19 January 2015

PRICE $7.99 JAN. 19, 2015 JANUARY 19, 2015 5 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 17 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Adam Gopnik on carnage and satire; Mark Zuckerberg’s book club; Bill Murray; Smithsonian time capsule; Christine McVie. rebecca mead 22 WHEN I GROW UP A theme park where kids pretend to be adults. kelly stout 29 LET’S GET DRINKS patrick radden keefe 30 CORRUPTION AND REVOLT Why is graft so hard to eradicate? luke mogelson 38 WHEN THE FEVER BREAKS Battling Ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone. raffi khatchadouriaN 50 WE KNOW HOW YOU FEEL The rise of affective computing. FICTION j. robert lennon 60 “BREADMAN” THE CRITICS POP MUSIC sasha frere-jones 66 Sleater-Kinney’s return. A CRITIC AT LARGE sam tanenhaus 69 L.B.J. and bipartisanship’s unexpected history. BOOKS 75 Briefly Noted THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 76 “Still Alice,” “Paddington.” POEMS Lia Purpura 26 “Probability” Ellen Bass 54 “Reincarnation” Ana Juan COVER “Solidarité” DRAWINGS Frank Cotham, Barbara Smaller, Ken Krimstein, Kaamran Hafeez, Roz Chast, P. C. Vey, Zohar Lazar, William Haefeli, George Booth, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Christopher Weyant, Julian Rowe, David Sipress, Joe Dator, Benjamin Schwartz SPOTS Laurent Cilluffo THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 1 CONTRIBUTORS adam gopnik (COMMENT, P. 17) writes frequently about French political and cultural affairs for the magazine. He is the author of “Paris to the Moon” and “The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food.” patrick Radden Keefe (“CORRUPTION AND REVOLT,” P. 30) is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, and has written for The New Yorker since 2006. rebecca mead (“WHEN I GROW UP,” P. 22), a staff writer, is the author of “One Per- fect Day” and “My Life in Middlemarch,” which comes out in paperback later this month. kelly stout (SHOUTS & MURMURS, P. 29) joined the editorial staff in 2010. luke mogelson (“WHEN THE FEVER BREAKS,” P. 38) is a freelance journalist based in Mexico. He last wrote for the magazine about the war in Syria. raFFI khatchadourian (“WE KNOW HOW YOU FEEL,” P. 50) has been a New Yorker staff writer since 2008. Ellen Bass (POEM, P. 54) teaches in the M.F.A. program at Pacific University. “Like a Beggar” is her most recent book of poems. J. robert lennon (FICTION, P. 60) has published several books, including the short- story collection “See You in Paradise.” He is an editor of the online magazine Okey- Panky. sam tanenhaus (A CRITIC AT LARGE, P. 69), the author of “The Death of Conserva- tism,” is working on a biography of William F. Buckley, Jr. ana juan (COVER), a Spanish artist, illustrated “The Boy Who Lost Fairyland,” the fourth in a series of children’s books by Catherynne M. Valente, which will be published in March. She has contributed covers to the magazine since 1995. NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more than fifteen original stories a day. ALSO: DAILY COMMENT / CULTURAL COMMENT: PODCASTS: On the Political Scene, Analysis of news and culture by Ryan Lizza and John Cassidy join Jeffrey Toobin and Sarah Larson. Dorothy Wickenden for a discussion about the Keystone XL pipeline and CHARLIE HEBDO: The New Yorker staff the new Congress. Plus, on Out Loud, responds to the violence in Paris. Nick Paumgarten, Rebecca Mead, and Michael Agger talk about KidZania and ARCHIVE: Every story since 2007, in parenting. easy-to-read text. FICTION AND POETRY: Readings by VIDEO: The latest episode of “The J. Robert Lennon, Ellen Bass, and Lia Cartoon Lounge,” with Robert Mankoff. Purpura. SUBSCRIBERS: Get access to our magazine app for tablets and smartphones at the App Store, Amazon.com, or Google Play. (Access varies by location and device.) THE MAIL REMEMBERING SELMA designs the eradication programs and sets the bait; the estimated annual cost to the In David Denby’s mostly laudatory re- government is in the neighborhood of a view of the film “Selma,” he is critical hundred million New Zealand dollars. As of the scenes depicting Martin Luther Kolbert points out, 1080 interferes with King, Jr.,’s confrontation with John Lewis energy production—it is a universal met- and James Forman, “the young leaders abolic poison that can kill birds and in- of the Student Nonviolent Coordinat- sects, even the maggots that would scav- ing Committee” (“Living History,” De- enge the corpses. At a sowing rate of two cember 22nd & 29th). Denby writes that to three pounds an acre, there is enough the two S.N.C.C. leaders are portrayed poison to kill every possum, rat, deer, bird, as “angry young men.” During the move- and insect. The crisis for our birds is ment, when I was twenty-one and Lewis caused not by pests but by a malevolent was twenty-two, we were roommates in blend of zealotry and greed. Atlanta. At the time, Forman, who was W. F. Benfield born in 1928, was like a father to me, as Martinborough, New Zealand he was to many