PRICE $8.99 JAN. 16, 2017

JANUARY 16, 2017

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

THE TALK OF THE TOWN Jelani Cobb on King Day then and now; Trump’s neighbor; an app for lonely teens; Silas Farley; child sex-tracking. ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS Vinson Cunningham Making God Famous Kirk Franklin pushes the boundaries of gospel. SHOUTS & MURMURS Calvin Trillin Tossing and Turning ANNALS OF FINANCE Sheelah Kolhatkar Total Return When the feds went after a hedge-fund legend. A R E P O RT E R AT L A RG E Ian Parker The Culling Why would a zoo shoot a girae?

PROFILES Rachel Aviv Surviving Solitary A Black Panther’s long road to freedom.

FICTION Thomas Pierce “Chairman Spaceman”

THE CRITICS BOOKS David Denby Steven Spielberg at seventy. Briefly Noted A C R I T I C AT L A RG E Adam Gopnik A new look at Montaigne. THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane “The Founder,” “The Ardennes.”

POEMS To m S l e i g h “The Fox” Corey Van Landingham “Gilly’s Bowl & Grille”

COVER Kadir Nelson “After Dr. King”

DRAWINGS Danny Shanahan, Drew Dernavich, Tom Toro, Seth Fleishman, Will McPhail, Edward Koren, Frank Cotham, Carolita Johnson, Michael Crawford, Harry Bliss, Matthew Diee, Pat Byrnes, Roz Chast, Liana Finck, William Haefeli, Robert Leighton, Michael Maslin, Bruce Eric Kaplan SPOTS Marc Rosenthal CONTRIBUTORS

Sheelah Kolhatkar (“Total Return,” Rachel Aviv (“Surviving Solitary,” p. 54) p. 34) became a staf writer in 2016. Her won a 2015 Scripps Howard Award for book, “Black Edge: Inside Information, her New Yorker story “Your Son Is De- Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring ceased,” about police shootings. Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street,” will be published in February. Rebecca Mead (The Talk of the Town, p. 24) has been a staf writer since Kadir Nelson (Cover) is an artist whose 1997. “My Life in Middlemarch” is her work will be included in the Society of latest book. Illustrators’ exhibition “Illustrators 59: Book and Editorial,” on view Febru- Thomas Pierce (Fiction, p. 68) is the au- ary 1st-26th. thor of the short-story collection “Hall of Small Mammals.” His novel, “The Vinson Cunningham (“Making God Fa- Afterlives,” will be published this year. mous,” p. 26) is a staf writer. Adam Gopnik (A Critic at Large, p. 81), Corey Van Landingham (Poem, p. 58), a staf writer, began writing for The New the author of the poetry collection “An- Yorker in 1986. He is the author of “The tidote,” was awarded a 2017 National Table Comes First.” Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Charles Bethea (The Talk of the Town, Ian Parker (“The Culling,” p. 42) has p. 23) has been contributing to the mag- been a staf writer since 2000. azine since 2008. His work also fre- quently appears in Outside. David Denby (Books, p. 76), a staf writer and a former film critic for the maga- Calvin Trillin (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 33) zine, is the author of “Lit Up: One Re- is the author of “No Fair! No Fair!: And porter. Three Schools. Twenty-four Other Jolly Poems of Childhood,” with Books That Can Change Lives.” illustrations by Roz Chast.

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2 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 THE MAIL

MOSUL’S OTHER CRISIS and these labels ignore their key similar- ity: they both risked everything to reveal Thank you for Dexter Filkins’s recent ar- lies propagated by the government and ticle about the grave risk that the Mosul by private corporations. In instance after Dam poses to Iraq (“Before the Flood,” instance, it is an individual—a bureau- January 2nd). Large dams, relying on shaky crat, a contractor, a soldier, or a private science (or ignoring good science), have citizen—who justly changes the course for decades devoured development funds of civil society by protesting against the while creating more problems than they’ve law. To enter the Trump era with an ar- solved. Dams are often built under au- ticle that seems to cast judgment on the thoritarian regimes, exacerbating political person who has told the most important instability while destroying many citizens’ truths in decades about state overreach lives and livelihoods. History has shown infringing civil liberties is disheartening. that dams are too costly a method of gen- Stevie Olson erating electricity, and this is particularly 1Brookline, Mass. true in Iraq, which has vast and unex- ploited solar potential. Factoring in the PEOPLE POWER ninety-seven-per-cent average cost over- run for large dams, a new structure down- Jelani Cobb concludes that “democracy stream from the Mosul Dam could cost may thrive in the states, the courts, the around four billion dollars. Dams are also next elections, and, lest the lessons of the a foolhardy investment: in our changing sixties be forgotten, the streets” (Com- climate, desert reservoirs are drying up. ment, January 9th). The Occupy Wall More than twenty per cent of the Tigris Street movement may have helped drive River’s precious freshwater is evaporating Bernie Sanders’s campaign, but he was the from its reservoirs, leaving behind saline-ir- only politician other than Donald Trump rigation water that’s slowly poisoning the who recognized the widespread discon- adjacent land. The Mosul Dam, the proj- tent in the United States. The D.N.C. and ect of a dictator’s hubris, is a literal and Hillary Clinton seem to have underesti- metaphorical sinkhole—for the dreams mated the concerns of a critical mass of of a nation and for funds that could be people, leading to Trump’s victory. In ad- better used elsewhere. Pouring more dition, reactionary Republicans control money, and more concrete, into this ill- more than sixty per cent of the country’s conceived behemoth, or into other dams, state legislatures and governorships, and will only delay the inevitable. But there is vacancies on many courts, where appoint- a possible solution for Iraq: to decommis- ments have for years been held up by ex- sion this dam. We can only hope that it tremists in Congress, will likely now be does so before it’s too late and the precar- flled by right-wingers. Moreover, in 2018, ious region is plunged further into chaos. when thirty-three Senate seats will be con- Kate Horner, Executive Director tested, the Democrats must win twen- International Rivers ty-fve seats just to maintain their current 1Berkeley, Calif. numbers in the Senate, and twenty-eight out of the thirty-three to win a majority THE WHISTLE-BLOWERS in that body, which is highly unlikely. In fact, the streets may be the only place where Malcolm Gladwell’s comparison of progressive voices can be heard. the whistle-blowers Daniel Ellsberg, a Steven Morris member of the intelligence élite, whom Mt. Pleasant, S.C. Gladwell calls a true “leaker,” and Ed- • ward Snowden, an outsider, whom he Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, calls merely a “hacker,” seems to glorify address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to and belittle them, respectively (“The Out- [email protected]. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in side Man,” December 19th & 26th). The any medium. We regret that owing to the volume two men are more similar than they seem, of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 3

JANUARY 11 – 17, 2017 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

The soul of silent film is comedy—the knockabout, loose-limbed antics of vaudevillians who sacrificed speech and song to the movies’ technical wonders and expressive intimacy. This year’s edition of ’s silent-era series, “Cruel and Unusual Comedy” (Jan. -), oers o-the-cu rowdiness from overlooked artists, including Mabel Normand, who also directed ten of her own early short films. In “Mabel’s New Hero” (Jan. and Jan. ), from

EVERETT , she’s paired with Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle under the direction of the slapstick pioneer Mack Sennett. Bargemusic The upcoming weekend at the loating chamber- music series is centered on the violin and its in- CLASSICAL MUSIC creasingly varied literature. On Friday, the Ger- 1 man violinist and composer Gregor Huebner and his ensemble o piano, bass, and percussion oer OPERA and courtesan who found hersel at the center o a “El Violin Latino,” a rangy evening that blends very dangerous game o espionage. Tina Mitchell the strains o Hispanic and Eastern European and Jerey Gavett take the leading roles. Jan. 11-14 music with those o classical and jazz. On Satur- Metropolitan Opera at 7. (HERE, 145 Sixth Ave.) • With “Funeral Doom day and Sunday, Mark Peskanov, the barge’s co- With a new production by Bartlett Sher, the Met Spiritual,” the composer, pianist, and male soprano mandante, teams up with the pianist Gerald Rob- inally has a “Roméo et Juliette” that suits both M. Lamar laces his particular brand o Afrofuturism bins to perform the three formidable Sonatas for Shakespeare’s tragedy and Gounod’s rhapsodic with dark foreboding, gothic makeup, and theatrical Violin and Piano by Brahms. Jan. 13 at 7:30; Jan. music. The curtain rises on a handsome Veronese piano lourishes. Inspired by spirituals that make 14 at 7:30 and Jan. 15 at 4. (Fulton Ferry Landing, piazza (designed by Michael Yeargan) where the mention o the end times, Lamar and his co-creators, Brooklyn. bargemusic.org.) chorus is bedecked in glinting jewelry and lavishly Hunter Hunt-Hendrix and Tucker Culbertson, con- colored eighteenth-century-style inery. Vittorio jure America’s history o racial violence with images Brenda Rae Grigolo is a beautiful Roméo, his sweet tenor trem- o guns and coins, before envisioning a rapture in The American soprano’s Carnegie Hall recital seems ulous with longing, and Diana Damrau a lovely Ju- the year 2116 that liberates the African-American like a straightforward program o four composers liette, her voice now fuller and less lexible than it spirit and puts an end to white supremacy. Jan. 13-14 (Strauss, Liszt, Debussy, and Schubert) plus one used to be. The conductor, Gianandrea Noseda, at 7 and 10. (National Sawdust, 80 N. 6th St., Brook- famous concert aria (Mozart’s sublime “Vorrei spie- sometimes gets swept away in Gounod’s seductive lyn.) • The conductor and composer Julian Wachner, garvi, oh Dio!”), but it’s also a canny presentation reveries, but he keeps the critical later acts taut who leads the musical aairs o Trinity Wall Street o her talents as a coloratura singer with a substan- with portent. Elliot Madore (Mercutio), Virginie and its famous choir, and Cerise Jacobs, who wrote tial lyric voice. In Sun Suh plays piano. Jan. 13 at Verrez (Stéphano), Laurent Naouri (Capulet), and the libretto for Zhou Long’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 7:30. (Weill Recital Hall. 212-247-7800.) Diego Silva (Tybalt) ill out a ine supporting cast. opera, “Madame White Snake,” team up for “Rev. Jan. 14 at 8 and Jan. 17 at 7:30. • The company’s four- 23.” The opera dramatizes a new, imaginary chap- Subculture: “The Tell-Tale Heart” month-long test o the durability o Puccini’s ev- ter o the Book o Revelation, wherein Lucifer un- The inviting venue, now an occasional place for ergreen romance, “La Bohème,” continues in the dertakes one last battle for Paradise-on-Earth with classical performances, hosts an evening with the New Year. This time, the youthful cast is headed the help o a few Greek gods. Wachner conducts composer and pianist Gregg Kallor, whose work by Ailyn Pérez, Susanna Phillips, Michael Fabi- the NOVUS NY Orchestra in a workshop concert sits astride the boundary o classical and jazz. ano, and Alessio Arduini; Carlo Rizzi conducts. that features Josh Quinn (Lucifer), Vale Rideout “The Tell-Tale Heart” is his setting o the chilling Jan. 11 at 7:30 and Jan. 14 at 1. These are the final per- (Hades), and Heather Buck (Persephone). Jan. 14 and outrageous short story by Edgar Allan Poe; formances. • Bartlett Sher’s irst production for the at 3. (National Sawdust.) (For tickets and full schedule, Kallor’s companions, each an artist o consider- Met, a leet-footed and sun-soaked “Il Barbiere di visit prototypefestival.org.) able talent and charisma, are the soprano Melody Siviglia,” remains one o his best. Three full-voiced 1 Moore and the cellist Joshua Roman. Jan. 14 at 11. singers—Pretty Yende, Peter Mattei, and Javier (45 Bleecker St. subculturenewyork.com.) Camarena—head up the cast as Rossini’s lovable ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES rapscallions; Maurizio Benini. Jan. 13 at 8. (Met- “Music Before 1800” Series: ropolitan Opera House. 212-362-6000.) New York Philharmonic “Valley of Tears” O Brahms’s four symphonies, the Third, a deeply The versatile New York baritone Jesse Blumberg New York City Opera: “Candide” lyrical work rich in harmonic and psychological joins the outstanding young early-music string The resurgent company seems to be carving out complexity, has never quite been as popular as its ensemble Acronym for an afternoon exploring a niche in the city’s opera scene by oering con- three companions. Alan Gilbert, however, is a big the works o a fascinating but little-known com- temporary works, but there is still room in the fan; he’ll use it to close a program that begins in poser: Johann Rosenmüller, a signiicant igure lineup for a backward glance. The Broadway leg- strains o glory, as Stephen Hough, an especially in the super-competitive music world o Venice end Harold Prince—who irst brought Bernstein’s thoughtful virtuoso, joins the orchestra in Bee- in the late seventeenth century. Several o the deft operetta to the company in 1982—undertakes thoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major, composer’s cantatas for bass voice will be inter- a new staging o the work, which stars an appro- “Emperor.” Jan. 11-12 at 7:30 and Jan. 13-14 at 8. spersed with a selection o instrumental sonatas. priate mix o opera and theatre talent, including (David Geffen Hall. 212-875-5656.) Jan. 15 at 4. (Corpus Christi Church, 529 W. 121st Jay Armstrong Johnson, Meghan Picerno, Gregg 1 St. mb1800.org.) Edelman, Keith Phares, Jessica Tyler Wright, and the redoubtable Linda Lavin (as the Old Lady); RECITALS “Naumburg Looks Back”: Charles Prince conducts. Jan. 11-13 at 7:30, Jan. Frank Huang and Gilles Vonsattel 14 at 2 and 8, and Jan. 15 at 4. (Rose Theatre, Jazz at London Haydn Quartet The violinist, the new concertmaster o the New Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th St. nycopera.com.) The Boston Early Music Festival’s long-standing York Philharmonic, and the admired Swiss- residency at the Morgan Library & Museum con- American pianist, each a winner o one o the Naum- “Prototype” Festival tinues with an especially inviting concert by this burg Foundation’s coveted prizes, meet at Carnegie’s The essential annual festival o new American opera winning ensemble (which has made a series o Weill Recital Hall to perform a repertory program winds up this week. David Lang’s hybrid opera/ Haydn recordings on the Hyperion label). It is featuring Beethoven’s “Spring” and “Kreut zer” musical-theatre piece “Anatomy Theater” stages joined by the clarinettist Eric Hoeprich—a period- Sonatas and Prokoiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in the confession, execution, and public dissection o performance authority as well as a virtuoso—for F Minor. Jan. 16 at 7:30. (212-247-7800.) a convicted murderess in eighteenth-century En- a concert o music by Haydn (the String Quartet gland. The work’s lurid libretto (co-written by Mark in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2), Beethoven, and Weber “Reflections and Projections: Dion) comes to life in haunting, darkly funny recita- (the Clarinet Quintet in B-Flat Major). Jan. 12 25 Years of Mirror Visions” tives set against a post-minimalist accompaniment at 7:30. (Madison Ave. at 36th St. themorgan.org.) For a quarter century, this enterprising ensemble that thumps, groans, and heaves; Bob McGrath di- o voices and pianists has been presenting new rects, and Christopher Rountree conducts. Jan. 11-14 Richard Egarr: American songs with both charm and expertise. at 8. (BRIC Arts, 647 Fulton St., Brooklyn.) • Though “Clogg’d in the English Vein” Its anniversary concert (featuring the soprano Jus- historians today cast doubt upon the criminality o The distinguished harpsichordist chooses a tine Aronson, the tenor Scott Murphree, and the Mata Hari, she was nonetheless executed in France cheeky title for a recital o Renaissance works pianist Margaret Kampmeier, among others) in- for being a double agent during the First World by composers from his home country—such as cludes premières from the young composers John War. In their world-première opera, “Mata Hari,” Byrd (three pieces, including “The Bells”), Pur- Glover and Margaret Barrett, classics by Britten the composer Matt Marks and the librettist Paul cell, and Blow—with a dash o music by the great and Brahms, and Tom Cipullo’s cantata “A Visit Peers deconstruct the nostalgic sounds o the Paris Dutchman Sweelinck (including the “Fantasia with Emily,” an expansive group o Emily Dickin- café (including accordion and banjo) as a way o Chromatica”). Jan. 12 at 7:30. (Weill Recital Hall, son settings. Jan. 16 at 8. (Sheen Center for Thought delving into the story o the free-spirited dancer Carnegie Hall. 212-247-7800.) and Culture, 18 Bleecker St. sheencenter.org.)

6 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017

and though he died ten years later his name echoed among abolitionists as this country divided. For Charles Sumner, the senator whose beating helped ART precipitate the Civil War, Lafayette was nothing 1 1 less than “the impersonation o liberty.” Through Feb. 4. (Grolier Club, 47 E. 60th St. 212-838-6690.) MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES GALLERIES—UPTOWN 1 GALLERIES—CHELSEA Whitney Museum “A True Friend of the Cause: Lafayette and “MPA: Red in View” the Antislavery Movement” Michelle Grabner The young American artist known as MPA, who Hero o two revolutions, the Marquis de Lafa- Cast-bronze blankets, whose surfaces look either lives in the Mojave Desert, explores the poetic yette was also a committed abolitionist, and this knit or crocheted, stand upright around the gal- and philosophical implications o colonizing the engrossing exhibition, largely drawn from the lery, drooping from the corners as i pinned to red planet, Mars, in this enigmatic four-part ex- holdings o his namesake college in Pennsylva- invisible clotheslines or held up by ghosts. The hibition. On one recent evening, two gender- nia, oers a timely reassurance that some poli- reined untitled sculptures, all from 2016, ri on deiant dancers in red makeup moved with in- ticians really do act on moral values. Two war- high modernist grids while invoking the homey tensity through the museum’s packed lobby; time engravings feature George Washington and custom o bronzing baby shoes. Grabner’s big cutouts in their jeans revealed “moons,” their his young French aide-de-camp; the general’s en- paintings are sunny counterparts to the solemn bare buttocks playing the roles o the Martian slaved valet is only partially visible, but Lafayette sculptures. Yellow, turquoise, red, and orange satellites Phobos and Deimos. Curious view- appears with a nattily dressed black groom stand- monochromes could be taut gingham tablecloths, ers followed the stern, fast-moving perform- ing proudly alongside him. After victory, Lafa yette but close inspection reveals that they were actu- ers into a red-lit, black-painted gallery, where established a plantation in what is now French ally laboriously composed o rectangular daubs MPA’s installation includes moody photo-based Guiana, where workers were paid and whippings (echoing the repetitive motion o knitting nee- works, a red phone (pick it up and a voice ques- were banned; in a letter here, he informs Wash- dles or a crochet hook). An ingenious eect o tions you about your Mars-based fantasies), and ington that “I . . . am going to free my Negroes in the installation is revealed when you view the cryptic arrangements o detritus scavenged in order to make that Experiment which you know paintings through the sculpture’s irregular nets: the desert, paired with painted wooden dowels. is my Hobby Horse.” (The plantation was conis- the canvases appear as pixellated ields. In her A site-speciic piece titled “Long Line” traces a cated after Lafayette was jailed during the French trickily seductive show, Grabner mingles domes- crimson path through the museum; it leads to Revolution. Its workers, named on a document tic and art-historical references with uncommon the third-loor theatre, where MPA will estab- here—Antoine, age twenty-ive; Dorothée, age grace and economy. Through Jan. 28. (Cohan, 533 lish a “self-sustaining biosphere” in a ten-day, four—were resold.) Lafayette came back to the W. 26th St. 212-714-9500.) round-the-clock performance, starting Feb. 9. United States in 1824–25, where he visited man- 1 Through Feb. 27. umission societies and greeted black war veterans, GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN

Elizabeth Murray This array o deep cuts from the nineteen- eighties and nineties shows the exuberant ab- stractionist toying with ideas for her bright com- positions. Murray, who died in 2007, made her name with surprising combinations o mechan- ical and intestinal forms in cartoony works that evoke twisted balloons, tangled showerheads, hamster mazes, and puzzle pieces. (The painter Carroll Dunham and the writer Dan Nadel, torchbearers o Murray’s good-humored, Pop- inlected vibe, co-organized the show.) Small studies on graph paper or loose-lea pages join inished drawings and one big, splashy painting, “Dust Tracks,” from 1993. It’s a shaped canvas, that suggests both a seahorse and a comic-book “POW!,” with a skeleton-key hole. Periodically throwing cups or cacti into the mix, Murray walked a tightrope strung between the known world and her madcap imagination. Through Jan. 29. (Canada, 333 Broome St. 212-925-4631.)

Marianna Simnett A London gallery branches out in New York with a stellar show o two works by this young British artist o considerable talent and audacity. In a video, tucked away in the back o the space, we witness the artist undergoing Botox injections in her vocal cords, a procedure typically reserved for transgender people seeking to lower their voices. It is excruciating to watch, but Simnett’s narration—part folktale, part scientiic history, part diary—transforms the proceedings into a modern-day myth about the body’s plasticity and limitations. In a thematically related light-and-sound installation, we hear the artist hyperventilate until she loses consciousness. It could have been a tired retread o endurance art; instead, the gasping for breath becomes both “Picasso’s Picassos: A Selection from the Collection of Maya Ruiz-Picasso,” at the erotic and terrifying. Through Jan. 22. (Seventeen, © 2016 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO ARTISTS/ RIGHTS OFPABLO SOCIETY (ARS), 2016© NEWESTATE YORK Gagosian gallery, includes “Le Baiser” (1931), a taut portrait of a love-hate relationship. 214 Bowery. 917-873 4115.) COURTESYGAGOSIAN HATALA; BÉATRICE PHOTOGRAPH BY

8 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017

berg’s memory play journeys back to 1967, when the stalled scribbler Aaron Port (Josh Radnor) takes a job teaching continuing education in Lev- THE THEATRE ittown. Amid the gossiping matrons and taciturn men, he inds one promising student, Joan Della- mond (Elizabeth Reaser), a troubled woman who seems on loan from a Tennessee Williams play (“I ind tomorrow unimaginable”). Under Terry Kinney’s direction, the performances are vigor- ous and the language tangy, but the play speeds along in inconsequential curves. Part o the trou- ble is Greenberg’s writerly luency. He’s always had a gift for pert, persuasive dialogue, but lately the stories he tells are less than urgent. Here, he’s content to steam from one aphorism to the next, rarely alighting on anything more essential. (Mitzi E. Newhouse, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200.)

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart A boozy gloss on border ballads with a sprinkling o Kylie Minogue, David Greig’s captivating play, presented by the National Theatre o Scotland, takes the form o a deeply weird folk-music ses- sion. Prudencia (Melody Grove), a priggish Ph.D. student leeing a humiliating academic conference, is seeking shelter when she falls into the arms o the Devil (Peter Hannah), who doesn’t like to let go. Greig’s script, much o it written in rhyming couplets, is sometimes smug in its modernizing o classic motifs. But Wils Wilson’s irrepressible staging beguiles. Audiences are enticed with whis- key shots, trays o cheese sandwiches, and good- natured invitations to assist the ive actors—who also form the superb band—as they dash and whirl between tables in the speakeasy space at the home Marie Mullen and Aisling O’Sullivan play a caustic mother and daughter in Martin McDonagh’s o “Sleep No More.” (The Heath at the McKittrick “The1 Beauty Queen of Leenane,” at BAM; in 1998, Mullen won a Tony for playing the daughter. Hotel, 542 W. 27th St. 212-564-1662.) life. (McGinn/Cazale, 2162 Broadway, at 76th St. Under the Radar Festival OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS 866-811-4111. Previews begin Jan. 13.) The Public’s avant-garde emporium concludes with experiments from home and abroad. The The Beauty Queen of Leenane Tell Hector I Miss Him New York-based company 600 Highwaymen stages The Irish company Druid revives Martin Mc- Paola Lázaro’s play, directed by David Men- “The Fever,” which uses audience collaboration Donagh’s dark comedy, directed by Garry Hynes, dizábal, depicts a web o tumultuous relation- to test the limits o group responsibility. The un- in which a mother in a provincial town tries to ships in a neighborhood in San Juan. (Atlan- derground troupe Belarus Free Theatre, whose spoil her daughter’s chance at happiness. (BAM tic Stage 2, at 330 W. 16th St. 866-811-4111. In founders have worked in exile since 2011, per- Harvey Theatre, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn. 718-636- previews.) forms “Time o Women,” honoring three female 4100. In previews. Opens Jan. 14.) dissidents who were jailed by the current regime. The Tempest In “Hundred Days,” the folk-rock duo the Beng- Jitney Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Donmar Warehouse sons link their own love story to the fear o mor- Manhattan Theatre Club stages August Wilson’s production comes to Brooklyn, featuring Dame tality. The Indonesian artist Eko Nugroho cre- drama about unlicensed cabdrivers in nineteen- Harriet Walter and set against the backdrop o ated “God Bliss (In the Name o Semelah),” which seventies Pittsburgh, directed by Ruben Santi- a women’s prison. (St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water uses shadow puppetry and video-game technol- ago-Hudson and featuring André Holland and St., Brooklyn. 718-254-8779. Previews begin Jan. 13.) ogy to trace how Islam entered Javanese culture. John Douglas Thompson. (Samuel J. Friedman, And, in “Latin Standards,” the downtown solo 261 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.) Yen artist Marga Gomez recalls her father’s career as Lucas Hedges (“Manchester by the Sea”) stars in an entertainer in New York’s Latino variety the- The Liar Anna Jordan’s play, directed by Trip Cullman for atres. For the full program, visit publictheater.org. Michael Kahn directs David Ives’s adaptation MCC, in which two under-parented kids meet a (Various locations. 212-967-7555. Through Jan. 15.) o the Corneille farce, in which a seventeenth- neighbor who takes an interest in their dog. (Lu- 1 century gentleman causes havoc by telling out- cille Lortel, 121 Christopher St. 212-352-3101. Pre- rageous ibs. (Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th views begin Jan. 12.) ALSO NOTABLE St. 866-811-4111. In previews.) Yours Unfaithfully A Bronx Tale Longacre. • Dear Evan Hansen Music Made in China The Mint stages a comedy by Miles Malleson, Box. • Finian’s Rainbow Irish Repertory. • The The Wakka Wakka ensemble created this con- published in 1933 but never produced, about a Front Page Broadhurst. • God of Vengeance La sumerism-minded puppet musical, in which a depressed writer (Max von Essen) whose wife Mama. • Gorey: The Secret Lives of Edward Gorey middle-aged American woman with a penchant tries to reignite their marriage. Jonathan Bank Sheen Center. Through Jan. 14. • Holiday Inn Stu- for big-box stores falls in love with her Chinese directs. (Beckett, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200. dio 54. Through Jan. 15. • The Humans Schoenfeld. neighbor. (59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200. In previews.) Through Jan. 15. • In Transit Circle in the Square. • Jer- In previews. Opens Jan. 15.) 1 sey Boys August Wilson. Through Jan. 15. • Martin Luther on Trial Pearl. • Natasha, Pierre & the Great The Oregon Trail NOW PLAYING Comet of 1812 Imperial. • Oh, Hello on Broadway Ly- Bekah Brunstetter’s play, presented by Fault Line ceum. • Orange Julius Rattlestick. • Othello New Theatre, tells the parallel stories o a teen girl The Babylon Line York Theatre Workshop. • Othel lo: The Remix West- playing the retro computer game and a young A drama about a creative-writing class that is it- side. Through Jan. 15. • The Present Ethel Barry- • woman navigating nineteenth-century frontier sel sporadically imaginative, Richard Green- more. Waitress Brooks Atkinson. CYNTHIA ILLUSTRATIONBY KITTLER

10 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017

1 JAZZ AND STANDARDS

Steve Davis Sextet NIGHT LIFE Davis may not have been around for the irst 1 lowering o hard bop in the nineteen-ifties, but for this supremely adept trombonist—who ROCK AND POP D.I.Y. fame, where news o your début album has also been heard with the neo-bop One for may appear in your campus paper: Ben Guterl, All unit, as well as with advanced ensembles like the band’s co-founder and primary songwriter, Chick Corea’s Origin band—the idiom is as nat- Musicians and night-club proprietors lead splits time between the studio and junior-year ural as his heartbeat. To stir up the action, he has complicated lives; it’s advisable to check seminars, and described his band’s quick rise gathered four similarly minded peers, includ- in advance to conrm engagements. to the Oberlin Review as “kind o overwhelm- ing the saxophonists Steve Wilson and Jimmy ing and a little nerve-wracking.” It’s also well Green, the bassist Peter Washington, and the Dave East deserved. The lo-i, low-slung rock found on drummer Lewis Nash, along with a highly re- A central conlict between two generations o their four-song EP, “Slop,” is conident and garded elder, the pianist Larry Willis. (Smoke, New York rappers concerns issues o style and untainted, and Guterl’s mucky guitar tugs out 2751 Broadway, between 105th and 106th Sts. 212- substance: elders perform with quick-tongued Trilling’s coy confessions in all the right ways: 864-6662. Jan. 13-15.) cadences but fall short on relatable narratives, “I can’t sleep when I’m uneasy / I get in my head, while upstarts sacriice traditional styles for please relieve me,” she sings on “Unfold.” They Marty Ehrlich luency in the day-to-day life o modern city are joined by Half Waif, Trace Mountain, and Sto- I you had your ears open to the work o Ehrlich kids. David Brewster, from East Harlem, excit- len Jars. (Baby’s All Right, 146 Broadway, Brook- back in the mid-eighties, it was obvious that a ingly bridges the two tropes as Dave East. In lyn. 718-599-5800. Jan. 13.) musician with mastery in his destiny was in our his song “Keisha,” from the September album midst. The initial promise has long been ful- “Kairi Chanel,” he wakes up after a night spent Sad13 illed, as Ehrlich’s extraordinary command o with a woman he met that morning to ind Pop music, as a format, has historically func- saxophones, lutes, and clarinets, his composi- his money and jewelry missing; it’s a tale that tioned as an escapist medium, devoid o pol- tional and bandleading skills, and his ease with would it in many dad-rap classics, modernized itics. But Sadie Dupuis, the front person o both conventional and new jazz practices have with scenes at the sneaker shop Flight Club, in the protean rock band Speedy Ortiz, insists all ripened. Here, he leads a groove-aware quar- SoHo, and the Mandarin Oriental, in Colum- that tales o challenging political conversa- tet that includes his longtime collaborator the bus Circle. This dextrous edge caught the at- tions with relatives over Christmas dinner pianist James Weidman. (Smalls, 183 W. 10th St. tention o the hip-hop elder Nas, who helped can it snugly between choruses that aspire to 212-252-5091. Jan. 13.) raise East’s proile in 2015 with an icy, out-of- hit-factory sheen. Dupuis, who received her time collaboration, “Forbes List.” East appears M.F.A. in poetry from UMass Amherst, writes Frank Kimbrough and Masa Kamaguchi alongside Just Blaze at this Boiler Room-hosted in a distinctively angular way as Sad13: in No- In 2016, the pianist Frank Kimbrough celebrated rap bash. (Highline Ballroom, 431 W. 16th St. 212- vember, she released her début solo pop eort, two major milestones: his sixtieth birthday and 414-5994. Jan. 12.) “Slugger,” a saccharine set o exploratory love his thirty-ifth year as a New York resident. He songs that recalibrate such topics as sexual con- also released what may be his masterwork, “Sol- Forth Wanderers sent (“Get a Yes”) and platonic opposite-sex stice,” a sparkling consideration o favored pieces Ava Trilling, the stunning vocalist o this Mont- friendships. She’s joined by local favorites and by such Kimbrough heroes as Paul Motian, An- clair slacker outit, graduated from high school friends o the Exploding in Sound label, in- drew Hill, and Annette Peacock. Although the this past June. Her band’s catalogue is just as cluding Patio, Painted Zeros, and Jackal Ona- album found him with two trusted associates— young; Forth Wanderers got their start with a sis, for a beneit show, where proceeds will go the bassist Jay Anderson and the drummer Je self-released album, which quickly caught the to the Southern Poverty Law Center. (C’mon Hirschield—here Kimbrough duets with the attention o Lorde and Father/Daughter Rec- Everybody, 325 Franklin Ave., Brooklyn. cmon- bassist Masa Kamaguchi, a musician’s musician ords. Such is the endearingly short path to everybody.com. Jan. 14.) who, in 2009, enhanced another o the pianist’s bracing recordings, “Rumors.” (Mezzrow, 163 W. 10th St. mezzrow.com. Jan. 12.)

Ohad Talmor Talmor, a resourceful and creative saxophonist, arranger, and composer, often inds his name linked with his mentor and musical idol, the leg- endary saxophonist Lee Konitz, with whom he’s collaborated on a number o rewarding projects. Here, leading the visiting EuroRadio Jazz Or- chestra, Talmor will present his ambitious “Dio- kan Suite,” which references sources ranging from Wayne Shorter to medieval and Cuban rit- ual music, while adding a touch o spoken word to the mix. (Jazz Gallery, 1160 Broadway, at 27th St., fifth fl. 646-494-3625. Jan. 13-14.)

Kenny Werner and Chris Potter The pianist Werner and the saxophonist Potter have been weaving stimulating tones together since at least 1993, when Werner guested on Pot- ter’s second album, “Concentric Circles.” A year after that, the two cemented their intuitive as- sociation on a live duet recording. Two decades later, the reputations o both men have only so- lidiied further: Werner is a respected bandleader and author; Potter, a questing stylist whose vir- tuosic work with Dave Holland and Pat Metheny has elevated him to venerated status. An intimate encounter will undoubtedly relect the wisdom The Montclair, New Jersey, five-piece Forth Wanderers, named after the Scottish football club, released o accumulated experience. (Jazz at Kitano, 66

“Slop,” a four-track EP of adolescent malaise, last November; they play Baby’s All Right on Jan. 13. Park Ave., at 38th St. 212-885-7119. Jan. 13-14.) REBEKKA ILLUSTRATIONBY DUNLAP

12 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017

MOVIES

In “Kaos,” Giovanna Taviani—the co-director Vittorio Taviani’s daughter—plays Pirandello’s mother as a young woman.

Mother Tongue astating eect on the island’s women. The himself within it. The cavalier grandee is opening tale, “The Other Son,” is centered indierent to the workman’s fate and even, A masterly movie adaptation of short on a woman who has been driven nearly in a scene of comedic splendor, visits a stories by Luigi Pirandello. mad by a solitude that masks unspeakable lawyer in the hope of suing him. When ’ name is ancient traumas. It’s a story of the Sicilian the potter seeks escape by conjuring class synonymous with the breaking of theatri- diaspora—the massive emigration, largely solidarity among the estate’s laborers, the cal boundaries, much of his work is narra- to the United States, in the late nineteenth Tavianis render the uprising as an ecstatic tive, including the fifteen-volume set and early twentieth centuries—and of the musical number in which the lord’s sub- “Short Stories for a Year,” comprising more violent horrors arising from Italy’s ject women play a heroic role. than two hundred tales, published between mid-nineteenth-century battles for inde- The film’s epilogue, “Conversing with and . Five of these folkloric and pendence and unification, of which Mother,” invokes the movie’s one famil- political stories, set in his native Sicily in women were the unconsidered victims. iarly Pirandellian touch—the appearance the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen- In “Moon Sickness,” a poor young of Pirandello as a character, returning to turies, were adapted by the Taviani broth- newlywed woman, Sidora, learns that her the deserted family home in Sicily and ers, Paolo and Vittorio, for the luminous husband, Batà, has concealed from her mentally summoning his mother in order three-hour-plus feature “Kaos,” from , the howling rage that possesses him upon to hear a tale from her youth that he has playing at Film Forum Jan. -, in a se- seeing the full moon. Sidora flees their tried and failed to write, one of political ries of films based on Pirandello’s writings. isolated homestead for her mother’s de- persecution and exile that’s also a story of Beginning with a mysterious prologue, crepit room in town, where an old wound joyful abandon and natural wonder. Film- in which a group of peasants wantonly is laid bare—Sidora’s love for another ing on location in the region’s still-wild capture a raven and tie a bell around its man, Saro, whom her mother considered landscapes, savoring the bird’s-eye views neck, the Tavianis fuse many strands of unfit for her to marry. “The Jar” is a wild of the raw and rocky terrain, returning to Pirandello’s experience and interests: myth political comedy about a tyrannical feudal the world of childhood and listening and anthropology, unredressed economic lord, Don Lollo, who orders a gigantic closely to women’s words, the Tavianis inequality and feudal authority, unresolved human-size clay pot to hold his estate’s evoke the mighty sources of Pirandello’s historical conflicts and exquisite psycho- great olive harvest. When the jar breaks, inspiration with a unique tone of secular logical intimacies, and, above all, the bra- a mystical potter with a mysterious glue holiness.

zenly asserted power of men and its dev- comes to fix it—and accidentally entombs —Richard Brody COURTESYCOHEN FILM COLLECTION

14 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 1MOVIES OPENING physical side of things and puts the friendship at risk, even as Louise innocently stirs up trouble with Ma Celia Rowlson-Hall directed and stars in Rémy. With a graceful round of self- deceptions and this dance-centered and modernized retelling mistaken identities, exquisite rationalizations and of the life of Mary. Opening Jan. 13. (In limited re- fortuitous accidents, Rohmer pierces the glossy ve- lease.) • The Son of Joseph Reviewed in Now Play- neer of the social scene and the dignified realm of ing. Opening Jan. 13. (In limited release.) art to reveal the sexual fury that they embody. In 1 French.—R.B. (Metrograph; Jan. 13.) NOW PLAYING Hidden Figures A crucial episode of the nineteen-sixties, centered Collateral Beauty on both the space race and the civil-rights strug- This leaden fantasy, the latest installment in the gle, comes to light in this energetic and impas- year’s dead-child movies, debases a strain of true sioned drama. It’s the story of three black women emotion and wastes a cast of extraordinary actors. from Virginia who, soon after Sputnik shocked the Will Smith plays Howard, a hearty, humane ad- world, are hired by NASA, where they do indis- vertising executive who, after the death of his six- pensable work in a segregated workplace. Mary year-old daughter, rejects his friends, divorces his Jackson (Janelle Monáe), endowed with engineer- wife, and—apparently worst of all—neglects his ing talent, has been kept out of the profession by business. When Howard ignores a lucrative buy- racial barriers; Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spen- out offer, Whit (Edward Norton), his best friend cer) heads the office of “computers,” or gifted and business partner, contrives to get him de- mathematicians, but can’t be promoted owing to clared mentally incompetent, and the ploy’s the her race; and the most gifted of calculators, Kath- thing. In his grief, Howard has been writing defi- erine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), is recruited for ant letters to three abstractions, Time, Love, and the main NASA rocket-science center, where, as Death; Whit hires three actors (played by Keira the only black employee, she endures relentless Knightley, Helen Mirren, and Jacob Latimore) to insults and indignities. Working with a nonfiction impersonate those abstractions and answer How- book by Margot Lee Shetterly, the director, The- ard’s letters in person. Whit is, as one member of odore Melfi (who co-wrote the script with Alli- the trio says, gaslighting his best friend. The setup son Schroeder), evokes the women’s professional is ludicrously rickety, but a director with imagi- conflicts while filling in the vitality of their inti- nation and style might have kept it buoyant; this mate lives; the film also highlights, in illuminat- one, David Frankel, sinks it under a burden of ing detail, the baked-in assumptions of everyday excessive and superfluous sentiment.—Richard racism that, regardless of changes in law, ring in- Brody (In wide release.) furiatingly true today.—R.B. (In limited release.)

