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MARCH 27, 2017

4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 15 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Amy Davidson on Trump and Europe’s right; Gwyneth’s Goop pills; brunch as protest; a spider whisperer; Gander comes to Broadway. THE POLITICAL SCENE Elizabeth Kolbert 20 Minority Report Chuck Schumer’s big task. SHOUTS & MURMURS Bruce McCall 29 Kim Jong-un No Patsy ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS Michael Schulman 30 The Listener Lynn Nottage’s drama of race and class. A R E P O RT E R AT L A RG E Jane Mayer 34 Trump’s Money Man Who’s funding America’s populist insurgency? PROFILES Joshua Rothman 46 A Science of the Soul Consciousness and Daniel Dennett. FICTION Victor Lodato 56 “Herman Melville, Volume I” THE CRITICS A C R I T I C AT L A RG E Jill Lepore 66 Geofrey R. Stone’s “Sex and the Constitution.” BOOKS 71 Briefly Noted Ruth Franklin 73 Jerome Charyn’s “Jerzy.” THE ART WORLD Peter Schjeldahl 76 The Whitney Biennial. THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 78 “Beauty and the Beast,” “T2 Trainspotting.” POEMS Frank Ormsby 43 “Visiting the Grave” Michele Glazer 63 “Seen” COVER Luci Gutiérrez “Shelf Life”

DRAWINGS Seth Fleishman, Drew Panckeri, Jason Patterson, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Edward Steed, Jason Adam Katzenstein, Liana Finck, Tom Chitty, Jack Ziegler, Frank Cotham, William Haefeli, Paul Noth, Amy Hwang, Roz Chast, Joe Dator, P. C. Vey SPOTS Tim Lahan

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 1 CONTRIBUTORS

Jane Mayer (“Trump’s Money Man,” Joshua Rothman (“A Science of the p. 34), a staf writer, is the author of Soul,” p. 46), The New Yorker’s archive “Dark Money: The Hidden History editor, is a frequent contributor to of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of newyorker.com. the Radical Right.” Elizabeth Kolbert (“Minority Report,” Victor Lodato (Fiction, p. 56) published p. 20) is a staf writer. Her book “The his latest novel, “Edgar and Lucy,” this Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural His- month. tory” won a Pulitzer Prize for nonfic- tion in 2015. Frank Ormsby (Poem, p. 43) lives in Bel- fast. His collection “The Darkness of Ruth Franklin (Books, p. 73) is the au- Snow” will come out in September. thor of “Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life.” Luci Gutiérrez (Cover), an illustrator based in Barcelona, contributes regu- Michael Schulman (The Talk of the Town, larly to the Wall Street Journal and Time p. 19; “The Listener,” p. 30) has contrib- magazine. She is currently working on uted to the magazine since 2006. His a new book. book, “Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep,” comes out in paperback in April. Bruce McCall (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 29) has painted more than seventy-five New Jill Lepore (A Critic at Large, p. 66) Yorker covers and contributed more than teaches at Harvard and is writing a his- eighty pieces for Shouts & Murmurs tory of the United States. since 1980. Michele Glazer (Poem, p. 63) directs the Sheila Marikar (The Talk of the Town, creative-writing programs at Portland p. 16) has been a contributor since 2016. State University. Her latest book is She is currently writing a book. “On Tact, & the Made Up World.”

NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more.

PODCAST VIDEO On this week’s episode, Victor Lodato In Cuba, where women are banned reads “Herman Melville, Volume I,” from competitive boxing, a thirteen- his short story from the issue. year-old girl steps into the ring.

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2 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 THE MAIL

TRUMP AND FRAUD especially worried about what citizen- ship may mean for immigrants and ref- President Trump’s entire individual and ugees. My grandparents came to the business tax returns—far more pertinent Bronx from Dublin in the second half and informative than the two pages from of the nineteen-fifties. Given the recent his 2005 return that were leaked last immigration issues, travel bans, and dam- week—may provide some answers to ques- aging rhetoric, I fear that their story will tions about his puzzling legal and finan- become a historical relic. Halpern closes cial ties in Azerbaijan, which Adam David- his piece by quoting the Vive staf mem- son wrote about in his recent piece (“Don- ber Mariah Walker: “I never thought my a l d T r u m p ’ s W o r s t D e a l , ” M a r c h 1 3 t h ) . A country would be the one people had to 1924 law, the result of conflict-of- interest run from.” It’s a sad but honest reflec- concerns about the Treasury Secretary An- tion. As many people around the world drew Mellon and executive-branch of- are persecuted for their beliefs and their cials involved in the Teapot Dome scan- appearance, it’s imperative that the United dal, gives Congress the authority to exam- States not succumb to that same igno- ine Trump’s returns and reveal them to the rance, fear, and hatred. It rose above the public without the President’s consent. Fascist swing in Europe, and the Com- Members of Congress cannot blame the munist movement in Eastern Europe absence of information solely on the Pres- and Asia. It must now rise above Islam- ident’s intransigence. Instead, they must ophobia and nationalism. explain why they favor the same secrecy Thomas Carty that the President does. 1Pleasantville, N.Y. George K. Yin Professor of Law and Taxation WHY HEALTH CARE FAILS University of Virginia School of Law Charlottesville, Va. Atul Gawande’s thoughtful piece on the Republicans’ alternative to Obamacare Even to news junkies with graduate de- doesn’t mention one of the underlying fac- grees (like myself ), the world of inter- tors, which he has written about before, national finance is mind-numbingly that will afect any national plan from any complex and opaque. Yet the powerful party (Comment, March 6th). Doctors, people who inhabit that world are the hospitals, and drug and medical-device ones who make many decisions that companies in the U.S. charge far more than significantly afect the rest of us. How their counterparts in other countries. Yet can we be a democratic society governed the U.S. spends more on health care than by rule of law if hardly anyone knows other high-income countries, and with or understands what is going on in that worse outcomes. As a people, we also eat, world? I am grateful that Davidson drink, think, and move in ways that often waded into the unseemly muck for us contribute to poor health. This is not a pri- and emerged with a clear picture. mary concern of individuals, physicians, or Janet Grove health-care organizations. Are there no re- 1Missoula, Mont. sponses other than each provider group saying “It’s not us,” while making more REFUGEES IN AMERICA money, and then fighting over which pay- ment system is better or worse for whom? Recent chaos in the American political Douglas K. Ferguson system has efectively drowned out Chico, Calif. stories of courage like the ones that Jake • Halpern tells about Vive, a refugee safe Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, house in upstate New York (“A New Un- address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to derground Railroad,” March 13th). I’m [email protected]. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in sixteen years old, and am very nervous any medium. We regret that owing to the volume about the future of our country. I am of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 3 MARCH 22 – 28, 2017 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Fresh o Ryan Murphy’s “Feud” comes another diva smackdown: a new musical about the rivalry between Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, who ran competing cosmetics empires. Though they never actu- ally met, both women used eyeliner and chutzpah to reshape mid-century ideas about beauty. In “War Paint” (now in previews, at the Nederlander), with a score by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie (“Grey Gardens”), they’re played by Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole, no strangers to the D-word. Let the lipstick fly!

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF BROWN Stewart just about hold things together, and there are thrilling stretches—Maureen exchanging texts with an unknown presence who could be a killer, a MOVIES stalker, or a phantom soul—when the movie stops 1 your breath.—A.L. (3/20/17) (In limited release.) Raw OPENING Morgan. Kasper Collin’s documentary is centered on the sole recorded interview granted by Helen, Julia Ducournau’s movie tells the tale o￿ Justine in 1996, shortly before her death. Her story, as (Garance Marillier), who is joining her older sis- I Called Him Morgan Reviewed in Now Playing. presented by Collin, has a vast historical dimen- ter Alexia (Ella Rump￿) at veterinary school. Jus- Opening March 24. (In limited release.) • Life A sci- sion, focussing on her life in New York in the nine- tine arrives there as a hardworking student, a strict ence-￿ction ￿lm, directed by Daniel Espinosa, teen-￿fties, where she de￿ed the limited opportu- vegetarian, and a blushingly timid soul; what we about a Martian organism that gets loose on a nities for black women and turned her midtown observe, in stages, is the process by which she turns spaceship and threatens to conquer Earth. Star- apartment into a freestyle artistic salon. Interviews into a lusty carnivore on the rampage. The trigger ring Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson, and Jake with Lee Morgan’s great musical cohorts, such as is the hazing ritual to which she and other nov- Gyllenhaal. Opening March 24. (In wide release.) Wayne Shorter and Albert (Tootie) Heath, reveal ices must submit, which involves, among other 1 the jazz circuit’s high-risk behind-the-scenes activ- delights, a shower o￿ blood and the chomping o￿ ities, involving fast cars, sharp clothes, sexual con- a raw rabbit kidney—su￿cient to give Justine a NOW PLAYING quests, and, often, drugs. When Lee’s career was craving for ￿esh o￿ other kinds. She is not alone derailed by his heroin addiction, Helen took him in her appetites, we learn, and Ducournau does not Frantz under her wing and checked him into rehab. When shy away from detailing the tasting menu that fol- The new ￿lm from François Ozon takes place just he came out clean, they lived together as a couple lows. Viewers with nervous stomachs should stay after the First World War, and the action is shared and she managed his triumphant comeback; then well clear, yet the ￿lm, however lurid, is memora- between enemies; the ￿rst part is set in a small Ger- he left her for another woman, and tragedy ensued. ble less for its capacity to disgust than for its por- man town, and the second is centered in Paris. Rec- With an insightful blend o￿ interviews and music, trayal o￿ sisterly bonding, and for exploring the ex- onciliation, however well meant, turns out to be archival footage and photographs, Collin anchors tent to which the characters—not merely the young an elusive ideal. Paula Beer, whose performance this resonant double portrait in its subjects’ en- ones, as a late revelation suggests—are both liber- gains momentum as the plot unfolds, plays Anna, duringly in￿uential artistic scene and era.—Rich- ated and caged by bodily wants. In French.—A.L. who lost her ￿ancé, Frantz (Anton von Lucke), ard Brody (In limited release.) (3/13/17) (In limited release.) in the con￿ict; she still lives with his parents, the Ho￿meisters (Ernst Stötzner and Marie Gru- Kong: Skull Island Song to Song ber). They are visited by Adrien Rivoire (Pierre An unmapped and storm-girdled island, deep in In this romantic drama, set in and around the Aus- Niney), a tremulous Frenchman, who says that he the South Paci￿c, is too much to resist. Hence the tin music scene, Terrence Malick places the tran- was a friend o￿ Frantz, and whose recollections expeditionary force that is dispatched there—set scendental lyricism o￿ his later ￿lms on sharply bring solace to the bereaved. As Ozon’s admir- in motion by a scientist (John Goodman), guided mapped emotional terrain. It’s a story o￿ love ers will know, however, from “Under the Sand” by a British tracker (Tom Hiddleston), and caught skewed by ambition. Rooney Mara plays Faye, a (2000) and “In the House” (2012), mourners can on ￿lm by a dauntless photographer (Brie Larson). young musician who falls into a relationship with surprise both themselves and others, and the tell- Military muscle is provided by a squad o￿ American a record-company mogul (Michael Fassbender) ing o￿ tales can lead one down curious paths. Thus, troops, newly released from the toils o￿ the Viet- who can boost her career. Then she starts seeing when Anna travels to a still hostile France, all that nam War and commanded by Lieutenant Colonel another musician (Ryan Gosling), who also gets she believes begins to fall apart. On the surface, the Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), who is al- pulled into the impresario’s orbit. The shifting tri- ￿lm—shot in black and white, with short surges ready itching for another con￿ict. The fun starts— angle à la “Jules and Jim” is twisted by business con- o￿ color—is placid and polite, yet what stirs be- and it starts with admirable speed—when the island ￿icts and other players, including a waitress (Na- neath feels unhappy and unresolved. In French and proves to be far from uninhabited. In residence is talie Portman), a socialite (Cate Blanchett), and German.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of a U.S. pilot (John C. Reilly), who’s been stranded an artist (Bérénice Marlohe). Meanwhile, Patti 3/20/17.) (In limited release.) there for almost thirty years and has never heard Smith, playing herself, is the voice o￿ conscience o￿ the Cold War (“They take the summers o￿?”); and steadfast purpose, in art and life alike. With- Get Out a bunch o￿ prehistoric nasties with a grievance; and out sacri￿cing any o￿ the breathless ecstasy o￿ his A young white woman named Rose (Allison Wil- a monkey the size o￿ the Chrysler Building, whom urgent, ￿uid, seemingly borderless images (shot liams) takes Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), her black we seem to have met somewhere before. The di- by Emmanuel Lubezki), Malick girds them with boyfriend, to meet her parents for the ￿rst time. rector o￿ this heady nonsense is Jordan Vogt-Rob- a framework o￿ bruising entanglements and bit- They live, in some style, in the country, and Chris, erts, who sees no reason that “Apocalypse Now” ter realizations, family history and sti￿ed dreams. though an unru￿ed soul, feels a mild trepidation. should not be mashed up with monster ￿icks; the His sense o￿ wonder at the joy o￿ music and the But Rose’s father (Bradley Whitford) and mother result, apart from a stale patch in the middle, is power o￿ love is also a mournful vision o￿ paradise (Catherine Keener), liberal to a fault, o￿er a warm dished up with energy and verve.—A.L. (3/13/17) lost.—R.B. (In limited release.) welcome; i￿ anything, it is their African-American (In wide release.) sta￿—Walter (Marcus Henderson) and Georgina A Taste of Honey (Betty Gabriel)—who make Chris feel more un- Personal Shopper When the blowsy Helen (Dora Bryan) says she easy. A party for friends and family, the day after Kristen Stewart, who has made a wise habit o￿ never knew that her mis￿t daughter, Jo (Rita Tush- the couple’s arrival, deepens his suspicion that turning to distinctive directors, colludes again ingham), was talented, Jo retorts, “I’m not just tal- something is awry, and the ￿nal third o￿ the ￿lm with Olivier Assayas. In “Clouds o￿ Sils Maria” ented, I’m geniused.” There is a touch o￿ genius bursts into open hostility and dread. The writer and (2014), she played the assistant to a celebrated ac- to Shelagh Delaney’s 1958 Manchester-set play director is Jordan Peele, making his feature-￿lm tress; here she takes a similar but grimmer role as about Jo’s inchoate yearnings, her brie￿ interra- début, and the result feels in￿ammatory to an as- Maureen, the dogsbody who runs around buying cial romance, and the safe zone she creates with tounding degree. I￿ the awkward social comedy clothes and bags for a celebrity (Nora von Wald- her only friend, a tender gay man (Murray Mel- o￿ the early scenes winds up as a ￿at-out horror stätten) o￿ no perceptible talent. Any social sat- vin). Jo is a ￿ighty character with a bitter earthy movie, that, we feel, is because Peele ￿nds the ire, though, is lightly handled, for Assayas has streak, and her con￿icting energies—expressed in state o￿ race relations so horri￿c—irreparably so— other zones o￿ obsession and frustration to ex- sometimes edgy, sometimes fanciful dialogue— that no other reaction will su￿ce. Kaluuya makes plore. Maureen is psychic, and desperate to hear make this a near-classic o￿ postadolescent confu- a likable hero, for whom we heartily root.—A.L. from her twin brother, who succumbed to a heart sion and longing. The director, Tony Richardson (3/6/17) (In wide release.) condition from which she also su￿ers. In that spirit, (who co-wrote the screenplay with Delaney), didn’t the movie becomes a ghost story, with the heroine ￿nd a visual style to match the verve o￿ Delaney’s I Called Him Morgan prowling a vacant house in search o￿ the dead; as language, but he cast the ￿lm superbly, and in the One o￿ the traumas o￿ modern music was the death i￿ that were not enough, death then shows up un- best scenes Walter Lassally’s photography and John o￿ the trumpeter Lee Morgan, at the age o￿ thir- invited, in the shape o￿ a savage murder. Some au- Addison’s score help him achieve the perfect blend ty-three, when he was shot in a Lower East Side diences will doubtless be ba￿ed and annoyed by o￿ poignancy and insouciance.—Michael Sragow jazz club, in 1972, by his common-law wife, Helen this mixing o￿ genres and tones, yet Assayas and (Film Forum; March 24 and March 28.)

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 5 1 OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS

Amélie THE THEATRE Phillipa Soo (“Hamilton”) stars in a musical ad- aptation o￿ the 2001 ￿lm, by Craig Lucas, Daniel Messé, and Nathan Tysen, about a young woman who spreads joy in Montmartre. (Walter Kerr, 219 W. 48th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.)

Anastasia Darko Tresnjak directs this new musical, by Ter- rence McNally, Stephen Flaherty, and Lynn Ahrens, drawn from the 1956 and 1997 ￿lms about the Russian Grand Duchess. (Broadhurst, 235 W. 44th St. 212-239-6200. Previews begin March 23.)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Christian Borle plays Willy Wonka in this musi- cal version o￿ the Roald Dahl book, featuring new songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and a book by David Greig. (Lunt-Fontanne, 205 W. 46th St. 877-250-2929. Previews begin March 28.)

Daniel’s Husband Primary Stages presents a new play by Michael McKeever, directed by Joe Brancato, about a seem- ingly happy gay couple who disagree about whether to get married. (Cherry Lane, 38 Commerce St. 866- Primal Edge ranging from early one-acts like 811-4111. In previews.) “Thirst” to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Bobby Cannavale stars in Eugene Gently Down the Stream “Anna Christie,” the briny world O’Neill’s “The Hairy Ape.” In Martin Sherman’s new play, set at the begin- aects his characters’ interpretations, ning o￿ the online-dating era, Harvey Fierstein ’ at Eugene O’Neill’s and misinterpretations, of life on dry plays a gay pianist living in London who meets a younger man. (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967- play, “The Hairy Ape,” in many land. In his masterpiece “Long Day’s 7555. In previews.) years before I picked it up again re- Journey Into Night,” the ocean fog cently, on the occasion of Richard that shuts the characters o from the Groundhog Day Tim Minchin and Danny Rubin wrote this musi- Jones’s interpretation of the work for rest of the world is like another char- cal version o￿ the 1993 Bill Murray comedy, about the Park Avenue Armory (March - acter—like God—that man alone can’t a misanthropic weatherman (Andy Karl) forced April ). The standout actor Bobby cut through. to repeat the same day over and over. Matthew Warchus directs. (August Wilson, 245 W. 52nd St. Cannavale stars as Robert (Yank) In “The Hairy Ape,” Yank, insulted 212-239-6200. In previews.) Smith, a physically imposing stevedore by a rich girl he meets in the stoke- on an ocean liner that’s headed for New hold, heads into a sharp, edgy New Hello, Dolly! Bette Midler stars as the turn-of-the-century York. Yank is a “primitive” who grew up York, where everything he prizes about matchmaker Dolly Levi in the Jerry Herman mu- tough—his father beat him as a kid— himself is considered loutish, out of sical from 1964, directed by Jerry Zaks and featur- but he doesn’t dwell on the pain of the synch with Manhattan sophistication. ing David Hyde Pierce. (Shubert, 225 W. 44th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.) past; what matters to Yank is today. This Written in a frenzied, layered style, pre-Depression world is dominated by O’Neill’s play is filled with extraordi- Latin History for Morons the wealthy, and it’s not clear where a nary energy and something that’s not In his new comic monologue, John Leguizamo sur- veys history from the Aztec Empire through the man like Yank—who believes that a awfully popular these days: compas- Revolutionary War in an attempt to ￿nd a hero for man’s a man only as he inhabits the sion for male pain. This is a specialty his son’s school project. (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212- universe that is his body—fits in. Yank’s of Cannavale’s acting. In the play 967-7555. In previews. Opens March 27.) older shipmate Paddy (David Costa- “The Motherfucker with the Hat,” his Miss Saigon bile) doesn’t worry about the rich, be- ex-jailbird character was so hopped Cameron Mackintosh remounts the 1989 mega-mu- cause the seamen run the boat, and they up on what turned out to be false hope sical, by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, and Richard Maltby, Jr., an update o￿ “Madame have power. But it’s the rich who own that once he learned the truth of love Butter￿y” set during the Vietnam War. (Broad- the boat, and the world. Paddy misses his tremendous physical energy col- way Theatre, Broadway at 53rd St. 212-239-6200. In the days when man and water and sea- lapsed, and those watching collapsed previews. Opens March 23.) craft were one. That was true freedom. with him. Writing from inside Yank’s The New Yorkers For his entire life (-), deepest desires, dreams, and inno- Encores! presents Cole Porter’s 1930 musical about O’Neill loved water. As a boy, he spent cence, O’Neill created one of his more speakeasies, gangsters, and dames in Prohibition-era New York, based on a story by E. Ray Goetz and the summers with his family near the densely and poetically conceived New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno. (City Center, 131 beach in New London, Connecticut, scripts, about a world where language W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. March 22-26.) and as a young man he worked on and the body confuse one another, and Oslo freighters that travelled to places like end up cancelling each other out. A Broadway transfer o￿ J. T. Rogers’s play, directed

Argentina and Honduras. In his plays, —Hilton Als by Bartlett Sher, which explores how a Norwegian BENDIK ILLUSTRATIONBY KALTENBORN

6 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 THE THEATRE diplomat (Jennifer Ehle) and her husband (Je￿er- vision, presenting an unavoidably important Amer- sorts. Silverman further populates her wuthering son Mays) secretly helped orchestrate the 1993 Oslo ican drama that retains the power to spellbind and heights with a winsome governess (Chasten Har- Accords. (Vivian Beaumont, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239- unnerve. Obi Abili, in the supremely challenging mon), a typhoid maid (Hannah Cabell), a talking 6200. Previews begin March 23.) role o￿ Brutus Jones, rules the show with a ruth- moorhen (Teresa Avia Lim), and a glum mas- less charm and retains a crucial psychological au- ti￿ (Andrew Garman). “Sometimes I think, Who The Play That Goes Wrong thenticity, no matter how histrionic the hallucina- would I be i￿ I weren’t depressed?” the dog says. England’s Mischie￿ Theatre imports this backstage tions. (Irish Repertory, 132 W. 22nd St. 212-727-2737.) The script is a knowing Gothic ri￿, but Mike Do- comedy, about a hapless drama society whose pro- nahue’s heavy-footed direction, which keeps paus- duction o￿ a nineteen-twenties murder mystery de- The Gravedigger’s Lullaby ing to re-fog the stage, overemphasizes its archness, scends into chaos. (Lyceum, 149 W. 45th St. 212-239- Baylen (Ted Koch) and Margot (KK Moggie) are rendering this playfully macabre pastiche strangely 6200. In previews.) a young couple with a nearly inconsolable baby leaden. The terri￿c exception: Huppuch, as the girl, trying to survive in a miserable, vaguely De- younger spinster, performing what begins as a folky Present Laughter pression-era shack on the outskirts o￿ town. Along murder ballad and devolves into a wild, blood-spat- Kevin Kline plays a narcissistic actor having a with his friend Gizzer (Todd Lawson), Baylen is tered punk snarl. (The Duke on 42nd Street, 229 midlife crisis, in Moritz von Stuelpnagel’s revival a digger o￿ “holes,” as he puts it, and he’s a de- W. 42nd St. 646-223-3010. Through March 25.) o￿ the 1939 Noël Coward comedy. (St. James, 246 cent man stretched to the breaking point. Into W. 44th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.) the cemetery comes Charles (Jeremy Beck), the Sundown, Yellow Moon son o￿ one o￿ the town’s richest men, looking for a Technically, little happens in Rachel Bonds’s quiet The Profane plot for his father. Amid scenes touching on mo- new play, yet the show, co-presented by WP The- Zayd Dohrn’s play, directed by Kip Fagan, is about rality, economics, partnership, and gender roles, atre and Ars Nova, works a sneaky charm. Twin a liberal immigrant Manhattanite whose daughter Je￿ Talbott’s play, from the Actors Company The- sisters spend some time visiting their father (Peter falls in love with the son o￿ conservative Muslim atre, goes from grim to grimmer, with a plot twist Friedman), who got into trouble at the school parents. (Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. 212- that disingenuously ￿irts with tragedy. The direc- where he teaches. He’s not the only one at a cross- 279-4200. In previews.) tor, Jenn Thompson, and her cast give believable roads: the overachieving Joey (Eboni Booth) only muscle to scenes involving physical labor, macho appears to know where she’s going and is ready Sweat horseplay, sex, and violence, but the play, after a to be distracted, while Ray (Lilli Cooper) is still Lynn Nottage’s drama, in which a group o￿ factory promising start, devolves into melodrama. (Beck- trying to ￿nd herself, confused by a fraught a￿air workers in Reading, Pennsylvania, ￿nd themselves ett, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200.) and ambivalent about being a musician. The di- at odds amid layo￿s and pickets, transfers from rector Anne Kau￿man and her actors tease out all the Public under the direction o￿ Kate Whoris- Joan of Arc: Into the Fire the nuances in Bonds’s script in an accomplished key. (Studio 54, at 254 W. 54th St. 212-239-6200. In This biographical musical about the quintessen- production (the sound and lighting are especially previews. Opens March 26.) tial Catholic martyr-saint comes equipped with the impressive), and the perfectly integrated songs, by words, songs, and pedigree o￿ David Byrne, but the the Bengsons, add an element o￿ indie-pop mel- Vanity Fair result scans oddly like a straightforward French- ancholy. But be wary o￿ tranquil waters—they can The Pearl stages the William Makepeace Thackeray nationalist religious pageant, albeit with a superior suck you in. (McGinn/Cazale, 2162 Broadway, at novel anatomizing nineteenth-century British so- calibre o￿ chord changes and stagecraft. (The di- 76th St. 866-811-4111.) ciety, adapted by Kate Hamill and directed by Eric rector is Alex Timbers, who also collaborated with Tucker. (Pearl, 555 W. 42nd St. 212-563-9261. Pre- Byrne on “Here Lies Love.”) It’s a fair guess that The View UpStairs views begin March 24.) Joan’s story has something to tell us from across When Wes (Jeremy Pope), a clueless, black, gay 1 the centuries, but such insights are almost entirely millennial on his way to becoming a “#house- missing here. Byrne’s libretto is persistently lit- holdname,” comes to inspect the building he’s NOW PLAYING eral, pedestrian, and predictable, which is a mys- just bought for his ￿edgling fashion business, he tery coming from a songwriter who has composed ￿nds himsel￿ temporarily transported back in time, Come from Away so many surprising, original, and wonderfully am- “Brigadoon” style, to a tacky gay bar in 1973. It’s Canadian hospitality doesn’t seem like grist for biguous lyrics over the decades. The show’s sav- occupied by a colorful crew o￿ old-school queens, drama, but this gem o￿ a musical, by Irene Sanko￿ ing grace is Jo Lampert, whose soulful voice and including a young hustler in form￿tting polyester and David Hein, makes kindness sing and soar. On natural air o￿ youthful fervor are a perfect match pants (Taylor Frey), with whom Wes falls in love. 9/11, thousands o￿ airline passengers were rerouted for Joan, and who is worth watching in anything. At ￿rst, Wes condescends to his new friends, who to the tiny Newfoundland town o￿ Gander, popula- (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555.) still cower around cops and have unprotected sex, tion nine thousand. The Ganderites opened their but by the end o￿ the evening he realizes that “likes” doors—and fetched sandwiches, underwear, and ko- The Light Years are no substitute for ￿esh-and-blood community. sher meals—while the “plane people,” trapped in a Some plays use stage magic as a storytelling tool; Max Vernon’s compact musical could have been all ￿ve-day limbo, reckoned with a changed world. A this show is about stage magic itself, seen here as fun and camp, but, under Scott Ebersold’s direc- splendid twelve-person cast plays dozens o￿ char- an expression o￿ a very American enthusiasm for a tion, it’s more thoughtful than that, with sad, beau- acters, but Sanko￿ and Hein deftly spotlight a few, brighter, shinier future—even when harsh economic tiful love songs performed by a soulful ensemble including an American Airlines pilot (Jenn Colella) realities get in the way o￿ dreams. As be￿ts a piece cast. (Lynn Redgrave, 45 Bleecker St. 866-811-4111.) trying to maintain control o￿ her charges and an by the New York company the Debate Society (“Ja- 1 Egyptian che￿ (Caesar Samayoa) coping with the cuzzi”), “The Light Years” is wonderfully eccentric, ￿rst glimmers o￿ post-9/11 Islamophobia. Christo- toggling between the Chicago World’s Fairs o￿ 1893 ALSO NOTABLE pher Ashley’s production doesn’t dwell on inspira- and 1933. The focus is on worker bees—an electrician tional messaging, instead letting the story, along (Erik Lochtefeld), a jingle writer (Ken Barnett)— All the Fine Boys Pershing Square Signature Cen- with some ￿ne ￿ddle playing, put the wind in its but casting a long shadow is Steele MacKaye (Rocco ter. Through March 26. • Bull in a China Shop Claire sails. (Schoenfeld, 236 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200.) Sisto), a real-life theatre demiurge who dreamed o￿ Tow. • C. S. Lewis Onstage: The Most Reluctant Con- building a twelve-thousand-seat venue, the Specta- vert Acorn. • Dear Evan Hansen Music Box. • 887 The Emperor Jones torium, for the 1893 event. Tying it all together is BAM Harvey Theatre. Through March 26. •The It would be all too easy to present the opening scene Aya Cash (from the TV show “You’re the Worst”), Glass Menagerie Belasco. • How to Transcend a o￿ Eugene O’Neill’s nightmarish 1920 drama— who appears in both time lines and whose dry wit Happy Marriage Mitzi E. Newhouse. • If I Forget about a con-artist braggart who ascends to ulti- and classic, tender elegance recall Irene Dunne’s. Laura Pels. • Linda City Center Stage I. • Man from mate power on a wave o￿ lies—as an allegory for (Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200.) Nebraska Second Stage. Through March 26. • 946: the rise o￿ Trump, or the rest o￿ the play as a pre- The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips St. Ann’s Ware- monition o￿ the ￿nal hours o￿ Saddam Hussein The Moors house. •The Outer Space Joe’s Pub. • The Price or Muammar Qadda￿. But this revival, directed Homage, lampoon, and queer subversion, Jen Sil- American Airlines Theatre. • Significant Other by Ciarán O’Reilly, isn’t that kind o￿ reboot, nor verman’s play skulks in and out o￿ a gloomy man- Booth. • Sunday in the Park with George Hud- does it attempt to recon￿gure the play’s uncom- sion smack in the middle o￿ Brontë land. In this son. • Sunset Boulevard Palace. • Sweeney Todd: fortable racial dynamics (although, mercifully, it Playwrights Realm production, Linda Powell and The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Barrow Street does soften O’Neill’s “Negro” dialect). Instead, it Birgit Huppuch play Agatha and Huldey, two spin- Theatre. • Wakey, Wakey Pershing Square Signa- plunges headlong into O’Neill’s own often vexing ster sisters encircled by dark plots and licorice all- ture Center. • War Paint Nederlander.

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 7 unusual yet compelling set pieces: Britten’s adapta- tions o￿ Purcell’s “Job’s Curse” and “Let the Dread- ful Engines o￿ Eternal Will,” and a nineteenth-cen- CLASSICAL MUSIC tury ballad by Carl Loewe. Rose and his pianist, Vlad Iftinca, then pivot to more traditional fare, 1 closing with Schubert’s ￿nal, masterly song cycle, OPERA 28 at 7:30. (St. Bartholomew’s Church, Park Ave. at “Schwanengesang.” March 25 at 7:30. (Weill Recital 51st St. mmpaf.org.) Hall, Carnegie Hall. 212-247-7800.)

Metropolitan Opera Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin Orlando Consort: “Rediscovering Compère” The star o￿ the Met’s current revival o￿ Mozart’s This scintillating German early-music ensemble, Loyset Compère is a name that often pops up on music drama “Idomeneo” is the orchestra itself, in a program titled “Foreign A￿airs: Characters early-music programs to add a dash o￿ variety to the from which James Levine, in ￿ne form, summons o￿ the Baroque,” conjures a vision o￿ European proceedings, but the prestigious male vocal quartet beautifully round and resonant sound, communi- union circa the eighteenth century, when conti- turns that formula on its head in a concert presented cating a wide range o￿ emotions. The singers are nental composers including Telemann, Handel, by Miller Theatre. A sequence o￿ fourteen o￿ Com- more or less ￿tted into the orchestral fabric, but Bach, Vivaldi, and Rebel found common ground père’s spirited chansons and more sombre sacred they, too, ￿nd moments to shine: Matthew Polenza- in dance-music forms and virtuoso display. March settings is contrasted with a pair o￿ entries from ni’s Idomeneo delivers a rousing “Fuor del Mar”; 23 at 7:30. (Zankel Hall. 212-247-7800.) his more famous peer Josquin and his predecessor Alice Coote’s Idamante, a dramatic “Il Padre Ad- Dufay. March 25 at 8. (150 W. 83rd St. 212-854-7799.) orato”; Nadine Sierra’s Ilia, a beautifully sculpted American Composers Orchestra “Ze￿retti Lusinghieri”; and Elza van den Hee- A watershed work in terms o￿ technique, content, Rafał Blechacz ver’s screwball villainess, Elettra, a vivid “D’Oreste, and identity—and simply a thrilling piece—Steve The much honored Polish pianist, a brilliant tech- d’Ajace.” (This is the ￿nal performance.) March 25 Reich’s “Tehillim,” a group o￿ Psalm settings, is nician with an inquisitive touch, makes his 92nd at 1. • Sonya Yoncheva put her de￿nitive mark on the anchor o￿ a program celebrating the compos- Street Y début after previously storming Zankel the title role o￿ Verdi’s “La Traviata” this season, er’s eightieth-birthday season. Sharing the bill are Hall. Music by Chopin (including the Sonata No. 2 but now it’s the turn o￿ the up-and-coming Italian new commissioned works by the gifted younger in B-Flat Minor) is o￿ course on the program, com- soprano Carmen Giannattasio, who joins the re- composers David Hertzberg, Paola Prestini, and plemented by works by Bach (Four Duets, BWV vival’s established stars, Michael Fabiano (as Al- Trevor Weston. March 24 at 7:30. (Zankel Hall. 802-805) and Beethoven. March 26 at 3. (Lexing- fredo) and Thomas Hampson (Germont). Nicola 212-247-7800.) ton Ave. at 92nd St. 92y.org.) Luisotti conducts. March 22 at 7:30 and March 25 at 8:30. • Sonja Frisell’s grand production o￿ Ver- Music Mondays Series: “Last Words” Music at the Frick Collection: di’s “Aida” is not exactly a shrinking violet on the Ekmeles, a chamber choir that devotes itsel￿ to Christopher Purves Met’s schedule. It returns with two estimable sing- the most challenging o￿ contemporary works, of- The forceful baritone, who made an indelible im- ers, Krassimira Stoyanova and Violeta Urmana, fers David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Little pression in George Benjamin’s opera “Written on as Aida and her nemesis, Amneris, and a new- Match Girl Passion,” in a capacious concert that Skin,” at Lincoln Center in 2015, comes to the mu- comer tenor, Jorge de León, as Radamès; Daniele also features powerful pieces by Wolfgang Rihm seum’s graciously gilded music room to sing a pair Rustioni. March 23 and March 27 at 7:30. • Much (“Sieben Passions-Texte”) and the great Schütz o￿ Handel arias as well as serious songs by Schubert like Beethoven’s symphonies, the composer’s only (including excerpts from the “St. Matthew Pas- and Mussorgsky (“Songs and Dances o￿ Death”) opera, “Fidelio,” makes its points in dense and el- sion”). Also on hand is the Attacca Quartet, per- and lighter fare by Gerald Finzi. March 26 at 5. (1 oquent musical arguments. Fortunately, the Met’s forming selections from the string-quartet version E. 70th St. 212-547-0715.) two leads, Adrianne Pieczonka and Klaus Florian o￿ Haydn’s “Seven Last Words o￿ Christ.” March 27 Vogt, are Wagnerians known for carrying power at 7:30. (Advent Lutheran Church, Broadway at 93rd National Sawdust: “Harold Meltzer @ 50” as well as lyricism, and they head a cast that also St. No tickets required.) One o￿ the broad-minded music club’s classical includes Greer Grimsley and Falk Struckmann; 1 highlights this week is a tribute to the distinctive Sebastian Weigle. March 24 and March 28 at 7:30. American composer, known for the limpid del- (Metropolitan Opera House. 212-362-6000.) RECITALS icacy o￿ his style. A superb group o￿ musicians (including the mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer, LoftOpera: “Otello” Miah Persson and Florian Boesch the Cygnus Ensemble, and the Boston Chamber Verdi’s interpretation o￿ Shakespeare’s tale o￿ the The year 1840 is known as Robert Schumann’s Lie- Music Society) gather to perform the New York Moor o￿ Venice would be beyond this upstart com- derjahr (“year o￿ song”), since it saw the composi- premières o￿ the Piano Quartet and o￿ “Variations pany’s range, but Rossini’s lighter, bel-canto ver- tion o￿ so many o￿ his best-loved vocal works, in- on a Summer Day,” a spacious cycle o￿ Wallace Ste- sion should be a better ￿t. John de los Santos has cluding the “Eichendor￿ Liederkreis,” Op. 39, and vens settings. March 26 at 7. (80 N. 6th St., Brook- set the opera in the time o￿ Italy’s postwar “eco- “Frauenliebe und -leben.” The glossy-voiced so- lyn. nationalsawdust.org.) nomic miracle”; Sean Kelly conducts a cast headed prano and the eloquent baritone focus on selections by Bernard Holcomb and Cecilia Violetta López. from both o￿ these works in their all-Schumann “Morton Feldman: The Late Piano Works” March 23, March 25, and March 27 at 8. These are the recital, with some later songs added into the mix. Spectrum, the very intimate venue on the Lower ￿nal performances. (LightSpace Studios, 1115 Flushing The lively collaborative pianist Malcolm Martin- East Side, is devoting a sequence o￿ concerts to Ave., Brooklyn. loftopera.com.) eau accompanies them. March 22 at 7:30. (Zankel music by the revered proto-minimalist, an archi- 1 Hall. 212-247-7800.) tect o￿ luminously quiet musical landscapes. Nils Vigeland o￿ers the last installment, which features ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES “Air Schoenberg: Connecting Flights” “Piano” (1977) and “Palais de Mari” (1986). March In New York, Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2 in 26 at 7. (121 Ludlow St., 2nd Floor. Tickets at the door.) Bach’s “St. John Passion” F-Sharp Minor, a gorgeously lyrical work in which The shorter and more sharp-edged o￿ Bach’s late Romanticism and modernism miraculously Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: Eastertide masterworks is presented by two top- coexist, has become one o￿ the great unperformed “Parisian Tableau” notch groups this week. The home-town chorus pieces. International Street Cannibals, a gamely ti- The Society, highlighting the French tendency to is TENET, an early-music ensemble o￿ distinc- tled new-music ensemble, gives it a well-deserved write chamber music for violin with soloistic ￿air, tion, which teams up with the period instrumen- hearing, collaborating with the soprano Ariadne presents an array o￿ works, centered on the violin- talists o￿ the Sebastians; Aaron Sheehan sings Greif; also included on the enticing program are ist Yura Lee’s performance, with the pianist (and the role o￿ the Evangelist, and Mischa Bouvier chamber and vocal works by Arvo Pärt (“Fratres”), Society co-director) Wu Han, o￿ Ravel’s bravura is Jesus. March 23 and March 25 at 7. (German Zemlinsky, Berg, Webern, Schubert, and Brahms. “gypsy”-style showpiece, “Tzigane.” Other compos- Lutheran Church of St. Paul, 315 W. 22nd St. tenet. March 22 at 7:30. (St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, ers on the program include Leclair, Françaix (his nyc.) • Those seeking a lighter and more pas- 131 E. 10th St. Tickets at the door.) Trio for Violin, Viola, and Cello), and Chausson telled type o￿ sound can take in a performance (his luxuriant Concert in D Major for Violin, Piano, from the Choir o￿ New College, Oxford, a re- Matthew Rose and String Quartet, led by the dexterous violinist nowned men-and-boys ensemble in the Angli- For his New York recital début, the British bass Arnaud Sussmann). March 28 at 7:30. (Alice Tully can tradition. Robert Quinney conducts. March showcases his penchant for the dramatic with three Hall. 212-875-5788.)

