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 cul- tural 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.

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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.

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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 pub- lished 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. Mac, like Vander Les Misérables Clyde, uses his difference not as a club to hit the audience over the head but, rather, as an Imperial interesting point of reference. Motown: the Musical Lunt-Fontanne. Through Jan. 18. Mac, who was born in 1973 and raised in Stockton, California, can’t be described as a On the Town cabaret artist; his range is too big. In 2010, he won an Obie for his theatrical phantasmagoria Lyric “The Lily’s Revenge,” and in 2013 he turned it out with flawless vulnerability and technique The River in Foundry Theatre’s revival of Brecht’s “Good Person of Szechwan.” In short, Mac is a theatre Circle in the Square Rock Bottom artist through and through—no aspect of the stage is alien to him—but what I remember most Joe’s Pub when I think of him is his voice: his sweet singing, almost contralto at times, is as original as Rock of Ages anything else he does, and isn’t the artist’s voice what we look for when we go to the theatre? Helen Hayes. Through Jan. 18. At New York Live Arts, Jan. 13-25, as part of the Public’s Under the Radar Festival, Mac under the radar festival Public will perform a six-decade section (the nineteen-aughts through the nineteen-fifties) of his Wicked epic “24-Decade History of Popular Music,” wherein the artist traces changes in the national Gershwin attitude through a variety of songs, such as “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and “K-K-K-Katy.” You Can’t Take It with You With sets and costumes by the brilliant Machine Dazzle, Mac’s musical survey of the country Longacre that made him and others like him is offered in the spirit Whitman had in mind when he said that he heard America singing. —Hilton Als

6 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 ILLUSTRATION BY JONNY RUZZO IOLANTAPETER TCHAIKOVSKY / BÉLA / BARTÓK Openings and Previews The Woodsman A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks Created by James Ortiz and Strangemen & Co., of the Greatest of the Great Lakes this play tells a story about the Tin Man from BLUEBEARD ’S Kate Benson wrote this play, presented by New “The Wizard of Oz,” the woman he loves, and Georges in association with Women’s Project the witch who tries to keep them apart. The pro- CASTLE Theatre, about the lively dynamics during one duction, which premièred last year, has music by family’s Thanksgiving dinner. Lee Sunday Evans Edward W. Hardy and lyrics by Jennifer Loring. directs. In previews. Opens Jan. 15. (City Center Ortiz and Claire Karpen direct. In previews. Opens JAN 26, 29 Stage II, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212.) Jan. 18. (59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200.) FEB 3, 7, 10, 14 mat, 18, 21 3 Between Riverside and Crazy Austin Pendleton directs the play by Stephen Now Playing IOLANTA Adly Guirgis, which premièred at Atlantic Theatre Dying for It A beautiful Company last August, about a widower trying to Moira Buffini’s 2007 adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s blind princess hidden hold on to his valuable rent-controlled apartment 1928 play “The Suicide”—it was never produced on the Upper West Side. Most of the original in Stalinist Russia, and the author was exiled to from the world by her cast, including Stephen McKinley Henderson, Siberia—begins on a dark, cold night more than Elizabeth Canavan, and Liza Colón-Zayas, re- a decade after the Revolution. Semyon (Joey domineering father. turns. Previews begin Jan. 16. (Second Stage, 305 Slotnik, a comically bewildered, buffeted, and W. 43rd St. 212-246-4422.) blustery Everyman) is guilty, angry, defensive, and BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE desperate because of his inability to provide for Film Chinois his family. His vain talk of ending it all catches A new wife blind to Pan Asian Repertory presents a noir drama by the attention of neighbors and acquaintances, each the dark secrets of her the Singaporean playwright Damon Chua, set in of whom—the intellectual, the priest, the wheeler- Peking in 1947, in which an American operative dealer, the writer, the whore—has a personal murderous husband. gets involved with a mysterious Chinese woman and ideological agenda in encouraging Semyon’s and a Belgian ambassador. Previews begin Jan. 17. suicide. Neil Pepe directs the large, skilled (Beckett, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200.) company with aplomb, finding appropriate levels Don’t miss the Met’s of foolishness and hysteria for each character. powerful new double bill. Hamilton But there’s more than just farce; there’s also Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote this musical about suspense, pathos, warmth, and nobility. A party Alexander Hamilton, in which the birth of Amer- scene that opens the second act, which includes ica is presented as an immigrant story. Thomas terrific music by a violinist and an accordionist, Kail directs. Previews begin Jan. 20. (Public, 425 is particularly fluid, by turns boisterous, uplifting, Lafayette St. 212-967-7555.) and sobering. (Atlantic Theatre Company, 336 W. 20th St. 866-811-4111. Through Jan. 18.) Honeymoon in Vegas Tony Danza, Rob McClure, and Brynn O’Mal- The Miser ley star in Andrew Bergman and Jason Robert The walls of a third-floor salon in Park Slope’s Brown’s new musical, based on the 1992 movie. Grand Prospect Hall are so bedecked in cornices Gary Griffin directs. In previews. Opens Jan. 15. and valances, ornate moldings and gilded trim, it’s (Nederlander, 208 W. 41st St. 866-870-2717.) a wonder they stand up at all. The opulent setting frames a more modest endeavor: a bare-bones I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard revival of Molière’s 1668 farce by the site-specific Trip Cullman directs the world première of a play company Brave New World. The audience sits by Halley Feiffer, about a young actress seeking on ballroom chairs arrayed around a dance floor, the approval of her father, a famous playwright. watching two kids (Marshall York and Catherine In previews. Opens Jan. 20. (Atlantic Stage 2, at Mancuso) conspire against their penny-pinching 330 W. 16th St. 866-811-4111.) pop (Ezra Barnes). The director, Alice Reagan, updates the tone and the look—Converse, formal Into the Woods shorts—to the Brooklyn of today. But the script, a Roundabout Theatre Company presents Fiasco 1987 translation by Albert Bermel, doesn’t feel all Theatre’s unplugged version of the 1987 musical by that contemporary. (When’s the last time anyone Stephen Sondheim, with a book by James Lapine, shouted “So much for your delicate fops!” at a featuring eleven actors and one piano. Directed preening hipster?) A comedy of haves, have-nots, CONDUCTED BY by Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld. In previews. and desperately-scheming-to-haves performed with VALERY GERGIEV (Laura Pels, 111 W. 46th St. 212-719-1300.) such good will ought to soar. Instead it stagnates. (263 Prospect Ave., Brooklyn. 212-352-3101.) STARRING A Month in the Country Taylor Schilling, Peter Dinklage, Anthony Edwards, Winners and Losers ANNA NETREBKO Annabella Sciorra, and Elizabeth Franz star in Ivan James Long and Marcus Youssef, two fidgety, PIOTR BECZALA Turgenev’s comedy from 1855, in which a woman fortyish Vancouver-based writer-performers, sit falls in love with the tutor she has hired for her across from each other at a spare wooden table. NADJA MICHAEL son. Erica Schmidt directs. In previews. (Classic They’re playing a made-up game in which some- MIKHAIL PETRENKO Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St. 866-811-4111.) one brings up a person or an entity—Stephen Hawking, Mexico, their respective fathers—and Shesh Yak they declare it a “winner” or a “loser.” It’s only a Rattlestick presents a play by the Syrian-British matter of time before each man is subjected to playwright Laith Nakli, directed by Bruce Mc- the same stark assessment, but only after they’ve Carty, about a meeting between a Syrian-American worked out some aggression through Ping-Pong writer and a leader in the Syrian anti-government and wrestling. The chatty, semi-improvised piece, movement. Previews begin Jan. 15. (224 Waverly directed by Chris Abraham, inevitably cross-fades Pl. 866-811-4111.) into something more wounding, as Long and Youssef stack up their achievements, parenting The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet skills, bank statements, and class privilege, in a sly Shakespeare in the Square presents the romantic theatrical microcosm of how people (particularly metopera.org drama at the Gym at Judson. In previews. Opens men reaching middle age) compete. (SoHo Rep, Jan. 18. (243 Thompson St. 718-790-3081.) 46 Walker St. 212-352-3101.) 212.362.6000 LISTEN TO METROPOLITAN OPERA RADIO 24/7 ON Photo: Andrea Kremper/Baden-Baden Festspielhaus Kremper/Baden-Baden Photo: Andrea ART