people in the S.N.C.C. He may have been “angry,” but he was Kolbert’s excellent description of the just as old as Dr. King. Unfortunately, it’s chaos caused by mammalian species to almost impossible to reverse the mass birdlife notes the awareness that New false consciousness created by popular Zealanders have of their natural heri- films. The events depicted in “Selma” tage. She spent time on a mountaintop happened because of the incredible cour- reserve called Maungatautari, where al- age of Lewis and those who were with most eighty-five hundred acres have been him when he stood on the Edmund Pet- preserved inside a twenty-nine-mile tus Bridge, in a raincoat, confronting the fence. The establishment of that pro- police. Recently, I was with Representa- tected area, and the reintroduction of tive Lewis in his office when he held up many endangered bird species—such as an Associated Press photograph of him- the kiwi, the hihi, the takahe, and the self being beaten on Bloody Sunday by saddleback—was pioneered by a largely an Alabama state trooper. The helmeted volunteer organization of local landown- officer is pulling Lewis toward him as he ers and native Maori; there is also an raises his baton just before crashing it edu cational arm that draws students from down onto Lewis’s head. Lewis, who was as far as Auckland. The trust overseeing then hospitalized with a fractured skull, Sanctuary Mountain, as the preserve is told me, “I wish I had that raincoat.” now known, seeks to restore the area to Danny Lyon its pre-mankind status and return the Bernalillo, New Mexico birdlife to the morning chorus that early 1 settlers would have heard. When I was BLOODY BIOPHILIA there last year, I found that Maungatau- tari community leaders and activists took Elizabeth Kolbert, in her piece about great pride in their achievements toward eradicating invasive mammals, conveys thwarting species extinctions. the impression that the populace of New John T. Reid Zealand supports conservation by way President, American Friends of of the toxin 1080 (“The Big Kill,” De- Maungatautari cember 22nd & 29th). In fact, there is Millbrook, New York widespread concern about the activities of my country’s eco-gestapo. Invasive • creatures have allegedly caused damage, Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail but now hundreds of square miles of to [email protected]. Letters may be unspoiled wilderness are being spread edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to with poisoned bait. This is an incredibly the volume of correspondence we cannot reply profitable activity for the industry that to every letter or return letters. GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN JANUARY WEDNESDAY • THURSDAY • FRIDAY • SATURDAY • SUNDAY • MONDAY • TUESDAY 2015 14TH 15TH 16TH 17TH 18TH 19TH 20TH In 1956, Tomi Ungerer arrived in New York from his native Strasbourg with sixty dollars and a suitcase full of drawings. A year later, his illustrations were appearing in the Village Voice, Life, and Esquire, and THE THEATRE | art his first children’s book, about a family of daredevil pigs, was published by Harper & Row. Ungerer, who classical music is now eighty-three, has said, “My life has been a fairy tale—with all its monsters.” His storybooks forgo DANCE | NIGHT LIFE treacle in favor of darker narratives whose characters include a lonesome man in the moon, a trio of ABOVE & BEYOND robbers (pictured), and a German Teddy bear who is separated from his Jewish playmate during the Second World War. “All in One,” a retrospective of Ungerer’s work—with a room devoted to his erotica— movies | FOOD & DRINK opens this week at the Drawing Center, where the artist appears in conversation on Jan. 17. Illustration by Tomi Ungerer the THEATRE also notable aladdin New Amsterdam Beautiful—The Carole King Musical Stephen Sondheim The Book of Mormon Eugene O’Neill Cabaret Studio 54 Constellations Samuel J. Friedman The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Ethel Barrymore A Delicate Balance Golden Disgraced Lyceum The Elephant Man Booth Songs of himself A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder Taylor Mac constructs a musical portrait of America. Walter Kerr Hedwig and the Angry Inch Belasco in 1969, the esteemed scholar and biographer Francis Steegmuller published, in this If/Then magazine, a profile about Vander Clyde, a Texas-born performer who, as Barbette, a transvestite Richard Rodgers It’s Only a Play aerialist, was the toast of nineteen-twenties Paris. (You may remember him from Jean Cocteau’s Schoenfeld 1930 masterpiece, “The Blood of a Poet.”) Although decades separate Barbette from the The Last Ship glorious singer and performer Taylor Mac, I often think of Barbette when Mac’s name comes Neil Simon up, largely because I’m so moved by how much bravery and control they both put into their Matilda the Musical Shubert spirited transformations, and how free of rancor their various inventions are.

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