8 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 revelation has only drawn fans closer to the fringe icon, who performs alongside Cakes da Killa. (Bow- NIGHT LIFE ery1 Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. 212-260-4700. March 26.) 1 JAZZ AND STANDARDS ROCK AND POP ing label for melodic punk that appeals to people past their teens. (Union Pool, 484 Union Ave., Brook- Stanley Cowell lyn. 718-609-0484. March 24.) Cowell was a whirlwind o￿ activity in the nine- Musicians and night-club proprietors lead teen-seventies and eighties, sharing his encyclo- complicated lives; it’s advisable to check Moor Mother pedic piano skills with a host o￿ top-tier artists as in advance to con￿rm engagements. Camae Ayewa—a poet, vocalist, and masterly sound well as showcasing them on his own ￿ne record- collager—performs confrontational music under the ings, co-founding the in￿uential Strata-East label, Downtown Boys moniker Moor Mother. During her days in the Phila- participating in jazz-repertory projects, and gener- Firing out o￿ the basements and loft parties o￿ Prov- delphia underground, in the early aughts, Ayewa re- ally playing his part as a sparkplug o￿ post-bop jazz. idence, Rhode Island, this bilingual group slugs corded hundreds o￿ unpolished self-released songs, Academia claimed him in the subsequent decades; through brawny no-wave shows with little concern and performed in local venues where she booked lately, following his retirement, in 2013, he’s been re- for personal safety or noise-induced hearing loss. Its shows for other acts. She describes her material as a surfacing for occasional welcome appearances. The brash vocalist, Victoria Ruiz, is committed to left-wing mixture o￿ “low-￿, dark rap, chill step, blk girl blues, still scintillating virtuoso leads a quintet featuring causes; she’s worked for the public defender’s o￿ce, witch rap, co￿ee shop riot gurl songs, southern girl the saxophonist Bruce Williams. (Dizzy’s Club Co- she sings in both English and Spanish, “to speak to dittys and black ghost songs,” and has focussed on ca-Cola, Broadway at 60th St. 212-258-9595. March 23.) as many people as possible,” and she titled the band’s both interrogating and becoming a vehicle for truth. début album “Full Communism.” This week, Down- This is evident in the dense industrial compositions Victor Goines Quartet town Boys appear alongside Alice Bag, a predecessor o￿ “Fetish Bones,” an album she made using analog A proud scion o￿ New Orleans who holds fast to to Ruiz who must be happy to see the Boys ￿ourish; noise machines and ￿eld recordings. She performs his roots, Goines may be best recognized as a sax- her own group, the Bags, was part o￿ the formative alongside the composer Rabit and the sound art- ophonist and clarinettist with the Jazz at Lincoln late-seventies generation o￿ Los Angeles punk, and ist GENG. (Sunnyvale, 1031 Grand St., Brooklyn. 347- Center Orchestra. The Big Easy and its enduring she continues to be a precious voice o￿ dissent in her 987-3971. March 25.) musical charms will not be far from his mind during subversive solo work. (Baby’s All Right, 146 Broadway, this three-night gig, for which he shares the stage Brooklyn. 718-599-5800. March 24.) Mykki Blanco with the e￿ervescent banjo player and singer Don Michael Quattlebaum, Jr., was early to alt-hip-hop— Vappie. (Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Broadway at 60th Iron Chic he’s been making waves with his non-gendered take St. 212-258-9595. March 24-26.) Iron Chic is a modest out￿t, in keeping with the on rap’s hypermasculine aesthetics since 2010. His attitude o￿ its adopted home town o￿ Long Island. work with rising electronic producers has received The Jazz Passengers The band members describe themselves as “decent,” more play at underground raves than it ever would One o￿ the essential groups to emerge from the nine- the songs they play as “acceptable,” and their genre on mainstream radio: “What the fuck I gotta prove teen-eighties East Village scene, the Jazz Passengers as “punk,” but their music bears all the marks o￿ a to a room full o￿ dudes / who ain’t listening to my celebrate their thirtieth anniversary with the release sincere emo band without the youthful ￿u￿. “The words ’cause they staring at my shoes?” he raps on o￿ a bighearted, satirical new record, “Still Life with Constant One,” Iron Chic’s most recent album, and “Wavvy,” from 2012. Quattlebaum brie￿y attended Trouble.” The band’s origins can be traced to the pit only its second, from 2013, begins with “Bogus Jour- both the School o￿ the Art Institute o￿ Chicago and o￿ the Big Apple Circus, where its founders, the sax- ney,” a sad, tuneful, and lovely song about the daunt- Parsons School o￿ Design, and his videos and stage ophonist Roy Nathanson and the trombonist Curtis ing scale o￿ the universe and our shrinking presence shows maintain an art-school exhibitionism. The Fowlkes, forged a lifelong friendship and a musical within it: “One hundred million miles o￿ space, the line between the personal and the public was blurred collaboration that soon led to a stint with their like- right time and the perfect place.” The band’s next ef- further when, in June o￿ 2015, he revealed, via Face- minded downtown predecessors the Lounge Lizards. fort will be released on Side One Dummy, a launch- book, that he’d been H.I.V. positive since 2011. The The Passengers’ new album, like its previous e￿orts, is marked by a central contrast: breezy, comic vocals mingling with beautiful, unpredictable melodies and abstract harmonies that suggest an underlying serious- ness. This show features most o￿ the stellar original band members, including Bill Ware, on vibraphone, and E. J. Rodriguez, on drums and percussion, but the core o￿ the group’s sound is still the warm interplay between Nathanson’s frenzied sax solos and Fowlkes’s groove-￿lled trombone lines. (Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn. 917-267-0363. March 28.)

Bucky Pizzarelli The dean o￿ mainstream jazz guitar turned ninety-one at the beginning o￿ the year, which means that his dulcet tones and perfectly turned phrases have ￿lled the air for more than seven decades. Supported by his second guitarist and frequent partner Ed Laub, Pizzarelli will demonstrate undiminished ￿air on his trademark seven-stringed instrument. (Jazz at Ki- tano, 66 Park Ave., at 38th St. 212-885-7119. March 24.)

Renee Rosnes On the gifted pianist’s recent album, “Written in the Rocks,” composition assumes equal importance with instrumental invention. After paying initial dues with such monumental modernists as Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson, Rosnes has stepped ￿rmly into the role o￿ assured bandleader. She’s joined by key collaborators, including the vibraphonist Steve Nel- son, the bassist Peter Washington, and the drummer The Jazz Passengers, a post-bop gang of music-class clowns, were East Village darlings in the Lewis Nash. (Smoke, 2751 Broadway, between 105th and

ILLUSTRATION BY DANIELKRALL ILLUSTRATIONBY nineteen-eighties. Three decades after the group’s début, it gathers at Roulette with a new album. 106th Sts. 212-864-6662. March 24-26.)

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 9 DANCE

Rainer and her colleagues David Gordon and Steve Paxton), it was later given as a solo, as a duet, as a group piece. Originally, it was performed to Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour.” On some later oc- casions, it had a spoken text. Often it was danced in silence. The dancers usually wore street clothes, but that could vary, too. In , Stephen Radich, a New York gallery owner, exhib- ited some works that used the American flag in ways that condemned the Vietnam War. (In one, the flag, stued to resemble a penis, was hung on a seven-foot cross.) Radich was arrested and eventually con- victed of desecrating the flag. In protest, a People’s Flag Show was organized in Greenwich Village, in . Rainer con- tributed what she called “Trio A with Flags,” in which she and five other danc- ers performed the now famous piece wear- ing nothing but five-foot-long U.S. flags, tied to their necks like lobster bibs. Radich’s conviction was ultimately thrown out, but the history of “Trio A with Flags” did not end there. In , the choreographer Stephen Petronio launched his company’s “Bloodlines” project, whereby his shows would in- clude dances not just by him but also by his postmodern predecessors. This year, for his company’s season, March - April , at the Joyce, he will feature works by Steve Paxton, Anna Halprin, and also Rainer, including “Trio A with David Gordon in a performance of “Trio A with Flags,” at Judson Memorial Church in 1970. Flags.” Asked why he chose the flag piece, Petronio answered that he made Naked Flag Dance with expression altogether. It did not de- the decision months ago, to celebrate pict anything; it did not narrate anything. what he was sure would be Hillary Clin- Stephen Petronio revives Yvonne All it was, or hoped to be, was a series of ton’s election as President. “Then,” he Rainer’s “Trio A with Flags.” movements. (Now we kneel, now we hop, said, “the world changed.” Once it did, -, a number now we stick our chins out, etc.) Nothing he figured, as Rainer had a half century of downtown choreographers found developed into anything else. Above all, before, that “Trio A with Flags” would themselves weary of the emotionalism of nothing was given more emphasis than make a nice act of defiance. The flag-clad modern dance: all those women flinging anything else. version is actually not a good way to see themselves around in great swaths of Of course, in the end, the piece, by re- the choreography of “Trio A.” The flags fabric and looking tragic. The leading fusing to express anything, came o as block your view of the movement, and proponent of this position, or the one extremely expressive—of an anti-expres- so does the nudity, because it’s distract- who immortalized it, was Yvonne Rainer, sionist position. Never mind. It had a nice, ing. But the Petronio company will per- a founding member of the Judson Dance cleansing eect on the field, and thereby form the five-minute dance twice in a Theatre and Grand Union collectives. In helped modern dance become postmodern row, first with flags, then with clothes , Rainer premièred a dance called dance. Indeed, it was a sort of theme song (and Wilson Pickett).

“Trio A,” which attempted to dispense of that transition. First done as a trio (by —Joan Acocella N.Y. MOORE/VAGA, BARBARA MOORE/© PETER BY PHOTOGRAPH

10 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 DANCE

Hamburg Ballet / “Old Friends” For the past forty-four years, the American-born choreographer John Neumeier has been the di- rector o￿ Hamburg Ballet, creating work in his ART highly emotive, theatrical style. (Many know him 1 1 for his “Lady o￿ the Camellias,” which is in the repertory at American Ballet Theatre.) For the MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES GALLERIES—CHELSEA company’s ￿rst appearance at the Joyce—part o￿ an American tour—it will perform “Old Friends,” a compendium o￿ intimate scenes from Neumei- Brooklyn Museum Alice Neel er’s vast catalogue. It is set mostly to Chopin “Georgia O’Kee￿e: Living Modern” An observant and expressive portraitist, pieces, plus a Bach orchestral suite and several This eagerly anticipated exhibition makes a the American artist spent most o￿ her adult songs by Simon and Garfunkel. (175 Eighth Ave., strong argument that the work o￿ the great life in Spanish Harlem and Morningside at 19th St. 212-242-0800. March 21-25.) American modernist can be illuminated by a Heights. This exhibition, lovingly curated study o￿ the singular persona she crafted—in by Hilton Als, a sta￿ writer at this maga- Paul Taylor American Modern Dance particular, by a look at her remarkable ward- zine, brings together two dozen stunning In what may be a ￿rst, the company presents robe, from her collection o￿ casually regal, paintings o￿ the artist’s neighbors o￿ color. an evening o￿ works by three titans o￿ Ameri- Japanese-inspired robes to her black, bespoke “Julie and the Doll,” from 1943, shows an in- can modern dance: Taylor, Martha Graham, and men’s suits. In novel, telling arrangements, tense brown-eyed young sitter in a teal dress, Merce Cunningham. The Cunningham piece, O’Kee￿e’s striking early abstractions and rad- slouching as she cradles a rigid blond doll; “Summerspace,” is performed by the Lyon Opera ically blown-up renderings o￿ ￿owers are in- the brushy tangerine, brown, and lavender Ballet. The season also includes two new dances stalled alongside related garments. For exam- background evokes a sunset as well as heavy by the eighty-six-year-old Taylor, his hundred ple, three exquisite white blouses, hand-sewn drapes. Neel was an instinctual, exuberant and forty-￿fth and hundred and forty-sixth. One by the artist, are shown against a dark wall colorist whose formal decisions lent her work o￿ them, “The Open Door,” is set to Edward El- with a glorious painting o￿ canary-yellow au- a sibylline clarity. In the mustard-and-dark- gar’s “Enigma Variations”; the excellent Michael tumn leaves, from 1928. Her subtle embroi- green-dominated “Anselmo,” from 1962, the Novak is the central ￿gure. (David H. Koch, Lin- dery echoes the veined surfaces and serrated self-conscious subject is tenderly rendered coln Center. 212-496-0600. March 21-26.) edges o￿ the foliage. Photographs by her hus- with the artist’s hallmark outlining, a tech- band, Alfred Stieglitz, and a very long list o￿ nique that grew bolder over the years. By “Juilliard Dances Repertory” other famous photographers, demonstrate her the seventies, she ampli￿ed irregular facial The conservatory, which supplies dancers to con- commanding, androgynous bearing and bold features and sartorial quirks with even more temporary troupes around the world, o￿ers an ensembles, but this is where the proportions aplomb, as in “Stephen Shepard,” from 1978, evening o￿ works by well-established choreogra- feel a bit o￿: with this parade o￿ works by other which shows a very stylish young man, his phers. The least known is “Sheer Bravado,” from artists, the image o￿ O’Kee￿e as an exacting face silhouetted in electric blue. Homoge- 2006, by the British modern-dance-maker Rich- aesthete is nearly overtaken by one o￿ her as a neous, conventional subjects would have been ard Alston, whose work combines a keen musi- model or muse. It makes you thirsty for more death to Neel’s curious, empathetic way o￿ cality with the exuberance o￿ Paul Taylor. (It’s o￿ her paintings, though there are some knock- seeing. This show celebrates her refreshing, set to Shostakovich’s lively First Piano Concerto, outs on view: o￿ pink shells, animal skulls, oth- matter-of-fact inclusivity—and the value o￿ played by Juilliard musicians.) “Por Vos Muero” erworldly landscapes. These grand canvases an openhearted, uptown sensibility in gen- (1996) combines Nacho Duato’s earthy, grounded put the show’s vitrines o￿ ballet ￿ats and ban- eral. Through April 22. (Zwirner, 525 W. 19th style with Spanish court music from the ￿fteenth dannas in proper perspective. Through July 23. St. 212-727-2070.) and sixteenth centuries. Mark Morris’s “V,” a luminous and occasionally devastating work, is set to Schumann’s E-Flat Major Piano Quintet (also performed live). (Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, 155 W. 65th St. 212-769-7406. March 22-25.)

Harkness Dance Festival / Jillian Peña Peña borrows from basic ballet in a bid to expose its strangeness. She often uses multiplied video images and ￿atly recited text to express the de- sires and the dissatisfactions o￿ sel￿ood. It’s a method that can itsel￿ be dissatisfying, when the strangeness and desires turn out to be humdrum. She closes out this year’s Harkness Dance Festi- val with the première o￿ “The Natural Order,” which plays with pop-culture ideas about witches and cult ideology. (92nd Street Y, Lexington Ave. at 92nd St. 212-415-5500. March 24-25.)

Che Malambo When this all-male touring ensemble from Ar- gentina made its local début, at City Center’s “Fall for Dance” sampler, in 2015, the response was wild whooping. Now it returns with a full show. Under the direction o￿ the French choreog- rapher Gilles Brinas, the troupe takes the drum- ming and percussive dancing traditions o￿ South American cowboys and sexes them up: slicked hair, tight black pants. The presentation is a bit silly and the show is short on tonal variety, yet the speed o￿ the swivelling footwork has a novel force, and the whirling o￿ stones on the ends o￿ lassos makes an undeniably strong impression. (Leon M. Goldstein Performing Arts Center, Kings- borough Community College, 2001 Oriental Blvd., “Marsden Hartley’s Maine,” at the Met, surveys the modernist painter’s relationship to

COURTESY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART MUSEUMOF METROPOLITAN THE COURTESY Brooklyn. 718-368-5596. March 25.) his home state, through June 18. (Pictured: “The Ice Hole, Maine, 1908-09.”)

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 11 1 1ART GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN GALLERIES—BROOKLYN der singer-songwriter with a pop streak he never quite managed to leverage. In addition to a cozy Sascha Braunig “Do What I Want: Selections from the listening station, this small show includes corre- Meticulous, delirious paintings by the young Arthur Russell Papers” spondence, scores, scraps o￿ lyrics, and charming Maine-based phenom borrow tricks from Op The genre-defying experimental musician and photos, such as one, snapped by the artist’s long- art and Surrealism, while posing decidedly composer died young, from AIDS, in 1992, leav- time partner, Tom Lee, o￿ Russell sitting cross- contemporary questions about the fate o￿ the ing behind a remarkable body o￿ work that con- legged, smiling, on a beach with a microphone, female form in virtual space. Braunig’s world tinues to earn him devotees. Russell, Iowa-born making a ￿eld recording. The assembled archi- is neon-lit and barren but for warping grids and trained as a cellist, thrived in the cross-pol- val material o￿ers a welcome glimpse into the and armatures o￿ what look like high-tech al- linating underground scenes o￿ New York in the inner workings o￿ a mysterious and beloved ￿g- loys and silicone. In the painting on paper seventies and eighties, producing both strangely ure, whose reserved demeanor belied his uninhib- “Study for Tenterhooks,” stretched coral-col- spare disco tracks and languorous instrumentals ited creativity. Through May 14. (Brooklyn Academy ored latex appears to shield a wire ￿gure, her in￿uenced by Eastern music. He was also a ten- of Music, 30 Lafayette Ave. 718-636-4100.) head ￿opping back on a folding neck. A leit- moti￿ in these seductively bizarre works is a downcast female ￿gure in pro￿le, walking in low heels—she appears both illuminated by acid-yellow light and bathed in lurid red. The show includes one curious and compelling bronze sculpture: the talismanic wild card ABOVE & BEYOND “Cuirasse,” a voluptuous breastplate formed from what looks like wavy spaghetti. Through April 2. (Foxy Production, 2 E. Broadway. 212- 239-2758.)

Jeremy Couillard Inside a psychedelic living-room installation— complete with drawn shades, prints on the walls, and a co￿ee table furnished with a novel by Philip K. Dick and a bong—is an enormous pro- jection o￿ Alien Afterlife, a video game that the artist, a self-taught coder, designed. It begins with a hospital deathbed scene and continues on in strange landscapes charged with uncer- Treasure in the Trash transatlantic sale was held in London, a few tain threats and suggestive gibberish. It’s as Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Zero Waste initiative, weeks back; the New York portion takes place fun as it is disconcerting. A hilariously over- also referred to as 0X30, commits New York on March 22. Among the lots are a double por- the-top coda is installed in the gallery’s base- City to contributing zero waste to land￿lls trait o￿ an Etruscan statue—front and back— ment: two life-size sculptures o￿ aliens sitting by the year 2030, including a plan to reduce by Matt Lipps, called “Untitled (Double),” at facing desks, communicating in a live chat commercial waste by ninety per cent. How from 2011, and a carousel-like installation by room—you can join in at alienafterlife.com. seriously you take such a goal may depend the German artist Friedrich Kunath, “Unti- Through April 2. (Yours Mine & Ours, 54 Eldridge on your de￿nition o￿ waste: Nelson Molina, tled (Table/Lamps).” (20 Rockefeller Plaza, at St. 646-912-9970.) a worker at the Department o￿ Sanitation for 49th St. 212-636-2000.) the past three decades, has attempted to re- 1 Peter Halley de￿ne the city’s discarded objects as collect- Sunny abstract gouaches from the late seven- ibles. An hour-long tour o￿ Molina’s ￿ndings READINGS AND TALKS ties bring to mind Mondrian’s “Broadway Boo- is part o￿ the city’s “Getting to Zero” event gie-Woogie,” Navajo blankets, or mosaics. Two series; his troves o￿ rarities conjure an eth- 92nd Street Y works titled “A Japanese Woman Washing Her nographic ￿ea market. Molina will be avail- Dorothy (Dot) Padgett organized Jimmy Car- Hair” evoke both pixellation and the paintings able to answer questions and help guide at- ter’s Presidential campaign in 1975, the year o￿ Jennifer Bartlett. Halley’s real interest here tendees through the mounds. (M11 Garage, she says the election was won “with pocket isn’t form as much as it is color—he treats each 343 E. 99th St. gettingtozero.nyc. March 26 at change and peanuts.” Carter entered politics square as its own little painting, ￿lling the cen- 11 ￿.M. and 1.) after farming peanuts in rural Georgia for ter with curving brushstrokes and sometimes most o￿ his life, and famously beat Gerald leaving the edges bare. One green square at Macy’s Flower Show Ford by a thin margin. At this talk, Padgett the bottom corner o￿ “Kaaba” is painted every The annual two-week exhibition, at the Her- revisits various aspects o￿ the transformative which way: purple and yellow lines that radi- ald Square ￿agship store, is a welcome sign o￿ campaign—including her leadership o￿ what ate from it seem to shoot straight to heaven. the arrival o￿ spring. It features ornate, aro- would become known as the Peanut Brigade— Through March 31. (Karma, 188 E. 2nd St. 212- matic displays o￿ ￿ora from around the coun- and o￿ers a multidimensional look at the role 390-8290.) try. This year’s theme is “Carnival,” with can- o￿ current grassroots campaigning in Ameri- died treats and ￿ower displays fashioned after can elections. (Lexington Ave. at 92nd St. 92y. Ragen Moss carny rides, as well as seminars and events fo- org. March 23 at noon.) Enter on the East Broadway side o￿ the Apple cussing on twentieth-century American fairs. Bank on Grand Street, on a weekend afternoon, On March 26, the Flower Show pays homage Pioneer Works and an attendant will lead you down to the base- to Coney Island, with art works and perfor- Jill Kroesen, a nineteen-seventies performance ment, where eleven heartrending sculptures mances inspired by classic Brooklyn-beach- artist whose work examines the relationships hang from two long poles. They are made from front attractions—stilt walkers included. (Ma- between humans and institutions, appears molded pieces o￿ transparent plastic, which cy’s Herald Square, 151 W. 34th St. 212-695-4400. as a motivational speaker for the “o￿ce re- Moss partially paints and then joins to create March 26-April 1.) treat”-themed closing reception for “WORK,” sealed cocoons. “Consumptive Reader, 1st De- 1 the art collective E.S.P. TV’s ￿rst solo exhibi- gree (with Lemon)” sports blue plaid and con- tion in the United States. The group created tains a yellow balloon; “Vigilante (with Apple, AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES a six-week-long televisual installation, which with Pear)” features an orangish cross and two broadcasts staged performances o￿ sta￿ers re- jagged squares marked out in black. The objects’ The Saatchi Gallery, a prominent contem- arranging sets, grabbing co￿ee, and carrying shapes call to mind internal organs and suggest porary-art space based in London’s Chelsea, out cubicle minutiae—the o￿ce vignettes are evidence o￿ some mysterious trauma. Through is selling o￿ a hundred works from its col- then transformed into stand-alone audiovisual March 26. (Ramiken Crucible, 389 Grand St. lection—most from the past decade or so— shorts. (159 Pioneer St., Brooklyn. pioneerworks.

917-434-4245.) at Christie’s. The ￿rst hal￿ o￿ this two-part, org. March 26 at 7.) AMARGO PABLO ILLUSTRATIONBY

12 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 FßD & DRINK

1 TABLES FOR TWO and sage shrub, followed by the Ethio- BAR TAB Bunna Café pian Ice Road Trucker, a crisp sunflow- er-milk shake spiked with stout and Flushing Ave., Brooklyn bourbon. Then, in preparation for the (--) main course, wash your hands at New York restaurants the colorfully tiled basin at the back of that you can mention in any social set- the restaurant. Like all Ethiopian stews, ting and someone will invariably nod Bunna’s should be scooped up using in- 100 Fun and intone, sagely, “Oh, yes, I go there jera, a tart, bready pancake that is fer- 932 60th St., Brooklyn (718-436-8883) all the time.” Somewhat remarkably for mented for two days before it’s ready to At night, this karaoke emporium appears like a vegan Ethiopian spot—in Bushwick, eat (gluten-free injera is available, but a neon mirage on a quiet Borough Park street. no less—Bunna Café is one of them. you have to order it a day in advance). The curved bar inside, bathed in lavender light, What’s more, Bunna is well, and rightly, Injera is also used to make the kategna, is practically galactic. Though the menu’s sug- ary cocktails, such as the Blue Hawaii and the loved. It’s one of those vegan restau- in which a toasted, folded hunk of it is ￿uorescent Pinky, are, as one patron put it, rants where the absence of meat and slathered with berbere; it’s excellent, if “very Dave & Buster’s,” they are perfectly ad- dairy isn’t obvious while you’re there, you like spicy food. Less strong, and equate lubrication for crooning modern classics like Kanye’s “Heartless” or Rihanna’s “Work.” but when you venture out the door your more refreshing, is the butecha selata, a (Patrons seeking greater luxury will be glad to step has a new spring in it. kale-and-red-onion salad mixed with a know that there is an extensive bottle-service The dining room at Bunna is dark, tangy paste made from turmeric, onion, list.) The establishment’s glitzy corridors are lined with private rooms, each lavishly deco- woody, filament-bulb-lit, and perenni- pepper, and chickpea flour. Eat a bite, rated and equipped with a television, micro- ally almost full. Murmuring couples on and, miraculously, you feel healthy. phones, and drink service at the touch o￿ a dates provide backing vocals for out- The best thing to do is to go for one button. Wandering the hallways, one overhears a multitude o￿ pitch-imperfect voices, ranging of-towners visiting friends for the first of the feasts (for two, three, or four). All from breathy delight to bellowing sorrow. On time (“Brooklyn’s basically a big city, of Bunna’s goodness is heaped on round a recent Monday, surrounded by the quilted right?”), until a steel-drum band, say, platters of injera: from Ethiopian clas- pink walls o￿ the Hello Kitty room, a group o￿ karaoke veterans scrolled through a list o￿ songs strikes up a set, mixing Beatles covers sics such as misir wot (stewed lentils) in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English. with island rhythms. There may even and shiro (silky split peas simmered in Strobe lights ￿ashed on the placid face o￿ the be a coee ceremony going on, with garlic and herbs) to innovations like patron pink-bowed cat, which beamed down from the ceiling. An artist who grew up in Hong incense burning as demitasse cups are kedija selata, a jumble of kale, jalapeño, Kong was delighted to stumble onto the Canto- filled with pungent black liquid. At and avocado sprinkled with lemon, as pop star Denise Ho. “She was my only queer Bunna, which means “coee” in Am- well as a rotating seasonal dish (at the icon growing up,” the reveller said, picking up a microphone to sing “￿￿￿￿￿￿” (“Thou- haric, the ceremonial coee is free. moment, it’s stewed kabocha squash). sands o￿ Me”). The other patrons, who had But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. As Bunna’s motto says, “Everything is moved from cocktails to Bud Lights and Coro- You should first order cocktails. The best eshi”—in other words, “It’s all good.” nas, chattered over the music. But the solo quickly gained their rapt attention—setting among these is the Melkam Maracuja, (Feast for two, $.) down their drinks, they swayed their arms gen-

PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMONEPHOTOGRAPH BY LUECK FORTHE JOOSTNEWSWARTE YORKER; ILLUSTRATIONBY playfully sweet with rum, passion fruit, —Nicolas Niarchos tly in time to the ballad.—Wei Tchou

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 13

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT EUROTRUMP

typically German about you?” Don- in Austria, three months ago, the Continent was emulating “I ald Trump was asked in January, during an interview Trump and reverting to its basest image of itself and of oth- with European journalists about his immigrant forebears. ers. In fact, Europe’s current populist-nationalist movements He answered, “I like things done in an orderly manner. predate Trump’s ascendance, and, at times, it isn’t clear who And, certainly, the Germans, that’s something that they’re is nurturing whom. Wilders, for example, was a featured rather well known for.” As often with Trump’s comments, speaker at a rally in New York, protesting the con- it was hard to distinguish historical insensitivity from per- struction of a mosque near the World Trade Center site, sonal obliviousness—given the complete disorder of his and he has since written for Breitbart News. Representa- Administration—and heedless stereotyping. (He added, in tive Steve King, the Iowa Republican, was praising Wilders reference to his mother, who was born in Scotland, “The when he remarked, earlier this month, that Western civili- Scottish are known for watching their pennies. . . . I deal zation could not be saved by “somebody else’s babies.” in big pennies.”) When Trump talks about Europe, it tends Two days before the Dutch election, in a televised de- to be as a land of his own imagining: a once terrific place bate, Wilders railed against the “liars” and the “givers-away” brought low by deadbeats and so wrecked by immi- who “don’t allow the Netherlands to be the Netherlands gration-related disasters that no one wants to visit any- anymore.” Rutte agreed that immigration was an issue, but more; its discontent a harbinger of his success and proof charged that Wilders’s proposals were “fake,” and added, of his perspicacity. Last week, however, the real Europe fell “That’s the dierence between tweeting from your couch out of step with Trump. and governing the country.” That line, which dominated On Wednesday, the Dutch held an election in which the next day’s headlines, was one that Hillary Clinton might the center-right Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, was pitted have used; in Rutte’s case, it seems to have worked. With a against Geert Wilders, a right-wing extremistwhose oddly record eighty-two-per-cent voter turnout, his party won constructed blond pompadour is the least baneful of his thirty-three seats out of a hundred and fifty, leaving Wilders resemblances to Trump.Wilders had called for shutting in second place, with twenty. Many young, first-time vot- mosques, banning the Koran, closing ers supported the GreenLeft Party, the Netherlands’ borders to Muslims, which won fourteen seats—up from and levying a tax on women who wear just four in the previous election— head scarves in public.Owing to the under the leadership of Jesse Klaver, fragmented state of Dutch politics— who is thirty years old and exhorted twenty-eight parties were on the crowds to stand by their principles. ballot—he had a shot at gaining a The celebrations were tempered, plurality, an outcome that would though, by the way that Rutte had have given momentum to others on pandered to the right. One of his Europe’s far right, including Marine campaign ads told immigrants, “Be Le Pen, who will face French voters normal or get out,” and he warned in the Presidential election next that, with Wilders, the “wrong kind of month, as well as the German extrem- populism” would take hold, begging ists who will challenge Chancellor the question of what the right kind Angela Merkel in the fall. might be.This is a temptation that

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM ILLUSTRATIONS BY The fear was that, after a near-miss many European politicians share with

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 15 the leaders of the G.O.P.: how Trump-like are they will- gone the full Donald Trump.” It is May, though, who is ing to appear in the interest of winning over voters? In the leading Britain out of Europe—a process advanced by Par- event, Rutte’s party did worse in this election than it did liament last week. More than a million Britons signed a in the last one, and it will probably rely on insurgent pro- petition berating her for inviting Trump for a state visit, Europe leftist parties to form a coalition. François Fillon, which would entail the national mortification of seeing France’s center-right Presidential candidate, tried a tactic him presented to the Queen. (Sean Spicer’s accusation, similar to Rutte’s, only to be derailed by a classically French during a White House press briefing, that British spies corruption scandal involving, among other things, expen- had helped President Obama wiretap Trump didn’t help sive suits. If the polls hold, Emmanuel Macron, who is es- matters.) But such gestures mean little in the absence of a sentially running as an independent, will be the mainstream clear European voice speaking out against what Trump alternative to Le Pen in a runo, in May. At a moment of stands for. partisan upheaval and realignment, the future is not likely The closest the Continent has to that is Angela Merkel, to belong to those who do little more than triangulate. who arrived in Washington last Friday. During the cam- Europe may also be taking note of the backlash in this paign, Trump said that Merkel, with her humane approach country to Trump’s xenophobic policies. On the same day to refugees, was “ruining” her country, and that “the Ger- that Wilders was defeated, a judge in Hawaii issued a tem- man people are going to end up overthrowing this woman.” porary restraining order halting Trump’s latest travel ban, At a joint press conference, when a reporter asked Merkel on the ground that its legal language was simply a cover what she thought of Trump’s “style” she politely made a for discriminating against Muslims. Still, European anti- broader point: “People are dierent, people have dierent Trump sentiment possesses, as yet, a certain ideological in- abilities, have dierent characteristics, traits of character, coherence. Last week, after Nicola Sturgeon, the First Min- have dierent origins, have found their way to politics along ister of Scotland, called for a new referendum on Scottish dierent pathways—well, that is diversity, which is good.” independence she took to Twitter to boast about the nu- As she finished speaking, she turned and nodded at Trump, merical superiority of her electoral mandate to that of with a smile, trying, perhaps, to discern just what about Theresa May, the British Prime Minister. In response, Ruth him might be typically American. Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, tweeted, “Someone’s —Amy Davidson

DEPT. OF HYPHENATES tigued, Paltrow summoned Junger to “I have no problem doing that for DR. GWYNETH WILL SEE YOU a Manhattan hotel room to adminis- the first few months,” Junger said. ter an intravenous dose of vitamins “That’s so nice. Really?” Paltrow and minerals (B, C, and magnesium, said. She fished around in a pile of among other ingredients) known in vials strewn on her desk, grabbed a the trade as a Myers’ Cocktail. After- brown tube of something, and swiped ward, he prescribed a plan of pills and it across her lips. powders. “I was, like, ‘If only every- They moved on to a mockup of a , the actress turned one could have access to this!’ ” Pal- Goop newsletter, which included a title L life-style entrepreneur Gwyneth trow recalled, smiling. She was wear- beside Paltrow’s name: C.E.O. Paltrow summoned a small group ing a short, poufy skirt, high-heeled “Have we discussed that?” Paltrow of employees to her bright Santa booties, and chunky gold rings. Monica oce. Goop, the weekly news- Talk turned to packaging, and letter she founded nine years ago, has Junger told his patient, “For you, I grown into an e-commerce empire, would put the pills in ziplock bags, and she wanted to discuss the online remember?” Goop’s vitamins have self- marketing plan for the company’s consciously quirky names (Why Am latest enterprise: pills. In , sales I So Eng Tired, High School Genes, of dietary supplements in the United Balls in the Air, the Mother Load) States reached $. billion, so it and come portioned out in color- coded makes sense that Goop would expand packs. its stock of wellness wares (Ayurve- Elise Loehnen, Goop’s head of con- dic ashwagandha powder; a vaginal- tent, who has a rumpled pixie cut muscle-toning egg made of jade) to and wore a black blazer over a white include vitamins. T-shirt, asked Junger if he would an- One of the meeting’s principal swer questions from supplement users participants was Dr. Alejandro Junger, on Facebook. She suggested that he a Uruguayan cardiologist and one of write out answers in advance. “I don’t the four doctors whose help Paltrow expect you to hang out in our Face- enlisted for her vitamin business. The book group,” she said. “Unless you two met in , when, intensely fa- want to.” Gwyneth Paltrow

16 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 asked, indicating her new position, twelve-year-old daughter. “Hold ple paid a hundred and fifty dollars which had not been announced. on,” she said, “Apple’s panicking at each to gather for a feast in a rented “I think we just do it,” Loehnen Disneyland.” party space with views of the Hudson said. After she hung up, there was a con- River. Last year, Goop raised fifteen mil- versation about the adrenal benefits Katie Crown, a British-born event lion dollars in venture capital and of soaking in a bath of magnesium planner, and Marissa Lippert, the moved its headquarters from New and about how the antioxidant glu- owner of Nourish Kitchen + Table, York to Los Angeles, in the process tathione is hard to absorb orally. in the West Village, organized the losing its C.E.O., Lisa Gersh, the for- “What about sublingually?” Pal- evening with friends, soliciting dona- mer C.E.O. of Martha Stewart Liv- trow asked. tions for most of the food and the ing Omnimedia. Junger said it was best adminis- furnishings. They wore T-shirts de- At the prospect of revealing her tered intravenously. “But we can’t sell signed for the occasion, emblazoned new boardroom role, Paltrow groaned. those things,” he said. “You can shoot with “Alepp” and a falling “o.” Lippert “Ugh, you guys are giving me agita,” yourself ”—Paltrow mimed sticking a rushed around, hugging people and she said. She banged her fists on her syringe into her behind—“but you checking on appetizers, which included desk, rattling the vials, and pretended can’t buy injectable glutathione with- sunchoke-and-feta phyllo purses, or- to pout. out a prescription.” ange-hazelnut labne, spice-roasted “Can’t this be your subtle com- “Right,” Paltrow said. “I think beets with Sudanese mish sauce, and ing-out party?” Loehnen asked. mainlining vitamins might be going za’atar-sprinkled flatbread. A nutri- “I guess so,” Paltrow said. “I mean, a bit far, even for us.” tionist and self-proclaimed food nerd, the board did make me C.E.O. It 1—Sheila Marikar Lippert had devised the menu by re- wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my decision.” searching the prized dishes of the seven Ashley Lewis, Goop’s senior direc- BROTHERHOOD OF MAN countries and then figuring out how tor of wellness, ran down a list of daily THE NEW BRUNCH to approximate them, using a some- reminders that all vitamin buyers would what random store of donated ingre- receive as texts from “Nurse Kevin,” dients that included a whole goat. Sure, a character based on Paltrow’s spiky- carpaccio is an Italian dish, but there haired assistant, Kevin Keating. was some extra goat, and raw slices of “The Kevin emoji right now, it’s the loin went well with dukkah, an some weird bear,” Paltrow said. Egyptian spice blend, and zhoug, a “His name is Nurse Kevin?” Junger was born Yemeni condiment. asked. A in the seventeen-seventies, when “Every time I get a push notifi- While discussing the benefits of the Boston Tea Party turned that town’s cation from the Times or CNN, my broccoli extract, Paltrow ripped open harbor into a souchong-scented scene heart sinks,” Crown said. “I’m an im- a small white packet and slurped down of rebellion. In , the cafeteria in migrant, and America welcomed me its contents: vitamin-C nanospheres, the U.S. House of Representatives, in with open arms.” which purportedly reach the blood- a somewhat literal protest of France’s At the bar, Noor Ahmad, a young stream faster than other forms. (She position against the Iraq War, rechris- public defender for the Legal Aid So- oered one to a visitor; it tasted like tened fried potatoes freedom fries. Last ciety, declined a Desert Rose Gin Fizz glue.) Lewis distributed printouts show- year, the Spanish-American chef José and picked up a glass of rosé. (All the ing the supplements’ packaging. “I Andrés, oended by Trump’s anti-Mex- banned countries, except Syria and Iraq, really love the names,” Paltrow said, ican rhetoric, pulled out of a restaurant prohibit alcohol.) Ahmad, who is Pal- gazing at a shot of the box for High deal with the candidate’s new Wash- estinian-American, spoke of her Lib- School Genes (to boost metabolism). ington, D.C., hotel. Trump’s election yan-born mother, who was travelling “You know what I wish,” Loehnen has inspired dissent in a variety of abroad. “I’m panicked about her com- said, smirking. spheres, the culinary among them. ing into J.F.K. and them looking at her “Do you know what Elise wanted As Donna Lieberman, the executive passport,” she said. “My immigration to name High School Genes?” Pal- director of the New York Civil Liber- attorney says, ‘You have every right to trow asked, stifling a laugh. “The ties Union, put it, “Protest is the new be panicked. Yes, she’s a U.S. citizen, Blaster!” Junger looked puzzled. brunch.” but these guys are thugs right now.’ ” “We sent it to the regulatory guy The occasion for Lieberman’s com- As guests took their seats and began at the lab,” Lewis said. “He goes, ‘I’m ment was a benefit dinner, last month, eating Persian shaved-vegetable salads a millennial, but what’s a ?’ ” (It’s called “Breaking Bread,” which fea- with orange-blossom citronette dress- an acronym for a fat upper pubic area; tured the cuisines of the seven Mus- ing, Lieberman gave a speech. “The some people substitute a dierent “P” lim-majority countries designated in bread would be tasty in any circum- word.) Trump’s original travel ban—Iran, Iraq, stance,” she said. “But tonight it is es- Paltrow laughed. “These nano- Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and pecially tasty, because it’s seasoned with spheres are going to come out my nose.” Yemen . (Iraq has since been taken o a spirit of resistance to the hateful, Her cell phone rang. It was her the list.) More than a hundred peo- harmful, and unlawful attacks on good