Museums Short List Museums and Libraries Metropolitan Museum a deus-ex-machina fruit delivery—in geously cloudy mirrors. Composite “Madame Cézanne.” Metropolitan Museum which Maoist propagandists denounce photographs of billowing smoke, Through March 15. “The Winchester Bible: A a university professor as an enemy of transferred to reflective glass, have Museum of Modern Art Masterpiece of Medieval Art” the state. Through April 26. been tinted petal pink or storm-cloud “Robert Gober: The Heart Is Commissioned by a grandson of 3 gray. Here and there, the image is Not a Metaphor.” William the Conqueror and completed wiped away, like condensation from Through Jan. 18. around 1200, this hulking manuscript, Galleries—Uptown a window, leaving space for viewers MOMA PS1 rich with gold and lapis lazuli, is on Ruven Afanador to see themselves amid the frilly “Zero Tolerance.” loan while Winchester Cathedral The photographer, a contributor abstraction. Goldschmied & Chiari Through March 8. undergoes renovations. On a recent to this magazine, follows up his call the series “Untitled Portraits,” Guggenheim Museum visit, the Bible was open to the first spectacular portraits of female and invite our fleeting collabora- “V. S. Gaitonde: Painting as page of Genesis, whose big illuminated flamenco performers, from 2009, tion. Although the rosy tone can Process, Painting as Life.” “I” features seven roundels depicting with an even more flamboyant be cloying, the work is seductive Through Feb. 11. Eve’s creation, Noah’s ark, and the series on their male counterparts. and mysterious, like a good magic Brooklyn Museum Last Judgment, among other scenes. Staged outdoors, under the hot act. Through Jan. 25. (Lorello, 195 “Killer Heels: The Art of the The manuscript is paired with con- Andalusian sun, these high-contrast Chrystie St. 212-614-7057.) High-Heeled Shoe.” temporary artifacts from the critical black-and-white pictures combine the Through Feb. 15. period between the Romanesque and graphic impact of Toulouse-Lautrec Laura Poitras American Museum of the Gothic: reliquaries, a drinking cup, posters with the audacious humor The Berlin-based filmmaker has long Natural History and a liturgical comb made of ivory of Pedro Almodóvar. Using masks, kept one foot in the art world, and “Nature’s Fury: The Science of and portraying Thomas à Becket. wigs, cross-dressing, and nudity, this showcase offers a chance to see Natural Disasters.” Also on view is the Bible’s frontis- Afanador simultaneously celebrates two feature-length documentaries Through Aug. 9. piece, now in the Morgan Library’s and subverts hypermasculinity in that, with “Citizen Four,” her film Morgan Library & Museum collection, in which a boyish David outrageous pictures that are as erotic about Edward Snowden (now in “The Untamed Landscape: slays Goliath with a sword as big as as they are hilarious. Through Feb. theatres), form a loose trilogy. In Théodore Rousseau and the he is. Through March 9. 28. (Throckmorton, 145 E. 57th St. “My Country, My Country,” the Path to Barbizon.” Through Jan. 18. 212-223-1059.) Iraqi occupation is seen through the Museum of Modern Art 3 eyes of a doctor; after completing New Museum “Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs” it, in 2006, Poitras ended up on the “Chris Ofili: Night and Day.” Galleries—Chelsea Through Feb. 1. This exhibition will give you as much Homeland Security watchlist. Even aesthetic pleasure as you can stand “The Thing and the better is “The Oath,” from 2010, Studio Museum in Harlem and then some. When Matisse is at Thing-in-Itself” which juxtaposes the Guantánamo “Kianja Strobert: Of This Day in Time.” Through March 8. his best, the exquisite frictions of Organized by the art historian trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver his color, his line, and his pictorial Robert Hobbs, and saddled with a and long, discursive conversations invention overwhelm perception, at Kant-quoting title, this big-ticket with a former Al Qaeda militant galleries Short List which point enjoyment sputters into show features seven significant in Yemen, now working as a cab- Chelsea awe. That effect recurs with startling works whose force derives from the driver and happy to drink Western Yael Bartana efficiency in the major works of his tension between sense perception soda pop, which his friends call Petzel late period before his death, in 1954, and intellect. The earliest inclusion “the product of infidels.” One 456 W. 18th St. 212-680-9467. at the age of eighty-four. Scissoring is a Marcel Duchamp Readymade, of Poitras’s greatest strengths is Through Feb. 14. shapes from gouache-painted paper his 1916 steel comb (actually, a later her recognition that the tangle of “Looking Back: Selected by and directing assistants who pinned replica), which was conceived as an contemporary geopolitics is to some Cleopatra’s” them into compositions over and antidote to what the artist derided degree unresolvable. Through Feb. White Columns 320 W. 13th St. 212-924-4212. over, until they were right, was the as “retinal” art. A 1954 black painting 15. (Artists Space, 38 Greene St. Opens Jan. 13. expedient of a genius. Through Feb. 18. by Ad Reinhardt, too often consid- 212-226-3970.) ered an end-of-painting exercise, “No Entrance, No Exit: Anna K.E., Aline Tenser, China Institute offers profound visual pleasure, “The Actual” Viola Yesiltac” “Mao’s Golden Mangoes and opening up the longer you look at Beauty isn’t necessarily a priority for The Kitchen the Cultural Revolution” it, to reveal a cross in deep space. photographers working in process- 512 W. 19th St. 212-255-5793. In 1968, Mao Zedong received a The show skids a bit after that, in driven abstraction these days, but it’s Opens Jan. 13. case of mangoes from a Pakistani works from the sixties, including a one of the attractions in this smart Downtown diplomat and gave it to student rebels fine Magritte painting of a painter, show of work by six contemporaries. Jon Kessler at Tsinghua University. The students Yoko Ono’s video feed of the sky, Even the most restrained pieces here Salon 94 Freemans then distributed the fruit to factory and a text piece by Joseph Kosuth. pulse with energy, including John 1 Freeman Alley. 212-529-7400. workers, and soon mango fever had It starts to feel as though any work Houck’s sharply creased prints and Opens Jan. 15. swept the People’s Republic, with bearing on both eye and brain might Jason Kalogiros’s gridded photograms. “The Left Front: Radical Art in the tropical fruit held aloft at rallies have been included, and as though Miranda Lichtenstein and Sara Cwy- the ‘Red Decade’ 1929-1940” alongside the Little Red Book. In the application of Kantian dualism nar make a much bigger splash with Grey Art Gallery this fascinating exhibition, medals to art is outdated. Through Jan. 24. layered pictures loosely grounded in 100 Washington Sq. E. portraying the Great Helmsman embel- (Rosen, 525 W. 24th St. 212-627-6000.) representation. Marsha Cottrell con- 212-998-6780. Opens Jan. 13. lished with mangoes appear alongside 3 structs intriguing quasi-architectural cheap porcelain trays, papier-mâché spaces, and Jessica Eaton abandons her “Tomi Ungerer: All in One” mangoes, and printed cotton quilts. Galleries—Downtown usual strict geometries for gorgeous The Drawing Center 35 Wooster St. 212-219-2166. All this may sound awfully kitsch, Goldschmied & Chiari images of what looks like torn paper, Opens Jan. 16. but the Cultural Revolution was no Sara Goldschmied and Eleonora glowing in outer space. Through Feb. laughing matter, as we’re reminded by Chiari, collaborators based in Italy 15. (Eleven Rivington, 11 Rivington a gripping 1976 film—which ends with since 2001, show a group of gor- St. 212-982-1930.)