Fences I, Daniel Blake Chatting it up from the back of the garbage truck Ken Loach’s stirring and deeply empathetic drama, they operate for the city of Pittsburgh, Troy Max- about the obstacles and humiliations faced by son (Denzel Washington) and his best friend, Bono British citizens when applying for benefits, is (Stephen McKinley Henderson), launch this ad- centered on a sixtyish carpenter, Daniel Blake aptation of August Wilson’s 1983 play with a free- (Dave Johns), in Newcastle. Unable to work be- flowing vibrancy that, unfortunately, doesn’t last cause of a recent heart attack, he is nonetheless long. Under Washington’s earnest but plain di- thrown back into the workforce by bureaucratic rection, scenes of loose-limbed riffing—such as a fiat. An old-school craftsman who’s never used a sharp-humored trio piece in the Maxson back yard computer or written a résumé, Daniel endures for the two men and Rose (Viola Davis), Troy’s the rigors and the indignities of searching for a steadfast wife—soar above the drama’s conspicu- job that, on doctors’ orders, he can’t accept—and ous mechanisms and symbolism. Troy, a frustrated when he admits as much the government pulls former baseball player from an era before the major away his safety net. Along the way, Daniel be- leagues were integrated, tries to prevent his son friends Kate (Hayley Squires), a single mother Cory (Jovan Adepo) from seeking a football schol- newly arrived from London, and becomes an in- arship to college. Meanwhile, the embittered pa- dispensable presence for her two young children, terfamilias threatens his marriage by having an af- but Kate’s own troubles with the benefits office fair with a local woman. Much of the action takes deepen grievously. A spirit of indignation and place in the stagelike setting of the Maxson home revolt energizes the drama, but Loach is so keen and yard; despite the actors’ precise and passion- on engendering sympathy and inflaming political ate performances, Washington neither elevates nor sensibilities that he leaves his working-class char- overcomes the artifice, except in his own mighty acters’ complex humanity and discourse aside and declamation of Troy’s harrowing life story.—R.B. instead spotlights his own virtuous intentions and (In wide release.) demands. His Britain comes off as a land without populism.—R.B. (In limited release.) Full Moon in Paris Eric Rohmer’s 1984 romantic comedy is one of his Jackie most robust achievements, thanks to a cast that in- Natalie Portman plays Jacqueline Kennedy, and cludes two of France’s finest modern performers. does so with such careful intensity that it will be Pascale Ogier—tall, angular, darting, filled with hard for future actresses to take on the role afresh nervous energy and ardent longing—plays Louise, and make it theirs. No one, certainly, will capture an interior designer who lives with her athletic boy- the First Lady’s voice with quite such breathy pre- friend, Rémy (Tchéky Karyo), in a new suburban cision. Much of Pablo Larraín’s film, scripted by apartment complex. Needing more time to herself, Noah Oppenheim, is set after the death of John F. she refurbishes the Parisian pied-à-terre that she Kennedy (Caspar Phillipson), although we are led had planned to sell, and, in the city, spends time a sorry dance between the period of mourning, the with Octave, a writer played by the theatrical Fa- day of the assassination, and some of the brighter brice Luchini, whose hyper-refined diction and mag- times that went before—Jackie’s televised tour of isterial gestures are the apotheosis of the aesthet- the White House, say, in 1962. That narrative rest- icizing intellect. But Octave caddishly presses the lessness owes something to an interview that she

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 15 MOVIES gives, when newly widowed, to a visiting reporter Whether that desire has grown with time is un- The dismissal becomes a witch hunt, with Ne- (Billy Crudup), but more to the frailty o her griev- clear, but now, at last, it can be fulilled, thanks to ruda—sly, grand, lecherous, and overweight—lee- ing mind, and Larraín often compounds the mood the miracle o Google Earth (for which the movie ing from one safe house to another, lovingly sup- by trapping her, with no means o escape, in the is an unabashed commercial). As is proved by doc- ported by his wife (Mercedes Morán) and harried center o the frame. Respectful viewers may ind umentary footage at the end, Garth Davis’s ilm by an irrepressible policeman (Gael García Ber- the results tendentious and even tactless; do we re- is based on a true story; though wrenching, there nal). Much o this story, including the journey over ally need to see inside the Presidential limo after is barely enough o it to ill the dramatic space, the Andes into Argentina, is a matter o record, the shooting? Still, Portman gives the ilm her all, and the second hal is a slow and muted aair but other parts, like the character o the cop, were assisted by Peter Sarsgaard, as Robert Kennedy; after the Dickensian punch o the irst. The un- brewed up for the sake o the movie. The result is John Carroll Lynch, as Lyndon B. Johnson; and doubted star is Pawar, whose début commands both highly unreliable and enjoyably persuasive; John Hurt, as a ruminative priest.—Anthony Lane attention much as Sabu’s did, in “Elephant Boy,” we are lured into Larraín’s imaginings, such as a (Reviewed in our issue of 12/5/16.) (In limited release.) some eighty years ago.—A.L. (In limited release.) inal showdown in the snow, much as Neruda’s dev- otees succumb to the declamations o his verse. In Julieta Live by Night Spanish.—A.L. (1/2/17) (In limited release.) The latest ilm from Pedro Almodóvar is more Ben Aleck—as director, screenwriter, and temperate than what we grew accustomed to in star—revels in the juicy historical details o this Passengers his melodramatic prime, but it is just as sumptu- Prohibition- era gangster drama (adapted from a This science-iction drama has the substance and ous in its color scheme and no less audacious in novel by Dennis Lehane) but fails to bring it to the tone o a “Twilight Zone” episode while oer- shouldering a burden o plot beneath which other life. He plays Joe Coughlin, a disillusioned First ing a too-good-to-spoil and too-evil-to-believe plot directors would sag. The source is an unlikely World War veteran and small-time Boston crim- twist that’s the movie’s raison d’être. Sometime in one: three stories by Alice Munro, which follow inal who tries to keep apart from both the city’s the future, a private company oers paying custom- a single igure through motherhood and loss. Irish gang, run by Albert White (Robert Glenis- ers the chance to colonize a planet in distant space. Julieta—played in her youth by Adriana Ugarte ter), and its Italian one, headed by Maso Pescatore The autopiloted light takes a hundred and twenty and as an older woman by Emma Suárez—is a (Remo Girone). But, after being brutally beaten years, during which time the ive-thousand-plus teacher o classical literature and myth. She has for romancing Albert’s mistress, Emma Gould settlers and crew members are kept in suspended- a child by a man whom she meets on a train (the (Sienna Miller), Joe goes to work for Maso in animation pods that prevent them from aging. But scene is much lustier than it is on the page) and Tampa, taking over the rum racket and falling in after an unforeseen calamity only thirty years into moves to be with him on the coast. But one sor- love with a local crime lord, Graciella Suarez (Zoe the journey two travellers, Jim (Chris Pratt), a me- row after another intervenes, and it is only in ma- Saldana), a dark-complexioned Cuban woman— chanical engineer, and Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence), turity, after a chance encounter, that she starts to and their aair provokes the wrath o the K.K.K. a writer, are awakened too soon and face a lifetime solve the puzzle o what feels like a broken life. The drive for power, the craving for love, the hun- as the only two functioning humans aboard the ef- Even then, the ilm is surprisingly open-ended; ger for revenge, and a rising sense o justice keep fectively empty spacecraft. (There’s also a bartender it leaves you wondering what mysterious path the gory and grandiose gangland action churning named Arthur—played by Michael Sheen—but he’s Almodóvar will take next. Fans will rejoice in and furnish a hefty batch o plot twists and rever- actually an android.) The director, Morten Tyldum, the return o Rossy de Palma, one o his muses, sals o fortune. But Aleck’s lat and lashy story- thrives on the peculiarities o the spaceship’s ameni- although the role she plays here—a frizzy-haired telling omits the best and the boldest behind-the- ties—the holographic greeters, the waitsta robots Mrs. Danvers—may come as a shock. In Span- scenes machinations that Joe and his cohorts pull with French accents, the implacable food dispens- ish.—A.L. (12/19 & 26/16) (In limited release.) o, depicting instead the noisy but dull ireworks ers, the swimming pool with a cosmic view—and that result.—R.B. (In wide release.) the most engaging drama arises not from the pair’s La La Land relationship but from the dangers o losing grav- Breezy, moody, and even celestial, Damien Cha- Manchester by the Sea ity. As for the big, crude, and ugly twist, it’s just a zelle’s new ilm may be just the tonic we need. The Kenneth Lonergan’s new ilm is carefully con- prefabricated think piece.—R.B. (In wide release.) setting is Los Angeles, with excursions to Paris structed, compellingly acted, and often hard to and Boulder City, and the time is roughly now, watch. The hero—i you can apply the word to Paterson though the movie, like its hero, hankers warmly someone so deiantly unheroic—is a janitor, Lee The new Jim Jarmusch ilm stars Adam Driver as after more melodious times. Sebastian (Ryan Chandler (Casey Aleck), who is summoned from the title character; to call him the hero would be Gosling) is a jazz pianist who dreams o opening Boston to the coast o Massachusetts after the something o a stretch. He is a bus driver living in a club but, in the meantime, keeps himsel aloat death o his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler). This is Paterson, New Jersey, with his wife, Laura (Gol- with undigniied gigs—rolling out merry tunes, the deinition o a winter’s tale, and the ground shifteh Farahani), and their dog, Marvin. In idle say, to entertain diners at Christmas. Enter Mia is frozen too hard for the body to be buried. Piece moments, during the evening or on his lunch hour, (Emma Stone), an actress who, like Kathy Selden by piece, in a succession o lashbacks, the shape Paterson writes poems, not for publication but as in “Singin’ in the Rain,” is waiting for that big o Lee’s past becomes apparent; he was married i to gratify some private compulsion or demand. break. Haltingly, they fall in love; or, rather, they to Randi (Michelle Williams), who still lives lo- Not that they seem to cost him much in terms o rise in love, with a waltz inside a planetarium that cally, and something terrible tore them apart. Joe, emotional turmoil; we hear him recite them in a lofts them into the air. The color scheme is hot and too, had an ex-wife, now an ex-drinker (Gretchen frictionless calm while the words appear patiently startling, and the songs, with music by Justin Hur- Mol), and their teen-age son, Patrick—the most onscreen. (The verses are by Ron Padgett, al- witz and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, ferry resilient character in the movie, smartly played though the presiding spirit is that o William Car- the action along. I the singing and the dancing by Lucas Hedges—is alarmed to learn that Lee los Williams.) The movie follows Paterson’s lead, lack the otherworldly rigor o an old M-G-M pro- is to be his legal guardian. What comes as a sur- guiding us through successive days and noting the duction, that is deliberate; these lovers are much prise, amid a welter o sorrow, is the harsh com- minor dierences between them. Regular scenes too mortal for perfection. With John Legend, as edy that colors much o the dialogue, and the near- in a bar or on a bench are barely ruled by inci- a purveyor o jazz-funk, and J. K. Simmons (who farcical frequency with which things go wrong. dent, and the only gun that is pulled turns out to commanded Chazelle’s “Whiplash”), as a wither- Far-reaching tragedy adjoins simple human error: be a replica. Even as the ilm lirts with dullness, ing maître d’.—A.L. (12/12/16) (In wide release.) such is the territory that Lonergan so skillfully however, it starts to wield a hypnotizing charm, maps out.—A.L. (11/28/16) (In wide release.) and Jarmusch has few peers nowadays in the art Lion o the running—or, in his case, gently strolling— A small boy called Saroo (Sunny Pawar), born Neruda gag.—A.L. (1/2/17) (In limited release.) into a poor Indian family, falls asleep on a train Another new bio-pic, o sorts, from Pablo Larraín, and wakes up more than a thousand miles from whose “Jackie” is still in theatres. Once again, the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story his home. Eventually, after escaping various per- angle o approach is oblique, avoiding the standard The latest entry in the franchise is a pure and per- ils, he winds up in an orphanage; from there, he is procedures o the genre, although in this instance fect product with all the heart and soul o a logo. adopted by an Australian couple (Nicole Kidman there is an extra dash o playfulness and mischief. It’s the story o Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), a and David Wenham) and goes to live with them That certainly its the subject, Pablo Neruda (Luis scientist who’s forced by the Empire to work on the in Tasmania. We jump twenty years, to Saroo as Gnecco), whose poetry would later earn a Nobel Death Star, and his daughter, Jyn (Felicity Jones), a young man (now played by Dev Patel), who has Prize, but who begins the ilm, in 1948, as a mem- who’s suspected by the Rebel Alliance o sympa- an American girlfriend (Rooney Mara) and an un- ber o the Chilean senate; as a Communist, he inds thy for the Empire because o his work. But, after appeasable wish to discover where he came from. himsel scorned by the recently elected President. receiving her father’s holographic message with

16 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 MOVIES insider information on how to destroy the Death life of a high-school student in current-day Paris Star, Jyn teams up with an international band is as much of an emotional wonder as a concep- of outsiders, including Captain Cassian Andor tual one. Vincent (Victor Ezenfis), an only child, (Diego Luna), a blind monk and martial-arts whiz is something of a loner; he’s being raised by his (Donnie Yen), an intrepid pilot (Riz Ahmed), and mother, Marie (Natacha Régnier), who refuses a tart-tongued robot (voiced by Alan Tudyk), to to tell him anything about the father he never wage guerrilla war on the Empire. The action in- knew. But Vincent does some snooping, finds out volves some serious unpleasantness—destruction, that he’s a big-time book publisher named Oscar bloodshed, death—but the characters are so un- (Mathieu Amalric), and insinuates himself into derconceived and the performances so constrained Oscar’s splashy and decadent milieu, with tragi- that none of it has any emotional impact. Even the comic results. Meanwhile, Vincent encounters Os- special effects—the forte of the director, Gareth car’s ne’er-do-well brother, Joseph (Fabrizio Ron- Edwards—offer few delights or thrills. The key gione), and discovers surprising affinities with plot point, involving the transmission of a giant him. The writer and director Eugène Green, an data packet, seems ready-made for repackaging American émigré and a specialist in Baroque the- as a cell-phone commercial. Only Greig Fraser’s atre, assigns the actors archaic diction and declam- shadow-shrouded cinematography displays any atory airs and stages an ecstatic scene of musical imagination.—R.B. (In wide release.) drama as an ideal fusion of style and substance. But the passionate heart of the action, Vincent’s The Rules of the Game quest for emotional connection, involves his rad- The director Jean Renoir gives himself a star turn ical rejection of norms and proprieties and sparks in this panoramic romance—made in 1939, on the the timeless fury of revolt; it’s as thrilling as it is eve of the Second World War—that’s both a por- ingenious. In French.—R.B. (In limited release.) trait of the artist and a vision of the times. He plays Octave, a failed musician and social butter- Toni Erdmann fly, whose high-society machinations result in a Maren Ade’s new film is a German comedy, two grand reception for France’s heroic transatlantic hours and forty minutes long, and much of it pilot (Roland Toutain), who is in love with their is set in Bucharest. These are unusual creden- hostess, a Viennese émigrée (Nora Gregor). She, tials, but the result has been received with rap- in turn, is the wife of a French marquis (Marcel ture since it showed at Cannes. What it grapples Dalio), who is cheating on her with a Parisian so- with, after all, is matters of universal anxiety: phisticate (Mila Parély). Meanwhile, Octave flirts the bonds, or lack of them, between parent and with a chambermaid (Paulette Dubost), sparking child, and the ways in which the modern world— the violent rage of her gamekeeper husband (Gas- in particular, the world of business—can com- ton Modot). Renoir fills the majestic château with press the spirit. Sandra Hüller plays Ines, who the themes and characters of the day, including a works as a smoother of deals in the oil indus- fatuous general; a gaggle of socialites with their try; her father is Winfried (Peter Simonischek), heads in their finery; a pervasive anti-Semitism; a shambling hulk who thinks that a set of false and an emphasis on “class,” the elegant lies that teeth is amusing, and who tracks her to Roma- keep the masquerade going. Renoir’s operetta- nia in a bid to disrupt her life and, perhaps, to like confection is booby-trapped; stupefied rev- alleviate its ills. His method involves assuming ellers staring at a player piano as it rattles out the a new identity (hence the title) and invading the “Danse Macabre” take their place among histo- space where his daughter makes her deals. We ry’s passive victims. In French.—R.B. (Anthology get, among other things, sexual humiliation in- Film Archives; Jan. 13-15.) volving petits fours, and a party that takes an un- expected turn. If the film has a fault, it lies with Silence Ade’s reliance on embarrassment as a weapon of Martin Scorsese has never made a Western; his ad- attack. For a generation reared on “The Office,” aptation of Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel, set in the that may not be a problem. In German.—A.L. seventeenth century, is the closest thing to it. Two (In limited release.) Portuguese priests, Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garrupe (Adam Driver), 20th Century Women have heard rumors that their teacher and confessor, In Santa Barbara in 1979, Dorothea Fields (An- Father Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson), a mission- nette Bening) presides, with genial tolerance, over ary in Japan, has betrayed his Christian faith, and a mixed household. She is in her mid-fifties, with they travel to search for him. En route, they learn a teen-age son, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), who is of the bloody persecution that Christians face in nurturing an interest in feminism, and a couple of Japan, and when they’re smuggled into the country lodgers—Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a russet-haired they, too, face the authorities’ wrath. Rodrigues is photographer with violent tastes in music, and the protagonist of this picaresque epic of oppression the more serene William (Billy Crudup), whose and martyrdom, which Scorsese ingeniously infuses talents range from meditation and effortless se- with tropes from classic movies, as in the manner- duction to fixing the ceiling. Mike Mills’s movie, isms of a good-hearted but weak-willed Christian like his earlier “Beginners” (2010), is a restless af- (Yosuke Kubozuka) and a brutal but refined official fair, skipping between characters (each of whom (Issey Ogata), whose intricate discussions of reli- is given a potted biography) and conjuring the gion and culture with Rodrigues form the movie’s past in sequences of stills. Plenty of time is also intellectual backbone. Many of the priests’ wander- devoted to the friendship, threatened by looming ings have the underlined tone of mere exposition; desire, between Jamie and Julie (Elle Fanning), but as Rodrigues closes in on Ferreira the movie who is older and wiser than he is, but no less con- morphs into a spectacularly dramatic and bitterly fused; at one point, they take his mother’s car—a ironic theatre of cruelty that both exalts and ques- VW Beetle, naturally—and elope. Amid all that, tions central Christian myths. It plays like Scorsese’s the movie belongs unarguably to Bening, and to own searing confession.—R.B. (In limited release.) her stirring portrayal of a woman whose ideals have taken a hit but have not collapsed, and who The Son of Joseph strives, in the doldrums of middle age, to defeat This arch, bold, and tender transposition of el- her own disappointment.—A.L. (12/19 & 26/16) ements of the Nativity to the cramped secular (In limited release.)

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 17 company’s choreographer, Sharon Eyal, and its dancers are alums o the Batsheva Dance Com- pany, and Ohad Naharin’s inluence is highly DANCE visible in its abnormal extremes and extraor- dinary pliability. But the sway o its co-artistic director, Gai Behar, who once organized raves, New York City Ballet “American Realness” is also strong. Set to a live techno score by the No sooner have the last lingering snowlakes This annual festival o avant-garde performance, d.j. Ori Lichtik, “OCD Love” attacks ritualis- been swept up than the company begins prepa- long based at Abrons Arts Center, now has a sec- tic repetition with catwalk hauteur. The poem rations for its winter season. It includes two new ond home at Gibney Dance, where the festival’s that inspired it, by Neil Hilborn, describes a works by Justin Peck, the irst o which, “Scherzo founder and director, Thomas Benjamin Snapp woman who inds beauty in the speaker’s symp- Fantastique,” had its première last summer in Pryor, has recently been put in charge o perfor- toms but ultimately lees in exasperation. That’s Saratoga. Set to early Stravinsky, it features mance and residency programming. The sched- a risk that L-E-V runs with audiences. (Joyce bright, colorful designs by the Brooklyn-based ule is as packed as ever: ive world premières, six Theatre, 175 Eighth Ave., at 19th St. 212-242-0800. artist Jules de Balincourt. In the second new U.S. premières, encore presentations, exhibitions, Jan. 11-15.) work, as yet untitled, the dancers wear sneak- and discussions, and at least one party. One o the ers—shades o Jerome Robbins—and move to best bets is “Mercurial George,” a volatile reckon- COIL 2017 music by Dan Deacon, an earnest indie rocker ing with identity by the Canadian choreographer The dance selections o P.S. 122’s multidisci- from Baltimore. In addition to two weeks o Dana Michel. Also on the program are Juliana F. plinary festival conclude with “A Study on Ef- Peter Martins’s sleek and eicient “Sleeping May’s “Adult Documentary,” Jen Rosenblit’s “Clap fort.” A collaboration between the violinist Keir Beauty” and another week devoted to works by Hands,” and Trajal Harrell’s “Twenty Looks or GoGwilt and the remarkable dancer Bobbi Jene Balanchine, the company oers a new ballet by Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church(s).” (Var- Smith, an Iowa-born beauty who spent a de- the Swedish-born choreographer Pontus Lid- ious locations. 212-352-3101. Jan. 10-12.) cade in Israel with the Batsheva Dance Com- berg, his irst for N.Y.C.B. • Jan. 17 at 7:30: “La pany, the work is a series o vignettes indulging Sonnambula,” “Prodigal Son,” and “Firebird.” L-E-V in the pleasures o maximal exertion. (Invisible (David H. Koch, Lincoln Center. 212-496-0600. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a itting sub- Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen St., Brooklyn. 212-352- Through Feb. 26.) ject for this recently founded Israeli troupe. The 3101. Jan. 12-14.)

ABOVE & BEYOND

Zlatne Uste Golden Festival championship rings, and a trove o leather-bound its publication in the U.S. Nitehawk Cinema cel- Eastern European and Middle Eastern music, tomes (including a complete edition o the works ebrates the franchise’s twentieth anniversary by dance, and culture coalesce at this annual festival, o Charles Dickens). (175 E. 87th St. 212-427-2730.) screening all eight o the ilm adaptations, and held in New York City for more than thirty years. 1 hosts a completist’s dream o a talk: the author- Balkan traditions and customs unfold across two ities and enthusiasts Alise Morales, Aliza Wein- nights and four stages, where attendees can shop READINGS AND TALKS berger, Matt Zoller Seitz, and Matt Jacobs will for folk arts and sample the wide array o foods debate whether the Potter novels or their big- native to the region, spanning roughly from Ro- Powerhouse Arena screen counterparts are better at delivering J. K. mania to Greece and from Croatia to Turkey. Knowledge o the human body grows increasingly Rowling’s tangled wizard universe. (136 Metro- The main draw is a marathon o groups staging precious. We enlist specialists and trainers and politan Ave., Brooklyn. nitehawkcinema.com. Jan. performances from the region, including Egyp- hunt new diets and regimens, largely forgoing de- 12 at 7:30.) tian traditional dance, a Slavic chorus, a Balkan tailed information on anatomy and physiology in brass band, and a Mediterranean outit o violin, favor o a sort o science-based service industry. “Apollo Uptown Hall” accordion, and clarinet. Proits generated from James Hamblin, the senior editor o The Atlantic, The political leadership and public works o ticket sales will be donated to charitable and ed- delivers “I Our Bodies Could Talk: A Guide to Martin Luther King, Jr., in the face o opposi- ucational organizations aiding Balkan communi- Operating and Maintaining a Human Body” this tion, have come to embody the power o civil ties. (The Grand Prospect Hall, 263 Prospect Ave., week, a witty how-to book touching on health con- disobedience, and the willingness o our coun- Brooklyn. goldenfest.org. Jan. 13-14.) cerns and blind spots in areas including sex, aging, try to bend toward progress. In 1967, King pub- 1 wellness, and nutrition. Hamblin has helped ex- lished “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos plain our bodies to us since 2012, when he joined or Community?” in which he considered the AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES The Atlantic to build out its health section—the next steps for the social-justice movements o book arrives as an extension o his video series on his time and how they might develop in the fu- The collection o the late Nelson Doubleday, scion the site, and answers questions about things like ture with respect to wage inequality, housing, o the Doubleday publishing family, goes under optimal sleeping patterns and cell-phone radia- poverty, and education. A panel o writers, ac- the gavel at Doyle (Jan. 11). More o a sports- tion based on responses from health-care profes- tivists, and religious leaders, including Opal man than a bibliophile, Doubleday sold the fam- sionals and medical experts. (28 Adams St., Brook- Tometi, Shaun King, L. Joy Williams, Rabbi ily business in 1986, the same year his other main lyn. 718-666-3049. Jan. 12 at 7.) Ben Kamin, and Staceyann Chin, gather to read asset, the New York Mets, won the World Series. from King’s writings and examine their new- As beits these two competing facets o his life, Nitehawk Cinema found contexts in our contemporary social and the sale features maritime paintings—Doubleday “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” ar- political climate. (Apollo Theatre, 253 W. 125th

was an avid sailor—by Buttersworth and Dawson, rived on British shelves in 1997, a year ahead o St. 800-745-3000. Jan. 15 at 3.) AMARGO PABLO ILLUSTRATIONBY

18 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 FßD & DRINK

1 TABLES FOR TWO chemical ritual. The server poured dill oil BAR TAB Agern and powdered phytoplankton into a corked glass press filled with salt-and- Grand Central Terminal (--) vinegar water, emulsified the concoction, first then poured the hot broth into a black opened its doors, a century ago, there was ceramic cup. “I hope it makes you feel like a Russian bath in the Men’s Waiting you’re standing on an oceanside cli at Room. Last April, Claus Meyer, a Danish sunset,” he intoned. Apothecary-chic mi- Paul’s Casablanca food entrepreneur and the co-founder of croalgae may be a dated culinary trend, 305 Spring St. (212-620-5220) Noma, in Copenhagen, opened a Nordic but who cares? It’s mermaid tea, and its The other night, in west SoHo, two young men eatery named Agern in that lost oasis. Two powers of salty transport are real. were rebued at the entrance o a bar. “Is this Casa- hard-to-find entrances lead into an elegant Three servers paraded to a table like blanca?” they asked. A bouncer in a balaclava shook room of muted Aalto-ish minimalism. the Magi bearing gifts: walnut shells con- his head. Fifteen minutes later, after wandering up and down the street, they found themselves under- Glowing silvery orbs hang from the ceil- taining steaming rounds of sourdough, neath a neon sign that read “McGovern’s Bar.” ing, an echo of both the celestial mural in fresh-whipped-butter cumuli, a baked beet Could this be the place? Another bouncer, this time the main concourse and the starry sky that carved from a vegetable-ash crust. (After in a hood, nodded. “We’re at capacity,” he said, waving through a man in a bone-white fur and cloaks Scandinavia in darkness for much such theatrics, the root was unremarkable.) matching spectacles. They would have to wait. This of the year. If Grand Central is a cathedral Gíslason’s home town is a fishing port, yet is because the Casablanca they sought is Paul’s for commuters, Agern is a chapel for in- it was the fowl that stood out. Tender, juicy Casablanca, the latest venture from Paul Sevigny, begetter o the Beatrice Inn, baron o the Baby dulging the senses. Best to stay put. guinea-hen breast lay on a pillow of sun- Grand. Sevigny’s new bar draws a little from both The head chef, Gunnar Gíslason, grew choke cream, accompanied by the leg, o those but has neither the cocoonish hustle o the up in northern Iceland, and the menu at sprinkled with bits of deep-fried skin. former nor the graitied luxury o the latter. In- stead, Sevigny has gone for a purer form o fun: an Agern features the flavors of his childhood, For dessert, buttermilk ice cream with enilade o domed caverns where dancers sway to reinvented with Hudson Valley ingredi- watercress and whey recalled a cool, grassy rock and disco hits lanked by tiled nooks from ents. The Land & Sea tasting menu (Field crème brûlée, and Gíslason’s Icelandic which clusters o beautiful folk watch the whorling crowd. The eect? A little like an after-party to & Forest is the vegetarian option) starts birch schnapps, sourced from forests he Malcolm Forbes’s seventieth-birthday party in with a staccato array of tiny snacks. A sin- helped plant, evoked a Christmas tree— Tangier, which oddly obsessed glossy-magazine gle oyster topped with fizzy cranberry in a good way. “I can’t make this here,” he writers for a period in 1989. Mixed drinks, which are almost impossible to order at a long bar near foam goes down in a tart, briny splash. A said. “The birch branches taste dier- the entrance but easily acquired at an arabesque fried pork trotter tastes like a bacon Tater ently.” What else does Gíslason miss from nook in the back, are in the twenty-dollar range— Tot; a waiter explained that it’s made from his native country? He sighed. “The hot not that the price seems to bother any o the ebul- lient patrons, who are presumably too drunk or too “parts of the feet and parts of the face.” A geothermal baths. You take off your well heeled to care. Just make sure that when check- rye crisp dolloped with smoked cream clothes, get in, and stare at the stars.” ing items downstairs you don’t lose your ticket. cheese conjures a ghost of lox. (Tasting menu: $-$. À la carte: $- Recently, a woman was howling at the attendant, “It’s the black mink coat! It’s probably the only real One night, a warm “ocean broth,” $. Prices include service.) mink there.” To which the response came: “We got

PHOTOGRAPH BY JANELLEPHOTOGRAPH BY JONES FORTHE JOOSTNEWSWARTE YORKER; ILLUSTRATIONBY made tableside, was the meal’s first al- —Carolyn Kormann a lot o black mink back here.”—Nicolas Niarchos

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 19

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT BIRTHDAY WISHES

, , Representative John Conyers, from De- derstood/how a man who died for good /could not have a day O troit, marched through downtown Memphis with Coretta that would / be set aside for his recognition.” Finally, in , a Scott King, Ralph Abernathy, Harry Belafonte, and thou- bill written by Representatives Jack Kemp, a Republican, and sands of people who had come to that city from across the Katie Hall, a Democrat, passed in the House. In the Senate, country. Four days earlier, Martin Luther King, Jr., had been Jesse Helms, who had denounced the Civil Rights Act as shot and killed there, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced and a fugue of disbelief and despair hovered over the crowd in the Congress,” tried, unsuccessfully, to have the bill, which as it continued down the road that King had travelled. The was sponsored by Edward Kennedy, sent back to committee. march served as a momentary validation of King’s work, but Undaunted, Helms moved to have King’s F.B.I. files declassified, Conyers hoped to craft a more enduring one. That week, he so that the Senate might explore the specious claim that he introduced legislation in the House of Representatives that was a Communist stooge. In a fit of anger, Daniel Patrick would make King’s birthday, January th, a national holiday. Moynihan threw a copy of Helms’s documents to the floor of It languished in committee. the Senate, denouncing them as “filth.” The bill passed by a Two months after the assassination, Coretta Scott King vote of seventy-eight to twenty-two, and President Ronald founded the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent So- Reagan, despite initial reluctance, signed it into law, in Novem- cial Change, in Atlanta. It was intended to serve as a well- ber of , declaring that Martin Luther King, Jr., Day would spring for works of the type to which her husband had ded- be celebrated every year on the third Monday of January. icated his life, but it was quickly deployed in a secondary It had taken fifteen years for Conyers’s original gesture mission: to lobby for the holiday, which she later described as to become a legislative reality, a journey that reflected a grow- “a day of interracial and intercultural coöperation and shar- ing national acceptance of King’s ideals of pacifism and racial ing.” In , the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and economic equality, and a posthumous validation of his which King had led, delivered to Con- approach to social change. Nevertheless, gress a petition bearing three million King Day has occupied an awkward niche signatures in support of the eort. In in the progression of American commem- , Harold Washington, an Illinois orations. It was not fully recognized in all state representative who was later elected the states until —New Hampshire the first black mayor of Chicago, spon- was the last. Currently, Alabama, Arkan- sored a bill that made his state the first sas, and Mississippi also celebrate the to recognize the holiday. A handful of birth of Robert E. Lee on the day set other states followed, but there was lit- aside for King. tle federal momentum. Coretta Scott The awkwardness persists on other King kept up pressure on elected o- levels. For an activist to be honored by a cials, writing, speaking, and testifying government, even one hoping to recog- twice before congressional committees. nize that activist’s principles, is an inher- In , a House bill failed by five ently contradictory event. On King’s sev- votes, even though President Jimmy Car- enty-fifth birthday, in , President ter had endorsed it. King then enlisted George W. Bush, mired in a disastrous the aid of Stevie Wonder, who composed war in Iraq, took the time to lay a wreath “Happy Birthday,” a jaunty bit of agit- at King’s tomb, in Atlanta. A police bar-

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM ILLUSTRATIONS BY pop that included the lines “I never un- ricade surrounded the President, yielding

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 21 a tableau of antiwar demonstrators being kept away from the ical. In , he declined an invitation from President John F. tomb of a pacifist, in deference to a man overseeing a war. In Kennedy to attend his Inauguration, but two weeks later he , the holiday fell on January th, a day before the Inau- gave a speech outlining the ways in which Kennedy might guration of Barack Obama, the first African-American Pres- use legislation, executive orders, and the moral authority of ident. The proximity of those events suggested a kind of moral the Presidency to diminish racial discrimination. He closed momentum, a verification that the will toward democracy wins by quoting a line from a report issued by the President’s out in the long run. Committee on Civil Rights, established by Harry Truman: Next year, Donald Trump will preside over a holiday ded- “The United States is not so strong, the final triumph of the icated to a man whose principles he scarcely seems to com- democratic ideal not so inevitable that we can ignore what prehend. In a speech that King delivered in , in Atlanta, the world thinks of us or our record.” he condemned the Vietnam War and warned against what he The divided bounty of America is such that it is a place called “the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and where King was both hailed and spat upon; where he wielded militarism.” All three figured prominently in Trump’s Presi- influence over a President and was hounded by federal inves- dential campaign. Moreover, in the Department of Jus- tigators; where he was aorded ocial accolades and was mur- tice sued Trump Management, of which Trump was the pres- dered on the balcony of a nondescript motel. Now, at the out- ident, for refusing to rent apartments to African-Americans. set of this Presidency, King’s words to Kennedy warrant Specifically, the government charged that the company had repeating. His ideals have survived him, but they have inher- violated the Fair Housing Act—a landmark piece of legisla- ited the same unreconciled, and maybe irreconcilable, status. tion passed in , partly in tribute to King’s desegregation In , the King holiday pointed to how far we had come. work. Now Trump, instead of calming the racial fires that he This year, it highlights the fact that we’ve arrived at a place stoked during the campaign, has opted for private meetings where the familiar landmarks are missing. The Memphis with B-listers of black life: Don King, Ray Lewis, Jim Brown—a marchers in held one advantage: they knew the road they coalition of the compromised. were going down. King’s insights into our society have never been more crit- —Jelani Cobb

DOPPELGÄNGER DEPT. more than six weeks—ever since the owns six restaurants, including the orig- NEW YORK STRIP Presidential-election result had imposed inal Uncle Jack’s, in Bayside, declined to gridlock on the neighborhood—barri- identify his party aliation. “I don’t call cades at both ends had been business myself anything,” he said. “I’m an entre- killers. Volume at Uncle Jack’s was down preneur. I make my own decisions. I’m a more than twenty per cent, and that was smart guy in the sense that I’m not highly an improvement over the first two weeks. educated, but I break things down and “Completely shut down,” Degel recalled. simplify. I’m a really good problem solver.” , Willie Degel, the “Pedestrian trac, commercial trac, Another parallel: As he made plain E proprietor of Uncle Jack’s Steak- cars, everything. It was, like, ‘Red alert!’ in an interview several years ago, he’s not house, on West Fifty-sixth Street, less The city wasn’t prepared for it. You men- inclined to curl up with, say, “Mrs. Dal- than an avenue away from Trump Tower, tion Fifty-sixth Street, people were like, loway.” (“I don’t read books. I read peo- has a blunt conversation with his mir- ‘Ohmigod, you must be dead. Are you ple.”) Also, like , he’s been the ror. A couple of days before Christmas, going out of business?’ ” Now, at least, star of a reality-television show—“Restau- he sat with a visitor at a slightly wobbly the police were allowing selective breach- rant Stakeout”—in which he untactfully table upstairs at Uncle Jack’s and de- ing of the Sixth Avenue barricade: vend- told people how they were doing their scribed his routine. “I look at myself and ers could make deliveries and garbage jobs wrong. It’s pure coincidence, prob- I say, ‘I’m the man,’ ” said Degel, a round- was being picked up, but to get out you ably, that in the early nineties, when faced, crewcut fellow in his late forties, had to make a U-turn. Trump was sting his bankers for hun- with a sturdy build that was testing the None of this had diminished Degel’s dreds of millions, Degel did six months seams of his three-piece suit. “I say, ‘Who’s esteem for a certain President-elect. in federal prison for conspiracy to com- the man? I’m the fucking man. Today, “Trump’s been here,” he said. “He orders mit credit-card fraud. I’m going to work, I’m taking on this steak. He loves the New York strip steak. Though all evidence pointed to the world, I’m making it the way I want it I just renamed it the Trump Strip. It Secret Service and the N.Y.P.D., Degel to be.’ And I’m uplifted, I’m inspired. makes me laugh when people, to ridi- preferred to blame Bill de Blasio for the You gotta say it three times. The third cule him, talk about how his father maybe street closing. “I want the Mayor to do time, you gotta really be looking your- left him a few million dollars. And you a better job,” he said. “I paid for this lo- self dead in your eyes and tell yourself turn it into five hundred or seven hun- cation, I pay taxes, I pay rent. We reached who you are and what your mission is.” dred million? You know how hard it is out to the Mayor. We invited him to a That particular day, Degel had told to make money? He’s not an idiot. He’s breakfast. Nobody’s knocked on this himself that his mission was to get ve- a smart man, he’s a businessman, he’s a door once.” hicular trac moving on his block, developer. I’m pro-Trump.” What if the situation persisted? between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. For Degel, who grew up in Flushing and “Let’s make this whole block into a

22 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 café-type block. You don’t want car trac? seven, because the server kept crashing.” “Do you think ‘verified emojis’ is a No problem. But let’s put tables and pic- Isaiah Turner—also a rail-thin high- good term?” nic things, and put little coee trucks school dropout, with bleached hair—lay “No. That’s what, like, an adult would and make it really cool. And make this on a couch, the only elevated place to sit say if they made Twitter.” the best destination to walk to and go other than a plastic folding chair “for “We could make it ‘veri-emojis.’ ” eat and drink. It’s, like, Vegas does it, but adults,” kept in a closet. Wearing paja- “No, that’s also, like, super-adult.” it’s in a mall. So let’s do it right here.” mas, Turner, who is eighteen, typed code “ ‘Emojified’? ‘To emojify.’ ” Three days into the new year, the Sixth on his MacBook. “Yeah, that’s good.” Avenue barricade had been removed and “Yo, I’m afraid to not be a teen-ager Pasternak’s phone buzzed. He went cars were moving, sort of; the block be- in two years,” Turner said. “No one takes into the hall to take his daily call from tween Fifth and Madison remained closed. you seriously as an adult.” his mother. He returned ten minutes A reporter’s request for an explanation A week earlier, Pasternak and Turner later and Swiered the floors. from Secret Service personnel inside had débuted Monkey, a video-chat app Around four-thirty, Ryan Metzger, a Trump Tower proved as fruitful as a visit that aims, Turner explained, “to fill the to the Tomb of the Unknown Complainer. loneliness void in teen-agers.” He added, Degel, meanwhile, had a new headache. “It’s like Chatroulette, without the pervs.” “The week after New Year’s, you be- The app already had fifty thousand come a ghost town anyway,” he said. “Ev- users, who’d made half a million ran- erybody’s got resolutions and is going to domized calls to one another. Tim Cook the gym. Supposedly, there was a rift be- (“a dope adult”) congratulated Paster- tween the Mayor and the Secret Service. nak in an e-mail. John Maloney, the I don’t really know what went down. The former Tumblr president, texted. Chris Mayor was grandstanding—this was Smith, an entrepreneur who is help- what people were saying. What people? ing to pay Monkey’s startup costs, has You know, just people in general. I don’t advised Pasternak on a range of ques- know. No one tells you what’s going on. tions: Should he star in a reality-tele- It was just politics. Everything’s politics.” vision show called “CEO@”? (“Yes.”) 1—Mark Singer Should he have tipped his SoHo hair- stylist for his hundred-and-twenty-dol- Ben Pasternak BRAVE NEW WORLD DEPT. lar Bieber do? (“Being Australian, you MONKEY DO get a pass.”) twenty-year-old William & Mary drop- Pasternak had recruited Turner, an out with a five-hundred-thousand-dol- up-and-coming hacker and app devel- lar venture-capital fund and a study app oper, a few weeks earlier, as Pasternak called CoeeCram, came by. (“He’s where was struggling to take down eBay with I was maybe a year and a half ago,” Pas- Flogg, a kid-friendly commerce app he’d ternak said, before Metzger arrived.) developed. (This app led ABC News to “Yo,” Metzger, who wore jeans and a out of wonder whether Pasternak was “the next puy jacket, said. He took a seat on the B high school in Sydney, Australia, last great titan of technology.”) floor and opened his laptop. year and moved to New York, with the “Ben repeatedly told me, ‘You’re gonna “Yo,” Pasternak and Turner replied. goal of making what he called “the No. die one day and no one’s gonna come to “I think I just raised another two hun- app in the world.” One recent afternoon, your funeral,’ ” Turner said. “Now I live dred and fifty thousand,” Metzger said. he woke up at one o’clock, in his twen- here on his nice couch.” “Cool,” Pasternak said. He then named ty-seventh-floor, forty-two-hundred- “He buys fifteen-hundred-dollar elec- an angel investor who “wants to give me dollar-a-month apartment in Hell’s tric skateboards,” Pasternak said. “He’s a hundred grand.” Kitchen. He put on one of his six iden- not broke.” “You should take his money,” Metzger tical pairs of Zanerobe black pants. “You “Yo, that’s actually true. I own fifty advised. can save, like, a year and a half of your total things, and it is one of those things.” “Some of these guys don’t know what life if your outfit is pre-chosen,” he said. “It’s a nice skateboard,” Pasternak said. they’re doing,” Pasternak continued. “We did the math.” He walked to the “It’s a dope skateboard,” Turner agreed. “Being in V.C. without having been a kitchen, past inspirational quotes taped “It goes twenty-two miles per hour, so I startup founder, it’s like”—he searched to the wall —“Life is divine chaos” (mis- don’t have to take cabs.” for a metaphor—“being a lifeguard with- attributed to Keats); “Listen to the kids, “Yo, I just take a lot of Ubers,” Pas- out knowing how to swim.” bruh” (Kanye)—and opened the refrig- ternak said. “I’ve got to send this oer to my erator: seven bottles of Soylent drink They got back to work on Monkey. lawyer,” Metzger said. “Have you seen and some cheese dip. Pasternak rode in circles on his hover- the app Ironclad? It does automated “I was up until five-thirty,” he board as they discussed a new feature. legal paperwork.” told a visitor. “Isaiah is the better “Yo, Isaiah—how’s the emoji thing?” “Lawyers will be completely gone, Monkey founder. He stayed up until “It’s almost done.” like, pretty soon,” Pasternak said.