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 17 1 people and good cultures that have GONE TOMORROW DEPT. der was on her own. (He employed only given so much to our country.” SPIDERWEB-MAN females.) “Some of them have personal- Over slow-roasted goat with So- ities,” he said. “I’m not kidding. Some are, mali bizbaz sauce and Yemeni whey- like, Where would you like this? Others braised lamb fahsa, a young man in a are, like, Fuck you, I’m outta here.” blazer spoke of other fund-raising din- In the morning, he’d return to find ners in the works. “Have you eaten at elaborate new lattices. He gathered up Yemen Café? They might do some- the spiders and put them back where thing with Roads & Kingdoms,” he , the artist Michael he’d found them, outside. Then he spray- said, referring to a new multicultural E Anthony Simon, then thirty, was liv- painted the webs. Sometimes he left the Web site. ing in Chicago and feeling complacent, painted webs attached to the rods—when The evening’s entertainment was creatively. So he moved to South Korea. they collapsed, maybe after a couple of East African retro-pop music, per- “I wanted to isolate myself, close the stu- years, he’d collect the detritus in a signed formed by a band called the Nuba- dio doors, see what happened,” he said plastic baggie, or else he’d make collages tones. Alsarah, the lead singer, wore the other day. What happened was that, with the fragments. Sometimes he re- jeans and a snakeskin-patterned vest after settling in the city of Gwangju, he moved the web paintings from the rods over a silky peasant blouse. She talked found himself wandering out of the stu- and hung them on the wall. “I like the about growing up in Sudan and Yemen dio and into the woods, and painting on ridiculous nature of the project,” he said. and eventually landing in New York. leaves and spiderwebs—canvases, of a Last spring, Simon, on a bender in The city, she said, was “like that lover kind. The only traces of these variegated Seoul, fell and banged his head. In the that slaps you across the face but you apparitions, once the elements had done following days, his vision started to dete- keep crawling back.” them in, were photographs. “This whole riorate. At first, it felt as if someone were In a hallway, away from the music, thing of making bronze statues to last turning up the lights, as if the world had Lieberman listed the events she had five thousand years—if everyone did that, been bleached. He began wearing sun- lined up for the next few days, and there’d be no space left,” Simon said. glasses at night. Then he lost the ability spoke of the political transformation Still, he wanted to take his art inside. to focus; though he could distinguish of the upcoming generation. “A friend’s He began catching spiders and putting things on the periphery, the center of his daughter went o to college this year, them to work in his studio. After exper- vision, as it were, was gone. A blood test and she was feeling a little lost, but imenting with dierent species, he set- in September revealed that he had Leb- now she’s involved in a protest a min- tled on the golden silk orb-weaver, known er’s hereditary optic neuropathy, a condi- ute,” she said. “When I was in college, for its great circular webs. “I’d get them tion caused by a rare genetic mutation. In in the sixties, political protest was a started, and then I’d leave for the night,” just eight weeks, he’d become legally blind. passion and a set of values, but it was he said. He’d fabricated triangular ped- Living in Korea was impractical. In Oc- also a set of friends. As guilty as I feel estals with three acrylic rods rising ver- tober, he moved back to the U.S., to a about leaving our kids in this pile of tically from the points. With a stick, he’d basement apartment in his brother’s house, shit, they’re going to have a commu- place a spider atop one of the rods, con- in the suburbs of Denver. He boxed and nity of people who share their values, vey it to the next rod, and then to the shipped twenty unpainted webs to Col- and I think that’s really nice.” third rod, and finally back to the first, to orado, so that he could continue his spi- —Shauna Lyon complete the triangle. After that, the spi- der work. His latest thing, though, is work- ing without color. He has a new series of paintings of polar bears in blizzards. He was in New York recently, to visit an exhibit of his old painted webs at Apex Art, a SoHo gallery. He stayed in Korea- town, and one snowy day went out search- ing for a pot of kimchi-jjigae, a spicy stew that suited the foul weather. Living in Asia had infected him with a sneaker fet- ish: he avoided puddles in order to pro- tect his laceless Onitsuka Tigers. He had a black beard and, under a wool cap, a shaved head. He made eye contact—a vestigial reflex, perhaps—and had a beatific vibe. At a restaurant, he took photographs of the menu with his phone and enlarged them on the screen, which he then held inches from his nose. “One of the seven deadly sins this condition has helped me with is pride,” he said. He ordered in Korean. Some young Asian women seated Elliott’s mayoral duties typically in- CBC branch and Newfoundland’s NTV. at the next table took note. clude welcoming conventiongoers and “How does it feel today to be here on “This is the first time I’ve spoken Ko- negotiating local disputes, such as the the red carpet?” an NTV reporter asked him. rean in four months,” he said. “I learned school-bus drivers’ strike that was in eect “Like being a kid in a candy store!” to read and write Korean in three or four on /. The arrival of the plane people, Elliott said. “There are very friendly peo- hours from YouTube. The actual speaking as the locals called them, nearly doubled ple here. People are waving to you, they part is a dierent story.” He was finding the town’s population. “I didn’t go home say hello to you—almost the same as we it almost as hard to adjust to living in the for five days,” Elliott, who is retiring as do in Newfoundland.” U.S. again as it was to get used to being mayor in September, recalled. Elemen- He accompanied his family inside and legally blind. “I’m an independent guy, but tary schools were converted into make- sat in front of Beverley Bass, who was I know I need help,” he said. “I’m still shift dormitories. Volunteers from the the first female captain at American Air- figuring this out.” As far as working is con- Salvation Army and the Red Cross made lines and one of the pilots grounded in cerned, “it just takes longer. It’s alleviated lunches, and the hockey rink became a a lot of bullshit, because I can’t see it!” walk-in refrigerator. Other logistical prob- In his peripheral vision, he caught lems were trickier. “We ran out of un- sight of something on the wall. A bug, derwear,” Elliott said, so more was trucked yes. He smiled. Fruit fly. in from St. John’s, two hundred and seven 1—Nick Paumgarten miles away. The plane people hailed from ninety-five countries, including Zimba- THE BOARDS bwe; kosher meals were required, as was PLANE PEOPLE a place for Muslim passengers to pray. A town veterinarian took care of the ani- mals in the planes’ cargo holds, includ- ing two chimpanzees en route to the Co- lumbus, Ohio, zoo. “A few years later, I got a letter from the Columbus Zoo and a picture of a baby chimpanzee, and they’d Gander, Newfound- named it Gander,” Elliott said. T land, has six trac lights and a pop- By Day Two of the crisis, Elliott was Ivanka Trump and Justin Trudeau ulation of less than thirteen thousand. at the Royal Canadian Legion Hall, ini- Snowmobiling is popular, and people leave tiating marooned passengers as honor- . After the show, the actors invited their car doors unlocked while they’re at ary Newfoundlanders, in a ritual named their real-life counterparts onstage for a the grocery store. Its distinguishing fea- “screeching in”: visitors wear yellow bow. “Something else to take o my ture—and the reason it exists—is its air- sou’westers, eat hard bread and pickled bucket list,” Elliott said. Walking out of port, which opened in and was once bologna, kiss a cod on the lips, then drink the theatre, he told an N.Y.P.D. ocer, the largest in the world, making Gander the local rum, called screech, while on- “God bless you for your service,” before a crucial transatlantic refuelling stop in lookers bang an “ugly stick” covered in leading the Ganderites onto a shuttle the days before long-range jet travel. On beer-bottle caps. “We started o with bus. On their way to the after-party, September , , after flights were re- seven thousand strangers,” Elliott said, where screech cocktails and cod awaited, routed to their nearest airports, thirty- “but we finished with seven thousand they broke into song again: “There’s eight jets suddenly landed in Gander, family members.” no place I would rather be than here in stranding some seven thousand passen- In New York, the Mayor, wearing a Newfoundland!” gers for up to five days in a town with tuxedo, reappeared in his hotel lobby in “If we were onstage when they were only five hundred hotel rooms. Times Square, along with fifteen other doing the screeching, it would be the real “The first thing I did was declare a Newfoundlanders who had come down stu!” Elliott bellowed. The Newfound- state of emergency,” Claude Elliott, the for opening night, including a town con- landers cheered. Mayor of Gander since , recalled the stable named Oswald Fudge. They had “And the bottle of screech wouldn’t other day. A stout sixty-seven-year-old heard that Cindy Crawford was at the be only half-empty!” someone behind with salt-and-pepper eyebrows and a Saturday matinée. “She said she cried, him yelled. thick Newfoundland accent, Elliott was she laughed, but it was the human kind- Three days later, the Mayor went back in New York with his wife and daugh- ness that really touched her,” Elliott said. to watch the show alongside the Cana- ter for the opening of “Come from Away,” The group walked to the Schoenfeld dian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who a new Broadway musical recounting Gan- Theatre, while Elliott led them in a New- had brought Ivanka Trump. Right before der’s act of extreme hospitality. It was his foundland ditty called “Aunt Martha’s the lights went down, Elliott took a selfie third time in New York City. “Going out Sheep.” Outside the entrance was a press with Trump. “I invited her to Gander,” for breakfast, we were standing on the line, including reporters from Playbill he said afterward. “And if she wants to street corner and I told my wife, ‘There’s and the BroadwayWorld Web site. El- become an honorary Newfoundlander, more people here this morning than what liott went straight for the Canadian press, we will screech her in.” live in Gander,’ ” he said. including camera crews from the local —Michael Schulman

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 19 one in particular, since the chamber was, THE POLITICAL SCENE as usual, nearly empty. “One of the things that the framers of the Constitution most worried about was the threat of foreign MINORITY REPORT intervention in our government, what they called ‘foreign intrigue,’ ” he said. Can Chuck Schumer check Trump? “The reported contact between opera- tives in the Trump campaign and Rus- BY ELIZABETH KOLBERT sian intelligence ocials is exactly the kind of intrigue that our founders sought to prohibit. I mention all of this because I believe the stakes to be very high.” When the th Congress convened, on January rd, Schumer became the Senate’s Minority Leader. (He ascended to the post upon the retirement of Sen- ator Harry Reid, of Nevada.) Two and a half weeks later, on Inauguration Day, Schumer became the country’s high- est-ranking Democrat. Neither position was what he had had in mind. Throughout the campaign, Schumer had assumed that Hillary Clinton would be President. He further imag- ined that Democrats would pick up enough seats in the Senate to make him the Majority Leader. He would then help shape and enact the Presi- dent’s legislative agenda. He and Clin- ton were already considering what their priorities should be for the first months of her Administration. The election results put an end to this happy dream. The power of the Senate minority is purely negative: it can’t pass legislation; it can only block it. But even exercising negative power requires a great deal of discipline—potentially more than not long after Mi- and I have never, ever seen anything like the Democrats can muster. O chael Flynn, having lied about this,” he went on. “At this juncture, we Next year, ten Democratic senators conversations with the Russian Am- would all do well to remember that de- will be up for reëlection in states that bassador, was forced to step down as na- mocracy, the most benevolent, desirable, Trump carried. The President has been tional-security adviser, but before Je eective, and just form of government wooing these senators, and even consid- Sessions, having lied about conversations devised by man, is also one of the most ered naming two of them, Joe Manchin, with the Russian Ambassador, was forced fragile systems of government devised of West Virginia, and Heidi Heitkamp, to recuse himself from any Justice De- by man. It requires constant vigilance.” of North Dakota, to his Cabinet. Mean- partment investigation involving the Schumer was wearing a dark suit while, Democratic activists—generally Trump campaign, Chuck Schumer rose that sagged under the weight of the in blue states—are calling for round- from his desk on the floor of the United mike pinned to his lapel. His tie was the-clock resistance. Protesters have States Senate to reflect on the state of askew. (New York once described Schu- gathered in front of Schumer’s apart- the union. mer, the state’s senior senator, as a ment, in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, for ral- “We are in a moment of profound “zhlub, and in a good way.”) He kept lies organized under the tagline “What unease about the stability of the exec- glancing down at his notes through a the F*ck, Chuck?” (At least one demon- utive branch of our government,” he pair of half-glasses, so that the view strator brought a model of a skeleton, began. “Something is rotten in the state from the press gallery, and also on to illustrate the importance of a spine.) of Denmark. -, was mostly of his scalp. Can Schumer negotiate these cur- “I’ve been in Congress a long time Schumer continued, addressing no rents? Can anyone? It seems no exag- geration to say that on these questions Seen as a pragmatist, Schumer hopes to reclaim populism for the Democrats. the future world depends. As Schumer

20 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY BARRY BLITT himself put it the other morning, to way to describe it. He was there to assert care costs. He was so skillful at gener- the almost vacant Senate chamber, himself, and he was there to move on.” ating coverage that his colleagues in “This is not a drill.” Schumer’s reputation for aggressive- the New York delegation invented a ness followed him to Congress, where new term: to be upstaged on an issue chumer, who’s sixty-six, is an op- he arrived shortly after his thirtieth birth- was to be “Schumed.” S timist, a trait that he says he inher- day. He won a seat on the House Bank- In Washington, Schumer roomed ited from his father, Abe. Abe, for his ing Committee and began courting Wall with Leon Panetta, then a representa- part, inherited an exterminating business Street; while still a freshman, he man- tive from California, and two other con- from his father, Jack, a Jewish immigrant aged to amass the House’s third-largest gressmen in a town house near Capitol from Ukraine. The family lived in Flat- campaign account. (When, in 1982, Hill. To save money, Schumer slept in bush, Brooklyn, and Schumer, growing Brooklyn lost a congressional seat to re- the living room, on a foldout couch. The up, would sometimes lend a hand kill- apportionment, Schumer’s enormous war place, which inspired a short-lived Am- ing roaches. chest insured that it was not his.) Even azon series called “Alpha House,” was One summer, instead of working for in the nation’s fund-raising capital, the famously grungy, and Schumer was fa- his dad, Schumer got a job with a neigh- intensity of Schumer’s eforts stood out. mously messy. He didn’t worry about bor, Stanley Kaplan, who, at that point, The Hill once reported that, having se- niceties like cleaning or even eating; often was still laying the foundations of his cured a contribution from a Republican he dined on cold cereal. (“My favorite test-prep empire. Schumer mimeo- lobbyist, Schumer insisted that the check food,” he told me.) Panetta, who went graphed thousands of practice S.A.T.s, be delivered by courier. on to serve as the director of the C.I.A. an experience he credits with boosting Just as assiduously as he pursued and then as the Secretary of Defense, re- his own scores, which were just shy of donors, Schumer wooed the press. Rec- members him constantly rushing back sixteen hundred. He went of to Har- ognizing that it was hard to fill the to his district. vard. There he tried out for the basket- Monday papers, he took to holding “He was one of the few people I ball team, but was cut before he had a regular Sunday news conferences. He’d knew who would go to grammar- school chance to touch the ball. This was in rail against college-tuition hikes or graduations, for God’s sake,” Panetta the fall of 1967, and a week or so later present a study documenting what he said. a fellow-student invited him to go to said were unfair disparities in health- “I don’t think anyone can outwork New Hampshire to campaign for Eu- gene McCarthy. Schumer had never heard of McCarthy, but he was lonely, so he went. Almost immediately, in his words, he “caught the bug.” He loved the excite- ment of politics, along with the cama- raderie and the sense of being involved in great events. In 1974, the State As- sembly seat for the district that included Flatbush came open. Fresh out of Har- vard Law School, Schumer decided to run for it. His mother, Selma, urged her neighbors not to vote for him. Schumer had an ofer from the prestigious law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Selma didn’t want him wast- ing his time when he could be making good money. Schumer ended up spending six years in Albany. People who knew him in those days mostly remember his ambitious- ness. In the New York State Capitol in the nineteen-seventies, county bosses called the shots, and initiative was not encouraged. “There was an order,” Mel Miller, who was elected to the Assembly a few years before Schumer and eventually became its speaker, told me. “You waited your turn. And Chuck was not going to wait his turn. I think that’s the best

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 21 Chuck Schumer,” another “Alpha House” and the third sat out the election. A few that it was rumored Schumer was going resident, Marty Russo, a former repre- weeks ago, Schumer informed me that to drop out. He called together his top sentative from Illinois, told me. Eileen was feeling more confident about aides to come up with a plan. There her vote, “not that she ever liked Hillary seemed little to be gained from criticiz- f Schumer has a political philoso- that much.” Joe, meanwhile, was having ing his rivals’ views on issues like abor- I phy, he owes it to a Long Island cou- second thoughts. tion and civil rights, since Schumer mostly ple named Joe and Eileen Bailey. The Bai- “He’s getting a little queasiness in his shared their views. What he needed to leys live in Massepequa, a town on the stomach,” Schumer said. “It just seems do, he decided, was to reach those voters South Shore, across the bay from Jones like amateur hour, and Joe’s not an am- who cared more about unpaid bills and Beach. Joe works for an insurance com- ateur. He’s very good at what he does. college tuition. These were the types of pany; Eileen is an administrative assistant He was angry at the liberal way, but he people he’d grown up with in Flatbush, in a physician’s ofce. The couple have didn’t think Trump would be like this.” and whose houses his father sprayed for three children, two of whom are grown. To Schumer, the Baileys represent the pests. The more he thought about it, the Economically, the Baileys are doing O.K., sort of voters that the Democratic Party more convinced he became that the Bai- but they worry about rising property taxes too often neglects, and that it needs to leys were the key to the race, and the and what the future holds for their kids. reach in order to survive. They are his more vivid the family became. They ac- They’re not strong partisans. They feel reality check, which would be less note- quired parents—Eileen’s father had pros- that politicians of both parties sometimes worthy were they real. tate cancer—and neighbors, some of condescend to them, something they hate. Schumer dreamed up the Baileys whom had recently lost their jobs when The Baileys voted for Bill Clinton twice, during his first campaign for the Senate, the work was moved overseas. then, in 2000, after much agonizing, in 1998. In the spring of that year, he was Schumer spent the next few months pulled the lever for George W. Bush. polling third in a three-way primary race, hammering away at issues—big-impact This past November, the Baileys split behind Geraldine Ferraro, the onetime or small-bore, depending on your perspec- their votes. Joe went with Trump, Eileen Vice-Presidential nominee, and Mark tive—like the high cost of flying out of with Hillary. As for their kids, one was Green, the former New York City pub- the Albany and Rochester airports. With not yet eighteen, one voted for Clinton, lic advocate. Things were looking so bad the Baileys by his proverbial side, he won

22 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 the primary and the chance to face the lot of space to the Baileys, who, he wrote, Leader is an ofce just steps away from incumbent, a three-term senator, Alfonse felt that they were being ignored by a the Senate chamber. It’s a magnificent D’Amato. The general-election campaign government too focussed on “the very place, with eighteen-foot-high ceilings was the most expensive in the nation for poor or the very rich.” The Baileys, he and a working fireplace. On a recent af- that election cycle—Schumer spent some- maintained, could just as easily have been ternoon when I visited Schumer there, thing like three million dollars a month, called the Ramirezes or the Kims or the several logs were burning away merrily. D’Amato twice that amount—and, once Salims, but it was clear that the propos- “I never had a fireplace before,” he again, Schumer’s poll numbers were de- als in “Positively American” were aimed said. “But they have these starter logs, so moralizing. But a last-minute gafe by at middle-class white voters. These are even I can do it.” He threw one on, to D’Amato—in a private meeting he called the same voters, of course, who elected demonstrate. Schumer a “putzhead,” then denied it, Trump, so even though Schumer was Schumer began by asking me ques- then said that he stood by the character- shocked by Clinton’s defeat, in a certain tions: Where did I grow up and what ization “one hundred per cent”—helped sense he saw it coming. did my father do for a living? The con- Schumer win that race, too. “The good news is, when Newt Gin- versation then turned to his father, who After Schumer was reëlected in 2004, grich read my book, he said on TV, if is ninety-three. Schumer had recently with more than seventy per cent of the Democrats followed Schumer’s advice taken his parents—his mother is eighty- vote—a record margin at the time—he they’d be the dominant party for a gen- eight—to one of their favorite restau- wrote a book in which he tried to im- eration,” Schumer told me. “The bad rants, Stella’s, in the town of Floral Park, part the lessons of his campaigns to Dem- news is, no one did read it. I still have on Long Island. ocrats nationwide. In “Positively Amer- plenty of free copies, if you want one.” “It’s a nice restaurant,” he said. “And ican,” he ofered policy proposals that it’s a good place to take the tempera- included a tax deduction for college tu- ost senators have ofces a quar- ture.” The restaurant’s patrons tend to ition, a crackdown on the use of ques- M ter of a mile or more from the Cap- be “very middle class, Irish Catholic, Ital- tionable corporate tax shelters, and bet- itol and shuttle back and forth, using ian Catholic. And they were very posi- ter enforcement of laws against hiring Congress’s miniature subway system. tive. They said, ‘Keep up the fight’—that illegal immigrants. Schumer devoted a Among the perks of being Minority sort of thing. I was pleased.” Schumer

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 23 told me that his wife, Iris Weinshall, who knew in New York,” McConnell observed Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary; served as New York City’s transporta- dryly when the meeting was over. and Ben Carson, the Housing Secretary. tion commissioner under Mayors Rudy Schumer, for his part, indicated that “This Cabinet is the most extreme, Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, had he and Trump might find common as well as the least vetted, as well as the packed the leftovers from the dinner in ground. “Changing our trade laws dra- most conflict-of-interest-laden Cabinet, Tupperware, and he had brought them matically, a large infrastructure bill, I think, in the history of America,” Schu- with him to Washington. cleaning up the swamp in Washing- mer said to me the afternoon I visited Schumer and Trump are frequently ton—these are things that Democrats him in his oce. “It means there are al- likened to each other, and for good rea- have always stood for and, frankly, Re- most no areas where we can compromise son. Both men spent their formative publicans have always been against,” he with Trump—or ‘work together’ is a bet- years in the outer boroughs said on “Meet the Press,” ter word. Don’t use ‘compromise.’ ” (Trump in Jamaica Estates, in November. “So we’re go- Later, he told me he thought that Queens). Both crave at- ing to challenge President people like Vice-President Mike Pence tention. And both claim a Trump to work with us on and the White House chief of sta, native-New Yorker’s nose those issues.” Reince Priebus, had directed the Presi- for bullshit. But the dier- For even entertaining the dent’s Cabinet picks, and that Trump ences are just as striking. possibility of collaborating might not even have been aware of his There’s no such thing as with Trump, he got a lot of own nominees’ views. gold-plated Tupperware. grief. “Schumer has histor- “On many of them, it was how they When Schumer uses the ically been really good at looked, how they felt, and he got cap- word “fancy,” it’s spoken in reaching out across the aisle, tured by the hard right, but he goes along a tone that implies “fancy-schmancy.” which in let’s call them ‘normal times’ is with it because that’s not what he cares In the weeks following the election, a great strategy to get things done,” Eliz- about,” Schumer said. “And that’s a re- Trump and Schumer engaged in a po- abeth Zeldin, one of the organizers of the ally sad, to use his word, a very sad com- litical dance that played out half in pri- What the F*ck Chuck rallies, told me. mentary on the President, to not care vate, half in public. Comparing Schumer “But I think everyone’s feeling was, these about the issues you’re governing about.” with his predecessor, Harry Reid, Trump are not normal times, this is not the time tweeted, “I have always had a good re- to make bipartisan motions.” Seventeenth Amendment lationship with Chuck Schumer. He In addition to the protesters who ap- U to the Constitution was ratified, is far smarter than Harry R and has peared in front of his apartment, chant- in , senators were chosen by state the ability to get things done. Good ing slogans like “You have a mission, lead legislatures, or, in many cases, not cho- news!” The President-elect phoned the the opposition,” demonstrators in Wash- sen, since legislatures frequently dead- Senator several times just, it seemed, ington heckled him on the steps of the locked and left the seats vacant. The to schmooze. Supreme Court. (Schumer and other Senate is still guided today by rules that “Sometimes he’d call me—I wouldn’t prominent Democrats were also there to evoke another era, the most important know why,” Schumer told me. “He’d just protest, against the President’s travel ban.) of which is Rule , known as the clo- chat.” In one of these chats, the New “Do your jobs!” the demonstrators ture rule, which sets the conditions for York Post reported, Trump told Schumer yelled. ending debate. To invoke cloture, sixty that he had warmer feelings toward him Since then, Schumer has taken an in- votes are needed, although significant than he had toward his fellow-Republi- creasingly hard line. The day after the exceptions to this requirement have cans Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mc- demonstration at the Supreme Court, been carved out. In , Harry Reid, Connell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. he voted no on the nomination of Elaine then the Majority Leader, grew so frus- As President, Trump opened his first Chao to be Secretary of Transportation. trated by what he termed “unbeliev- ocial meeting with congressional lead- The vote was seen as particularly signifi- able, unprecedented obstruction” by the ers by reciting the names of friends he cant, because Chao is McConnell’s wife. Senate minority that he invoked the and Schumer had in common. Later, he (In , Elizabeth Dole, the wife of so-called “nuclear option.” Using a set reminisced about a fund-raiser he’d held Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, was of arcane parliamentary maneuvers, he at Schumer’s request. Trump boasted nominated to be Secretary of Labor. changed the interpretation, but not the that the gathering, at his Mar-a-Lago As the Washington Post noted, the idea actual text, of Rule , so that, in the estate, in Palm Beach, had raised two of Minority Leader George Mitchell case of Presidential nominations, cut- million dollars for the Democratic Sen- voting against her “would have been ting o debate would require only fifty- atorial Campaign Committee. Schumer unimaginable. But the Senate, it is a one votes. A further exemption to this corrected him: it was a little more than changin’.”) Schumer has voted no on all exemption was made for nominations two hundred and sixty thousand. (Over but two of the Cabinet nominees to come to the U.S. Supreme Court. the years, Trump and his family have do- up for confirmation since Chao. These Schumer worked behind the scenes nated roughly sixteen thousand dollars include Je Sessions, now the Attorney to forestall the nuclear option, then voted to Schumer’s own Senate committee.) General; Scott Pruitt, the head of the in favor of the maneuvers when Reid “I enjoyed the President and Senator Environmental Protection Agency; Ste- proposed them on the Senate floor. Schumer talking about all the people they ven Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary; He now regards the whole episode as

24 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 regrettable. “I will say it was a mistake,” to include in the extension bill (or bills) unusual times—when there is unprece- he told me. any provisions that Democrats would dented stress on our system of checks The new arrangement left Senate find unacceptable, such as money to build and balances—the bar is even higher,” Democrats no leverage over Trump’s a wall along the Mexican border. (The Schumer wrote. Cabinet appointments. All they could battle over the extension is distinct from The debate over Gorsuch could play do was drag out the proceedings. This the battle over the President’s proposed out in several ways. There are now forty- they did, in part by staging all-night budget, which will play out this sum- eight Democratic senators, counting Ber- speaking marathons; then they watched mer.) The extension must be approved nie Sanders, of Vermont, and Angus as Republicans confirmed one “extreme” by April 28th to avoid a government King, of Maine, who are technically in- Cabinet member after another. shutdown, and it could be the first real dependents. Five of these senators—Jon Many of the Trump Administration’s test of Schumer’s caucus. More likely, Tester, of Montana; Joe Donnelly, of In- most consequential moves—including though, that test will come in the form diana; Claire McCaskill, of Missouri; the original travel ban and its replace- of Neil Gorsuch. and Manchin and Heitkamp—hail from ment—have been made via executive Schumer has made his objections to solidly red states, and not infrequently order. Others have been taken by fed- Trump’s Supreme Court nominee clear. vote with the Republicans. If they and eral agencies using their regulatory au- In an Op-Ed piece in the Times in Feb- four other Democrats back Gorsuch, he thority. The E.P.A. and the Transpor- ruary, he recounted that, in a “get-to- will be confirmed. tation Department, for instance, have know-you” session, Gorsuch had refused If forty Democrats decide to oppose signalled their intention to roll back to answer “even the most rudimentary Gorsuch—and many are still furious fuel -economy standards designed to re- questions.” At one point during the ses- about McConnell’s refusal even to hold duce carbon emissions from cars and sion, Gorsuch conceded that he was “dis- hearings on Merrick Garland, Presi- light trucks. (The rules are central to the heartened” by the President’s attacks on dent Barack Obama’s nominee for the U.S.’s commitments under the Paris cli- various judges. When Schumer asked same seat—Republicans will be faced mate accord.) Still others have involved him whether he would be willing to state with a choice. They could let Gorsuch the Congressional Review Act, a law this publicly, he said no. go down, or they could go nuclear that allows legislators to overturn re- “The bar is always high to achieve a and reinterpret Rule 22 to exclude cently finalized regulations with a sim- seat on the Supreme Court, but in these Supreme Court nominees. Trump, not ple majority vote in the Senate. One reg- ulation reversed in this way was aimed at preventing mentally impaired people from buying guns. “It’s not outrage of the day,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, told me. “It’s outrage of the hour.” Ryan and McConnell are hoping to “repeal and replace” the Afordable Care Act using yet another vehicle for avoid- ing cloture—what’s known as a bud- get-reconciliation bill. The American Health Care Act, which was recently unveiled by House Republicans (and immediately dubbed “Trumpcare” by Democrats), could be approved in this way, though it’s not clear that it has enough G.O.P. backers. (Last week’s re- port from the Congressional Budget Ofce, which forecast that, in the course of the next decade, the measure would increase the number of uninsured Amer- icans by twenty-four million, has fur- ther eroded Republican support.) Eventually, the G.O.P. will run out of ways to bypass Senate Democrats and Rule 22. Later this spring, the federal government’s spending authority will run out, and, in the Senate, sixty votes will be needed to extend it. Schumer re- cently warned McConnell against trying

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 25 surprisingly, has advocated the latter the deductions as crucial to “middle-class York’s sixty-two counties at least once course. McConnell has, so far, been homeowners.” He promised to fight a year. noncommittal. “tooth and nail” to keep them in place. “People said, ‘With your new posi- “If I had to right now, I’d say he won’t “In fact, we have a little battle cry: tion, will you tour the sixty-two coun- get sixty votes,” Schumer told me when ‘No reductions on your deductions,’ ” ties again?’ ” he told the group on the I asked about Gorsuch. Other Demo- he said. “I didn’t think that up. Good driveway. “Absolutely.” cratic senators I spoke with echoed this sta work.” He asked for questions. A “Even now, people say, ‘Chuck is assessment, but just about everyone else stout woman in a red jacket quickly around; Kirsten is not,’ ” one promi- I talked to in Washington predicted changed the topic. She wanted to talk nent New York Democrat told me. that Gorsuch would get the sixty votes. about the loss of manufacturing jobs (Kirsten Gillibrand, New York’s junior in central New York. It was clear the senator, occupies the seat formerly held , unseasonably warm question was a hostile one, but Schumer by Hillary Clinton.) O day in the town of Clay, near Syr- tried a conciliatory tone. “People want to be talked to,” Schumer acuse, about twenty people gathered in “That’s a very excellent point, with told me a few hours after the stop in front of a split-level house on Maryland which I agree,” he said. “Jobs are key.” Clay. “These days more than ever.” He Lane to wait for Schumer, who was going He listed several manufacturing plants had just finished another press confer- to hold a press conference in the drive- in the area he had worked to save and ence, at the police station in Utica, and way. One of the Senator’s aides had set noted his opposition to free-trade deals. was eating lunch at an Italian restaurant up a lectern on the blacktop, and a few (As a congressman, Schumer voted in the town of New Hartford. He brought reporters were stationed in front of it, against the North American Free Trade up the woman in the red jacket: “Like but most of those assembled lived on the Agreement, in .) that lady today—she wanted to express block, in similar-looking houses. When “One of the reasons all these jobs left her opinion, God bless her.” Schumer arrived, he glanced around and is trade treats us unfairly,” he said. “We Schumer is often described as a “prag- announced cheerfully, “This is like the have to change our trade laws.” The matist.” Sometimes this is meant as a neighborhood I grew up in—middle woman wasn’t satisfied. She thought the tribute, sometimes not. Even as he trav- class, solid, hardworking people.” problem was New York’s minimum wage, els around the state, championing the “We’re not sure if we’re middle class,” which, under a new state law, will climb middle class, in Washington Schumer an elderly woman called out. to fifteen dollars an hour. Schumer sup- devotes much of his time to the concerns “That’s what a lot of people worry ported the increase. They went back and of the super-wealthy. New York’s econ- about,” Schumer said, nodding. “It’s forth for a while. omy is heavily dependent on finance, so harder to stay in the middle class than “Thank you for coming,” Schumer its representatives tend to be banker- it ever was.” finally said. “I know you probably don’t friendly; Schumer has been called “the The subject of the press conference agree with me.” senator from Wall Street.” In the years was taxes. As part of a broader federal- “I don’t agree with you,” the woman leading up to the financial crisis, he tax overhaul, various Republicans have said. “Absolutely not.” worked to limit oversight of credit-rat- proposed capping the deduction for mort- Schumer is a big believer in the power ing agencies and sponsored legislation gage-interest payments and eliminating of showing up. Since he was elected to to cut fees on financial transactions. In state and local taxes. Schumer portrayed the Senate, he has visited each of New a letter to the Wall Street Journal, writ- ten with Mayor Bloomberg in late , he complained that too many regulatory agencies were overseeing the financial industry, and were competing “to be the toughest cop on the street.” Following the crisis, Schumer changed his tune and supported greater oversight and tougher regulation. Still, he remains a top recip- ient of Wall Street contributions. During the last election cycle, he raised more than five million dollars from the finan- cial sector, according to a report by Amer- icans for Financial Reform, a liberal non- profit. That figure put him behind just two other senators, Marco Rubio, of Flor- ida, and Ted Cruz, of Texas, both of whom were running for the Republican Presi- dential nomination. “He isn’t just one thing,” Barbara Roper, the director of investor protec- “All right, but just one more episode.” tion at the Consumer Federation of America, said. “In between crises, he may Peter King, a Republican from Long be a friend to Wall Street and advance Island, told me. “You just know that an agenda that we, frankly, think of as whether he’s in the majority or in the harmful. But, if you’re talking about what minority he’s going to get it through.” he did during the financial crisis, he was Schumer was instrumental in securing an advocate for strong reform. And then twenty billion dollars for New York after there are a whole host of issues that have the September 11th attacks, and fifty- to do with more bread-and-butter con- one billion dollars for the region after sumer issues where he’s been a strong Hurricane Sandy. and reliable supporter.” At the Italian restaurant, I asked Barney Frank, the former Massachu- Schumer about his approach to negoti- setts congressman and one of the chief ations. He had polished of a plate of authors of the financial-reform bill that gluten-free pasta and was working his became known as Dodd-Frank, sat next way through the cream filling from a to Schumer in House committees for cannoli. There was still a lot of food on eighteen years. the table, because the restaurant, where Politicians “are often either good he’s a regular, had sent out heaping plat- inside players or good outside players,” ters. Schumer asked the waitress to box Frank told me. “Chuck is unusually up the leftovers and urged me to take good at both. He understands that in them home. a legislative body, sharing power with “Here’s the formula I’ve used,” he so many people, you need to compro- said. “Walk in the other guy’s shoes. mise. Another thing that you need to Try to figure out not what you think do, which he does, but which other he should want but what he really people do not do, is eschew an attitude wants. Don’t look down, and you can of moral superiority.” Through a spokes- get things done.” man, Hillary Clinton called Schumer “a strong progressive and great legis- n December, 2014, shortly after the lative strategist,” who “knows how and I midterm election, Schumer gave a when to give ’em hell.” speech at the National Press Club, in Over the years, Schumer’s talents as Washington. Democrats had just lost a “legislative strategist” have put him at control of the Senate, which they’d held the center of some of Congress’s most for the previous eight years. In the speech, contentious negotiations. He was a pri- Schumer described American politics as mary author of the Brady Bill, which a long-running battle “between pro-gov- required federal background checks for ernment and anti-government forces.” gun buyers, and one of the key authors From the nineteen-thirties through of the 1994 crime bill, which put close the nineteen-seventies, according to to a hundred thousand police on the Schumer, pro-government forces, which streets, ofered incentives to states to is to say Democrats, were victorious. lengthen prison sentences, and banned This was largely due to F.D.R. and the the manufacture of assault weapons for New Deal, which “demonstrated that civilian use. (This last provision has since government could indeed improve the lapsed.) More recently, in 2013, Schumer standard of living for average Ameri- was part of the so-called Gang of Eight, cans.” With the election of Ronald Rea- a group of four Democratic and four gan, in 1980, anti-government forces, Republican senators who crafted a which is to say Republicans, gained as- sweeping package of immigration re- cendance. By Schumer’s account, G.O.P. forms. The reforms would have created dominance lasted until around the year a path to citizenship for millions of peo- 2000, at which point stagnating middle- ple now living in the U.S. illegally and, class incomes prompted many Amer- at the same time, would have made it icans, once again, to switch sides. In more difcult for employers to hire un- 2008, Obama was elected President, documented workers. The bill passed and Democrats won majorities in both the Senate but died in the House. houses of Congress. “On any issue involving New York, “Unfortunately, Democrats blew the I have always felt, if I can get it through opportunity,” Schumer told the press the House, Chuck will definitely get it club. “We put all our focus on the wrong through the Senate,” Representative problem—health-care reform.” Health

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 27 care was a huge problem for the millions message in preparation for . “It’s going mer’s life easier. The divisions in his cau- of Americans who lacked insurance, but to be based on two things—putting more cus—between blue-state and red-state this was a minority compared with the money in the average person’s pocket and Democrats, between the “progressive” hundreds of millions of people insured reducing the expenses they pay out of and the “pragmatic” wings of the Party, either by the government, through their pocket,” he said. “I was going to call between everyone and Joe Manchin— Medicaid and Medicare, or by their em- it the paycheck agenda, but my sta re- look a lot less stark when viewed against ployers. Among that minority, only a minded me that people under forty-five the backdrop of the Trump White House. fraction would turn out to vote. Demo- don’t know what a paycheck is.” “If Trump had come out with a signifi- crats would have been much better o, He assured me that the agenda was cant infrastructure investment right Schumer argued, had they focussed first “going to be really good.” In a challenge o the bat, it would probably have on issues aecting a broader swath of to Trump, Senate Democrats have pro- splintered the Democrats,” Brian Fallon, the American electorate—the swath that posed their own infrastructure plan, to- who served as Schumer’s spokesman and includes families like the Baileys. talling a trillion dollars. But when I asked then as Hillary Clinton’s, observed. “Had we started more broadly, the Schumer if he could share any other “They would have been hard-pressed, middle class would have been more parts of the agenda with me, he said no. especially those from red states, to be on receptive to the idea that President the opposing side of a jobs bill. Instead, Obama wanted to help them,” Schumer of the only members he’s largely united them.” said. “They would have held a more S of the U.S. Senate to still use a flip But, in a bigger-picture sense, it’s tough pro-government view. Then Democrats phone, which sometimes seems attached to overstate the obstacles that Democrats would have been in a better position to to his ear. He calls the other forty-seven in the Senate—and just about everywhere tackle our nation’s health-care crisis.” members of his caucus so frequently that else—are facing. Next year, elections will What the Democrats needed to do, he has memorized all their numbers. be held for thirty-four Senate seats. Dem- heading into a Presidential race, was “He reaches out constantly,” Senator ocrats currently hold twenty-five of these, come up with an agenda to “win back Al Franken, a Democrat from Minne- and the Party will have to hold on to all those core white working-class voters sota, told me. twenty-five just to stay even. Were Dem- who turn out most.” The speech “He knows what everyone’s working ocrats to pick up two seats—a feat most prompted outrage from the Obama Ad- on,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Mas- analysts regard as nearly impossible, no ministration; one former speechwriter sachusetts, said. “He knows what peo- matter how much havoc Trump wreaks— for the President said that it represented ple are interested in and what they are they would still, for all practical purposes, “the worst instincts of the Democratic worried about.” be in the minority, as the Senate would Party in action.” Others observed that “Chuck is like a giant shop vac with be split fifty-fifty, and a Republican, Schumer, at that time the chairman of nine nozzles to suck up information,” Vice-President Pence, would cast the the Democratic Policy and Communi- Senator Whitehouse said. tie-breaking vote. Meanwhile, Republi- cations Committee, had helped put to- Schumer has enlarged the Senate’s cans now control thirty-three state leg- gether the Party’s message for and Democratic leadership team, so that now islatures, just one shy of the number was in no position to point a finger. more than a fifth of his caucus members needed to circumvent Congress and call Schumer’s assessment of is have some kind of title. Among those a constitutional convention. similar to his analysis of , but with elevated were Sanders, one of the cau- Despite all this—and despite the rev- an added dollop of self-criticism. cus’s most liberal members, and Man- elations about Russia, and the hastily “When you lose an election like this, chin, easily its most conservative. written executive orders, and the unvet- you don’t blink,” he told me when the “Chuck expanded his leadership team ted Cabinet secretaries, and the regula- conversation turned to November. “You and I’m part of it, and I’m thankful for tory reversals, and the leaks and the tweets look it in the eye and say, ‘What did that, because on a lot of things I don’t and the counter-tweets—Schumer, ever we do wrong?’ And I include myself agree with the national Democratic the optimist, told me he was upbeat. in this; I don’t just point at Hillary or Party,” Manchin told me. He said he was “I have surprised myself,” he said at anybody else. particularly pleased that Schumer had one point. “Even though this is a total “When you lose to a candidate who decided to hold a recent caucus retreat change for me in so many ways, I enjoy is so unpopular—yes, you could say if in his home state of West Virginia. waking up in the morning and being Comey wasn’t there we would have won,” “We brought in a panel of six or seven ready for the fight.” he went on, referring to James Comey, lifelong Democrats that had all voted At another point, he said, “Deep, the F.B.I. director. “But we should have Republican,” Manchin related. “What deep down, I believe in the American won anyway, with Comey and with the they said is, ‘We grew up with the Dem- people—their solidness, their decency, hacking. And we did not have a sharp, ocrats always being for the working peo- even at times when they’re angry and strong, populist enough economic mes- ple, and now we believe’—this is what frustrated, their pulling back and try- sage. If you ask average voters, ‘What they said—‘that the Democratic Party ing to do the right thing. And I’ve be- did we stand for?,’ they say we weren’t is the party that’s preventing men and lieved in it my whole life and this is the Trump. It wasn’t good enough.” women from working.’ ” most challenging time for it, but I still Schumer told me that he and his sta In a local sense, all the tumult of believe in it. And, if I’m wrong, God were working to craft such an economic the past two months has made Schu- help America.” 