8 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 Russian Chamber Chorus at 7:30. For information about free of New York tickets, visit argentomusic.org.) Nikolai Kachanov celebrates three decades with his excellent ensem- American Modern Ensemble: ble, which regularly offers rare but “String Theory” worthy Slavic works. This concert’s The group’s enterprising musicians highlights include selections from have a new home at SubCulture, the Rachmaninoff’s soulful “Liturgy of budding lower-Manhattan music St. John Chrysostom” and a piece club. In this concert, its members classical MUSIC of more recent vintage, “Senseless team up with three outstanding War,” by the eminent Georgian modern-minded string quartets— composer Giya Kancheli. (Holy JACK, the Del Sol Quartet, and Trinity Lutheran Church, Central PUBLIQuartet—for an evening Park W. at 65th St. Jan. 15 at 8. featuring new music by Jacob rccny.org. Note: The performance Bancks, Sidney Boquiren, and will be repeated at Brick Presbyterian Robert Patterson, as well as works Church on Jan. 18.) by the established masters Chinary Opera a touch too dependent on visual Ung, John Zorn (“The Dead Man”), Metropolitan Opera razzle-dazzle, but it is nonetheless Orchestra of St. Luke’s and John Luther Adams (“Dream The Met has replaced the complex a vigorous and inventive attempt to Harry Bicket, the British maestro in White on White,” conducted by Continental charm of Tim Albery’s grapple with Offenbach’s eternally who has led many a fine night at the David Delta Gier). (45 Bleecker St. 2000 production of “The Merry problematic opera, an admixture Met, guest-conducts the renowned subculturenewyork.com. Jan. 15 at 8.) Widow” with the high-stepping, of divine genius and mere profes- freelance orchestra in a program all-American good cheer of the sionalism. Its première offered a far from his usual Baroque realm: Ecstatic Music Festival choreographer and director Susan golden opportunity for the Maltese Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,” Dvořák’s The Kaufman Music Center has Stroman’s new version, which tenor Joseph Calleja to reach a new Piano Concerto (with the always reëstablished some of its brand vigor opened on New Year’s Eve. Stro- level of artistry; the excellent and persuasive Stephen Hough), and by organizing this festival of new man’s transformation succeeds most ambitious Vittorio Grigolo takes Haydn’s Symphony No. 104, “Lon- music, now in its fifth year, from with those who are best suited to the title role, with Kate Lindsey don.” (Carnegie Hall. 212-247-7800. the contemporary-classical sphere it: the Broadway star Kelli O’Hara as Nicklausse, Thomas Hampson as Jan. 15 at 8.) and far beyond. This free kickoff (in a solid Met début), in the role the Four Villains, and Erin Morley, event is a collaboration between of Valencienne; the suave and Hibla Gerzmava, and Christine Budapest Festival Orchestra the progressive-rock guitarist Ian versatile baritone Nathan Gunn, Rice as the objects of Hoffmann’s In the first of two concerts, Iván Williams (of Battles) and the as Danilo; the venerable Thomas doomed affections; Yves Abel. (Jan. Fischer’s galvanic ensemble returns exciting young ensemble Mantra Allen, as winning as ever in the 16 at 7:30.) (Metropolitan Opera to the city with a typically piquant Percussion. (Brookfield Place Winter buffo role of Baron Zeta; and, House. 212-362-6000.) program: orchestrations of three Garden, 220 Vesey St. Jan. 15 at 8. not least, a captivating troupe of songs by Fanny Mendelssohn (with No tickets required.) singing, dancing Grisettes. Renée “Mariinsky at BAM”: the soprano Anna Lucia Richter), Fleming, the leading lady, is not a “The Enchanted Wanderer” the songful Violin Concerto by her Marilyn Horne Song natural in the operetta idiom, but This deeply Russian work, with brother Felix (with Isabelle Faust), and Celebration her hard work and innate glamour music and a libretto (adapted Brahms’s mysterious and compelling The revered singer’s annual festival eventually win the day; Andrew from a novel by Nikolai Leskov) Third Symphony. (Avery Fisher Hall. at Carnegie Hall concludes with a Davis’s fluttery conducting, however, by Rodion Shchedrin, the reigning 212-721-6500. Jan. 18 at 3.) concert featuring not only several of prevents Lehár’s melodies—some master craftsman of Russian music, 3 her protégés but also special appear- of Vienna’s finest—from achieving was commissioned, surprisingly, by ances by the mezzo-soprano Susan their proper bloom. (Jan. 17 at 1 Lorin Maazel and the New York Recitals Graham and the pianist Brian Zeger; and Jan. 20 at 7:30. Paul Nadler Philharmonic, who premièred it Juilliard and New York songs by Ravel, Schoenberg, Schubert replaces Davis in the second per- in 2002. Valery Gergiev conducts Festival of Song: “Great (selections from “Schwanengesang”), formance.) • Also playing: Willy a fully staged version for one night American Songwriting Poulenc, and Pauline Viardot are on Decker’s bracing modern-style only, as the opening flourish of his Teams” the program. (Zankel Hall. 212-247- Salzburg Festival production of “La two-week festival at BAM’s Howard The festival’s annual collaboration with 7800. Jan. 17 at 7:30.) Traviata”—visually dominated by a Gilman Opera House, the rest of Juilliard’s vocal department focusses massive clock and by the lurid red which will be devoted to ballet. this year on masters of the American Music at the Frick Collection: dress of the title character—made Alexei Stepanyuk directs; Sergei Songbook, presenting songs, both Ruby Hughes waves when it arrived at the Met, Aleksashkin, Andrei Popov, and famous and obscure, by such starry The distinguished accompanist in 2010. Now a known quantity, Kristina Kapustinskaya sing the pairs as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Julius Drake partners with the it can serve as a vehicle for rising leading roles. (30 Lafayette Ave., Rodgers and Hart, Kander and Ebb, up-and-coming British soprano stars. This revival features Sonya Brooklyn. bam.org. Jan. 14 at 7:30.) and the Gershwins. Steven Blier, in her New York début, a concert Yoncheva (who recently made a fine 3 once again, is the lead pianist and offering favorite songs by Schubert, role début as Mimì at the house) and compère. (Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, Mahler (the “Rückert-Lieder”), Francesco Demuro as Violetta and Orchestras and Choruses Juilliard School, Lincoln Center. Jan. Debussy (“Chansons de Bilitis”), Alfredo, with Quinn Kelsey in the New York Philharmonic 14 at 8. Free tickets are available at Ravel, and Britten. (1 E. 70th St. role of Germont; Marco Armiliato. The Verdi Requiem, a vivid, almost events.juilliard.edu.) frick.org. Jan. 18 at 5.) (Alexei Markov replaces Kelsey terrifying soundscape of enormous in the second performance.) (Jan. proportions, is a test for any con- Argento Chamber Ensemble: Nate Wooley: 14 at 7:30 and Jan. 17 at 8.) • The ductor. Alan Gilbert steps to the “Mahler in New York” “For Kenneth Gaburo” beloved Zeffirelli production of “La podium to meet the challenge this Michel Galante’s hardy modernist The dynamic young trumpeter and Bohème” makes its latest outing week; the four soloists, all superb, group offers its next concert in the composer, who has created his own under the baton of Riccardo Frizza; include Angela Meade and Bran- tony Board of Officers Room at the space between experimental classical the soprano Kristine Opolais, a don Jovanovich (who met a great Park Avenue Armory: an evening and jazz, presents his latest project, newly minted Met star, is Mimì, challenge of his own last fall, in the pairing Schoenberg’s chamber ar- a piece for solo trumpet and elec- heading a cast that also features Met’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”), rangement of Mahler’s “Das Lied tronics (written in homage to the Marina Rebeka, Jean-François Borras, in their Philharmonic débuts, and von der Erde” (featuring the vocal pathbreaking American composer and Mariusz Kwiecien in the other the returning Lilli Paasikivi and soloists Jennifer Beattie and James and sound researcher) that explores leading roles. (Jan. 15 and Jan. 19 at Eric Owens. With the New York Benjamin Rodgers) with new works the relationship between phonetic 7:30.) • Bartlett Sher’s production of Choral Artists. (Avery Fisher Hall. in the spirit of Mahler by the very sounds and mechanically reproduced “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” may be 212-875-5656. Jan. 15-16 at 7:30 and gifted Oliver Schneller and Jesse sonorities. (Wild Project, 195 E. 3rd a little overstuffed with ideas and Jan. 17 at 8.) Jones. (Park Ave. at 66th St. Jan. 15 St. avantmedia.org. Jan. 19 at 8.)

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 9 skill and stylishness. The result, alas, is often over- Mariinsky Ballet burdened and underinspired. “BeginAgain” (part The fabled company, based in St. Petersburg, of P.S. 122’s COIL Festival) abounds in mirror returns to New York for the first time since 2011. images. Amid a set that juxtaposes neon and soil, The three programs range from the inevitable two twinlike women engage in parallel solos with “Swan Lake” (Jan. 15-16 and Jan. 21-23) to a a mixture of awkwardness and precision that recalls zany, modernist take on Prokofiev’s “Cinderella” the work of Ohad Naharin. (Baryshnikov Arts by Alexei Ratmansky (Jan. 17-20). The third DANCE Center, 450 W. 37th St. 866-811-4111. Jan. 14-16.) program (Jan. 24-25) comprises three ballets set to music by Chopin: the moonlit reverie “Chopin- American Realness Festival iana,” created by Michel Fokine in 1908; Jerome Often insular and cliquish, this festival has become Robbins’s “In the Night”; and a recent work by Royal Danish Ballet: Principals New York’s preëminent sampler of boundary-pushing Benjamin Millepied, “Without.” As always, the and Soloists performance bordering on dance. In the second main attraction is the company’s exquisite lineup Fourteen dancers from the world’s third-oldest week, Jeremy Wade débuts a lecture-performance of ballerinas, including Diana Vishneva, Yekaterina troupe come to the Joyce with a program of celebrating death, and Jack Ferver and Reid Bartelme Kondaurova (a.k.a. Big Red), Viktoria Tereshkina, buoyant, delicate, difficult ballets by the Danish introduce a tête-à-tête about friendship and suicide. and Ulyana Lopatkina (a national icon)—not to choreographer August Bournonville. The pas Tere O’Connor investigates repressed sexuality, with mention the impeccable corps de ballet, who de deux from “Flower Festival in Genzano” is “Undersweet,” and Miguel Gutierrez presents the transform the lakeside acts of “Swan Lake” into a bashful and lighthearted, requiring quicksilver second part of his mid-career meditation, “Age & dreamlike elegy. (BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera footwork. The dances from Act III of “Napoli” Beauty.” Neal Medlyn closes the proceedings with House, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. overflow with steps and artful groupings. The all seven installments of his series of freewheeling Through Jan. 25.) second act of “La Sylphide”—Bournonville’s most fantasias on pop stars, from Lionel Richie to Miley famous ballet—exemplifies the lightness of the Cyrus to Michael Jackson. (Abrons Arts Center, “Works & Process” / Miami City Ballet: Romantic-era ballerina, while also allowing space 466 Grand St. 212-352-3101. Jan. 14-18.) Justin Peck and Shepard Fairey for detailed mime. The dancers here include up- The choreographic whiz kid Justin Peck previews and-comers like Sebastian Haynes, established Alexandra Bachzetsis his new work for the Miami City Ballet, a collab- principals like Amy Watson (trained in the U.S.), For her United States début (part of the COIL oration with the graphic designer Shepard Fairey. the whisper-light Gudrun Bojesen, and the veteran Festival), the Swiss choreographer presents “From “Heatscape,” which premières in March, is Peck’s dance-actress Sorella Englund. (175 Eighth Ave., A to B via C,” a postmodern riff on Velázquez’s second foray into the music of the Czech composer at 19th St. 212-242-0800. Jan. 13-18.) painting “Venus at Her Mirror.” Three performers, Bohuslav Martinů. Dancers from the Miami troupe sometimes nude, sometimes in bodysuits printed will perform excerpts, and Peck and Lourdes Lopez Zoe | Juniper with anatomy illustrations, use one another as studio (the troupe’s artistic director)—joined on Jan. 18 This Seattle-based team, led by the choreographer mirrors, blurring ideas of authorship, autonomy, by Fairey—will discuss the genesis of the work. Zoe Scofield and the video artist Juniper Shuey, and authenticity. (Swiss Institute, 18 Wooster St. (Guggenheim Museum, Fifth Ave. at 89th St. combines dance and technology with uncommon 212-925-2035. Jan. 14.) 212-423-3575. Jan. 18-19.)