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 23 “Same with cashiers,” Metzger said. during museum hours. “Thousands of tury Vélez Blanco patio. Tomer said that “They make no sense. And non-auto- people who would self-select out of any the British company Erratica had cre- mated cars? Those are dangerous.” contemporary performance were seeing ated a site-specific video opera for the “I’m never learning to drive,” Paster- work in progress,” Tomer said. space, which was seen by more than nak said. “Cars are so big and ugly. In In the American Wing, Farley struck twenty- five thousand visitors. Farley’s fifty years, we’ll look at them like steam a pose identical to that of Augustus Saint- eyes widened. “Those are football num- locomotives.” Gaudens’s gilded Diana. “One of my fa- bers,” he said. He looked up at the At six o’clock, Turner looked up.“Yo, vorite things to do with my friends is gallery. Something was percolating. let’s get breakfast,” he said. “I’m hungry.” reënact the poses of sculptures,” he said. Half an hour passed. Metzger set a five- Last summer, while New York City Bal- minute timer on his phone. When it went let was performing at the Théâtre du o for the third time, Pasternak put on Châtelet, Farley proposed to his girl- a pair of Yeezys, Turner got dressed, and friend, Cassia Wilson, who is a dancer they walked down to Chipotle. in Austin. They went to the Louvre and 1—Charles Bethea impersonated “Psyche Revived by Cu- pid’s Kiss,” by Canova. SCOUTING MISSION Farley grew up in Charlotte, North MUSE Carolina, the youngest of seven, and began dancing at the age of seven. (One brother took a dierent, if no less physically de- manding, path: Matthias Farley is a de- fensive back with the Indianapolis Colts.) He has choreographed for the School of American Ballet, and also teaches there. , is a dancer in the He said he was shocked when some of Silas Farley S corps of New York City Ballet, be- his students hadn’t recognized the name came an aficionado of the Metropolitan Vaslav Nijinsky. “I thought, I could get “Classical ballet is this elevating form— Museum a few years ago, after he was mad, or I could just tell them about Ni- you have to rise to meet it, whether you given a membership by a donor to the jinsky,” he said. “It’s not that they’re cal- are the dancer or the audience,” he said. School of American Ballet, where he was lous or they don’t care. It’s just that there “The thing is, the audience possesses the a student. “I call her my New York City are so many distractions—all the tweets same instrument. The audience mem- ballet fairy godmother,” Farley, who is and the texts. But put them in front of bers have the same body. It’s like a cello twenty-two, said recently. “I started to beauty, and it will change them.” Farley playing for an audience of cellos.” come all the time.” One Monday morn- is not on social media. “I’m, like, from 1—Rebecca Mead ing not long ago, Farley was back at the sixteenth century,” he said. the museum, at the invitation of Limor As a visitor to the Met, Farley said, END OF INNOCENCE Tomer, who presides over the Met’s live he has enjoyed the Costume Institute’s TRAFFIC performances. The goal: to walk through exhibitions, including a show from a cou- the galleries in the hope that the muse— ple of years ago about Charles James— Terpsichore, specifically—might strike. “It was as if George Balanchine had writ- The tour began in Arms and Armor. ten all the plaques on the walls”—and “There are a lot of objects here, but, more the recent “Manus X Machina” exhibi- importantly, the Met is a huge reposi- tion, on the intersection of fashion and tory of ideas,” Tomer said. A couple of technology. “I sat and looked at that first , I had no idea years ago, the Gotham Chamber Opera Lagerfeld dress for, like, twenty minutes,” “T what child sex tracking was,” took over the space for a performance of he said. He’d just seen the Kerry James Mary Mazzio said. The documentary “Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clo- Marshall show at the Met Breuer, and filmmaker was at Smith & Wollen- rinda,” by Monteverdi, paired with a mod- wanted to return with his students: “The sky, having lunch with a former New ern work by Lembit Beecher. (As part same conversation we’re having about York City deputy mayor named Carol of the latter piece, an actor dressed in diversity in dance is happening all across Robles-Román and the litigator David camouflage was installed in a glass case the arts.” (Farley is one of only a hand- Boies, who was cross-examining the usually occupied by suits of armor.) Far- ful of African-American dancers in the menu through rimless spectacles. “The ley nodded approvingly, and said, “You company.) Rounding a corner, Farley had images we saw were always the same,” reconsider the art work because of the another moment of recognition. “Hi! Mazzio continued. “Fish-net stockings way it is activated by the performers.” How are you!” he said, greeting a secu- being pulled up, then a young Afri- He and Tomer stopped in at the Rob- rity guard; the man was a member of his can-American woman leaning in the ert Lehman court, where the contem- Bible-study group, at Redeemer Presby- window of a minivan. I’m embarrassed porary choreographer Dai Jian showed terian Church on the Upper West Side. by how I bought into the ‘Pretty Woman’ a dance in . Rehearsals took place The final stop was the sixteenth-cen- scenario of child prostitution.”

24 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 Mazzio’s “I Am Jane Doe,” which opens next month, is three films in one. She began by filming a retired manag- ing partner at the law firm of Ropes & Gray, near her home, in Boston, who was representing three children who’d sued Backpage.com, an online classifieds site where they were marketed as “escorts.” According to a Senate report, Backpage commands more than eighty per cent of online-sex-ad revenues. The company has been accused of enabling child sex tracking, although Backpage denies this. “I thought it would be an antisep- tic legal project,” Mazzio, a former law- yer and Olympic rower, said. Then she interviewed some of the more than a hundred thousand Ameri- can children who are being tracked. Pimps and their female accomplices daz- zle girls by promising, “I will never let anything bad happen to you.” They get “If a sixth borough opens up, I’ll let you know.” them hooked on heroin or meth—the “leash” that keeps them from running away, back home—then, through ads •• that use code such as “fresh o the boat,” sell them to be raped as many as twenty Enter David Boies, who represented geously pursuing this, and who motivate times a day. The documentary features Al Gore in Bush v. Gore and mar- us. It’s not just happening in the Philip- three girls—one just thirteen—who es- riage-equality proponents in Perry v. pines. It’s happening here, in every strata.” caped that life, but only physically. Schwarzenegger. The seventy-five-year- Last month, Kamala Harris, then the Robles-Román said, “Mary, I’m em- old counsellor recently filed an amicus California Attorney General, charged barrassed that I didn’t believe the advo- brief on behalf of several children’s and Backpage’s C.E.O. and two of the site’s cates, because I wasn’t reading about it women’s organizations, led by Legal former owners with pimping and money anywhere. But, when I visited homeless Momentum, which Robles-Román laundering. They have denied the charges. shelters or schools, inevitably one stu- now runs. The brief asked the Supreme “The endgame,” Robles-Román said, dent would stay afterward and say, ‘Don’t Court to hear the case against Back- “is getting an injustice out of our jus- look at me—I don’t want you to know page arising from the First Circuit, tice system.” Referring to the case who I am—but I was tracked.’ Why in Boston, whose interpretation of the that upheld the “separate but equal” doc- is it a secret how many children are being C.D.A. it termed “particularly nonsen- trine, she continued, “Plessy v. Fergu- raped by pedophiles?” sical.” As he cut up his chicken, Boies son—thank God people didn’t just say, “I Am Jane Doe” eventually becomes explained, “We’re pursuing three ap- ‘Well, the Supreme Court has ruled, a quest for a hero: which crusading law- proaches. One, get the Supreme Court let’s move on.’” yer or outraged politician will pierce to enforce the C.D.A.’s true intent. Child rape has become a huge, en- Backpage’s legal shield? That shield is Two, find a legislative solution.” This trenched business, Boies pointed out: Section of the Communications De- week, the Supreme Court is expected “Backpage is owned by a Netherlands cency Act, a law that Congress passed to announce whether it will hear the company that runs a web of nefarious in to protect Internet companies case, and the Senate subcommittee is Web sites. One is called Cracker. Back- from liability for content posted on their holding another hearing. “And, three,” page is mild compared to Cracker.” sites by other parties. In the end, none he continued, “use additional legal “Have you gone on Cracker, David?” of the lawyers whom Mazzio inter- avenues to go after Backpage. It’s a Mazzio asked. views—not the professorial litigator in dramatic failing of our legal system “I have not,” he said. “I’ve had people Boston, or the fiery solo practitioner that something so obviously terrible go on it.” He added, with barely tem- working out of a strip mall near Seat- continues to flourish.” pered outrage, “I don’t know of another tle—can convince the courts that the Mazzio said, “Having been a lawyer— organized-crime group that’s as sophis- C.D.A. was never intended to protect a and hating most lawyers—I have to thank ticated in their corporate structure.” forum for the sexual marketing of chil- you for doing this work.” “Wow,” Mazzio said. “You’re really dren. When a Senate subcommittee Boies raised his Diet Coke in ac- saying it, aren’t you?” held a hearing on the matter, Backpage’s knowledgment, then said, “The real he- “Wait till you see our litigation.” C.E.O. didn’t show up. roes are the Jane Does who are coura- —Tad Friend

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 25 of the sound in Franklin’s music comes ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS from elsewhere—usually, a band and an ensemble of singers—he is always and unquestionably the locus of its en- MAKING GOD FAMOUS ergy and intention. When I first saw Franklin perform How Kirk Franklin is pushing the boundaries of gospel. live, last spring, at the newly renovated Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, he stood BY VINSON CUNNINGHAM at center stage, spotlit, rasping out preachy interjections whenever his sing- ers paused for breath. The theatre had the grandeur of a cathedral: blood-red velvet curtains framed the stage; golden ceilings, patterned with blue-and- purple paisleys, soared over vaudeville-era bal- conies and plush seats. During “I Smile,” a bouncy, piano-propelled anthem to joyful resilience against life’s troubles, Franklin punctuated the chorus with a rhythmic series of shouts: “I smile”— “Yes!”—“Even though I’m hurt, see, I smile”—“Come on!”—“Even though I’ve been here for a while”—“Hallelu- jah!”—“I smile.” Meanwhile, he danced. Franklin’s music is rife with recognizable in- fluences, from traditional Southern gos- pel to R. & B., hip-hop to arena rock, and he accentuates this fact by oer- ing audiences a flurry of accompany- ing bodily references. He is short—five feet five on tiptoe—and has friendly features: sleek eyes with penny irises, arched eyebrows, a mouth that rests in a grinning pout, taut balloons for cheeks. He wore white pants with black racing stripes, a long black shirt, and, around his neck, a neatly knotted red bandanna. Cradling the microphone stand near the lip of the stage, he wiggled his feet like James Brown and drew miniature scallops with his hips, then galloped from one side of the stage to the other, like a sanctified Springsteen. During the down-home numbers, he turned his back to the crowd and waved his hands in the direction of the singers, a Franklin (seated) blends secular sounds with an uplifting devotional message. slightly comic invocation of the Bap- tist choir director’s showily precise con- ’ describe in a word what his role more closely resembles that of trol. Then he broke into a survey of re- I Kirk Franklin does for a living. a stock character in hip-hop: the hype cent dances made viral by teens on Vine Franklin, forty-six, is the most success- man. The best hype men—Flavor Flav, and Snapchat: the Milly Rock, the Hit ful contemporary gospel artist of his Spli Star, the early Sean (P. Diddy) Dem Folks, the Dab. Sometimes, as if generation, but he isn’t a singer. He Combs—hop around onstage, slightly overtaken by joy, he simply leaped into plays the piano, but only intermittently behind and to the side of the lead m.c., the air and landed on the beat. onstage, more to contribute to the pag- addressing the microphone in order to The show was a stop along Frank- eantry than to show o his modest ad-lib or to reinforce punch lines as lin’s latest tour, “ Years in One Night.” chops. Above all, he is a songwriter, they rumble by. But a hype man is, by The tour’s title had rounded down the but in performance and on his albums definition, a sidekick, and while most years ever so slightly: Franklin released

26 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY BRENT HUMPHREYS his first album in 1993. Since then, he to have at least a few of them in its rep- has sold millions of records and won ertoire. His melodies and harmony parts scores of awards for a brand of gospel were easy to teach to amateur ensem- that blends secular sounds with an up- bles, and congregations were sure to lifting devotional message. He has also know them, and to sing along. collaborated with some of the biggest Franklin had forged an uncommon names in pop: a few months before the connection with “the youth,” as the Brooklyn show, he appeared on “Ul- elder churchgoers called us. His mes- tralight Beam,” the first song on Kanye sage rarely difered from that of the West’s newest album, “The Life of other gospel music circulating at the Pablo,” and performed the song along- time, but his sound and his attitude side West on “Saturday Night Live.” were of a piece with the most popular The mostly black audience at Kings hip-hop and R. & B. acts of the mo- Theatre was older than the usual con- ment. His physicality sometimes scan- certgoing crowd, and well versed in dalized the older crowd. I often heard Franklin’s œuvre, frequently breaking, people complain, “He’s bringing the unbidden, into surprisingly competent world into the church.” But those par- harmony. “Y’all sound good!” Frank- ents also accepted, sometimes grudg- lin said. Later, he joked about his re- ingly, that this flashy figure might hold lationship with West: “Anyone can be the key to keeping their sons and saved . . . even Kanye!” The crowd daughters in the pew and of the streets. laughed. The show ran for two and a Franklin’s first album, a live record- half hours, with a short intermission; ing called “Kirk Franklin and the Fam- at several points, Franklin asked the ily,” ofered a smooth, pop-adjacent audience if they had got their money’s brand of gospel, descended from acts worth. He was a genial narrator, a kind like Andraé Crouch, the Winans, and, of hovering intelligence, pulling his perhaps especially, Edwin Hawkins, fans through the healing places in his whose 1969 hit “Oh Happy Day” laid songs. When he was done, a woman the template for the kind of main- of maybe sixty looked over at me, dazed, stream acceptance that Franklin hoped and said, “That’s why he’s so skinny— to win. Franklin’s songs had compul- he’s got a lot of energy!” “What a bless- sively singable melodies—there was ing,” somebody else said. “I feel so light.” little of the sweaty, melismatic display typically associated with gospel vocal- n the mid-nineties, when I was izing. His choir, the Family, sang in I ten years old, my mother and I be- sweet, perfectly blended, middle- came members of a Pentecostal church of-the-register unison, splitting into in Harlem. We had recently moved back three-part harmony only toward the to New York after six years in Chicago, propulsive endings of their songs. The where my mother taught grade-school- lyrics were earnest statements of afec- ers and my father was the music direc- tion toward the divine. “I sing because tor at a Roman Catholic church. The I’m happy,” went one of the more pop- hush of Catholicism was most of what ular numbers. “I sing because I’m I knew about religion—my dad had a free”—“His eye is on!”—“His eye is talent for sneaking gospel sounds into on the sparrow”—“That’s the rea- hymnody, but the Mass had a staid, son!”—“That’s the reason why I sing.” stubborn rhythm of its own—and the “Kirk Franklin and the Family” sold biggest shock of my first few months a million copies, becoming the first immersed in charismatic religion was gospel début to go platinum. Frank- the wild, unceasing stream of noise. lin’s next record, “Whatcha Lookin’ 4,” Even as the pastor preached, the organ went platinum as well, and earned would honk, or a cymbal would crash, Franklin his first Grammy. Both al- or someone in the congregation would bums topped Billboard’s gospel-album open her mouth and let fly a stream of category. And, surprisingly, they ap- Spirit- given tongues. The other sound peared on the R. & B. chart—a sign I remember was Franklin’s music. He that gospel, Christ and all, might finally was a fairly new phenomenon, and his cross over. In 1995, Jimmy Iovine, then songs had already become inescapable. the chairman of Interscope Records, Every respectable church choir seemed home of Tupac Shakur and Dr. Dre,

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 27 engineered a partial acquisition of ily, talked over meals, and stopped by wanna give you Jesus, but I wanna give Gospo Centric Records, the indepen- his old high school. The family attends you Jesus with an . I wanna give dent label that had signed Franklin. the Oak Cli Bible Fellowship, a Dal- you Jesus with some strings.” Hill nod- One of Interscope’s talent scouts had las congregation led by the pastor and ded in agreement. brought Franklin to Iovine’s attention, radio personality Tony Evans, who has As a teen-ager, Franklin spent days and Iovine was enthralled by Frank- become a mentor and spiritual adviser on end at a record shop near his high lin’s charisma as well as by his com- to Franklin. When we first pulled up school, looking up the names of the mercial potential. He heralded Frank- to Franklin’s house, which is topped producers who had created the songs lin—who, by now, was heading a new by spires and slatted roofs, and set be- he loved. Other musicians, Hill said, outfit, called God’s Property—as gos- hind a black wrought-iron gate on a “who grew up in church and knew pel music’s Bob Marley. secluded street, Franklin turned to me they could sing or whatever, they were “Stomp,” the lead single on Frank- and said, “Now, remember, this is just sort of pushed toward gospel lin’s next album, “God’s Property from Texas.” music. That’s the natural frame of Kirk Franklin’s Nu Nation,” made the On a bright, hot afternoon, we had mind—‘People in church say I could Top Forty charts in . Its video, lunch at a Mediterranean restaurant be bigger, so I’ll go into it.’ Not ‘I which entered regular rotation on MTV, near his home. We were joined by his wanna pursue this,’ not ‘I’m gonna opens with Franklin, in a white suit manager and closest confidant, Ron spend my time honing my craft, and and shades, issuing a warning directly Hill, a slim, cerebral guy in his early listening to other music, and growing to the camera: “For those of you that thirties who went to college in New as an artist.’ ” think that gospel music has gone too Orleans and, after getting started in Franklin pulled my audio recorder far—you think we’ve gotten too radi- the music scene there, lost nearly ev- across the table and said emphatically, cal with our message. Well, I’ve got erything in Hurricane Katrina. After “This cat Ron Hill could easily run news for you: you ain’t heard nothin’ the storm, he recommitted himself to Apple, he could run Microsoft, he yet. And if you don’t know, now you his faith, then became an intern at could run Google. He is one step away know. Glory, glory!” It was a deliberate Franklin’s label, Fo Yo Soul Record- from something crazy that is going echo of the Notorious B.I.G.’s intro- ings, a joint venture with RCA cre- to change the culture.” duction to his hit “Juicy,” and ated in . He is now its president. Franklin’s interest in fame and his served as a kind of mission statement The two men engaged in rolling, big- devotion to the church can both be for Franklin’s gospel/hip-hop hybrid. brother, little-brother banter, littered traced to his early years. Born Kirk Throughout the video, the members of with industry gossip and notes on Mathis, he was abandoned by his fa- God’s Property—dressed, variously, in new albums. The conversation inev- ther and his mother by the time he baggy jeans, shiny athletic gear, and itably returned to what they see as was four years old. He was adopted Nike Air Force s—dance boisterously, the rut that gospel music has fallen by a relative, Gertrude Franklin, a striking poses you’d otherwise expect into. Why, they ask, can’t the genre pious woman and a widow in her six- to see in a night club. be as dynamic and unbound as its ties. Her age was alienating for Kirk, “Lately I’ve been goin’ through some secular counterparts? And why can’t as was the fickle presence of his bio- things that’s really got me down,” the more of its listeners applaud risks like logical mother, who lived close enough choir sings. “I need someone, some- those which Franklin has continued to stop by a few times a year and then body to help me come and turn my life to take? disappear again. He listened to Top around.” Beneath the voices is a sam- Franklin has a raspy voice, like a Forty radio constantly, and his talent ple from Parliament-Funkadelic’s “One preacher after service, and a slight stut- was obvious from an early age: at Nation Under a Groove,” and this un- ter. He is given to parables and anal- eleven, he became the minister of dercurrent of funk, along with Frank- ogies, and he speaks with his entire music at his church. When he began lin’s interjections, keeps the song lively torso, leaning over and looking you in to write songs—and started perform- and aloft. Toward the end, Cheryl the eyes to make sure you’re still with ing them, along with choirs he’d as- James—otherwise known as Salt, of him. Discussing the business of music, sembled, in churches all over Fort the rap duo Salt-N-Pepa—oers a he started many sentences by saying, Worth—his first impulse was to meld verse. “God’s Property” went double “See, the problem with my genre . . .” the secular and the sacred. His first platinum, and reached the No. spot One of the problems, he said, is gos- song was a reworking of Elton John’s on the Billboard chart. Franklin pel’s dual role as artistic endeavor and “Bennie and the Jets,” called “Jesus Is won another Grammy. Iovine’s com- as purveyor of religious experience. Coming Back.” parison of Franklin to Marley began “They don’t come to gospel for the Franklin’s career is replete with to seem almost reasonable. production or for the beats,” he said unlikely collaborations, each reflec- of his audience. “They come because tive of a love for pop tunes: Bono, , I went to see Franklin for they wanna be ministered to. So some- Mary J. Blige, and R. Kelly have all I a few days in Fort Worth, Texas, times it’s, like, Well, if that’s all I’m shared a studio with Franklin. Re- where he was born and raised and still good for, what do I do with all these cently, the collaboration with Kanye lives, with his wife, Tammy, and their ideas, and these creative dreams, and West had angered some portion of children. We spent time with his fam- growth I want to do as an artist? I Franklin’s fans, and, at lunch in Fort

28 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 Worth, Franklin and Hill were still smarting from that reaction. West grew up in Chicago and was raised in the church; on “Ultralight Beam,” he uses Franklin’s voice as a kind of associative device, meant to ratify his assertion that “The Life of Pablo” is a gospel album. Franklin arranged the choir parts that provide the back- ground for the song’s chorus, and he speaks at the end of the track: “Fa- ther, this prayer is for everyone that feels they’re not good enough. This prayer’s for everybody that feels like they’re too messed up—for everyone that feels they’ve said ‘I’m sorry’ too many times. You can never go too far, where you can’t come back home again!” Even before the song was released, a photograph was posted online of Franklin and West together in a re- cording studio, and Franklin received a raft of negative Instagram com- ments. (“Why is Kirk in a picture with Kanye?” one fan asked. “I really hope •• and pray he is not collaborating with that blasphemous fool!”) After per- forming the song on “S.N.L.,” Frank- ways get accepted in the church. But appeal. But nobody danced to Mahalia; lin posted a black-and-white photo we’re trying to reach the people that hers was a moral moment, and the of himself and West on Instagram. don’t know the gospel.” mainstream largely left her there. “Kanye is not me,” he wrote in the Kirk Franklin has held on to the caption. “I am not him. He is my of understanding gospel message while moving his sound, brother I am proud to do life with.” O the customary path from gospel and his presentation, in the direction He added, “To a lot of my Christian prominence to mainstream stardom is of hip-hop and contemporary R. & B., family, I’m sorry he’s not good enough, to listen to two recordings by Sam the genres with an increasingly solid Christian enough, or running at your Cooke, “Wonderful” and “Lovable.” grip on the imagination of America’s pace . . . and as I read some of your The melodies and song structures are youth. Last June, he travelled to Los comments, neither am I. That won’t almost identical. They both speak of Angeles for the BET Awards. He’d stop me from running.” an otherworldly, all-accepting love; on been nominated for Best Gospel/In- In Fort Worth, Franklin spoke of both tracks, Cooke rests his trademark spirational Artist, an award he had won the constraints he feels as a gospel art- yodel over classic gospel-quartet several times. Before the ceremony, he ist. “If I’m writing and doing music chords. But “Wonderful” is about God, was slated to participate in a public in- celebrating the Creator, who is the and “Lovable,” released one year later, terview, called a BET Genius Talk, most creative being in the world—I is about a woman, any woman, maybe hosted by DeVon Franklin, a friend mean when you look at nature and you. Sam Cooke crossed over. who has worked as a Hollywood ex- when you look at all of the beautiful Acts like Cooke, Solomon Burke, ecutive and is a preacher and motiva- created things—why should I be lim- and Aretha Franklin made their way tional speaker. The talk took place at ited in expressing myself? He’s cre- into the hearts of pop audiences by the Los Angeles Convention Center. ative, so why shouldn’t my music be shedding their music’s religious con- Backstage, as both Franklins waited to creative, too? But everyone in my com- tent while retaining its fervor. They begin, DeVon turned to Kirk and play- munity, and especially the consumers, left traditional gospel behind and in- fully said, “Now, listen, I don’t want they don’t see it that way. Which is vented, in its place, an entirely new the humble Kirk. The people want to weird for me. It makes you feel good American genre: soul. Other acts held hear the genius Kirk.” After DeVon when you do a song that, sonically, on to the sacred, and some of them went o to greet some friends, Frank- can fit right next to Drake. But our were swept into wider fame by the so- lin turned to Hill and asked, “The hum- audience, they don’t care. And it hurts cial turmoil of the sixties. Mahalia Jack- ble thing—am I coming o insincere? that they don’t care!” son soundtracked the civil-rights move- That’s just how I am.” Hill said, “His music may not al- ment, echoing its overtly religious Soon he was rushed onto the stage,

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 29 and the crowd hooted and clapped. Prompted by DeVon, he outlined his life, presenting his abandonment and THE FOX adoption as obstacles faced and, by de- grees, overcome. “Sometimes, when Marine helicopters on maneuver kept dipping you feel like you’ve hit rock bottom, toward swells at Black’s Beach, my board’s poise often you find out that God is the rock giving way to freefall of my wave tubing at the bottom,” he said. After the event, a young assistant over me, nubs of wax under my feet as I crouched pulled Franklin into a vast ballroom under the lip, sped across the face and kicked out— and pointed to a makeshift triangle of all over Southern Cal a haze settled: as if light breathed black draping, where he could change clothes for the ceremony. “They told that technicolor smog at sunset over me there’d be, like, a little room,” he San Diego Harbor where battleships at anchor, said, smiling. The assistant shrugged just back from patrolling the South China Sea, were and shook her head. Franklin disap- peared behind the curtain. having rust scraped o and painted gray. Franklin dislikes awards shows, This was my inheritance that lay stretched before me: which remind him of how explicit the which is when I felt the underbrush give way celebrity machine’s hierarchy can be. Everything from seat assignments to and the fox that thrives in my brain, the number of camera flashes that an not looking sly but just at home in his pelt attendee attracts on the red carpet is and subtle paws, broke from cover and ran meant, in some way, to fix a person in his place. To no one’s surprise, Frank- across the yard into the future to sni my gravestone, lin won again that night. He took the piss, and move on. And so I was reborn into stage with his wife, Tammy, and gave my long nose and ears, my coat’s red, white, and brown a short, slightly nervous speech. Watch- ing from the audience, I wondered giving o my fox smell lying heavy on the winds what might have happened if, at the in the years when I’d outsmart guns, poison, commercial and cultural apex of his dogs and wire, when the rooster and his hens career, Franklin had rocketed away from music about Jesus and into the clucked and ran, crazy with terror heart of secular pop, the way Cooke at how everything goes still in that way a fox adores, and Aretha had. You sometimes get gliding through slow-motion drifts of feathers. the sense, hearing him talk, that he wonders this, too. But, despite his pe- Tom Sleigh riodic restlessness, leaving was never a serious consideration. Gospel, he told me later, is “closely connected with the out of court.) A few years later, he and know how to lovingly navigate me dude that I am.” His relationship to Tammy gave interviews, first in a se- through it. So I was kind of written the genre, he said, was like that of “a ries of Christian magazines, and finally o. But I knew that she loved me.” It married man who sometimes gets frus- on the Oprah Winfrey show, in which was around this time, Franklin says, trated with his marriage.” He went on, they divulged that Franklin was ad- that an anonymous benefactor, who “You know, he can get frustrated, hav- dicted to pornography, and that the had heard about Franklin’s musical tal- ing arguments and disagreements, and habit had threatened their marriage. ents, oered to pay his tuition to a new be, like, ‘Man, if I was single I wouldn’t Franklin says that he has always private high school for the perform- have to be dealing with this.’ But you craved attention and approval, espe- ing arts. There were thirty students in never get to the point where you’re in cially from women, and that he be- the entire school. For the first time in divorce court or you’re talking to an came promiscuous in his early teens. his life, Franklin was the only black attorney.” He often got involved with—and hung student in his class, surrounded by Beginning in the late nineties, around the homes of—girls whose “white weirdos” who listened to Pink Franklin’s life was roiled by less met- families were more conventional than Floyd, and who considered Franklin aphorical troubles. First, members of his. Eventually, Gertrude kicked him cool because he was black and knew God’s Property filed a lawsuit against out—rightfully, he says. “I was smok- how to dance. He felt lucky; somehow, him, claiming that he hadn’t paid them ing in the house, sneaking girls in and he fit in. He was sleeping most nights suciently. (The suit, along with a out to have sex,” he said. “She loved on couches and in cars. At the end of similar one brought two years later by me, but I could tell that my adoles- the school year, he found out that his members of the Family, was resolved cence disappointed her. She didn’t girlfriend was pregnant. He quit school

30 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 for good before his son Kerrion was But finally I can imagine me.” Just be- in the bubble and aect the world? born. fore the song’s closing crescendo, You can’t do that if you only know the Gertrude died when Franklin was Franklin begins to speak directly to bubble.” twenty, and left him her house. He the listener. “This song is dedicated to Escaping this provincialism is the sold it, paid o a few bills, moved into people like me,” he says. “Those that theme of Franklin’s most recent album, an apartment in nearby Hulen Heights, struggle with insecurity, acceptance, “Losing My Religion,” which was re- and began to write the songs that and even self-esteem. You never felt leased late in and was just nom- appeared on “Kirk Franklin and the good enough; you never felt pretty inated for a Grammy. The title was Family.” enough.” instantly and predictably provocative: Franklin speaks of God as if he were Franklin talks about the change in Franklin’s fan base wondered if he in the next room, a shout away. Spurred his work directionally: he had started planned to depart from Christian doc- by what he calls his “mama issues,” he out writing, like much of the gospel trine. He didn’t. “I just wanna have has from time to time played the anal- industry, “vertically,” man to God— deeper conversations that intellectu- ysand. “I’m a Christian who believes “You know, ‘God, we praise you!,’ all ally challenge us, to make sure that in therapy,” he told me. In the aughts, of that, which is beautiful”—but now we’re growing the right way,” Frank- Franklin underwent an artistic meta- he wrote “horizontally,” person to per- lin said. “I wanna make sure that we’re morphosis that was primarily lyrical: son, hoping that the particulars of his not just being cultural Christians, just he turned, sharply and compellingly, life would strike a universal chord in ’cause we’re black. Or because we’re toward the personal. The result was both believers and unbelievers. American. I want to talk about weighty the creation of a specific, fully real- “It’s still very much a genre that stu.” The “ Years” billing of the re- ized “I” in his songs, an innovation fa- wants these vertical songs,” Franklin cent tour was partly a way to wrap miliar from blues and pop that had said. “But I want to write about the these “deeper conversations”—about never before wholly crossed into gos- God that I live with, not just the God the church’s ecacy in an increasingly pel. That character first appears on that I love. Because the God that I live secular world—into the context of “Hero,” an album released in . with sees me having doubts with him, Franklin’s entire career. “I wanted them “Hero” is Franklin’s most autobiograph- and being afraid of him, and being to know that I’m still their boy,” he ical album, and his best. In “Let It Go,” mad at him, and saying sorry, and mak- said, referring to the fans who have a spoken-word near-rap driven by a ing up.” “Hero” briefly charted on the stuck with him through the years. moody sample of “Shout,” by the band Billboard . It is the last of his al- Assurances notwithstanding, “Los- Tears for Fears, Franklin begins, “My bums to go platinum. ing My Religion” is an open rebuke to mama gave me up when I was four the stuer, more conservative corners years old/ She didn’t destroy my body last year on NPR, of the church. “Religion is a prison but but she killed my soul…. Ten years old I Franklin said, “My job on earth, the truth sets us free,” Franklin says on the finding love in dirty magazines/ Ms. reason why Kirk is created, is to make album’s opening track, an a-cappella December you remember I bought you God famous. I just want God to be spoken-word piece. He continues, “Ter- twice/Now I’m thirty plus and still well known.” God does not seem to ror, famine, disease/Millions in pov- paying the price.” It continues in this lack for name recognition, but the re- erty/Hungry, can’t sleep/ With all of autobiographical vein: “Had a sister nown that Franklin has in mind is a this religion, why these babies can’t eat?” that I barely knew/ Kind of got sep- kind of cultural capital, or, Franklin blames church- arated by the age of two / Same mama as he explained it to me, world cloistering, in part, dierent daddy so we couldn’t fake it/ “a seat at the table of cul- for Donald Trump’s suc- I saw my sister’s daddy beat her in the ture.” Secularists some- cess among conservative tub naked.” times fear that theocracy evangelicals. Trump, he Another song, “Imagine Me,” a wil- is right around the corner, thinks, oered churches— lowy ballad held together by a soft, but in America God re- often courted by main- vaguely martial snare, a bright acous- mains uncool. stream Republicans as a tic guitar, and a sweetly repetitive piano “Christianity, and the source of votes, and then ri, pulls a neat psychological trick: framework of religion, all but ignored—a high- instead of telling the customary gos- makes us a subculture,” way back to cultural prom- pel story of absolute, transformational Franklin said. “But there’s a whole other inence. “To see the evangelical com- change, the narrator presents the act world going on—technology, and sci- munity be so desperate for relevancy, of even imagining an uninhibited re- ence, and racism, and economics, and that really breaks my heart,” he said. lationship with God as a kind of break- capitalism, and all of these things hap- “You know what that means to me, through. “Imagine me,” the chorus be- pening, but we have this bubble. And also? There have been decades where gins, in a tender unison that sometimes the problem is that when people leave you didn’t do good work. Decades sprouts into harmony, “being free, trust- this bubble they have to go into the where you didn’t lay down a good ing you totally/Finally I can imagine world to work, and to raise their kids, framework where the culture saw you me./I admit it was hard to see/ You and to find a spouse, to pay taxes. So as not only passionate about the rich being in love with someone like me/ why wouldn’t you take what you learn but passionate about the poor.” Shortly

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 31 after the election, Franklin published New York. He stood in the Armory’s having a promoter come up to me and an essay on the Hungton Post, ti- gravel alleyway, wearing the same tell me he doesn’t have three thousand tled “Dear Fellow Christians . . .” He black-and-white outfit that I’d seen in dollars? That’ll make you want to go walks a tightrope in the letter, declin- Brooklyn. His background singers, home. My community’s still doing ing to praise or condemn either can- mostly women, hung around him in a that? I’m done.” didate. Instead, he expresses conster- loose, laughing cluster, and the band, Toward the end of the show in nation toward his co-religionists. “My all male, stood a ways o. The sun was Rochester, Franklin hopped o the shock is in the worst I’ve seen in those beginning to set, making soft shapes stage and waded into the crowd. He that claim to believe like I do,” Frank- on the musicians’ horns. oered the microphone to maybe a lin writes. “While we fight and argue “All right, let’s pray it up,” Frank- dozen people in turn and asked, “What’s about abortion and sexual orientation, lin said to the group. your favorite Kirk song?” Each of them we apparently forgot one of the great- The huddle tightened. beamed and answered the question. est sins that God continuously ac- “If the light shining on you,” Frank- Returning to the stage, he didn’t knowledges He hates: .” lin said. hop quite high enough, and for a sec- The political realm is thorny for a “Is brighter than the light shining ond he was stuck, with his torso on- figure like Franklin, whose audience in you,” the rest replied. stage and his legs wiggling. After a is largely culturally conservative and “Then the light shining on you—” few moments of struggle, he worked drawn to a positive, uplifting message. “—will destroy you.” himself up and onto the stage, and Today, in contrast to the sixties, much After the prayer, we could hear the stood shaking his head and scratch- social-activist energy comes from sec- squalls of an opening act—one of an ing his brow. An embarrassed smile ular sources. Some black religious lead- exasperating five, none of which Frank- passed across his face. He started to ers from more liberal traditions have lin had been involved in choosing. laugh, and the crowd laughed along. aligned themselves almost totally with “There’s no support system,” he said Later, on board his tour bus, he was progressive politics, even on issues like as he stretched, hoisting first one leg, still good-naturedly embarrassed. “Ha!” homosexuality. Franklin is not quite then the other, almost level with his he barked. “Please include me getting so free, though he occasionally skirts head, against a brick wall. “It’s almost stuck,” he said, pointing to my recorder. the edges of orthodoxy. During an in- like when women started doing their “I have more ambition than I do phys- terview on “Sway in the Morning,” hair natural. The style was always ical capacity.” He had changed into a popular radio show on Sirius XM, perms, but then somebody said, ‘You sweats and bobbed like a wrestler atop he addressed the matter of same-sex know what?’ ” Here he slipped into a the bus’s couch. In a few hours, he relationships. “As Christians, as the head-snapping, wrist-flipping impres- would take o for the tour’s final show, church, we’ve come o like the police,” sion. “ ‘I’ma start getting my hair nat- in Baltimore. He didn’t look much he said. “What I always wanna say, ural.’ And then their girlfriends were, more tired than he had before the show. man, is I’m sorry for all of the ugly like, ‘Yeah, girl, let’s go natural!’ So “Like, if you wanted to go eat, I could things and all of the painful things they all went natural, but the beauty go eat,” he said. “You want to go maybe that people have even heard from shops didn’t know. They still had all see your peoples? We could go see your church people. Because things can these chemicals and stu, and girls peoples. Can I do a whole ’nother con- come from a very homophobic lens— showed up, like, ‘Do me natural,’ and cert? Probably not.” sometimes it feels very homophobic the shops were, like, ‘Huh?’ ’Cause Also aboard were two women, a re- when people are trying to make their they’re still used to the perm.” porter from Rochester’s weekly black stance or their beliefs.” Promoters didn’t understand that newspaper and a friend of hers. The Life in the bubble won’t do for a you couldn’t sell tickets to a big gos- reporter wanted a photo. Franklin crossover artist like Franklin, who ap- pel show the way you would for a Ri- obliged, but not without extracting proaches his visits to churches and hanna tour, he said. “You gotta go to some market research. hip-hop radio shows with equal ardor. the churches, you gotta include the “So was this a good turnout for He has souls to win, seats to fill. churches, churches gotta know you, Rochester?” you gotta become a partner.” The women laughed. of the “ Years After one of the recent concerts, he “No, no, really,” he said, raising T in One Night” tour ran mainly said, a promoter told him that he was his eyebrows. He’d seen a scatter- through big cities, and was organized three thousand dollars short of the ing of empty white folding chairs and promoted by the entertainment fee he owed Franklin. “You wouldn’t throughout the Armory. “Was it a good behemoth Live Nation. The crowds do that to John Legend,” Franklin said, turnout?” were so large that Franklin and his clearly still upset. “You wouldn’t do They assured him that it was. Al- team organized a second leg on their that to Jill Scott or Erykah Badu. So most nobody big comes through Roch- own, through smaller markets—Tulsa, what do you think of me and my genre, ester, they said, and even fewer get a Savannah, Clearwater—where they that it’s so country and so backward crowd like this. were at the mercy of independent pro- that you can do that to me?” He found Franklin gestured toward his road moters. I joined him at the ivy-clad the whole experience discouraging. assistant. “One of y’all has to go see Main Street Armory, in Rochester, “You mean after twenty years I’m still how many people came out,” he said. 

32 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 mission of the departments they’re sup- SHOUTS & MURMURS posed to lead—seem to indicate an at- tempt to find a fox for every henhouse. I countered with: “Where did that TOSSING AND TURNING figure, sixty thousand pounds of shrimp, come from? It was confirmed, in an BY CALVIN TRILLIN Internetish sort of way, by some sites with names like Fun Facts About Las Vegas.” Had I chased away the depressing thoughts? Not quite. I could still envi- sion him as President, giving out the Medal of Freedom to some beloved old television star. Instead of a few graceful remarks of the sort we came to expect on such occasions from, say, Obama or Reagan, he’s boasting that the ratings of the star’s show were nothing compared with the ratings of “The Apprentice,” which, he explains at length, was shafted by the Emmy Awards because the Emmy Awards are definitely rigged. I was ready for that. “Saying that more shrimp is consumed in Las Vegas , I sometimes Village. But that staved o the depress- than in the rest of the country is not S wake up at three or four in the morn- ing subject for only a moment or two, like saying that more toasted ravioli ing, disturbed by dark thoughts, and as I searched my mind for other poets is consumed in St. Louis than in the when that happens I try my best to with buildings in their names. I tried rest of the country,” I said to myself. think of the surprising amount of out, unsuccessfully, a few more geo- “St. Louis is about the only place where shrimp consumed in Las Vegas every graphical surprises, such as the fact that people actually eat toasted ravioli, so day. We all have our own way of deal- the second most populous city in Illi- that would make sense. But think of ing with this thing. nois is Aurora. Then I settled on shrimp all the shrimp consumed in New York, My way is what might be called re- consumption in Las Vegas. Los Angeles, Chicago, Aurora.” placement denial. In order to avoid I had acquired my knowledge of Las But imagining that Medal of Free- dwelling on a depressing or disturbing Vegas shrimp consumption from one dom ceremony had started something. subject—the sort of subject that can of those interstitial statements that Now I could envision a state dinner keep you from falling back asleep—you “PBS NewsHour” flashes on the screen for the President of France, during concentrate on a subject that is so en- to give viewers a sort of bonus fact which, in the room where the cellist grossing that it can drive the depress- about the segment they’ve just seen. Pablo Casals played so memorably for ing subject from your mind. Concen- What had flashed on the screen, after the Kennedys, the guests are being en- trating on shrimp consumption in Las a segment that took place in Las Vegas tertained by a tag-team exhibition from Vegas is not my first attempt at replace- but had nothing to do with shrimp, World Wrestling Entertainment. ment denial. On previous nights, for in- was this: “, pounds of shrimp are “And consider the shells,” I said to stance, I’d done my best to contemplate consumed per day in Las Vegas, more myself, even before the thump of the ramifications of a similarly surpris- than the rest of the country combined.” huge men hitting the canvas faded. ing fact: the largest state east of the On the first night I put that fact to “There must be mountains of shrimp Mississippi, in land area, is Georgia. use, I’d awakened at about .., think- shells, piled on the desert like slag heaps Diverting ramifications were not ing, Could it really be that American in a played-out coal county. Let’s say forthcoming. All I could think of was children are going to be raised to look that there are thirty or so shrimp to a that people who are asked to name the up to a coarse blowhard who has boasted pound. That means peeling two mil- largest state east of the Mississippi tend about assaulting women? lion shrimp every day.” I could envi- to say that it’s Pennsylvania or Flor- “According to no less a source than sion the shrimp-peelers, probably paid ida—both states won by the man I was PBS,” I replied to myself, “Las Vegas by the shell, peeling and counting: “One trying to put out of my mind. After consumes more shrimp every day than million four hundred and eighty-six that, I tried to make do with the fact the rest of the country combined.” thousand five hundred and eleven . . . that Edna St. Vincent Millay’s middle There was a slight delay. Was it one million four hundred and eighty-six name is not an old family name, as peo- working? Not yet, because this thought thousand five hundred and twelve . . .” ple tend to assume; she was named for came into my mind: His appointments Long before they got to two million,

TOMI UM St. Vincent’s Hospital, in Greenwich so far—people who are opposed to the I was asleep. 