28 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 counter V. Putin’s cynical and highly SHOUTS & MURMURS naughty charm oensive on D. Trump, so that Dear Leader and Loyal Pal Kim Jong-un will no longer be excluded KIM JONG-UN NO PATSY from fun U.S. bridge parties, barbecues, buet suppers, etc. BY BRUCE MCCALL — It is my Party and I will rule as I want to, Rule as I want to, rule as I want to. You would rule, too, if Dear Leader were you! © , K.J.U. PLAGIARISTIC MUSIC INC. — Q: How can Dear Leader Kim ma- neuver D. Trump into, say, pushing V. Putin o the roof of Trump Tower and then telling Fox News that “Kim is a beautiful, wonderful guy—believe me, I know”? A: Kim Jong-un counters this im- pudent challenge by the turd-tossing camp with Aphorism No. -J: The enemy of my friend is exposed as the friend of my enemy, has already been fed into a cement mixer, and is now a speed bump in the pavement of the parking lot behind the Kim Jong-un Academy of Hairdress- ing, in Pyongyang. — , Instructions for smiling-charm oen- sive: E-mail to supreme hair fan V. Putin per- to shut out life-of-the-party Kim D. Trump of enlarged black-and- E severes in his campaign to shame- Jong-un by making him seem, by con- white photos of the head of V. Putin, lessly gush over naïve rookie U.S. Pres- trast, like an unfunny midget warlord revealing advanced male-pattern bald- ident D. Trump. Dear Leader Kim who feeds uncles to dogs. This cynical ness, and color glossies of Kim’s luxu- Jong-un knows this to be a Russo- trick will not succeed. Therefore, here riant pompadour. Follow this by deliv- American conspiracy to ridicule the it comes, Kim Jong-un’s Aphorism ering to the main White House gate, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, No. -J: To the winner go the spoils, under cover of night, a live baby seal, Kim Jong-un’s haircut, and his hon- while the loser is bound to a kitchen chair in club included, in a basket. Immediately ored sibling. Kim Jong-un, contemp- a bean field and atomized by cannon fire. commence five-for-the-price-of-one tuous of the International Jealous The warning is clear: to vanquish blowout sale of Ivanka Trump hand- Front’s quibbles about his nuclear- V. Putin’s impudent show of ersatz en- bags, shoes, and fashion jewelry at every weapons program and his success in thusiasm for D. Trump, and to smash D.P.R.K. government outlet mart. having his fat-boy half brother Kim this unholy alliance and thereby restore Note: Further smiling-charm- oen- Jong-nam massaged with a poison face the D.P.R.K.’s first-placeness, Dearer sive suggestions welcome. Hurry! rub in a busy air terminal, defiantly is- by the Minute Leader Kim Jong-un — sues Aphorism No. -J: Hooligan has issued to the forty-first plenary ses- traitor saboteurs are more easily squashed sion of the one-thousand-two- hundred- Dear Leader Kim Jong-un, already by organophosphate than by vinegar or and-fifty-sixth Juche Talkathon the running late for the Dennis Rodman honey. following order: “Mobilize a heroic pa- roast, must bolt, but leaves us to pon- V. Putin, meanwhile, hoists papier– triotic smiling-charm oensive.” der his Aphorism No. -J: Sticks mâché “barbells” while ruthlessly press- What exactly is a smiling-charm and stones will break your bones, but re- ing his campaign of praising the vain oensive? Shut up and read on: The fusing to name names only ends with dis- rookie U.S. President D. Trump at every smiling-charm oensive is a self-pro- covery of one can of Kim’s Powdered

ALLAN SANDERS ALLAN turn—a transparent Kremlin attempt tective defense measure designed to Chowder in Grandma’s mailbox. 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 29 xenophobia (a Colombian busboy who ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS works as a scab is targeted), and violence. The play opened at the Public The- atre last November, five days before the THE LISTENER Presidential election, which gave the country a new fixation: the Rust Belt Lynn Nottage’s plays give voice to the disenfranchised. working class. Who were these people who had cast their lot with Donald BY MICHAEL SCHULMAN Trump? Why had the media—and the Democrats—largely ignored their trou- bles? Nottage was an unlikely teller of the story: an Ivy League-educated black woman from Brooklyn. “One of the man- tras I heard the steelworkers repeat over and over again was ‘We invested so many years in this factory, and they don’t see us. We’re invisible,’ ” Nottage said. “I think it profoundly hurt their feelings.” Nottage, who has thick dreads and a warm, warbling voice, has built a career on making invisible people visible. Her plays, including “Ruined,” for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, are vigorously re- searched and unapologetic about their so- cial concerns, at a time when critics tend to dismiss “issue plays.” At fifty-two, she is sprightlier than her more serious work suggests, a quality that helps earn the trust of her subjects, whether in Africa or in coal country. “Lynn carries something with her,” Kate Whoriskey, the director of “Ruined” and “Sweat,” said. “People imme- diately recognize that she has integrity.” “Sweat” ’s transfer to Studio —it is Nottage’s Broadway début—may make it the first theatrical landmark of the Trump era: a tough yet empathetic portrait of the America that came undone. “Most folks Lynn Nottage a year later I was, like, ‘Oh, that’s about think it’s the guilt or rage that destroys T sometimes doesn’t know what her me and my mother,’ ” Nottage told me. us,” one character says. “But I know from plays are about until well after she’s With her latest work, “Sweat,” Not- experience that it’s shame that eats us finished them. At the Yale School of tage’s accidental insight was not into her- away until we disappear.” Nottage wasn’t Drama, in the late nineteen-eighties, she self but into the American electorate. The prescient—she was as shocked as anyone based a play on a news item about a Bra- play is set in Reading, Pennsylvania, where by the election result. But what wasn’t zilian town where locals had found a glow- she spent two and a half years interview- shocking “was the extent of the pain,” she ing capsule thought to have supernatural ing residents. Much of the action takes told me. “These were people who felt help- powers; it turned out to contain radio- place at a bar where the steelworkers hang less, who felt like the American dream active waste, and more than a hundred out; among them are Cynthia, who is that they had so deeply invested in had thousand people were contaminated. black, and Tracey, who is white. Both apply been suddenly ripped away. I was sitting Sometime later, Nottage realized that for a job in management; Cynthia gets with these white men, and I thought, You she had been writing about , which it. Soon, the company issues layos—it’s sound like people of color in America.” had claimed the lives of a number of her shipping jobs to Mexico—and the work- classmates and teachers. After her mother ers strike, pitting Cynthia against her old ” origin in , with died, of Lou Gehrig’s disease, in , friends. The bar’s tenuous ecosystem un- “S an e-mail from one of Nottage’s she wrote a play called “The Emperor ravels: economic anxiety begets racial re- neighbors in Brooklyn, a single mother, and the Scribe,” about a dying African sentment (Tracey thinks that Cynthia who confessed that she was broke. “She ruler and his amanuensis. “It wasn’t until got the promotion because she’s black), has this bubbly, outgoing personality, and it was really kind of devastating to To write “Sweat,” Nottage spent years interviewing residents of Reading, Pennsylvania. realize that she was in such dire straits,”

30 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY NATHAN BAJAR Nottage recalled. “It made me think a calling her œuvre “schizophrenic.” After burlesque show is less about stripping lot about how close we live to poverty.” “Ruined,” she wrote “By the Way, Meet all the layers than about audience en- The next morning, Nottage brought Vera Stark,” a postmodern screwball com- gagement and spectacle.” the friend to Zuccotti Park to see the edy about a nineteen-thirties Hollywood Occupy Wall Street protest. The friend star resembling Hattie McDaniel. Her in the house where cheered up, she said, because “she wasn’t most popular work is “Intimate Apparel,” N she grew up, a century-old brown- alone.” about a black seamstress in early- stone on Dean Street, in Boerum Hill, But Nottage was perturbed: “How twentieth-century New York. “What Brooklyn, filled with modern art and did we arrive at this point?” She decided drew me to it was that it was a full story of African masks collected by her parents, to investigate a struggling city. She read a woman,” Viola Davis, who starred in it Ruby and Wally Nottage. One recent in the Times that the Census Bureau had O Broadway, in , said. “Lynn’s char- night, the house was buzzing with peo- found Reading to be the poorest Amer- acters go on a full journey. In the end, ple, including Nottage’s brother Aaron ican city of its size, with a poverty rate you fully understand their pathology.” and Gerber, her husband, who observed of more than forty per cent. The Ore- Nottage feels that what unifies her that the ages of the house’s population gon Shakespeare Festival had com- plays is their “morally ambiguous heroes ranged “from eight to eighty-eight.” missioned her to write a play about an or heroines, people who are fractured The eight-year-old was their son, Mel, American revolution; she chose the de- within their own bodies, who have to whom they adopted from Ethiopia. industrial revolution, which she called make very dicult choices in order to The eighty-eight-year-old was Wally, “the biggest shift in American sensibil- survive.” Each character in “Sweat” com- who was downstairs, in hospice care. ities since the nineteen-sixties.” On her mits a reprehensible act, whether it’s Nottage’s parents bought the house first trip to Reading, she and her assis- Cynthia’s failing to stand with her friends in . Wally was a social worker focus- tant pulled into a gas station, and a guy on the picket line or Tracey’s exhibit- sing on juvenile delinquency, and Ruby told them, “Can I give you a piece of ing a newfound racism. The plays also taught at a public school in Bed-Stuy. advice? Get out before sundown.” give voice to marginalized lives. “Her They were a social, sophisticated couple, Nottage wasn’t fazed. In , she main characters happen to be African- and their friends included artists, politi- had travelled to Uganda, to research the American women who are dark-skinned cians, and feminist leaders, like Bella play that would become “Ruined.” The and who probably otherwise wouldn’t be Abzug. Ruby gave her children an Af- idea was to re-set Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother considered beautiful,” Davis said. “She rocentric education, and filled in their Courage and Her Children” in the Congo, gives you the beauty, because she gives picture books with a brown marker— which was reeling from civil war. During their lives a lyricism. She pays attention, the Little Prince became black. Along three trips, she interviewed women in in the same way Arthur Miller pays at- with Betty Shabazz and Eugenia Clarke refugee camps and demobilized soldiers tention to Willy Loman.” (the wives of Malcolm X and John Hen- from the Lord’s Resistance Army. At one Though “Sweat” harks back to the rik Clarke), Ruby formed a program point, she and her husband, Tony Ger- working-class naturalism of Cliord called the Black School, which Nottage ber, a documentary filmmaker, were try- Odets, Nottage is eager to push beyond attended on weekends. “We learned to ing to cross the border on foot, after a the proscenium. She teaches a graduate tie-dye, because tie-dying was tradition- banana truck blocked their car. A crowd course at Columbia, called “American ally a black art,” she recalled. surrounded them and began shouting at Spectacle,” and takes her students on field The surrounding neighborhoods were Gerber, who is white. “They’re saying trips: a Coney Island sideshow, a murder self-segregated—a few blocks away was they’re going to stone him to death,” their trial, a Times Square mega church. “I had all Italian—but Boerum Hill in the sev- translator told them brightly. “But I don’t this feeling that arts institutions were enties was a bastion of multiculturalism. think it’s going to happen, so don’t worry!” closing in and demanding that play- The writer Jonathan Lethem grew up “Ruined,” which is set in a Congo- wrights shape their visions to the space,” down the block, and later fictionalized lese brothel, opened at Manhattan The- she said one night last month. “So the the area in his novel “The Fortress of atre Club in . Ben Brantley, in the goal is to create a whole generation of Solitude”; Nottage’s brother (now a Times, noted its “raw and genuine agony.” resistance.” I had met her and six stu- Brooklyn district attorney) was the model There was talk of moving it to Broad- dents at the Slipper Room, a burlesque for a character named Henry, and the way, but, Nottage said, “repeatedly I heard, club. She was interested in “the gaze,” stoop where the kids play games was the ‘There are no black actresses who can she said, and in “the way people slowly Nottages’, where Wally would keep watch. open a Broadway play.’ It was frustrat- remove layers. It’s an exercise in subtext.” “Their house was a haven and a beacon,” ing—the unwillingness to gamble on this A rowdy crowd formed as the show Lethem told me. “They would open their play that had proven to be very success- began. Like a hip Mary Poppins, Not- back yard to kids in the neighborhood. ful, because it was written by a woman tage sipped a bourbon as her charges The snacks were laid out: bug juice and of color and starred women of color.” watched a woman in a flapper dress paper cups for every kid.” Some playwrights work within a con- strip to her panties while hula-hooping. Wally and Ruby were hands-o par- sistent aesthetic world—Arthur Mill- After the show, Nottage gave the stu- ents. The kids played in the street, “like er’s mid-century morality plays, Annie dents an assignment. “Think about free-range chickens,” Lynn Nottage said. Baker’s chatty hipster miniatures—but what dialogue you want to have with One summer, she and Aaron were at a Nottage shifts wildly from play to play, the audience,” she told them. “This sleepaway camp in Pennsylvania (where

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 31 Nottage beat her fellow-camper Laura serted itself. An English teacher who was job had international scope—she toured Linney for an acting prize), and their inspirational to Lethem bedevilled Not- with the Guatemalan activist Rigoberta parents were a week late picking them tage. When she signed her name to pa- Menchú—but she was frustrated that up. “When we got older, they started pers, she got B’s or C’s, but on anony- the group neglected women’s issues like talking about places they had been, like mous exercises she got A’s. Nottage wrote genital mutilation. She would draft press Guadeloupe,” Aaron said. “That’s when the teacher a letter saying, “I deserve a releases about human-rights abuses, I realized: they’d send us away, and they in this class, and here’s the reason why.” hoping for a blurb in the Times. “I would travel.” Years later, Lethem asked Nottage for her thought, There must be a better way of As a child, Lethem recalled, “Lynn memories of Boerum Hill. “She said, communicating stories,” she said. One was a watchful, wise-beyond-her-years ‘Every kid we grew up with either went day, after seeing a portfolio of domestic- presence on the block. I felt the power to jail or into law enforcement.’ I replied, abuse victims by the photographer of her awareness and her watching and, looking at her and myself,‘There was a Donna Ferrato, she closed her oce sometimes, her intervening kindness.” third way—you could become a writer.’ ” door and wrote her first play in years: a When Nottage was twelve, her father Nottage had grown up seeing plays by one-act called “Poof!,” about a battered slipped while carrying a piece of slate in the Negro Ensemble Company, most wife who tells her husband to go to hell, the back yard. Not realizing that he had memorably Charles Fuller’s “Zooman and after which he spontaneously combusts. broken his back, he took the kids to Pros- the Sign.” But when she enrolled at Brown Nottage sent the play to the Actors pect Park to play Frisbee. “He came home University, in , she was pre-med. Or- Theatre of Louisville, where it won a and didn’t move for two years,” Nottage ganic chemistry put an end to that, and prize in a festival. She quit her job and recalled. She switched from private to she gravitated toward her playwriting started temping and writing. At Play- public school, while Ruby supported professor, George Bass, the executor of wrights Horizons, she joined a work- the family on her teacher’s salary. Langston Hughes’s estate. “He was into shop for black playwrights, which turned In ninth grade, Nottage and Lethem ritual, and theatre as a sacred space,” Not- into “a therapeutic bitch session”: she and started at the High School of Music & tage said. Once, he told the students to the others felt that nonprofit theatres Art, where he studied painting and she close their eyes and hold out their hands, were using them to fill a diversity quota played the flute. Every day, they shared and gave each a chunk of Hughes’s ashes. but not producing their work. Eventu- an hour-long ride on the A train, which (Nottage still has hers, in a silver case.) ally, in , Playwrights Horizons did Lethem recalled as “a mind-blowing ex- Another teacher was Paula Vogel, who stage Nottage’s “Mud, River, Stone,” about odus from the local scene through the “introduced me to the notion that you a well-o New York couple who go to entire length of Manhattan up to a Hun- can make a career as a playwright,” Not- Africa to “find their roots.” As the play dred and Thirty-fifth Street.” Together, tage said. In , she started at the was going up, Nottage’s life was under- they honed their powers of observation. Yale School of Drama, but the and going huge changes. Her daughter, Ruby, The conductor would sit with his wife crack epidemics overshadowed her time was born three weeks before rehearsals. until she kissed him and got o in lower there. She didn’t think the school was During previews, her mother died. Manhattan. Then, a few stops later, his invested in her as a playwright, and in At the same time, her grandmother mistress would get on. “We’re these two turn she felt less invested in playwriting. Waple Newton was succumbing to al- bug-eyed kids who’ve been told to stick “I thought, I need to do something that coholism. In her day, Newton had been to the conductor like glue,” Lethem said, feels like it will have impact,” she said. a splendid raconteur, with friends like “and he spotted us, day after day, watch- After graduation, she sold her computer Shirley Chisholm. As Newton lost her ing this little playlet go on.” and began working as the national press lucidity, Nottage cleaned out her house, At school, a racial double standard as- ocer for Amnesty International. The in Crown Heights. Wedged between the pages of an issue of Family Circle, Nottage found a passport photo of her great-grandmother Ethel Armstrong. With her mother gone and her grand- mother incapacitated, she had no one to ask about Ethel’s life, so she decided to invent a life for her. The play that re- sulted, “Intimate Apparel,” won a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and became the most produced play in the country in the - season.

“Sweat” had its first T preview on Broadway, Nottage, Ger- ber, and a film crew drove to Reading. Nottage didn’t want to feel like “a car- petbagger,” so she and Gerber had de- “The kids have been out there awhile.” vised an installation piece that will open in Reading in May, a Joseph Beuys-like “It’s not getting any better,” he said. Way, Meet Vera Stark,” she listened to “social sculpture” combining performance, He told her that he had burned out and Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith. The visual projections, and interviews docu- had had to cut down on his services. “Sweat” soundtrack began with “Smooth,” menting the city’s decline and attempts With his bad back, he could no longer by Santana. “From the moment I con- at rebirth. The work, called “This Is Read- haul heavy bags of food into the woods. ceived the play, that’s how I heard it start- ing,” will occupy the long-vacant Frank- “It was just getting to be more and more. ing,” she told me. lin Street Railroad Station. I can’t keep everyone out of jail and I She was in a rehearsal room, where The demise of the Reading Railroad, can’t pay everyone’s rent. I can’t buy for- the cast was about to run Act I, Scene . which remains a two-hundred-dollar mula for every baby.” It’s the first scene at the bar, when the property on the Monopoly board, is in- “What about your boy in charge— subject of the open supervisor position tertwined with the city’s slump. As chron- Trump?” Nottage asked. Though Read- comes up. “The real darkness is there icled by its native son John Updike, Read- ing had leaned toward Clinton, Berks and looming in the distance, but hasn’t ing once thrived on its steel mills and yet touched them,” Nottage explained. coal mines and became “the outlet cap- At the Public, the scene opened with ital of the world.” The train to Philadel- everyone dancing to “Smooth,” which phia shut down in , along with found- Nottage liked because it represented all ries and textile factories. Manufacturing the characters: “You have a little R. & B., jobs have dropped thirty per cent since a little rock and roll, a little pop, a little , and only eight per cent of residents Latino flavor.” But the production hadn’t have a bachelor’s degree. A majority of cleared the rights for Broadway, so the city’s population is now Hispanic, Whoriskey, the director, had lined up al- further alienating the white working class. County had gone for Trump by a ten- ternatives. The stage manager played The group parked at the Reading Rail- point margin; Obama had won by nine Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” road Heritage Museum, which opened points in . Graybill voted for Trump, while the actors danced. in , in a defunct steel foundry. A because “I didn’t want to give up my Nottage frowned. “It’s fun, but it’s too guide showed them the collection: model guns,” he said. But he wasn’t optimistic. fast,” she whispered to Whoriskey. trains, old maps. Nottage said that she “Nobody’s going to make it any better,” “They’re going to have heart attacks.” was looking for artifacts for the installa- he told Nottage. “Obama didn’t make it They tried Marc Anthony’s “I Need tion, part of a “visual tapestry” to trigger any better in eight years. Trump’s not to Know.” “Much better,” Nottage said. memories of the way Reading used to be. going to do it in eight years. Nobody’s (Later, she lamented, “There’s no song Afterward, Nottage and I drove going to, unless there’s the same num- that’s as perfect as ‘Smooth.’ ”) The ac- through town, passing a bar called Mike’s ber of jobs there were forty years ago.” tors ran the scene, in which the charac- Tavern, which had inspired the central “A lot of those jobs aren’t coming ters discuss the possible layos: location of “Sweat.” “You don’t see the back,” Nottage said gently. C: That rumor’s been ying around poverty, but it’s there,” Nottage said. She Graybill said that he’d been seeing for months. Nobody’s going anywhere. approached her research with the motto “the Wizard” (his shrink) once a week, S: Okay, you keep telling yoursel that, “Replace judgment with curiosity,” but but he was haunted by the desperation but you saw what happened over at Clemmon’s her empathy was tested at times—for around him. “I can’t hear another sad Technologies. No one saw that coming. Right? instance, when she noticed that an ex- story. I can’t hear about another person You could wake up tomorrow and all your jobs are in Mexico, whatever, it’s this bullshit— con whom she’d been interviewing had going to jail. I don’t want to hear about T: What the fuck is ? Sounds white-supremacist tattoos. three sick kids and no food.” like a laxative. In a restaurant at the new Double- Nottage nodded: “When I was at Am- Tree Hotel, we met a sixty-five-year-old nesty International, I was seeing a chi- Nottage laughed. The scene is set in native named Doug Graybill. After serv- ropractor three times a week.” , but the workers she met in Read- ing in Vietnam, Graybill had problems “I feel guilty,” Graybill went on. “Be- ing were well aware of , which re- readjusting and was repeatedly arrested. cause I got a chance to shower and shave sulted in jobs moving overseas. In the (“I would actually beg the cops to shoot this morning, and put on deodorant and campaign, Trump used the fact that Bill me,” he said.) Despite stints as an iron- clean clothes.” Clinton had signed as a cudgel worker, he struggled to make ends meet “When you come and you hear these against Hillary. (“Worst trade deal ever.”) and was periodically homeless. Eight stories, you feel incredibly guilty,” Not- If “Sweat” shows the fissures that were years ago, he and his wife, Liz, started a tage agreed. “That’s the reason I wanted forming in Reading, the election cracked nonprofit group called Veterans Making to come back. You can’t just run away.” them wide open. “Now it’s like the San a Dierence. Graybill would bring food Andreas Fault,” Nottage said. Her char- and supplies to shantytowns that had a new play, acters, who already face long odds, would sprung up in the woods; during Not- B she makes herself a soundtrack. For be even more divided in Trump’s Amer- tage’s research for “Sweat,” he guided her “Intimate Apparel” (which she and the ica, and just as invisible. “I worry about there to interview the residents. composer Ricky Ian Gordon are turning Reading, which needs good governance “So, how is Reading doing?” Nottage into an opera), the playlist included rag- in order to resurrect itself,” she said. “I asked Graybill, who sipped soup. time artists like Scott Joplin. For “By the fear that it’s going to be overlooked.” 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 33 A REPORTER AT LARGE TRUMP’S MONEY MAN

How Robert Mercer, a reclusive hedge-fund tycoon, exploited America’s populist insurgency.

BY JANE MAYER

, President Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. Cad- who formerly served as the chairman of Donald Trump toured a Boeing dell is well known to this inner circle. He the Federal Election Commission, said, L aircraft plant in North Charles- first met Trump in the eighties. (“People “I have no idea what his political views ton, South Carolina, he saw a familiar said he was just a clown,” Caddell said. are—they’re unknown, not just to the face in the crowd that greeted him: Pat- “But I’ve learned that you should always public but also to most people who’ve rick Caddell, a former Democratic po- pay attention to successful ‘clowns.’ ”) Cad- been active in politics for the past thirty litical operative and pollster who, for dell shared the research he did for Mer- years.” Potter, a Republican, sees Mercer forty-five years, has been prodding in- cer with Trump and others in the cam- as emblematic of a major shift in Amer- surgent Presidential candidates to attack paign, including Bannon, with whom he ican politics that has occurred since , the Washington establishment. Caddell, has partnered on numerous projects. when the Supreme Court made a con- who lives in Charleston, is perhaps best The White House declined to divulge troversial ruling in Citizens United v. Fed- known for helping Jimmy Carter win the what Trump and Caddell discussed in eral Election Commission. That ruling, Presidential race. He is also remem- North Charleston, as did Caddell. But and several subsequent ones, removed vir- bered for having collaborated with his that afternoon Trump issued perhaps the tually all limits on how much money cor- friend Warren Beatty on the satire most incendiary statement of his Presi- porations and nonprofit groups can spend “Bulworth.” In that film, a kamikaze can- dency: a tweet calling the news media on federal elections, and how much in- didate abandons the usual talking points “the enemy of the American people.” The dividuals can give to political-action com- and excoriates both the major political proclamation alarmed liberals and con- mittees. Since then, power has tilted away parties and the media; voters love his un- servatives alike. William McRaven, the from the two main political parties and conventionality, and he becomes improb- retired Navy admiral who commanded toward a tiny group of rich mega-donors. ably popular. If the plot sounds familiar, the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Private money has long played a big there’s a reason: in recent years, Caddell called Trump’s statement a “threat to de- role in American elections. When there has oered political advice to Trump. He mocracy.” The President is known for were limits on how much a single donor has not worked directly for the President, tweeting impulsively, but in this case his could give, however, it was much harder but at least as far back as he has words weren’t spontaneous: they clearly for an individual to have a decisive im- been a contractor for one of Trump’s echoed the thinking of Caddell, Bannon, pact. Now, Potter said, “a single billion- biggest financial backers: Robert Mer- and Mercer. In , Caddell gave a speech aire can write an eight-figure check cer, a reclusive Long Island hedge-fund at a conference sponsored by Accuracy and put not just their thumb but their manager, who has become a major force in Media, a conservative watchdog group, whole hand on the scale—and we often behind the Trump Presidency. in which he called the media “the enemy have no idea who they are.” He contin- During the past decade, Mercer, who of the American people.” That declara- ued, “Suddenly, a random billionaire can is seventy, has funded an array of polit- tion was promoted by Breitbart News, a change politics and public policy—to ical projects that helped pave the way for platform for the pro-Trump alt-right, of sweep everything else o the table—even Trump’s rise. Among these eorts was which Bannon was the executive chair- if they don’t speak publicly, and even if public-opinion research, conducted by man, before joining the Trump Admin- there’s almost no public awareness of his Caddell, showing that political condi- istration. One of the main stakeholders or her views.” tions in America were increasingly ripe in Breitbart News is Mercer. Through a spokesman, Mercer de- for an outsider candidate to take the Mercer is the co-C.E.O. of Renais- clined to discuss his role in launching White House. Caddell told me that Mer- sance Technologies, which is among the Trump. People who know him say that cer “is a libertarian—he despises the Re- most profitable hedge funds in the he is painfully awkward socially, and rarely publican establishment,” and added, “He country. A brilliant computer scientist, speaks. “He can barely look you in the thinks that the leaders are corrupt crooks, he helped transform the financial indus- eye when he talks,” an acquaintance said. and that they’ve ruined the country.” try through the innovative use of trading “It’s probably helpful to be highly intro- Trump greeted Caddell warmly in algorithms. But he has never given an in- verted when getting lost in code, but in North Charleston, and after giving a terview explaining his political views. Al- politics you have to talk to people, in speech he conferred privately with him, though Mercer has recently become an order to find out how the real world in an area reserved for V.I.P.s and for object of media speculation, Trevor Pot- works.” In , when the Wall Street White House ocials, including Stephen ter, the president of the Campaign Legal Journal wrote about Mercer assuming a

Bannon, the President’s top strategist, and Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group, top role at Renaissance, he issued a terse ANDREWPHOTOGRAPH BY OPPOSITE TOTH/GETTY PAGE:

34 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 Nick Patterson, a former colleague of Mercer’s, said, “In my view, Trump wouldn’t be President if not for Bob.”

ILLUSTRATION BY OLIVER MUNDAY THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 35 statement: “I’m happy going through my the candidate.” He warned, “Robert Mer- cer read the publication at the time. David life without saying anything to anybody.” cer now owns a sizeable share of the Brock, a former Spectator writer who is According to the paper, he once told a United States Presidency.” now a liberal activist, told me that the colleague that he preferred the company Nick Patterson, a former senior Re- alleged Mena conspiracy was based on of cats to humans. naissance employee who is now a com- a single dubious source, and was easily Several people who have worked with putational biologist at the Broad Insti- disproved by flight records. “It’s extremely Mercer believe that, despite his oddities, tute, agrees that Mercer’s influence has telling that Mercer would believe that,” he has had surprising success in align- been huge. “Bob has used his money very Brock said. “It says something about his ing the Republican Party, and conse- eectively,” he said. “He’s not the first conspiratorial frame of mind, and the quently America, with his personal be- person in history to use money in poli- fringe circle he was in. We at the Spec- liefs, and is now uniquely positioned to tics, but in my view Trump wouldn’t be tator called them Clinton Crazies.” exert influence over the Trump Admin- President if not for Bob. It doesn’t get Patterson also recalled Mercer argu- istration. In February, David Magerman, much more eective than that.” ing that, during the Gulf War, the U.S. a senior employee at Renaissance, spoke Patterson said that his relationship should simply have taken Iraq’s oil, “since out about what he regards as Mercer’s with Mercer has always been collegial. it was there.” Trump, too, has said that worrisome influence. Magerman, a Dem- In , Patterson, at that time a Renais- the U.S. should have “kept the oil.” Ex- ocrat who is a strong supporter of Jew- sance executive, recruited Mercer from propriating another country’s natural re- ish causes, took particular issue with Mer- I.B.M., and they worked together for sources is a violation of international law. cer’s empowerment of the alt-right, which the next eight years. But Patterson doesn’t Another onetime senior employee at Re- has included anti-Semitic and white- share Mercer’s libertarian views, or what naissance recalls hearing Mercer down- supremacist voices. Magerman shared he regards as his susceptibility to con- play the dangers posed by nuclear war. his concerns with Mercer, and the con- spiracy theories about Bill and Hillary Mercer, speaking of the atomic bombs versation escalated into an argument. Clinton. During Bill Clinton’s Presi- that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Magerman told colleagues about it, and, dency, Patterson recalled, Mercer insisted Nagasaki, argued that, outside of the im- according to an account in the Wall Street at a sta luncheon that Clinton had par- mediate blast zones, the radiation actu- Journal, Mercer called Magerman and ticipated in a secret drug-running scheme ally made Japanese citizens healthier. The said, “I hear you’re going around saying with the C.I.A. The plot supposedly op- National Academy of Sciences has found I’m a white supremacist. That’s ridicu- erated out of an airport in Mena, Ar- no evidence to support this notion. Nev- lous.” Magerman insisted to Mercer that kansas. “Bob told me he believed that ertheless, according to the onetime em- he hadn’t used those words, but added, the Clintons were involved in murders ployee, Mercer, who is a proponent of “If what you’re doing is harming the connected to it,” Patterson said. Two other nuclear power, “was very excited about country, then you have to stop.” After sources told me that, in recent years, the idea, and felt that it meant nuclear the Journal story appeared, Mager- they had heard Mercer claim that the accidents weren’t such a big deal.” man, who has worked at Renaissance for Clintons have had opponents murdered. Mercer strongly supported the nom- twenty years, was suspended for thirty The Mena story is one of several dark ination of Je Sessions to be Trump’s days. Undaunted, he published an op-ed fantasies put forth in the nineties by The Attorney General. Many civil-rights in the Philadelphia Inquirer, accusing American Spectator, an archconservative groups opposed the nomination, point- Mercer of “eectively buying shares in magazine. According to Patterson, Mer- ing out that Sessions has in the past ex- pressed racist views. Mercer, for his part, has argued that the Civil Rights Act, in , was a major mistake. According to the onetime Renaissance employee, Mer- cer has asserted repeatedly that African- Americans were better o economically before the civil-rights movement. (Few scholars agree.) He has also said that the problem of racism in America is exag- gerated. The source said that, not long ago, he heard Mercer proclaim that there are no white racists in America today, only black racists. (Mercer, meanwhile, has supported a super , Black Amer- icans for a Better Future, whose goal is to “get more Blacks involved in the Re- publican Party.”) “Most people at Renaissance didn’t challenge him” about politics, Patterson said. But Patterson clashed with him over climate change; Mercer said that concerns about it were overblown. After government the better. He’s happy if peo- thropy”—made donations to dozens of Patterson shared with him a scientific ple don’t trust the government. And if the politically tinged organizations. paper on the subject, Mercer and his President’s a bozo? He’s fine with that. Like many wealthy families, the Mer- brother, Randall, who also worked at the He wants it to all fall down.” cers have a private foundation. At first, hedge fund, sent him a paper by a sci- The Presidential election posed the Mercer Family Foundation, which entist named Arthur Robinson, who is a challenge for someone with Mercer’s was established in , had an en- a biochemist, not a climate expert. “It ideology. Multiple sources described him dowment of only half a million dollars, looked like a scientific paper, but it was as animated mainly by hatred of Hillary and most of its grants went to medical completely loaded with selective and bi- Clinton. But Mercer also distrusted the research and conventional charities. ased information,” Patterson recalled. Republican leadership. After the candi- But by , under the supervision of The paper argued that, if climate change date he initially supported, Mercer’s ardently conser- were real, future generations would “enjoy Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, vative daughter, Rebekah, an Earth with far more plant and ani- dropped out of the race, Mer- the foundation began giv- mal life.” Robinson owns a sheep ranch cer sought a disruptive figure ing millions of dollars to in Cave Junction, Oregon, and on the who could upend both the interconnected nonprofit property he runs a laboratory that he Democratic Party and the groups, several of which calls the Oregon Institute of Science and Republican Party. Patterson played crucial roles in prop- Medicine. Mercer helps subsidize Rob- told me that Mercer seems agating attacks on Hillary inson’s various projects, which include to have applied “a very Re- Clinton. By , the most an eort to forestall aging. naissance Technologies way recent year for which fed- Patterson sent Mercer a note calling of thinking” to politics: “He eral tax records are avail- Robinson’s arguments “completely false.” probably estimated the probability of able, the foundation had grown into a He never heard back. “I think if you Trump winning, and when it wasn’t very $.-million operation that gave large studied Bob’s views of what the ideal high he said to himself, ‘O.K., what has sums to ultraconservative organizations. state would look like, you’d find that, to happen in order for this twenty-per- On top of this nonprofit spending, basically, he wants a system where the cent thing to occur?’ It’s like playing a Mercer invested in private businesses. state just gets out of the way,” Patter- card game when you haven’t got a very He put ten million dollars into Breitbart son said. “Climate change poses a prob- good hand.” News, which was conceived as a conser- lem for that world view, because mar- Mercer, as it happens, is a superb vative counterweight to the Hungton kets can’t solve it on their own.” poker player, and his political gamble Post. The Web site freely mixes right- Magerman told the Wall Street Jour- appears to have paid o. Institutional In- wing political commentary with juvenile nal that Mercer’s political opinions “show vestor has called it “Robert Mercer’s Trade rants and racist innuendo; under Ban- contempt for the social safety netthat he of the Century.” non’s direction, the editors introduced a doesn’t need, but many Americans do.”He rubric called Black Crime. The site played also said that Mercer wants the U.S. gov- campaign, Mercer gave a key role in undermining Hillary Clin- ernment to be “shrunk down to the size I $. million in disclosed donations ton; by tracking which negative stories of a pinhead.” Several former colleagues to Republican candidates and to politi- about her got the most clicks and “likes,” of Mercer’s said that his views are akin cal-action committees. Tony Fabrizio, a the editors helped identify which story to Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Republican pollster who worked for the lines and phrases were the most potent Rand. Magerman told me, “Bob believes Trump campaign, said that Mercer had weapons against her. Breitbart News has that human beings have no inherent value “catapulted to the top of the heap of been a remarkable success: according to other than how much money they make. right-of-center power brokers.” It’s worth ComScore, a company that measures on- A cat has value, he’s said, because it pro- noting that several other wealthy finan- line trac, the site attracted . million vides pleasure to humans. But if some- ciers, including Democrats such as unique visitors in October. one is on welfare they have negative value. Thomas Steyer and Donald Sussman, Mercer also invested some five mil- If he earns a thousand times more than gave even more money to campaigns. lion dollars in Cambridge Analytica, a a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand (One of the top Democratic donors was firm that mines online data to reach and times more valuable.” Magerman added, James Simons, the retired founder of influence potential voters. The company “He thinks society is upside down—that Renaissance Technologies.) Neverthe- has said that it uses secret psychological government helps the weak people get less, Mercer’s political eorts stand apart. methods to pinpoint which messages are strong, and makes the strong people weak Adopting the strategy of Charles and the most persuasive to individual online by taking their money away, through David Koch, the billionaire libertarians, viewers. The firm, which is the American taxes.” He said that this mind-set was Mercer enlarged his impact exponen- aliate of Strategic Communication typical of “instant billionaires” in finance, tially by combining short-term campaign Laboratories, in London, has worked for who “have no stake in society,” unlike the spending with long-term ideological in- candidates whom Mercer has backed, industrialists of the past, who “built real vestments. He poured millions of dollars including Trump. It also reportedly things.” into Breitbart News, and—in what David worked on the Brexit campaign, in the Another former high-level Renais- Magerman has called “an extreme exam- United Kingdom. sance employee said, “Bob thinks the less ple of modern entrepreneurial philan- Alexander Nix, the C.E.O. of the firm,

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 37 says that it has created “profiles”—con- ence, in his first public appearance since guages. I.B.M. considered the project a sisting of several thousand data points— entering the White House, Rebekah Mer- bit of a luxury, and didn’t see its poten- for two hundred and twenty million cer was part of his entourage. Bannon tial, though the work laid the founda- Americans. In promotional materials, supports some initiatives, such as a major tion for Google Translate and Apple’s S.C.L. has claimed to know how to use infrastructure program, that are anath- Siri. But Mercer and his main partner, such data to wage both psychological and ema to libertarians such as Robert Mer- Peter Brown, found the project exciting, political warfare. “Persuading somebody cer. But the Wall Street Journal has de- and had the satisfaction of showing up to vote a certain way,” Nix has said pub- scribed Bannon joking and swearing on experts in the field, who had dismissed licly, “is really very similar to persuading the deck of the Mercers’ yacht, the Sea their statistical approach to translating - to -year-old boys in Indonesia to Owl, as if he were a member of the fam- languages as impractical. Instead of try- not join Al Qaeda.” Some critics suggest ily. Bannon assured me that the Mercers, ing to teach a computer linguistic rules, that, at this point, Cambridge Analyti- despite all their luxuries, are “the most Mercer and Brown downloaded enor- ca’s self-promotion exceeds its eective- middle-class people you will ever meet.” mous quantities of dual-language doc- ness. But Jonathan Albright, an assis- Robert and Diana Mercer brought uments—including Canadian parlia- tant professor of communications at Elon up their three daughters in a modest mentary records—and created code that University, in North Carolina, recently home near I.B.M.’s Thomas J. Watson analyzed the data and detected patterns, published a paper, on Medium, calling Research Center, in Westchester County. enabling predictions of probable trans- Cambridge Analytica a “propaganda The girls attended public schools, and lations. According to a former I.B.M. machine.” Robert and Diana worried about pay- colleague, Mercer was obsessive, and at As important as Mercer’s business in- ing three college tuitions. According to one point took six months o to type vestments is his hiring of advisers. Years Donna D’Andraia, a family friend, Diana into a computer every entry in a Span- before he started supporting Trump, he was a PTA member and a “tiger mom” ish-English dictionary. Sebastian Mal- began funding several conservative ac- who “made sure that the girls did all the laby, in his book on the hedge-fund tivists, including Steve Bannon; as far right things—they were in the honor so- industry, “More Money Than God,” re- back as , Bannon was the Mercers’ ciety, and stayed out of trouble.” D’An- ports that Mercer’s boss at I.B.M. once de-facto political adviser. Some people draia recalled Diana saying that Robert jokingly called him an “automaton.” who have observed the Mercers’ politi- was brilliant, but D’Andraia found it In , Mercer accepted a lifetime- cal evolution worry that Bannon has be- hard to tell, because “he was very quiet— achievement award from the Association come a Svengali to the whole family, ex- he didn’t talk to anybody.” for Computational Linguistics. In a speech ploiting its political inexperience and The eldest Mercer daughter, Jenni- at the ceremony, Mercer, who grew up in tapping its fortune to further his own fer, or Jenji, attended Stanford. Rebekah, New Mexico, said that he had a “jaun- ambitions. It was Bannon who urged the the middle daughter, enrolled at Cornell diced view” of government. While in col- Mercers to invest in a data-analytics firm. and then transferred to Stanford. Ma- lege, he had worked on a military base in He also encouraged the investment in joring in biology and math, she gradu- Albuquerque, and he had showed his su- Breitbart News, which was made through ated in ; a few years later, she got an periors how to run certain computer pro- Gravitas Maximus, L.L.C., a front group M.A., in operations research. The young- grams a hundred times faster; instead of that once had the same Long Island ad- est daughter, Heather Sue, “was the saving time and money, the bureaucrats dress as Renaissance Technologies. In an spitfire,” D’Andraia recalled. When ran a hundred times more equations. He interview, Bannon praised the Mercers’ Heather Sue was a junior in high school, concluded that the goal of government strategic approach: “The Mercers laid she tried out to be a place kicker on the ocials was “not so much to get answers the groundwork for the Trump revolu- football team. She made it, and, after en- as to consume the computer budget.” tion. Irrefutably, when you look at do- rolling at Duke University, she joined its Mercer’s colleagues say that he views the nors during the past four years, they have varsity squad. When the Duke coach re- government as arrogant and inecient, had the single biggest impact of any- fused to treat her as the equal of her and believes that individuals need to be body, including the Kochs.” male teammates, she sued the school for self-sucient, and should not receive aid Last summer, Bannon and some other gender discrimination, and won two mil- from the state. Yet, when I.B.M. failed to activists whom the Mercers have sup- lion dollars in damages. Ron Santavicca, oer adequate support for Mercer and ported—including David Bossie, who ini- Heather Sue’s high-school coach, de- Brown’s translation project, they secured tiated the Citizens United lawsuit—came scribed the Mercers, who still invite him additional funding from , the se- together to rescue Trump’s wobbly cam- to their Christmas parties, as “the salt of cretive Pentagon program. Despite Mer- paign. Sam Nunberg, an early Trump ad- the earth.” He added, “The whole fam- cer’s disdain for “big government,” this viser who watched Mercer’s group take ily is very determined. When they have funding was essential to his early success. over, said, “Mercer was smart. He invested a mission, they go after it.” Meanwhile, Patterson kept asking in the right people.” In , when Nick Patterson mailed Mercer and Brown to join Renaissance. Bannon and Rebekah Mercer have Robert Mercer a job oer from Renais- He thought that their technique of ex- become particularly close political part- sance, Mercer threw it in the trash: he’d tracting patterns from huge amounts ners. Last month, when Bannon denounced never heard of the hedge fund. At the of data could be applied to the pile of “the corporatist, globalist media” at the time, Mercer was part of a team pioneer- numbers generated daily by the global Conservative Political Action Confer- ing the use of computers to translate lan- trade in stocks, bonds, commodities, and