NIGHT LIFE

Rock and Pop full-length album, “Dum-Dum,” whose release The outfit, which delivers bluegrass-infused folk Musicians and night-club proprietors lead date, in 1989, came a week after the couple’s pop, has Beggins and Wilson sharing the mike, complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in advance breakup. Though the pair never left the U.K. but Wilson (who is also a violinist) steals the to confirm engagements. during their short career, their impeccably show with her jazzy soprano. “Pillow Talk,” the crafted songs and yearning harmonies caught act’s self-released 2011 début album, generated Savages the ear of Kurt Cobain, who championed Kelly some hype on music blogs and attracted the There is something undeniably powerful about and McKee as his “favorite songwriters,” named attention of Ben Kweller, who produced the this London group, which leaves no doubt about his daughter, Frances Bean, after McKee, and band’s follow-up album, “The Runaround.” its name. The all-female band’s rapid, abrasive famously had Nirvana cover three of their (Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 N. 6th St., guitar playing and caustic rhythm section pro- songs. During the next two decades, Kelly and Brooklyn. 718-486-5400. Jan. 17.) vide an artful and often brutal backdrop to the McKee each led different bands, and, while anthemlike vocals, which are delivered with the occasionally reuniting for one-offs, they did not Zlatne Uste Golden Festival speed of punk rock and the solemnity of hymns. re-form the Vaselines until 2006. Four years after The annual gathering, a joyous celebration of Savages’ début album, “Silence Yourself,” which that, they released a sophisticated, racy album orthodox and heterodox Balkan-inflected music, came out in 2013, is a grim and energetic blast, called “Sex with an X,” whose catchy brilliance marks its thirtieth anniversary. This year’s festival, and now the group is bringing new music to a slew has now been surpassed by their latest record, taking place at the ornate Grand Prospect Hall, in of intimate clubs, providing a rare opportunity “V for Vaselines.” Consciously channelling the Brooklyn’s South Slope, features more than sixty to see them up close. (Jan. 12, Jan. 19, and Jan. Ramones’ belief in the power of simplicity, the acts, from the octogenarian Armenian-American 26: Baby’s All Right, 146 Broadway, Brooklyn. pair delivers raucous songs (and the occasional woodwind player Souren Baronian, who melds Jan. 14, Jan. 21, and Jan. 28: Mercury Lounge, ballad) that are by turns innocent, passionate, and jazz and Turkish music, to the euphoric brass 217 E. Houston St. Jan. 17, Jan. 24, and Jan. 31: funny. (The Bell House, 149 7th St., Brooklyn. band Čoček Nation, whose members range in age Saint Vitus, 1120 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn. 718-643-6510. Jan. 16.) from nine to twenty-five. Traditionalist highlights savagesband.com.) include an appearance by the Montreal-based Wild Child Moldavian accordion virtuoso Sergiu Popa and The Vaselines Alexander Beggins and Kelsey Wilson, the sets by the Kolev family, from Bulgaria, who are Like a shooting star, the first iteration of this act primary songwriters in this Austin-based en- led by Nikolay Kolev—a master of the gadulka flashed across the pop sky briefly and brilliantly semble, began collaborating a few years ago as (a bowed, lutelike instrument)—and his equally more than a quarter century ago. The Glasgow members of the backing band on tour with the gifted wife, Donka, on vocals. Two frenetic local singer-songwriters (and, at the time, lovers) Danish songwriter Bjarke Bendtsen, a.k.a. the staples, Slavic Soul Party! and Zlatne Uste Brass Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee formed the Migrant. Once off the road, the pair called on Band (the festival’s producers), will also perform. duo in 1986, and recorded two singles and one some local musicians and formed Wild Child. (263 Prospect Ave. goldenfest.org. Jan. 16-17.)

10 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 Jazz and Standards Cheyenne Jackson Omer Avital Making his Café Carlyle début, the likable The bassist Avital, an Israeli expat with a deeply television and stage personality presents “Eyes physical approach to his instrument, was one Wide Open,” a rumination on the vicissitudes of the key figures in the new wave of jazz that of romance, as expressed through songs by emerged during the early nineties. He’s still an Louis Armstrong, Lady Gaga, and other artists. integral presence on the local scene, and his There will be something for everyone. (Carlyle most recent album, “New Song,” draws on the Hotel, Madison Ave. at 76th St. 212-744-1600. musical traditions of his parents’ Yemenite and Jan. 13-24.) Moroccan heritage. (Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St. 212-576-2232. Jan. 13-14.) René Urtreger In December of 1957, Miles Davis headed to Paris Gilad Hekselman and Stranahan/Zaleski/ to work on the soundtrack for the Louis Malle film Rosato “Elevator to the Gallows.” His pianist for the now Although the drummer Colin Stranahan, the pianist classic session was Urtreger, a local bebop stylist Glenn Zaleski, and the bassist Rick Rosato are who acquitted himself with distinction. Rarely seen becoming familiar names through their individual in America, Urtreger remains a supple performer appearances as sidemen with contemporary band- who is fluent in a variety of jazz idioms. He will leaders, the three are at their best as a collective be supported by a French rhythm section. The trio, as heard on their impressive 2014 sophomore French expatriate pianist Jean Michel-Pilc opens. release, “Limitless.” On Jan. 17, they provide support (Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Broadway at 60th St. for the Israeli guitar virtuoso Hekselman. (Cornelia 212-258-9595. Jan. 14.) Street Café, 29 Cornelia St. 212-989-9319.) “When You Wish Upon a Star” Fred Hersch Trio + 2 No component of American music is off limits The magisterial pianist Hersch leads one of the to the innovative guitarist Bill Frisell, who, in great trios of the moment, but he also enjoys this program, reshapes classic songs associated mixing it up now and then, often with joyous with film and television. He’ll be joined by, results. His regulars—the bassist John Héber and among others, the singer Petra Haden (with the drummer Eric McPherson—will be on hand whom Frisell recorded a celebrated duo album at the Village Vanguard, joined by two inventive in 2003), the violist Eyvind Kang, the bassist horn men, the saxophonist Mark Turner and the Thomas Morgan, and the drummer Rudy trumpeter Ralph Alessi, both of whom have long Royston, all fellow-eclectics. (Appel Room, and fruitful associations with Hersch. (178 Seventh Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th St. Ave. S., at 11th St. 212-255-4037. Jan. 13-18.) 212-721-6500. Jan. 16-17.)