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 33 nouncements and other such events, ANNALS OF FINANCE and maintained high returns, against the odds, year after year. He was short and thick, had a fierce mind and a TOTAL RETURN quick temper, and he lived in a thirty- five-thousand-square-foot mansion in What happened when the feds went after a hedge-fund legend. Greenwich, Connecticut. A passionate art collector, he would spend a hundred BY SHEELAH KOLHATKAR million dollars or more on a single work. Zabel and Bharara had had multi- ple conversations about the case, and the time had come to decide how they were going to proceed. The two men were often in agreement about how to approach their cases—Bharara has called Zabel “my consigliere and my closest friend”—but Bharara relied on him especially for his insight into white- collar opponents and their highly compensated defense lawyers. In fact, Zabel had more in common with rich Wall Street defendants than he did with Bharara. Bharara, the son of a pediatrician, immigrated to the United States from India as a young child, grew up in New Jersey, and moved swiftly through Har- vard, Columbia Law School, and, even- tually, into the oce of Senator Charles Schumer, of New York, where he spent four years as chief legal counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. For Zabel, by contrast, the hedge-fund in- dustry was native ground: his father was a founder of Schulte, Roth & Zabel, an immensely successful law firm that served hedge-fund clients. Many on Wall Street saw Zabel as one Government ocials spent years investigating Steven Cohen’s financial empire. of them. One prominent fund man- ager, whose company had been inves- early , Preet Bha- wiretapping traders’ calls, and flipping tigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Oce, O rara, the U.S. Attorney for the witnesses, one after the other, as they recalled many bitterly competitive Southern District of New York, met worked their way deep into some of rounds of squash with Zabel, and was with his deputy, Richard Zabel, about Wall Street’s most profitable hedge convinced that they had led to ill will one of the biggest cases of his career—a funds. Bharara was now considering between them. Like others in the crackdown on insider trading in the a criminal indictment of Steven A. hedge-fund world, he felt that his in- hedge-fund industry. Although the Cohen, the founder of a fourteen- dustry was being unfairly persecuted fi nancial crisis had receded, popular billion-dollar hedge fund called S.A.C. by government ocials who were rage against Wall Street bankers and Capital Advisors. overly aggressive in advancing their traders was still strong; most Ameri- Cohen was a captivating figure on cases. cans had seen their incomes stagnate Wall Street. He was not the sort of in- Bharara, having amassed dozens of while the fortunes of the wealthiest vestor who, like Warren Buett, took guilty pleas and convictions for insider continued to swell. For the previous a large stake in a company and held it trading, had come to enjoy the feeling few years, Bharara and the prosecutors for years, immersing himself in how of winning, and was not inclined to file who worked under him at the South- the business worked. He was a short- ambitious cases unless he was confi- ern District, along with investigators term speculator, who had built a vast dent of victory. He had just brought at the Federal Bureau of Investigation personal fortune by placing high- volume insider- trading charges against two and the Securities and Exchange Com- bets on small movements in stock prices; S.A.C. employees: Michael Steinberg, mission, had been studying phone logs, he was often driven by earnings an- a high-level portfolio manager who was EELLS/BLOOMBERG/GETTY(FACE) SOURCE: SCOTT

34 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY BEN JONES close to Cohen, and Mathew Martoma, also spent time as a prosecutor, in the at S.A.C., and, eventually, to Cohen. a former portfolio manager, who had late nineteen- eighties, had a Ph.D. in Shortly afterward, Cohen began selling made enormously profitable trades in philosophy from Yale, and was known all five hundred thousand of his Dell two pharmaceutical companies, Elan for his courtly demeanor and his re- shares. On August th, Dell made its and Wyeth, before Cohen fired him, in luctance to raise his voice. He was ac- earnings announcement: it had indeed . In both cases, it appeared to Bha- companied by a colleague from his firm missed the estimates, and its stock fell. rara and his colleagues that Cohen had and three partners from Paul, Weiss. Cohen avoided a loss of $. million. made money trading stocks on the basis Theodore Wells, a star trial lawyer at Klotz focussed on whether Cohen of inside information that Steinberg Paul, Weiss, was also in attendance. He could be convicted of insider trading and Martoma provided. didn’t speak, but the implication was on the basis of the “nd hand read” Bharara had to decide if his oce clear: if this case reached a courtroom, e-mail. He made a three-part argu- was going to bring criminal charges Wells, whose closing statements were ment: that it was highly unlikely Cohen against Cohen as well. Putting a leg- so powerful that he sometimes brought had read the e-mail; that even if he had endary hedge-fund manager behind himself to tears, would be the govern- read it he didn’t necessarily trade on bars would send a strong message to ment’s adversary. the basis of it; and that, even if he had the industry, and show the public that Klotz led the presentation. He and made a trade based on it, this didn’t the Justice Department could take on Cohen’s other attorneys came prepared necessarily constitute insider trading, one of the most powerful men in finance. to target the prosecutors’ fear of losing because Cohen knew so little about the Yet mounting a trial against such a a big case. Every member of the de- original source of the tip, and the e-mail prominent defendant, who had billions fense bar knew that the government’s didn’t indicate that its contents were to spend on his defense, was daunting. calculations were based at least in part nonpublic. It would be helpful to have an idea of on risk assessment and vanity. The aim “There is no evidence that Steve what the prosecutors were up against. was to get the prosecutors to think hard read the ‘nd hand read’ e-mail or that It was not uncommon for prosecu- about what it would be like to suer a he spoke to anyone about the e-mail,” tors to meet with the attorneys of a humiliating defeat at trial. Klotz went on. “There isn’t a single prospective defendant, giving them a A Willkie associate distributed a witness who would testify that they chance to present their side and try to black binder to everyone in the room. discussed the e-mail with Steve.” He talk the prosecution out of filing a case. Klotz looked out at the crowd of faces. added, “Steve only reads a very small Now Bharara and Zabel agreed that it “Thank you all for giving us this time percentage of his e-mails.” was time to bring Cohen’s lawyers in to come and talk to you today,” he said. Opening his binder, Klotz flipped and hear what they had to say. The government’s case relied on an to a screen shot of Cohen’s e-mail in- e-mail that Michael Steinberg had re- box. Cohen had spam filters that di- - conference ceived from his analyst, Jon Horvath, verted junk messages from his corre- T room at St. Andrew’s Plaza, the who was now coöperating with the spondence, but he still received almost home of the Manhattan U.S. Attor- prosecutors. Horvath had obtained in- a thousand e-mails every business day. ney’s Oce, is the largest one in the side information about the computer- According to Cohen’s legal team, he building. But even its ample capacities manufacturing company Dell from a looked at just eleven per cent of them, were tested on the morning of April , friend at another hedge fund, and had and at only about twenty-one per cent , when men and women in dark shared it with Steinberg. (Horvath of the e-mails from the research trader suits began streaming in for the meet- pleaded guilty to insider trading in , who had forwarded the “nd hand read” ing between prosecutors and Steven but charges against him were dropped e-mail. Klotz’s screen shot included a Cohen’s lawyers. Bharara did not at- before sentencing, in .) The source message about scheduling a golf game tend, but Zabel did, and he took a seat predicted that Dell would miss the es- and dinner; research reports from var- at the center of the “government” side timates most investors were expecting. ious brokerage firms about oil prices of the long table. On either side of him “I have a nd hand read from someone and geopolitics; and a report on the were federal prosecutors, the securities- at the company—this is rd quarter I Federal Reserve minutes. unit chiefs, the head of the asset- have gotten this read from them and Halfway down, the message from forfeiture unit, and the leader of the it has been very good in the last two Horvath—“FW: DELL,” in bold oce’s criminal division, along with quarters,” Horvath wrote on August , type—was clearly visible. The govern- several F.B.I. agents and S.E.C. law- , two days before Dell publicly ment lawyers tried not to chuckle at yers. Someone had to get extra chairs announced its quarterly earnings. To a the Amazon message directly above from down the hall. layperson, it wouldn’t have made much it—“Up to % O Art Magazines.” On the other side of the table sat sense, but to sophisticated Wall Street Apparently, the spam filters didn’t al- Cohen’s main defense attorney, Mar- traders it meant that the information ways work. tin Klotz, looking slightly dishevelled. about Dell’s as yet nonpublic earnings Klotz pointed out that Cohen’s desk Klotz, who was the senior counsel at had come from someone inside the had seven monitors on it. His Micro- Willkie, Farr & Gallagher, had been company who had provided valuable soft Outlook messages appeared on Cohen’s, and S.A.C.’s, outside legal ad- information in the past. The e-mail was the far-left one, behind multiple other viser for more than a decade. He had forwarded to another portfolio manager screens, further increasing the likelihood

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 35 that he never saw the Dell message. source of the information, and too ig- have had a gun, but that doesn’t mean He would have had to “turn to the far norant of the circumstances, to be crim- I robbed the bank.” left of his seven screens, minimize one inally liable for any securities fraud. Still, Cohen had been notably dis- or two computer programs, scroll down “A number of people I’ve spoken to creet. The government had subpoe- his e-mails, double-click into the ‘nd say that isn’t a legitimate extension of naed his e-mails, his phone records, hand read’ e-mail to open it, read down insider trading,” Klotz said. and his instant-message logs; prosecu- three chains of forwards to read the “Are any of these people federal tors and F.B.I. agents had studied his ‘nd hand read’ e-mail, before issuing judges?” Zabel asked. He, like his col- communications patterns and his trades an order to sell shares of Dell.” And all leagues, felt confident about his inter- in detail. They had even placed a wire- of this would have taken place in less pretation of the events. “Give me a tap on his phone. They wanted to find, than half a minute. break.” say, Cohen thanking Steinberg or Mar- Klotz was essentially saying that Zabel understood how hedge-fund toma or someone else for sharing his Cohen, the most successful trader of valuable inside information—some his generation, was winging it every piece of evidence that would prove that day. Maybe he read a critical e-mail; Cohen knew the information was dirty maybe he didn’t. Who knew? Cohen before he traded on it. Nothing like lived in a swamp of information so that had turned up, and, having scru- deep that there was no way to prove tinized Cohen and his background, the that any particular e-mail was read, prosecutors had an inkling about why. let alone acted upon. There was no method to what he did; it was all December, , improvisation. O Cohen, a twenty-nine-year-old Most of the government investiga- trader at Gruntal & Company, a small tors in the room balked at this notion. people operated, and he wasn’t afraid New York brokerage firm, spoke on the They had been studying Cohen for to express his cynicism about their mo- phone to his brother Donald. The two years and understood him to be a ra- tives. But, where his bluntness would often talked about stocks, and on this pacious consumer of information about normally have prompted laughter, there day Cohen had a recommendation to his stocks. They believed that S.A.C. was only awkward silence. The gov- pass along: he suggested that his brother had been structured to insure that ernment attorneys knew that Cohen’s buy shares of RCA, the parent of NBC. Cohen, a notoriously demanding boss, distance from the Dell leak was a se- “I believe there might be a restructur- had access to every bit of trading data rious weakness. ing going on,” Cohen told him, accord- that was gathered by his portfolio man- Then, there was the Mathew Mar- ing to testimony that Donald gave later agers and their teams. The suggestion toma case: the former S.A.C. portfo- to the S.E.C. “These TV stocks were that he ignored eighty per cent of the lio manager had an inside source—a pretty hot,” Donald recalled him say- messages from his own research trader, doctor who helped supervise drug tri- ing. “If NBC was spun o, it could run whose job was to alert him to critical als for the Elan Corporation—and in- up about twenty points.” market information, struck them as vestigators had established that Mar- After studying RCA’s stock chart absurd. toma made a phone call to Cohen over the weekend and looking through Still, as a glimpse into Cohen’s po- shortly before Cohen gave orders to a few back issues of Forbes, Donald tential defense arguments, it was un- sell the stock. But Klotz observed that, bought twenty March call options in nerving. Klotz reminded everyone of before the sello, Elan had risen from his personal trading account at Fidel- the convoluted journey the “nd hand nineteen dollars to more than thirty, ity. This gave him the right to buy RCA read” e-mail had taken before being and that several analysts had issued re- shares, three months later, at fifty dol- sent to Cohen. “Steve does not remem- ports arguing that the stock had peaked. lars, an aggressive bet that the stock ber reading it,” Klotz said. “He may It made sense for Cohen to sell his price was going to increase. Accord- not have read it.” shares. In Klotz’s telling, Martoma had ing to Donald’s testimony, Cohen had told Cohen that he was “no longer com- made a similar investment in his own attacking the fortable” being long in the stock. Given account. K legal underpinnings of the Dell that S.A.C. had an unrealized profit of Cohen had grown up in Great Neck, case. The information had been passed around eighty million dollars, selling the third of eight children. His father from a Dell investor-relations employee was simply the prudent thing to do. ran a garment firm, and his mother to an analyst at an investment fund When Klotz finished, Zabel shook gave piano lessons. According to peo- and then to an analyst at another fund his head. “I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it,” ple who were close to Cohen then, he before reaching Horvath, whereupon he said. Klotz’s points involved few pos- knew from an early age that he didn’t it went to Steinberg, then to another itive assertions. Cohen may not have want a version of his family’s middle- portfolio manager, then to Cohen’s re- read the e-mail. He may not have had class life, and was intensely driven to search trader, and, finally, to Cohen. time to react to it. It was a bit like say- make money. He attended the Whar- Klotz and his colleagues believed that ing, “I might have been in the bank, and ton School and joined Gruntal shortly Cohen was too far from the original I might have had a mask, and I might after graduating, in . On his first

36 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 day there, Cohen made eight thousand stocks, too—Warner Communications, Around .. on June , —the dollars trading, a significant profit at General Foods, and Union Carbide. It same day that Levine pleaded guilty the time. He wasn’t a math wizard, had was a violation of securities law to trade to tax evasion, securities fraud, and no deep knowledge of global econo- on material, nonpublic information that perjury and agreed to become a gov- mies, and didn’t rely on a unique in- was leaked by an insider who was sup- ernment witness—Cohen arrived at vesting philosophy. He was simply a posed to keep it confidential. Accord- Federal Plaza, at Broadway and great trader. “I knew he was going to ing to the agency’s investigation, a group Worth Street. He was about to be de- be famous within a week,” his boss at of people had accumulated shares of posed in the RCA investigation. Grun- Gruntal said. “I never saw talent like all four stocks right before public an- tal had arranged for Cohen to be rep- that.” Seven years later, he was running nouncements drove the prices higher. resented by Otto Obermaier, a former his own division. The agency suspected an insider- head trial lawyer for the S.E.C. Ober- The movement of RCA’s stock trading ring. maier was one of the most talented looked like the skyline of the Andes, a Donald got a subpoena, too. He and well-connected defense attorneys series of dramatic spikes as investors called Steven, who reassured him. “Ev- in the field, and he was about to vali- kept buying more shares in response eryone that bought RCA at the time date his reputation. to takeover rumors. Cohen’s first wife, was being questioned,” Donald recalled An S.E.C. sta attorney and a finan- Patricia, later said in court filings that him saying, in his testimony. cial analyst who evaluated trading data he’d been telling people that a Whar- Privately, though, Cohen was stressed, for the agency’s enforcement division ton classmate had mentioned an im- according to court documents filed greeted Cohen and Obermaier, and the pending takeover oer for the com- by Patricia. Around the same time, formal proceedings began. “This is an pany. Five days after Cohen’s conversa- Dennis Levine—a top mergers-and- investigation by the Securities and Ex- tion with his brother, General Electric acquisitions banker at Drexel Burn- change Commission entitled ‘In the announced a takeover of the broad- ham Lambert, the firm where the matter of trading in the securities of caster, for $. a share, which sent junk-bond financier Michael Milken RCA Corporation,’” the sta attorney RCA’s stock price shooting up. Cohen worked—was arrested and charged said. Cohen then raised his right hand made twenty million dollars on the with orchestrating an immense in- and was sworn in. “Have you seen the trade, according to a lawsuit that Pa- sider-trading scheme. The arrest was subpoena?” the sta attorney asked tricia later filed against him. just the beginning of a series of secu- Cohen. Four months later, an S.E.C. sub- rities-fraud prosecutions—run by Ru- “He has,” Cohen said, referring to poena arrived at the oce of Gruntal’s dolph Giuliani, then the U.S. Attor- Obermaier. legal counsel. The agency had launched ney for the Southern District of New The sta attorney looked at Ober- an investigation of possible insider trad- York—that dominated news head- maier, then turned to Cohen again. ing in RCA before the takeover, and lines for months. The S.E.C. accused “Have you seen the subpoena?” wanted Cohen to testify. Levine of accumulating $. million “I don’t think so,” Obermaier said, The S.E.C. was looking at other in illegal profits and froze his assets. answering for Cohen. “It hasn’t been shown to him.” The agency had sent a separate sub- poena to Cohen requesting trading records and other documents as part of its investigation. The sta attorney mentioned this and then asked Cohen, “Do you plan to produce any docu- ments today?” “No,” Obermaier said, again on Co- hen’s behalf. Obermaier said that they would “decline the invitation to pro- duce documents,” on the basis of his client’s constitutional rights. “Which constitutional right is that?” the sta attorney asked. “The provision that no person shall be compelled to be a witness against himself,” Obermaier said. “That’s his Fifth Amendment right,” the sta attorney said, trying to insist that Cohen answer the question about the documents himself. During depositions, there was usu- “I misunderstood the term pugilism!” ally some wrangling over this point. The S.E.C.’s preference was always to Much to Cohen’s surprise, though, get a witness to admit, on the record, the investigation seemed to go quiet that he was “taking the Fifth” when he during the months after he testified— was refusing to answer questions; it or, rather, refused to testify. Cohen could be used later as an inference of was never charged or sanctioned in guilt. If you were innocent, the think- the case. Taking the Fifth, Cohen ing went, why wouldn’t you use the op- learned, could take all the momentum portunity to tell the S.E.C. all about out of a securities investigation. it? White-collar defense attorneys were well aware of this, of course, so their fter Klotz left and the meet- job was to keep the client from saying A ing concluded, Zabel tried to sum- that he was “taking the Fifth,” even marize the salient points of Cohen’s when he was taking the Fifth, for pre- defense for Bharara, distilling his im- cisely the same reason. It was standard pressions before sharing them with the legal maneuvering. larger team of prosecutors working on “He has to assert personally his right the case. Zabel explained that Klotz’s not to produce documents under the basic argument—which could be re- Fifth Amendment,” the S.E.C. staf at- duced to “Cohen probably didn’t read torney said, trying again. his e-mail”—was weak. The picture of “I don’t think he does,” Obermaier Cohen as a hands-of investor who replied. “I’m responding as his lawyer.” didn’t care what his other traders were “What is your date and place of doing defied belief. “It’s just inconceiv- birth?” the staf attorney asked Cohen. able that they didn’t explore their po- “Upon the advice of counsel,” Cohen sition, with that much money flying said, “I respectfully decline to answer around,” Zabel told the team. “It just the question on the ground that I’m isn’t credible.” being compelled to be a witness against The insider-trading investigation myself.” had been an enormous investment of “Did you purchase securities on time and resources—at the expense of behalf of Gruntal & Company in De- other financial-fraud cases that could cember of 1985 while in possession have been pursued, in the opinion of of nonpublic information concern- some critics—and people were now ing RCA?” waiting to see whether Bharara would “Same response,” Cohen said. indict Steven Cohen. If Cohen went The staf attorney asked more ques- to jail, it would be one of the most tions: Did Cohen purchase RCA significant Wall Street prosecutions in shares in his own account in Decem- history, possibly bigger even than Giu- ber, 1985? Did anyone tell him that liani’s case against Milken. It would RCA would be involved in a merger prove that the new billionaires who with General Electric before the pub- dominated America’s economic and lic announcement? Did Cohen, in political life were not above the law. December, 1985, recommend that any- But the government was running up one else buy RCA shares? Each time, against the statute of limitations. A de- Cohen repeated the same answer, tak- cision had to be made quickly. ing the Fifth without saying that he A few weeks earlier, Bharara had was taking the Fifth. asked his team to prepare a detailed The testimony was over in twenty memo outlining all the evidence that minutes. Riding the elevator back down the government had against Cohen. to the lobby, Obermaier felt that it Two prosecutors, Antonia Apps and wasn’t a major event. Cohen, though, Arlo Devlin-Brown, had spent a week worried that he was at risk of losing putting it together. In addition to de- his livelihood. scribing the Dell and Elan cases, the “I’m just a stock trader and I hap- memo contained many other exam- pen to have been trading in these ples of Cohen receiving what seemed stocks,” Cohen complained to a friend to be inside information from his trad- on the golf course, according to the ers and analysts; some had told the friend’s later testimony. “It’s creating a F.B.I. that they regarded it as part lot of problems for my family, my chil- of their job. Yet nothing definitively dren, and my personal life.” proved that Cohen knowingly traded

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 39 on inside information. Martoma and era crews started setting up tripods warned that they were going to be hear- Steinberg were pleading innocent and along the back wall of the ground-floor ing unpleasant things about him. “Peo- fighting their indictments; no wit- atrium at St. Andrew’s Plaza. The ple in the company have done things ness would testify that he had given room grew so crowded that people had that are wrong, and they’re going to Cohen inside information and that to stand in the aisles. At : .., pay for what they did,” he said. But, he Cohen knew it. Bharara stepped out from behind a reassured them, “I didn’t do anything In the room with Klotz, Zabel and dark curtain and stood behind the lec- wrong.” his colleagues had felt confident. But tern. “Today, we announce three law- For the rest of the summer, Cohen now, looking through the memo, and enforcement actions relating to the made a point of being at his desk by reviewing what Cohen’s defense argu- S.A.C. group of hedge funds,” he said, .., as always. He sat in front of ments seemed likely to be, they felt against a soundtrack of clicking cam- his seven screens and traded. Even their confidence waning. Resignation era shutters. He outlined three sets of though his company had been branded was setting in. They knew that they charges against Cohen’s company: a criminal enterprise, major investment had to assess the evidence coldly. They insider- trading charges, wire-fraud banks like Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan looked again at what they had, and charges, and civil money-laundering Chase, and Goldman Sachs, which had what they had, they saw, wasn’t enough charges, which could entail forfeiture earned hundreds of millions of dollars to insure a victory. Klotz’s defense was of assets tied to the illegal trading. He in commissions from Cohen over more patchy, tenuous, and rooted largely in also announced the guilty plea of an- than a decade, refused to abandon one speculation, but it could be enough to other portfolio manager at S.A.C., the of the most profitable traders they had withstand the government’s meagre eighth employee to be charged with ever worked with. evidence. And Cohen, like most pow- insider trading. “They have been an important cli- erful Wall Street defendants, was un- “When so many people from a sin- ent to us,” Goldman Sachs’s president, likely to testify. The time and energy gle hedge fund have engaged in insider Gary Cohn, said on television about prosecutors would have to spend try- trading, it is not a coincidence,” Bha- S.A.C., just days after the U.S. Attor- ing the case, the years of appeals and rara said. “It is, instead, the predictable ney for the Southern District of New arguments, all under close public scru- product of substantial and pervasive York called the firm a “magnet for mar- tiny, would be excruciating. If it re- institutional failure. As alleged, S.A.C. ket cheaters” and alleged that it had sulted in failure, the entire narrative of tracked in inside information on a “tracked in inside information” on a Bharara’s tenure would change. scale without any known precedent in vast scale. Cohn called S.A.C. “a great Bharara and his colleagues could the history of hedge funds.” He de- counterparty.” still take action, though. Legally, when scribed the scope of illegal trading at Before S.A.C.’s indictment, the U.S. any employee acting within the scope S.A.C. as “deep” and “wide,” spanning Attorney’s Oce had made it clear of his employment committed a crime, more than ten years and involving at that, in order to resolve the case, Cohen that crime could be attributed to the least twenty dierent securities from would have to shut down his hedge company he worked for. Steinberg and multiple industries, and resulting in il- fund. The government could not stop Martoma had been charged with in- legal profits of “at least” hundreds of him from managing his own money, sider trading, and six others from S.A.C. millions of dollars. though; he would still have close to ten had pleaded guilty. (U.S. prosecutors Bharara said that he would take a billion dollars of his personal fortune withdrew the charges against Stein- few questions from the reporters in the to trade and invest as a private family berg in .) Bharara and Zabel an- room. “Do you plan to criminally in- oce. Cohen and his army of traders alyzed the evidence in light of the prin- dict Steve Cohen?” one of them asked. would still command respect from Wall ciples of corporate prosecution that A hint of irritation crossed Bhara- Street’s major investment banks and appear in the U.S. Attorney’s manual, ra’s face. He knew, of course, that the have access to the best I.P.O. alloca- and agreed that there was easily enough media would fixate on the absence of tions. The ten-billion-dollar figure sent to meet the requirements. They de- charges against Cohen. He had not, in a signal to the world that nothing had cided to indict S.A.C. Capital, and not the press’s familiar story line, caught really changed. Cohen himself. It wasn’t what many in the “big fish,” and reporters would be Four months later, on November th, the oce had hoped for, but it seemed eager to cast the indictment of S.A.C. Bharara announced that the govern- a respectable fallback. as something short of total victory. ment and S.A.C. had reached a final “Today, we’re bringing the charges that settlement. The firm had agreed to pay of July th, an I’ve described,” he said, hoping that $. billion. (In fact, the fine was $. O alert went out from the U.S. At- would be the end of it. “I’m not going billion, because the company was given torney’s Oce to members of the news to say what tomorrow may or may not credit for $ million in fines that it media: “ ..—A press conference bring.” had already committed to pay the will be held on a securities fraud mat- That weekend, Cohen retreated to S.E.C.) The settlement would also in- ter.” Bharara was ready to unveil his his home in East Hampton and, as the clude a guilty plea by S.A.C.—an ad- indictment of S.A.C. Capital Advisors, news continued to circulate, had a word mission, in court, that the firm had with all the pageantry of a major an- with his four youngest daughters. Ac- done what the government was accus- nouncement. Around lunchtime, cam- cording to an account in New York, he ing it of. For Americans who were still

40 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 upset that nobody had been held re- sponsible for the crimes that led to the financial crisis of , the punishment of Cohen’s company was, ostensibly, a clear victory for the forces of fairness and integrity. A few days later, S.A.C. registered its guilty plea before a federal judge. While TV networks beamed news of the settlement onto trading floors around the world, Cohen sat at his desk in Stamford. He had an aggressive P.R. firm on retainer, ready to counterattack the second Bharara made his announce- ment. “The tiny fraction of wrongdo- ers does not represent the , hon- est men and women who have worked at the firm during the past years,” S.A.C.’s public-relations firm said in a statement. “S.A.C. has never encour- aged, promoted or tolerated insider trading.” In his oce, Bharara and his col- leagues couldn’t believe what they were •• reading. S.A.C. had just signed a guilty plea admitting that it had, in fact, been built on a culture of securities fraud. by spending a hundred and one million And, of course, Donald Trump won The chief of Bharara’s securities unit dollars at Sotheby’s for an Alberto Gia- the Presidency, promising to drasti- called Cohen’s lawyers and told them cometti sculpture called “Chariot.” cally cut back on financial regulation. to retract the statement, which they Cohen had been working to cleanse According to news accounts, Cohen’s did. Then they released a new one that his reputation on Wall Street as well, new legal counsel worked briefly as said, “We greatly regret this conduct trying to distance himself from the part of Trump’s transition team. The occurred.” legal scandal. He had all but erased result of the government’s nearly ten- his old firm’s name, S.A.C. Capital year battle against Cohen’s empire was later, on May , Advisors, and rebranded his private looking increasingly like a momentary A , Christie’s hosted a special family oce as Point Asset Man- setback. evening sale for the world’s top art col- agement, a reference to its address, at The night of the auction, the Chris- lectors at its headquarters, at Rocke- Cummings Point Road, in Stam- tie’s building was overflowing with feller Center. The auction was called ford. But, since he had ten billion dol- the international élite. The atmosphere “Looking Forward to the Past,” and it lars to invest, his daily life seemed lit- was feverish. Just before the auction’s was built around a carefully selected tle changed. When he looked for a start time, at .., Cohen’s car pulled group of twentieth-century master- new head of compliance, a recruiter up to the building, and Cohen mounted pieces. The night’s sales were expected contacted several prosecutors and F.B.I. a flight of stairs to the packed auction. to be record-breaking, attesting to a agents. Eventually, Cohen hired a for- Smiling his gap-toothed, kid-in-a- worldwide boom in the art market, fu- mer Connecticut U.S. Attorney to be candy-store smile, Cohen arrived right elled largely by Wall Street money and Point’s general counsel and an- at the start of one of the season’s most exploding wealth in Asia. One of the nounced plans for a six-person “advi- hotly anticipated art auctions—an- paintings up for sale was from Cohen’s sory board,” made up of high-profile other assertion of power. He knew that collection—“Paris Polka,” by Jean Du- business leaders who would counsel the sale couldn’t begin without him. buet. It had an estimated sale price the firm on management and ethics Toward the end of the auction, Gia- of twenty-five million dollars. issues. Cohen even started a program cometti’s bronze sculpture “L’Homme In the months after S.A.C.’s guilty for college students called the Point au Doigt” (“Pointing Man”) came on plea, Cohen, no longer burdened by the Academy, a “highly-selective and rig- the block. It is widely considered one threat of criminal charges, seemed de- orous -month training program” that of the artist’s greatest works. After termined to show the world that he was would teach investment strategies to several rounds of aggressive bidding, as powerful as ever. He sat courtside at young people seeking careers in finance. Cohen placed the winning bid, pay- a Knicks game at Madison Square Gar- In , he reached an agreement with ing in total $. million. It was the den, in full view of the television cam- the S.E.C. that allowed him to return most anyone had ever paid for a sculp- eras. On November th, he made news to the hedge-fund business in . ture at auction. 

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 41 A REPORTER AT LARGE THE CULLING

At Danish zoos, surplus animals are euthanized— and dissected before the public.

BY IAN PARKER

Three employees at the Odense Zoo—Soe Berg Hansen, Lærke Stange Dahl, and Malene Jepsen—make incisions in a culled lion.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MITCH EPSTEIN January, two years after sta members O at the Copenhagen Zoo sur- prised many people by shooting a healthy young girae, dissecting it in public, and then feeding its remains to lions, another Danish zoo was pre- paring for a public dissection. Lærke Stange Dahl and Malene Jepsen—bi- ology students in their early twenties and part-time guides at the zoo in Odense, Denmark’s third-largest city— sat at a table in the zoo’s education room. They were surrounded by skulls and skins, and by tanks containing live snakes and cockroaches. Fruit flies hovered, and crickets chirped. This is where the zoo greets school groups, and hosts team-building exercises, cen- tered on rodent dissections, for Dan- ish corporations. The next morning, Dahl and Jepsen were scheduled to dissect a young lion in front of a family audience, as part of a weekend-long event called “Ani- mals Inside Out.” The lion, which had been euthanized a year earlier, then kept in a freezer, was thawing nearby. It had been ruled surplus to the zoo’s needs. In , a similar judgment had been made about the girae in Copen- hagen, known as Marius; its death be- came a social-media sensation, created panic in the international zoo business, and revealed a proud Danish unfussi- ness about animal mortality. Although the practice of culling zoo animals— euthanizing them for reasons of pop- ulation control—is not restricted to Denmark, the practice elsewhere tends to be hidden, if not denied. In Den- mark, culled animals are viewed as ed- ucational opportunities, and as meat for other captive animals. (A headline at the time read: “’ ’ .”) The women were pleased to have been assigned the dissection. They had an open, earnest confidence, founded, in part, on two years spent leading zoo tours and narrating sea-lion feedings. But neither of them had dissected a mammal larger than a rat. So they had arranged a study session—bringing coee, reference books, and a laptop whose screen image was now projected onto a wall, just above a stued lion. A space heater helps to thaw the carcass. They had cued up a YouTube video of

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 43 a previous lion dissection at Odense. working from the tail to the head. “In- Now it lay on a pallet on the con- “It’s not really dierent from a rat, testines—what else do we meet on the crete floor of a small, bare room that is except the size,” Jepsen said. way up?” Jepsen asked, holding a pen- normally used to prepare food for the “There’s more cutting,” Dahl said. cil in the air. zoo’s carnivores. Next door, there was They were worried that the lion “We should definitely take the kid- a room packed with the remains of might not fully defrost before the morn- neys out, and the liver.” horses; the zoo had euthanized the an- ing. A colleague, passing through the “And the spleen,” Jepsen said, imals after they were donated by mem- room, reassured them that a lion’s breast- grudgingly, as if the organ were not bers of the public. (These deliveries had bone was “easier to cut than ice cream important enough to be included in peaked at the start of the year, suggest- just out of the freezer.” the dissection. ing that end-of-life decisions had been The video showed an outdoor scene. “Cut larynx o,” Dahl said, summa- deferred until after Christmas.) The lion’s Two zookeepers stood behind a table rizing the end of the process. “Blow up tongue was lolling out of its mouth, on which lay a dead lion, its legs in the lungs. Take out tongue. Cut o head.” from which a few drops of viscous blood air. A couple of hundred people, in “Shall we take out the eye, if the had spilled to the ground. winter clothing, watched from bleacher kids are asking about it?” Jepsen said. Jepsen pressed gently on its side seating, with young children at the front. Dahl and Jepsen decided to check on with two hands, like someone shop- One of the zookeepers, in the tone of the lion. Outside, it was cold and almost ping for a sofa. a kindergarten teacher, asked the chil- dark; un-Scandinavian birds squawked. “Oh, my God,” she said. There was dren what they expected to see. A child We walked to a farmlike area of storage almost no give. called out, “Liver!” rooms and workshops. Here, two days She brought an air heater closer, As Dahl and Jepsen watched the earlier, I had seen the lion in a walk-in while acknowledging a fear of cooking video, they began to write an outline freezer, alongside trays of rats, a sitatunga, the flesh. of their event. They would first need and a severed girae leg, upright in “As long as it doesn’t take us an hour to say something about surplus ani- a corner. The lion, nine months old just to get to the heart,” she said. mals and conservation: the Danes are when it died, looked a little compressed mindful of maintaining a genetically by gravity and bloodlessness, and its , long after Marius, the varied stock of a species, and culling fur had an infant paleness; it could I girae, was shot in Copenhagen, a can help preserve that diversity. Then have almost been a shorn sheep. A fork- British zoo professional had a conver- the women would cut into the lion, lift had carried it across the yard. sation with Bengt Holst, the Copenha- gen Zoo’s scientific director and the pub- lic face of the zoo’s euthanization and dissection polices. As the Briton recently recalled, he began by asking Holst, “What the fuck were you thinking?” Zoo directors in the United States and Europe have a recurring obliga- tion, largely unknown to people who run art galleries and amusement parks, to explain to the public that their in- stitutions deserve to exist, and aren’t sad, and will still exist in thirty years. The oddity, and arguable unkindness, of displaying animals that are prevented from doing much of what they do in natural settings—breeding, hunting, walking from here to there—has to be discussed and defended, even on days when public attention isn’t drawn to the issue, as it was by the death of Marius, or by the death, in May, , of Ha- rambe, a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo. Harambe was shot and killed after it picked up a three-year-old boy who had climbed inside its enclosure. The child recovered from his injuries. (Ha- rambe has had a strange afterlife, as a shorthand joke about Internet sensa- tions—a meme about memes.) “I’m Juliet. Who the hell is Rapunzel?” The modern defense of zoos tends to refer to four achievements: educa- paper, discussing the award, praised unsentimentality and clear-sightedness tion, conservation, scientific research, Holst for his “calm, scientific voice,” in a place that, like almost every zoo, and the societal benefit of getting peo- and quoted an observation of his: sells toys, surrenders to fairy-tale opin- ple out of the house. Much of this is “Every schoolchild in Denmark has ions about the preëminence of certain often packed into a single claim, which been on a farm and seen someone chop species, and creates fantasy habitats; the may be true even if it is unsupported o a chicken’s head. In this country, we Copenhagen Zoo has placed thatched by good evidence: zoos are said to cause know that it’s sometimes necessary to huts next to an icy field and called the people to value wild animals more than kill an animal.” area “Africa.” they otherwise would, thereby improv- Holst handed me the award, saying, Although the girae had no public ing the survival prospects of threatened “This ugly thing!” He added that his name, the zookeepers needed an easy species. children had been happy about it. He identifier when referring to its diet or A modern zoo hopes to tell a story then recalled that he had been pleased, its health. They began to call it Mar- of refuge and empathy. So a girae’s ius. According to Mads Bertelsen, one dismemberment, observed by unsmil- of the zoo’s two veterinarians, who was ing children, suggested a counternar- present when the girae was born and rative, and one that carried a particu- when it died, the name was an hom- lar risk of public-relations contagion. age to a well-liked contractor respon- Giraes are easy to like—in part for sible for collecting the zoo’s trash. In seeming so unassuming about their a recent e-mail, Bertelsen put the name height advantage—and the interna- in quotation marks. Holst told me that, tional zoo industry couldn’t dismiss during dozens of media appearances the Copenhagen Zoo as a renegade in , he “always said ‘the girae’— operation. Following Marius’s death, too. The Marius aair, he said, “started deliberately.” Holst, a sober-looking white-haired as a shit storm, and we turned it around.” As we walked back to Holst’s oce, man in his early sixties, appeared fre- We walked outside and stopped at we passed a display, for children, that quently on television, talking steadily a strong-smelling girae house. Here, arranged suède gloves, a shaving brush, about education, conservation, and sci- in February, , a male girae was and a salami against silhouettes of their entific research. born into a herd of seven. In accor- source animals. When I visited the Copenhagen dance with zoo policy, the girae was Zoo, early last year, the grounds were not given a public name. A zoo ani- , can live for dotted with charcoal braziers, and chil- mal’s standing, in relation to humans, I twenty-five years. Marius’s misfor- dren were daring one another to put depends in part on the outlook of the tune was to be male. Captive giraes their fingers into the flames. The zoo institution in which it lives. An ani- of both genders tend to be removed is compact—lions living alongside cam- mal can be a city’s shared pet, or it can from their family groups before they els, as in a picture book. Holst’s oce be a quasi-agricultural team member reach sexual maturity, to avoid inbreed- had a view of the cobbled alley, just o whose work is to be seen and to breed ing; many are then transferred to an- one of the main thoroughfares, where and, perhaps, to die young. The Co- other zoo. The three hundred and the zoo conducts outdoor dissections. penhagen Zoo, more than most oth- twenty-one members of the European His manner, like that of Richard Daw- ers, aims to include virtually every an- Association of Zoos and Aquaria () kins, combines reserve and certainty imal in the second category, and to exchange animals among themselves in a way that can suggest adolescence: avoid what Holst likes to call the “Dis- for no fee; the receiving institution nor- sometimes, when countering one of his neyfication” of nature. When zoo ani- mally pays for shipping. critics, he reddens slightly, and half mals are anthropomorphized, they be- Male giraes, once they are one or smiles. come “clowns in our world,” Holst two years old, will fight with each other In , Holst became the chair of said. (He once described Knut—the when they share space with females. Denmark’s Animal Ethics Council, famously coddled polar bear in the Ber- Some zoos keep male-only groups, but which advises the government on is- lin Zoo, which died in —as so the typical captive girae herd has sev- sues such as cloning, bestiality, and rit- plump that it resembled “a barrel on eral females and only one adult male. ual slaughter. (The council recently rec- four legs.”) Holst, who has a dog named It’s the same for many other animals, ommended a ban on catch-and-release Bassti, went on, “It’s fine to get attached including elephants. As a result, the fishing, on the ground of cruelty.) But to the animals—as our keepers are. But over-all demand for males is lower than before the death of Marius, Holst was you also have to be realistic. This is not for females. And Marius was born at not a public figure. Today, he has an a fairy tale, where everything gets born a time of girae plenitude in Europe. e-mail folder reserved for death threats. but never dies.” The captive-birth rate had been in- On a windowsill outside his oce, there The giraes were out in the yard. creasing; as Holst explained, this was is an award, made of Styrofoam, that We were standing by a claw-grab ma- in part because zoos had learned that he received in , after readers of a chine that was filled with anatomically giraes breed better in groups than in Danish newspaper, Politiken, voted him imperfect plush giraes. Holst’s chal- marital pairs. Copenhagen’s “person of the year.” The lenge is to make an argument about Marius’s conception could have been

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 45 prevented, either by separating his par- selected girae groups will be large and some data supporting the “dreamy stu ” ents or by using contraception. This is diverse enough to allow for indefinite argument but hurried past the finding the preferred American way. But the survival. that zoo visits made people seventeen Copenhagen Zoo adheres to a prac- Moreover, most captive populations per cent less committed to take action tice known as “breed and cull.” The of endangered animals will never play on habitat protection and creation, and case for this policy, which is followed a conservation role in what remains of nine per cent less likely to act against by many other zoos in Europe, if with the world’s natural habitats. Zoo o- pollution and climate change. less gusto, is this: because contracep- cials often talk about the Arabian oryx, But it is hard to question Holst’s tion carries medical risks, and because which was once extinct in the wild and premise that, as long as one has zoos, animals can become infertile if they now has a wild population of a thou- culling helps to keep captive popula- don’t breed, and because zoos must de- sand, thanks to reintroduction programs, tions genetically robust. In the prive animals of many natural behav- using captive animals, that began in network, some employees have the job iors, it’s important to allow them to the nineteen- eighties. But such pro- of “species coördinator.” As Holst de- mate and raise infants. “Why take that grams are rare: they are costly and re- scribed it, they have the power to say, away?” Holst asked me. The zoo will, quire a viable natural habitat, and loss “This animal has to breed with that if necessary, euthanize an ospring— of habitat is the primary cause of spe- animal, and this ospring has to be ideally, at an age when the animal would cies endangerment. moved over to that zoo.” When Mar- typically leave its family in the wild. The global girae population has ius was born, its fate was nominally in The Copenhagen Zoo culls twenty or declined by nearly forty per cent in the the hands of Jörg Jebram, ’s gi- thirty animals a year. These are usually past thirty years, and the International rae coördinator. As Jebram and Holst goats, antelopes, and reindeer, but the Union for Conservation of Nature re- both knew, Marius’s genes were well zoo has also culled lions, tigers, zebras, cently declared the animal to be “vul- represented across Europe. Even if there and bears. nerable” to extinction. Hancocks said, were a space in a herd of celibate bach- The argument in favor of culling “I don’t think it is at all likely that any elor giraes, it would be better to re- extends beyond a notion that sex mat- captive-girae population could re- serve the spot for a more unusual spec- ters. According to Holst, the only zoos plenish the wild population.” imen. When Marius was about a year likely to exist in a few decades will be So one can build a better conserva- old, Jebram informed Copenhagen that those working to insure that their cap- tion ark, but it will probably remain the girae was genetically unnecessary. tive-animal populations are genetically forever at sea. Dale Jamieson, a profes- At that point, the Copenhagen Zoo and demographically equipped to sur- sor of environmental studies and phi- might have found a home for Marius vive for many generations. This requires losophy at N.Y.U., who has written elsewhere—say, at an accredited zoo killing animals, he said. “If zoos hide, skeptically about zoos, put it to me this outside Europe. “We may have found or don’t want to modernize, some will way: “If I’m a Silicon Valley billionaire a place somewhere,” Holst said, wea- no doubt go under,” Holst added, with- who freezes myself at the point of death, rily—in China, perhaps. “But we can- out regret. is the probability that I’m going to be not look all around the world every The underlying proposition, widely immortal greater than if I hadn’t? Yes, time we have a surplus animal of any advanced by zoo professionals, is that, there’s a greater probability, but is it one kind. Because this happens all the time. in an era when it’s no longer accept- that we want to place any value on?” It happens every day!” able to round up wild giraes, main- Nevertheless, many people in the has estimated that its mem- taining a sustainable stock in a zoo is zoo industry argue that they play a role bers cull between three and five thou- not simply a business necessity; it’s an in protecting endangered species. Ac- sand animals a year. According to the achievement of conservation—or, at cording to David Powell, a mammal- Copenhagen Zoo, in the five years be- least, a sign of scientific ardor. David ogist who recently left the Bronx Zoo fore Marius was born half a dozen Hancocks, a zoo consultant who for- for the St. Louis Zoo, breeding pro- young male giraes had been killed, merly ran the Woodland Park Zoo, in grams are conservation tools because quietly but not illicitly, in other Dan- Seattle, recently dismissed this idea as they contribute to “fund-raising and ish zoos. part of “the conservation myth, where education—and inspiration.” This ar- anything’s justified if you’re ‘saving the gument assumes that bake sales and of , Marius was species.’ ” In truth, many zoo popula- documentaries couldn’t achieve the B twelve feet tall. (Adult males can tions are too small to encourage real hope same eect without cages. And the ed- reach twenty feet.) His father was fre- of long-term survival, no matter how ucational claim—what Jamieson de- quently shoving him against walls and fastidiously they’re managed. There are scribed to me as “dreamy stu about trees, and the abrasions left him with about nine hundred giraes in in- the touch of the tiger’s fur turning furless patches on his neck. A final call stitutions; five subspecies are represented, someone into a conservationist”—is was made to Jebram, in case Marius’s and there are some hybrids. ’ im- unproved. The World Association of relatives in other zoos had unexpect- mediate ambition is to strengthen four Zoos and Aquariums recently com- edly died, making him genetically pre- subspecies while allowing the other missioned a global survey of the im- cious. This hadn’t happened. The zoo populations to dwindle to zero. But the pact of zoos on the public understand- decided to euthanize Marius on Feb- organization does not claim that the ing of biodiversity; its report included ruary th, a Friday.