38 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 currencies. The patterns could generate predictive financial models that would give traders a decisive edge. In the spring of , Mercer experi- enced two devastating losses: his mother was killed, in a car crash, and his father, a biologist, died six weeks later. With life’s precariousness made painfully clear, and with tuition bills mounting, he decided to leave I.B.M. for a higher-paying job at Renaissance. Brown made the leap, too. Renaissance was founded by James Si- mons, a legendary mathematician, in . Simons had run the math department at Stony Brook University, on Long Island, and the hedge fund took a uniquely aca- demic approach to high finance. Andrew Lo, a finance professor at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, has described it as “the commercial version of the Man- hattan Project.” Intensely secretive and filled with people with Ph.D.s, it has been •• sensationally profitable. Its Medallion Fund, which is open only to the firm’s valuable that, when a pair of Russian Long Island, and called the property three hundred or so employees, has aver- mathematicians at the firm tried to take Owl’s Nest. Mercer, a gun enthusiast, aged returns of almost eighty per cent a the recipe elsewhere, the company initi- built a private pistol range there. (He is year, before fees. Bloomberg News has ated legal action against them. also a part owner of Centre Firearms, a called the Medallion Fund “perhaps the Renaissance’s profits were further en- company that claims to have the coun- world’s greatest moneymaking machine.” hanced by a controversial tax maneuver, try’s largest private cache of machine In “More Money Than God,” Mal- which became the subject of a Sen- guns, as well as a weapon that Arnold laby, who interviewed Mercer, describes ate inquiry. According to Senate inves- Schwarzenegger wielded in “The Ter- his temperament as that of an “icy cold tigators, Renaissance had presented minator.”) At Owl’s Nest, Mercer has poker player”; Mercer told him that he countless short-term trades as long-term installed a $.-million model-train set could not recall ever having had a night- ones, improperly avoiding some $. in his basement; trains chug through a mare. But Mercer warms up when talking billion in taxes. The Senate didn’t allege miniature landscape half the size of a about computers. In the speech, he criminality, but it concluded that Re- basketball court. The toy train attracted recalled the first time he used one, at a naissance had committed “abuses.” The unwanted tabloid headlines, such as science camp, and likened the experience I.R.S. demanded payment. (Renaissance “- -,” after to falling in love. He also spoke of the defended its practices, and the matter Mercer sued the manufacturer for over- government lab in New Mexico. “I loved remains contested, leaving a very sen- charging him. (The case was settled.) the solitude of the computer lab late at sitive material issue pending before the Mercer retains a domestic sta that night,” he said. “I loved the air-condi- Trump Administration.) includes a butler and a physician; both tioned smell of the place. I loved the The Medallion Fund made Renais- accompany him whenever he travels. But sound of the disks whirring and the print- sance employees among the wealthiest this, too, has sparked bad publicity. ers clacking.” The speech lasted forty people in the country. Forbes estimates In , three members of the house- minutes—“more than I typically talk in that Simons, who has the biggest share, hold sta sued to recover back wages, a month,” he noted. is worth eighteen billion dollars. In , claiming that Mercer had failed to pay Patterson told me that when Mercer Simons stepped aside, to focus on philan- overtime, as promised, and that he had arrived at Renaissance the firm’s equities thropy, and named Mercer and Brown deducted pay as punishment for poor division was lagging behind other areas, co-C.E.O.s. Institutional Investor’s Alpha work. One infraction that Mercer cited such as futures trading. Mercer and estimates that, in , Mercer earned as a “demerit” was a failure to replace Brown applied their algorithms to equi- a hundred and thirty-five million dol- shampoo bottles that were two-thirds ties trading. “It took several years,” Pat- lars at Renaissance. empty. This suit, too, was settled. terson recalled, but the equities group Mercer has bought several spectacu- eventually accounted for the largest share ’ allowed him lar yachts, including the Sea Owl, which of the Medallion Fund’s profits. Mercer M and his family to indulge their is two hundred and three feet long. A and Brown’s code took into account nearly wildest material fantasies. He and Diana photo shows the gates of the Tower every conceivable predictor of market moved into a waterfront estate in Head Bridge, in London, raised high to allow swings; their secret formula became so of the Harbor, a seaside community on it to proceed up the Thames. The Sea

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 39 Owl has a crew of eighteen, and features ida, for $. million. Jenji and Diana reg- chanting firecrackers.” She likened the a hand-carved “tree” that twists through ularly attend the Winter Equestrian Fes- Mercer sisters to the Schuylers—the four levels of decks. Designed, in part, tival, in Palm Beach. They are investors high-spirited, witty sisters made famous as a place where the extended Mercer in an equestrian center in North Caro- by the musical “Hamilton.” Shlaes went family can gather, the yacht has many lina, and have announced plans to open on, “The Mercers have strong values, fanciful and didactic touches for the Mer- one in Colorado. Diana is also listed as they’re kind of funny, and they’re really cer grandchildren, such as frescoes that the owner of Equinimity, a horse stable bright. Their brains are almost too allude to the discoveries of Darwin and in Florida. According to the stable’s Web strong.” Rebekah, she noted, supports Newton. There’s a self-playing Steinway, site, it specializes in Equine Facilitated several think tanks, but grows tired of a spa pool, and an elevator. Learning, a system that teaches “non-ver- talk; she “is into action.” Mercer has given major credit to his bal leadership and interpersonal com- family for the yacht’s special details, tell- munication skills through non-preda- Citizens United decision, ing Boat International that they are “en- tory horse-inspired wisdom.” A in , the Mercers were among dowed with both exceptionally good taste Rebekah worked for a few years at the first people to take advantage of the and exceptionally strong opinions.” The Renaissance after graduating from Stan- opportunity to spend more money on Mercer daughters are indeed forceful. ford. A former colleague recalls her as politics. In Oregon, they quietly gave When a Manhattan bakery that the sis- smart but haughty. In , she married money to a super —an independent ters loved, Ruby et Violette, threatened a Frenchman, Sylvain Mirochniko, who campaign-related group that could now to close, depriving the Mercers of their is a managing director of Morgan Stan- take unlimited donations. In New York, favorite cookies, they bought it. In a Fox ley. They had four children and bought reporters discovered that Robert Mer- News interview, Heather Sue recalled a twenty-eight-million-dollar prop- cer was the sole donor behind a mil- telling the others, “We are going to buy a erty—six apartments joined together— lion-dollar advertising campaign attack- bakery!” The Mercers still own the busi- at Trump Place, on the Upper West Side. ing what it described as a plan to build ness, although it is now online-only. Now forty-three, she is divorcing Mi- a “Ground Zero Mosque” in Manhat- After graduating from Duke, Heather rochniko. She homeschools the chil- tan. The proposed building was neither Sue began competing in high-stakes dren, but in recent years she has become a mosque nor at Ground Zero. The ads, poker tournaments; she is admired on consumed by politics. “She is the First which were meant to boost a Conserva- the circuit for her cool manner. When Lady of the alt-right,” Christopher tive Party candidate for governor, were Mercer insisted that Heather Sue take Ruddy, the owner of the conservative condemned as Islamophobic. a security guard with her, Santavicca outlet Newsmax Media, said. “She’s re- In Oregon, the Mercers gave six hun- said, “they became friends, then they spected in conservative circles, and clearly dred and forty thousand dollars to a group became whatever, and now they’re mar- Trump has embraced her in a big way.” that attacked Representative Peter De- ried, with two beautiful daughters.” Amity Shlaes, the conservative writer Fazio, a Democrat, with a barrage of neg- Jenji has a law degree from George- and the chair of the Calvin Coolidge ative ads during the final weeks of his town, but she has pursued an interest in Presidential Foundation, where Rebekah reëlection campaign. This eort horses instead. In , the Mercers Mercer is a trustee, told me, “In the dull also failed—it didn’t help when DeFazio bought a horse farm in Wellington, Flor- crowds of policy, the Mercers are en- announced that a New York hedge-fund manager and his daughter were med- dling in Oregon politics. Press accounts speculated that Rob- ert Mercer may have targeted DeFazio because DeFazio had proposed a tax on a type of high-volume stock trade that Renaissance frequently made. But sev- eral associates of Mercer’s say that the truth is stranger. DeFazio’s Republican opponent was Arthur Robinson—the biochemist, sheep rancher, and climate- change denialist. The Mercers became his devoted supporters after reading Access to Energy, an obeat scientific newsletter that he writes. The family has given at least $. million in dona- tions to Robinson’s Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Some of the money was used to buy freezers in which Robinson is storing some fourteen thousand samples of human urine. Rob- inson has said that, by studying the urine, he will find new ways of extending the have run a powerful political machine Breitbart soon introduced the Mer- human life span. for decades. The Mercers attended the cers to Steve Bannon. For a while, Breit- Robinson holds a degree in chemis- Kochs’ semiannual seminars, which pro- bart News operated out of oce space try from Caltech, but his work is not re- vide a structure for right-wing million- that Bannon owned in Santa Monica. A spected in most scientific circles. (The aires looking for eective ways to chan- Harvard Business School graduate, Ban- Oregon senator Je Merkley, a Demo- nel their cash. The Mercers admired non had worked at Goldman Sachs, but crat, has called Robinson an “extremist the savviness of the Kochs’ plan, which he eventually left the world of finance kook.”) Robinson appears to be the source called for attendees to pool their con- and began making political films. His of Robert Mercer’s sanguine view of nu- tributions in a fund run by Koch op- ambition, apparently, was to become the clear radiation: in , Robinson co-au- eratives. The fund would strategically Michael Moore of the right. In the aughts, thored a book suggesting that the vast deploy the money in races he directed polemical docu- majority of Americans would survive “an across the country, although, mentaries, among them “Fire all-out atomic attack on the United at the time, the Kochs’ chief from the Heartland” and States.” Robinson’s institute dismisses cli- aim was to defeat Barack “District of Corruption.” A mate change as a “false religion.” A pe- Obama in . The Kochs former associate of Bannon’s tition that he organized in to op- will not reveal the identi- in California recalls him as pose the Kyoto Protocol, claiming to ties of their donors, or the a strategic thinker who was represent thirty thousand scientists skep- size of contributions, but adept at manipulating the tical of global warming, has been criti- the Mercers reportedly be- media. A voracious reader, cized as deceptive. The National Acad- gan giving at least a million he was quick and charming, emy of Sciences has warned that the dollars a year to the Kochs’ but, according to the former peti tion never appeared in a peer-reviewed fund. Eventually, they contributed more associate, he had a chip on his shoulder journal, though it is printed in “a format than twenty-five million. about class. He often spoke of having that is nearly identical to that of scien- The Mercers also joined the Coun- grown up in a blue-collar Irish Catholic tific articles.” The petition, however, still cil for National Policy, which the Times family in Richmond, Virginia, and of hav- circulates online: in the past year, it was has described as a “little-known club of ing served as a naval ocer when he was the most shared item about climate a few hundred of the most powerful con- young. Bannon seemed to feel excluded change on Facebook. servatives in the country.” The Mercers from the social world of Wall Street peers Robinson, who calls himself a “Jesus- have contributed hundreds of thousands who had attended prep schools. He had plus-nothing-else” Christian, has become of dollars. The group swears participants left Goldman Sachs, in , without a hero to the religious right for home- to secrecy. But a leaked roster re- making partner, and, though he was well schooling his six children. Robert and vealed that it included many people who o, he had missed out on the gigantic Rebekah Mercer have praised a curric- promoted anti-Clinton conspiracy sto- profits that partners had made when the ulum that Robinson sells. (An advertise- ries, including Joseph Farah, the editor company went public, in . ment for it casts doubt on evolution: “No of WorldNetDaily. The group also In , Bannon drafted a business demonstration has ever been made of the brought the Mercers into the orbit of plan for the Mercers that called for them process of ‘spontaneous origin of life.’ ”) two people who have become key figures to invest ten million dollars in Breitbart Robinson has said that the “socialist” in the Trump White House: Kellyanne News, in exchange for a large stake. At agenda of public schools is “evil” and rep- Conway, who was on the group’s execu- the time, the Breitbart site was little more resents “a form of child abuse.” tive committee, and Steve Bannon. than a collection of blogs. The Mercers In , the Mercers met Andrew signed the deal that June, and one of its was a successful Breitbart, the founder of the fiery news provisions placed Bannon on the com- E election year for Republicans, the outlet that bears his name, at a confer- pany’s board. candidates that the Mercers had sup- ence organized by the Club for Growth, Nine months later, Andrew Breitbart ported in Oregon and New York both a conservative group. They were so im- died, at forty-three, of a heart attack, and lost decisively. Their investments had pressed by him that they became inter- Bannon became the site’s executive chair- achieved nothing. Wealthy political do- ested in investing in his operation. Breit- man, overseeing its content. The Mer- nors sometimes make easy marks for bart, a gleefully oensive provocateur, cers, meanwhile, became Bannon’s prin- campaign operatives. Patrick Caddell, was the temperamental opposite of Rob- cipal patrons. The Washington Post the former pollster, told me, “These peo- ert Mercer. (In , Breitbart told this recently published a house-rental lease ple who get so rich by running businesses magazine, “I like to call someone a rav- that Bannon signed in , on which he get so taken in when it comes to poli- ing cunt every now and then, when it’s said that his salary at Breitbart News was tics. They’re just sheep. The consultants appropriate, for eect.”) Nevertheless, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. suck it out of them. A lot of them are the Mercers were attracted to Breit bart’s Under Bannon’s leadership, the Web surrounded by palace guards, but that’s vision of “taking back the culture” by site expanded dramatically, adding a fleet not true of the Mercers.” building a media enterprise that could of full-time writers. It became a new By , the Mercers had joined wage information warfare against the force on the right, boosting extreme in- forces with Charles and David Koch, mainstream press, empowering what surgents against the G.O.P. establish- who own Koch Industries, and who Breitbart called “the silenced majority.” ment, such as David Brat, who, in ,

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 41 took the seat of Eric Cantor, the Vir- Sam Nunberg, the aide who worked on Freedom of Information Act request de- ginia congressman. But it also provided the early stages of Trump’s campaign, manding access to Hillary Clinton’s State a public forum for previously shunned has said. “They gave us an outlet. No one Department e-mails. When the e-mails white-nationalist, sexist, and racist voices. else would. It allowed us to define our were released, her Presidential campaign One pundit hired by Bannon was Milo narrative and communicate our message. became mired in negative news stories. Yiannopoulos, who specialized in puer- It really started with the birther thing”— Bannon has often collaborated with ile insults. (He recently resigned from Trump’s false claim that Obama was not Bossie, producing half a dozen films with the site, after a video of him lewdly de- born an American citizen—“and then him. In , Bossie suggested a new fending pederasty went viral.) immigration, and Iran. Trump was de- joint project: a movie that urged Dem- In , Bannon began hosting a radio veloping his message.” By , Nun- ocrats and independents to abandon show that often featured Patrick Cad- berg said, Trump, like others on Breit- Obama in the Presidential election. The dell, who eectively had been banished bart, was “hitting the establishment” by film’s approach was influenced by poll- by Democratic Party leaders after years slamming the Republican leadership in ing work that Patrick Caddell had shared of tempestuous campaigns and fall- Congress, including Paul Ryan. Nun- with Bannon. The data suggested that ings-out. On the air, Caddell floated dark berg added, “It wasn’t like Charlie Rose attacking Obama was counterproductive; theories about Hillary Clinton, and often was asking us on.” it was more eective to express “disap- sounded a lot like Bannon, describing pointment” in him, by contrasting him “economic nationalism” as the driving with earlier Presidents. force in American politics. Under Barack T kept expanding its political invest- Caddell and Bannon made an unholy Obama, he said, America had turned ments. Between and , it gave alliance, but they had things in common: into a “banana republic.” nearly eleven million dollars to the Media both men were Irish Catholic sons of the By , Breitbart News claims, it Research Center, an advocacy group South, scourges to their respective parties, had the most shared political content on whose “sole mission,” according to its and prone to apocalyptic pronouncements. Facebook, giving the Mercers a platform Web site, “is to expose and neutralize the “We hit it o right away,” Caddell told that no other conservative donors could propaganda arm of the Left: the national me. “We’re both revolutionaries.” Bannon match. Rebekah Mercer is highly en- news media.” The group’s founder, was excited by Caddell’s polling research, gaged with Breitbart’s content. An in- L. Brent Bozell III, is best known for his and he persuaded Citizens United to hire sider there said, “She reads every story, successful campaign to get CBS sanc- Caddell to convene focus groups of dis- and calls when there are grammatical er- tioned for showing Janet Jackson’s bared illusioned Obama supporters. Many of rors or typos.” Though she doesn’t dic- breast during the Super Bowl broad- these voters became the central figures of tate a political line to the editors, she cast. The Mercers have been among the “The Hope & the Change,” an anti-Obama often points out areas of coverage that M.R.C.’s biggest donors, and their money film that Bannon and Citizens United re- she thinks require more attention. Her has allowed the group to revamp its news leased during the Democratic Na- views about the Washington establish- site, and it now claims to reach more than tional Convention. After Caddell saw the ment, including the Republican leader- two hundred million Americans a week. film, he pointed out to Bannon that its ship, are scathing. “She was at the avant- In , the Mercer Family Founda- opening imitated that of “Triumph of the garde of shuttering both political parties,” tion donated two million dollars to Cit- Will,” the ode to Hitler, made by the the insider at Breitbart said. “She went izens United, which had tracked in Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Ban- a long way toward the redefinition of Clinton hatred for years. During the non laughed and said, “You’re the only American politics.” one that caught it!” In both films, a plane The Mercers’ investment in Breitbart flies over a blighted land, as ominous music enabled Bannon to promote anti-estab- swells; then clouds in the sky part, augur- lishment politicians whom the main- ing a new era. The disappointed voters in stream media dismissed, including the film “seared into me,” Bannon said, Trump. In , David Bossie, the head the fact that middle-class Americans badly of the conservative group Citizens wanted change, and could be lured away United, introduced Trump to Bannon; from the Democratic Party if they felt at the time, Trump was thinking about that they had been conned. running against Obama. Bannon and In , Citizens United’s foundation Trump met at Trump Tower and dis- Clinton Administration, David Bossie, paid Bannon Strategic Advisors, a con- cussed a possible campaign. Trump de- the group’s leader, was a Republican con- sultancy group founded by Bannon, three cided against the idea, but the two kept gressional aide, and he was forced to re- hundred thousand dollars for what it de- in touch, and Bannon gave Trump ad- sign after releasing misleading material scribed to the I.R.S. as “fund- raising” ser- miring coverage. Bannon noticed that, about a Clinton associate. In , Cit- vices. Bossie told me that the tax filing when Trump spoke to crowds, people izens United released a vitriolic film, must have been made in error: the pay- were electrified. Bannon began to think “Hillary: The Movie.” Two years ago, ment was actually for Bannon’s “film de- that Trump might be “the one” who could after the group received an additional velopment” work. Charitable groups are shake up American politics. five hundred and fifty thousand dollars barred from spending tax-deductible “Breitbart gave Trump a big role,” from the Mercers’ foundation, it filed a contributions on partisan politics, yet, as

42 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 paigns. In , Robert Mercer made a two-and-a-half-million-dollar con- VISITING THE GRAVE tribution to the Kochs’ Freedom Part- ners Action Fund. This exceeded the We visit your grave on week-days, you who dressed two-million-dollar contributions of the ordinary week-day in its Sunday best David and Charles Koch, prompting a and the week-day heart of Sunday taking its rest. memorable headline about Mercer from Bloomberg News: “ - —Frank Ormsby .” Rebekah Mercer, meanwhile, was growing impatient with the Kochs. She Breitbart News noted at the time, “The to the institute, and in it contrib- felt that they needed to investigate why Hope & the Change” was a “partisan” film uted another million. In , it donated their network had failed to defeat Obama “targeting Democrats” during an elec- $. million, which exceeded the group’s in . Instead, the Kochs gathered do- tion year. Even so, the Mercers took a entire budget the previous year. The nors and presented them with more hefty tax deduction for their two-million- G.A.I., meanwhile, paid Bannon three empty rhetoric. Mercer demanded an dollar donation to Citizens United. hundred and seventy-six thousand dol- accounting of what had gone wrong, and Bossie told me that “the Mercers are lars during its first four years; it told the when they ignored her she decided to very interested in films.” Indeed, Re- I.R.S. that Bannon was working for it start her own operation. In a further blow, bekah Mercer is on the board of the thirty hours a week, ostensibly on top of Mercer soured several other top donors Moving Picture Institute, a conservative his full-time job running Breitbart News. on the Kochs. group devoted to countering Hollywood The G.A.I. billed itself as a nonpar- In , one area in which the Re- liberalism with original online enter- tisan research institute, but in Ban- publicans had lagged badly behind the tainment. Among its recent projects was non told Bloomberg Businessweek that its Democrats was in the use of digital an- a cartoon, “Everyone Coughs,” which mission was to dig up dirt on politicians alytics. The Mercers decided to finance spread the rumor that Hillary Clinton and feed it to the mainstream media. (A their own big-data project. In , Mi- was mortally ill. The film ended by de- G.A.I. staer called this “weaponizing” chal Kosinski, a researcher in the psy- picting an animated Clinton literally information.) The group reportedly hired chology department at the University of coughing herself to death. an expert to comb the Deep Web—sites Cambridge, was working in the emerg- that don’t show up in standard searches— ing field of psychometrics, the quantita- in , the for incriminating information about its tive study of human characteristics. He O Mercers and other top conserva- targets. The plan was to exploit the main- learned from a colleague that a British tive donors settled into the V.I.P. section stream media’s growing inability to company, Strategic Communication Lab- of a Republican Party victory celebration, finance investigative reporting by doing oratories, wanted to hire academics to having been assured that their invest- it for them. The strategy paid o spec- pursue similar research, for commercial ments would pay o. Obama’s defeat of tacularly in April, , when the Times purposes. Kosinski had circulated per- Mitt Romney particularly infuriated Re- ran a front-page article based on the sonality tests on Facebook and, in the bekah Mercer, who concluded that the book “Clinton Cash,” a compendium of process, obtained huge amounts of in- pollsters, the data crunchers, and the corruption allegations against the Clin- formation about users. From this data, spin doctors were all frauds. Soon after- tons, which was written by the G.A.I.’s algorithms could be fashioned that would ward, Republican Party ocials invited president, the conservative writer Peter predict people’s behavior and anticipate big donors to the University Club, in Schweizer. (The G.A.I. had given the their reactions to other online prompts. New York, for a postmortem on the elec- paper an advance copy.) The book trig- Those who took the Facebook quizzes, tion. Attendees were stunned when Re- gered one story after another about Hil- however, had been promised that the bekah Mercer “ripped the shit out of lary Clinton’s supposed criminality, and information would be used strictly for them,” a friend of hers told me, adding, became a best-seller. In , a film ver- academic purposes. Kosinski felt that “It was really her coming out.” As the sion, co-produced by Bannon and Re- repurposing it for commercial use was Financial Times has reported, from that bekah Mercer, débuted at the Cannes unethical, and possibly illegal. His con- point on Mercer wanted to know ex- Film Festival, as the Mercers’ yacht cerns deepened when he researched actly how her donations were being spent, bobbed oshore. S.C.L. He was disturbed to learn that and wanted to invest only in what an- The G.A.I. also undermined Jeb the company specialized in psychologi- other friend described as “things that Bush, the candidate favored by the Re- cal warfare, and in influencing elections. she thinks put lead on the target.” publican establishment, with another He spurned the chance to work with That year, Rebekah Mercer joined the Schweizer book, “Bush Bucks.” As Ban- S.C.L., although his colleague signed a board of the Government Accountabil- non put it in a interview, it depicted contract with the company. ity Institute, a nonprofit group, based in Bush as a figure of “grimy, low-energy Kosinski was further disconcerted Tallahassee, which Bannon had recently crony capitalism.” when he learned that a new American founded. In , the Mercer Family During this period, the Mercers con- aliate of S.C.L., Cambridge Analyt- Foundation contributed a million dollars tinued giving money to election cam- ica—owned principally by an American

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 43 hedge-fund tycoon named Robert Mer- data to Mercer and Bannon, who were talking about alienation of the voters for cer—was attempting to influence elec- at the event. The data showed mount- twenty-five years, and people didn’t pay tions in the U.S. Kosinski, who is now ing anger toward wealthy élites, who attention—but he’s a brilliant guy, and he an assistant professor of organizational many Americans believed had corrupted nailed it.” The political consultant and behavior at Stanford’s business school, the government so that it served only strategist Roger Stone, who is a longtime supports the idea of using psychometric their interests. There was a hunger for Trump confidant, was fascinated by the data to “nudge” people toward socially a populist Presidential candidate who research, and he forwarded a memo about positive behavior, such as voting. But, he would run against the major political it to Trump. Caddell said that he spoke told me, “there’s a thin line between con- parties and the ruling class. The data with Trump about “some of the data,” but vincing people and manipulating them.” “showed that someone could just walk noted, “With Trump, it’s all instinct—he It is unclear if the Mercers have into this election and sweep it,” Cad- is not exactly a deep-dive thinker.” pushed Cambridge Analytica to cross dell told me. When Mercer saw the Robert Mercer, too, was kept informed. that line. A company spokesman de- numbers, he asked for the polling to be Perkins said, “He just loves the numbers. clined to comment for this story. What repeated. Caddell got the same results. Most people say, ‘Tell me what you is clear is that Mercer, having revolution- “It was stunning,” he said. “The coun- think—don’t show me the numbers.’ But ized the use of data on Wall Street, was try was on the verge of an uprising he’s, like, ‘Give me the numbers!’ ” eager to accomplish the same feat in the against its leaders. I just fell over!” During the campaign, as the political realm. He screened many da- Until Election Day in , Mercer Mercers considered which Presidential ta-mining companies before investing, and Hanley—two of the richest men in candidate to back, they rejected insid- and he chose Cambridge Analytica, in America—paid Caddell to keep collect- ers such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, part, because its high concentration of ing polling data that enabled them to ex- who they believed couldn’t win. They accomplished scientists reminded him ploit the public’s resentment of élites such initially gravitated toward Ted Cruz, in of Renaissance Technologies. Rebekah as themselves. Caddell’s original goal was part because he was an outsider in the Mercer, too, has been deeply involved in to persuade his sponsors to back an in- Senate—loathed by even his Republi- the venture. Cambridge Analytica shares dependent candidate, but they never did. can peers. During the primaries, the a corporate address in Manhattan with In , Caddell and two partners went Mercers gave eleven million dollars to a group she chairs, Reclaim New York, public with what they called the Candi- a super supporting Cruz, run by which opposes government spending. date Smith project, which promoted data Kellyanne Conway. According to Po- (Bannon has reportedly served as a cor- suggesting that the public wanted a “Mr. litico, Rebekah Mercer soon “wore out porate ocer for both Reclaim and Cam- Smith Goes to Washington” figure—an her welcome” with the Cruz campaign bridge Analytica.) outsider—as President. During the next by oering withering appraisals of his Political scientists and consultants year or so, Caddell’s poll numbers tilted debate performances. She also insisted continue to debate Cambridge Analyt- more and more away from the establish- that the campaign hire Cambridge An- ica’s record in the campaign. David ment. Caddell’s partner Bob Perkins, an alytica, even though Cruz campaign Karpf, an assistant professor at George advertising executive and a former finance ocials were skeptical of it. Washington University who studies the director of the Republican Party, told me, After Cruz dropped out, many Re- political use of data, calls the firm’s claim “By then, it was clear there wouldn’t be publicans—including Cruz himself—re- to have special psychometric powers “a a third-party candidate. But we thought coiled from Trump. The Mercers, how- marketing pitch” that’s “untrue.” Karpf that a Republican who harnessed the ever, joined the Trump camp, and publicly worries, though, that the company “could angst had a real chance.” At one point, rebuked Cruz, giving a statement to the take a very dark turn.” He explained, Caddell tested all the declared Presiden- Times. If Clinton won, the Mercers “What they could do is set up a Move- tial candidates, including Trump, as a claimed, she would “repeal both the First On-style operation with a Tea Party-ish possible Mr. Smith. “People didn’t think and Second Amendments of the Bill of list that they could whip up. Typically, Trump had the temperament to be Pres- Rights.” Given the stakes, they said, “all lists like that are used to pressure elected ident,” Caddell said. “He clearly wasn’t hands” were “needed on deck” in order to ocials, but the dangerous thing would the best Smith, but he was the only Smith. insure a Trump victory. Cruz, they noted, be if it was used instead to pressure fel- He was the only one with the resources had “chosen to stay in his bunk below.” low-citizens. It could encourage vigilan- and the name recognition.” As Bernie The Mercers redirected their Cruz tism.” Karpf said of Cambridge Analyt- Sanders’s campaign showed, the popu- super to support Trump, and gave ica, “There is a maximalist scenario in list rebellion wasn’t partisan. Caddell wor- two million dollars to it. According to which we should be terrified to have a ried, though, that there were dark under- one Trump adviser, there were strings at- tool like this in private hands.” tones in the numbers: Americans were tached to the donation. He says that, two Cambridge Analytica is not the only increasingly yearning for a “strong man” weeks before Cruz dropped out, Bannon data-driven political project that the to fix the country. urged the Trump campaign to talk to Mercers have backed. In , at a con- Caddell circulated his research to Alexander Nix, Cambridge Analytica’s servative conference in Palm Beach, an anyone who would listen, and that in- C.E.O., about hiring the company. (The oil tycoon named William Lee Hanley, cluded people inside the Trump cam- previous year, the Trump campaign had who had commissioned some polls from paign. “Pat Caddell is like an Old Tes- rebued a pitch from the firm.) The Patrick Caddell, asked him to show the tament prophet,” Bannon said. “He’s been adviser said that Nix followed up and

44 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 oered cash inducements, in the form of a “finder’s fee,” to a Trump operative. (A Cambridge Analytica spokesman de- nied that this occurred.) Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager at the time, said that he knew nothing of Nix’s cash oer but gave Cambridge Analytica a limited contract, though he didn’t see the need, in deference to the Mercers. Later that summer, Manafort was forced to resign, after the press reported his links to Ukrainian oligarchs. In the vacuum, the Mercers soon established control over the Trump campaign. Re- bekah Mercer successfully pushed for a sta shakeup that led to the promotions of three people funded by the family: Bannon became the campaign’s C.E.O., Conway its manager, and Bossie its dep- uty manager. William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard and an adamant “I love a hearty soup.” Trump opponent, warned, “It’s the merger of the Trump campaign with the kooky •• right.” But an e-mail that Bannon sent to a friend in , and that was later leaked to the Daily Beast, confirms that Fischer said, “it raises the possibility of So far, her suggestion that Arthur Rob- the elevation of the Mercers and their the Mercers subsidizing Steve Bannon’s inson, the Oregon biochemist, be operatives was, in many ways, a formal- work for the Trump campaign.” named the national science adviser has ity. A year before Bannon joined Trump’s On December rd, the Mercer fam- gone nowhere. Like her father, she ad- campaign sta, he described himself in ily hosted a victory celebration at Owl’s vocates a return to the gold standard, the e-mail as Trump’s de-facto “campaign Nest—a costume party with a heroes- but as of yet she has failed to get Trump manager,” because of the positive cover- and-villains theme. Rebekah Mercer to appoint ocials who share this view. age that Breitbart was giving Trump. That welcomed several hundred guests, in- Still, Mercer made her influence felt. coverage had largely been underwritten cluding Donald Trump. In extempo- Her pick for national-security adviser by the Mercers. rane ous remarks, Trump thanked the was Michael Flynn, and Trump chose Brendan Fischer, a lawyer at the Cam- Mercers, saying that they had been him for the job. (Flynn lasted only a paign Legal Center, said that the Mer- “instrumental in bringing some orga- month, after he lied about having spo- cers’ financial entanglement with the nization” to his campaign. He specifi- ken with the Russian Ambassador be- Trump campaign was “bizarre” and po- cally named Bannon, Conway, and fore taking oce.) More important, sev- tentially “illegal.” The group has filed a Bossie. Trump then joked that he’d eral people to whom Mercer is very complaint with the Federal Election just had the longest conversation of close—including Bannon and Conway— Commission, which notes that, at the his life with Bob Mercer—and it was have become some of the most power- end of the campaign, the super just “two words.” A guest at the party ful figures in the world. run by the Mercers paid Glittering told me, “I was looking around the Rebekah’s father, meanwhile, can no Steel—a film-production company that room, and I thought, No doubt about longer be considered a political outsider. shares an address in Los Angeles with it—the people whom the Mercers in- David Magerman, in his essay for the Cambridge Analytica and Breitbart vested in, my comrades, are now in Inquirer, notes that Mercer “has sur- News—two hundred and eighty thou- charge.” rounded our President with his people, sand dollars, supposedly for campaign After the election, Rebekah Mer- and his people have an outsized influence ads attacking Hillary Clinton. Although cer was rewarded with a seat on Trump’s over the running of our country, simply Bannon was running Trump’s campaign, transition team. “She basically bought because Robert Mercer paid for their Fischer said that it appears to have paid herself a seat,” Fischer said. She had seats.” He writes, “Everyone has a right him nothing. Meanwhile, the Mercers’ strong feelings about who should be to express their views.” But, he adds, super made a payment of about five nominated to Cabinet positions and “when the government becomes more million dollars to Cambridge Analytica, other top government jobs. Not all her like a corporation, with the richest .% which was incorporated at the same ad- ideas were embraced. She unsuccess- buying shares and demanding board seats, dress as Bannon Strategic Advisors. Super fully pushed for John Bolton, the hawk- then we cease to be a representative de- s are legally required to stay indepen- ish former Ambassador to the United mocracy.” Instead, he warns, “we become dent of a candidate’s campaign. But, Nations, to be named Secretary of State. an oligarchy.” 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 45 PROFILES A SCIENCE OF THE SOUL

A philosopher’s quest to understand the making of the mind.

BY JOSHUA ROTHMAN

ago, Earth artificial intelligence. His newest book, was a lifeless place. Nothing strug- “From Bacteria to Bach and Back,” tells F gled, thought, or wanted. Slowly, us, “There is a winding path leading that changed. Seawater leached chem- through a jungle of science and philos- icals from rocks; near thermal vents, ophy, from the initial bland assumption those chemicals jostled and combined. that we people are physical objects, obey- Some hit upon the trick of making cop- ing the laws of physics, to an under- ies of themselves that, in turn, made standing of our conscious minds.” more copies. The replicating chains were Dennett has walked that path be- caught in oily bubbles, which protected fore. In “Consciousness Explained,” a them and made replication easier; even- best-seller, he described conscious- tually, they began to venture out into ness as something like the product of the open sea. A new level of order had multiple, layered computer programs been achieved on Earth. Life had begun. running on the hardware of the brain. The tree of life grew, its branches Many readers felt that he had shown stretching toward complexity. Organ- how the brain creates the soul. Others isms developed systems, subsystems, and thought that he’d missed the point en- sub-subsystems, layered in ever-deep- tirely. To them, the book was like a trea- ening regression. They used these sys- tise on music that focussed exclusively tems to anticipate their future and to on the physics of musical instruments. change it. When they looked within, It left untouched the question of how some found that they had selves—con- a three-pound lump of neurons could stellations of memories, ideas, and pur- come to possess a point of view, interi- poses that emerged from the systems ority, selfhood, consciousness—quali- inside. They experienced being alive and ties that the rest of the material world had thoughts about that experience. lacks. These skeptics derided the book They developed language and used it as “Consciousness Explained Away.” to know themselves; they began to ask Nowadays, philosophers are divided into how they had been made. two camps. The physicalists believe, with This, to a first approximation, is the Dennett, that science can explain con- secular story of our creation. It has no sciousness in purely material terms. The single author; it’s been written collab- dualists believe that science can uncover oratively by scientists over the past only half of the picture: it can’t explain few centuries. If, however, it could be what Nabokov called “the marvel of said to belong to any single person, that consciousness—that sudden window person might be Daniel Dennett, a swinging open on a sunlit landscape seventy-four-year-old philosopher who amidst the night of non-being.” teaches at Tufts. In the course of forty Late last year, Dennett found him- years, and more than a dozen books, self among such skeptics at the Edge- Dennett has endeavored to explain how water Hotel, in Seattle, where the a soulless world could have given rise Canadian Institute for Advanced Re- to a soulful one. His special focus is the search had convened a meeting about creation of the human mind. Into his animal consciousness. The Edgewater own he has crammed nearly every re- was once a rock-and-roll hangout—in lated discipline: evolutionary biology, the late sixties and seventies, members neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, of Led Zeppelin were notorious for their

Daniel Dennett’s naturalistic account of consciousness draws some people in and puts others o. “There ain’t no magic here,” he says. “Just stage magic.”