above beyond

Monster Energy Buck Off at the Garden Readings and Talks For the ninth year in a row, Madison Square Garden McNally Jackson Books is transformed, as 1.5 million pounds of dirt covers the The New Yorker’s poetry editor, Paul Muldoon, floor that typically hosts Rangers and Knicks games this celebrates the publication of his own new collec- time of year. As part of the Built Ford Tough Series, tion, “One Thousand Things Worth Knowing.” the top thirty-five athletes of the Professional Bull (52 Prince St. No tickets necessary. Jan. 14 at 7.) Riders try to wrangle eight seconds of perilous glory. The three-time event winner J. B. Mauney returns Intelligence Squared U.S. for a chance to defend his title, in the company of This series of live Oxford-style debates presents other veteran riders, including his fellow-champions the topic “Amazon Is the Reader’s Friend.” The Silvano Alves, Renato Nunes, Kody Lostroh, Guil- author and self-publishing pioneer Joe Konrath herme Marchi, and Mike Lee. (pbr.com. Jan. 16-18.) and Matthew Yglesias, the executive editor of Vox, will argue for the idea. Franklin Foer, the former “Round-Up” editor of The New Republic, and the writer Scott A few days later, an artistic type of rodeo pops Turow will argue against it. (Kaufman Center, up in (where else?) Brooklyn. The whispery 129 W. 67th St. Jan. 15 at 6:45, with a reception singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens expertly conjures starting an hour earlier. For more information, America through mood. He has written a few visit iq2us.org.) albums about particular states and one about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and his latest project, Mark Strand Memorial commissioned by BAM, concerns the rodeo. The The U.S. Poets Laureate Charles Simic and Charles film “Round-Up,” for which Stevens wrote the music, Wright, the actor Mary-Louise Parker, the painter features slow-motion footage shot by the brothers William H. Bailey, the composer and pianist John Aaron and Alex Craig at the Pendleton Round-Up, Musto, the playwright John Guare, the novelist in Oregon, one of the world’s most famous rodeos. Francine Prose, and others pay tribute to the Expect artful scenes of grand parades, bronco and former U.S. Poet Laureate and chancellor of the bull riding, barrel racing, and Native American Academy of American Poets, who died this past traditions. Stevens provides live accompaniment November. Strand’s family will host the evening. for these screenings, with the quartet Yarn/Wire (The auditorium at the American Academy of on keyboards and percussion. (Harvey Theatre, Arts and Letters, 632 W. 156th St. No tickets 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. Jan. 20-25.) necessary. Jan. 18 at 5.)

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 11 MOVIES

camera perched high above pushcarts in the teeming neighborhood, Griffith films West, in costume, jostling on Rivington Street amid a throng of passersby, some of whom stare curiously into the lens. When the action shifts to the farm, Griffith elaborates his reactionary philosophy along with his daring artistry. As the young woman faces the probing policeman while fetching water from a well, the rope attached to the bucket looms behind her head, appearing as if tied around her neck. Her courtship by the farm boy of Christian charity plays like an updated “Merchant of Venice,” with its depiction of a Jewish girl’s redemption through marriage to a Gentile. In Griffith’s vision, deliverance for a child of the ghetto is in leaving the cramped tenements, the depraved city, and her alien heritage for the American heartland and mainstream. The German director Ernst Lubitsch, who was Jewish, left Berlin for good in 1922 to expand his horizons in Hollywood. There, he quickly became the master of a new genre, the sophisticated sex comedy, as seen in “Three Women,” from 1924 (screening on Jan. 18). It was Lubitsch’s third American film but his first to be set in the United States—specifically, Dorothy West plays a Lower East Side orphan in D. W. Griffith’s “A Child of the Ghetto,” from 1910. on Park Avenue, where a dissolute financial speculator sets his sights on Babel on the Hudson a wealthy widow in order to replenish his fortune. But, when the woman’s Silent masterworks at the New York Jewish Film Festival. daughter comes home from college, the suave seducer turns his attention to this year’s new york jewish Film Festival, running Jan. 14-29 at Film Society of her instead. The action begins at a Jazz Lincoln Center, offers welcome restorations of several rare silent classics. D. W. Griffith’s Age revel worthy of Gatsby: a posh “A Child of the Ghetto,” made in 1910, just two years into his directorial career, displays and wild party where the financier a playfully innovative movie technique. (The film screens on Jan. 24.) The ghetto of the hunts his potential romantic prey with title is New York’s Lower East Side; the “child” is an unnamed, newly orphaned Jewish a discerning gaze at their jewels. As adolescent (Dorothy West) who takes in piecework for a garment factory. Falsely accused the self-interested roué’s plan kicks of stealing by her boss, and hotly pursued by the police, she ends up in the countryside, into high gear, the cynical comedy where the grown son of a farm family finds her and takes her in. Her hard-won new darkens to operatic drawing-room tranquillity is threatened, however, by a chance visit from a city policeman. melodrama, but Lubitsch anchors Griffith packs a remarkable density of incident and emotion into a mere sixteen the resulting violence with a piercing, minutes. He delights in audacious editing effects—such as a jump cut, from the girl’s subtle intimacy. arrival at home to her efforts at needlework—and surprising visual compositions. With a —Richard Brody