46 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 Two days before the scheduled cull- create an international provocation, it the girae’s death, has counted two ing, someone e-mailed Ekstra Bladet, a had made a bold public-relations de- hundred and thirty thousand Marius- Danish tabloid, about it; the e-mail used cision: it would defend its right to kill related tweets, in English and Danish, the name Marius, which had never been a girae by showing itself to be unem- in the week after the Ekstra Bladet shared with the public. (The zoo as- barrassed about killing a girae. On article appeared. sumes that a visitor overheard zookeep- Wednesday afternoon, Ekstra Bladet Holst told me that he and other zoo ers talking; there’s no suggestion that a published a temperate story, beneath a ocials received forty thousand e-mails sta member wrote the e-mail.) Mik- photograph of Marius looking sweetly in the first days of the story, including kel Selin, a reporter for the paper, spoke reproachful. “It was for local consump- dozens of death threats. Until Sunday to Holst, who noted that, were Marius tion, for local people,” Holst said. “And morning, “people thought they could

The dissection of Marius, at the Copenhagen Zoo, on February , .

released into the wild, he would prob- we’ve had no fuss whatsoever in the save the girae,” Holst said. “As if we ably be “shot or run over two days later.” past.” He added, “But it’s one of these could be influenced—as if we’d say, Holst told Selin that Marius’s autopsy, animals with the nice eyes, very nice- ‘Oh! O.K. then, we won’t do it.’ ” Sev- which had been planned as a private looking, and a big animal.” eral petitions were started. On one of event, would be performed before the And Marius was, for the moment, them, a signatory noted, “I love ani- public. Most of the zoo’s mammals are still alive. The Copenhagen Zoo ap- mals and these people should get the autopsied, and these procedures are oc- peared to have scheduled an atrocity. shit beat out of them.” casionally shown to visitors. (The Odense For a couple of days, the story was re- The media reported on several last- Zoo had started doing public autopsies ported only in Scandinavia. But on Sat- minute oers to rehouse Marius; the in Denmark twenty years earlier.) For urday, after a tweet from the president Copenhagen Zoo rejected or ignored stang reasons, a public autopsy couldn’t of the Born Free Foundation, a Brit- these oers, surprising many people happen on Friday, so Marius’s death was ish animal-welfare nonprofit, the story who assumed that any institution ex- delayed until Sunday. was picked up by the London Indepen- hibiting live animals would be won Being candid about the zoo’s policy dent, then by the BBC, and then by the over by a narrative of rescue and re- didn’t require a spectacle. But, as Mads rest of the world. Chris Zimmerman, demption. Åke Netterström, the owner Bertelsen recently put it, zoo ocials a doctoral researcher at the Copenha- of a zoo in Frösö, Sweden, that had no had decided “that we would not be bul- gen Business School, who has been giraes, made one of the rebued oers.

PETER HOVE OLESEN/AP PHOTO/POLFOTO OLESEN/AP HOVE PETER lied.” Even if the zoo wasn’t seeking to studying the international response to (He has also tried, unsuccessfully, to

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 47 me five million dollars, I won’t take it.” According to Holst, the man got angry and said, “I oer to get you out of this shit, and to save the girae, and I will give you a lot of money. How can you dare not say yes? You are a scoundrel, you are a killer.” When I called Hjelmbak, he de- scribed himself, “very humbly,” as “one of the most influential celebrity bro- kers” in American entertainment. (He has sometimes helped organize parties attended by celebrities.) “I can raise funds to do a party with Britney and Sharon Stone in no time—of course I can save a girae!” he said. He claimed that a billionaire, whom he would not name, had urged him to make the call. “She could have built her own goddam zoo and not even worried about it, money wise,” he said. (He recalled oer- ing Holst “a few million Danish kro- ner.”) The call with Holst, he said, “was like talking to a pervert who was plea- suring himself.”

, elephant suering from I foot abscesses was euthanized in the Berlin Zoo. It was hanged, on the prem- ise that this was the most civilized method. A modern zoo sometimes tran- quillizes a doomed animal with a dart, and then injects it with an overdose of “I think you’ll nd this home has real storybook charm.” barbiturates; this is how the Odense Zoo euthanized its young lion. But a tranquillized girae might injure itself •• terribly in a fall, and an animal killed with chemicals can’t become food. On acquire giraes through a private dealer shire’s plan. The zoo’s foundation had February , , before the Copen- in France.) He recently said of the Co- recently generated media coverage, and hagen Zoo opened, a zookeeper let penhagen Zoo, “I think it’s a sickness. cash, by campaigning to “rescue” a polar Marius out into the yard beside the gi- They wanted to show the world: We bear living in a Mexican zoo. That zoo rae house. With a slice of rye bread, do what we want.” had no intention of giving up its ani- the keeper drew the girae to a spot According to Holst, the Frösö Zoo, mal. If Yorkshire had space for a fifth where Mads Bertelsen was waiting with which is not part of the network, girae, then Jörg Jebram, the girae a Winchester rifle. Marius leaned down, “had no clue what a girae was.” But coördinator, could have supplied, at any took some bread, and stood up, and Yorkshire Wildlife Park, in the North time, the best candidate from Europe’s Bertelsen shot him in the head. Ber- of England, is in . That Saturday, surplus. Mads Bertelsen, the vet, de- telsen is confident that Marius died in- a Yorkshire sta member left a mes- scribed Yorkshire’s oer as “a P.R. stunt.” stantly. (One of his colleagues played sage at the Copenhagen Zoo’s switch- (Yorkshire Wildlife Park declined to a video of the shooting at a meeting board, oering to add Marius to its all- comment for this article, and even asked of Scandinavian veterinarians.) male herd of four. On Facebook, for its decision not to comment to be The zoo opened at ten. A few pro- Yorkshire described this as “an attempt o the record.) testers stood outside the entrance. In to save Marius.” The girae’s support- The same day as that oer, Holst the alley beneath Holst’s oce, Ber- ers were impressed. “You rock,” one took a call from a Dane in Los Ange- telsen led the dissection, assisted by wrote. “Bless you for oering him a les. According to Holst, the caller, Claus Cathrine Sauer Jørgensen, a Ph.D. home.” Hjelmbak, proposed giving the zoo a student in animal nutrition, who was The BBC mentioned the oer in million dollars for Marius. Holst re- able to add to her collection of diges- its reports. This was, perhaps, York- called saying, “No way. You can give tive tracts from three dozen giraes.

48 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 Zoo visitors, including children, stood “Schoolchildren can actually learn a lot gard zoos as immoral, and calm broader with no barrier between them and from seeing this.” He went on, “To see public disquiet about keeping animals Marius’s body. Bertelsen tried to dis- the big neck . . . and see the big heart. in captivity. These rebuttals are tailored regard the reporters and the photog- Why does it have a big heart? Well, it to local appetites. With Marius, the raphers standing at his shoulder. It has to pump the blood two metres up Copenhagen Zoo was able to reinforce was a cold day; people came and went. in the air to reach the brain.” He noted its allegiance to a strand of Danish an- After three hours, the autopsy was that children “asked a lot of questions, imal exceptionalism. Danes aren’t un- over. “We cut certain pieces up, and and the vet answered a lot of ques- usually careless about animal welfare, put them on our little electric cart, and tions.” Asked about feeding the girae’s but there’s a tradition of pragmatism— put everything else in the freezer,” Ber- carcass to the lions, Holst said, “We or, a critic could say, an insular and self- telsen said. He added, “Nobody could try to show the public what an animal congratulatory moral laxity—about an- eat a whole girae.” He took the meat is, what animal wonders are, in all its imal death. Denmark’s largest pig over to the lions. “They’re fed three aspects. . . . And the real-life lions eat slaughterhouse is open to the public, or four days a week, but they don’t meat, and meat comes, among others, and a hundred and fifty visitors tour it normally get hot meat.” from giraes.” each day. One of Denmark’s sub- Images of that meal helped set the Frei denounced Holst as “clinical missions for a foreign-language Acad- tone for what followed. Kirstie Alley and cold.” His tone may have puzzled emy Award, “Men & Chicken,” which tweeted, “Oh man, I’ve seen a lot of fans of Channel ’s documentary se- stars Mads Mikkelsen and involves hu- abuses in my life, but this baby Girae ries “Inside Nature’s Giants,” which man-animal hybridization and bestial- killing at the Copenhagen Zoo is over- also airs on PBS. The show has broad- ity, was, according to its director, An- whelming. I have to take a cry walk.” cast the dissections of a dozen exotic ders Thomas Jensen, “much more taken On the zoo’s Facebook page, someone animals, including a girae. as a comedy” at home than in the United posted, “This place is a hell on earth. Holst stayed civil and unrued, States. Jensen, speaking on the phone, The ‘humans’ who work there are the which played well in Denmark. The recalled that in his first film, “Flicker- real ‘surplus’ in society. These people announcement in Politiken of Holst’s ing Lights,” Mikkelsen played a thug should be lured away, shot and butch- “person of the year” victory noted that hiding out in the country, who shoots ered.” Sergey Donskoy, Russia’s min- Frei had been put in his place, and added a cow in the head for no good reason; ister for natural resources and ecology, that Danes “should not change the the animal crumples to the ground. Jen- wrote online that the killing was an world into a Disney one where nobody sen acknowledged dryly that the film “unforgivable mistake, an inhumane ever dies.” Zoos everywhere have to would be “unable to include a tag say- and horrific act.” An editorial in the counter animal-rights activists who re- ing that ‘no animals were harmed’ ” Los Angeles Times argued that Co- penhagen had broken an “inviolate if unwritten contract” prohibiting the killing of zoo animals. A few hours after Marius’s death, a news show on Britain’s Channel ran a long interview with Holst. As he re- cently recalled it, “Something happened in that interview, and that was lucky for me.” Matt Frei, the host, addressed him in a chagrined, accusatory way. “The whole thing is cruel!” Frei cried, adding that the Danish children who observed the autopsy were “clearly freaked out.” John Oliver, on HBO, later drew the same inference from im- ages of children holding their noses at an animal dissection in Odense. Such commentaries seem to suggest that Danish children don’t cry, or hide, or run, when horrified. Frei asked Holst, “If you allowed schoolchildren—some very young chil- dren—to watch the dismemberment of the dead girae, why not just invite them in to see the killing?” Holst re- sponded, “There’s no education in see- ing the killing.” He said of the autopsy, “He’s a nice guy—he’s always giving me free stu.” during its production. The cow, which a horse or a dog.” (The Copenhagen things—you should defend this one.’ ” was due to be slaughtered for meat, was Zoo has considered, and rejected, the The D.P.P. is now the second-larg- shot on camera by a vet wearing Mik- idea of breeding animals that could be est party in a parliament that has passed kelsen’s wardrobe. supplied to visitors as meat.) measures designed to make Denmark Casper Tybjerg, a film historian at Peter Sandøe, a philosopher at the less attractive to refugees. The rheto- the University of Copenhagen, recently University of Copenhagen, has known ric of pragmatism, or of rejecting po- described how his ten-year-old daugh- Holst for years. Sandøe recently noted litical correctness, has perhaps made ter, who was caring for a rabbit at an that although he accepts the need for it easier for Danes to accept an unwel- after-school center, had been prepared culling in zoos, he and Holst have often coming stance. Karina Due, the Par- by sta members for the likely fate of disagreed about whether it’s better for ty’s animal-welfare spokeswoman and her rabbit’s future ospring. As Tyb- an animal to be alive or dead. “I’m of a parliamentarian from a rural district, jerg recalled it, his daughter was told, an age that whenever I get to a birth- recently met me in her oce and dis- “You should know this. There will be day the alternative is worse,” Sandøe cussed the D.P.P.’s commitment to the all these cuddly things, and half of them told me. “And I have the same view preservation of Danish culture. She will have to be clubbed to death.” This about animals.” He noted that Holst connected the furor over Marius to was the Danish mind-set, Tybjerg ex- disagrees, adding, “He gets very upset urban ignorance of agricultural ways. plained. “We like to think of ourselves whenever we discuss it.” “In Copenhagen, people think that as open about things that Victorians Some Danes were unimpressed by eggs come from the stores, not the butt were closed-minded about.” This self- the zoo’s handling of Marius. Torsten of a chicken,” she told me. image, he said, derived in part from a Jansen, a former cultural attaché in the In response to the death of Marius, school of Danish thought, in the early Danish Embassy in Washington, D.C., Rufus Giord, the U.S. Ambassador to twentieth century, that stressed “a and now a lobbyist in Copenhagen, re- Denmark, wrote on Facebook, “I find greater openness around sex and death cently compared the episode to the de- the situation to be disturbing and the and gross bodily functions.” He noted cision taken by a national newspaper, video hard to watch.” Danes responded that Denmark was the first country in in , to publish satirical cartoons by referring to the U.S. death penalty, the world to legalize pornography, in of the prophet Muhammad. He called and to a proposal, then in the news, to the late sixties. Denmark “a tiny country trying to get cull two thousand swans in New York. Tybjerg is an authority on “Løve- noticed,” adding, “We’re like a younger A few months later, Giord was inter- jagten,” or “Lion Hunting,” a classic brother with eight siblings who goes viewed in a Danish magazine; without of Danish silent cinema, released in into a store and smashes something.” referring directly to the case, he sought . The film was shot partly at the He said, “We don’t have to display ev- to rehabilitate the word “Disneyfied.” Copenhagen Zoo. The sub-Saharan erything. We don’t have to increase the He defined it as American optimism: savanna was represented by an island amount of information around our vis- “It means that we always believe in a in a fjord that Tybjerg described as its to the rest room.” ‘happy ending,’ that we can get mar- “about the size of a tennis court.” Two But Holst received widespread sup- ried to the prince, become a million- elderly lions, bought from a German port. Chris Zimmerman, the business- aire, and save the world.” (Through a zoo, were shot and killed, under wa- school researcher, has tabulated the spokesman, Giord said that the State tery skies. hundred most frequently used words, Department would not allow him to “I mean, when you’re dead you’re in English and Danish, in the media comment further.) Holst told me that dead,” Holst said to me at one point. and social-media coverage of Marius. he wasn’t sure if Giord’s comments And animals “don’t have any expecta- The language of violence (“murdered,” about Marius were diplomatic, and tions of what happens after death, or “execution”) was far more common in added, “We are Danish, we work this that they could have had a longer life.” English than in Danish, and words of way. The Americans work the Ameri- He said that he recognized just one attachment (“healthy,” “baby,” “beau- can way.” ethical boundary among species. “I think tiful”) could be found only in English. the only place is between human be- Denmark’s largest animal-welfare non- experienced its ings and the rest,” he said. “Some peo- profit supported the zoo’s decision, to T own Marius aair three decades ple say, ‘The apes, they are so close to the regret of similar groups elsewhere ago. In , the Detroit Zoo appointed us, they should be in our group.’ But in Europe. So did most of the coun- a new director, Steve Graham. Arriv- the apes are also very close to the rest try’s politicians. Pia Kjærsgaard, a co- ing from Baltimore, he chose to stop of the African primates, so if we take founder of the populist, anti-immigra- giving animals names, to stop selling them on, too, then you go down the tion Danish People’s Party, was out of surplus animals to dealers, and to pub- ladder . . . ” Holst went on, “And since the country when Marius died, and licly acknowledge the need to cull. Gra- we have agreed on killing animals for criticized the zoo in a Facebook post. ham soon announced the impending consumption, hundreds of thousands But, as Holst recalled, “people from euthanizations of four elderly tigers. of years ago, we have agreed that we her own party, at home, said, ‘Please He and the zoo were sued by the Fund can, for a reason, kill an animal, take a shut up, you’re not here, finally some- for Animals, and there were well- healthy life. If there’s a reason for it, we one is doing something for Denmark. publicized court hearings. “I wish I can do it with an ape or an elephant or We have a special Danish view on could put you in a small, slippery-floored

50 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 cage,” an anonymous correspondent family with children sitting watching a To the extent that zoos around the wrote to Graham. “Then I would tor- lion take an animal apart,” he told me. world have come to define themselves ture you each day . . . until you died.” After the Marius scandal, zoos ev- as scientific, progressive institutions The zoo did kill three of the tigers. erywhere felt besieged and betrayed. rather than as immersive, slow-motion Graham, who is now retired, said in a Terry Maple, a former director of Zoo circuses, Holst had called their blu. phone conversation that, during the Atlanta, and now a consultant and au- American zoos were keen to distance worst of the tiger crisis, Coleman Young, thor, said that the incident was “a huge themselves from Copenhagen, but they Detroit’s mayor, “lent me his Uzi guy”—a public-relations blunder,” adding, “It re- struggled to find the right ethical ob- bodyguard who carried an automatic verberated all over the world. Every zoo jection. Tom Stalf, Hanna’s successor weapon in a gym bag. director was asked, ‘How can this hap- at Columbus, suggested to me that the American zoos did not follow Gra- pen?’ ” The public outcry over Marius’s children who viewed the autopsy at ham’s lead. They chose instead to cel- killing threatened the zoo industry’s the Copenhagen Zoo “might be hor- rified but unaware of it.” He said that they might realize their distress only in middle age. A few days after Marius’s death, , the American equivalent of , released a statement that claimed, in part, “Incidents of that sort do not happen at -accredited zoos.” This is accurate if by “incident” one means a particular sequence of bloody events, including a girae’s severed neck being transported on a golf cart through weekend crowds. But the statement could easily be understood to mean that healthy animals are never euth- anized in the U.S. This is how NPR reported it, and it’s how Wayne Pa- celle, the director of the Humane So- ciety of the United States, described policy in a recent phone conver- sation, before he revised his thought. Asked several times if culling occurs in American zoos, Rob Vernon, a spokes- Danish children, after attending a lion dissection, cut open dead rats. man for , told me, variously, “No,” “Yes,” and “That’s a good question.” ebrate animals’ birthdays, send surplus ability to present itself as a prime agent He made the candid observation that animals to roadside zoos, and never of conservation. As Maple put it, “If it his own discomfort reflected the in- talk about death. In current industry hadn’t aected the rest of us, I’m sure dustry’s discomfort. guidelines on population control, the we would have thought, That’s a pretty American zoos do cull, and rules phrase “non-living” is used eight times, eccentric decision. But when you begin allow it. Terry Maple told me, “I would and there’s no use of a shorter, more to see how it moves the people who have never done it, most of my col- common alternative. support you—when they’re in tears, and leagues in the United States would have America’s folksy model is symbolized they just can’t believe this—it starts to never done it.” He immediately added, by Jack Hanna, the former director of undermine the credibility of zoos, which “But when you get below the example the Columbus Zoo. Now its “director have to be justified, have to be supported of a charismatic mega-vertebrate”—a emeritus,” he is widely known for his by the public.” He called the episode storybook species—“and go to animals “Jungle Jack” television appearances. In “an existential threat,” and added, “We’re that are a little less special, there are , Hanna compared Steve Graham under enough attack from animal-rights cases of killing.” He recalled Zoo At- to Hitler. (When I spoke to Graham, he groups, even when we do the right lanta euthanizing dozens of newborn called Hanna the “clown prince of zoos.”) thing.” A few weeks after Marius’s death, pythons with his blessing. Maple has In a recent phone call, Hanna argued Maple wrote an op-ed in the San Fran- written, critically, of “taxonomic élit- that Columbus’s keepers would all re- cisco Chronicle, in which he claimed, ism” in zoos, but, in an apparent at- sign if the zoo introduced culling. He wrongly, that the girae had been shot tempt to diminish the act of snake-kill- noted that he’d made six hundred tele- in view of visitors. He still refers to the ing, he described the pythons to me as vision shows about wild animals and had case as one “where you just walk out slithery and mean. never shown a kill. “There’s enough going and kill the animal, I would say in cold One could argue that certain be- on in the world—I don’t need to have a blood, in front of your adoring public.” loved species should be protected from

PHOTOGRAPH BY MITCH EPSTEIN THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 51 culling because they’re beloved. (Why a building opposite the Bronx Zoo’s about it? And why didn’t you warn us shouldn’t humans have favorites?) But “Madagascar!” exhibit, Powell said he that you were doing it?” Leo Ooster- Maple was making the case a little was confident that these percentages weghel, the director of the Dublin Zoo, dierently—by disparaging the euth- would hold up in a larger sample. He which doesn’t cull, had written in an anized pythons. “They were going to added that ’s statement about Mar- Irish newspaper that the death of Mar- grow into twenty-six-foot-long ani- ius was “unfortunate.” Powell’s paper ius was “cold, calculated, cynical and mals that could eat your dog or maybe didn’t include specific examples of spe- callous.” He recently told me that he your kid!” he said. In American zoos, cies that had been culled by the sur- found it easier to accept obfuscation the preferred term for culling is “hu- veyed zoos. But he had the data on his than Danish confidence. “I prefer the mane euthanization”—a phrase that computer. He opened the file and read people with less pride, people who say, begins to defend the practice even be- from the screen: “Python ... deer . . . ‘Gee, I had to do this, and I’m not com- fore it’s been announced. invertebrates . . . ‘Ungulates as needed’ fortable with it, and I don’t really want Just as Denmark’s zoos can’t rid . . . ‘Fish or amphibians only’ . . . Guinea to talk about it.’ ” He blamed the Mar- themselves of Disney, America’s zoos pigs . . . ‘Hoofed animals’ . . . ro- ius crisis on the promotion of scien- are more Danish than they would like dents .. . wallabies . . . ‘domestic mam- tists to zoo-leadership positions. to acknowledge. At the time of Mar- mals’ .. . and a tiger.” In one Saumur session, David ius’s death, David Powell, the mam- Williams-Mitchell, ’s communica- malogist, was researching the use of months after Mar- tions manager, gave a PowerPoint pre- euthanasia in breeding programs in T ius’s death, zoo directors sentation, “What Went Wrong, and American zoos. He asked thirty-three gathered for a conference in Saumur, What We Should Do About It,” which zoos about their culling practices in western France. The weekend was suggested that one reason for the reach (promising not to name them). In a dominated by fractious debate about of the Marius story was “media-consumer co-written paper, he reported that forty- the Copenhagen incident. Although weariness regarding Syria and other five per cent of the zoos had said they European zoos were more likely than human catastrophes.” The presentation were euthanizing healthy animals; in American zoos to cull large animals, scolded Yorkshire Wildlife Park, argu- this cohort, seventy-nine per cent were many of them were no readier to ac- ing that there should be “absolutely no culling mammals. knowledge the practice. Holst recalled collusion with animal-rights agendas” In a conversation that took place in being asked, “Why were you so open that might “conflict with the future sur- vival of our members and the species they protect.” An annual report later re- ferred to “gut-churning sanctimony” in some parts of the international zoo com- munity, and described European disunity on the culling issue as the organization’s nadir. Several changes have been made to rules; member zoos are now asked to warn the organization if a sched- uled culling might cause a fuss. Since the death of Marius, thirteen giraes have been culled in zoos. Haig Balian, the director of Royal Zoo, in Amsterdam, told me that he had first reacted to Marius’s death by asking himself, “How stupid can you be?” He then became grateful for the controversy, because it had placed questions about the purpose of zoos “in the middle of society.” His zoo re- cently introduced a policy of not nam- ing animals, and has begun to list eu- thanizations in annual reports. In April, , Balian opened a long-planned exhibit that has become, he said, an ac- cidental meditation on the death of Marius. It’s a study of the work of mi- crobes. The body of a three-day-old girae, which had died in the zoo “Mommy, when will I blossom into a of natural causes, was allowed to start beautiful projection of male desire?” decomposing. After six months, the process was halted. The girae—look- ing desiccated but not disfigured—was put on display in a clear, airless box.

, in a provo- O cation that helped to establish the limits of Danish acceptance of animal deaths, Asger Juhl, a talk-radio host, killed a rabbit live on the air during a three-hour discussion about meat- eating and animal rights. Juhl lifted the rabbit’s back legs—as he’d watched oth- ers do on YouTube—and hit it on the head with a bicycle pump. An intern had given the rabbit a name, Allan. “I first had the idea of a pig,” Juhl told me when we met. “But you’d need a vet, and it was too complicated.” After the show, he took the rabbit home, skinned it, and gutted it. He and his co-host ate it for supper. Holst disapproved. “Why make a drama out of killing to start a discus- sion about killing?” he asked me. The majority of Juhl’s listeners felt simi- larly. (And Ricky Gervais, on Twitter, wrote, “I just battered a Danish d.j. to death with a bicycle pump to show how terrible murder is.”) The police opened an investigation. Juhl was in- terviewed on Russian television. “The angle, more or less, was: People in the West are barbaric, personified by this one man,” Juhl recalled. Several months later, Malene Jepsen and Lærke Stange Dahl dissected the lion in the Odense Zoo. The lion was •• largely defrosted, and there was a sour, cabbagey smell in the air. In the audi- ence, young twins with pacifiers, one “It was a surprise how heavy it was,” that had a weekday, classroom flavor. wearing a “Hello Kitty” hat, were dis- she told me a moment later. “It was: A boy observing the dead lion asked, tracted from the blood and the fur by O.K., I can’t stand too long like this. I “What’s the brown stu?” sea lions swimming in a pool just be- think it’s four or five kilos.” “It’s shit,” Dahl said. yond the dissectors. In the foreground, As the crowd dispersed, a dozen Another boy said, “What a shame intestines unspooled, and a translucent children gathered at the table, where for the lion.” bladder of frozen urine was held up to internal organs lay alongside what re- Dahl said, “It’s not a shame for the the light. Then there was an eortful mained of the body. Dahl had blood lion, because the lion is dead.” decapitation, with Jepsen keeping up on the front of her fleece. She showed A zoo worker was waiting with a buoyant patter as Dahl tried to sever a boy clumps of horsehair that were plastic wheeled trash can. Referring vertebrae, using a knife held horizon- inside the lion’s stomach. He looked to the remains as kød—meat—rather tally in two hands. “You have to find happy. The next day, a girl of four and than as a lion corpse, he asked if it was the small gap and push the knife down, her parents came upon a similar scene, time to clean up. He pulled at the lion’s between the nerves and whatever,” Dahl following the dissection of a sitatunga. tail, and Jepsen pushed from the other later explained. The girl boldly asked to see a bone end, and the headless body slid into At the end of an hour, Jepsen put being cut, but when this was done she the trash. “I feel like the undertaker,” down the lion’s head, which she’d been crumpled into tears. She was the only he said. holding, and said, “We hope you’ve child I saw showing any distress. Doz- Jepsen and Dahl hosed down the learned something about the lion and ens of others seemed either thrilled table. “Super!” Dahl said, taking o yourself.” There was warm applause. or a little wary of a weekend event her gloves. 

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 53 PROFILES SURVIVING SOLITARY

Albert Woodfox was in isolation longer than any other American. Then he came home.

BY RACHEL AVIV

, months after stock answer to the question: “Ask me table stood behind him, clenching their being released from prison, Al- in twenty years.” fists. L bert Woodfox went to Harlem. They reached the Apollo Theatre, “This is Brother Albert Woodfox,” It was there, in , during his last and Johnson told the others to stand Johnson said. “Longest man in soli- week of freedom, that he met members under the marquee for a photograph. tary confinement in the history of of the Black Panther Party for the first They all looked soberly at the camera America!” time. He had been mesmerized by the and raised their arms in a black-power One of the men said that he’d been way they talked and moved. “I had al- salute. There were pouches under Wood- in solitary, too. “I thought I was in the ways sensed, even among the most confi- fox’s eyes, and a thick crease between box a long time,” he said. “But I’ll just dent black people, that their fear was his eyebrows. His Afro was straggly put my troubles in my pocket.” right there at the top, ready to over- and gray. “Look, one day in the box is enough,” whelm them,” he told me. “It was the On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Bou- King said. first time I’d ever seen black folk who levard, they browsed souvenirs, T-shirts, were not afraid.” and jewelry arrayed on tables along the a child in Woodfox had intended to go to a sidewalk. “Black Lives Matter!” one W New Orleans, he made money meeting of the New York chapter of the vender shouted. “We got the shirts— by stealing flowers from gravestones and Party that week, but he was arrested for ten dollars!” selling them to mourners. The oldest of a robbery before he could. Instead, he Woodfox walked by, paused, then six siblings, he grew up in the Tremé, founded a chapter of the Party at the turned around. “Give me one of those,” one of the first neighborhoods in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, in Angola, he said. He handed the man a ten- South to house freed slaves. He remem- where he was held in solitary confine- dollar bill. “I’ll wear it tomorrow,” he bers standing at a bus stop with his ment for more than forty years— told the others. mother when he was twelve and trying longer than any prisoner in American Suddenly, the men’s mood became to figure out why, when a police car history. He and two other Black Pan- lighter. Now they all wanted to buy passed, she pulled him behind her, as if thers, who were in solitary confinement something. Johnson sampled musks and to hide him. “She was so scared of white for a total of more than a hundred years, decided on a three-dollar glassine of folks,” he said. “We all knew they had became known as the Angola . “Bleue Nile,” while King and Smith absolute power over us.” Woodfox, who is sixty-nine, strolled contemplated buying their own “Black In , when Woodfox was fifteen, along Malcolm X Boulevard with three Lives Matter” shirts. he was arrested for a car-parking scheme: former Panthers: his best friend, Rob- Then Johnson led the men four he and his friends charged drivers to ert King, one of the Angola , as well blocks south, to the original headquar- protect their cars. Two years later, he as Atno Smith and B. J. Johnson, mem- ters of the New York City chapter of went to jail for riding in a stolen car. bers of local chapters of the Party. He the Party, now a bodega called Jenny’s That year, he got his girlfriend preg- had never met Smith or Johnson be- Food Corp. Several elderly men sat nant. He paid little attention to his new- fore, and the conversation was halting smoking at a card table in front of the born daughter, Brenda. He took pride and restrained; they spoke of gentrifi- shop. in being a good crook. “They used to cation, Jackie Wilson, and the type of “We’ve got original Panthers here,” call me Fox,” he said. “You didn’t mess diabetes they had. Woodfox is reserved, Johnson told the men at the card table. with Fox.” humble, and temperamentally averse “Originals?” one man said, putting When Woodfox was eighteen, he to drama. When he talked about him- out his cigarette and standing up. was arrested for robbing a bar and sen- self, his tone became flat. He was sched- “All right, all right,” Woodfox said, tenced to fifty years in prison. After the uled to speak at a panel on solitary deflecting attention. sentencing, he overpowered two sheri’s confinement the next day, and he felt “Can I take a picture?” another man deputies in the basement of the court- exhausted by the prospect. “I get ap- asked. house and fled to Manhattan. He had prehensive when somebody asks me The four Panthers posed in front of been in the city for only a few days— something I can’t answer, like ‘What the store, next to a sandwich board ad- he had just met Panthers in Harlem, does it feel like to be free?’ ” he said. vertising hot oatmeal. Woodfox held his and was angling to date some of the fe- “How do you want me to know how new T-shirt in a plastic bag and raised male Party members, who seemed more it feels to be free?” He’d developed a his other fist. The men from the card self-possessed than any women he’d ever

54 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 “What does it feel like to be free?” Woodfox asked. “How do you want me to know how it feels to be free?”

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK HARTMAN THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 55 met—when a bookie accused him of was disillusioned by the incremental ap- neighborhoods that had been neglected trying to rob him. “I remember think- proach of the civil-rights movement. by the government. Under the slogan ing, What’s wrong with you—you can’t Huey Newton, the Party’s co-founder, “Survival Pending Revolution,” the Pan- stay out of jail,” he said. “I thought it said that black people were tired of sing- thers established screening centers for was just me, that something was wrong ing “We Shall Overcome.” He said, “The sickle-cell anemia, provided pest con- with me.” only way you’re going to overcome is to trol and trash disposal, and gave free He was extradited to New Orleans apply righteous power.” The Panthers breakfasts to children, who ate while and placed on the Panther Tier at the saw a direct link between the country’s learning black history. The first goal on Orleans Parish Prison. Eighteen mem- armed interventions abroad—in Viet- the Panthers’ ten-point program was: bers of the Black Panther Party, wait- nam, Latin America, and Africa—and “We want the power to determine the ing to be tried for shoot-outs with the what Eldridge Cleaver, a Party leader, destiny of our black community.” police, held classes on politics, econom- called the “bondage of the Negro at Woodfox said that the Party “helped ics, sociology, and the history of slavery. home.” Black people, he said, lived in a bring out who I really was.” He felt giddy Steel plates had been axed to their “colony in the mother country,” shunted when he used the language that the windows so that they couldn’t commu- into inferior housing, jobs, and schools. Panthers taught him for articulating his nicate with prisoners on other tiers. The Panthers followed the police, whom discontent. He realized that he’d been Malik Rahim, the defense minister of they saw as occupying troops, through part of the lumpenproletariat, a term the New Orleans chapter of the Party, the ghetto. If an ocer questioned a that Marx coined to describe “thieves told me, “They thought they were sep- black person, the Panthers got out of and criminals of all kinds, living on the arating us, but everywhere we went that their car and monitored the encounter, crumbs of society.” infectious disease called organizing was drawing loaded guns. By the time of Woodfox’s trial, in taking hold.” They ripped apart Frantz J. Edgar Hoover called the group , he believed that it had been his Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” “the greatest threat to the internal se- moral right to flee. On the morning of and divided it into sections, so that each curity of the country,” and, as part of his his trial, he and three other Panthers inmate could study a chapter and teach program, ordered the F.B.I. who had been placed in a holding pen the others what he’d learned. to disrupt and discredit its activities. But under the courthouse sang, “Pick up the Formed a year after the assassination much of the Party’s work was focussed gun/put the pigs on the run/there of Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party on providing community services in aren’t enough pigs/in this whole wide world/to stop the Black Panther Party!” Ocers beat them and sprayed them with mace. When Woodfox was called into the courtroom, his face was bruised and burning. His ankles and wrists were chained to a steel belt around his waist. He turned toward the spectators in the courtroom and shook his chains. “I want all of you to see what these racist, fas- cist pigs have done to me,” he said.

to Angola, the W largest maximum-security prison in the country. The penitentiary, situ- ated on eighteen thousand acres of farmland and bordered on three sides by the Mississippi River, is a former cotton plantation and slave-breeding business. It was named for the Afri- can country, the source of its slaves. After the Civil War, a former Confed- erate general acquired the plantation and leased state convicts—most of them black, including children as young as seven—to work at Angola, easing the labor shortage brought by Eman- cipation. The state purchased the plan- tation in , but convicts still slept in former slave cabins and worked seven days a week, cultivating sugar- “Look alive, Proust, you’re next.” cane and cotton. When Woodfox arrived, black and were ‘political prisoners,’ even though need to bring y’all ass down to St. Fran- white inmates lived separately, in cinder- they had been convicted of crimes hav- cisville. We’ll show you something.” block compounds, and the cafeteria was ing no political motive or significance. Miller’s body had been found near divided by a wooden partition, to keep They claimed that responsibility for the bed of Hezekiah Brown, a black in- the races apart. Every guard at Angola their actions belonged not to them but mate who had been sentenced to death was white. Woodfox and two other in- to society, which had failed to provide for rape. Brown initially said that he mates he’d met at the Orleans Parish adequate housing, equal educational op- knew nothing about the murder. Four Prison requested permission from the portunities, and equal opportunities in days later, Warden Henderson prom- Panthers’ Central Committee, in Oak- American life.” ised Brown a pardon if he would “crack land, to establish a chapter of the Party Woodfox took a similar view. In an the case.” Brown named four prison ac- at Angola—the only recognized chap- interview with the Angolite, he said, “I’ve tivists from New Orleans: Woodfox, ter founded on prison grounds. The new always considered myself a political pris- Herman Wallace—a charismatic and Panthers encouraged the other prison- scholarly thirty-year-old who had co- ers, who cut crops for two cents an hour, founded the New Orleans chapter of to work more slowly. Woodfox said, “It the Party—Chester Jackson, and Gil- was this macho thing where the guys bert Montague. Brown said that he had would deliberately work at a fast pace been drinking coee with Miller when to show o how masculine they were, the four Panthers ran into the dorm, and we’d explain to them that all they’re pulled Miller onto Brown’s bed, and going to do is take you to another field.” stabbed him. (The prison’s chief secu- A few times a week, a group of nearly rity ocer later confided to the war- fifty men pretended to play football den’s wife that Brown was “one you could while discussing how to conduct them- oner. Not in the sense that I’m here for put words in his mouth.”) selves as revolutionaries. Woodfox, who a political crime, but in the sense that The four suspects and some twenty now described himself as a “dialecti- I’m here because of a political system other black men, all known as militants, cal materialist,” summarized what he’d that has failed me terribly as an indi- were transferred by van to Angola’s ex- learned from the Party’s list of some vidual and citizen in this country.” tended lockdown unit, called Closed thirty required books, by writers like Cell Restricted. According to the Black W.E.B. Du Bois, Michael Harrington, , , Brent Miller, a Panther, the Party newspaper, the men and Marcus Garvey. Prisoners who knew O twenty-three-year-old guard at An- were dragged into the hallway at night Woodfox from New Orleans, where gola who had just been married, was and two rows of guards attacked them he’d earned a reputation as a hustler, at stabbed thirty-two times in a black dorm. with baseball bats, pick handles, and first thought that he was operating some He and his bride, Teenie, had grown up iron pipes. An inmate told the paper sort of scam. on the grounds of the prison, in a set- that those “who weren’t beaten nearly Angola was known as the most dan- tlement for three hundred families who to death were made to sit while , , or gerous prison in the South. According worked at Angola. Miller’s father su- pigs cut their hair in all directions.” to the editor of the prison’s newspaper, pervised the hog farm; his brother the Angolite, a quarter of the inmates guarded the front gate; and his father- Miller’s death, lived in “bondage”: raped, sold, and in-law ran the sugar mill. C. Murray T the four men were charged with traded, they generated income for their Henderson, the warden, described the murder. There was an abundance of owners as well as for prison guards, who Millers as “one of my favorite families physical evidence at the crime scene, were paid to look the other way. The on Angola; they were a close-knit fam- none of which linked them to the kill- Panthers organized an Anti-Rape Squad, ily, the boys made music together, they ing. A bloody fingerprint near Miller’s which escorted new prisoners to their had a good band and played for dances.” body did not match any of theirs. dorms. “We would let them know who Friends of the Millers came to the In preparation for trial, the New Or- we were and that we were there to pro- prison armed with shotguns and base- leans chapter of the Panthers formed tect them,” Ronald Ailsworth, a mem- ball bats, to assist with the investigation. a support group, the Angola Brothers ber of the squad, told me. They armed Woodfox was the first prisoner to be Committee. The treasurer was an F.B.I. themselves with bats and knives, which interrogated. Warden Henderson, who informant, Jill Schafer, who, along with they fashioned out of farm equipment, described Woodfox as a “hard-core Black her husband, Harry, received nine thou- and used mail-order catalogues and din- Panther racist,” assumed that the murder sand dollars a year to infiltrate radical ner trays as shields. was a political act. “You had a group of organizations, as part of the - Woodfox was inspired by the Black Panthers inside who felt that they project. By instigating rifts among uprising at Attica, and felt connected had to do something to get attention, members, Schafer sabotaged the com- to a movement of prisoners, many of and they decided to kill a white person,” mittee’s eorts to raise money for a de- them Panthers, calling for reform. The he said later. Woodfox said that the fense lawyer. McKay Commission, which investi- sheri of St. Francisville, the town clos- At Woodfox’s trial, all the jurors were gated the situation at Attica, reported est to Angola, pointed a gun at his fore- white. The prosecutor, John Sinque- that “many inmates came to believe they head and told him, “You Black Panthers field, referred to them as “common,