46 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY IRINA ROZOVSKY escapades there—but it’s now plush and into a meditation on “Westworld,” clutched to the real thing. Animals have fewer sedate, with overstued armchairs and their heads and sighed. mental layers than people—in particu- roaring fireplaces. In a fourth-floor meet- Dennett sat at the seminar table like lar, they lack language, which Dennett ing room with views of Mt. Rainier, a king on his throne. Broad-shouldered believes endows human mental life with dozens of researchers shared specula- and imposing, with a fluy white beard its complexity and texture—but this tive work on honeybee brains, mouse and a round belly, he resembles a cross doesn’t make them zombies. It just means minds, octopus intelligence, avian cog- between Darwin and Santa Claus. He that they “sort of ” have consciousness, nition, and the mental faculties of mon- has meaty hands and a sonorous voice. as measured by human standards. keys and human children. Many young philosophers of mind look Dennett waited until the group talked At sunset on the last day of the con- like artists (skinny jeans, T-shirts, asym- itself into a muddle, then broke in. He ference, the experts found themselves metrical hair), but Dennett carries a speaks slowly, melodiously, in the confi- circling a familiar puzzle known as the homemade wooden walking stick and dent tones of a man with answers. When “zombie problem.” Suppose that you’re dresses like a Maine fisherman, in beat-up he uses philosophical lingo, his voice a scientist studying octopuses. How boat shoes and a pocketed vest—a cos- goes deeper, as if he were distancing would you know whether an octopus is tume that gives him an air of unpreten- himself from it. “The big mistake we’re conscious? It interacts with you, responds tious competence. He regards the zom- making,” he said, “is taking our conge- to its environment, and evidently pur- bie problem as a typically philosophical nial, shared understanding of what it’s sues goals, but a nonconscious robot could waste of time. The problem presupposes like to be us, which we learn from nov- also do those things. The problem is that that consciousness is like a light switch: els and plays and talking to each other, there’s no way to observe consciousness either an animal has a self or it doesn’t. and then applying it back down the an- directly. From the outside, it’s possible But Dennett thinks these things are like imal kingdom. Wittgenstein”—he deep- to imagine that the octopus is a “zom- evolution, essentially gradualist, without ened his voice—“famously wrote, ‘If a bie”—physically alive but mentally hard borders. The obvious answer to the lion could talk, we couldn’t understand empty—and, in theory, the same could question of whether animals have selves him.’ But no! If a lion could talk, we’d be true of any apparently conscious being. is that they sort of have them. He loves understand him just fine. He just wouldn’t The zombie problem is a conversational the phrase “sort of.” Picture the brain, he help us understand anything about lions.” vortex among those who study animal often says, as a collection of subsystems “Because he wouldn’t be a lion,” an- minds: the researchers, anticipating the that “sort of ” know, think, decide, and other researcher said. discussion’s inexorable transformation feel. These layers build up, incrementally, “Right,” Dennett replied. “He would be so dierent from regular lions that he wouldn’t tell us what it’s like to be a lion. I think we should just get used to the fact that the human concepts we apply so comfortably in our everyday lives apply only sort of to animals.” He concluded, “The notorious zombie problem is just a philosopher’s fantasy. It’s not anything that we have to take seriously.” “Dan, I honestly get stuck on this,” a primate psychologist said. “If you say, well, rocks don’t have consciousness, I want to agree with you”—but he found it dicult to get an imaginative grip on the idea of a monkey with a “sort of ” mind. If philosophy were a sport, its ball would be human intuition. Philosophers compete to shift our intuitions from one end of the field to the other. Some in- tuitions, however, resist being shifted. Among these is our conviction that there are only two states of being: awake or asleep, conscious or unconscious, alive or dead, soulful or material. Dennett believes that there is a spectrum, and that we can train ourselves to find the idea of that spectrum intuitive. “If you think there’s a fixed meaning of the word ‘consciousness,’ and we’re searching for that, then you’re already making a mistake,” Dennett said. “I hear you as skeptical about whether consciousness is useful as a scientific concept,” another researcher ventured. “Yes, yes,” Dennett said. “That’s the ur-question,” the re- searcher replied. “Because, if the answer’s no, then we should really go home!” “No, no!” Dennett exclaimed, as the room erupted into laughter. He’d done it again: in attempting to explain con- sciousness, he’d explained it away. In the nineteenth century, scientists and philosophers couldn’t figure out how nonliving things became living. They thought that living things possessed a mysterious life force. Only over time did they discover that life was the prod- uct of diverse physical systems that, to- gether, created something that appeared magical. Dennett believes that the same “Seriously, lady, at this hour you’d make a lot story will be told about consciousness. better time taking the subway.” He wants to tell it, but he sometimes wonders if others want to hear it. “The person who tells people how •• an eect is achieved is often resented, considered a spoilsport, a party-pooper,” and Bertha Turner. From Basil, Dennett worked for a tree surgeon and a fish bi- he wrote, around a decade ago, in a learned to frame a house, shingle a roof, ologist, and has been a white-water-raft- paper called “Explaining the ‘Magic’ glaze a window, build a fence, plow a ing guide; his daughter, Andrea, runs of Consciousness.” “If you actually man- field, fell a tree, butcher a hen, dig for an industrial-plumbing company with age to explain consciousness, they say, clams, raise pigs, fish for trout, and call her husband. you will diminish us all, turn us into a square dance. “One thing about Dan— A few years ago, the Dennetts sold mere protein robots, mere things.” Den- you don’t have to tell him twice,” Turner the farm to buy a nearby waterfront nett does not believe that we are “mere once remarked to a local mechanic. Den- home, on Little Deer Isle. On a sunny things.” He thinks that we have souls, nett still cherishes the compliment. morning this past December, fresh snow but he is certain that those souls can In the course of a few summers, he surrounded the house; where the lawn be explained by science. If evolution fixed up the Blue Hill farmhouse him- met the water, a Hobie sailboat lay await- built them, they can be reverse-engi- self, installing plumbing and electricity. ing spring. Dennett entered the sunlit neered. “There ain’t no magic there,” Then, for many years, he suspended his kitchen and, using a special, broad-tined he told me. “Just stage magic.” academic work during the summer in fork, carefully split an English mun. order to devote himself to farming. He After eating it with jam, he entered his ’ give an account of tended the orchard, made cider, and study, a circular room on the ground I Dennett’s life in which philosophy used a Prohibition-era still to turn the floor decorated with sailboat keels of hardly figures. He is from an old Maine cider into Calvados. He built a blue- dierent shapes. A close friend and Lit- family. By the turn of the eighteenth berry press, made blueberry wine, and tle Deer Isle visitor, the philosopher and century, ancestors of his had settled near turned it into aquavit. “He loves to hand psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, had the border between Maine and New down word-of-mouth knowledge,” Steve e-mailed a draft of an article for Den- Hampshire, at a spot now marked by Barney, a former student who has be- nett to review. The two men are simi- Dennett Road. Dennett and his wife, come one of the Dennetts’ many “hon- lar—Humphrey helped discover blind- Susan, live in North Andover, Massa- orary children,” says. “He taught me sight, studied apes with Dian Fossey, chusetts, a few minutes’ drive from Tufts, how to use a chain saw, how to prune and was, for a year, the editor of Granta— where Dennett co-directs the Center an apple tree, how to fish for mackerel, but they dier on certain points in the for Cognitive Studies. But, in , they how to operate a tractor, how to whit- philosophy of consciousness. “Until I bought a two-hundred-acre farm in Blue tle a wooden walking stick from a sin- met Dan,” Humphrey told me, “I never Hill, about five hours north of Boston. gle piece of wood.” Dennett is an avid had a philosophical hero. Then I dis- The Dennetts are unusually easygoing sailor; in , he bought a boat, trained covered that not only was he a better and sociable, and they quickly became his students to sail, and raced with them philosopher than me; he was a better friends with the couple next door, Basil in a regatta. Dennett’s son, Peter, has singer, a better dancer, a better tennis

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 49 player, a better pianist. There is noth- (the physicalist and design stances, re- ing and beauty. Dennett seems wounded ing he does not do.” spectively); you ask how the program is by this idea. “There are those wags who Dennett annotated the paper on his thinking, what it’s planning, what it insist that I was born with an impover- computer, and then called Humphrey “wants” to do. These dierent stances ished mental life,” he told me. “That on his cell phone to explain that the capture dierent levels of reality, and ain’t me! I seem to be drinking in life’s paper was so useful because it was so our language reveals which one we’ve joys pretty well.” wrong. “I see how I can write a reac- adopted. We say that proteins fold Dennett’s full name is Daniel Clem- tion that is not so much a rebuttal as (the physicalist stance), but that eyes ent Dennett III. He was born in Bos- a rebuilding on your foundations,” see (the design stance). We say that ton in . His father, Daniel C. Den- he said, mischievously. “Your explora- the chess computer “anticipated” our nett, Jr., was a professor of Islamic tion has helped me see some move, that the driverless car history, who, during the Second World crucial joints in the skele- “decided” to swerve when the War, was recruited by the Oce of ton. I hope that doesn’t upset deer leaped into the road. Strategic Services and became a secret you!” He laughed, and invited Later, at a rickety antique agent. Dennett spent his early child- Humphrey and his family to table in the living room, Den- hood in Beirut, where his father posed come over later that day. nett taught me a word game as a cultural attaché at the American He then turned to a prob- he’d perfected called Frigate- Embassy. In Beirut, he had a pet ga- lem with the house. Some- bird. Real frigate birds swoop zelle named Babar and learned to speak thing was wrong with the down to steal fish from other some Arabic. When he was five, his landline; it had no dial tone. birds; in Frigatebird, you steal father was killed in an unexplained The key question was whether words made of Scrabble tiles plane crash while on a mission in Ethi- the problem lay with the wiring inside from your opponents. To do so, you use opia. In Dennett’s clearest memory of the house or with the telephone lines new letters to transform their stems: him, they’re driving through the des- outside. Picking up his walking stick you can’t steal “march” by making ert in a Jeep, looking for a group of and a small plastic telephone, he went “marched,” but you can do it by mak- Bedouins; when they find the camp, out to explore. Dennett has suered a ing “charmed.” As we played, I tried to some Bedouin women take the young heart attack and an aortic dissection; attend to the workings of my own mind. Dennett aside and pierce his ears. (The he is robust, but walks slowly and is How did I know that I could use the scars are still visible.) sometimes short of breath. Carefully, letters “u,” “t,” and “o” to transform Den- After his father’s death, Dennett re- he made his way to a little gray service nett’s “drain” into “duration”? I couldn’t turned to the Boston suburbs with his box, pried it open using a multitool, quite catch myself in the act of figur- mother and his two sisters. His mother and plugged in the handset. There was ing it out. To Dennett, this blind- became a book editor; with some guid- no dial tone; the problem was in the ness reflects the fact that we take the ance from his father’s friends, Dennett outside phone lines. Harrumphing, he intentional stance toward ourselves. became the man of the house. He had glanced upward to locate them: another We experience ourselves at the level of his own workshop and, aged six, used new joint in the skeleton. thoughts, decisions, and intentions; the scraps of lumber to build a small table During the course of his career, Den- machinery that generates those higher- and chair for his Winnie-the-Pooh. As nett has developed a way of looking at order properties is obscured. Conscious- he fell asleep, he would listen to his the process by which raw matter be- ness is defined as much by what it hides mother play Rachmanino ’s Piano Pre- comes functional. Some objects are mere as by what it reveals. Over two evenings, lude No. in E-Flat Major. Today, the assemblages of atoms to us, and have while drinking gin on the rocks with a piece moves him to tears—“I’ve tried only a physical dimension; when we twist—a “sort of ” cocktail—we played to master it,” he says, “but I could never think of them, he says, we adopt a “phys- perhaps a dozen games of Frigatebird, play it as well as she could.” For a while, icalist stance”—the stance we inhabit and I lost every time. Dennett was pa- Dennett made money playing jazz piano when, using equations, we predict the tient and encouraging (“You’re getting in bars. He also plays the guitar, the direction of a tropical storm. When it the hang of it!”), even as he transformed acoustic bass, the recorder, and the ac- comes to more sophisticated objects, my “quest” into “equations.” cordion, and can still sing the a- cappella which have purposes and functions, we tunes he learned, in his twenties, as a typically adopt a “design stance.” We people who member of the Boston Saengerfest Men’s say that a leaf ’s “purpose” is to capture A study consciousness is that Den- Chorus. energy from sunlight, and that a nut nett himself might be a zombie. (“Only As a Harvard undergraduate, Den- and bolt are designed to fit together. Fi- a zombie like Dennett could write a nett wanted to be an artist. He pursued nally, there are objects that seem to have book called ‘Consciousness Explained’ painting, then switched to sculpture; beliefs and desires, toward which we that doesn’t address consciousness at when he met Susan, he told her that take the “intentional stance.” If you’re all,” the computer scientist Jaron Lanier she had nice shoulders and asked if she playing chess with a chess computer, has written.) The implicit criticism is would model for him. (She declined, you don’t scrutinize the conductive prop- that Dennett’s account of consciousness but they were married two years later.) erties of its circuits or contemplate the treats the self like a computer and reflects A photograph taken in , when inner workings of its operating system a disengagement from things like feel- Dennett was a graduate student, shows

50 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 him trim and shirtless in a courtyard in ademic friends and neighbors, Dennett homa, emits a kind of radiation that’s Athens, smoking a pipe as he works a learned about psychology, computer safe for the body but lethal to the brain. block of marble. Although he succeeded programming, linguistics, and artificial Government scientists decide on a rad- in exhibiting some sculptures in galler- intelligence—the disciplines that came ical plan: they separate Dennett’s brain ies, he decided that he wasn’t brilliant to form cognitive science. from his body, using radio transmit- enough to make a career in art. Still, he One of Dennett’s early collabora- ters implanted in his skull to allow the continued to sculpt, throw pots, build tors was Douglas Hofstadter, the poly- brain, which is stored in a vat in Hous- furniture, and whittle. His whittlings math genius whose book about the ton, to control the body as it approaches are finely detailed; most are meant to mind, “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eter- the warhead. “Think of it as a mere be handled. A life-size wooden apple nal Golden Braid,” became an unlikely stretching of the nerves,” the scientists comes apart, in cross-sections, to reveal best-seller in . “When he was say. “If your brain were just moved over a detailed stem and core; a fist-size nut young, he played the philosophy game an inch in your skull, that would not and bolt turn smoothly on minute, per- very strictly,” Hofstadter said of Den- alter or impair your mind. We’re sim- fectly made threads. (Billed as “haptic nett. “He studied the analytic philos- ply going to make the nerves indefi- sculptures,” the whittles are currently ophers and the Continental philoso- nitely elastic by splicing radio links on display at Underdonk, a gallery in phers and wrote pieces that responded into them.” Brooklyn.) to them in the traditional way. But then After the surgery, Dennett is led into Dennett studied philosophy as an he started deviating from the standard the brain-support lab: undergraduate with W. V. O. Quine, pathway. He became much more in- I peered through the glass. There, oating the Harvard logician. His scientific formed by science than many of his in what looked like ginger ale, was undeniably awakening came later, when he was a colleagues, and he grew very frustrated a human brain, though it was almost covered graduate student at Oxford. With a with the constant, prevalent belief with printed circuit chips, plastic tubules, elec- few classmates, he found himself de- among them in such things as zom- trodes, and other paraphernalia. . . . I thought to myself: “Well, here I am sitting on a fold- bating what happens when your arm bies. These things started to annoy him, ing chair, staring through a piece o plate glass falls asleep. The others were discuss- and he started writing piece after piece at my own brain. . . . But wait,” I said to my- ing the problem in abstract, philosoph- to try to destroy the myths that he con- self, “shouldn’t I have thought, ‘Here I am, sus- ical terms—“sensation,” “perception,” sidered these to be—the religious res- pended in a bubbling uid, being stared at by and the like—which struck Dennett idues of dualism.” my own eyes’?” . . . . I tried and tried to think mysel into the vat, but to no avail. as odd. Two decades earlier, the philos- Arguments, Dennett found, rarely opher Gilbert Ryle, Dennett’s disserta- shift intuitions; it’s through stories Toward the end of the story, the tion adviser, had coined the phrase “the that we revise our sense of what’s nat- radio equipment malfunctions, and ghost in the machine” to mock the the- ural. (He calls such stories “intuition Dennett’s point of view is instantly re- ory, associated with René Descartes, pumps.”) In , he published a short located. It is “an impressive demonstra- that our physical bodies are controlled story called “Where Am I?,” in which tion of the immateriality of the soul, by immaterial souls. The other students a philosopher, also named Daniel Den- based on physicalist principles and were talking about the ghost; Dennett nett, is asked to volunteer for a dan- premises,” he writes, “for as the last wanted to study the machine. He began gerous mission to disarm an experi- radio signal between Tulsa and Hous- teaching himself neuroscience the next mental nuclear warhead. The warhead, ton died away, had I not changed lo- day. Later, with the help of various ac- which is buried beneath Tulsa, Okla- cation from Tulsa to Houston at the speed of light?” The story contains only winding path leads from determinism he never believed in God, he enjoyed neurons and machines, and is entirely to freedom, too: “A whole can be freer going to church. For much of his life, materialist; even so, it shows that you than its parts.” Dennett has sung sacred music in choirs aren’t situated “in” your brain the same (he gets misty-eyed when he recalls way you’re situated “in” a room. It also Richard Dawkins, Sam singing Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion”). suggests that the intuitions upon which A Harris, and the late Christopher He and Susan tried sending their chil- philosophers so confidently rely are ac- Hitchens, Dennett is often cited as one dren to Sunday school, so that they tually illusions created by an elaborate of the “four horsemen of the New Athe- could enjoy the music, sermons, and system of machinery. ism.” In a book called “Breaking Bible stories, but it didn’t take. Den- Only rarely do cracks in the illusion the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phe- nett’s sister Cynthia is a minister: “A of consciousness appear through which nomenon,” he argued that religion ought saintly person,” Dennett says, admir- one might see the machinery at work. to be studied rather than practiced. Re- ingly, “who’s a little annoyed by her lit- Proust inspected the state between cently, with the researcher Linda La- tle brother.” sleep and wakefulness. Coleridge ex- Scola, he published “Caught in the The materialist world view is often perimented with mind-altering drugs. Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind,” a book associated with despair. In “Anna Neuroscientists examine minds com- of interviews with clergypeople who Karenina,” Konstantin Levin, the nov- promised by brain injury. Dennett’s ap- have lost their faith. He can be haughty el’s hero, stares into the night sky, proach has been to look back into evo- in his dismissal of religion. A few years reflects upon his brief, bubblelike ex- lutionary history. In the minds of other ago, while he was recovering from his istence in an infinite and indierent animals, even insects, Dennett believes, aortic dissection, he wrote an essay universe, and contemplates suicide. For we can see the functional components called “Thank Goodness,” in which he Dennett, however, materialism is spir- upon which our selfhood depends. We chastised well-wishers for saying “Thank itually satisfying. In a book called can also see the qualities we value most God.” (He urged them, instead, to thank “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea,” he asks, in human selfhood in “sort of ” form. “goodness,” as embodied by the doc- “How long did it take Johann Sebas- Even free will, he thinks, evolves over tors, nurses, and scientists who were tian Bach to create the ‘St. Matthew evolutionary time. Your amygdala, the “genuinely responsible for the fact that Passion’?” Bach, he notes, had to live part of the brain that registers fear, may I am alive.”) for forty-two years before he could not be free in any meaningful sense— Yet Dennett is also comfortable with begin writing it, and he drew on two it’s eectively a robot—but it endows religion—even, in some ways, nostal- thousand years of Christianity—in- the mind to which it belongs with the gic for it. Like his wife, he was brought deed, on all of human culture. The sub- ability to avoid danger. In this way, the up as a Congregationalist, and although systems of his mind had been evolv- ing for even longer; creating Homo sapiens, Dennett writes, required “bil- lions of years of irreplaceable design work”—performed not by God, of course, but by natural selection. “Darwin’s dangerous idea,” Dennett writes, is that Bach’s music, Christian- ity, human culture, the human mind, and Homo sapiens “all exist as fruits of a single tree, the Tree of Life,” which “created itself, not in a miraculous, in- stantaneous whoosh, but slowly, slowly.” He asks, “Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Prob- ably not.” But, he says, it is “greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. . . . I could not pray to it, but I can stand in armation of its magnificence. This world is sacred.” Almost every December for the past forty years, the Dennetts have held a black-tie Christmas-carolling party at their home. This year, snow was fall- ing as the guests arrived; the airy mod- ern shingle-style house was decorated like a Yuletide bed-and-breakfast, with “I’ll go shop around for a doctor.” toy soldiers on parade. In the kitchen, a small robotic dog-on-wheels named Tati huddled nonfunctionally; the living-room bookshelf displayed a set of Dennett-made Russian dolls—Des- cartes on the outside, a ghost in the middle, and a robot inside the ghost. Dennett, dapper in his tuxedo, min- gled with the guests. With a bearded, ponytailed postdoc, he considered some mysteries of monkey consciousness; with his silver-haired neighbors, many of whom had attended the party annually since , he discussed the Patriots and the finer points of apple brandy. After a potluck dinner, he called everyone over to the piano, where Mark DeVoto, a re- tired music professor, was noodling on “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” From piles on a Dennett-built coee table, Den- nett and his wife distributed homemade books of Christmas carols. “Hello!” Dennett said. “Are we ready?” Surrounded by friends, he was grinning from ear to ear. “Let’s go. We’ll start with ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful.’ First verse in English, second in Latin!” Earlier, I’d asked Susan Dennett how their atheism would shape their carol-singing. “When we get to the parts about the Virgin, we sometimes “You’d think a celebrity sex tape would display sing with our eyebrows raised,” she said. a higher degree of showmanship.” In the event, their performance was unironic. Dennett, a brave soloist, sang •• beautifully, then apologized for his voice. The most arresting carol was a tune called “O Hearken Ye.” Dennett that performs a song called “The Zom- have meaningful conversations with sang the words “Gloria, gloria / In ex- bie Blues.” (“I act like you act, I do you, like the smartphone voiced by Scar- celsis Deo” with great seriousness, his what you do. . . . / What consciousness lett Johansson in “Her.” Johansson’s hands at his sides, his eyes faraway. is, I ain’t got a clue / I got the Zombie character is conscious: you can fall in When the carol faded into an appre- Blues.”) In his most important book, love with her, and she with you. There’s ciative silence, he sighed and said, “Now, “The Conscious Mind,” published in a soul in that phone. But how did it that’s a beautiful hymn.” , Chalmers accused Dennett and get there? How was the inner space the physicalists of focussing on the “easy of consciousness opened up within philosophical problems” of consciousness—questions the circuits and code? This is the hard D arch-nemesis: an Australian named about the workings of neurons or other problem. Dennett regards it, too, as a David Chalmers. Chalmers, who teaches cognitive systems—while ignoring the philosopher’s fantasy. Chalmers thinks at N.Y.U. and at the Australian Na- “hard problem.” In a formulation he that, at present, it is insurmountable. If tional University, believes that Dennett likes: “How does the water of the brain it’s easy for you to imagine a conscious only “sort of ” understands conscious- turn into the wine of consciousness?” robot, then you probably side with Den- ness. In his view, Dennett’s theories Since then, the “hard problem” has been nett. If it’s easier to imagine a robot that don’t adequately explain subjective ex- a rallying cry for those philosophers only seems conscious, you’re probably perience or why there is an inner life in who think that Dennett’s view of the with Chalmers. the first place. mind is incomplete. A few years ago, a Russian venture Chalmers and Dennett are as dier- Consider your laptop. It’s process- capitalist named Dmitry Volkov orga- ent as two philosophers of mind can ing information but isn’t having expe- nized a showdown between Dennett be. Chalmers wears a black leather jacket riences. Now, suppose that every year and Chalmers near Disko Island, o the over a black T-shirt. He believes in the your laptop gets smarter. A few years west coast of Greenland. Before mak- zombie problem and is the lead singer from now, it may, like I.B.M.’s Watson, ing a fortune investing in Shazam and of a consciousness-themed rock band win “Jeopardy!” Soon afterward, it may in the Russian version of PayPal, Volkov

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 53 element: he loves parties, materialism, and the sea. After the introduction and summa- rizing part was over, Chalmers, carrying a can of Palm Belgian ale, walked to the front of the room and began his remarks. Neurobiological explanations of con- sciousness focus on brain functions, he said. But, “when it comes to explaining consciousness, one needs to explain more than the functions. There are introspec- tive data—data about what it’s like to be a conscious subject, what it’s like expe- riencing now and hearing now, what it’s like to have an emotion or to hear music.” He continued, “There are some people, like Dan Dennett, who think that all we need to explain is the functions. . . . Many people find that this is not taking con- sciousness seriously.” Lately, he said, he had been gravitating toward “pan- proto- psychism”—the idea that consciousness might be “a fundamental property of the universe” upon which the brain some- how draws. It was a strange idea, but, then, consciousness was strange. Andy Clark was the first to respond. “You didn’t actually give us any posi- “Could we move the piece representing ourselves a tives for pan-psychism,” he said. “It was little farther away from the battle?” kind of the counsel of despair.” Jesse Prinz, a blue-haired philoso- pher from , seemed almost enraged. •• “Positing dualism leads to no further insights and discoveries!” he said. was a graduate student in philosophy at nuanced analyses of our intuitions.” This Calmly, nursing his beer, Chalmers Moscow State University, where he wrote had annoyed Chalmers, but on the cruise responded to his critics. He said that he a dissertation on Dennett’s work. Now the two philosophers were still able to could make a positive case for pan- proto- he chartered a hundred-and-sixty-eight- marvel, companionably, at the land- psychism, pointed out that his position foot schooner, the S/V Rembrandt van scape’s alien beauty. Later, everyone wasn’t necessarily antimaterialist (a Rijn, and invited Dennett, Chalmers, gathered in the Rembrandt’s spacious pan-psychic force could be perfectly ma- and eighteen other philosophers on a galley, where Volkov, a slim, voluble man terial, like electromagnetism), and de- weeklong cruise, along with ten gradu- in sailor’s stripes, presided over an in- clared that he was all in favor of more ate students. Most of the professional tellectual round-robin. Each philoso- neuroscientific research. philosophers were materialists, like Den- pher gave a talk summarizing another’s Dennett had lurked o to the side, nett, but the graduate students were un- work; afterward, the philosopher who stolid and silent, but he now launched committed. Dennett and Chalmers had been summarized responded and into an argument about perspective. He would compete for their allegiance. took questions. told Chalmers that there didn’t have to In June, when the Arctic sun never Andy Clark, a lean Scottish philoso- be a hard boundary between third- sets, the lowlands of Disko are covered pher with a punk shock of pink hair, person explanations and first-person ex- with flowering angelica. The philoso- summarized Dennett’s views. He wore perience—between, as it were, the de- phers piled into inflatable boats to ex- a T-shirt depicting a peacock with a tail scription of the sugar molecule and the plore the fjords and the tundra. The made of screwdrivers, wrenches, and other taste of sweetness. Why couldn’t one year before, in the Journal of Conscious- tools. “It obviously looks like something see oneself as taking two dierent stances ness Studies, Dennett had published a quite colorful and full of complexity and toward a single phenomenon? It was paper called “The Mystery of David ‘peacockness,’ ” he said. “But, if you look possible, he said, to be “neutral about Chalmers,” in which he proposed seven more closely, that complexity is actually the metaphysical status of the data.” reasons for Chalmers’s resistance to his built out of a number of little devices.” From the outside, it looks like neurons; views, among them a fear of death and “A Swiss Army peacock!” Dennett from the inside, it feels like conscious- a pointless desire to “pursue exhaustively rumbled, approvingly. He was in his ness. Problem solved.

54 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 Chalmers was unconvinced. Pacing without managing to move all that many nett sat in an armchair in his Maine up and down the galley, he insisted that readers from wary agnosticism to calm living room. The sky and the water “merely cataloguing the third-person conviction,” he writes, in “From Bacte- were blue and bright. He’d acquired data” could not explain the existence of ria to Bach and Back.” “Undaunted, I two copies of the Ellsworth American, a first-person point of view. am trying once again.” the local newspaper; later, he and Susan Dennett sighed and, leaning against would sit by the fireplace and compete the wall, weighed his words. “I don’t , I took Chalmers’s to see who could finish the crossword see why it isn’t an embarrassment to F side in this dispute. I read Dennett’s first. In the meantime, he was think- your view,” he said, “that you can’t name “Consciousness Explained,” but I felt ing about the nature of understanding. a kind of experiment that would get that something crucial was missing. I He recalled a time, many years ago, at ‘first-personal data,’ or ‘experiences.’ couldn’t understand how neurons—even when he found himself lecturing a That’s all I ask—give me a single ex- billions of neurons—could generate the group of physicists. He showed them ample of a scientifically respectable experience of being me. Terrence Dea- a slide that read “E=mc ” and asked if experiment!” con, an anthropologist who writes about anyone in the audience understood it. “There are any number of experi- consciousness and neuroscience, refers Almost all of the physicists raised their ments!” Chalmers said, heatedly. When to “the Cartesian wound that separated hands, but one man sitting in the front the argument devolved into a debate mind from body at the birth of mod- protested. “Most of the people in this about dierent kinds of experimental ern science.” For a long time, not even room are experimentalists,” he said. setups, Dennett said, “I think maybe the profoundly informed arguments that “They think they understand this equa- this session is over, don’t you? It’s time Dennett advanced proved capable of tion, but, really, they don’t. The only to go to the bar!” He looked to Chal- healing that wound. people who really understand it are the mers, who smiled. Then, late last year, my mother had theoreticians.” Among the professional philosophers, a catastrophic stroke. It devastated the “Understanding, too, comes in de- Dennett seemed to have won a narrow left side of her brain, wrecking her pa- grees,” Dennett concluded, back in his victory. But a survey conducted at the rietal and temporal lobes and Broca’s Maine living room. “So how do you take end of the cruise found that most of the area—parts of the brain that are in- that last step? What if the answer is: grad students had joined Team Chal- volved in the emotions, the senses, mem- ‘Well, you can only sort of take it’?” Phys- mers. Volkov conjectured that for many ory, and speech. My mother now ap- ics, Dennett said, tells us that there are people, especially those who are new to pears to be living in an eternal present. more than three dimensions, and we philosophy, “it’s the question of the soul She can say only two words, “water” and can use math to prove they’re there; at that’s driving their opinions. It’s the “time.” She is present in the room—she the same time, we struggle to picture value of human life. It’s the question of looks me in the eye—but is capable of them in our heads. That doesn’t mean the special position of humans in the only fleeting recognition; she knows they’re not real. Perhaps, he thought, world, in the universe.” only that I am someone she should rec- the wholly material soul is similarly hard Despite his aability, Dennett some- ognize. She grasps the world, but lightly. to imagine. “I’m not ready to say it’s un- times expresses a weary frustration with As I spent time with my mother, I imaginable, because there are times when the immovable intuitions of the people found that my intuitions I think I can imagine it,” he is trying to convince. “You shouldn’t were shifting to Dennett’s he said, “and then it doesn’t trust your intuitions,” he told the phi- side of the field. It seems seem to be such a big leap losophers on the Rembrandt. “Con- natural to say that she “sort at all. But—it is.” ceivability or inconceivability is a life’s of ” thinks, knows, cares, Before the morning work—it’s not something where you just remembers, and under- slipped away, Dennett de- screw up your head for a second!” He stands, and that she is “sort cided to go out for a walk, feels that Darwin’s central lesson—that of ” conscious. It seems ob- down to where the lawn everything in biology is gradual; that it vious that there is no “light ended and a rocky beach arrives “not in a miraculous, instanta- switch” for consciousness: began. He’d long de- neous whoosh, but slowly, slowly”—is she is present and absent lighted in a particular too easily swept aside by our categori- in dierent ways, depending on which rock formation, where a few stones cal habits of mind. It could be that he of her subsystems are functioning. I still were piled just so, creating a peephole. is struggling with the nature of language, can’t quite picture how neurons create He was disappointed to find that the which imposes a hierarchical clarity upon consciousness. But, perhaps because I tides had rearranged the stones, and the world that’s powerful but sometimes can take a stance toward my mother that the hole had disappeared. The false. It could also be that he is wrong. that I can’t take toward myself, my be- dock was pulled ashore for the winter, For him, the struggle—a Darwinian lief in the “hard problem” has dissolved. its parts stacked next to his sailboat. struggle, at the level of ideas—contin- On an almost visceral level, I find it eas- He walked down the steps anyway, oc- ues. “I have devoted half a century, my ier to accept the reality of the material casionally leaning on his walking stick. entire academic life, to the project, in a mind. I have moved from agnosticism For a few minutes, he stood at the bot- dozen books and hundreds of articles to calm conviction. tom, savoring the frigid air, the lapping tackling various pieces of the puzzle, On a morning this past winter, Den- water, the dazzling sun. 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 55 FICTION

56 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY ANTHONY BLASKO ’ skateboards, “Moby-Dick,” because who writes some- he asked for money, people often mis- two backpacks, the banjo in its thing like “Moby-Dick” before they’re understood him. She hurries on, hop- S scratched-up case—a husk of thirty. Evan was already twenty-three, ing he isn’t in trouble. molded leather that’s always looked to and she’s used up only a few years less. How could it be getting dark her like a giant key but now seems It was unlikely that either of them would already? The weather around here more like a con. accomplish much, at this rate. She’s never changes so quickly it’s like some crazy Maybe because she hasn’t played in even read “Moby-Dick,” though of course opera, with floodlights and invisible weeks. This time of year, people don’t she knows it’s about a whale. Man against people pulling levers. Now sun! Now stop; the coins in their pockets stay there. nature. She recalls the phrase from school. rain! A billowing cloud is following Are you too good for fifty cents? Evan When it comes to books, Evan takes her like a blimp. had scolded her. If Evan had his way, whatever he can find—freebies on She tries not to worry—remember- she’d be playing every day. He doesn’t the curb, or sour wrecks from garbage ing how, a few weeks ago, when they understand how much it takes to stand bins. It drives her crazy, the way he were moving along the coast, they’d in front of strangers and summon up doesn’t discriminate. He’ll pick up spent a night on a deserted beach in songs she learned as a child. Espe- anything. The diet book, for instance— Bandon, and in the morning there was cially on dark afternoons, with the that was just ridiculous. She and Evan a starfish on one of Evan’s boots. It mist spitting in her face like some were about as fat as Popsicle sticks. seemed a good sign. Evan had walked pissed-o ghost. She refuses to play On cold nights, when they slept in with it for a bit—two of its golden arms under such conditions. the same bag, they fit no problem, and protruding like a spur. Later, when he Anyway, she wants to protect the in- when they jammed against each other put his boot in the water to let the strument—the pretty cherry wood, the for comfort their hips clacked like starfish go, they’d both said goodbye to feathery carving on the neck. It’s the castanets. it. Evan, adorably, had waved. only fine thing she has; why ruin it? “But look, babe,” he’d said, show- Her father had said never get it wet. ing her the pictures—bright veggies ’ little town—she’ll give Treat it wrong and it would get sick, on white plates and artful piles of I it that. They’d passed through here same as anything. fruit. “Doesn’t that look nice?” before, in the spring. But even now, cast So she’d let it sleep for a bit. The case Even as she said yes, she felt em- into gloom, the place seems poised for was comfy, lined with velvet. barrassed, as if they were looking at a postcard. Fairy-tale pines and fear- Again, the con comes to mind. She pornography. less deer. Fresh-painted porches, flut- grunts and shifts her load, trying not tering prayer flags. There are squirrels to fall. , men are blowing cheeky with nuts and autumn roses Maybe Evan had wandered into town. O leaves; the air smells like diesel. poking through fences. Some of the Often he didn’t sleep well, and some- She notices that they don’t turn o their houses look like the witch’s cottage from times, when he got up, he needed to burn blowers as she approaches, the way “Hansel and Gretel.” It wasn’t uncom- o some dream he’d had. Usually he was they do for most people. Maybe she has mon to see shells or beads hanging in back within an hour. Today she’d waited leaves in her hair—it was certainly pos- gardens, or Victorian rooftops resem- almost until noon, when a woman who sible. Her face is probably dirty, too. bling fancy cookies. On one place there lived across the street from the empty She smiles at the men, showing her are bits of yellow glass that look like lot came over to inform her that the land good teeth, which she hopes will dis- lemon drops. was private property. The woman had tract them from the rest of her. The Maybe Evan had got hungry. She stared (cell phone threateningly in hand) younger man smiles back and turns o heads toward the café they’ve been going until the girl packed up all the gear and his blower. The other one follows suit. to for the past few days. There’s a guy went limping down the street. She scurries by, unaccosted. there who gives them free coee, though Good teeth, she’s learned, are like a he fills the paper cups only halfway. ’ way too heavy. What passport: they helped you cross bor- Not that she was complaining. It E feels like bricks, she knows, are ders. Evan has terrible teeth, insanely was just funny how, even when people books. One of them, a hardcover, is crooked. Every time he opens his were being nice, they gave you only as biting into her shoulder. mouth, you can see the unloved child much as they thought you deserved. Are you going to read them? she’d he’d surely been. It always surprised When she played her banjo in the park, asked him. He said yes, he’d definitely her, the way strangers reacted. What it irritated her if someone tossed down read them—but later, when they were should have elicited sympathy—or even pennies. settled, when it was warmer. Maybe pity—tended to arouse suspicion. She could see why Evan thought she in April, he said. Of course, Evan did have a funny was prideful—but that wasn’t the right There’s a diet book, a book about car way of speaking—a creaky hesitation, word. Sure, she knew she was good, but repair, a biography of the guy who wrote as if he couldn’t get the words out, and she never considered the music hers. “Moby-Dick.” The biography is nearly then, when he finally did, it was more All the trancelike drones and the clever a thousand pages long, even though it’s like a sneeze, or a bark. It seemed ag- fretwork, she’d fashioned after her fa- only Volume I—just the first thirty years gressive, though he meant no harm. He ther. The way he could open a song, of Melville’s life. She assumes it’s pre- was just intense, slightly feral. When make it shimmer or bleed, depending

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 57 on how he cut it. To recognize the same and Evan doesn’t like the vibe of it— men with packs. Evan isn’t among them. competence in herself wasn’t pride; the prayers before meals, the sad chapel She’d like to sit on one of the benches it was simply gratitude, or respect. with folding chairs, the pamphlets. and wait—but she knows, if she does, It was sort of like putting flowers on It doesn’t really bother her, that re- one of the other roamers will approach his grave. ligious stu—and the people who work her and want to chat. in those places usually look you in the Where you coming from? Where you the fountain. With some eye. Plus, a shower’s a shower. She’s headed? S napkins she’s saved, she tries to hoping for one tonight. It’s supposed Some man will ask her if she wants freshen up a bit. But when she wets to snow, and they’ll have no choice but company. the brown paper and rubs it across her to go back to the Christians. There’s There are about five of them, loi- face it falls apart. She can feel bits of always dessert. tering by a sculpture of a bear stand- it sticking to her skin. She wipes down Evan complains that the beds look ing on its hind legs—a splotchy bronze. her backpack, too. It’s filthy, found in like something from a hospital. But she The men’s skin is a similar color, a bin in Portland. There are pink and knows that what really bothers him is strangely candied by sun and weather. green polka dots. It probably belonged that they can’t sleep in the same room. Their scarves look like bandages, and to a kid once. She doesn’t wipe down She hates that, too—but it’s worth it, two of them have knife sheaths hang- Evan’s pack, because it’s black and the because when they get back on the road ing prominently from their belts. One dirt doesn’t do it any disservice. The and he kisses her freshly scrubbed neck guy has so many tattoos on his face he dirt actually helps, like shoe polish— she feels hopeful; she feels she has seems to be peering out from behind hides the scus. She pulls back her something to give him. a thicket. greasy hair and secures it with a rub- Anyway, between the two of them In the warmer months, there were ber band. Then she opens Evan’s pack it’s not just about sex. Promises have more women. There were kids from Cal- and puts on his Diamondbacks cap. been made. Promises that are easier to ifornia roughing it for a week; middle- She brushes her teeth with her tongue believe when she’s clean. aged hippies from the music fests; hik- and straightens the cus of her jeans. ers from the Pacific Crest Trail. These She’ll brush for real in the bathroom ’ the park. She wonders days, it’s down to something darker— of the coee shop. H if he’s hiked up to the reservoir, the folks who can’t or won’t go home. They haven’t had proper shelter in though she’d have trouble getting there Mostly men—and, with the weather weeks. Up North, there are more places, with all the gear. When she emerges closing in, they seem more tightly but around here there’s only the one, back onto the plaza, there are several wound. Evan should realize that he can’t just disappear whenever he’s in some crazy mood. As she walks away, it’s hard to tell if the knot in her stomach is anger or fear. She looks up at the gray, potbel- lied sky and wishes she were back in Tucson. A life that had once meant nothing to her seems epic now: a sun so hot it could make you shiver, her father’s tiny adobe with its tin roof, the pink-grapefruit tree in the back yard. She wonders if new tenants have moved in. But maybe no one would want to rent the place after what happened there. She hopes that somebody is wa- tering the grapefruit at least. It was an old tree, and temperamental—turning yellow and dropping its leaves if you ignored it for even a week. How long has she been gone now? Seven months? The tree was probably dead.