12 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE RIFKIN Now Playing donnish, and his task is to crack the wild: a good match for the roughness Opening American Sniper codes—supposedly impregnable—that of our hero. He is a hard drinker, but Appropriate Behavior Clint Eastwood’s new film is a devas- are being used to encrypt German no one here drinks softly—not the Desiree Akhavan directed tating pro-war movie and a devastating communications. Fifty years ago, cops, not the visiting lawyer from and stars in this comic drama, about an Iranian-American antiwar movie, a sombre celebration of even to tell such a story would have Moscow (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), woman who hides her a warrior’s happiness and a sorrowful been a treasonable act; the existence and least of all the local mayor bisexuality from her parents lament over a warrior’s alienation and of Bletchley, where Turing worked, (Roman Madyanov), who tries to and her brother. Opening misery. Eastwood, working with the remained a state secret. Now the tale bully Kolya into giving up his home Jan. 16. (In limited release.) screenwriter Jason Hall, has adapted is told as a thriller, with all scientific for redevelopment. In amassing these Blackhat the 2012 best-seller by the Navy complexity stripped away and months small parochial lives, Zvyagintsev Michael Mann directed this SEAL sharpshooter Chris Kyle, who of patient toil pared down to a single hints at something rotten in the thriller, about a battle against is played here by Bradley Cooper. eureka moment in a pub. We even body politic—scaly with corruption, hackers who cause a nuclear The film is devoted to Kyle’s life as get a spy on the premises, for good pickled in alcohol, and inflamed by the disaster in China. Starring a son, husband, father, and, most of measure. Morten Tyldum’s film chops rhetoric of the Church. Yet the movie Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, all, righteous assassin—a man always back and forth between Turing’s is neither spiteful nor disorderly; the and Wei Tang. Opening Jan. 16. (In wide release.) sure he is defending his country in school days, his code-breaking, and camera stays unshakably calm, and Iraq against what he calls “savages.” his arrest for homosexual activity Zvyagintsev’s images strike home with Giuseppe Makes a Movie Perched on a rooftop in Ramadi or after the war. “I think Alan Turing persistent power. One relieving grace A documentary, by Adam Rifkin, about Giuseppe Sadr City, he’s methodical and imper- is hiding something,” an inquiring note: if there is equilibrium here, or Andrews, an independent turbable, and he hardly ever misses. policeman says, making perfectly a sense of natural justice, it belongs filmmaker who lives and works With his brothers in the field, Kyle sure that we can connect the dots. to women. Would the nation not be in a trailer park. Opening is convivial, profane, and funny; at The film is plain and stolid, and not safer in their hands? In Russian.—A.L. Jan. 16. (Anthology Film Archives.) home with his loving wife (played by helped by murky, computer-generated (1/5/15) (In limited release.) Human Capital Sienna Miller, who’s excellent), he’s images of planes and submarines, A drama, directed by Paolo increasingly withdrawn, dead-eyed, yet the central character continues Li’l Quinquin Virzi, about the legal and enraptured only by the cinema of war to fascinate, and Cumberbatch is in The title of Bruno Dumont’s new emotional aftermath of a traffic that’s playing in his mind. As Kyle his element.—Anthony Lane (12/1/14) film—first shown as a three-hour-plus accident. Opening Jan. 14. and his men rampage through the (In limited release.) television miniseries—is the nickname (Film Forum.) rubbled Iraqi cities, the camera records of a taciturn fireplug of a boy in a Little Accidents exactly what’s needed to dramatize a Inherent Vice farm village on the northern coast of Sara Colangelo directed this given event and nothing more. There’s The hero of the new Paul Thomas France. On the first day of summer drama, about the search for no waste, never a moment’s loss of Anderson film is Doc Sportello vacation, he takes his girlfriend, a teen-age boy who goes missing from a mining town. concentration, definition, or speed; (Joaquin Phoenix), a hairy-cheeked, Eve, and another pair of friends on Starring Elizabeth Banks, Josh the atmosphere of the cities, and dope-wreathed private investigator a bicycle excursion in pursuit of a Lucas, and Chloë Sevigny. life on the streets, gets packed into who lives near a beach. The time, helicopter, which then airlifts the Opening Jan. 16. (In limited the purposeful action shots.—David unsurprisingly, is 1970. Doc’s latest corpse of a cow from an abandoned release.) Denby (Reviewed in our issue of 12/22 task is to trace a batch of missing Second World War bunker. This sur- Paddington & 29/14.) (In wide release.) persons: Mickey Wolfmann (Eric realistic vision gives rise to a moment Reviewed this week in The Roberts), a property developer; Mick- of horror—the corpse is stuffed with Current Cinema. Opening Big Eyes ey’s squeeze, Shasta Fay Hepworth human body parts—but the police Jan. 16. (In wide release.) Tim Burton’s bio-pic about Margaret (Katherine Waterston), who used investigation that results is a quiet Still Alice and Walter Keane is a feminist psycho- to go out with Doc; and a wander- uproar of comic bumbling. Dumont Reviewed this week in The melodrama made without insight or ing stoner, Coy Harlingen (Owen thrusts two rustic Keystone Cops into Current Cinema. Opening dramatic excitement. Starting in the Wilson), who couldn’t find himself a quasi-documentary contemplation of Jan. 16. (In limited release.) fifties, Margaret (Amy Adams) painted in a mirror. Somehow, everything is his own home turf; he looks longingly The Wedding Ringer innumerable pictures of waiflike girls connected, although, since the movie and lovingly at the craggy landscape, Kevin Hart stars in this with enormous eyes. Her husband, is adapted from a novel by Thomas which the children roam for pleasure comedy, as a best man for Walter (Christoph Waltz), marketed Pynchon, there is a strong chance and the officers scour for business. The hire who comes to the aid of them all over the world as his own that the connections will never be nearly anthropological view of local bridegrooms without close friends. Directed by Jeremy work. Adams is fine in her role, though explained, let alone straightened customs (the Bastille Day festivities are Garelick. Opening Jan. 16. Burton’s conception causes her to be out. Subplots overwhelm plots, and extraordinarily detailed and teeming (In wide release.) so passive that the character holds no one gaudily named character after set pieces) doesn’t spare any ugliness, interest; Waltz, acting with his teeth another—Sauncho Smilax (Benicio from endemic and unchallenged revivals and festivals Titles in bold are reviewed. and rear end, is completely miscast del Toro), Dr. Blatnoyd (Martin racism to a heritage of violence. Yet and awful—he seems to be clowning Short), and Japonica Fenway (Sasha the murder plot is of a piece with the Anthology Film Archives his way through the part so that we Pieterse)—stops by and adds to the bumptious comedy; the action seems The films of Richard Sarafian. don’t confuse him with the larcenous mix. Even as the story caves in, to rise organically from the locale, and Jan. 14 at 6:45: “The Man and tyrannical Walter. Burton once though, what binds the movie together Dumont’s grand yet intimate fiction Who Loved Cat Dancing” again shows himself incapable of is Anderson’s feel for the drifting, fuses his inner world with the historical (1973). • Jan. 14 at 9:15: making a film about adults. He’s smokelike sadness in Pynchon, and moment. In French.—Richard Brody “Vanishing Point” (1971). no more than half-interested in the the sudden shafts of bright comedy; (In limited release.) BAM Cinématek reasons that Margaret painted the the least inhibited performance is that Special screening. Jan. 16 at 8: same creepy image over and over, of Josh Brolin, playing not a hippie Macbeth “Goodbye to Language” (2014, and he’s not interested at all in the but a dirty cop called Bigfoot, who In his first Shakespeare film, from Jean-Luc Godard). sexual mystery that lies at the heart sucks on chocolate-coated bananas. 1948, Orson Welles employed a stark Film Forum of the Keanes’ story. With Jason With Reese Witherspoon, as a deputy and gloomy medieval production of The films of Orson Welles. Jan. Schwartzman and Terence Stamp, who D.A.; armed with a business suit and the play to address the horrors of 14 at 12:30, 2:40, 4:50, 7, and 10: “Touch of Evil” (the “Preview” plays a caricature of the disapproving coiffed hair, she’s a dead ringer for his own times. He takes the Scottish version) (1958). • Jan. 15 and Times art critic John Canaday.—D.D. Tippi Hedren.—A.L. (12/15/14) (In setting seriously; the cast (including Jan. 17 at 12:30, 2:40, 4:50, and (In wide release.) limited release.) Welles, in the title role) performs 10 and Jan. 16 at 12:30, 2:40, the text—which they prerecorded 4:50, 7:10, and 10: “Macbeth” The Imitation Game Leviathan and lip-synched—in plain speaking (the “Scottish” version). • Jan. Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), The new film from Andrey Zvyagintsev voices thick with brogues, on a 15 at 7:10 and Jan. 17 at 2:45: recruited into service at the start of stars Aleksey Serebryakov as Kolya, dark set of forbidding mountains, “Wellesiana,” rare film clips the Second World War, presents a man who dwells by the sea on the grim grottoes, and mournful plains, featuring Orson Welles. Both himself at a house in the British Kola Peninsula, in northwest Russia. amid mud and filth, wind and cold, screenings will be introduced countryside. His manner is intoler- The climate is curiously temperate, and their own sweat and grime. ant, his demeanor is a parody of the but the land is spare, unforgiving, and The Ubuesque grotesqueries of the