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 57 ordinary everyday folk like us.” Al- though two inmates had testified that they were eating breakfast with Wood- GILLY’S BOWL & GRILLE fox at the time of the crime, the jury deliberated for less than an hour before As for the beer, I bring my own. I haven’t touched finding him guilty. A year later, Wal- another human lace was also convicted by an all-white in twenty-three days, not even someone’s palm jury. (Jackson became a witness for the prosecution, and Montague was acquit- passing my change. ted, because prison records showed that I forget—because I am in heels, because California he was in the infirmary at the time of still owns the murder.) After the trials, the war- den secured Hezekiah Brown’s pardon a portion of my body, and is on re—my socks. and release, using prison funds to pay The owner for his campaign for clemency. of the alley lends me his daughter’s, Woodfox and Wallace, sentenced to life without parole, were returned to who is behind Closed Cell Restricted and placed in the concession counter and looks, in braces, six-by-nine-foot cells. For more than blond hair five years, they never went outside. twisted on top of her head, like she could to be mine. They’re clean, W cry only when everyone else on he tells me. Crew, bleached white, mid-Atlantic the tier was asleep. His youngest brother, Michael, who visited the prison every preteen packaged. month, said that Woodfox no longer She wants, I am sure of it, something synthetic. permitted himself the pleasure of rem- She wants, iniscing about their childhood. Hand- cued and shackled, he spoke through in pink polka dots, in patterned tiny stereos, a heavy wire-mesh screen. “He can’t allow to forget the pain to be expressed,” Michael told the same ve boys corralling the boxes of M&M’s, me. “He feels he has to be a conqueror, a leader, a demonstration for other men. sodas sweating He doesn’t want people to know he has in their Styrofoam cups. Peeling out on the simulated- weaknesses.” driving games, Woodfox and Wallace soon became close with another Panther, Robert King, they push in quarter after quarter she drops to their who was also in C.C.R. and had been cupped hands. convicted of killing an inmate. They be- And as I test each polished orb for weight, I think lieved that he, too, had been framed be- cause of his connection to the Party. the white, ribbed The three men had all been raised by cotton socks are the rows of corn she rides single women in New Orleans; had met her brother’s bike their fathers only a few times, or not at all; had dropped out of school, because by. Shoot after shoot of the alleys they didn’t see the point of it; had been she sweeps arrested for petty crimes—both Wal- lace and Woodfox were picked up for violations of Jim Crow laws, like stand- it.” Woodfox said, “Our instincts and words—“capitalism,” “imperialism,” ing too close to a building without the thoughts were so closely aligned it was “feudalism,” “totalitarianism,” “bour- owner’s permission—and had been sent frightening.” geoisie”—and the following day he to Angola for robberies. They were all In C.C.R., they were permitted to quizzed them. introduced to the Party in jail and saw leave their cells for an hour a day to Gary Tyler, an African-American its teachings as a revelation. Until then, walk along the tier alone. During their inmate in C.C.R., said that the teach- King said, “I had the attitude that life free hour, Woodfox, King, and Wallace ings made him consider himself a po- had nothing more to oer me, nor could held classes for the other inmates, litical prisoner. At seventeen, Tyler was life get anything from me, for I had passing out carbon-copied math and sentenced to death, after a jury con- nothing. I felt I had done it all and, grammar lessons. Woodfox gave them victed him of shooting a white class- should I perish the next morning, so be twenty-four hours to study lists of mate who had been protesting the

58 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 that degraded black women, and to try “Native Son,” by Richard Wright. Whit- after the boys are picked up and taken home. more told me, “Man, I kept on reading and reading. Then I looked in the mir- I drink ror and saw Bigger Thomas. I was com- the beer her father wouldn’t, brewed in a fancy ing to terms with who I was as a per- coastal town. son, with my blackness, with being at the bottom of the world.” I’m not, we both know, from around here. No one else After reading a history of chattel bowls alone. slavery, Woodfox told the inmates in I christen each column with a name I always wanted. C.C.R. that Southern plantation own- ers used to inspect the rectums of the Brooke. Madison. slaves they intended to buy at auction. Biblical Joannas, Rachels, Lydias. Women with history. Woodfox said that the process resem- The children bled what they endured whenever they left the cell block: they were forced to I will never have. The year my father died strip, raise their genitals while lifting I swore it— each foot, and bend over and spread never leave another behind. Keep to yourself. their buttocks while coughing. Wood- fox, Wallace, and King circulated a let- Move often, ter to all the inmates on one tier, de- and far, and spend your money. It is, I hope, scribing a plan for resistance. On the his business— chosen day, nearly all the inmates began refusing the strip search. A few were Gilly’s—named for her, so that, when she has moved beaten so badly by guards that they had to Pittsburgh, to be hospitalized. or Cleveland, and he has been gone almost ten years, worked to curtail she can know T their desires. None of them drank he wanted, for her, somewhere that people would drive to, coee or tea or smoked. “If I feel a habit in the dark, is developing, or even a disorder of any kind, I counsel myself in spirit,” Wallace to drink under the neon lights and hurl their lives away told a psychologist. “The more food you for an hour eat, the more your body craves food,” he or two. To sweat into her own socks, which will still wrote to a friend. “It’s the same for sleep— most of it is mental.” He didn’t like being be here dependent on security guards to turn the then, clean, white, and when they place them light on every morning, so he kept it on on the counter all the time and covered it with a legal pad when he slept, which he did for fewer a man might grab a stranger’s hand than three hours each night. and tell her In , when the prison opened a she cannot leave with her open bottle of beer. small outdoor exercise cage in C.C.R.— inmates could go outside for a few hours —Corey Van Landingham a week—the three men ran barefoot outside, even when frost covered the ground. “We had to make ourselves think that ordinary things didn’t apply to us,” desegregation of his school. (A federal tional structure of the schools, why the Woodfox told me. “We wanted the se- judge called his trial “fundamen- black schools were poorly financed,” curity people to think that they were tally unfair”; all the eyewitnesses even- Tyler told me. “I used to get mad at dealing with superhumans.” It was also tually recanted.) Woodfox, Wallace, them sometimes, because they acted a coping strategy. “Before I let them and King gave Tyler reading lessons like they were my dads. They left me take something from me, I deny it from and lent him radical newspapers, like no room to be a risk-taker.” myself,” he said. Fight Back! Newspaper of the Revolu- Kenny Whitmore, another inmate Woodfox spent several hours a day tionary Brigade, and Final Call, founded in C.C.R., said that Woodfox “should writing letters to pen pals, many of by Louis Farrakhan. “These guys were have been a professor.” Woodfox told whom were also known as political able to break down the politics sur- Whitmore to stop reading his “trash- prisoners, like Leonard Peltier and rounding my situation—the educa- ass pimp books,” urban crime novels Mumia Abu- Jamal. He said he was

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 59 “positive that the people—our broth- drank heavily during lunch breaks, did “did not appear depressed” and that his ers and sisters outside—would rise up not ask the state to test the bloody fin- attitude was “appropriate to situation.” and organize for us.” But the Party had gerprint, and he didn’t discover Heze- Every ninety days, a Lockdown Re- splintered—Huey Newton envisaged kiah Brown’s special treatment. Instead, view Board set up a table at the end of a party devoted to community service, the focus of the trial was Woodfox’s mil- the hallway on Woodfox’s tier. Shack- while Eldridge Cleaver advocated urban itance, though his views had softened. led and handcued, he stood at the guerrilla warfare. By , the Party When the prosecutor, Julie Cullen, asked table for a brief conference with two had collapsed. The plight of the An- Woodfox if he still felt that he had the board members. They had his disci- gola was forgotten. right to escape from the courthouse, he plinary record, but they rarely looked Yet the three men, who communi- said no. “I was afraid,” he said. “I was a at it. He often informed the ocers cated with one another by sending writ- young man. I was afraid.” that he hadn’t had a rule violation for ten and oral messages, passed from one Cullen asserted that Woodfox’s po- years. Once, a sympathetic board mem- cell to the next, continued identifying litical views were “diametrically opposed” ber told him, “Hey, this comes from as Panthers. Wallace described the prin- to Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s nonviolent higher up. We can’t release you, and ciples of the Party as “indelible men- approach. you know that.” tal protection,” the “key to the mental “No, they were not,” Woodfox said. Prisoners in C.C.R. who had killed stability of every one of us.” The men “All of this talking about revolution inmates or tried to escape—one had were repeatedly singled out as impor- and bloodshed, death, sacrifices,” she kidnapped the warden at knifepoint— tant enough to take revenge on, a fact said, referring to a letter he’d written in were eventually released. But Woodfox, that helped them preserve their self- . “You’re not an advocate of any of Wallace, and King remained. The Lock- esteem. A security ocer acknowledged that? You’re a victim of all of that?” down Review Summaries for the three in an interview with Warden Hender- “Well, I think I was a victim of rac- men always provided the same expla- son’s wife, Anne Butler, who wrote ism in this country,” he said. “Yes—from nation for their confinement: “Nature books on regional folklore, that at one the day I was born.” of Original Reason for Lockdown.” point he gathered a “good crowd” of When Cullen asked Woodfox if he Burl Cain, who was the warden from ocers at C.C.R., armed with pistols was still politically active, he said that until last year, acknowledged in a and a gas-grenade launcher. He said, he tried to teach inmates on his tier to deposition that Woodfox appeared to “Everybody’d done went to arguing have “pride, self-respect, a sense of self- be a “model prisoner.” But, Cain said, “I about who was gonna get Woodfox and worth, and to see that the way to change still know that he is still trying to prac- Wallace.” things is to first change themselves.” tice Black Pantherism.” He didn’t like “Is that a yes or a no?” Cullen in- that Woodfox “hung with the past,” he , Woodfox had terrupted. said. An assistant warden, Cathy Fon- F no lawyer. He, Wallace, and King “That is a yes,” Woodfox said. tenot, said that the three men had to be taught themselves criminal and civil He was convicted and again sen- kept in lockdown because “they have law. In , King wrote a brief for tenced to life without parole. “Some tremendous influence with the inmate Woodfox, arguing that he had may view that victory as a sign population.” been unconstitutionally in- to end my existence,” he wrote Gary Tyler, who was eventually re- dicted, because his grand jury, to a friend. leased from C.C.R. and placed in An- like every grand jury in the gola’s general population, told me, “As history of St. Francisville, and the time went on, it became utterly impos- excluded women. A judge D two years leading up to sible for me to even reach these guys. agreed, and overturned Wood- it, Woodfox was in the gen- The warden kind of built a wall around fox’s conviction. Before he eral population at a county jail them. They were considered the pari- could be released, however, in Amite City, where he was ahs of the prison.” the state indicted him again. never disciplined for breaking One of the grand jurors was a rule. When he returned to up gasp- Anne Butler. She had devoted Angola, a social worker noted W ing. He felt that the walls of the part of a book to the case, describing that there were “no indications of be- cell were squeezing him to death, a sen- how the Angola Panthers left “their havioral problems about this inmate re- sation that he began to experience the own bloody mark on history.” She said ported by security.” Nevertheless, he was day after his mother’s funeral, in . that she asked to be excused from the placed in solitary confinement. He had planned to go to the burial— jury but that the D.A. insisted she serve. Social workers, who occasionally cir- prisoners at Angola are permitted to at- (Later, after an argument, the warden culated on the tier, described Woodfox tend the funerals of immediate family— shot her five times, almost killing her, as “respectful,” “positive,” “coöperative,” but at the last minute his request was and was sentenced to fifty years in and “neat.” King was characterized as denied. For three years, he slept sitting prison.) “friendly,” “calm,” and “polite.” When up, because he felt less panicked when The trial was held in Amite City, a Wallace complained that he had been he was vertical. “It takes so much out town where many Angola guards lived. in solitary confinement for nearly three of you just to try to make these walls, Woodfox’s lawyer, a public defender who decades, a social worker noted that he you know, go back to the normal place

60 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 they belong,” he told a psychologist. “Someday I’m not going to be able to deal with it. I’m not going to be able to pull those walls apart.” In , the three men filed a law- suit, arguing that twenty-eight years of solitary confinement constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The ground- work for the case was done by a law stu- dent, Scott Fleming, who began study- ing the court records in , after receiving a letter from Wallace, who wrote to any lawyer or activist whose address he could find. Fleming knew the neighbor of the daughter of Anita Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop, and after learning of the case Roddick visited Woodfox in prison. She decided to pay for lawyers for the three men. George Kendall, one of their new lawyers, said he thought that “part of this case is going to be figuring out how to hold these guys together mentally.” But their resilience became as much an object of psychological scrutiny as their suering. Stuart Grassian, a psycholo- gist hired for the lawsuits who studies the eects of solitary confinement, wrote, “I have never encountered any situation nearly as profound or extreme as that “Just to be clear, this is just a spaceman and a spacewoman of the three plaintis in this case.” on a spacewalk. This isn’t a spacedate.” Even the state’s psychologist, Joel Dvoskin, seemed impressed by the men’s endurance. He wrote that Wood- •• fox “maintains a demeanor of quiet dig- nity, he asserts his rights in a similarly daily reading. He decided, after a ro- the love between us. He felt he would dignified way.” When Dvoskin asked mantic relationship in the nineties that leave us shorthanded.” Woodfox if he would ever take medi- developed through letters, not to be- A sinewy fifty-nine-year-old, King cation for his anxiety, Woodfox replied come involved with another woman as walked from C.C.R. into Angola’s park- that he would control the problem long as he was in prison. “From my read- ing lot. He moved into a small apart- through “concentration and will power.” ing, I knew that revolutionaries had to ment in New Orleans with a former He told another psychologist, Craig purge themselves of being chauvinistic,” Panther, Marion Brown, and rarely left. Haney, that he was afraid of how well he said. Rebecca Hensley, a professor of He couldn’t sleep for more than an hour he’d been “adapting to the painfulness.” sociology at Southeastern Louisiana at a time. Brown said that King was “There is a part of me that is gone,” he University, who corresponded with “filled with fear, suspicion, conspiracy.” said. “I had to sacrifice that part in order Woodfox for many years, said that when If she moved a piece of furniture, he as- to survive.” she expressed romantic feelings for him sumed that someone had broken in. Woodfox felt that his strength was he gently declined. He told her to read Prisoners from Angola often called his ability to hide “what’s going on deep a book called “The Prisoner’s Wife,” King collect, and, though he had no in- inside of me,” and the conversations about the pain of prison relationships. come, he never refused the charges. Gras- with the psychologists left him un- sian, who met King when he was free, hinged. At the end of the interview with , ’ conviction was over- observed that he “somehow seems to Grassian, he said, “When you leave, I I turned, after the state’s two witnesses feel that neither he nor Marion can lead have just minutes to erect all these lay- admitted that they had lied, and re- any semblance of a normal life until he ers, put all these defenses back. It is the canted their testimony. King was told gains his friends’ release. He devotes al- most painful, agonizing thing I could that if he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge most all his concentration and energy imagine.” he would be released immediately. “King to talking about, or thinking about, his He steadied himself with a rigid rou- was real reluctant to leave us,” Wood- two friends who remain at Angola.” tine that required at least two hours of fox told me. “It was the comradeship, Not long after he was freed, King

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 61 returned to Angola to visit Roy Hollings- tencies in the state’s testimony. Rogers the principles of the Black Panther worth, an inmate in C.C.R. who cred- wrote Richmond a letter saying that she Party. As punishment, Woodfox was its the Angola for his moral awaken- was “shocked to find out that no real at- prevented from going outside. Soon af- ing. Hollingsworth said that, years tempt was made to find out who the fin- terward, Warden Cain decided that he before, he was about to rape a young gerprint did belong to, which should no longer wanted Woodfox and Wal- inmate and smash his head when King have been a very simple thing to do.” lace at his prison. “I got tired of the An- called out from another cell and asked The state met doubts about the case gola ,” he said. The men were trans- him to reflect on what he was about to with unusual vigor. After the case re- ferred to new prisons, at opposite ends do. When King got to C.C.R., five se- ceived national media attention, on NPR of the state. They remained in solitary curity ocers approached him and ter- and in Mother Jones, the public-infor- confinement. Woodfox wrote to a friend, minated the visit. He was told never mation oce for the Louisiana Depart- “I would go insane if I for a second al- to return. ment of Corrections set up a Google lowed an emotional connection to take In a deposition, Warden Cain said Alert and notified Angola’s administra- place with what is my reality!” he expected that King would resume his tion when the men were in the news. When the psychologist Craig Haney “revolutionary stu ” if Woodfox and Louisiana’s attorney general, Buddy visited the two men at their new pris- Wallace were ever released. “He is only Caldwell, who was elected in , said ons, he was shocked to see how much waiting, in my opinion, for them to get of Woodfox, “I oppose letting him out they had aged. “The separation was dev- out so they can reunite,” he said. “So with every fibre of my being.” He had astating,” Haney told me. “They had a they can pick up where they left o.” been friends since first grade with the powerful connection to each other that original prosecutor in the case, John had sustained them.” Woodfox told , , the chair of Sinquefield, whom he promoted to the Haney that he had “lost interest in ev- I the House Committee on the Judi- second-highest position in his oce. erything.” He was again subject to strip ciary, and Cedric Richmond, a Louisi- Caldwell requested the recordings of searches up to six times a day. The men ana state representative, learned about nearly seven hundred phone calls made in the cells on either side of him were Woodfox and Wallace’s decades of by Wallace and Woodfox, including con- mentally ill and screamed for much of confinement and visited them at C.C.R. versations with their lawyers. Warden the day. He felt overwhelmed by the After the meeting, Richmond told the Cain said in a deposition, “We were sour smell of their breath. press that a “massive amount of evidence” kind of curious to see just how far they At Angola, Woodfox and Wallace showed that Woodfox and Wallace were would go . . . to see what rules they had seen themselves as “village elders,” innocent. Brent Miller’s widow, Teenie would break.” but at the new prisons the other inmates Rogers, had also begun to question the Investigators listened to all the calls, treated them like ordinary criminals. state’s evidence, after a young investiga- and found that, in an interview with a Wallace told Haney that he felt as if he tor on the case, Billie Mizell, befriended project called Prison Radio, Woodfox were reaching his “end point.” His voice her and made charts mapping inconsis- had stated that he continued to live by cracked, and he seemed hesitant and slow. He thought that there was some- thing wrong with his heart. Crying, he said, “I can’t stand up to it.”

pounds. He W complained of stomach pain, which the prison doctors diagnosed as a fungus. “No palpable masses—exam limited by prison room chair,” one doc- tor wrote in June, . Five days later, a doctor hired by Wallace’s lawyers found an eight-centimetre bulge in his abdo- men. He received a diagnosis of liver cancer. Wallace told Haney, “The ma- jority of my life I have been treated like an animal, so I guess I will die like an animal.” The cancer swiftly spread to his bones and his brain. In letters, Wallace referred to himself as a “soldier” and drew ornate pictures of panthers. He liked to use the term “W.W.T.P.D.”— What would the Panthers do? A friend, Angela Allen-Bell, didn’t understand his devotion. “You have given your whole life to the Party,” she told him. death is the realm of freedom, then diovascular disease. Still wearing her pa- “Why aren’t they here for you now when through death I escape to freedom.” jamas, she got into her car and followed you are sick and need help?” She said Woodfox couldn’t accept that Wal- the ambulance to the hospital. She tried that he told her, “I didn’t join the peo- lace, whom he described as “the other to see if the man being unloaded from ple—I joined the Party. The Party trans- part of my heart,” had become an “an- the gurney was Woodfox, but she couldn’t formed my mind, and that’s all it owes cestor,” the term Panthers used to de- get a view of his face. to me.” Another friend, Jackie Sumell, scribe the dead. “We always believed Three months later, she sent a letter said that Wallace’s and Woodfox’s com- that we would survive anything,” he said. to a judge who had presided over pre- mitment to the Party reminded her of He could no longer avoid the thought vious hearings. “I have made a terrible the “Japanese fighter pilots that they that a similar fate awaited him. He said, mistake,” she wrote. She also wrote to found on some of the Philippine Is- “All these years and years of study and the judge who had overseen her grand lands thirty years after the war, still discipline and carrying myself a certain jury, telling him that after researching fighting.” way, in order to die in prison.” the case she understood that crucial facts In September, , Wallace gave a had been withheld from her. “I feel vi- deposition in his civil suit from a bed ’ death, olated and taken advantage of,” she said. in the prison’s infirmary. He hadn’t eaten A Woodfox’s conviction was over- In another letter, she begged Buddy for several days, and was being given turned again, because of racial discrim- Caldwell to stop the prosecution. When heavy doses of the opiate fentanyl. The ination in the selection of the grand jury. she received no replies, she mailed a let- state’s lawyer requested that the depo- The state issued a new arrest warrant ter to the governor, Bobby Jindal, whom sition be adjourned, because Wallace and, in February, , convened a grand she had voted for. “This is the worst was vomiting, but Wallace told him, jury to indict Woodfox for the third human tragedy I have ever seen,” she “Come on. Come on with your ques- time. Deidre Howard, a sixty-one-year- wrote. tions.” He was capable of saying only a old dental hygienist from St. Francis- In April, , she and her twin sis- few words at a time. He said that being ville, was the forewoman. She said that ter, Donna, drove to a prayer vigil for in solitary confinement for forty-one the prosecutor explained that the case Woodfox at a church in Baton Rouge, years had reduced him to a “state of had to be “run back through” because to mark his fortieth year in solitary being where I can barely collect my own of a technicality. “They told us we just confinement. They remained in their thoughts.” He pursed his lips and ap- needed to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s,” car, and, as Woodfox’s brother and other peared to be holding back tears. “It’s she said. supporters arrived, they leaned down, like a killing machine,” he said. The coroner in the case had been so that no one would see their faces. “You’re on your deathbed, is that Howard’s doctor; the district attorney your understanding?” one of his lawyers worked down the street from her and , Buddy Caldwell was asked him. had lent her a tent for her outdoor Bible I voted out of oce, and Deidre How- “Yes,” he replied. meetings. Warden Henderson had been ard sent the new attorney general, Je “Are you able to say with a clean con- her neighbor. Howard felt that she owed Landry, more than a hundred pages of science, as you prepare to meet your it to the Miller family, who owned a letters that she had written to attorneys maker, that you did not murder Brent restaurant where she sometimes ate, to and judges involved in the case. “Jury Miller?” keep Woodfox locked up. According to service has been a devastating experi- “Yes.” Howard, the prosecutor emphasized to ence,” she wrote. Although people had Five days later, a federal judge re- the jury that the Black Panther Party been protesting the case for years, it was sponded to Wallace’s habeas petition, was devoted to “raping and robbing.” the first time that anyone from St. Fran- which had been lingering in the courts She signed the indictment. “There re- cisville had seemed bothered. for years. The judge overturned his con- ally wasn’t anything to deliberate,” she Landry oered to end the prosecu- viction, ordering that he be released. told me. tion if Woodfox pleaded no-contest to At dusk, Wallace was loaded into an As she lay in bed that night, Howard manslaughter. For years, Woodfox had ambulance and taken to New Orleans, realized that she had determined a man’s fantasized about walking out of court to stay with a friend who lived half a life with less consideration than she de- after being acquitted by a jury, but block from where he’d been raised. Fam- voted to buying a new refrigerator. She his lawyers urged him to avoid a trial. ily and friends, some of whom he hadn’t could barely remember his name. The Despite requests that the location be seen for forty years, gathered around his day after the indictment, Woodfox was changed, the case would be heard in bed. One friend read him the last chap- transferred to West Feliciana Parish De- West Feliciana, a parish in which the ter of Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice.” tention Center, which is three blocks Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, dur- Another held flowers to his nose. from Howard’s house. One evening, as ing a Senate bid in , had received On Wallace’s second day of freedom, she was getting ready for bed, she heard seventy-five per cent of the white vote. the state impanelled a grand jury, which the siren of an ambulance. From her bed- As Woodfox was contemplating the reindicted him for Miller’s murder. Wal- room window, she saw the ambulance oer, Woodfox’s fifty-two-year-old lace was never told. He died the next heading toward the jail. She had read in daughter, Brenda, ran into one of Wood- day. He asked that his funeral program the newspaper that Woodfox had renal fox’s childhood friends in New Orleans. begin with a quote by Frantz Fanon: “If problems, diabetes, hepatitis C, and car- Wood fox hadn’t seen her in nearly twenty

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 63 years. The friend took a photograph of he found frightening. He was used to friend in New Orleans, hosting visitors. Brenda and sent it to Woodfox, to guarding the front of his cell without Most nights, he sat in a pink armchair confirm that the woman was his daugh- having to worry about “the damage wearing his prison-issue gray sweatpants ter. Then Brenda visited him at the jail, someone can do from behind,” he said. and a pair of Crocs that his brother had bringing her son and her two grandchil- King sensed Woodfox’s discomfort and bought for him. He found it a “strain dren. “Up until that point, there was this moved closer to him, guiding him to stay within the social dialogue,” he constant internal battle going on,” Wood- through the room. Woodfox kept his said. He often warned new acquain- fox told me. “I’ve always preached to eyes on the floor. His expression seemed tances, “I’m not good at, as they say, other men, ‘You have to be willing to frozen in an apologetic smile. ‘chitchat.’ ” sacrifice everything, even your life.’ If I At the party were people he hadn’t He worried that his family would took the plea deal, would I be a hypocrite?” seen for forty years. He thought that feel that he had abandoned them, but Woodfox’s brother Michael told him they would still see him as a “petty crim- his daughter, Brenda, became a regu- about a conversation he’d had with inal who victimized my own neighbor- lar visitor. She exuded an aura of pa- Brenda. “She was crying and said she hood,” he said. Most of his supporters tient competence, seeming content to didn’t have a daddy,” Woodfox said. “I in recent years had been white, and he sit silently on the couch, observing her can’t tell you the depths of pain I expe- worried that the black community would father with others. She often brought rienced from hearing that.” He decided find him inauthentic. Toward the end her boisterous grandchildren. Her ten- that a plea deal could be justified. of the evening, an old friend invited him year-old granddaughter, Michaela, liked Woodfox had a week to prepare for onto a stage and handed him a micro- to dance to pop songs on Woodfox’s his release. For years he had created phone. Woodfox pulled up his pants, new iPhone, a gift from a detective imaginary budgets, determining how which were too loose, and held the zip- who worked on his case. Woodfox nod- much he could pay for food, given the per of his jacket. “I’m kind of new at ded to the beat and occasionally said, rent and his monthly utilities. He had this,” he said. “I hope you understand “Hehe.” “Your great-grandpa is a quiet spent four decades, he said, living “in that I have been through a terrible or- soul,” Brenda told Michaela. “Quiet the abstract.” He told himself, “I can deal. I need a little time to get my foot- but deadly. Don’t mistake his quietness handle this—I just need to see it com- ing so I won’t make a fool of myself.” for weakness.” ing.” He revisited lists that he’d made, The friend handed the microphone Woodfox discovered that a typical edited over the course of decades, of to Robert King, who shrugged. He has day in the house—moving from the what to do when he was free: visit his a leisurely, meandering way of speak- kitchen to the bathroom to the living mother’s and his sister’s gravesites, learn ing. “Anyway,” he said. “What can I say?” room—entailed more steps than his en- how to drive again, go to Yosemite Na- He pointed to Woodfox. “This is your tire exercise regimen in prison. He felt tional Park, “be patient.” night, bro.” overwhelmed by options. “I have to sub- On February , , his sixty-ninth “Whatever is my night is your night,” mit to the process of developing a new birthday, Woodfox packed his belong- Woodfox said quietly, looking at his technique to fill the hours,” he told me, ings into garbage bags and put about a sneakers. three weeks after he was released. “I’m hundred letters in a cardboard box. He The d.j. played Stevie Wonder’s trying to strike the right balance with put on black slacks and a black bomber being free.” jacket that a freed Angola prisoner had He walked slowly, with such intense sent him. concentration that he didn’t notice when Not until he was outside did he be- someone called his name. His footing lieve that he was actually going to be was unsure. “He seemed very nervous, freed. It was a warm, clear, sunny day. very insecure,” his friend Allen-Bell told He squinted and held the hem of his me. “I’d never seen that Albert before.” jacket. When he reached the front gate, Theresa Shoatz, the daughter of Rus- he raised his fist and gave a closed-lip sell (Maroon) Shoatz, a Black Panther smile to a small crowd of supporters. who was in solitary confinement for Michael led him to his car, a blue “Happy Birthday” for Woodfox, who twenty-eight years in Pennsylvania, said Corvette. Woodfox shued when he nodded and gave the black-power that Woodfox appeared “docile and with- walked, as if shackles still connected his salute. drawn. He didn’t look you in the eye. feet. Biting his lip and crying, Michael He just held his head down and said, helped his brother into the passenger to spend ‘Thanks for your support.’ I didn’t see seat and showed him how to fasten the W a month camping in the woods, much happiness on his face.” seat belt. gazing at the sky—a cleansing ritual. Years before, Woodfox had said that After years of being forced to listen to if he was ever released he would “un- , and Robert men talking to themselves, he was des- leash the little man inside of me and T King went to a party in Woodfox’s perate to be alone on his own terms. let it jump up and down.” But he didn’t honor at the Ashé Cultural Arts Cen- Once he was released, though, he felt feel that sense of abandon. He felt ter, in New Orleans. People kept tap- that this would be an indulgence. He ashamed that he’d pleaded guilty to ping Woodfox’s shoulder, an experience spent his first month at the house of a anything. “I’ve learned to live with it,

64 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 but I still haven’t come to terms with it,” he told me. “I still regret it. I don’t care how you look at it: I was not stand- ing for what I believed in. I truly feel that.” After a month in New Orleans, Woodfox moved into a spare bedroom in Michael’s home, in Houston. Above his bed, he taped a picture of Wallace and him at Angola, and placed a few Panther buttons on the dresser. “I don’t like an over-cluttered room,” he said. Michael said that sometimes he’d pass Woodfox’s bedroom and see him lying in bed awake, his arms folded across his chest. Michael urged Woodfox, “You have to tell your mind, ‘I am free. I don’t have to just sit there.’ ”

he W felt more comfortable in social settings if King was by his side. At a family reunion in a suburb of New Or- leans, his relatives congregated in his cousin’s kitchen while he and King sat at a card table in the garage. Woodfox kept his back against the garage door and picked at a small bowl of egg salad. He almost never finished a meal. He •• sometimes went all day without eating before realizing that there was a reason he felt so depleted. ing inmates in solitary confinement, and She told him that the calls were King assured Woodfox that he was consider the status of segregated pris- for serious matters: armed robbery, kid- also a sensitive eater. “I gotta eat in in- oners in a more meaningful way. napping, rape. crements,” he said. “If I eat a whole plate, With a modest sum from the set- “So?” Woodfox said. I lose my appetite.” tlement, Woodfox and King, who had A few days after the phone call, “Yeah, I’m a nibbler,” Woodfox said. moved to Austin after his home was Woodfox finalized the purchase. Brenda Woodfox’s cousin had invited sev- destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, de- drove him to the real-estate agent’s oce, eral supporters—Woodfox and King cided to buy houses in New Orleans. in a high-rise, to sign the paperwork. called them their “Angola family”— Woodfox looked at ten houses before She had begun taking him to all his ap- including Deidre Howard. She and her choosing one in East New Orleans, pointments. He liked to tell people, “I’m twin sister, Donna, sat in the garage with in a lower-middle-class neighbor- a dad now.” him and King. They were dressed iden- hood, for less than seventy thousand They were two hours late for their tically: black platform sandals, rued dollars. He wasn’t entirely sure why appointment with the agent, a chirpy collared shirts, gold pendant earrings, he liked the house—the interior was blond woman. “We got caught up in and their hair in a French ponytail with dark, and he wished it had a larger trac,” Woodfox told her casually. the same type of barrette. back yard. The process required two witnesses, Woodfox asked Deidre if people in Allen-Bell researched the frequency and the agent asked me to be the St. Francisville still thought that he was of calls in the neighborhood and first one. Although Brenda was sit- guilty. She swiftly changed the subject. tried to dissuade him. “It’s not a place ting beside me, the agent asked an- “I did not have the heart to tell him that where you are going to feel comfortable other white woman who was work- our community still sees him as a mur- walking on the street,” she told him on ing behind the desk to be the second. derer,” she said later. the phone. Woodfox signed the papers, and then “I don’t care if there are nine hun- we did, too. Woodfox’s re- dred calls,” he said. “I’m buying the Later, I asked Woodfox if he thought T lease, he and King settled their civil house.” it was strange that the agent had ig- suit with the state. The agreement re- “Why?” she asked him. nored Brenda. He said that he fig- quires that Louisiana’s Department of “Why?” he said. “Because I want it, ured it was a mistake, and not worth Corrections review its system for plac- that’s why.” dwelling on. “I don’t spend a lot of time

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 65 looking for racism,” he told me. “Look, at which point they were ready to lips together and paused, regaining his if it really manifests, then I will give the leave. composure. “I hope that my being here person a tongue-lashing. I think I’ve de- “Bye-bye house,” Woodfox said. tonight is a testament to the strength veloped a pretty good vocabulary to do and determination of the human spirit,” that, a pretty good philosophy.” , felt that he he said. A few weeks earlier, a cabdriver had B was getting his “street legs,” as he After the speech, Woodfox and King demanded that he and King pay for called them. A sly sense of humor sur- headed to a lounge on the second floor their ride before they reached their faced. But he was also increasingly ex- of the law school, where people were destination. Insulted, Woodfox said hausted. He spoke at panels about pris- selling buttons, T-shirts, and posters that that his first instinct was to get out of oners’ rights in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, said “Free All the Angola .” Wood- the car; instead, he and King handed Los Angeles, and Baton Rouge. “I feel fox signed a dozen posters, writing in over the cash and at the end of the an obligation, because when I was in steady, capital letters, “ - ride gave the driver a large tip—“guilt the position of the guys in prison I used .” People kept approach- money,” they called it. to wonder why nobody spoke for us,” ing him to ask if they could take selfies. Woodfox didn’t have the keys to his he told me. His friend Kenny Whit- “It’s amazing to be in the room with house yet, but he wanted to show it to more, who is still at Angola, told me you,” one person told him. “Talk about Brenda. We parked in front of the house, that when Woodfox was freed “he took moving and inspiring!” another said. a brick ranch with bars on the front a part of me with him.” Whitmore said, “O.K.,” Woodfox said in response to windows, a screened-in patio, and a “That old man is going full speed ahead.” most compliments. lawn with six squat palm trees and some In early August, Woodfox flew to A woman who had recently been re- spindly shrubs. A chain-link fence sur- New York City to receive an award from leased from prison tried to commiser- rounded the property. Woodfox men- the National Lawyers Guild, an associ- ate. “It’s scary getting out,” she told tioned a few things that he appreciated ation of progressive lawyers and activ- Woodfox. She wore anti-embolism about the neighborhood—most of the ists, at the organization’s annual confer- stockings and carried a plastic bag con- lawns were mowed—but he admitted ence. He wore a gray blazer over a T-shirt taining dozens of tubes of toothpaste. that none of that really mattered. “To that said “I Am Herman Wallace.” At “I just bought a house in New Orleans,” be honest,” he said, “I just wanted a the podium, he announced that he he told her. Then he seemed to feel guilty house close to my family.” wanted to honor “my comrade and good for making it sound too easy. “I’m try- Brenda realized that chocolate had friend.” He extended his palm toward ing not to get too frustrated,” he added. melted over her car’s center console. King, who was in the third row of the He pointed to King: “Fortunately, I have She and Woodfox spent the next ten auditorium, but became too choked up him as an example.” minutes wiping it up with tissues, to say his name. Woodfox pressed his Although he’d been too nervous to sleep the night before, Woodfox stayed out until .., going to bars with lawyers and activists. He had a work- manlike approach to socializing. He didn’t drink, and he never seemed to judge people. The most skeptical thing I’d ever heard him say was that some- one was “quirky.” He had a hard time saying no to anyone. Although he hoped to eventually have a romantic relationship, he didn’t feel that he could devote time to it. “I mean, I’m open to a relationship,” he told me, “but right now that’s not my primary thing. I know the interest in me and what I went through is going to die, so I’m trying to get as much done while peo- ple are still interested enough.” Two days after the speech, Wood- fox, King, and I had breakfast at their hotel, in Greenwich Village. At the con- ference, Woodfox had felt himself being turned into a mythological figure, a pro- cess that he found uncomfortable. “All these people who have been involved in social struggle for so long want to shake my hand,” he told me. “I don’t have an emotional connection as to what members had gathered at the Oakland that the Panthers existed on an other- the big deal is. Sometimes I just don’t Museum of California for panels and worldly plane, free of fears and flaws, think that, you know, surviving solitary discussions. At night, many of them and he was surprised to see that they confinement for forty-one years is a big went to a jazz club called Georey’s could pass as ordinary human beings. deal.” I asked if that was a coping mech- Inner Circle, in downtown Oakland. “I’m realizing how normal they are,” he anism, and he said, “Pretty much every- Tins of macaroni and cheese, fried fish, said. “Made extraordinary by circum- thing I did for the last forty-four years and collard greens drew a long line of stances.” His friend B. J. Jennings, one was some sort of coping mechanism.” men and women that stretched across of Huey Newton’s former aides, told me He said that, in the early two- the dance floor. Their bellies had be- that Woodfox had been able to survive thousands, inmates at Angola began come soft, and their pants rose a little because “you stand on the principles of telling him, “Thanks for not letting high. They wore Velcro shoes or Tevas the Black Panther Party, and, baby, you them break you.” It was the first time with socks. A few used walkers or canes. are empowered. It’s like how people read he grasped that, by staying sane, he had “I’m not trying to sound conceited,” the Bible, take that word for word, and done something unusual. Woodfox told me, “but I seem to be stand on that mentality to get free.” King, who was eating a piece of toast more animated than some of these When Woodfox was released, he told with jelly, recalled one of the first pro- guys.” He ordered orange juice from me that he wanted to write a book that tests in C.C.R., when the Panthers per- the bar and sat in a booth, watching would ask the question “Why the Party?” suaded inmates to refuse the strip search. the crowd. Eventually, he and King mi- By the time of the reunion, he had given After a few days, King had realized that grated to the dance floor. Woodfox had up on formulating a complex theory. inmates were being beaten so badly that danced only a few times since he’d been “From the Party I learned that I had they could die, and he wrote a letter to released: his style was slow, deliberate, worth as a human being,” he said. “How Woodfox recommending that they end and somehow gentle. There was no ex- do you explain something that’s in your the protest. “It is the man who creates cess movement. heart and your mind and your soul?” the principles,” he wrote. “The princi- Conversations drifted toward police Woodfox and King had been talking ples shouldn’t kill the man.” shootings. “The more things remain the about “the fiftieth,” as they called it, for King took a bite of his toast. He same, the more things remain the same,” months, but when I asked Woodfox if seemed to be contemplating the deci- Woodfox said after someone described he enjoyed events of this kind he shook sion for the first time in many years. “In a shooting. When a young reporter from his head and grunted. “I enjoy being the final analysis, I think we made the a black-news Web site asked him for a alone,” he said. Nevertheless, he kept right decision,” he said. five-minute interview, Woodfox quickly inviting people to stay at his new house “It was the right decision,” Woodfox got to his point. “We have to protect in New Orleans, telling them about the said. Black Lives Matter like we didn’t pro- things he had purchased: a washer and “I mean, I could have given my life tect the Black Panther Party,” he said. dryer; a refrigerator with an ice dispenser and been beaten to death,” King said. Later, he told me, “I can’t tell you how and an electric stove; a leather sectional “The legacy I would have left is that no proud I am of them.” The greatest dis- sofa; two bedroom sets with dressers one would know why I was killed.” He appointment of freedom, he said, was and mirrors. His daughter was furnish- leaned back in his chair, smiling. “I’m realizing how little had changed. “It’s ing his house, and he was delighted by so glad that decision was made. I’m so the same old America.” her ability to take charge and find a glad that decision was made.” People often introduced themselves good bargain. “I’m just kind of holding to Woodfox by claiming a central role on by the fingernails,” he told me. , months after his in the Party. “Oakland, born and raised, He planned to move into the house I release, Woodfox passed the Louisi- , four months after the Party shortly after his seventieth birthday, in ana driver’s test, scoring ninety per cent. started,” one man announced. “I’m the February, and then he hoped to cut back He bought a Dodge Charger and drove only original Panther besides Huey on travelling. “I have to,” he told me. “I for the first time in forty-seven years. “I Newton named Huey,” he said, though can’t keep doing this. I mean, I can— just whipped out the old phone, gave later he acknowledged that Huey was but I choose not to.” He was sleeping the G.P.S. system my brother’s address, his middle name. A former Panther only a few hours a night. He sometimes and ten minutes later I was pulling up who sells historical artifacts—slave jolted awake, overcome by the sensation to his house,” he told me. shackles, Ku Klux Klan robes, abolition- that the atmosphere was pressing down A few days after getting his license, ist newspapers—told Woodfox that he on him. All four walls appeared to be Woodfox flew to Oakland for the fifti- had been one of the founders of the inches from his face. He felt so con- eth reunion of the Black Panther Party. Party, which he said originated in stricted that he removed all his clothes. The Panther Post, a newspaper printed Bridgeport, Connecticut. Woodfox lis- He calmed himself by pacing—four by the Panther alumni association, an- tened silently and looked at him slightly steps forward, four steps back—a tech- nounced on its front page, “With much askance. Then he excused himself. nique he’d been using for decades. After joy we welcome our comrade, Albert “I’ll tell you—that’s the fifteenth story four or five minutes, the walls of the Woodfox, back to the community that I’ve heard that the Party started in some room would snap back into place. “The he was ripped away from.” other city,” he told me. only thing I can do is walk it o,” he Some two hundred original Party For years Woodfox had imagined said. “It happens. And I move on.” 