the to-go counter isn’t T the one from before, but she asks him anyway. “Sorry,” he says. “We don’t oer “This window has a view of the park.” samples.” She touches her face, worried that A wing of white light cuts through been thinking clearly. The blood, the some of the napkin is still stuck there. the clouds—a merciless angel, it brings bullet hole in the wall. What if she’d “Oh, O.K.” She smiles. “Because they no warmth. She tugs her gloves back made a mistake? did yesterday—and the day before. Just, on, but they don’t help. One of the like, half a cup.” drifters has spotted her—an older fel- up again, the man “Yeah, sorry, I can’t do that.” low with a beard that looks like it’s W with the beard is walking toward “No, that’s O.K.” She holds her smile made of mud. He lifts his hand and her. The way his Lawrence of Arabia for a little longer, until it cracks. waves, as if he knew her. She hates to rags flap in the wind makes her seasick. There’s a line of people behind her think of herself as one of them. She picks up her stu, and the next thing now, and she can feel the familiar rush It’s hard to say why anyone travels she knows she’s on her knees. Her yel- of shame. It starts at the base of her like this—the way she and Evan do. low gloves look like starfish. She retches, neck and moves into her face—the heat When they first met and she asked but nothing comes up. of it almost makes her dizzy. if he had family, he said yes. “You O.K.? Hey.” She feels a hand “Did you want to buy anything?” When he asked the same question, on her back. “You want some water?” the guy asks. she said no. “Please,” she tells him, “just leave me “Let me think about it,” she says, Both answers bore witness to a story alone.” stepping aside, making a show of look- neither had the strength to tell. And But when she looks up it’s not Law- ing at the pastry case. “You can go ahead what did it matter? All they needed to rence of Arabia. It’s a tall woman in a of me.” She gestures toward the woman know was that she wished to leave be- red parka and furry boots that look like who’s next in line and slowly slinks hind an absence, and he wanted to be- teddy bears. The woman pulls a plastic away, careful not to hit anyone with come one. bottle from one of her huge pockets. the skateboards. She feels like a wal- Of course, over time they’d given “Poor thing, what did you eat? Did rus, too big for this gingerbread town. each other clues, little comments laid you eat rubbish?” The funny thing is, she has some down casually in the night like play- “I don’t eat rubbish,” the girl says. money. But Evan doesn’t like her to ing cards. No tears or drama. Just facts. “Well, that’s good. Here, take a sip.” spend it—not frivolously, anyway, on Nearly deaf in his left ear from smacks. The girl accepts the water, but as soon pastry and coee. He says they need A bullet hole in her father’s bed room as she drinks she’s afraid she’s going to to save it for when they get settled, wall. be sick again. She wipes her mouth and maybe for a car. So far, they’ve set aside Shocked into travelling, she sup- hands back the bottle. around fifteen hundred. In addition to poses. That seemed about right. Still, The woman keeps staring. She has a what she gets from playing, they’ve it was a choice. They weren’t zombies. pale, wrinkled face and neat gray hair worked some farms—picking or pack- They knew what they were doing— twisted into enormous braids the size ing—and sometimes Evan makes these Evan maybe more than she. of baguettes. She’s clearly not a travel- nifty pins from bottle caps; in the sum- In the first few months after her fa- ler. Her clothes are too clean, and she mer he sold a ton of them. ther died, she’d only pretended to run smells sweet, like lavender. She puts the She approaches the bathroom and away. She’d pack some things and head water back into her parka and pulls out uses the code they gave her yesterday. down to the Greyhound station on a bag of almonds. “You probably need It doesn’t work. She steadies her shak- Congress Street, just to see how it might some protein.” ing hand and reënters the numbers and feel. She did it a few times, with all her “I’m fine,” the girl says, relieved to letters into the keypad. money in her pocket, after which she’d see that the bearded man has gone back “New code,” the counter guy calls out. go back to the old adobe and eat a bowl to his buddies. “You get it when you order something.” of ice cream. “You’re not fine,” the woman says. She thinks to get back in line, pull Then one day Evan was at the sta- “Let me make you a cup of tea.” She out the roll of bills. But she’s already tion, with his crooked teeth and his thrusts her hands back into her pock- made a fool of herself, and people are anime eyes. He came over and smiled. ets, and for a moment the girl wonders starting to stare. “Nice board. You a skater?” She said if she’s going to pull out a kettle. she wasn’t great. Instead, she oers a tiny square of , air startles her “And a musician, too,” he said. At foil. O and she puts down the packs. She which point she started to cry, and he The girl stares at it, confused, won- stus the skateboards inside, with their held her. dering if it’s chocolate. tops sticking out. In a better mood, she It wasn’t much more complicated “For your face.” might have felt like Santa Claus. It’ll than that. The girl realizes that it’s a moist tow- be December soon, if it isn’t already. Sometimes, though, she wonders at elette. She blushes and slips the thing The men with their sleeping rolls her decision—to just take o like that into her pack. are still in the plaza. There’s no sign of with a stranger. But the truth was, noth- “I live right around the corner,” the Evan. If she were a normal person, she ing had ever been easier. And it wasn’t woman says. “Come on—let me help could just call him—but they no lon- just the boy’s eyes or some chemical you up.” ger have working phones, just dead rel- thing. She’d trusted him immediately. “No, thank you. I have to go.” ics at the bottom of their bags. Of course, it was possible she hadn’t The girl stands on her own, tottering

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 59 lifting Evan’s bag from where she’s thrown it. “Whoa!” he says. “That’s some heavy shit. What do you got in here—gold?” “No, it’s just—we just have some books. It’s my boyfriend’s,” she says, trying to make the word meaningful. The man nods as he works the shoul- der straps into place. “Really,” she says, “I can carry it.” “So, where is he? Your friend?” She doesn’t know what to say. “I’m meeting him in, like, five minutes, so—” “He’ll want his books.” “Yes. He will.” She extends her hand, waiting for the man to return the pack. But he only stares at her. “You guys have enough blankets for tonight? Gonna need them.” “Yes, we’re fine. Thanks. I really have to go.” He slips the bag o his shoulder, sets it on the ground, and begins to unzip it. “Honestly, it’s just books and un- derwear and . . .” •• She’s crying now, but the man doesn’t stop. He’s got Evan’s blue sweater in slightly to the left. She picks up her stu them longer than she should before his hands and then the box of crack- and walks away. turning away. ers, and then he pulls out Herman “You don’t want the tea?” the woman On the way down, she proceeds Melville. calls after her. slowly and keeps her eyes on her feet. “Please don’t touch anything.” When The girl shakes her head and wob- When finally the trail flattens out and she tries to stop him, he grabs her wrists. bles back toward the park. she finds herself in a grove of peeling “Don’t be nasty,” he says. “You have madrones, she eases o her pack and to learn to share.” walk up to the old then throws Evan’s to the ground. The He pushes her against a tree, and S reservoir. She and Evan had camped banjo case she sets gently on a mound even though his hand is somewhere there for a week during the summer. of leaves. else, the girl feels it on her throat. She On the trail, as she pivots at a switch- She’s nauseated again, and starving. can’t speak. She only squeaks. A shadow back, she slips and nearly falls. She grabs Why the fuck didn’t she take the al- falls, as if to give them privacy. The an oak bush she hopes isn’t poison. Cold monds? All she has is a few stale man takes full advantage. air plummets from the mountaintop. crackers. “Get the fuck away from her.” She can’t do this. Why is she doing “Where are you?” she screams. There’s a sudden cracking sound, this? She does it because the reservoir There’s an echo, and then footsteps. and the man yelps. is where Evan proposed to her, and “I’m right here,” he says—a backlit When he stumbles away, the girl where she accepted. It was late, they silhouette at the entrance to the grove. cries, “Evan”—but when she looks she were tipsy on a bottle of wine—a rare “Look at your face.” He laughs. “I didn’t sees the old woman in the red parka, treat. Maybe he was kidding, who mean to scare you.” standing there with a long pole or knows. They’ve never discussed it again. When he comes into view, she can maybe a branch. She whacks the man She keeps going until she sees the see the horrible beard, the filthy cape. again, and he falls to his knees. rusty tank and then a flash of water. His voice has the South in it, and “Get your stu,” the woman instructs It’s such a relief she nearly forgets the the hysterical keen of a chainsaw. He her. pain in her toes. suggests helping her with her stu. The man rubs his head. “Crazy But then she spots two high-school She stands frozen as Lawrence of bitch.” kids kissing solemnly on a blanket. In Arabia ambles closer, but when he “That’s right,” the woman says, rais- their shiny puer coats they look like reaches for her pack, the one with the ing the branch high and holding. writhing larvae. Apart from them, money, she quickly snatches it up. The girl shoves Evan’s sweater and there’s no one up here. She watches “I’ll carry the other one,” he says, the Melville into the open backpack,

60 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 but she leaves the crackers, kicking them Maybe she’ll steal some Q-tips, too, toward the fallen man. She knows she some Band-Aids. might run into him again. The road is Her hands are still aflutter, and so like that. “Please,” she says quietly. she empties the rest of the bag onto “Peace.” the floor. She doesn’t see the money. “You follow us and I’ll have you ar- O.K., O.K., she thinks, I put it where, rested,” the woman says. before I went to sleep?—and though she The man picks up the crackers and knows exactly where she put the roll leans over and starts to eat. He looks of bills, she’s sticking her hands into like an animal now, or a child. pant legs and sweaters, into filthy socks and underwear. She keeps looking long he’s still shaking as the woman after she understands why the money S makes the tea. The house is so isn’t there. warm it feels like sickness. Neither of She nods and then nods again, slowly them, though, has taken of her coat— doing it with her whole body—a kind the girl because she hasn’t been in- of rocking. Evan has the money. Evan vited to do so. She can’t recall the last who she can’t find. A funny sound comes time she was in a house. Maybe not from her mouth. It doesn’t stop. since Tucson. Of course, she’s been in “Are you O.K. in there?” stores and cafés and shelters, but this The woman’s voice is close to the is diferent: the ordered mess of do- door. mesticity, the softness of the light. It’s “Fuck of,” the girl says, before lean- confusing. ing over the bowl to vomit. The woman is talking, but the girl can’t understand her. Something about weating, she peels of her coat and men, and then something about egg S then the jacket underneath. For a salad. while, in the bathroom, she stares at her “Can I use your bathroom, please?” hands, appalled by their lack of faith. “Sure. Right down that hall, first Her teeth are chattering, too. door on the left.” When she opens a small window, it The girl picks up her backpack. lets in no relief. A scolding sound of “You can leave that here. It’s per- leaves, the empty smell of snow. Her fectly safe.” thoughts kneel like beggars. “I need to get something,” the girl It wasn’t possible he’d do something like says. this. There had to be another explanation— “O.K., I’m just telling you, I’ve someone else to blame. locked all the doors, so no one’s get- The room spins, laughing at her— ting in. Plus, I’ve got my stick.” because of course she’d said similar When the woman winks, the girl things about her father. Someone could wonders if she wasn’t better of with have broken into the house. A bullet hole Lawrence of Arabia. in the wall! How do you explain that? She’d shouted these things at the so- he crouches before the toilet, cial worker. S shocked by how pleasant it smells, “I know,” the man had replied pa- like a lake in springtime. Something tiently. “But what you have to under- churns in her gut. But when nothing stand is it’s not uncommon for a person comes she moves away from the bowl to miss, the first time. His hands were and sets to work on the pack, pulling probably shaking.” out her clothes and tampons and toothbrush, digging to the bottom for he drinks the flowery tea, not the bloated roll of bills. She’ll put it S saying much. She apologizes for in her jacket and then steal some toi- cursing. let paper; tell the woman she has to The woman keeps talking, but the girl’s go. She realizes now that she should thoughts get in the way of conversation. have stayed in the empty lot this morn- It doesn’t make sense. Why would he ing, despite the lady across the way. If leave his stuf behind—his favorite blue we ever get separated, Evan once told sweater, his skateboard? her, go back to where we last saw each Because it’s worthless crap, she an- other and wait. swers herself. Evan can replace every bit

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 61 of it a hundred times over with the says. “And I think there was a playground just need to rest. Travelling takes a lot money. She thinks of all the times he pretty close.” out of you.” made her beg or busk in the rain. “Say no more.” The woman makes a For the past ten minutes, the wom- Fucking asshole. sudden left. “I know the spot.” an’s been describing a backpacking trip “You can’t trust them,” the woman When they pull up to the empty lot, she took forty years ago to Nepal. “I’ve says, and the girl wonders how much she isn’t sure it’s right—the dirt graved never eaten so many lentils. Have you she’s said out loud. in white and the scrappy weeds glazed been to Nepal?” She stands and reaches for her coat. to silver. Maybe, the girl thinks, she hasn’t ex- “I better go.” Despite everything, she’s But then she sees the big flat rock plained her predicament suciently and still hoping Evan’s out there. “Thanks where she and Evan had eaten their it’s her own fault that she’s been mis- for the tea.” dinner of kipper snacks and crackers— taken for a more civilized kind of trav- The woman nods. She’s taken o her though the rock’s now under a bun of eller—maybe a long-distance hiker in parka and even undone her giant braids. snow. between care packages. On the table, there are orange peels and “I’ll be right back,” she says. “And then we went down to India. half-eaten sandwiches. There’s snow on “Why?” asks the woman. “There’s no This was after college, with my friend the windowsill. The girl’s not sure when one there.” Ginny.” all of this has happened. “I’ll take my stu,” the girl says. “You The girl closes her eyes. The house “Do you want me to pack up this don’t have to wait.” smells rustic, a mixture of mold and food for you?” “I’ll wait,” the woman tells her. flowers and snued-out candles. “You don’t have to.” Before stepping out of the car, the girl “She was a great lover of mountains, Glancing at the snow, she wonders hesitates. There are no footprints on the Ginny. A real cragswoman.” how she’ll make it to the shelter. She delicate crystals. It seems like a place one Somewhere, a clock is chewing some- could ask the woman for a ride, but the shouldn’t disturb—a church or a just- thing. The girl can feel her hair swim- woman’s done enough. Even now, she’s cleaned floor. She walks past the big rock ming in the flow of heated air. packing up not only the leftover sand- and looks down at the spot where she “Shall we have a little sherry?” wiches but also grapes and cookies and and Evan had slept. There’s no evidence The girl opens her eyes. almonds. She puts them into separate of them. She kneels on the ground, wish- “Or do you want to have a shower baggies. The cookies she inserts care- ing the woman weren’t watching. first? Yes, why don’t you? And then we fully, so they don’t break. She feels like digging. Maybe the can just relax. I’ll put your things in the It does something to the girl, watch- money fell out of her pack. Maybe Evan room at the end of the hall.” ing this. didn’t take it before he left. Maybe— The girl doesn’t want to move, but “Oh, honey, you’re shivering. Do you why the fuck not?—they’ll get married possibly she smells unpleasant. want to take a bath before you go?” in the spring. She takes o her point- “There are clean towels in the closet,” She touches the girl’s shoulder. “You less gloves and sends her hands down the woman says. “Maybe use the brown can use the big tub upstairs.” to where the earth is warmer. All she ones.” “I just—no—I need to find my friend. finds, though, is a wadded tissue. I have his stu.” She can’t help but think of her fa- is first cruelty The woman frowns, but says she un- ther. The white putty plugging the hole T and then something like God. She derstands. “You know, I was mauled by in the wall. Maybe they put something wants to stay in here forever, become a a bear once.” similar in his skull—who knows. After saint, a fleshless thing with glittering “Excuse me?” they removed his body from the bed- bones. “In Alaska. Made a real mess of me.” room, she never saw it again. And the Stay in here until she can forgive him. The girl isn’t sure what to say. She con had been closed. The shower’s an open cave, no door thinks to tell the truth, say that she’s She scoops up some snow and un- or curtain, and there’s a mirror across the stolen a roll of toilet paper. Instead, does it in her fist, throttling it back to room in which she can see her body. She she asks the woman if she’s ever read water. It’s no longer surprising to her expects to see a child, but she sees only “Moby-Dick.” that a person would want to die. the truth—the hairy legs, the purple “Oh God, yes,” the woman says. Time to grow up, Evan had said. bruises on her shoulders. She turns away “Dreadful book.” She’s twenty now. She understands and scrubs all of it with a bar of black everything. soap that smells like milk. ’ car now, but every- She wonders if Evan is in a room, too, T thing looks dierent, dusted with woman’s house, she’s having a wash, or maybe he’s already in snow. The plaza is empty—no men, only B so cold that she moves with a regal a hitch, heading south. Probably to Cal- a frozen swarm of Christmas lights. The slowness, like a shipwrecked queen ifornia. He said he’d never go back to girl’s disoriented. Without her feet on trudging toward shore. Tucson. She doesn’t cry, because in some the pavement, she has no sense of di- “Sit here,” the woman says, directing way she’s already shed those tears. rection and can’t recall exactly where it her to a plush red chair in the living Still, she can feel his chapped lips at was she camped last night. room. On both sides of it are heating her ears, her breasts, whispering things “It was by the railroad tracks,” she grates roaring fever. “You’ll be O.K. You into her that she’ll never forget. Terrible

62 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 her knees. On a small table is a glass decanter filled with straw-colored liq- SEEN uid. There are two glasses, one with a few dregs in it and the ghost of lip- Nature that wants to ll in stick. When the girl looks up she sees that, indeed, the woman has put on the gap the Falls some makeup. “Shall I pour?” falls in and the eye falls “Not for me.” And then, when she sees the woman’s disappointed face: “Well, maybe just a little. I don’t really on: that drink.” “Why—are you pregnant?” “What?” “Well, all that nausea this morning.” “No, I just—” extends a bewildering “Anyway, it’s none of my busi- ness.” The woman pours generously. “Either way, a little sherry won’t hurt you.” eye & in its in When the girl takes a sip, it’s not at all what she’d expected. The liquor’s exact not sweet; it tastes like something made from old furniture and walnuts. ness——no The woman sits on the sofa and pulls her legs up like a teen-ager, pats the place beside her. less a widen The girl hesitates and says, if it’s O.K., she’d rather sit by the fire.

,” she says, as the woman ing makes than what my “N refills her glass. The room’s a blur and she’s desper- mind made too much ate to go to sleep, blot out the day. But it’s as if she were in school, waiting for of when you the bell to ring. The woman won’t shut up. “You know,” she says, “I’ve had quite a few adventures myself.” planted a tree in it. “Yes, you said.” “Well, you know about Nepal, but —Michele Glazer I’ve also been to . . .” The stories pile up. The woman chugging kava with Fijians and brav- things about his family, breathless things She wants to laugh, but all that ing temple food in Rajasthan. about their future. The stunned blue comes from her mouth is a pant. As The girl nods dutifully. Out the win- marbles of his eyes, that strange yelp of she slips the gown over her head, she’s dow, the snow has stopped and, in the his. She’s always known he was crazy, but shocked by its softness, the way it but- dim light of the garden lamps, she sees she never expected something like this. ters the rough patches on her back. someone standing there. Not from the boy who stayed facing her When she walks into the living room, “What’s wrong?” after they fucked, gently thumbing her the woman’s kneeling before the hearth. “Nothing, I just—” She realizes it’s eyebrows as if trying to remove a smudge. She’s in a nightgown, too—disturb- a deer. “I think I’m a little tipsy.” ingly similar. “Me, too,” the woman says. “This is ’ nightgown laid “Give me one second. I’ve almost nice, isn’t it?” T out in the room where the wom- got this lit.” Beyond the walls, the hum of the an’s put her stu. It’s a flannel thing A moment later, there’s a dull boom freeway—a gentle shush, like the ocean. with a high neck that makes the girl as the flames jump. Evan had said they’d go back to think of Mary Poppins. Beside it is a “Good! Now we’re set.” The woman the coast next summer. Back to the note: Please put this on. stands slowly—some diculty with beach where they’d seen no whales,

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 63 only tankers floating precariously on man with a harpoon. When a hand instrument this way. On the streets, she’s the horizon. brushes her arm, she jumps. always standing up, and the banjo’s fairly “I told you about the bear, didn’t I? It’s the woman, setting the banjo heavy. When it rests on her lap, she’s got That was on another trip with my friend case on the couch. “I hope you don’t more freedom to find just the right angle. Ginny.” The woman’s lips are slightly mind my going into your room. I She can practically feel his hands at her smeared now. There’s some sherry on thought it might be nice to have a lit- side, adjusting her posture. The lessons her nightgown. “That was a pretty good tle music.” she hated as a child. vacation, despite everything. Well, you The girl feels a sudden rush of heat. She chooses a simple song, one of the know how it is when you’re travelling, She swallows, shakes her head. “No.” first she learned. As soon as she begins, ups and downs. So, when are you head- “Oh, come on.” The woman’s voice though, she wants to stop. The sound’s ing home?” rises childishly. “Play something.” so rich it frightens her. The way it flies The girl feels something like anger. “No—I really can’t.” from the instrument but doesn’t dissi- She wants to tell the woman that she’s The woman frowns and pours her- pate like it does when she plays outdoors. not on a fucking vacation. She wants self more sherry. “I mean, you’d think Here the notes can’t escape; they hit the to say that she lied earlier, that she has I’d be entitled to ask.” walls and ceiling and circle back to her. eaten rubbish, that she’s done it often. “Yes, of course, it’s just I’m—I’m Even with her too long nails and the She wants to take o her socks and really tired.” frets sounding a little fuzzy, she can hear expose her feet, which, after seven “Oh, she’s tired now.” The woman the music well enough to perfect it with months, are swollen and poxed with rises and lurches toward the fireplace, each new round. Leaning in, she claw- blisters. lifting the poker and smashing a black- hammers the melody, gathering speed Instead, she shrugs and puts down ened log to sparks. One flies to the as she goes. Imping, her father had called her glass, touches her belly. carpet and chars it. “You know, all you this sort of frenzied picking. She feels sick, bloated, forced to girls are the same. When it’s your turn When she finishes, it’s with a sweep- eat this woman’s stories. It doesn’t to give . . .” The woman thrusts the ing flourish that’s not for show; it’s the seem right to know this much about a poker again, leaning unsteadily against imp, breaking loose and fleeing. Where stranger. It occurs to her that she knows the bricks. “I suppose you only do it it goes the girl can never understand. more about this old woman than she for money.” She hopes the woman won’t applaud. does about Evan. She even knows where “Excuse me?” The girl stands and It’s like a test, this hard-earned si- this woman was the day her mother reaches for her case. “I really need to lence; only a fool would squander it. died: “On a boat, headed toward Spain. go to bed.” The woman blinks drunkenly and I got a telegram!” “Oh, so you’re staying here?” the yawns. Still, she doesn’t know the wom- woman says imperiously. an’s name, and the woman doesn’t The girl flushes, looks away. She all night, his body break- know hers. says she’ll pack her bags. S ing from the water, the white skin The girl bares her teeth and says “No.” The woman puts down the pierced with sticks. When he goes under nothing. poker and grimaces. “Oh, my God, I again, she follows him. The sound, a always do this.” She steps on the smok- whining bass. I’d love?” She asks him why he’s crying. “Y The girl is nodding o. “I’m He says, “I have no mother.” sorry, what did you—” When she pulls a spear from his “Wait. Let me get it.” The woman side, there are slow red clouds that smell stands, rubs her knees, and disappears like rain. into the hallway. The girl feels woozy. She stares at the house is jumpy the bowls of tidbits on the coee table. I with light, sudden glints o melting Neither of them has eaten much of it, snow. The girl puts a blanket over the but now that the woman’s gone the woman, who’s asleep on the couch. In the girl stus a handful of cheese cubes ing cinder. “Please,” she says. “I’m sorry. kitchen, she eats a tangerine and a few into her mouth. As she chews them Please don’t go.” spoons of yogurt. Then she creeps to her into glue, she watches the fire, a glow- She says it so many times that the room and goes through the packs, win- ing wound of embers. girl starts to cry. nowing them down to what’s essential. A clock on the mantelpiece reads She keeps Evan’s blue sweater and his :. Usually by nine she and Evan a long time in the black hoodie, the warmest of his filthy are on the ground, often in the same T stifling room, not speaking, though socks. She keeps a few of his painted sack. Often naked. She leans back on the woman seems to be doing some sort bottle caps. Then, stupidly, for luck, she the cushions and gives in to the weight of breathing exercise. The girl, troubled grabs the Melville. The rest of his cloth- of her lids. She thinks about all those by the sound, takes the banjo from its ing, along with some of her own—tat- books she has to carry. Half of Mel- velvet bed and places it, properly, on her tered summer dresses and hopeless un- ville’s life. She pictures him, a hairy lap. It’s been a while since she held the derwear—she chucks into a bin in the

64 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 garage. She puts the extra sleeping roll and the two skateboards in an empty box marked “Donations.” The remaining books she sneaks into gaps in the bed- room’s shelf of paperbacks. What’s left fits into a single bag, but when she lifts this onto her shoulder it frightens her. She pictures Evan face down in a ditch. Maybe she should call the police. “You’re up already?” The woman is standing in the door- way. In the sun, her bloated face is a road map of wrinkles. The way she lingers outside the room embarrasses the girl. That anyone should feel shame in her own house is awful. “You can come in,” the girl says. “I left you some books I was finished with.” The woman nods, then points to the “It’s another Sicilian message. It means nightgown on the bed. “You’re not tak- ‘Please disregard the previous Sicilian message—it was ing that?” inadvertently sent to everyone on our list.’ ” When the girl mentions the police, the woman says, “I’m sure your friend is fine. It’s you I’m concerned about. Please— •• why don’t you take the nightgown.” “No. I’d ruin it in, like, five minutes.” mirror. “I doubt they want company.” The girl shakes her head at the ridic- The girl picks it up, tries to fold it bet- The girl sees now that the travellers ulous word. ter. “But—I don’t know—maybe you are holding hands—teen-agers with But then she thinks of the grapefruit could drive me to the freeway?” matching dreadlocks, their packs rising tree. “Tucson is, like, over a thousand The woman stiens and attempts a behind them like a private city. miles.” smile. “I’ll make some breakfast.” The car rolls past the Denny’s, and “Don’t worry,” the woman says. “I’m before the girl can protest the woman a good driver. I took a lot of road trips the sign for the in- turns left—a long, curving loop that feels with Ginny.” W terstate, her heart begins to thump. like an amusement-park ride. The girl suspects that they were more Maybe the woman can hear it, too. “Where are you—” than road trips—probably some kind of “I’m not comfortable leaving you by the The woman accelerates and merges love story. side of a road.” She slows down and onto the freeway, the wet road bordered “So you were attacked by a bear once?” reaches into her purse. “At least let me by slush. “Oh, yes. And I have the scars to prove give you something for the books.” She “Stop,” the girl says. “This is fine.” it. I’m sure he would have killed me had pulls out some bills, too many. “Don’t But the woman only laughs. The road I not punched him in the face.” argue. Take it.” sounds like a river and is blinding with “That’s what you’re supposed to do,” “It’s just a cookbook and some stu- puddles of light. the girl says, remembering what Evan pid car-repair thing.” “There are sunglasses in the glove had taught her. “Or you wave your arms “Well, I do neither of those things box,” the woman says. “Would you grab and shout at them.” well, so . . .” them?” “Yes, exactly. You make yourself big- “Maybe just drop me o up there by The girl feels queasy again. After she ger than you are.” the gas station.” hands over the glasses, she leans back The girl wonders how on earth a per- “No, that’s not a good area. I’ll leave and closes her eyes. She tells the woman son could do that. you by the Denny’s.” she’ll get out at the first rest stop. But the following year, just before she When the girl spots some travellers The woman says nothing—and then, delivered the baby, she understood how near the trac light, she rolls down the after a while: “I’m Kathryn, by the way.” it was possible. How there was a certain window, just to be sure. Then they’re quiet, letting the free- point when you were no longer what you Evan isn’t with them, of course, though way thrash its tail behind them, sending were; when you became like the largest she can’t stop looking back. She’s still up sprays of water. When they zoom past animal that ever existed—and no one, sick with worry. the rest stop, the girl steadies her trem- no one, could fuck with you.  “Just leave me here,” she says. “I can bling hands and says, “Where are we go with them.” going?” NEWYORKER.COM The woman glances into the rearview “I’ll take you home,” the woman says. Victor Lodato on the short story as a ing.

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 65 THE CRITICS

A CRITIC AT LARGE THE HISTORY TEST

Constitutional interpretation reaches back to the dawn of time.

BY JILL LEPORE

of April , , a republic, the people retain all the rights rights fall under the definition of due O James M. Kiley, thirty-nine, was not specifically granted to the govern- process and equal protection? There shot with a .-calibre pistol at a gas ment and because anything written down seemed to be two possibilities: precedent station in Somerville, Massachusetts, is both limited and open to interpreta- and reasonable judgment. In Snyder v. during a botched holdup. Kiley, the night tion. “What is the liberty of the press?” Massachusetts, Snyder’s attorneys argued manager, had twenty-four dollars in his Alexander Hamilton asked. “Who can that Snyder had a fundamental right to pocket; the cash in the register was un- give it any definition which would not go on the trip to the gas station, under touched. Herman Snyder, nineteen, was leave the utmost latitude for evasion?” the due-process clause. But Justice Ben- found guilty of first-degree murder and These were excellent questions, but Ham- jamin Cardozo, writing for the majority, sentenced to death. “Well, that’s that,” ilton lost the argument. The Bill of Rights said that the question turned not only on Snyder said, when the jury delivered the was ratified in . Past the question of a reasonable reading of the Fourteenth verdict. But that wasn’t that. Snyder filed which rights there remained the ques- Amendment or on precedent but also on an appeal arguing that his constitutional tion of whose rights. In , in Dred whether refusing to bring a defendant rights had been violated: during his trial, Scott, the Supreme Court asked whether with the jury to the crime scene “oends when the judge, the jury, lawyers for both any “negro whose ancestors were im- some principle of justice so rooted in the sides, and a court stenographer visited ported into this country and sold as slaves” traditions and conscience of our people the gas station, the judge refused to allow is “entitled to all the rights, and privi- as to be ranked as fundamental.” He then Snyder to go along. Even Lizzie Bor- leges, and immunities” guaranteed in the recited instances, going back to , to den had been oered a chance to go Constitution. Relying on “historical facts,” show that what Snyder had been denied with the jury to the crime scene, Sny- the Court answered no, arguing that, at did not meet this standard. der’s lawyers pointed out, and so had the time of the framing, black people History, in one fashion or another, Sacco and Vanzetti. “had for more than a century before been has a place in most constitutional argu- In the summer of , Snyder’s law- regarded as beings of an inferior order, ments, as it does in most arguments of yers went to see Louis Brandeis, the Su- and altogether unfit to associate with the any kind, even those about whose turn preme Court Justice, at his summer home, white race either in social or political re- it is to wash the dishes. Generally, ap- on Cape Cod; Brandeis, in an extraor- lations, and so far inferior that they had peals to tradition provide little relief for dinary gesture from the highest court, no rights which the white man was bound people who, historically, have been treated issued a stay of execution. The Court to respect.” After Emancipation, the unfairly by the law. You can’t fight seg- agreed to hear the appeal, and, in Janu- Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in , regation, say, by an appeal to tradition; ary, , upheld Snyder’s conviction in cast o the shackles of history with this segregation was an entrenched Ameri- a – opinion that proposed a standard guarantee: “No state shall make or en- can tradition. In , Plessy v. Fergu- for measuring the weight of tradition in force any law which shall abridge the son, essentially reprising Dred, cited the fundamental-rights cases, a standard privileges or immunities of citizens of “established usages, customs, and tradi- sometimes known as the history test. the United States; nor shall any state de- tions of the people” in arming the con- Some rights, like freedom of religion, prive any person of life, liberty, or prop- stitutionality of Jim Crow laws. In , are written down, which doesn’t always erty, without due process of law; nor deny to challenge such laws, Brown v. Board make them easier to secure; and some, to any person within its jurisdiction the of Education disavowed historical anal- like the right to marry, aren’t, which equal protection of the laws.” Then, in a ysis and cited, instead, social science: em- doesn’t mean that they’re less fundamen- series of cases in the early twentieth cen- pirical data. Meanwhile, Snyder was tal. The Constitution, as originally tury, the courts began applying parts of chiefly cited in appeals of murder con- drafted, did not include a bill of rights. the Bill of Rights to the states, mainly victions involving defendants who At the time, a lot of people thought that by way of the Fourteenth Amendment. claimed that their rights had been vio-

listing rights was a bad idea because, in Yet how would judges decide what lated. In , Justice William O. Douglas REA BRIAN ABOVE:

66 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 History written to win legal arguments has a dierent authority from history written to find out what happened.

ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN STAUFFER THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 67 cited Snyder in a – decision reversing Blackmun wrote. In turning back the library stacks. There is virtually no end the conviction of a Georgia sheri who hands of time, he didn’t stop there. “We of places in the historical record to look had arrested a young black man for steal- are told that, at the time of the Persian for the traditions and conscience of our ing a tire and then beaten him to death. Empire, abortifacients were known, and people, especially when “our people” is The killing was “shocking and revolting,” that criminal abortions were severely everyone. Originalism, a term coined in Douglas wrote, but it was impossible to punished. We are also told, however, that , asks judges to read only the books know whether the victim’s civil rights had abortion was practiced in Greek times on a single shelf in the library: the writ- been violated. In a fierce dissent, Francis as well as in the Roman Era, and that ‘it ings of delegates to the Constitutional Murphy argued that the reversal was ab- was resorted to without scruple.’ ” Roe Convention and the ratifying conven- surd: “Knowledge of a comprehensive overturned laws passed by state legisla- tions, the Federalist Papers, and a hand- law library is unnecessary for ocers of tures by appealing to ancient history. ful of other newspapers and pamphlets the law to know that the right to mur- William Rehnquist, in his dissent, cited published between and (and, der individuals in the course of their du- Snyder: “The fact that a majority of the occasionally, public records relating to ties is unrecognized in this nation.” States reflecting, after all, the majority debates over subsequent amendments, But, in recent decades, the history test sentiment in those States, have had re- especially the Fourteenth). Even more applied in cases like Snyder has quietly strictions on abortions for at least a cen- narrowly, some originalists insist on con- taken a special place; it has been used to tury is a strong indication, it seems to sulting only documents that convey the help determine the constitutionality of me, that the asserted right to an abor- “public understanding” of the writings everything from assisted suicide to de- tion is not ‘so rooted in the traditions of these great men. “If someone found portation, by the unlikely route of judi- and conscience of our people as to be a letter from George Washington to cial decisions about sex. History’s place ranked as fundamental.’ ” Martha telling her that what he meant in American jurisprudence took a turn Not coincidentally, liberals began ap- by the power to lay taxes was not what in , in Roe v. Wade, when the Court plying the history test to fundamental- other people meant,” Robert Bork once dusted o its incunabula and looked into rights cases at the very moment that wrote, “that would not change our read- what “history reveals about man’s atti- women and minorities were entering ing of the Constitution in the slightest.” tudes toward the abortion procedure over the historical profession and writing his- Roe, along with a series of civil-rights the centuries,” as Justice Harry Black- tory that liberal-minded judges might decisions made by the Warren Court, mun explained. Abortion had not been be able to cite. Conservatives, mean- fuelled the growth of a conservative legal a crime in Britain’s North American col- while, defined a new historical method: movement. The Federalist Society, onies, nor was it a crime in most parts originalism, a method with roots in the founded in a number of law schools in of the United States until after the Civil kind of analysis made in Dred Scott. , developed an intellectual tradition, War. “It perhaps is not generally appre- Originalism is essentially a very tightly promoted scholarship, and sought to ciated that the restrictive criminal abor- defined history test. Snyder’s invocation place its members on the courts. ( Jus- tion laws in eect in a majority of States of “the traditions and conscience of our tices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, today are of relatively recent vintage,” people” is like a reader’s pass to the along with Neil Gorsuch, who has been nominated to join them, are aliated with the Federalist Society.) Within five years of its founding, the society had chapters at more than seventy law schools. In , in a speech to the Federalist Society, Ronald Reagan’s Attorney Gen- eral, Edwin Meese, announced that “the Administration’s approach to constitu- tional interpretation” was to be “rooted in the text of the Constitution as illumi- nated by those who drafted, proposed, and ratified it.” He called this a “juris- prudence of original intention,” and con- trasted it with the “misuse of history” by jurists who saw, in the Constitution’s “spirit,” things like “concepts of human dignity,” with which they had turned the Constitution into a “charter for judicial activism.” Meese’s statement met with a reply from Justice William Brennan, who said that anyone who had ever studied in the archives knew better than to believe that the records of the Constitutional “For a better look at the painting, go to our Web site.” Convention and the ratifying conventions ofered so certain, exact, and singular a of what was at stake: the relationship verdict as that which Meese expected to between history and the law. find there. (Obama’s Supreme Court Scalia was the Court’s most deter- nominee Merrick B. Garland clerked for mined and eloquent originalist, but he Brennan.) Brennan called the idea that also frequently invoked tradition. In 1989, modern judges could discern the fram- writing for the majority in Michael H. v. ers’ original intention “little more than Gerald M., a case involving the asser- arrogance cloaked as humility.” tion of parental visitation rights, he ar- In opposing fundamental-rights ar- gued that finding rights “rooted in his- guments, though, the Reagan-era Court tory and tradition” required identifying used not only originalist arguments but the “most specific” tradition; Brennan, in also the history test. In June, 1986, the his dissent, questioned Scalia’s method, Court ruled, 5–4, in Bowers v. Hardwick, writing that the opinion’s “exclusively that the right to engage in homosexual historical analysis portends a significant sex was not rooted in tradition; instead, and unfortunate departure from our prior prohibitions on homosexual sex were cases and from sound constitutional de- rooted in tradition. Justice Byron White, cisionmaking.” As he had in his debate writing for the majority, said that these with Meese, Brennan charged Scalia prohibitions had “ancient roots.” In a with something between ignorance and concurring opinion, Justice Lewis Pow- duplicity. “It would be comforting to ell wrote, “I cannot say that conduct con- believe that a search for ‘tradition’ in- demned for hundreds of years has now volves nothing more idiosyncratic or become a fundamental right.” Black- complicated than poring through dusty mun, in his dissent, argued against this volumes on American history,” Bren- use of history: “I cannot agree that ei- nan wrote, but history is more compli- ther the length of time a majority has cated than that, “because reasonable held its convictions or the passions with people can disagree about the content which it defends them can withdraw of particular traditions, and because they legislation from this Court’s scrutiny.” can disagree even about which tradi- Antonin Scalia joined the Court in tions are relevant.” Even more funda- the next term. And, soon afterward, in mentally, Brennan argued that the ap- 1987, Reagan had the opportunity to ap- peal to tradition essentially nullifies the point another Justice, and named Rob- Fourteenth Amendment, whose whole ert Bork. Less than an hour after the point was to guarantee constitutional nomination was announced, Senator Ed- protections to those Americans who ward M. Kennedy called for Democrats had not been protected by the traditions to resist what he described as Reagan’s and consciences of other Americans. attempt to “impose his reactionary vision If less carefully observed than the de- of the Constitution on the Supreme Court bate over originalism, the debate over and on the next generation of Ameri- the history test has influenced judicial cans.” Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law nominations for decades. “A core ques- professor, testified in opposition to Bork’s tion is whether, in examining this na- nomination. But concerns about Bork’s tion’s history and tradition, the Court vantage on history were not limited to will protect only those interests supported liberal legal scholars. His most deter- by a specific and longlasting tradition, mined critics included the federal judge or whether the Court will not so con- Richard Posner, who wrote of Bork’s strict its analysis,” Senator Joseph Biden views, “There are other reasons for obey- said during hearings on David Souter’s ing a judicial decision besides the Court’s nomination, in 1990. (Biden had been ability to display, like the owner of a cham- coached by Tribe.) Souter’s answer—“It pion airedale, an impeccable pedigree for has got to be a quest for reliable evidence, the decision, connecting it to its remote and there may be reliable evidence of eighteenth-century ancestor.” In retro- great generality”—satisfied Democrats. spect, the way this debate reached the Liberal legal scholars, meanwhile, had public was mostly a distraction. The press grown increasingly alarmed by Scalia’s generally reduced the disagreement to a use of history: in a 1990 case, for exam- stubbornly partisan battle in which con- ple, he cited a book written in 1482 in servatives and the past squared of against a narrowing definition of due process, liberals and the future, and missed most and in a 1991 case he cited punishments