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 13 newly ambitious lord invoke Welles’s sets and quick, pugnacious camera inner-city Detroit mothers whose career-long theme—the comeuppance strokes, the Spierigs summon thick children have died in the streets. He’s by the film historian Joseph of the arrogant—but several stunning and hyperbolic moods of period grit been spouting a chic platform that McBride. • Jan. 17 at 5:15: “The details reflect another outrage. The and metaphysical conspiracy. The includes the legalization of recreational Magnificent Ambersons” (1942), Highland hold of the conniving couple long exposition—with its voice-over drugs; now he comes face to face introduced by McBride and suggests nothing so much as Hitler’s narration, interior monologues, and with a constituency that’s horrified followed by a discussion of Welles’s lost original cut. • Jan. hollow at Berchtesgaden, and when copious flashes back and forth through- by the free flow of pharmaceuticals, 18 at 12:50, 4:50, and 8:50 and Macduff learns of his family’s slaughter out the late twentieth century—sets and the confrontation is galvanizing. Jan. 19 at 12:35 and 4:35: “Jane he wears a shirt of vertical black and up delightfully bewildering riddles The whole “Tanner ’88” series is an Eyre” (1943, Robert Stevenson). white stripes reminiscent of those worn of shifting identities and multiple amalgam of inspired topical riffs Film Society of Lincoln by inmates in German concentration worlds. The desperate pursuit is and stinging seriocomic scenes. It Center camps; Welles’s emphasis on English flecked with surprising moments of has had a long-lasting influence on New York Jewish Film Festival. warriors fighting the sanguinary hard-won and sincere tenderness. political comedy-dramas.—Michael Jan. 14 at 4 and 8:45: “The usurper reinforces the parallel. Safe Though the dénouement seems rushed, Sragow (MOMA; Jan. 14-15.) Muses of Isaac Bashevis in victory, Welles could empathetically it gleefully conjures a supernatural Singer” (2014, Asaf Galay and display the conscience of a king who, pileup of epochal proportions.—R.B. Two Days, One Night Shaul Betser). • Jan. 15 and Jan. 18 at 3:30: “The Dune” (2013, in fact, displayed none.—R.B. (Film (In limited release.) There has been a vote in the Belgian Yossi Aviram). • Jan. 17 at 7: Forum; Jan. 15-17.) factory where Sandra (Marion Co- “The Mystery of Happiness” Selma tillard) works. Her colleagues have (2014, Daniel Burman). • Jan. 17 A Most Violent Year Like “Lincoln,” Ava DuVernay’s stirring accepted a bonus, on the condition at 9:15: “Paris Is Burning” (1990, Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), the movie avoids the lifetime-highlights that she is laid off. Now she has a Jennie Livingston). • Jan. 18 at hero of J. C. Chandor’s brilliant strategy of standard bio-pics and single weekend in which she must 1: “Three Women” (1924, Ernst new movie, was born somewhere concentrates instead on a convulsive convince, or beg, them to change Lubitsch). south of Texas, but by 1981—the political process—the events leading their minds: in effect, to lay down French Institute Alliance year in which the film is set—he up to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. their money for her sake. The scale Française lives in Westchester and works in President Lyndon Johnson (Tom of the drama may be minimal, and “Eccentrics of French Comedy.” Jan. 20 at 4 and industrial Brooklyn. Abel owns a Wilkinson), eager to move on to the the action repetitive (Sandra has to 7:30: “L’Amour C’est Gai, heating-oil-delivery company; he’s War on Poverty, is pressured to change go around town, ringing one doorbell l’Amour C’est Triste” (1968, a wealthy immigrant businessman direction by Martin Luther King, Jr. after the next), but, in the hands of Jean-Daniel Pollet). swathed in double-breasted suits (David Oyelowo), who is fighting for the writer-directors, Jean-Pierre and IFC Center and a camel-hair coat. But, while voting rights in the Oval Office and Luc Dardenne, the movie somehow In revival. Jan. 16-19 at he desperately scrambles to raise on the streets of Alabama. DuVernay tautens with suspense. This is the 11 A.M.: “His Girl Friday” (1940, money to buy a delivery depot on captures King’s canny and dominating first time that the Dardenne brothers Howard Hawks). • Jan. 16-18 at the East River, his rivals attack resourcefulness in strategy meetings have used an international star, and midnight: “Crash” (1996, David his trucks and an assistant district as well as the grand rhetoric of his Cotillard rises to the occasion—or, Cronenberg). attorney (David Oyelowo) charges public speeches, and Oyelowo adds rather, sickens, dwindles, collapses, Museum of Modern Art him with fraud. The atmosphere of a sexiness and an altered rhythm to and weeps. She is bold enough to “Acteurism: Joan Bennett.” Jan. fear never lets up—assaults arrive King’s speech patterns; his King is leave us with awkward doubts about 14-16 at 1:30: “I Met My Love out of nowhere—but much of the aggressive, barbed. A sequence set Sandra, whose mental state feels Again” (1938, Joshua Logan, action consists of terse banter and on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, as rickety, and who can seem as plaintive Arthur Ripley, and George Cukor). • The films of Robert veiled threats. Chandor is actually hundreds of protesters advance across as she is persevering. Yet her cause is Altman. Jan. 14 at 1:30: “Tanner interested in business—entrepreneurial the span and Alabama state troopers just, and once again the Dardennes’ ’88,” episodes 6–8. • Jan. 15 at practice at the end of the industrial terrorize them with tear gas, recalls stripped-down style conjures an air 1:30: “Tanner ’88,” episodes age and the persistence of honorable the magnificent crowd scenes from of moral persuasion denied to more 9–11. • Jan. 15 at 7: “Tanner on intentions in a corrupt milieu (the Soviet silent classics by Eisenstein sumptuous films. In French.—A.L. Tanner” (2004). • Jan. 16 at picture is an anti-“Godfather”). With and Pudovkin. With Carmen Ejogo, (1/5/15) (In limited release.) 4: “The Caine Mutiny Court Jessica Chastain, slinky in Armani, as as Coretta Scott King; Colman Martial” (1988). Abel’s show-me-buster wife, a cross Domingo, as the Reverend Ralph When Evening Falls on Museum of the Moving between a forties-movie good-bad girl Abernathy; Tim Roth, as Governor Bucharest or Metabolism Image and Lady Macbeth; Albert Brooks, as George Wallace; and Oprah Winfrey, After making two features that extract “First Look.” Jan. 16 at 7: “I Touched All Your Stuff” (2014, his cautious lawyer; the volatile Elyes as the civil-rights activist Annie Lee political subtleties from memory and Maíra Bühler and Matias Gabel, as a nervous young immigrant Cooper.—D.D. (12/22 & 29/14) (In language, the Romanian director Mariani). • Jan. 17 at 2: “Silk who will never wear camel hair; and wide release.) Corneliu Porumboiu now looks within Tatters” (2014, Gina Telaroli), Alessandro Nivola, as a charming Mob to extract them from the cinema “Starting Sketches #7” (2014, scion working the oil trade. Shot on Tanner ’88 itself. Paul (Bogdan Dumitrache), Telaroli), and “Brigadoon” location throughout New York City Robert Altman’s political mock epic, a young director, is filming a drama (1955, Vincente Minnelli). • by Bradford Young.—D.D. (1/12/15) from 1988 (which originally aired of intimate romantic crisis starring Jan. 18 at 1: “Suitcase of (In limited release.) as a TV series), follows a fictional Alina (Diana Avramut), an actress Love and Shame” (2013, Jane Gillooly). • Jan. 18 at 2: Democratic candidate for President, with whom he’s having an affair, but “Coming to Terms” (2013, Predestination Jack Tanner (Michael Murphy), their collaboration reveals his latent Jon Jost). Adapting a story by Robert A. Hein- through the factual minefields of a prejudices—and they spark conflict. lein, the Spierig brothers, Michael primary season, straight up to the What does her planned nude scene and Peter, have confected a brisk, Party’s Convention, in Atlanta. The suggest about his gender assumptions? twisty, and atmospheric science-fiction cross-country odyssey, written by Does his casting depend on ethnic thriller that piques the imagination Garry Trudeau, teems with sharply pigeonholing? Do movies—and re- and the senses with the low-rent etched characters and startling lationships—depend or founder on exuberance of fifties drive-in classics. incidents; it launched a new form the overlap of art and life? As the Ethan Hawke stars as a nameless of political satire. The supporting country’s political passions slip into agent in the Temporal Bureau, whose cast includes real politicos, like Bob oblivion, they leave long-silenced mission is to travel to 1970 to prevent Dole, Gary Hart, and Pat Robertson, ideas behind. With the dry wit of a mad bomber’s devastating attack and real journalists and pundits, like his shrewdly repressed long takes, in New York. Working undercover Linda Ellerbee, Chris Matthews, and Porumboiu puts dialectic front and movie OF THE WEEK as a bartender in a downtown dive, Hodding Carter. Tanner starts out center and speculates on the artistic A video discussion of he encounters a lonely and talkative as a likable, hollow figure mouthing implications of digital technology, Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. pulp-fiction writer with a story to tell, liberal bromides about a better even as he turns to medical imaging Ulmer’s “People on Sunday,” and the new friends embark on some tomorrow for America, then fitfully for some outrageously moist comedy. from 1930, in our digital edition unplanned time-leaping together. With matures as a politician. The turning In Romanian.—R.B. (Film Society and online. scant but eye-catching costumes and point comes when Tanner sits with of Lincoln Center.)

14 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 FOOD & DRINK

BAR TAB nitecap 120 Rivington St. (212-466-3361) How do you follow a classic? That was the question for David Kaplan and Alex Day, the proprietors of Death & Co, a lodestar of New York’s craft-cocktail scene since it opened, in 2006. Obviously, you put out a cocktail book. Maybe you open an L.A. venue, and start a hospitality firm, consulting on bars in places Tables for Two like Mumbai. Then what? Another pair of New York bars—a lounge via carota (151 Rivington) and Nitecap, a dark little place down a flight of stairs 51 Grove St. on the Lower East Side. But how to distinguish the new bars from the like the shiloh jolie-pitt of Manhattan restaurants, Via Carota is what original? “If Death & Co is your wife, happens when the restaurateurs behind two of the city’s most exquisite establishments Nitecap is your mistress,” Day said; come together. Rita Sodi’s tasteful standby on Christopher Street, I Sodi, is famous for later, he described it as “the bar I its woodsy lasagna and assertive Negronis; Buvette is Jody Williams’s casual French would build in the basement if I had a New York town house.” Kaplan nook one block over, perfect for midafternoon French 75s in coupes alongside little said that it’s targeting a somewhat nibbles of liberally buttered toast with anchovies. Via Carota is the name of a street younger crowd: if the typical Death in a Tuscan village where Sodi once lived; it is also, now, an Italian joint in the overly & Co customer is thirty-five, the cosseted confines of the West Village where you can eat lightly fried artichokes most kids at Nitecap are in their late times of the day, or order a side of beets with pickled apples and thyme, chased with a twenties. In other words, it’s a casual glass of tiramisu with black cherries. (The menu changes often.) No one will tell you joint that aims no higher than to that the kitchen prefers your entire order at once; there are no reservations, no host lighten the wallets of those raucous young men in blue oxfords whose stand, and no corner booths for visiting oligarchs—or even for Martha Stewart, who tastes increasingly determine the dropped in a few days after the restaurant opened and sat with her handbag in her lap at downtown bar scene. Little effort one of the tiny zinc tables like everyone else. has been expended on giving the With freedom comes responsibility. It’s on you to create a meal from a menu of place a distinctive look. The drinks, snack-size dishes which leaves you full but also satisfied, and there is no one else to mostly new takes on classics, are blame if you order three of the crostini with the cheese that tastes like butter (it’s expertly mixed, as you might expect stracchino) and then have to waddle off to the 1 train. The menu’s a grab bag—mostly from Kaplan and Day, but for a clientele largely indifferent to their vegetables, but the dishes vary in size and tastiness. Sautéed black kale with crumbled quality. There’s a feeling of an empire pork sausage seemed sad without orecchiette, and a cauliflower gratin was thin and becoming overextended. On a recent milky. The cod fritters were plentiful but not memorable, while the butter-bathed Thursday, a waitress delivered a Key pumpkin-and-sage ravioli were fluffy, beautiful, and fleeting, an exercise in virtuosity Lime Fizz with a lit candle suspended equivalent to a concert pianist running up and down a scale very fast. in its froth to a riotous table. A disco Plates might pile up before the table hits on a winner: one night, it was an austere ball descended from the ceiling, to Meyer-lemon risotto, each bite both crunchy and creamy. On another, it was slivers slurred exaltation. “To twenty-seven!” the birthday boy howled. of cabbage mixed with farro, like Moosewood goes to Tuscany in its guise of health, —Jiayang Fan wholesomeness, and simplicity. Via Carota lacks many of the trappings we’ve come to associate with trendy restaurants—flattering lights, bacon with the Brussels sprouts, elaborate cocktails with many ingredients. Instead, what Williams and Sodi have is confidence. Their chocolate budino is an ample smear, topped with a messy mountain of whipped mascarpone. There’s the faintest taste of orange. It’s the smoothest thing you’ll ever eat, and it would look horrible on Instagram. —Amelia Lester