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 67 FICTION PHOTOGRAPH: TETRA IMAGES/GETTY TETRA PHOTOGRAPH:

68 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL SAHRE ’ never see Bob Wyko, the new chief exec at River- “I ate about thirty shrimp just now.” any of these people again. Dom Hill Capital Management, and tugging “Eat thirty more.” A Whipple—the notorious cor- at his lapel flirtatiously. Dom had heard Jerome took it all in: the room, its an- porate raider, the scourge of boardrooms rumors about those two. He tried not to tiques, the stone fireplace, the floor-to- near and far, the layo king—had traded care. She had her journey, he had his. ceiling draperies, the custom chandeliers. his entire fortune for a one-way ticket Guests continued to arrive, and Dom “You really gave all this up, huh?” to a distant planet, and even guys like smiled amicably through the many toasts, “It’s just a house.” Lenny Westerfeld, a man he had once attempting an expression that he’d re- “Says the man who got to live in it. blackmailed into an early retirement, had hearsed in the mirror more than a few What about your ex—what’s her story?” come to bid Dom farewell. times, an expression that he hoped would “Nona? She’s a good person.” “Every cent?” Lenny asked him. “You put people in mind of the Dalai Lama. “She looks like a hard woman to mean to tell me you really gave that I’m amused, this smile of his said, but please,” Jerome said, smiling. “Am I church every single cent?” nothing you say can touch me, because right?” “It’s liberating, Lenny, it really is. I’ve none of this really matters, not ultimately, Dom said nothing. never felt so free in all my life.” and maybe one day you’ll wake up and “Don’t worry,” Jerome said. “There’ll “Be honest, though. No secret invest- realize that everything you’ve spent a be plenty of other ladies on the trip.” ments squirrelled away? No oshore lifetime chasing and acquiring is, ulti- That was true, but in order to cou- accounts?” mately, beside the point. ple with a fellow-passenger, Dom knew, Dom shook his head. “Not a one.” Not an easy look to achieve, this he would first have to marry that pas- “Well, I think it’s lovely,” Sheila Park smile. senger, and in order to marry her he chimed in. “I’d do it myself, only I’m As instructed by the church, Dom was would have to get the church elders probably not religious enough. What’s using these farewells as opportunities to to bless the union, which would re- this church of yours called?” make amends with as many people as he quire a series of counselling sessions “God’s Plan for Space. G.P.S.” could, and generally this meant avoid- and interviews. “Oh, my,” she said. “And I get ner- ing business talk. When Marty Corey There’d be no hanky-panky in the vous telling people I’m an Episcopalian came over and asked for his thoughts on alien Garden of Eden. anymore!” the R.G.C./PharmaFields merger, Dom God’s Plan had selected its future God’s Plan had a simple mission— shook his head goofily and told Marty home from a list of candidates provided to establish a more egalitarian society on he wasn’t up to speed and wished him by the government for possible plane- another planet and to spread the mes- all the best. Next, he apologized to Har- tary colonization. Dom had joined the sage of God’s love to unexplored solar riet Lu for never returning her calls church about a year after his divorce, and systems—but Dom’s best eorts to ex- after that night they’d shared at the Hil- he’d volunteered as a colonist for the new plain it had mostly been met with blank ton in New York all those years ago. He settlement six months later, a commit- stares and polite jokes. grabbed Erica Balou by the shoulders ment that required him to sign over all Blake Robbins sidled up next to Dom, and pulled her into a long hug. He tried his assets to the church. He was one of reeking of whiskey, and threw his arm to convince her that he’d been a terrible about two thousand people who’d vol- around Dom’s shoulder. “So fucking up mentor and pleaded with her not to fol- unteered for the trip, and the size of his one planet isn’t enough for you, pal? Kid- low too closely in his footsteps, though largesse had all but guaranteed him the ding, kidding.” He leaned in, and his he knew she’d be every bit as ruthless as next available spot on a ship. The irony voice softened. “Seriously, though, we’ll he’d ever been. It was like asking a jackal of the fact that a near-billionaire had all be rooting for you, buddy.” not to feast on a zebra’s entrails. bought his way into a future socialist Dom had the odd sense that he was “This here is some swanky shit,” community did not escape him, though at his own funeral and soon he’d be zoom- Jerome said. it didn’t exactly bother him, either. After ing o to Heaven. Heaven, in this case, Jerome was Dom’s shadow for the all, in giving up his substantial wealth, was a small planet orbiting a faraway week, his Earth Chaperon, assigned to wasn’t he sacrificing more than, say, the sun, a planet from which he would never him by the church. Dom had already line worker at the electric-car plant who’d be able to return. The chance of his death forfeited his cars and phones and most signed over only a double-wide and a was in fact rather high. The ship might of his cash, so Jerome was responsible meagre (k) plan? collide with an asteroid at the outer edge for getting him where he needed to be, His ship would be the second to de- of the solar system or its thermal pro- for keeping him well fed, for making part for the planet, and it would trans- tection shield might break apart and all sure he had a place to sleep. Jerome was port five hundred and twelve coloniz- on board might spend eternity asleep in rail-thin, with dark scruy eyebrows and ers. The first ship, which had left two their freeze boxes, never aging but es- an odd sense of humor. He liked flick- years earlier, was carrying only ten pas- sentially dead. Anything could happen, ing guys in the nuts, for some reason. sengers. All available data suggested that and Dom had tried to prepare himself, He’d spent a few years in jail, in his early the planet would be more than hospita- mentally and spiritually, for all possible twenties, for mailing fake I.D.s across ble to human life, but if these brave ten outcomes. state lines, but now he was on the arrived and found the conditions un- Across the room, near the fireplace, he “straightened arrow,” as he put it, often. suitable their job was to trigger a warn- spotted his ex-wife, Nona, chatting with Dom was not especially fond of Jerome. ing system that would automatically

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 69 “Please. Two days from now I’ll be a distant memory. How old will I be by the time you get there and unthaw?” “You’ll be sixty-one,” he said. He’d done the math many times. “So I’ll be an old woman, and you’ll still be forty-five years old. What will it matter to you then if I wound up with Bob Wyko, or anyone else, for that mat- ter?” She took his hand. “Dom, you do realize you don’t have to do this. You can still back out.” “I’ve given the church everything.” “This crazy church—it’s so unlike you. Never in a million years would I have suspected you’d get religious.” She sipped her wine. “Dom, you don’t have to go on “Renk just discovered beard oil.” some dumb space mission to save your soul. You know that, right? You can stay •• right here and walk the line on earth.” He leaned over and pressed his lips to hers. A last kiss, he told himself, a fare- reroute the second ship—Dom’s ship— first time all night, Nona really looked at well, a nostalgic indulgence. He hadn’t back to Earth. him. She was as beautiful as ever. Why made love—not to her, not to anyone— God’s Plan was well funded—Dom had he been so awful to her, so unfaith- since the divorce. The church forbade sex was hardly the only wealthy person to di- ful? He could no longer fathom it, why outside marriage, and he’d promised God vest his interests to the church—but the he’d ever been tempted by any others. to obey the church’s rules, but surely this ships were incredibly expensive, and most They’d met in business school, as mem- particular rule didn’t apply to an ex-wife? of the parts, for reasons of economy, had bers of the outdoor club. The first night He unzipped the back of her dress and been purchased secondhand. Even the they’d spent together had been in a tent. soon was on top of her. She helped him freeze boxes had been stripped o a de- She’d been a beautiful girl, strong, with with his pants. By the end, he was sob- commissioned asteroid-mining ship. As a rock climber’s dry, cracked hands, one bing into her chest. His face was on fire, it happened, the mining ships had be- or two of her fingers always bandaged and he could taste his own tears. Embar- longed to a company in which Dom had with white tape. In her nightstand she’d rassed by the outburst, he didn’t dare look once been the majority shareholder, a fact kept a small spiral notebook in which she up at her. She patted his back gently until that amused him. The ships were func- had scribbled a long list of life goals. High he regained control of himself. tional, but far from pristine. The church on the list was marriage to an “ambitious, “Sorry,” he said, eventually. “I’m so elders had advised all passengers to place driven man,” and also one child, “prefer- sorry. I don’t know where that came from.” their faith in God during the voyage ably a son.” She had never been a frivo- “Time for sleep,” she said. through the cold, dark wilderness of space. lous person. When Dom proposed to her, They went upstairs, moving quietly A shield of prayer, they called it. This she’d said yes immediately, as if ready to past Jerome’s room, and climbed into degree of faith was dicult for Dom to embark on their life together the very bed together. She rolled over onto her achieve, not because he didn’t believe in next morning. They’d never had children, side, and he pressed himself to her back. God—he did—but because his philos- but he had at least been ambitious and It was almost as if they’d never separated. ophy in business had always been to know driven for her. The divorce was amicable Maybe there was still hope for them, as much as possible about his invest- enough, to the extent that any divorce after all. Maybe a couple of years apart ments and to take only manageable risks. can be truly amicable, and he’d willingly had healed the rift. Tomorrow morning That is, risks that weren’t true risks. given her more than half of everything, he’d cancel his trip; he’d move back in not to mention the beach house, which with her; they’d start over. With a little you want to do this?” she’d always loved more than he did. He help from Nona, just a little bit of money, “A Nona asked him. was the one who’d cheated, after all. he could get things moving again, surely. The party was over, and they were sit- He was long past the point of obfus- Or his lawyers! Maybe they could find ting on her couch together, polishing o cation. He regretted everything. some loophole, some wrinkle in his do- a bottle of white wine. Dom wondered if “I saw you talking to Bob Wyko to- nation to the church. Maybe they could he’d ever drink something as delicious as night,” he said. “You two looked very find a way to get it all back for him. a chilled Sancerre again. Probably not. He chummy.” He woke up the next morning alone. doubted that wine grapes were among She smiled. “Does that bother you?” He found Nona downstairs in the kitchen, the seeds in the church’s seed banks. He “Of course it does. I’m still in love fully dressed, giving orders to the maid, bathed his tongue in every sip. For the with you.” Lucy, who was busy clearing away the

70 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 empty glasses from the party. Dom stood Jerome, with a very serious expres- God’s children and so forth, and yet . . . there in his underwear, scratching the sion, asked what Dom would do if an Anyway, in twenty-four hours he’d crust from the corners of his eyes. Lucy alien wanted to have sex with him. never have to see Rachel again. Quite poured him a glass of orange juice. Nona “Well, I very much doubt that will possibly, twenty-four hours from now— smiled at him as he gulped it down. happen.” at least, as he would experience those “I’ve got to be somewhere this morn- “Like, do you think you’d have any- hours—she would be an old woman, still ing,” she said. “You’re welcome to stay as where to put it?” messing with her coupons at the same long as you’d like, of course.” Put what? Oh, right. That. table, and meanwhile he would be shut- “You can’t cancel?” “Honestly,” Dom said, “I’ve given no tling down to an entirely new world as She kissed his cheek. “Are you maybe thought whatsoever to the hypothetical an entirely new man. He tried not to feel reconsidering?” reproductive organs of any hypothetical bad for them, these future old geezers in “I don’t know. Maybe we go get some alien creatures I might encounter.” this grimy kitchen, on this miserable breakfast and talk it over.” “Yeah, I mean, for all you know, it planet, making the best of it, muddling “I’m sorry, I really can’t.” might just be a bunch of”—Jerome through their lives without attempting “I’m leaving forever. What could be grinned—“spores.” anything big or monumental. more important than this?” “Spores?” Dom was feeling excited about the “That’s funny,” she said, her voice airy “Like, little yellow sea-urchin-look- trip again, thank God. He felt almost as and faraway. “I might have asked you the ing things that stick on your nut sack exuberant as he had months earlier, when same question.” and suck out the sperm.” he signed up. He was on a path to be- She moved to the door, where she “Jerome,” he said. “Why would I need come a better person. His priorities had jammed her feet into some designer boots. to reproduce with a spore-alien thing been all wrong until he joined the church. “Let’s talk more when I get back,” she when there will be plenty of women Forking over every dime, he’d finally felt said. “Just a couple of hours. To be con- there? Human women. Women who will it, the release, the weight sliding o him, tinued, right?” be more than happy to reproduce the those terrible barbells clanging against She grabbed her purse o a hook and old-fashioned way, sans spores.” the floor and rolling away. He was like left. Standing by the door, he could hear “Sure,” Jerome said. “Only, it boggles a child again! Innocent, full of awe. He the clack of her boots on the steps out- the mind, doesn’t it? The possibilities.” had nothing but the shoes on his feet side. The maid skittered away to the back They reached Jerome’s house—an old and a message of love to spread. of the house. After a shower upstairs, mill house near Charlotte—just before A message to preserve. If the Earth Dom slipped into his clothes and knocked dinnertime. When they walked through was going to die—and the way things on Jerome’s door. At length, Jerome ap- the door, Jerome’s wife, Rachel, was sta- were going, thanks to people such as him- peared. He blinked heavily and muttered tioned at the kitchen table, sliding cou- self, this seemed like the inevitable out- that he’d gather his things. pons into plastic sheets in a giant binder. come—wasn’t it the responsibility of de- She was a big-bottomed woman, her hair cent Christians to preserve the teachings - who streaked blond and red, and Dom had of the prophets, to insure the survival of T handed Dom his coee at McDon- no trouble imagining her waddling at least a single community of believers ald’s, the dent of his teeth in the cup’s through grocery stores, flipping through in the universe? That was the mission, paper lip, the smell of exhaust on the in- really, because what was the point of tell- terstate in bumper-to-bumper trac, the ing everyone to love each other if pretty silver dice dangling from the rearview soon there’d be no one left to love? mirror of Jerome’s truck—Dom mar- Jerome plopped down in his recliner, velled at the world he was soon to leave and Dom sat on the tartan couch. behind. “I tell you I dropped by the control A pop country song was playing on the room a few days ago?” Jerome said. “Sig- radio—a song about a Styrofoam cooler nal o the other ship is loud and clear, in a fishing boat, a father-daughter dance, you’ll be glad to know. Slow and steady, a marriage cut short by cancer, the usual. across the universe it rolls with the In- Never again would he hear songs like her binder in search of discounted mois- trepid Ten.” this. The church wasn’t letting anyone turizers, cereals, and hair dyes. The Intrepid Ten—that was how the bring prerecorded music to the planet. Even though he no longer had any congregation referred to the first ten Music from Earth, it had been decided, money to his name—and even though settlers. would only lead to feelings of melan- he knew it was contrary to his new “What do you think the weather will choly. Maybe one of the other coloniz- spiritual values to think so—he felt be like?” Jerome asked. “I think you ought ers would figure out how to fashion an that he was inherently better than this to find a nice beach and set yourself up instrument. He could already imagine it, woman. His thoughts clearer and more there. Build yourself a little beach hut. sing-alongs on an orange sand beach as perceptive. His body odor less oen- Drink coconut milk and eat crabs.” giant long-beaked insects feasted on lit- sive. His heart larger and more open. “I sort of doubt there’ll be any crabs tle pink jellyfish that washed up onshore. He knew he wasn’t supposed to har- or coconuts.” Anything was possible; all a mystery. bor such thoughts—that they were all “Whatever. The alien equivalent. You

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 71 know what I mean. The sun won’t ever messed things up with Nona. I wasn’t a T-shirt, blue, with the church’s insignia set, so you better find yourself some shade.” good person, O.K.? I did things I’m not over the left breast. “You think that’s such The planet was tidally locked, because proud of.” a good idea?” it didn’t rotate as it revolved around its “What things? What are these things Dom stood and held out his hand. sun. Half the planet was forever in the you’re always talking about? You’re a “Please. Help me out here. The last favor light, the other in the dark, the sun’s po- good boy, Dom. You always were. In the I’ll ever ask you for.” sition fixed in the sky. While this didn’t eighth grade you turned yourself in for Jerome seemed unwilling to fork sound immediately hospitable, all the data cheating on that test. You turned your over the keys. Maybe he thought Dom suggested that ideal conditions for life own self in!” would drive o and never come back. might be found where day and night met. This was a story she’d been telling for With a sigh, he stood and said that he It was in this liminal zone that the set- years, and Dom didn’t have the heart to was coming, too. On their way through tlers would live together, between a per- remind her that, in fact, he hadn’t turned the kitchen, Rachel asked if they were manent twilight and a permanent dawn. himself in but had been caught with the going out for food. Most likely they’d be living on a string answers scribbled on his hand. It was an “Naw,” Jerome said. “Chairman Space- of small islands in a band of ocean that embarrassing, if minor, episode in his life man here wants to go hug his mommy girded the planet. Evidence suggested that somehow had become a central fea- again.” that an ice world loomed on one side of ture in a narrative that existed only in “Don’t call me that,” Dom said. the ocean and a desert on the other, but his mother’s head. But how to tell your “What’s wrong with Chairman Space- the islands in the middle of that thin sea mother that you are not in fact a good man?” Rachel asked. “It’s a compliment!” were expected to be lush tropical oases. person? That you have blackmailed peo- “I’m not the chairman of anything. The job of finding the ideal site would ple to get what you want? That you have I leave here with nothing. I’m just like be the responsibility of the Intrepid Ten. made unwelcome advances on various everybody else.” Jerome dug around in the cushions women? That you have orchestrated— “Oh, lighten up, Dom,” Jerome said, for the remote, and when he finally found in a roundabout, legally fuzzy way—an- laughing. “Ten grand says you’ll be run- it he put on a survival show about a group other man’s death for the purposes of ning that planet by the end of the first of couples competing to see who could keeping said man from a deposition hear- fiscal year. You should have seen his house, make it the longest in the Australian ing that might have endangered a nat- Rachel. Unbelievable. It was like a god- outback without cracking. ural-gas company in which you had, at dang hotel.” “That’ll be you tomorrow night,” he the time, a controlling interest? That was “Oh, my Lord, that sounds nice.” Ra- said, with a smile. the sort of shame you didn’t disclose to chel groaned with envy. “All that money, Dom said nothing. Obviously life a mother so sweet and guileless, the sort gone to the church!” She shook her head wasn’t going to be easy on the planet. of shame you spared her and saved for wearily. “I tell you what, we could have Obviously there would be struggles and God alone. A shame that, Dom feared, used some of that money. We haven’t sacrifices. But why did Jerome see the would follow you across the galaxy. even paid o Jerome’s truck yet.” need to remind him of this fact on the “Just trust me,” he’d told her. “I’m not “Hush,” Jerome said. night before his departure? As Dom’s someone you should be proud of. But “In debt up to our eyeballs!” chaperon, Jerome had a responsibility to this is my chance for a fresh start, O.K.? “I already told you,” he said. “None put him up for the night, but Dom still This is a good thing.” of that, please.” had a few dollars left. Enough at least “Go, son,” his father had said then. “What’s it matter?” she asked. “It’s all for a cheap motel room. “Just go. We’ll pray for you. We’ll be true, and he’ll be gone tomorrow morn- He would have stayed with his par- fine. Go.” ing anyway. Why not say what we’re ents, only an hour south of Charlotte, ex- And so Dom had gone, but now, sit- thinking?” cept that the church advised against being ting on this couch in Jerome’s squalid “Dom doesn’t owe me nothing, and with family the night before launch. Dom living room, watching reality TV, he had I can take care of my own,” Jerome said, had said goodbye to them a few days an overwhelming urge to see them one irritably. earlier. Like Nona, they’d thrown him a last time, to wrap his arms around them, “Of course you can. That’s not what going-away party, to which his relatives to try to make amends. After tonight, I meant by it. It’s just”—her eyes blazed had been invited. His father had stood up he’d never have another chance to tell large—“all that money, gone just like to give a toast but, overcome with emo- them how sorry he was for being such a that. Like smoke. Like it never meant tion, had been unable to finish. His mother terrible son, for abandoning them here anything.” had refused to come outside and see Dom on this crumbling planet, this once and o when Jerome arrived in his truck. future wasteland. had bought his par- “Don’t do this,” she’d pleaded. “You’ll “I’d like to borrow your truck for a T ents wasn’t in the driveway. Nobody meet other women. Things will turn few hours,” he told Jerome. answered when he knocked on the door. around.” “What for?” He let himself into the house using the “This isn’t about Nona. It’s about me. “To see my parents. A quick trip. There key under the fake rock by the door. All It’s about finding the right path.” and back.” the lights were o. He reached for his “I hate her for doing this to you.” Jerome looked over at Dom grump- pocket, instinctively, thinking he’d just “It’s not Nona’s fault. I’m the one who ily and scratched his belly through his call them, but he’d already forfeited his

72 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 phone. He picked up the landline and care about photographs, about the little junkie. She was doing the best she could then stared at the keypad. He didn’t have glazed clay figurine he’d sculpted in the to get by in life. their cell numbers memorized. third grade, or about a ratty camp T-shirt, Dom brushed his teeth at the kitchen Now that he had it in his head to say all of which would wind up in a landfill sink, and then, once he was under the goodbye again, he was desperate to see anyway, all of which would degrade, all sheet on the couch, he read his father’s them. He didn’t like feeling so thwarted, of which was temporary, but Dom had toast. His father had delivered most of and he didn’t want to carry this failure to keep himself from snatching the James it, Dom saw now, except for the last few with him to a new planet. For the rest of Brown bobblehead away from Jerome. lines. “All I ask,” it said, “is that you re- his life, he’d wonder about what they might He wasn’t sure why he didn’t want Je- member us. When you’re standing on have said to each other if only they’d had rome to have the toy, but he didn’t. some very foreign shore, don’t forget to a few more hours. Why had they decided “It’s yours,” he said. gaze up into the night sky sometimes to go out the night before his launch? With a smile, Jerome went outside, and think about your parents and your Why the hell weren’t they at home, like and Dom slid the box back against the friends, all the people who loved you here always? He wandered through the house wall. Two folded sheets of paper shook on earth, regardless.” That word, “regard- in a daze, trying not to give in to self-pity. loose from the pile. Dom unfolded them less,” hit Dom hard. “We’ll be gone by Jerome poked his head in the door. and discovered his father’s toast, the one the time you get there, so maybe we’ll “You find them?” he’d failed to finish delivering a few nights be closer by than you think. Good luck, “They’re not here. God, it’s unbe- earlier. It occurred to Dom then that Dom. Safe flight.” lievable!” maybe it was a good thing his parents Reading this, Dom felt sick. Unable “Well, it’s not like they knew you’d weren’t here, that possibly it would have to sleep, he turned over onto his stom- be coming by, right?” been cruel to prolong the goodbye. ach and closed his eyes. The couch Dom could have punched him. Je- He tucked the speech into his pocket smelled like cigarettes. After tomorrow rome! He was almost as bad as that idiot and left. he would never smell cigarettes again, wife of his. since the church wasn’t permitting any- “What’s this?” Jerome asked, kicking asleep by the one to bring tobacco. Dom had been at a box by the door. R time they got back, but she’d put lying there for about twenty minutes, Dom hadn’t noticed it. He walked sheets on the couch. Maybe he’d mis- thinking of all the things he’d never see over to it and crouched down. Things judged her. She was a sweet woman. He or smell again, when he heard the floor were piled high in the box. His college couldn’t fault her for being a coupon creak. When he rolled over, Rachel was diploma. A James Brown bobblehead doll. A stack of photographs: Dom and his parents, years ago, on a cruise ship; Dom and Donny Means, his best friend in the eighth grade, holding up a bucket of crawdads; Dom as a toddler on the beach with sand all over his face. This was his mother’s doing, no doubt. Dom hadn’t even launched yet, and al- ready she was throwing away the few remnants of his life in the house. He tried not to be mad at her. Maybe this was her way of grieving the loss of her son, and, besides, she’d always been a serial purger. Dom had come home from his first year at college to discover that she’d thrown out all his Ray Bradbury books and his arrowheads and his Barber silver quarter, which he’d marked as special by keeping it in a small ziplock bag. “This all your stu?” Jerome asked. Dom nodded. “Oof, that’s rough, brother.” He picked up the James Brown doll, tapped its springy head. “I like this little guy. Probably a collector’s item. You mind if I take it?” In his vows to the church, Dom had renounced the earthly life and, with it, all possessions. He wasn’t supposed to “If only the aftertaste came first.” think we’re beneath you. Maybe we are, I don’t know. The God’s honest truth is we don’t like you all that much, either. But we love you like we love all God’s children and we wish you the best of luck.” “I like you both just fine,” Dom said. “I don’t know where you’re getting this.” “Anyway.” Jerome tried to smile. He bopped the bobblehead. “In the immor- tal words of James Brown, get on up.” Dom nodded, got out of the truck, and went over to stand in line with the others. No one had any bags or suitcases. They had nothing at all. The line led into an airplane hangar, where a lady with two brown front teeth sat Dom down in a chair, threw a barber’s cape around his shoulders, and buzzed o all his hair. After that, he was issued a small green bag, which contained two work uniforms, a leisure outfit, underwear, pa- jamas, and a utility belt with some basic “You’ll see it when it’s done.” tools. In the next room, along with ev- eryone else, he got naked and tossed his •• I.D.s and cards into a large blue barrel. He held on to his father’s toast for a few moments, and then tossed it in, too. standing just a few feet away, her back “The rest I gave to the church,” he Dom climbed a steep set of metal to Dom. She was patting at his jeans, said, truthfully. “I’m flat broke. I’ve got stairs and boarded a shuttle, which de- which were draped over the chair. He less than you.” livered him to the ship’s loading dock. cleared his throat, and she turned around “Don’t even tell me that. You could “Naked as we came,” the woman be- with a stricken look on her face. make two phone calls right now to the hind him said, smiling. “Sorry if I woke you,” she said, com- right people and get yourself a hundred “I must have eaten three pounds of ing over and kneeling down on the floor grand. Probably more. Who’ve I got to ice cream last night,” someone else said. beside the couch. call? Nobody’s gonna take my call, be- “My dog wouldn’t let me leave this Their faces were maybe a foot apart, lieve me.” morning,” a man said. “He kept trying and even through the darkness Dom “I’m sorry,” he said. to block the way. What do you make of could see the trails of a white cream across She hued angrily and stood up. On that?” her brow. her way out of the room she grabbed the Some people were crying quietly. Oth- “Listen,” she said. “Jerome is a good wallet from his jeans and took the cash. ers stared ahead with vacant expressions. man, but that’s sort of his weakness, too. A woman—naked, head shaved— Ever since prison, he’s been timid. He’s morning, Jerome walked by in the opposite direction, not like you. He’d rather get stung then E drove Dom to the launch site, out- flanked by techs in blue shirts. Tears were kill a wasp, you know what I mean? side town. The James Brown bobble- streaming down her face as she passed, We’ve maxed out all the cards, there’s head, on the dash, jiggled violently as and her breath was ragged. the truck, and my parents have basically they drove down a long gravel road. Dom turned to watch the woman go. cut me o. I know you’ve got some funds After he parked, Jerome shook Dom’s He knew there were about fifteen peo- hidden away somewhere, and I’m beg- hand. ple on standby in a nearby facility, hop- ging you to help us some. We’ve taken “Who knows, maybe we’ll jump on ing for a spot to free up. Launching the good care of you, haven’t we? You want one of these ships eventually and see you ship was far too expensive for any unoc- to be a good Christian? This is how. there one day.” cupied freeze boxes. Help us out. You won’t ever need that “I hope you do.” At the end of a gangway, one of the money anyhow.” “You don’t mean that, but I appreci- church’s pastors stood at the ship’s en- “I’ve got about eighty in my wallet. ate it.” trance, blessing each person as he or she That’s it. Take it if you want it.” “I do mean it.” stepped aboard. “Eighty dollars!” she said. “Please, like “Dom,” Jerome said. “We’re never “Go with God,” he said, patting Dom’s that’ll do us a lick of good! Come on, going to see each other again. You don’t shoulder. where’s the rest of it? Be honest with me.” like me and you don’t like Rachel. You Inside they stored their bags in lockers

74 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 and then waited for their freeze-box “There you go,” came a voice, nearby. “but then I came all the way back to assignments. “Good, good, cough it all up, buddy.” Earth?” “Whipple, Dom,” a woman said, Dom sucked in and then coughed “Dom,” the woman said, leaning to- sternly. “-A. Up and to the right.” harder, loosening more liquid from his ward him. Her eyes glistened. “They’ve He found his place and stood in front throat. The syrup was drizzling down been waking each of you up individu- of the box, a casket connected to a cen- the sides of his face, too, and he did his ally, and they asked family members to tral machine via a series of long corru- best to smear it away. All around him be here when possible. To help ease the gated tubes and thin metal pipes. He had were the other freeze boxes, most of their transition.” to wait only a few minutes before a tech lids open. Had it already happened? Was “Nona?” came over and helped him get situated he there? His body tingled. Sitting ahead “Oh, Dom,” she said, her frail hands inside his box. The tech instructed Dom of him in a small folding chair was a taking his despite the goo, squeezing to remain as flat as possible, to keep very, woman with long gray hair and a cane them gently. “Dom, my dear, you’re home. very still. The freezing process would be across her lap. When Dom’s eyes met You’re home again. You must think I’m almost instantaneous, he said, and Dom hers, she smiled and brought her hand hideous. I almost didn’t come. I was afraid wouldn’t feel a thing. to her mouth, as if in shock. Just behind to see you again after all this time. But “In just a minute, I’m going to close her stood a younger man in a khaki mil- here I am, I’m right here.” this lid,” the tech added, calmly. “As soon itary uniform, his arms sti at his sides. Nona was wearing no jewelry, no as I push this button”—he indicated a He was tapping his foot against the ship’s makeup, and her dress looked as if it had small gray button on the side of the box— grated metal floor. been made from burlap sacks. A white “you’ll be there. Voilà. Sixteen years and “Dom Whipple,” he said. “Can you scar peeped above the neckline at the a trip across space in a single instant. Isn’t hear me?” center of her chest. What sort of life had that amazing?” “Yeah,” Dom said, coughing up more she lived? Dom gazed up at this stranger, try- syrup. “My parents,” Dom managed to say. ing not to feel overwhelmed. He told “It’s important that you stay calm.” She shook her head. “A long time ago. himself he was about to get an MRI. He Dom nodded that he understood. I’m sorry.” was about to have a cavity filled. All this “Mr. Whipple, my name is Lieutenant Dom said nothing. was totally normal, totally routine. Roscoe Green. We’ve never met. I know She sighed. “Your parents, my par- The lid closed, shutting out the noise this must be very confusing for you, ents, Bob . . .” of the ship. Dom was alone with the what’s happening right now, and I’m “Bob Wyko?” sound of his own breath. Through a going to do my best to explain. Sir, you “Yes, all gone now. Sometimes I small window he could still see this were a member of a now defunct orga- think it’s for the best. Especially these stranger’s smiling face. The tech flashed nization called God’s Plan for Space, last few years. The world’s a dierent Dom a thumbs-up. A high whistling and you departed Earth on this ship ap- place. Nothing is like it used to be. Oh, noise filled the box. Like a steaming proximately thirty years ago. I can see Dom, I’m afraid you’re in for quite a teapot. A heavy heat shuddered through that you’re alarmed. Don’t try to stand. shock.” him. His head seemed to tay away Hold on. Allow me to explain. Fifteen The lieutenant cleared his throat. from his body at the neck. His vision years into your trip, your ship received Nona squeezed Dom’s hands again. bounced and blurred. Little pink bal- a signal from another ship that had ar- “They think I’ll overwhelm you if I tell loons swelled into view ahead of him, rived on the planet ahead of you, and you too much, but they don’t know you like engorged blood cells, crowding and this signal automatically reconfigured the way I do. Besides, look at you! You’ll bumping. More and more balloons ap- your flight plan and redirected you back be fine, won’t you? You’re still strong. peared. So many balloons! A celebra- here to Earth.” You’re still so young!” tion was under way, only Dom didn’t “I’m back on Earth?” Lieutenant Green smiled weakly, as feel especially excited. In fact, he was “Yes, sir, you are.” if to reassure Dom of this fact, and beginning to panic. He looked for the “How long did you say it’s been?” then fished a small shaving mirror from man on the other side of the window “Thirty years, sir. From what we’ve his pocket. He held it up close enough but couldn’t find him through the bal- pieced together, through a series of mes- to Dom’s face that he could see his loons. Where the fuck were all these sages that we only recently received—” reflection. balloons coming from? He tried to swat He frowned. “Well, it’s very odd, but, “I can’t get over it,” Nona said. “You at the balloons, but there were too many from what we can gather, the planet— look exactly as I remember you.” of them. Everything was so pink and that is, your destination—was already Dom tried to make sense of the mess bright and obnoxiously happy. occupied when the first group of settlers in the mirror as it jittered. That bald The lid popped open, and Dom sat arrived.” head, those greasy, hairless cheeks, the up in his freeze box. He coughed up a Dom waited for the man to continue. swollen eyes that looked as though they’d thick yellow syrup into his hands. He “What I mean is there was another only just now opened to the light for the could hardly breathe. Thank God, he intelligent life-form already living on the first time—a hideous baby.  thought. They must have aborted the planet, which did not take kindly to a launch. Or maybe the tech had seen him human presence.” NEWYORKER.COM panicking. He could still go home. “So I was almost there,” Dom said, Thomas Pierce on his story “Chairman Spaceman.”

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 75 THE CRITICS

BOOKS SPIELBERG AT SEVENTY

What he did, and how he did it.

BY DAVID DENBY

, the country, is awak- interested and literal-minded. Yet the old Western. When compared with his A ened by a strong light outside his boy in “Close Encounters” stands before ambitious contemporaries, he doesn’t seem window and some strange rustlings in an open door, and the reddish-gold light like an artist—he’s not self-punishing the house. A few feet from his bed, a toy beyond beckons him to some adventure and dark, like Martin Scorsese; or mis- monkey claps its cymbals together—like he couldn’t possibly have had before. chievous, even malevolent, like Brian a stick banging the floor three times in At the start of “Great Expectations,” De Palma; or complicated, elusive, and a French theatre, announcing the begin- Young Pip is terrified by the convict Mag- bitter, like Robert Altman. He hardly ning of a show—and tanks and police witch rising up in a graveyard and threat- touches the current world of work, iden- cars spin and race around the room. The ening to eat his liver. Spielberg has cre- tity, and play—his imagination is set ei- boy, who has a snub nose and wonder- ated, with skill equal to Dickens’s, the ther in the past or in the future. Such ing hazel eyes, is not at all afraid. A lit- strangeness felt by an innocent—the be- moods as alienation and melancholia have tle later, the house is invaded again, this wildering oddity, the physical enthrall- no place in his films. He goes right down time not so gently: a Hoover suddenly ments and terror of something entirely the center of common emotions, often sweeps across the floor, like a column unprecedented. He captures the experi- with jolting force. He is positive, exter- of Roman soldiers, terrifying the boy’s ence sensationally (in both senses of the nal, and patriotic, a public filmmaker. mother. Out in the street, while light word), with all the immersive physical “Saving Private Ryan” was made for pours down from above, a row of mail- violence that movies are capable of, and adults, but Spielberg’s audience is often boxes rattles furiously, as if under siege also as an abrupt change in awareness. the child harbored in the adult—the from a tornado. In the famous scene near the beginning viewer open to fear, excitement, and ex- The first hour or so of Steven Spiel- of “Saving Private Ryan” (), set at altation. He has directed thirty-four fea- berg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Omaha Beach on D Day, the bow ramp tures, and has served as a producer or an Kind”—a movie that opened forty years of the lead landing craft falls open and executive producer on almost seventy ago—is unparalleled in its combination the soldiers in front immediately get shot; other films. He has also produced TV of scary and funny ideas. In Muncie, In- the rest struggle to get onto the beach, series (“Band of Brothers,” “The Pacific”) diana, something has definitely arrived. their vision blurred by fear, their hear- and documentaries. He has founded (with The aliens extend a galvanizing finger, ing dulled by exploding shells. Janusz partners) a studio, DreamWorks, and reaching out not like the Sistine God to Kaminski, the cinematographer, works then lost it. His enormous output poses a naked and powerful Adam but to a boy, with a handheld camera that thrashes in obvious questions: How can anyone ap- to toys, and to appliances. The Ameri- the water. It is one of the great, tragic peal to innocence in big, expensive Hol- can consumer world is thrilled into elec- sequences in the movies, an experience lywood movies? Innocence is of dramatic tric activity, the rubbish scintillated and as bizarre and dislocating as it is deadly. value to an audience only if it is violated. redeemed. In Spielberg’s movies, tran- Steven Spielberg is the most popu- Spielberg, despite his mild public face, scendent or threatening forces enter or- lar moviemaker who has ever lived, yet is a great violator. But what kind of vi- dinary existence, where, despite them, he has made many people uneasy, even olation is exploitative, and what kind children play and couples quarrel, make resentful. Some have found him glib, changes consciousness, as the best pop- up, and split. Life goes on. The people his sense of action larger than life, his ular art often does? don’t know, so to speak, that they are frame too busy, his temperament a jar- part of a movie with a fantastic prem- ring combination of violence and sub- who readily identifies ise: they go to the beach oblivious of the urban sunniness. He can be tiresomely F with Peter Pan, attaining the age shark; they tidy up the kitchen without old-fashioned. In the spoofing, neoco- of seventy (as Spielberg did on Decem- noticing the alien in the house. By na- lonial “Indiana Jones” films, the turbaned ber th) seems a mistake, somehow. ture, most of us are busy with small tasks Arabs and Indians, gesticulating and Yet Spielberg has been famous as an in-

and immediate pleasures; we are self- shouting, bite the dust like braves in an spired boy at least since June , , ABOVE:LUCI GUTIÉRREZ

76 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 With many Spielberg movies, the audience is the child harbored in the adult—the viewer open to fear, excitement, and exaltation.

ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL ROGERS THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 77 when “Jaws” opened and the country, ven Spielberg: A Biography” was first to make fictions and a natural sense of laughing and screaming, went mad for published in , Haskell finds por- what’s broadly appealing. it. He is now the subject of a new study, tents of Spielberg’s visual imagination— He didn’t have the grades to get into written by the film critic Molly Has- his obsessions, his tropes—embedded the illustrious, connection-making film kell, “Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films,” in his early life, particularly in the fam- programs at U.S.C. or U.C.L.A., so he the latest volume in the distinguished ily romance of mother, father, and child. put in a couple of years at Cal State series “Jewish Lives,” published by Yale. Spielberg’s mother, Leah, who is always Long Beach. But Universal Pictures was As Haskell admits, she’s an odd choice described as a free spirit, was a permis- his real school. When he was sixteen, for the subject. She’s not Jewish, a fact sive parent. (“We never said no,” she he had wangled a pass to the studio, that, it turns out, matters not at all— said in a interview. “Steve really through a family friend. He sat at a desk she handles the Jewish part of Spiel- did run us. He called the shots.”) The in a shared oce and hung out on sets, berg’s identity briskly and convincingly. boy was not an attentive student, which eavesdropping, inquiring, viewing—a More centrally, she’s a lifelong feminist, grievously disappointed Arnold, who process of bold assimilation and impos- primarily concerned with the relations wanted him to study science and math. ture recapped in his movie, “Catch of men and women in movies, and es- Until Spielberg was three, he lived Me If You Can,” in which a real-life pecially with the intimation of sex. The in a comfortable and comforting Jew- teen-ager, Frank Abagnale, Jr. (Leo nardo intimation of sex is something that Spiel- ish community in Cincinnati, but then DiCaprio), insinuates himself into suc- berg has more than a little trouble with. the family moved to New Jersey, near cessive careers. In , when Spielberg He’s not much interested in men and Camden, and, when Spielberg was ten, was twenty-one, he got his professional women together—a skittishness that to a newly built suburb of Phoenix called start working in TV, signing a seven-year puts him in a long line of American Arcadia—a place very much like the contract with Universal Television. narrative artists, including James Feni- setting of “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” During the next few years, he directed more Cooper, Melville, and Twain. with its ranch houses and its freshly episodes of “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” Haskell also remains a sixties cine- poured sidewalks and streets, so good “Columbo,” “The Name of the Game,” phile at heart, in love with the formal for bicycling. The parents, mismatched, and “Night Gallery,” including an epi- inventiveness and the implicit and indi- fought a lot and, when Steven was nine- sode starring the sixty-two-year-old rect meanings of European movies. Spiel- teen, divorced. In his eyes, Arnold, who Joan Crawford, who had trouble re- berg may keep up with the latest in film was always working hard and often away, membering her lines. They apparently technology (in “War of the Worlds,” from was to blame, though Spielberg later got along well enough. He knew what , he ripped up the digital landscape found out that Leah had had a sexual he was doing on the set. with the best of them), but he’s hardly adventure outside the marriage. Having served his apprenticeship in an experimentalist. His moviemaking For biographers and journalists, Spiel- series work, he made, in , a TV heroes are John Ford and David Lean, berg’s estrangement from his father, movie, “Duel,” in which he broke with not Roberto Rossellini or Jean-Luc Go- which lasted for years, has become the TV aesthetics and created a film gram- dard. In freewheeling, frequently blitzed figure in the carpet—Spielberg has made mar of his own. In “Duel,” a harassed and blotto Hollywood, he has led a sober, film after film touching on fathers in Everyman played by Dennis Weaver work- and family-driven life. In brief, one way or another. There’s the work- (the sidekick in “Gunsmoke”), driving he’s a square, which is part of what Has- aholic father (“Hook”); the weak or miss- in the California desert and mountains, kell likes about him, since, she says, she’s ing father (“Close Encounters,” “E.T.,” gets caught up in an increasingly nerve- one, too. Disdaining cultists and box- “Empire,” “Catch Me If You Can”); and racking competition for the road with oce rhapsodists, she places each of his the hyper-responsible father (“War of a trucker whose face you never see. films adroitly in the culture of its period, the Worlds”). Even in “Lincoln,” the fa- There’s certainly no father figure in this and warmly praises some of his lesser- ther has troubles with his firstborn son, one. An exercise in vehicular virtuos- known works, like “The Sugarland Ex- Robby, and slaps him in the street. But ity—chase, pass, ram, escape—the movie press” (), “Empire of the Sun” (), all this is a little puzzling. Spielberg’s is relentless, mischievous, almost per- and “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” (). father gave him his first movie camera verse; at times, you’re invited to enjoy She has written a swift and elegant in- (-mm.) and, later, took him to the des- Weaver’s torment. The unhinged trucker, troduction to Spielberg’s life and work, ert in the middle of the night to see a after all, is a great entertainer. in which admiration for his talents and meteor shower. When Spielberg was in The shark in “Jaws” is a nasty wit, his stupefying success overcomes most high school, his father helped him make too. He’s more than hungry—he’s the of her resistance. “Firelight,” a kind of dry run for “Close Joker in the water, a large, very bad fish. When Spielberg was eight or nine, Encounters.” Whether Spielberg suered He keeps upping the ante on everyone, his father, Arnold Spielberg, a computer emotional injuries that caused his pa- including Robert Shaw’s sulfurous, engineer, gave him a tiny transistor. ternal fixation or, like many male film- Ahab-like hunter. Spielberg yoked hor- Spielberg swallowed it. He was defiant makers, simply brooded on the nature ror-film frights to a man-against-the- at the time—the ingestion was not in- of authority and heroism, associating sea adventure story, and the movie turns tended as a reverential act—but Has- the latter with fatherhood, it’s impossi- into a classically shaped humanist drama. kell sees the event as a communion. Like ble to say. There may be no Rosebud in Both “Duel” and “Jaws” have metaphys- Joseph McBride, whose magisterial “Ste- Spielberg’s life, just an inveterate urge ical overtones. You have to read them

78 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 allegorically, as fables about the relative weakness of innocence and the bottom- BRIEFLY NOTED less malice of the universe.