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 69 imposed during the reign of James II to ion by Chief Justice Burger indicate.” the past century and a half. “When the uphold a mandatory life sentence with- The tables had turned. Between Bow- Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in out the possibility of parole for the pos- ers and Lawrence, academic historians , every State limited marriage to one session of six hundred and fifty grams had produced a considerable body of schol- man and one woman, and no one doubted of cocaine. The legal scholar Erwin arship about the regulation of sexuality, the constitutionality of doing so,” he Chemerinsky argued that conservatives on which the Court was able to draw. Sca- said. “That resolves these cases.” on the Court had turned to history-test lia, in an uncharacteristically incoherent Liberal legal scholars disagree, and historicism because originalism is so dissent, mainly fumed about this, arguing Stone’s “Sex and the Constitution” is an patently flawed as a mode of constitu- that “whether homosexual sodomy was attempt to pull together all their evi- tional interpretation. (The framers weren’t prohibited by a law targeted at same-sex dence, for the sake of court battles to originalists; Brown v. Board can’t be sexual relations or by a more general law come. Ancient Greeks, Romans, and squared with originalism; originalism prohibiting both homosexual and hetero- Jews believed that sex was natural and can’t be reconciled with democratic sexual sodomy, the only relevant point is didn’t have a lot of rules about it, Stone self-government.) “The constant use of that it was criminalized—which suces argues. Early Christians, influenced by history to justify conservative results leads to establish that homosexual sodomy is Augustine of Hippo, who in the fifth to the cynical conclusion that the coun- not a right ‘deeply rooted in our Nation’s century decided that Adam and Eve had try has a seventeenth century Court as history and tradition.’ ” Scalia, in eect, been thrown out of the Garden of Eden it enters the twenty-first century,” Che- accused the majority of doing too much because of lust, decided that sex was a merinsky wrote in . “It is not enough historical research. sin, and condemned all sorts of things, to make one want to take all the history The inconsistency is perhaps best ex- including masturbation. Stone specu- books out of the Supreme Court’s li- plained by the Court’s wish to pretend lates that the medieval church’s condem- brary, but it makes one come close.” that it is not exercising judicial discre- nation of same-sex sex, a concern that tion. One legal scholar has suggested emerged in the eleventh century and write new history that the history test is like Dumbo’s that became pronounced in the writings O books. Georey R. Stone, a distin- feather. Dumbo can fly because he’s got of Thomas Aquinas, was a consequence guished professor and a former dean of big ears, but he doesn’t like having big of a new requirement: clerical celibacy. the University of Chicago Law School, ears, so he decides he can fly because According to Stone, Aquinas argued is a past chairman of the American Con- he’s got a magic feather. The Court has that the sins of mutual masturbation, stitution Society, which was founded, in got big, activist ears; it would rather be- oral sex, and anal sex were worse if they , as an answer to the Federalist So- lieve it’s got a magical history feather. involved two members of the same sex, ciety. His new book, “Sex and the Con- Lately, the field of argument, if not a position that became church dogma stitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from always of battle, in many fundamental- in the sixteenth century. America’s Origins to the Twenty-first rights cases has moved from the parch- During the Reformation, Protestants Century” (Liveright), locates “America’s ment pages of the Constitution to the redeemed one kind of sex: intercourse be- origins” in antiquity. Applying the his- clay of Mesopotamia. In Obergefell v. tween a married man and woman. (Mar- tory test to the regulation of sex, Stone Hodges, the Supreme Court deci- tin Luther argued that sex was as “nec- begins his inquiry in the sixth century sion that overturned state bans on same- essary to the nature of man as eating and B.C.E., and expands into a learned, il- sex marriage, Justice Kennedy, writing drinking.”) Protestants also rejected the luminating, and analytical compendium for the majority, reached back almost to Catholic Church’s condemnation of con- that brings together the extraordinary the earliest written records of human traception. But they believed that gov- research of a generation of historians in societies. “From their beginning to their ernments ought to regulate sexual behav- service of a constitutional call to arms. most recent page, the annals of human ior for the sake of public order. In the Stone started working on the book history reveal the transcendent impor- seventeenth century, most of England’s about a decade ago, not long after the tance of marriage,” he said. “Since the American colonies had an established re- Court reversed Bowers. In Lawrence v. dawn of history, marriage has trans- ligion, an arrangement that, a revolution Texas, in , the majority opinion formed strangers into relatives, binding later, they abdicated. overturned state sodomy laws by reject- families and societies together.” He cited Enlightenment philosophers rejected ing the history presented as evidence in Confucius. He quoted Cicero. The states Christian teachings about sex, and, be- Bowers. Colonial anti-sodomy laws did that wanted to ban same-sex marriage lieving in the pursuit of happiness, they exist, Kennedy wrote in Lawrence, but described its practice as a betrayal of that believed, too, in the pursuit of pleasure. they applied to everyone, not just to men; history, but Kennedy saw it as a contin- The Constitution and the Bill of Rights also, they were hardly ever enforced and uation, a testament to “the enduring im- say nothing about sex, of any kind, with “it was not until the ’s that any State portance of marriage.” Marriage is an anyone, under any circumstances. Nor singled out same-sex relations for crim- institution with “ancient origins,” Ken- do any of the original state constitutions. inal prosecution, and only nine States nedy said, but that doesn’t mean it’s Nor did any laws in any of the states, at have done so.” In short, Kennedy wrote, changeless. Scalia, in a heated dissent, the time of the founding, forbid sexual “the historical grounds relied upon in called Kennedy’s opinion “silly” and “pre- expression, or abortion before quicken- Bowers are more complex than the ma- tentious.” As a matter of historical anal- ing, and sodomy laws were seldom en- jority opinion and the concurring opin- ysis, Scalia mostly confined himself to forced. That changed in the first half of

70 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 the nineteenth century, when a religious revival led states to pass new laws, in- BRIEFLY NOTED cluding the first law against obscenity. A campaign against the long-standing practice of abortion began, followed by The New Odyssey, by Patrick Kingsley (Liveright). This chron- a crusade against contraception and, at icle of the refugee crisis—since , more than a million peo- the turn of the twentieth century, the ple from Africa, the Middle East, and beyond have tried to persecution of homosexuals. The cases reach Europe—argues that it is largely a manufactured disas- from Roe to Lawrence to Obergefell, ter, the result of insucient political will. The author accom- Stone suggests, constitute a revolution, panies migrants on perilous journeys across mountains, des- not a turning away but a turning back, erts, and the Mediterranean. He interviews trackers, toward the Enlightenment. volunteers, and overwhelmed bureaucrats. His lead character History written to win a legal argu- is a Syrian refugee, Hashem al-Souki, who makes a harrow- ment has a dierent claim to authority ing boat trip from Egypt to Italy, navigates Europe by foot than history written to find out what and rail, and seeks asylum in Sweden. As seen through Hash- happened. In a study of sex, Stone might em’s tired, tense eyes, the Continent is a place of mystery and have been interested in any number of danger. To avoid detection, he makes a show of reading local practices, but he has confined his inves- newspapers in each town he passes through. tigation to matters that are sources of ongoing constitutional and political de- My Utmost, by Macy Halford (Knopf ). This timely memoir seeks bate in the United States today: abor- to reconcile an evangelical upbringing in Texas with literary tion, contraception, obscenity, and sod- life in a godless New York. Halford’s Christian friends call her omy or homosexuality. Practices that an Esther—“heaven-sent to labor among the heathen.” With new were once crimes, like fornication and friends, Halford (who worked at this magazine) is self-conscious adultery, or that are still crimes, like in- about her love for Oswald Chambers’s daily devotional “My cest, infanticide, and rape, generally lie Utmost for His Highest,” a favorite of Jerry Falwell’s. Here she outside the scope of his concern. This reclaims Chambers, a turn-of-the-century Scottish minister, has the eect of obscuring the relation- as an artist manqué and a radical thinker. Wrestling with the ship between things he’s interested in way that her religion “condemned so much of what I loved,” and things he’s not interested in, and it she makes a persuasive case that “we all must learn to live with introduces a circularity: he has defined mystery, however clever we are, however much of it we dispel.” the scope of his study by drawing a line between what’s criminal and what’s not, Selection Day, by Aravind Adiga (Scribner). In this energetic sat- when how that line came to be drawn ire, two brothers from Mumbai’s slums hope to play for a local is the subject of his study. cricket team. Guided by their tyrannical father, who warns them The history of the regulation of sex- of “three principal dangers on their path to glory—premature uality, especially the parts he’s chosen shaving, pornography, and car driving”—they try to balance the to gloss over—which happen to be parts pressure of potential athletic glory with the challenges of ado- that particularly concern the vulnera- lescence and early adulthood. Though the characters sometimes bility of women and children—is a drift into caricature, Adiga’s barbed prose deftly skewers India’s chronicle of a staggeringly long reign tangled religious and class dynamics, and its literary stereotypes. of sanctioned brutality. That reign rests One character notes, “What we Indians want in literature, at on a claim on the bodies of women and least the kind written in English, is not literature at all, but flat- children, as a right of property, made by tery.” To his credit, Adiga oers none. men. “The page of history teems with woman’s wrongs,” Sarah Grimké wrote Memoirs of a Polar Bear, by Yoko Tawada, translated from the in . Stone only skimmed that page. German by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions). The imagined Or consider this page, from the Con- family history of Knut (-), an actual polar bear in Ber- gressional Record in , during the de- lin’s zoo, is the subject of this fable-like novel by a Japanese bate over the Fourteenth Amendment. writer based in Germany. Knut’s fictional grandmother re- Jacob Howard, a Republican senator tires from a circus and writes a celebrated autobiography, from Michigan, explained that the “Thunderous Applause for My Tears.” Her daughter aspires amendment “protects the black man in to be an actress, but, finding few roles, joins a circus, com- his fundamental rights as a citizen with muning with her keeper through dreams and eventually writ- the same shield which it throws over ing the keeper’s life story. Knut’s fame eclipses that of his the white man.” Howard assured his au- ancestors, but he has lost their powers of communication dience that the amendment did not and becomes isolated. Tawada’s strange, exquisite book toys guarantee black men the right to vote, with ideas of language, identity, and what it means to own even though he wished that it did, and someone else’s story or one’s own.

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 71 here he quoted James Madison, who’d sentially a medical problem,” the histor- lished for almost a thousand years. But written that “those who are to be bound ical record oers, at best, limited sup- what about acts of the executive branch? by laws, ought to have a voice in mak- port for the idea of a right to assisted Gorsuch said that if an executive agency ing them,” at which point Reverdy John- suicide and euthanasia. Gorsuch, an el- is acting like a judge its rulings are ret- son, a Democrat from Maryland, won- oquent and candid writer, has his doubts roactive, but if it’s acting like a legisla- dered how far such a proposition could about the history test. He writes, “The ture its rulings are prospective. That is, be extended, especially given the amend- history test, for all its promise of con- if the Board of Immigration Appeals ment’s use of the word “person”: straining judicial discretion, carries with makes a new policy, it can’t apply it to it a host of unanswered methodological people who made choices under the old M. J: Females as well as males? questions and does not always guaran- policy. The Tenth Circuit ruled in favor M. H: Mr. Madison does not say anything about females. tee the sort of certainty one might per- of Deniz. He still doesn’t have a green M. J: “Persons.” haps hope for.” card. That will likely take years. M. H: I believe Mr. Madison was Gorsuch may be dubious about the The chain of cases that are of inter- old enough and wise enough to take it for granted history test, but he happens to be a par- est to Stone in “Sex and the Constitu- that there was such a thing as the law o nature ticularly subtle scholar of precedent. tion” will be revisited by a newly con- which has a certain inuence even in political aairs, and that by that law women and children (He’s a co-author of a new book, “The stituted Supreme Court, once Scalia’s are not regarded as the equals o men. Law of Judicial Precedent”; Scalia had replacement finally takes a seat. More been meant to write the foreword.) immediately, though, the Court will be History isn’t a feather. It’s an albatross. And he’s written powerfully about the asked to rule on the due-process and relationship between history and the equal-protection-violation claims made , delivered law. In , Gorsuch wrote an opin- in opposition to President Trump’s early L a memorial tribute to Scalia, in ion in a case that concerned Alfonzo executive orders, as a matter of federal which he said that the Justice’s great- Deniz Robles. Deniz, a Mexican citi- law. “A temporary absence from the est contribution to jurisprudence was zen, twice entered the United States country does not deprive longtime res- his commitment to historical inquiry. illegally. He married an American cit- idents of their right to due process,” Gorsuch said that Scalia had reminded izen, and had four children. In , eighteen state attorneys general and oth- legal scholars that, rather than contem- the Tenth Circuit court ruled that an ers argued in a brief challenging the plating the future, “judges should in- immigrant in Deniz’s position was Trump Administration’s travel ban. Gor- stead strive (if humanly and so imper- grandfathered into a lapsed program such’s several rulings urging restraint of fectly) to apply the law as it is, focusing that allowed him to pay a fine and apply the executive branch carry a particular backward, not forward.” for residency, so Deniz applied for a weight in this new political moment, in Scalia spent much of his career ar- visa. The government held up his ap- which the history test is already being guing for the importance of history in plication for years, and by the time it applied to those orders. “The framers the interpretation of the law. “If ideo- was reviewed the Board of Immigra- worried that placing the power to leg- logical judging is the malady,” Scalia said tion Appeals, an executive agency, over- islate, prosecute, and jail in the hands in , “the avowed application of such ruled the court, requiring him to leave of the Executive would invite the sort personal preferences will surely hasten the country for ten years before apply- of tyranny they experienced at the hands the patient’s demise, and the use of his- ing for residency. (“It was, like, Today of a whimsical king,” Gorsuch wrote in tory is far closer to being the cure than you can wear a purple hat but tomor- a dissent from . A lot of people are being the disease.” row you can’t,” Deniz’s wife, Teresa, told still worried about that. Gorsuch’s account of this debate is me. “It was mind-boggling.”) Deniz Alfonzo and Teresa Deniz, who live more measured. Whose history? How appealed, on the ground that his rights in Wyoming with their kids, have so far back? “In due process cases, the Su- to due process had been violated. far spent more than forty thousand dol- preme Court has frequently looked not The appeal reached Gorsuch’s court lars on legal fees. They’ve got another only to this nation’s history, but also to in , at which point immigration ser- court date, on March st, the day after English common law,” Gorsuch has writ- vices told Deniz, as Gorsuch explained, the Senate Judiciary Committee begins ten. “But why stop there? Why not ex- “that he’d have to start the decade- hearings on Gorsuch’s nomination. The amine Roman or Greek or some other long clock now even though if he’d law keeps changing. “You hear a lot of ancient precedent as, say, Justice Black- known back in that this was his things,” Teresa told me. “It’s scary.” She’s mun did in his opinion for the Court in only option, his wait would be almost terrified that her children will lose their Roe v. Wade? And what about contem- over.” Writing for the court, Gorsuch father. I asked Teresa if she and her hus- porary experience in other Western coun- explained that judicial reasoning is al- band had ever met Neil Gorsuch. She tries?” His book on assisted suicide con- ways backward-looking, while legisla- said no. She didn’t know that he’d been tains a chapter, called “The Debate Over tion is forward-looking; he cited a thir- nominated to the Supreme Court. I History,” that applies the history test to teenth-century English jurist to establish asked her if she had a message for the the question of the right to die. He began that the presumption against retroactive Court. “Look at the families,” she said. his survey with Plato, hopscotched across legislation is nearly as old as common She began to cry. She said, “I just hope the centuries, and decided that, while a law, and the retrospective eect of judi- that they can come up with something consensus had grown “that suicide is es- cial decisions, he said, has been estab- that is justice.” 

72 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 for his life. Kosinski turned those stories BOOKS into his first novel, “The Painted Bird” (), which, for a time, was consid- ered a major work of Holocaust liter- LIFE AS FICTION ature. The book takes its name from an emblematic act of cruelty: a peas- A novel about the novelist Jerzy Kosinski. ant, unusually skilled at trapping birds, paints his captives before releasing BY RUTH FRANKLIN them, then watches as the rest of the flock, failing to recognize their former comrades, brutally attack them. It was universally assumed that Ko- sinski was the painted bird of the title, and that the book, like the stories its author so often told about his life, was autobiographical. Elie Wiesel endorsed it as a chronicle of “unusual power”; others marvelled that Kosinski had written it in English, given that it was not his first language. Its successor, “Steps”—which David Foster Wallace later described as a “collection of un- believably creepy little allegorical tab- leaux done in a terse elegant voice that’s like nothing else anywhere ever”—won the National Book Award for fiction in . Kosinski married the widow of a wealthy steel magnate and became friendly with numerous celebrities, in- cluding Peter Sellers, who starred in the hit movie made from “Being There,” Kosinski’s third novel. But, just a few months after the Times Magazine profile, an article in the Village Voice alleged that the stories in “The Painted Bird” were inconsis- tent and, perhaps, merely imaginary. It gradually emerged that Kosinski had not spent the war alone and at the mercy of Polish peasants; he and his parents went into hiding, living as Christians under assumed names. Fur- , , the Pol- a “connoisseur of survivors,” Gelb wrote thermore, the exposé accused him of I ish-American novelist and literary that of all the Holocaust survivors she employing assistants to help him write celebrity, appeared on the cover of knew Kosinski was both the most dam- the novel and his other books. Sworn the Times Magazine, photographed by aged—“psychically and physically”— to secrecy, uncredited, and sometimes Annie Leibovitz. Naked to the waist, and the most candid about it: “starkly unpaid, the assistants claimed to have his shoulder leaning against a stable in his fiction, wittily in the drawing translated chapters of “The Painted door, he wore polo boots and tight room.” Bird” from Kosinski’s Polish original white riding pants; horse tack dangled In the nineteen-sixties, Kosinski had and even to have rewritten the bulk of whiplike from his left hand. His skin become famous in Manhattan literary his later manuscripts. Kosinski denied was bronzed and glistening, his chest circles for his astonishing tales about these claims, but he never recovered hairless, his expression opaque: stern, the brutalities he had suered during his prestige. In , he killed himself, wary, perhaps a little confrontational. the war. Abandoned by his parents at and many attributed his suicide to the The accompanying article, a fawning the age of six, he claimed, he had roamed decline of his reputation and career. profile by Barbara Gelb, labelled him the countryside alone, witnessing rape, That is the outline of Kosinski’s “the ultimate survivor.” Calling herself murder, and incest, constantly fearing story, as well as it can be separated from the myths he wove around it.

INGE MORATH/THE INGE MORATH FOUNDATION/MAGNUM MORATH INGE MORATH/THE INGE Kosinski’s tales of wartime Poland made, and unmade, his reputation. A comprehensive biography by

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 73 James Park Sloan concludes that the her dacha. Alone in a strange country, invest much feeling in someone so mad- Village Voice got it right, regarding both separated from her children, she is un- deningly indeterminate. Often he seems Kosinski’s wartime experiences and impressed by the “nest of perfect little almost like a stock figure, performing the editorial assistance he sought and streets” but glad to be able to pursue the role of Jerzy Kosinski before a cred- received on his novels. But the figure her fascination with American litera- ulous audience. Ian, sent by Sellers to at its center remains as enigmatic as ture, which her father forbade her to visit him, sees him as “a dapper bird of his expression in the Leibovitz por- read. On the bookshelves of the house prey, with piercing dark eyes and a trait. Kosinski’s motto, Sloan writes, she rents, she finds a copy of “The prominent beak,” an adult version of was larvatus prodeo: “I go forth in dis- Painted Bird,” and the book speaks to the “bird-boy” of his book. At a cock- guise.” Was he indeed a painted bird— her feelings of loss and abandonment. tail party they attend together, he is cast out, forced to conceal his identity, “I, too, was a war orphan, though my “the jester king,” entertaining the host- abused, his encounters with others father was still alive in ’ and ’—he ess’s “suitors and sycophants with tales resulting only in brutality? Or was he had abandoned me to save the moth- of his childhood,” though some atten- also a bird painter, blending fact and erland. But I had felt the same terror tive listeners discover “inconsistencies fiction in his own life and the lives of as that little boy.” The claim would be in the fabric.” At one point, Kosinski others in a way that was deliberately outrageous if “The Painted Bird” were the character tricks Sellers by hiding deceitful, even sadistic? truly a Holocaust chronicle, but our within the cushions of a sofa, a prank knowledge of the book’s fraudulence for which, in real life, Kosinski was fa- “” (Bellevue Literary Press), makes the idea seem legitimate. mous. Rather than yielding new in- I a fictional fantasia on the life of Ko- Lana, as she calls herself—many sights into Kosinski, this section of the sinski, Jerome Charyn seeks less to an- characters in this book go by multiple book mainly rehearses familiar stories swer these questions than to dance in names—seeks out Kosinski. In a dark about him. “The book was a replica of circles around them. In a career span- corner of the Nassau Inn, they hold his secret life, and the monstrosities he ning more than fifty years, Charyn has hands and exchange intimacies, he revealed had the sting of truth. . . . Even published thirty novels, including, in with a glass of buttermilk (he claims if some ghost had helped guide Kosin- , “The Secret Life of Emily Dick- to have an allergy to alcohol), she over ski’s hand, there was still nothing else inson,” which narrates a fictional version a plate of strawberry shortcake (“as remotely like The Painted Bird,” Ian of the poet’s life in her own voice—a close as I could ever get to a charlotte concludes, inconclusively. literary license at which some readers russe”). He tells her that he once spied In Kosinski’s novel, the peasant who took oense. This time, he has chosen for the Polish secret service, deliber- paints birds does so when the woman a more circumspect approach, telling ately providing misleading testimony: he loves fails to appear at the spot Kosinski’s story primarily from the per- “That was my beginning as a novel- where they normally meet for erotic spectives of various characters who en- ist—lies, lies, lies. . . . I lie even while encounters. He isn’t motivated sim- counter him: Ian, Peter Sellers’s driver, I speak the truth.” He also admits ply by cruelty; his violence is an angry who is tasked with persuading Kosin- that he is a “fraud” who “cannot write reaction to the romantic rejection ski to allow his boss to play the lead my own novels without a helper.” They he feels. Charyn’s Jerzy, too, is often role in “Being There”; Svetlana Allilu- take trips together to Atlantic City in the role of unrequited—or per- yeva, Stalin’s daughter, who met Kosin- and New York, she pretending to haps unsatisfiable—lover. This is most ski when they were briefly neighbors be a tsarevna and he dressing as her evident in the episode related by Anna in Princeton; Kosinski’s first wife, here chaueur; they have a running gag Karenina, the dominatrix, who calls her- a petroleum-jelly heiress “cast out of based on Gogol’s story “The Nose,” self Kosinski’s “heartbeat as a writer.” the Social Register after her recent mar- and in the Rainbow Room Kosinski She, too, lives in disguise; her real name riage to a Polish parvenu”; and a dom- introduces himself as “General Gogol,” is Anita Goldstein—she mostly goes inatrix who goes by the moniker Anna her military aide. But eventually she by Anya—and she comes not from Karenina. Kosinski slips in and out of runs away from him, weary of his sa- Budapest, as she claims, but from the their fragmented narratives, a presence distic games. “He picked at whatever Bronx, Charyn’s own home town. The at once signally important and mad- sores and wounds I had—his love was author of a lesbian porn novel, she deningly elusive. shot through with hate. He clawed at hosts a literary salon, which Kosin- Of these figures, Svetlana Allilu- my weaknesses while he held my hand,” ski attends shortly after his arrival in yeva is the least fictionalized. Per- she says. This seems an apt descrip- America. When he tells her of the haps not coincidentally, she is the tion of what it might have been like atrocities he suered, she insists that book’s most fully drawn character. Hav- to love, or to be loved by, the author he write them down. But the book ing escaped from her father’s Soviet of “The Painted Bird.” he produced was “chaotic, without a Union—“I was put on display like a Only in this episode does Kosinski fine thread.” museum piece, told whom to marry, come vividly into focus. His opacity is Then they encounter Gabriela, a whom not to see”—she is nonplussed perhaps appropriate, given that the ac- gorgeous red-haired orphan who has to find herself in suburban Princeton, tual Kosinski was a figure almost lost been jailed for prostitution. Both fall a place she chose because she’d heard beneath his layers of imposture, but, as in love with her, enacting sexual fan- the countryside would remind her of the book goes on, it becomes harder to tasies in which she plays Little Red

74 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 Riding Hood and they play the wolf. But more important than the erotic spell she casts is the magic she is able to work with Kosinski’s novel. “Be- cause she herself had been abandoned and abused, the abandoned boy of The Painted Bird must have seemed like her own lost twin,” Anya says. “And with little strokes—a word and a line here and there—she restored pieces of the missing thread.” As in the case of Svetlana’s identification with Kosin- ski’s novel, Charyn suggests, persua- sively, that the value of “The Painted Bird” does not rest on its literal verac- ity as a Holocaust chronicle but on its power as a metaphor for the human condition. “We’re all painted birds, freaks with our own eccentric color- ing, and wherever we fly, the unpainted birds peck at us and drag us to the ground,” Gabriela tells Anya. “Then we’ll disguise our feathers,” Anya re- sponds, but Gabriela is unimpressed: “And be like every other unpainted bird? Thank you, Auntie, but I’ll keep my color.” It is a choice, one feels, that Kosin- ski would also have made. The final section of Charyn’s novel reimagines parts of “The Painted Bird” as they might actually have taken place—a moving attempt to envision the real wartime traumas that led Kosinski to invent fake ones. Jerzy’s father is a mas- ter strategist who employs a variety of desperate measures to preserve his fam- ily, even adopting a blond Gentile child to serve as a decoy. His mother has a secret of her own and enlists her son to help protect it. During these forma- tive years, Jerzy develops a taste for the life of a spy and for the power that a secret-holder can wield, and he learns to fear the potentially fatal consequences of exposure. Charyn doesn’t try to provide a def- inite answer to the crucial question of why Kosinski passed of his most fa- mous book as something it was not, but this last section goes some way to- ward suggesting why he felt the need to conceal himself behind a mask. Per- haps, like its creator, “The Painted Bird” had to go forth in disguise. In this way Kosinski was indeed the ultimate sur- vivor, though not in the way that Bar- bara Gelb meant. He never ceased to play the role that had saved him. 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 75 thousands. The curators have opted THE ART WORLD for depth over breadth, aording many of the artists what amounts to pocket solo shows. The criteria seem to be WHAT’S NEW? technical skill and engaging subject matter, with formal aesthetics taking The Whitney Biennial arrives at an unexpected political moment. third place. Most substantial, on all counts, are the works by several paint- BY PETER SCHJELDAHL ers, in a striking comeback for a me- dium that was often sidelined in the Biennials of the past two decades. The revival may reflect a market that is ever avid for things to adorn walls, but I think it also fulfills a desire for re- lief from our pixelated ambience. Dana Schutz is a new master, with subjects that are frankly goofy—people and giant insects piled together in an el- evator, for instance—but which she renders with powerfully volumetric, big-brushed forms that are at once lyrical and monumental. Jo Baer, fa- mous half a century ago for her min- imalist abstractions, astonishes with perfectly scaled, sensitive paintings, on gray fields, of mingled artifacts, buildings, and landscapes that are red- olent of cultures ancient, medieval, and modern. The work in the Biennial that you are most apt to remember, “The Meat Grinder’s Iron Clothes” (), by the Los Angeles artist Samara Golden, marries technique and storytelling on Painting makes a striking comeback: Dana Schutz’s “Elevator” (). a grandiose scale. Golden has con- structed eight miniaturized sets of Whitney Biennial at any concerted will to “resist” awk- elaborately furnished domestic, cere- T the museum’s two-year-old down- ward for those whose careers depend monial, and institutional interiors. town digs (owing to the move, it on rich collectors and élite institu- They sit on top of and are mounted, comes a year late) aims “to gauge the tions, sitting ducks for plain-folk re- upside down, beneath tiers that frame state of art in America today.” The sentment. Of course, artists are alert one of the Whitney’s tall and wide result, which is earnestly attentive to to ironies. The near future promises window views of the Hudson River. political moods and themes, already surprising reactions and adaptations Surrounding mirrors multiply the sets feels nostalgic. Most of the works to the new world disorder. But, for upward, downward, and sideways, to were chosen before last year’s Presi- now, all former bets are o. The ones infinity. To reach a platform with a dential election. Remember back placed by the Biennial’s curators, midpoint view of the work, you as- then? Worry, but not yet alarm, per- Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks, cend darkened ramps, on which om- meated the cosmopolitan archipel- preface an unfolding saga in which, inous hums, bongs, and whooshes can ago of new art’s creators, functionar- willy-nilly, all of us are characters. be heard. Concealed fans add breezes. ies, and fans. Now there’s a storm. The show is winningly theatrical Politics percolate in evocations of so- The Age of Trump erodes assump- in its use of the Whitney’s majestic cial class and function, with verisimil- tions about art’s role as a barome- new spaces. Lew and Locks sensibly itude tipping toward the surreal in, for ter—and sometime engine—of so- show far fewer participants than in example, a set that suggests at once a cial change. Radicalism has lurched the Biennial—sixty-three, down beauty parlor, a medical facility, and to the right, and populist national- from a hundred and three—given the a prison. But the work’s main appeal ism, though it has had little creative futility of trying to comprehend the is its stunning labor- intensiveness: influence so far, challenges sophisti- ranks of serious artists, swelled by sofas and chairs finely upholstered, cated art’s presumption to the crown the field’s wealth and glamour, who tiny medical instruments gleaming

of American culture. The crisis makes have come to number in the many on wheeled carts. Golden is the most BILLORCUTT CONTEMPORARYBERLIN;ANDFINEARTS, PHOTOGRAPH: SCHUTZ/PETZEL GALLERY DANA COURTESY

76 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 ambitious of several artists in the show (2017), by Asad Raza, who is from who appear bent on rivalling Holly- Bufalo and divides his time between wood production design, with a nearly New York and Brussels. The piece is uniform level of skill. I’m reminded composed of twenty-six trees in pro- of a friend’s remark, apropos of the gressive stages of budding, leafing, and recent New York art fairs: “I thought blooming, in the accelerated spring of I missed good art, but that’s always a gallery that has a sunrise-facing glass rare. What I miss is bad art.” wall. On-site caretakers will inform Political causes register in mostly you, in eager detail, about the varie- understated ways, as with suites of ties: cherry, birch, persimmon, and photographs or videos pertaining to others. You may find it hard to tell the racial, ethnic, and gender identities. forest from (forgive me) the twee, the Again, you will seek bad art in vain, piece is so wholesome. It’s pretty, unless you count the crude-on-pur- though. For a savage antidote, nearby pose banners by the California-born there’s “Real Violence” (2017), by the Chicago artist Cauleen Smith, with shockmeister Jordan Wolfson, who their perfunctory design and mes- caused a stir at the David Zwirner sages of laconic anguish. (One reads, Gallery, last year, with a huge robotic “No wonder I go under.”) Also rug- mechanism of chains and pulleys that ged, quite efectively, are the satiric dragged and slammed around the room paintings and drawings by Celeste a life-size puppet with a face like Dupuy-Spencer, a New Yorker trans- Howdy Doody’s and pleading video planted to Los Angeles, whose tar- eyes. Here Wolfson provides virtual- gets range from narcissistic leftists to reality headsets for a video of him the crowd at a Trump rally (the lat- bashing the head of another man with ter is subtitled “And some of them I a baseball bat, on a street lined with assume are good people”). L.A. is also ofce buildings, to the accompani- represented by two much discussed ment of the sung Hanukkah prayer. artists: Rafa Esparza, who has cre- Your discomfort is first abetted and ated a room of handmade adobe then abated by the continual twitch- bricks, as a shelter for works by other ing of the victim, whom a single blow artists, and Henry Taylor, who ofers should have quieted. How Wolfson a stark painting, in his more usually made what is in fact an animatronic infectious Expressionist manner, of a doll appear real is a mystery typical black man killed by the police. of new art’s galloping technological Staggeringly beautiful, in image novelties, and one likely to become and sound (including an orchestral old hat in short order. (I don’t know version of “Stormy Weather” that about you, but V.R. makes me feel less just about made me cry), is a docu- transported to another place than elim- mentary video shot on an Aleut-pop- inated from it.) ulated island in the Bering Sea, by As jazzy as many of the works in Sky Hopinka, a Native American this Biennial are, there’s an air of com- from Washington State. The show’s placent calm: so many tasks superbly most strident agitprop is “Debtfair” completed, so many social issues re- (2012-17), an enormous installation sponsibly advanced, so much profes- by a largely New York-based group, sionalism in evidence. Engineers some- Occupy Museums, which emerged times say that a machine works with from the Occupy Wall Street cam- maximum efciency just before it paign. In text and in a mélange of breaks. That’s my feeling about this mediums, the piece expounds on the show’s beamish collegiality, and it plight of contemporary artists bur- might have been the same, only less dened by financial debt, mainly from painfully, were Hillary Clinton in the student loans, relative to the profiteers White House. Times of social up- of the booming art-as-asset econ- heaval throw artists back on recon- omy. Incorporated works are for sale, ceiving their purpose and on choos- at prices related to how much the ing whether to address public afairs artists owe. or to maintain refuge from them. An- Ecological activism has an inning guish is assured. Conflicts are proba- with “Root sequence. Mother tongue” ble. The next Biennial bodes drama. 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 77 are expanded roles for the wardrobe THE CURRENT CINEMA (Audra McDonald) and the flirtatious feather duster (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), whom Lumière likes to whisk o her PRETTY AND GRITTY feet. New to the game is a self-playing harpsichord (Stanley Tucci), who, in “Beauty and the Beast” and “T Trainspotting.” battle, fires his ivory keys like darts from a crossbow. Diversity reigns, and the BY ANTHONY LANE finale puts a pair of waltzers into a same- sex clinch. Talk about a happy ending. In the meantime, something odd has happened to the music. In addition to the songs by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman, which were surgi- cally implanted into the ears of chil- dren and their parents more than a quar- ter of a century ago, and which retain an indisputable charm, we are granted a smattering of mini-songs by Menken and Tim Rice, which seem to start awk- wardly or to be sliced o in their prime: one to accompany a dance, for exam- ple, and another to be crooned by Mau- rice at his workbench. The Beast has a freshly minted lament, “For Evermore,” and his servants join forces for “Days in the Sun.” The hitch with these ad- denda is not their emotional gentility, Emma Watson is Belle and Dan Stevens is the Beast in Bill Condon’s movie. which is a Disney staple, or Rice’s lyr- ics (though Ashman’s are still the snap- the latest Disney pro- scene, how far have you actually strayed pier), but our growing sense that the T duction, “Beauty and the Beast,” is beyond the cartoon? Disney is set on narrative is being held up rather than oering something brand-new would submitting its famous features to this advanced. Indeed, in one instance, it be wide of the mark. A scholarly paper brand of reboot (we have already had gets wound back, as Belle and the Beast published last year presented “phyloge- “The Jungle Book,” and “Dumbo” are wafted by wizardry to a crumbling netic analyses” of famous folktales, as- awaits), but, given the congestion of loft, which she suddenly serenades: “This sessed “the posterior probability of an- special eects involved, the action is is the Paris of my childhood.” Quoi? cestral states,” and estimated that the scarcely live. It’s in limbo. If there’s one thing we don’t need origins of “Beauty and the Beast” date The plot, like much of the dialogue, here, it’s a backstory. And, if there’s one back to “between and years is preserved intact from . Once thing the movie does demand, it’s a ago.” All of which means that Disney’s again, we find the bookish Belle (Emma dose of pep and ginger in the heroine, costume designers had ample opportu- Watson) living in a village, worshipped plus an urge to pump up the volume. nity to prepare themselves, and no ex- by her father, Maurice (Kevin Kline), Emma Watson delivers her melodies cuse for not getting that butter-yellow and wooed without cease—or success— purely, demurely, and cleanly on the ball gown just right. by the vainglorious Gaston (Luke note, like a chorister, but that is not This year’s version of the legend, di- Evans). Maurice goes astray and arrives enough. Heaven knows, Julie Andrews rected by Bill Condon, is deeply in debt at a spellbound castle, where he warms was equally sweet in “The Sound of to Disney’s previous eort, which came his posterior probability against an open Music,” but she could also let rip with out in and became the first ani- hearth. Having foolishly picked a rose, “I Have Confidence,” arms flung wide, mated film to be nominated for Best he is made captive by the Beast (Dan as if to confess that sweetness alone Picture at the Oscars. Condon’s movie Stevens), the monster formerly known would get you nowhere. Belle, dissing is a live-action aair, stued with real as prince. He owns the joint, and pines the local meathead and straining at the actors, although in many cases the re- for the day when he will be sprung from leash of her environment, marked a leap ality is stretched and squeezed beyond his uglifying hex by the touch of love. in Disney, when the role was sung by recognition. If you cast Ewan McGre- Cue Belle, who turns up and takes her Paige O’Hara, in , and the oomph gor as Lumière, a manservant who has father’s place. Also in residence, along of her carolling signalled her intent. been transformed into a talking cande- with Lumière, are Cogsworth the clock The voice, for Belle as well as for Fräu- labra, and whom we don’t see in the (Ian McKellen), Mrs. Potts the teapot lein Maria, is the character, and Wat- flesh—heavily wigged—until the final (Emma Thompson), and so forth. There son, though she radiates a sane and

78 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY MALIKA FAVRE freckled healthiness, is too weak in the plucking. Stevens’s horns are no prob- Bremner), better known as Spud, is too pipes to grab you by the ears and make lem; horniness, no way. What the films much of a junkie to care, but Simon the film her own. provide, as compensation, is a banquet Williamson (Jonny Lee Miller), or Sick Dan Stevens, dimly discernible under of the decent and the sumptuous, where Boy, is at least half-bent on revenge, a hundredweight of pelt, has more luck. filigrees of gold float through the air and the terrifying Francis Begbie (Rob- He lends a bite of urgency to his songs, and land on the silk of a dress. You can ert Carlyle), or Franco, can think of lit- and rarely skips a chance to claw at his see where the money went (a hundred tle else. Given that Franco would sooner plight, even risking a wry amusement. and sixty million dollars of it), and try inscribe your face with a broken glass “I had an expensive education,” he says, to calculate how many multiples of that than buy you a drink, Renton needs to on the threshold of his massive library. sum “Beauty and the Beast” will yield. watch out. (As if reading ever helped.) What Ste- It feels both looser and beefier than the Like “Beauty and the Beast,” Boyle’s vens does, in other words, is refine the movie, running forty-five minutes movie glances backward, though its basic Beastly idea—the boor whose longer and lacking its compacted de- mission is not to refurbish the old but heart is gentle—with a glumly sophis- lights, and Condon cannot lay a paw to try, however grudgingly, to shake it ticated wit. It’s a daring move, yet it on Cocteau. Still, the sheer dexterity is o—not a bad image for Britain, both comes at a price: he’s not scary. When overwhelming, and only the sternest north and south of the border. The Belle commands him, at their initial viewer will be able to resist the onslaught mission fails: “Where I come from, the meeting, to “come into the light,” she of such thoroughly marketed magic. past is something to forget, but here hardly bothers to quake at what ap- “Beauty and the Beast” is delectably it’s all you talk about.” Such are the pears. I hope that I’m wrong, and that done; when it’s over, though, and when wise words of Veronika (Anjela Nedyal- children rear back from this ogre as the spell is snapped, it melts away, like kova), Sick Boy’s Bulgarian girlfriend, their grandparents did from the witch cotton candy on the tongue. with whom he plans to open a shiny in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” new brothel. (Or “an artisanal bed-and- After all, if fear is easily mastered, with- Ewan McGregor, these breakfast experience,” as Renton refers out a struggle, then you have no fairy F are confusing times. One moment, to it, when they apply for a develop- tale to speak of. Jean Cocteau knew as he’s a kind of haunted candlestick, wax- ment grant from the European Union; much, and that is why, in “La Belle et ing lyrical in a flickering French ac- so that’s why Scotland voted against la Bête,” his remolding of the story, cent; the next, he’s knocking around Brexit.) “T” cannot hope to break the Belle admits, with a dreamy look, “I like Edinburgh, getting clobbered with pool mold, as “Trainspotting” did, but Boyle being frightened.” cues in lousy pubs, scoring heroin, and and his cast rifle eagerly through the Something else clings to that un- loosing o lavish curses in his native shards: a motley of plot scraps, crazed withering movie, much as it hovers burr. The film in question is “T Train- camera angles, flashbacks, trips, sight around the ancient myth: the scent of spotting,” directed by Danny Boyle, gags, and musical yelps. When Sick sex. Remember the fur throw that slides and how he managed to sneak that title Boy chides his pal for being “a tourist o the bed, the smoke that reeks from past the makers of “Terminator : Judg- in your own youth,” you start to won- the Beast after a kill, and his sublime ment Day” I haven’t a clue. der: is Boyle rebuking himself, ward- observation to Belle, once her yearning It is twenty years since the events ing o accusations of nostalgia, or—as has switched him back into a prince: of “Trainspotting,” and Renton (Mc- I like to think—grappling with the “It’s as though you missed my ugliness.” Gregor), less whip-thin than he used sadness and the madness of being ad- The lady preferred the animal. Such to be, is back in town. His partners dicted to the highs of your lost life?  thoughts are out of bounds, needless to in crime are still there, and they say, in the Disney garden, where the haven’t forgotten that he fled, long ago, NEWYORKER.COM rose of desire is definitely not for the with the loot. Daniel Murphy (Ewen Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 27, 2017 79 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three nalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Jason Adam Katzenstein, must be received by Sunday, March th. The nalists in the March th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the nalists in this week’s contest, in the April th 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

“Personally, I’m not a big fan of modern architecture.” Peter Bonelli, Atlantic Beach, Fla.

“I invented re. He invested in it.” “No, you grow up.” John Pistell, Stony Brook, N.Y. Eric Behrens, Austin, Tex.

“Getting past the guard is easy. How do we remove the paintings?” Clinton Guthrie, Queens, N.Y.