- theatre was Judas, by Amos Oz, translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de I D. W. Grith’s frame of reference, Lange (Houghton Miin Harcourt). In this novel of nineteen- and nineteenth-century American paint- sixties Jerusalem, Shmuel Ash, lovelorn graduate student and ing John Ford’s, Spielberg’s is fifties TV lukewarm socialist, abandons his thesis (“Jewish Views of and classic Hollywood adventure films Jesus”) to care for a frail, elderly Zionist living in a funereal (like Victor Fleming’s “Captains Coura- villa. There he meets a cynical beauty who lost both father geous” or George Stevens’s “Gunga Din”). and husband in the mid-century wars, backroom and battle- He absorbed the elements of popular eld, that dened the contours of Israeli statehood. The novel storytelling, and created his own charged has a clear message; as Shmuel says, “All the power in the rhetoric of emotions—the climaxes ex- world cannot transform someone who hates you into some- tending to almost unbearable lengths, one who likes you.” But Oz tempers this didactic edge by the faces turned upward as the camera making Shmuel a hapless gure—with walking stick, inhal- moves rapidly or gravely toward some- ers, and baby-powdered beard—unimpressive to the aristo- one who’s taking something in. In Spiel- cratic recluses he’s stumbled among. berg’s films, thought is dynamic. The ac- tion is furious, but the key dramatic The Terranauts, by T. C. Boyle (Ecco). The Terranauts of the moments arrive in closeups, when char- title are the inhabitants of E, an airtight, simulated-Earth acters realize what is happening and de- environment—a test run for colonizing other planets in the cide what to do. They are like punctua- face of ecological catastrophe on Earth. E and its inhabi- tion marks in his stories. The characters tants are closely monitored, but a pregnancy upsets the su- must understand what is going on, or pervisor’s calculations. Despite the sci- premise, Boyle works they die. And the audience understands toward an intimate portrayal of the contingencies of charac- from such moments the significance of ter, shifting perspectives among the father-to-be, the mother- an unprecedented experience. to-be, and the mother’s bitter frenemy on the outside. With Spielberg became a prince of momen- many of the characters literally under glass, our attention is tum—he is nothing if not Newtonian. directed from the future of humanity toward human behav- Once a line of force begins, he keeps it ior as it is now. going, even adding strength to it, until it meets an immovable object or exhausts A House Full of Females, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Knopf). itself in open space. When a car turns a This empathetic account of the women of early Mormon- corner, the camera picks it up and hangs ism focusses on the doctrine of polygamy, rst articulated by with it; when someone walks down stairs Joseph Smith in . Ulrich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning his- in a house, he or she is followed out the torian, explores complex and contradictory responses to a door and along the street. Spielberg has practice seen by Mormons as answering a divine imperative always understood that one of the sheer to procreate; with many wives, a man could beget dozens of pleasures of movies is joining the action, “spirits” of the faith. Ulrich describes the daily lives of these not simply watching it. He turns us into women in attentive detail, their sorrows (child-mortality lev- participants, sometimes wary participants. els were high), their stubborn strength, and their willingness In “Munich” (), Israeli comman- to defy social norms. To the astonishment of the outside dos approach Beirut in small boats, jump world, the same women who vigorously defended multiple onto the wharves, change into women’s marriages also fought for—and won—female surage. clothes as a disguise, shoot the fedayeen sitting on a dock, run up the stairs of a Labyrinths, by Catrine Clay (Harper). Carl Jung once wrote to hotel, and charge into bedrooms and fire Sigmund Freud that the secret of a successful marriage was a again, the camera following in a rush, all “license to be unfaithful.” As this entertaining portrait of his of it a single vector of force, each shot pre- long-suering wife, Emma, shows, he meant a license only for cisely connected to the next. We are meant him; among his conquests were several women attached to the to be complicit in the savage excitement asylum where he worked. Emma was a naïve ancée, eager to that the moviemaking creates—and there- be a traditional, supportive wife. (She not only helped Carl fore active in the incessant debate among with his research and reports but also brought wealth and re- the Israelis (Tony Kushner and Eric Roth spectability to the marriage.) Clay follows her subject from wrote the screenplay) over the morality dicult decades of bringing up the children of a man whose of targeted assassination and retaliation. capriciousness increased with his fame to an impressive late Once Spielberg sets his basic pattern ourishing: in the nineteen-twenties, Emma, in her forties, of movement, he produces some of the became an author and a practicing psychoanalyst.

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 79 freest, most absurd bits of play since the this may have been particularly hurtful constructed “expresses a crucial connec- silent era. The dangerous heroism of to a boy who, on the day of his bar mitz- tion between seeing and understanding: Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton—push vah, sat on the roof of his house and pelted as those below are scurrying, their views a little beyond the actual, but keep it be- his parents’ guests with oranges. “I never restricted, Oskar becomes both witness lievable—reëmerges and triumphs all felt comfortable with myself,” he said and conscience.” Thereafter he changes, through the run-tumble-fall “Indiana in . “I wanted to be like everybody and all that we’ve seen—the casual, some- Jones” series. Even when Spielberg goes else . . . I wanted to be a gentile with the times whimsical, but unrelenting de- digital, he doesn’t place us entirely in fan- same intensity that I wanted to be a film- struction of a people—begins to register tasy; he plays within the confines of re- maker.” When he made “Schindler’s List,” in him as insane. The observer becomes alism, or mock realism. The raptors that he was reclaiming his identity as a Jew. an actor, even a protective father figure; take over the gleaming kitchen in “Ju- The question, then, was how to shoot the transformation is a kind of turbulent rassic Park” bump pots and pans o the the movie. The Holocaust has yielded landing place for Spielberg’s strategy of counters like careless boys. One of them, powerful memoirs and documentaries; observation and participation. confused by the reflection of a hiding fictionalized Holocaust films are no more girl, charges into a cabinet door and than a minor genre. Theodor Adorno praised for knocks itself out. This is so strangely said, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is S his “maturity” in making “Schindler’s funny—a klutzy raptor—that it’s com- barbaric”: any attempt to aestheticize the List,” but his career has never moved in parable to a great poet dropping a comic camps, to redeem the irredeemable, only a straight line of rising achievement. Since simile into a formal design. trivializes the events. Spielberg may not “Schindler,” he has tended to alternate have heard such sentiments, but he nev- serious movies with fun ones: “Munich” forties, Spielberg was ertheless provided a series of answers. followed by “Indiana Jones and the King- B over the top—way over. He had di- There is, for one, the extraordinary sixteen- dom of the Crystal Skull,” and, recently, rected four of the biggest box-oce suc- minute sequence called “The Liquidation “Bridge of Spies” followed by an animated cesses in history (“Jaws,” “Close Encoun- of the Ghetto.” On a vile, wet day with film, “The BFG.” In the midst of this ters,” “E.T.,” and “Jurassic Park”). He had white skies, members of the S.S. drag men, productivity, the subject of Abraham Lin- not one but two guardian angels—Sid women, and children into the street, pull- coln forced a change in style. He restricted Sheinberg, the president of Universal, ing apart families, dumping the contents his moving camera to following Lincoln and, later, Steve Ross, the C.E.O. of War- of suitcases from upper floors as the vic- down a White House corridor or, slowly, ner Communications, who inculcated in tims rush to find a nook, a corner, a place in a magnificent sequence, across a corpse- him the grand manner of Hollywood under the floorboards to hide, all done at strewn battlefield. This time, the person living (multiple houses) and the plea- Spielberg speed but with just enough looking and comprehending was the di- sures of philanthropy. His first marriage, breathing room so that we can see the rector, who respected the stillness deep to the actress Amy Irving, had broken fate of everyone we have known up to within his hero. Working with a script by up, and he got married again, to Kate that point. The movie—and that scene Tony Kushner, Spielberg drew on the rich Capshaw, Harrison Ford’s knockabout in particular—has often been character- theatricalism of the nineteenth century, mate in the second “Indiana Jones” movie. ized as “documentary” in style, but no doc- culminating in the moment when Lin- Today, he has seven children and four umentary ever looked like this. Janusz coln’s mighty hand (there’s no other way grandchildren. Kaminski’s camera presses along the edge of putting it) smashes down on a table in In , Universal bought the film of the violent, messy actions, or pitches the Cabinet room, a moment Biblical in rights to Thomas Keneally’s just pub- into the middle of them, bucking, arighted its weight and its emphasis. Transcendent lished novel, “Schindler’s Ark,” a slightly almost, but catching what it needs to force, it turns out, can live on earth, too. fictionalized account of how Oskar Schin- catch as anguished movement churns on At seventy, Spielberg seems to be pick- dler—a member of the Nazi Party—em- all sides. Far from being documentary, the ing up the pace. Another “Jurassic Park” ployed eleven hundred Polish Jews as directing style pushes representation to sequel is in the works, and another “In- workers in his Krakow factory and saved the end—toward life fully realized at its diana Jones,” too. A science-fiction movie them from Auschwitz. Feeling unready, most terrible. The only answer to Adorno based on Ernest Cline’s dystopian novel, Spielberg tried to pass o the project. It is the irrepressible courage of an artist. “Ready Player One,” will come out next took a decade, and various writers work- In the big-bodied, beguiling person of year. He’s also working with Kushner on ing on the screenplay (Steven Zaillian Liam Neeson, Schindler is a complex fel- “The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara,” wrote the one that got filmed), before he low: a party-giving sensualist, a war profi- a story about a Jewish boy in Bologna, was ready to commit to “Schindler’s List.” teer who bribes everyone in sight. For all Italy, in , who, having been secretly As he admitted, there was some un- his worldliness, however, he’s another of baptized, is forcibly taken from his fam- finished personal business at hand, a reck- Spielberg’s innocents overwhelmed by ily on the orders of Pope Pius IX and oning to be made. He had been troubled experience. He’s not prepared for what raised as a Catholic. It is another movie growing up as a Jew, especially in the Phoe- the Nazis plan to do to his workers. When about a broken family, in the course of nix suburbs. He had a big nose and his the roundup begins, he’s riding with a which we will likely understand, with ears stuck out. Known by some kids at his girlfriend on a blu overlooking the city; full physical power, and from the inside, high school as Spielbug, he was repeat- the entire scene plays o his stricken gaze. how it feels to be a father whose child edly taunted by an anti-Semitic bully. All As Haskell says, the way the sequence is is snatched away. 

80 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 ism—he thought that those cannibals A CRITIC AT LARGE were just as virtuous as the Europeans they oended, that customs vary equa- bly from place to place. Though some MIXED UP of his aphorisms have stuck, both funny (Doctors “are lucky: the sun shines on Montaigne on trial. their successes and the earth hides their failures”) and profound (“We are, I know BY ADAM GOPNIK not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and can- not rid ourselves of what we condemn”), he is not really an aphorist. He is, we think, a philosopher, and somehow ac- counted the father of modern liberalism, though he was aristocratic in self- presentation. We think of him, above all, as we do of Thomas More: a nice guy, an ideal intellect. S. N. Behrman, the American playwright and diarist, began but never finished a heroic play about Montaigne called “The Many Men,” which might have sealed him as the man for all seasons before the other guy got there. Philippe Desan, in “Montaigne: A Life” (Princeton; translated from the French by Steven Rendall and Lisa Neal), his immense new biography, dryly insists that our “Château d’Yquem” Montaigne, Montaigne the befuddled philosopher and sweet-sharp human- ist, is an invention, untrue to the orig- inal. Our Montaigne was invented only in the early nineteenth century. The Eyquem family, in their day, made no wine at all. They made their fortune in salted fish—and Desan’s project is to give us a salty rather than a sweet Mon- taigne, to take the Château d’Yquem out of his life and put the herring back the airier, bel- wine’s case because it costs too much in. Montaigne, to Desan’s dauntingly Fletristic kind used to enjoy point- money to drink as much as we might erudite but sometimes jaundiced eye, ing out that Michel de Montaigne, the desire, in the writer’s because it costs was an arriviste rather than an aristo- man who invented the essay, was born too much time to read as much as we crat, who withdrew into that tower out Michel Eyquem, in Bordeaux in , might want. of fear as much as out of wisdom, hav- and that the family name and estate “Que sais-je?” “What do I know?” was ing ridden political waves and been survive to this day in the name of Châ- Montaigne’s beloved motto, meaning: knocked down by them in a time, in teau d’Yquem, the greatest of all French What do I really know? And what do France, of unimaginable massacre and sweet wines. The connection feels im- we really know about him now? We may counter-massacre between Protestants probable—as though there were a vaguely know that he was the first es- and Catholics. His motto was safety Falsta Ale that really dates to Shake- sayist, that he retreated from the world first, not solitude forever. That new speare’s Stratford—but also apt. Mon- into a tower on the family estate to think form, the essay, is made as much from taigne’s essays can seem like the Yquem and reflect, and that he wrote about can- things that Montaigne prudently chose of writing: sweet but smart, honeyed nibals (for them) and about cruelty not to look at or evasively pretended but a little acid. And, with wine and (against it). He was considered by Claude not to know as from an avid, honest writer alike, we often know more about Lévi-Strauss, no less, to be the first so- appetite for experience. We confuse him them than we know of them—in the cial scientist, and a pioneer of relativ- with the truly engagé Enlightenment and Romantic writers who came long The essays were not written in isolation in the tower but often dictated on the run. afterward, as they came to confuse his

ILLUSTRATION BY GUIDO SCARABOTTOLO THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 81 briny Bordeaux with their winey one. to the château and the tower was, on sues had long since been swamped The idea of a salty rather than a this slightly cynical view, simply another by simple tribalism, of the kind that sweet Montaigne follows the contem- way of advertising and so accelerating has aicted Christianity since the porary academic rule that all sweet the family’s elevation. Arian controversy. It was a question things must be salted—all funny writ- But, we learn, the Montaignes, fa- not of two sides warring over beliefs ers shown to be secretly sad, all phil- ther and son, being the virtuous bour- but of two sides for whom the war had osophical reflection shown to be power geois they really were, played an active become the beliefs. politics of another kind. Desan has role in that parlement that the family As the battles between those faith- many crudely reductive theories—the had bought its way into. Here we begin ful to Henry of Navarre and those op- most insistent being that Montaigne to enter a more fertile vineyard of im- posed to him went on in ever more in- wrote essays about the world right now plication. The bureaucracies of justice tricate and absurd factional dances, because he was covering up the truth and politics in which Montaigne found Montaigne’s place within them was as that in the past his family were mer- himself are, as Desan describes them, treacherous as everyone else’s. Smart chants, not lords—but he is a master instantly familiar to anyone who knows people got killed, and often. It was dan- of the micro-history of sixteenth-cen- the equivalent in contemporary France. gerous not only because your side might tury Bordeaux. He lists all the other They combined, then as now, a wild lose but because there were so many recipients of the royal necklace that bureaucratic adherence to punctilio and factions to keep track of. Early on, he Montaigne was proud to receive in procedure with entanglements of co- wrote, cautiously, that it was a mistake midlife, signifying his elevation to the hort and clan that could shortcut the to look to the fortunes of war for proof knightly Order of St. Michael, and no procedure in a moment. Montaigne of the rightness of either side’s cause: one, we feel assured, will have to go had to learn to master this system while “Our belief hath other sucient foun- back and inspect those records again. recognizing its essential mutability or, dations, and need not be authorized by At the same time, Desan suers some if you prefer, hypocrisy. The forms had events.” But events were in the saddle. from the curse of the archives, which to be followed, even when there was The first stirrings of Montaigne’s is to believe that the archives are the no doubt that the fix was in. deflecting, double-sided literary style place where art is born, instead of where This sense of doubleness—that what appear in his eulogy for his clos- it goes to be buried. The point of the is presented as moral logic is usually est friend, the philosopher Étienne de necklaces, for him, is to show that Mon- mere self-sustained ritual—became es- La Boétie. Though the eulogy is mod- taigne rose from a background of bribes sential to Montaigne’s view of the elled on classical stoic death scenes and payos; he doesn’t see that we care world. (Lawyers to this day seem par- reaching back to Plato’s Phaedo, its about the necklaces only because one ticularly sensitive to the play between originality lies in Montaigne’s honest hung on Montaigne. form and fact, which makes them good reporting of the comic absurdities of He establishes convincingly, though, novelists.) “There is but little relation his friend’s passing, and of his own that the Eyquem family had long been between our actions that are in perpet- emotional ambivalence at his death. in trade—and was quite possibly Jew- ual mutation and the fixed and im- La Boétie, suering from some kind ish in origin on Montaigne’s mother’s mutable laws,” a chagrined Montaigne of ill-defined infection, is shown to be side—and that Montaigne’s persistent wrote later. “I believe it were better to less than admirably resigned. The de- tone of lordly amusement was self-con- have none at all than so infinite a num- lirium of his final hours led him to be- sciously willed rather than inherited. ber as we have.” His most emphatic— lieve that he was back in court, de- The family imported herring and woad if perhaps apocryphal—remark on the claiming: “The whole chamber”—that in large enough quantities to buy an ex- subject is still applicable. He is reputed is, his bedroom—“was filled with cries isting estate and win a kind of ersatz to have said that, having seen the law and tears, which did not, however, in- ennoblement. That act of ennoblement at work, if someone accused him of terrupt in the slightest the series of his fooled nobody—the old aristocrats knew stealing the towers of Notre-Dame ca- speeches, which were rather long.” La the dierence and so did your bourgeois thedral he would flee the country rather Boétie implored Montaigne to guar- neighbors—but it gave you license to than stand trial. antee his “place”—meaning, presum- start acting aristocratic, which, if con- Montaigne was witnessing the be- ably, his social position—to which tinued long enough, began to blend ginning of the parallel paper universe Montaigne replied, in a black, pun- seamlessly with the real thing. “Most of the French bureaucratic state, where ning moment out of a Samuel Beck- of these new nobles preferred to stress euphemism allows interest, and some- ett play, that “since he breathed and their way of living in retirement on their times evil, to take its course. But in his spoke, and had a body, he consequently lands, free from any visible commercial time these daily tediums were laid over had his place.” activity,” Desan writes. “Family history the violently shifting tectonic plates of Montaigne’s friendship with La is usually not mentioned, to the advan- religious warfare. The struggles be- Boétie helped convince him that reli- tage of the present and everyday pre- tween Catholic and Protestant in gious belief is purely customary—that occupations.” The merchant Eyquems, mid-sixteenth-century France killed what we believe is what we are told to under Michel’s father, Pierre, became more than a million people, either di- believe, but that our beliefs are still a noble “Montaignes,” able to use a sin- rectly or by disease. By the time the duty to our social hierarchy. “Voluntary gle name in signature. The son’s retreat wars swept through Bordeaux, the is- servitude” is the course that La Boétie

82 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 recommends: obedience to the state or unknown. E. B. White, a modern Mon- the run than written in that tower, dic- Church, with the inner understanding taigne, who got there through Thoreau, tation being the era’s more aristocratic, that this is a course we’ve chosen from was deeply attached to his wife, Kath- less artisanal method of composition. social prudence, not from personal con- arine. But she makes few if any appear- (They still occasionally bear dictation’s viction. “We are Christians by the same ances in his essays (though she’s there, marks of run-on breathlessness.) title as we are either Périgordins or hypochondriacally, all over his letters). Montaigne’s “Essais,” in any of their Germans” was Montaigne’s most force- He wasn’t neglecting her—it’s just that stages—they went through three edi- ful statement on this point. if the essays were even implicitly ad- tions in his lifetime—are one of those Desan scolds both Montaigne and dressed to a particular intimate they classic books that benefit from being his friend—there is a lot of scolding of would become too specific. The illu- read irresponsibly. Sit down to read them subject by author in this book—for sion of confiding in the reader alone is thoroughly step by step, even in the thereby recommending or even invent- what essayists play on. You’re my best great contemporary English translation, ing “the cornerstone of modern liber- friend, Montaigne, like every subse- of , by John Florio (whose render- alism: individual freedom detached from quent essayist of his type, implies to his ings I’ve mostly been using), and you any political or social action.” To say readers. By dramatizing an isolation will be disappointed, since the “argu- this, though, is surely to underestimate that can be cured only by an unknown ment” of the essays is often less than the originality of the position, or its au- reader, the confidences come to belong fully baked, and the constant flow of dacity in its time. The assertion of in- to all. classical tags and quotations is tedious. dividual freedom is a form of political Montaigne made several attempts Open more or less at random, though, action. As subsequent generations of at his essais—the French word means, and dip in, and you will be stunned by intellectuals caught in violent irratio- simply, “tries,” in the sense of experi- the sudden epiphanies, the utterly mod- nal wars or under repressive govern- mental eort, though the English word ern sentences: “Super-celestial opinions ments have also learned, learning not “sketches” comes closer—and the bulk and under-terrestrial manners are things to think foolishly is the first step to- of the work of writing was done in the that amongst us I have ever seen to be ward sanity. (Live not by the lie, Sol- seven years following La Boétie’s death. of singular accord,” he writes, giving as zhenitsyn urged his countrymen. Mon- Far from being rendered in elegant iso- an example a philosopher who always taigne’s is the same idea, in a warmer lation, we now know, the essays were pisses as he runs. climate with better wine.) Your mind written while Montaigne took part in Montaigne accepts, as no other writer belongs to you. Recognizing that every- Bordeaux politics, travelled to Italy had, that our inner lives are double, that thing is customary was not customary. (where the book was briefly confiscated all emotions are mixed, and that all con- Your body and your allegiance may in- by Church authorities, and he was sub- clusions are inconclusive. “In sadness there deed be given, prudently, to the state. jected to a withering examination and is some alloy of pleasure,” he writes in But no one can make your mind fol- a warning), and, eventually, became the the essay called, tellingly, “We Taste Noth- low suit: only a fool fools himself. The mayor of Bordeaux. When Montaigne ing Purely.” “There is some shadow of first step in dealing with the madness tells us that his library is where “I pass delicacy and quaintness which smileth of the political world is not to let it the greatest part of my live days and and fawneth upon us, even in the lap of make you crazy. “God keep me from wear out most hours of the days,” he melancholy. . . . Painters are of opinion being an honest man, according to the was being poetical. The pieces were, it that the motions and wrinkles in the description I daily see made of honor,” now seems, far more often dictated on face which serve to weep serve also to Montaigne wrote.

Montaigne, vis- D à-vis La Boétie, on a literary point, complaining that Montaigne, having first been inspired to literary eort by a friend, allows the idea of friendship to dissipate in his later essays, which entail no friend but the reader. The essay becomes an impersonal form of intimacy, betraying a fear of passionate commitment and political engagement. But each written form creates its own reader. A sonnet is addressed to an in- dierent object of passion; even if the actual lover warms up, the sonneteer can’t become too easily complacent— a dark lady suddenly sunny produces no one’s idea of a poem. So, too, an essay is always addressed to an intimate “Saddle up.” Although Florio’s eort was the first English rendering of Montaigne’s essays to appear in book form, they had certainly been circulating in manuscript before that. In an introduction to a new edition of the Florio, Stephen Green- blatt tantalizes us with the suggestion that the relation exists, and shows how richly it can be teased out—and then responsibly retreats from too much as- sertion with too little positive evidence, willing to mark it down to the com- mon spirit of the time. Well, essayists can go where schol- ars dare not tread—a key lesson to take from Montaigne—and this es- sayist finds it impossible to imagine that Shakespeare had not absorbed Montaigne fully, and decisively, right around . It is evident not in the “I wasn’t nervously hovered around enough as a child.” ideas alone but in a delighted place- ment of opposites in close relation, even more apparent in Shakespeare’s •• prose than in his verse. Writing shows its influences by the contagion of laugh. Verily, before one or other be de- he likes not knowing what he feels or rhythm and pacing more often than termined to express which, behold the who he is, enjoys having “wise” and by exact imitation of ideas. We know pictures success; you are in doubt toward “ignorant,” insulated by nothing but a that Updike read Nabokov in the which one inclineth. And the extremity comma, anchored together in one soul’s nineteen-sixties by the sudden license of laughing intermingles itself with tears.” harbor. They bang hulls inside our Updike claims to unsubdue his prose, Having two emotions at once is better heads. to make his sentences self-consciously than having one emotion repeatedly. Although those epigrammatic sen- exclamatory, rather than by an onset By giving life to this truth, Mon- tences can be arresting—“Nothing is so of chess playing or butterfly collect- taigne animates for the first time an firmly believed as that which a man ing. Hamlet says: inner human whose contradictions are knoweth least”—Montaigne doesn’t What a piece o work is a man! how noble identical with his conscience. “If I speak think epigrammatically. What makes in reason! how innite in faculty! in form and diversely of myself, it is because I look him astonishing is a sort of “show all moving how express and admirable! in action diversely upon myself,” he writes, in work” ethic that forced thought as it re- how like an Angel! in apprehension how like “On the Inconstancy of Our Actions.” ally is, mixed in motive and meanings, a god! the beauty o the world! the paragon o In the writer’s soul, he maintained, onto the page. He seems wise, more animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintes- sence o dust? man delights not me; no, nor all contrarieties are found . . . according to than smart or shrewd—wise without woman neither, though by your smiling you some turn or removing, and in some fashion being smart or shrewd. He can be em- seem to say so. or other. Shame-faced, bashful, insolent, chaste, barrassing, as he was often thought to luxurious, peevish, prattling, silent, fond, dot- be in his time, in a way that recalls less And the balancing of opposites, the ing, laborious, nice, delicate, ingenious, slow, a polished columnist than a great dia- rhythm of assertion and counter- dull, forward, humorous, debonair, wise, igno- rant, false in words, true speaking, both lib- rist, like James Boswell or Kenneth assertion, the sudden questioning turns, eral, covetous, and prodigal. All these I per- Tynan, incapable of being guarded, the all of it seems irresistibly like Florio’s ceive in some measure or other to be in mine, way shrewder people are. When he Montaigne, notably in the springy, according as I stir or turn myself. . . . We are writes about the joys of having sex with self-surprised beat: all framed o aps and patches, and o so shape- cripples, we feel uneasy, nervous, and less and diverse a contexture, that every piece How often do we pester our spirits with and every moment playeth his part. then enlightened. Whatever he’s tell- anger or sadness by such shadows and entan- ing, he’s telling it, as Howard Cosell gle ourselves into fantastical passions which Lists are the giveaways of writing. used to say, like it is. alter both our mind and body? What aston- What we list is what we love, as with ished, earing, and confused mumps and Homer and his ships, or Whitman and , about the mows doth this dotage stir up in our visages! What skippings and agitations o members his Manhattan trades, or Twain and D French Montaigne, avoids the and voice! steamboats. That beautiful and star- question that, for an English speaker, tlingly modern list of mixed emotions is essential: the great question of Mon- It’s not merely in the steady (and suggests a delectation of diversities— taigne’s relationship to Shakespeare. modern) use of exclamation points

84 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 but in the sudden turns and rever- tant export, more important even than actively inspirational at times of great- sals, without the mucilage of extended the salt fish that the family fortune had est stress. The German author Stefan argument—the turn-on-a-dime move- been built on. (It was a sign of the mid- Zweig, in flight from Nazism, turned ments, the interjections, the tone dle-class auence that sped along in first of all to Montaigne, writing, of a man talking to himself and spite of the wars of faith.) His one at- “Montaigne helps us answer this one being startled by what his self says tempted intervention in the religious question: ‘How to stay free? How to back. The alteration in the inner lives conflict led to his being arrested and preserve our inborn clear-mindedness of Shakespeare’s characters around held in the Bastille, for a few hours, by in front of all the threats and dangers , as evident in “As You Like It” extremist Catholics in Paris. He was of fanaticism, how to preserve the hu- as in “Hamlet,” bears his mark—as in released only after convincing the jail- manity of our hearts among the up- Jaques’s speech on the seven ages of ers of his Catholic bona fides. Fanati- surge of bestiality?’ ” man, which very much resembles cism always seems foolish until it locks Montaigne is present now in the Montaigne’s insistence that life-liv- you up. things he feels and the way he sounds, ing is role-playing. (“We must play After his mayoralty, combining, as and that is like a complete human being. our parts duly, but as the part of a it did, the trivial and the terrifying, He’s funny, he’s touching, he’s strange, borrowed personage.”) Montaigne moved away from politi- he’s inconclusive. Ironic self-mockery, Indeed, the Frenchman Jaques, cal action, and Desan, in the end, is muted egotism, a knowledge of one’s even more than Hamlet, and from hard on his politics. “Montaigne’s hu- own absurdity that doesn’t diminish the same year, is Montaignean man. manism, as it was conceptualized start- the importance of one’s witness, a de- In this case, a specific relation seems ing in , implies a renunciation of terminedly anti-heroic stance that re- to exist between Montaigne’s great politics,” he declares, and elsewhere he mains clearly ethical—all these eects essay “On Cruelty” and the scene in sees in Montaigne a sort of false dawn and sounds of the essayist are first heard “As You Like It” where Jaques is re- of liberalism. Montaigne’s retreat was here. We imitate the sound without ported brooding on the death of a only a rich man’s way of getting o the even knowing its source. Good critics deer. Montaigne’s point is that when highway before history ran him over. and scholars can teach us how to lis- it comes to cruelty we should subor- “Montaigne is supposed to be the ten. Only writers show us how to dinate all other “reasoning”—stoic, of best proof of . . . the victory of private speak—even when they tell us that it degree and dependency—to the es- judgment over systems or schools of is best to whisper. sential fact of the stag’s suering. We thought,” Desan writes. “Modern lib- Montaigne’s writing has not been can reason our way past another crea- eral thought discerns in Montaigne taken out of his time. It exists outside ture’s pain, but, as we do so, such “rea- the starting point of its history . . . but of his time. He is not plucked out to son” becomes the indicted evil. Jaques let us make no mistake: most of the become a false father; he is heard, long feels the same way. “We are mere strictly philosophical readings of Mon- past his time, as a true friend. He is usurpers, tyrants, and what’s worse / taigne are the expression of a form of an emotional, not a contractual, lib- To fright the animals and kill them (unconscious) ideological appropria- eral. He didn’t give a damn about de- up,” he says, while “weeping and com- tion that aims to place the universal mocracy, or free speech, or even prop- menting upon the sobbing deer.” subject on a pedestal, to the detriment erty rights. Equality before the law he We are meant to find Jaques’s dou- of its purely historical and political saw as impossible—not even aristo- ble occupation of weeping and com- dimension.” crats could get it. But he had a rich menting, feeling and keeping track This view is deaf to the overtones foundational impulse toward the emo- of his feelings, mildly comic—Shake- of Montaigne’s self-removal. To be tions that make a decent relation be- speare being always convinced, in his against violence, frightened of fanati- tween man and state possible. Here English way, that the French are cism, acutely conscious of the custom- was a far-reaching skepticism about hypersensitive and overintellectual. ary nature of our most devout attach- authority (either the ancients’ or the But Jaques is not a ridiculous figure. ments—without this foundation in actual), a compassion toward suer- He is conscience speaking through realism, political action always pivots ing, a hatred of cruelty that we now contradiction. toward puritanical self-righteousness. imagine as human instinct, though all It is not that Montaigne is placed on experience shows us that it must be the midst of all this that a pedestal; it’s that we look up at him inculcated. Montaigne, having no ac- I Montaigne was elevated to mayor only to find that he is already down cess to the abstract concepts that were of Bordeaux—an achievement, Desan here with us. His houses are built on later laid on this foundation, gives us shows, that was rather like getting ap- sand, rock being too hard for people, deeper access to them, because he was pointed police commissioner under who are bound to fall. His moral her- the one who laid it. The liberalism Tammany Hall. He wasn’t much of a oism lies in his resilience in retreat, that came after humanism may be mayor, although it was under his ad- which allows him to remind us of our what keeps his memory alive and draws ministration that the first protection capacity to persevere. His essays insist us to him. The humanism that has to and “control” of Bordeaux’s cru bour- that an honest relation to experience exist before liberalism can even begin geois was attempted, wine having crept is the first principle of action. As a is what Montaigne is there to show up to become the city’s most impor- practical matter, this has been most us still. 

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 85 about lettuce, and, when he loses his heart THE CURRENT CINEMA to a woman named Joan Smith (Linda Cardellini), they seal their love, in a late- night call, by discussing foot trac in FAMILY PACKS one of the franchise outlets. Viewers hop- ing for sex—something that appears to “The Founder” and “The Ardennes.” be vanishing from Hollywood produc- tions, without any help from a censor, let BY ANTHONY LANE alone public consultation—will have to settle for Joan stirring instant-milkshake powder into a glass of water, working up a fine foam, and taking a sip before Ray’s bulging eyes. Vanilla flavor, of course. Not that Ray has that much heart to lose. If you were shown a précis of “The Founder,” you might well assume it to be packed with salty satire. After all, Ray performs every task that we expect of a mean bastard: he dumps a loyal wife (Laura Dern), who has done nothing but sustain him through his career; he filches Joan from another guy; he fortifies himself with slugs of Canadian Club, though never enough to dull his wits; and he tramples all over the nice old-fash- ioned boys from San Bernardino. “Is he a pain in the rear?” Mac asks. “I’m a tad Michael Keaton plays Ray Kroc in a movie directed by John Lee Hancock. mied,” Dick says. When Ray unleashes an actual swear word, Mac faints. We from Missouri dence and nervous of whatever he is are doubtless being invited to side with W to San Bernardino, California, about to propose or perpetrate. In short, such homely virtues, and to sni at what to check out a burger joint? The an- he belongs to the Unrelaxers—that club Dick refers to as the “crass commercial- swer is Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), of leading men, staed by people like ism” of the Krocist ideology. Does Han- the hero of “The Founder.” The broth- John Malkovich and Je Goldblum, cock not yearn to decrassify? Is that not ers who own the place, Mac McDon- whose bound duty is to never leave us the movie’s grand plan? ald ( John Carroll Lynch) and Dick at ease. So scarily does the Keaton smile Sorry, but I don’t buy it. However (Nick Oerman), have ordered eight flash on and o, with a sudden baring decent the director’s original intentions, multi-spindle milkshake mixers, of the of incisors, that his entire career seems “The Founder” emerges as the first kind that Ray has been hauling around to have prepared him to play a man Trumpist film of the new era. By a in the trunk of his Plymouth and try- named Kroc. One lesson of “The happy serendipity, it goes on wide re- ing to sell, without success. So he wants Founder” is that there’s nothing wrong lease on January th, the day of the to see what sort of operation needs with biting o more than you can chew. Presidential Inauguration. I would sug- eight. When he arrives, he is nonplussed You can always swallow it whole. gest watching either the movie, at a by the novelty of the setup. Used to Tucked inside the title is a gristly joke. theatre, or the ceremony, on TV. Both sitting in his car at drive-ins, and wait- Kroc did not found McDonald’s. In , would be too much. Time and again, ing forever for the food to come, he he came upon the concept of fast food, whenever Ray presents his case we are finds it strange to stand in line for his in the enterprising hands of Mac and oered miraculous mantras, as if rep- meal and receive it without delay. “I Dick, took it up, took it over, and built etition alone could prove them true: just ordered,” he says. “And now it’s the corporation that we know today, with “Persistence,” “Speed,” or “The Name”— here,” the server replies. Ray hesitates, its sacred mission to swell the planet’s McDonald’s, that is, not Kroc. “Three then asks, “Where do I eat it?” girth. “Franchise the damn thing,” he de- words,” he announces. “McDonald’s. Keaton is made for such moments. clares, from “sea to shining sea.” A dan- Is. Family.” From where does he learn He has that trick, honed over many mov- gerous proportion of “The Founder,” these Trump-like hammer blows? Well, ies, of glancing to one side before deliv- which is written by Robert D. Siegel and near the start of the movie, when Ray ering a line, especially a question, as if directed by John Lee Hancock, is spent is still a travelling salesman in a lowly all information were secret and the sur- on the phone or in face-to-face meet- hotel room, with a portable record rounding world were populated by spies. ings, but, then, this is a film about busi- player, he listens to a recording of “The Wartime conditions would suit him ness. Kroc strides onto a golf course bran- Power of the Positive,” by a certain Clar- nicely. We feel both lured into his confi- dishing a substandard burger and raging ence Floyd Nelson, who recommends

86 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS GASH “a never-ceasing flow of energy.” That town life are meant to soften us up for And how long does Pront take to show is in fact a line from Norman Vincent his creed—a genuine hope that the all that? Three minutes. On this evi- Peale’s “The Power of Positive Think- franchise might yet become as ubiqui- dence, he may be just the man to film ing,” which was published in and tous as a courthouse or a church. Why, Eugene O’Neill. The long day’s journey remained on the Times best-seller list there is even a black person waiting for would be over and done by lunch. for more than three years. For Nelson, her meal at McDonald’s, who gets to By the time Kenny is freed, having read Peale. By rights, the nasty dazzle speak a line! (Just the one, but you have served four years, Dave and Sylvie are of Keaton’s performance should under- to start somewhere.) And so, layer by a couple. Neither of them dares to men- cut this sermonizing pomp, but that’s layer, this dumbfounding movie de- tion this to Kenny, and with good cause, not what happens. Instead, he grows vises its magical recipe, and dares us to since he doles out head-butts as a com- ever more eective, until the sheer brunt resist it: ketchup, mustard, two slices mon courtesy. “I’m waiting for the right of the character mows down all resis- of pickle, and hold the irony. Delicious. moment,” Dave explains. The film, as tance. Remind you of anyone? Rever- though infected by his indecision, end Peale, it should be noted, presided a battle of the broth- slumps in the middle, only to compen- at the wedding of Donald and Ivana I ers, the McDonalds, being honorable sate with a final act, set in the wooded Trump, in . citizens, wouldn’t last a minute against region of the title, that feels rich in kills In the end, Hancock lays not a glove Kenny (Kevin Janssens) and Dave ( Je- and overkills. We meet a transgender on Kroc, any more than he did on Walt roen Perceval). These two unlovely fel- thug named Joyce (Sam Louwyck), and Disney in “Saving Mr. Banks” (), lows tramp through “The Ardennes,” Kenny’s former cellmate ( Jan Bijvoet), and the camera conspires to smooth getting caught in all manner of malig- whose hobbies include the tending of any wrinkles of villainy. When Ray first nity. On the plus side, nobody invites bonsai trees and the unlawful use of approaches the brothers’ stand, in Cal- them to enter the hamburger business, a cleaver. Creepiest of all is a pair of ifornia, our gaze is ushered upward, to and for that we must be grateful. I don’t ostriches, on the lam and plainly look- a sign that reads “McDonald’s,” as if even want to think about how they ing for trouble. That’s Belgium for you, we were standing in front of a Gothic would source the meat. Or mince it. I guess. cathedral, and the music, by Carter One of the recent Belgian films to Dave’s dread of his brother hooks Burwell, rises in concord with the mood. cause an international stir was the “The Ardennes” onto a long chain of More preposterous still, later on, is gloom-ridden “Bullhead” (), and fraternal crime dramas, from “The Pub- the gleam of golden arches reflected “The Ardennes,” the first full-length fea- lic Enemy” () and “On the Water- in Ray’s windshield, and the drumroll ture by Robin Pront, is similarly aimed front” () to “We Own the Night” that we hear just before he reveals his at an audience of fatalists. The atmo- (). Pront can hardly be blamed if expansionist dream to Mac and Dick. sphere reeks of compulsive wrongness: his actors lack the sinew of Cagney or “Do it for your country. Do it for Amer- “You don’t always get to choose,” one of Brando, and, to be fair, the film does add ica,” he says. McDonald’s, he adds, must the characters says. They cannot move a few grace notes to the perennial theme, aspire to be “the place where Ameri- without stumbling into error, and what’s as when the boys’ mother, a gentle soul, cans come together to break bread”—a impressive is how rapidly we grasp that urges Dave to look after Kenny on his blasphemous touch, but openly backed dour habit. As the story begins, the broth- release. Without warning, she makes her by Hancock, with his shot of a bur- ers commit a crime—a housebreaking— point with a tigerish swipe across her ger-munching family gathered on a with mixed results. Dave gets away, son’s cheek. You rear back and think, bench, and of a woman, in slow mo- with Kenny’s girlfriend, Sylvie (Veerle So that’s where the fury comes from.  tion, feasting ecstatically on her bun. Baetens), at the wheel, but Kenny is left Likewise, on Ray’s pilgrimage across behind; refusing to squeal on his accom- NEWYORKER.COM the land, the fond glimpses of small- plices, he is sentenced to seven years. Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017 87 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 Joe Dator, must be received by Sunday, January th. The nalists in the January nd contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the nalists in this week’s contest, in the January 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

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THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“Row v. Wave.” Laura Silver, Brooklyn, N.Y.

“Don’t worry, the polls show it will miss us.” “I admire your restraint.” Peter Wingate, Hadley, Mass. Linda Pickering, Lawrenceville, N.J.

“We shall overcomb.” Timothy J. Hanley, New York City