ILLUSTRATION BY REBECCA MOCK REBECCA BY ILLUSTRATION Open daily. Dishes $8-$20.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIC HELGAS THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 15 Blini with Caviar Rijsttafel Stinking Bishop Sorrel Dinner at Alinea Fritto Misto A BLT Steak Frites Chakchouka Morning Shrimp in Oslo . . . just 990 to go. Take the Culinary Adventure of a Lifetime

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COMMENT SATIRE LIVES

he staff of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, massa- of the Internet, when images proliferate, merge, and alter in Tcred in an act that shocked the world last week, were an Adobe second, one would think that the power of a sim- not the gentle daily satirists of American editorial cartoon- ple, graffiti-like scrawl was minimal. Indeed, analysts of im- ing. Nor were they anything like the ironic observers and co- ages and their life have been telling us for years that this sort medians of manners most often to be found in our own be- of reaction couldn’t happen anymore—that the omnipres- loved stable here at The New Yorker. (Though, to be sure, the ence of images meant they could not offend, that their mean- covers of this magazine have startled a few readers and started ings and their capacity to shock were enfeebled by repetition a few fights.) They worked instead in a peculiarly French and availability. Even as the Islamist murderers struck in and savage tradition, forged in a long nineteenth-century Paris, some media-studies maven in a liberal-arts college was guerrilla war between republicans and the Church and the doubtless explaining that the difference between our time monarchy. There are satirical magazines and “name” cartoon- and times past is that the ubiquity of images benumbs us and ists in London and other European capitals, particularly Brus- their proliferation makes us indifferent. Well, not quite. It is sels, but they tend to be artier in touch and more media- the images that enrage; many things drove the fanatics to centric in concern. Charlie Hebdo was—will be again, let us their act, but it was cartoons they chose to fixate on. Draw- hope—a satirical journal of a kind these days found in France ings are handmade, the living sign of an ornery human in- almost alone. Not at all meta or ironic, like The Onion, or a tention, rearing up against a piety. place for political gossip, like the Paris weekly Le Canard En- For those who recall Charlie Hebdo as it really, rankly was, chaîné or London’s Private Eye, it kept alive the nineteenth- the act of turning its murdered cartoonists into pawns in a century style of direct, high-spirited, and extremely outrageous game of another kind of public piety—making them mar- caricature—a tradition begun by now legendary caricatur- tyrs, misunderstood messengers of the right to free expres- ists, like Honoré Daumier and his editor Charles Philipon, sion—seems to risk betraying their memory. Wolinski, Cabu, who drew the head of King Louis- Honoré: like soccer players in Brazil, Philippe as a pear and, in 1831, was put each was known in France by a single on trial for lèse-majesté. name. A small irreverent smile comes Philipon’s famous faux-naïf demon- to the lips at the thought of the flag stration of the process of caricature still being lowered, as it was throughout brings home the almost primitive kind France last week, for these anarchist of image magic that clings to the act of mischief-makers, and they would surely cartooning. In what way was he guilty, have roared at the irony of being sol- Philipon demanded to know, since the emnly mourned and marched for by King’s head was pear-shaped, and how former President Nicolas Sarkozy and could merely simplifying it to its out- the current President, François Hol- line be viewed as an attack? The coarser lande. The cartoonists didn’t just mock and more scabrous cartoons that marked those men’s politics; they regularly am- the covers of Charlie Hebdo—and took plified their sexual appetites and dimin- in Jesus and Moses, along with Mu- ished their sexual appurtenances. It hammad; angry rabbis and ranting bish- is wonderful to see Pope Francis con- ops, along with imams—were the lat- demning the horror, but also worth

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM BY ILLUSTRATIONS est example of that tradition. In the era remembering that magazine’s special

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 17 Christmas issue, titled “The True Story of Baby Jesus,” whose olics, offensive to feminists, offensive to the right and to the cover bore a drawing of a startled Mary giving notably fron- left, while being aligned with it—offensive to everybody, tal birth to her child. (Did the Pope see it?) equally. (The name Charlie Hebdo came into being, in part, Nor was it only people’s pieties that the cartoonists liked in response to a government ban that had put an earlier ver- to tweak. Georges Wolinski, eighty years old, born of a Pol- sion of the magazine out of business; it was both a tribute to ish Jewish father and a Tunisian Jewish mother, caused a Charlie Brown and a mockery of Charles de Gaulle.) The kerfuffle two years ago by creating a poster—for the Com- right to mock and to blaspheme and to make religions and munist Party, no less—in favor of early retirement, which politicians and bien-pensants all look ridiculous was what the showed a happily retired man grabbing the rear ends of magazine held dear, and it is what its cartoonists were killed two apparently compliant miniskirted women. “Life Be- for—and we diminish their sacrifice if we give their actions gins at Sixty” was the jaunty caption. Yet Wolinski, for all shelter in another kind of piety or make them seem too noble, his provocations, was a life-affirming and broadly cultured when what they pursued was the joy of ignobility. bon vivant, who became something of an institution; in As the week came to its grim end, with the assassins dead 2005, he was awarded the Légion d’ Honneur, the highest and several hostages—taken not by chance in a kosher gro- French decoration. cery store—dead, too, one’s thoughts turned again to the in- In recent years, Charlie Hebdo has had to scrabble for extinguishable French tradition of dissent, the tradition of money. It gets lots of attention, but satirical magazines of Zola, sustained through so much violence and so many civic opinion are no easier to finance in France than they are in commotions. “Nothing Sacred” was the motto on the ban- America. Still, Wolinski and his confederates represented the ner of the cartoonists who died, and who were under what true Rabelaisian spirit of French civilization, in their accep- turned out to be the tragic illusion that the Republic could tance of human appetite and their contempt for false protect them from the wrath of faith. “Nothing Sacred”: we high-mindedness of any kind, including the secular high-mind- forget at our ease, sometimes, and in the pleasure of shared edness that liberal-minded people hold dear. The magazine laughter, just how noble and hard-won this motto can be. was offensive to Jews, offensive to Muslims, offensive to Cath- —Adam Gopnik

INK The Zuckerberg book club consists he said, the Oprah comparisons are THE ZUCKERBERG BUMP of a Facebook group called A Year of overblown. “What Oprah accomplished Books. Zuckerberg will choose a new was singular.” title every two weeks, “with an empha- Oprah. The publicists allowed them- sis on learning about different cultures, selves to reminisce a little. “I still viv- beliefs, histories and technologies,” he idly remember when she announced wrote. Many commenters had sug- that first book,” the veteran publicist gested that he read the Bible. But he Camille McDuffie recalled. It was nother year, more lacklustre news went with “The End of Power,” by the 1996. The book was “The Deep End A for the book business. Stores former World Bank executive direc- of the Ocean,” a first novel by Jacque- closed. People ’grammed, Snapchatted, tor Moisés Naím, which, according to lyn Mitchard. It became a best-seller. and streamed. Amazon did its thing. the publisher’s summary, chronicles “For publishing, it was such a momen- Then, at the dawn of 2015, came good the vanquishing of “once-dominant tous occasion. Oprah was the most tidings—from, of all places, Silicon megaplayers” by “the new micropow- powerful figure in the media.” Valley. Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook ers” of the Internet age. The book did By the time Winfrey’s show went founder, is known for making quirky not dislodge “Wild” from the top of off the air, in 2011, the book club was New Year’s resolutions—past pledges the nonfiction best-seller list, but the a well-oiled machine. “It was a very included wearing neckties, learning Zuckerberg bump is significant. In elaborate system,” Seroy recalled. First Mandarin, and eating only the meat September, “The End of Power” was came “the Call.” Winfrey’s producers of animals that he had killed with his the 45,140th best-selling book on Am- would contact publishers in advance bare hands. Zuckerberg’s challenge for azon. It jumped into the top ten. Peo- of a book’s selection, requiring them 2015? To read books. In a January 2nd ple started calling Zuckerberg “the to sign nondisclosure agreements. The Facebook status update to his thirty new Oprah.” publisher would secretly print huge million followers, he explained his Book publicists took note. “I can quantities of special Oprah editions of choice with an earnest paean to the think of people who are probably al- the book, and solicit orders from book- pleasures of literature. “Books allow ready booking their flights to Menlo stores. “We had to assign new ISBN you to fully explore a topic and im- Park,” Jeff Seroy, at F.S.G., said. Paul numbers so the title could be kept se- merse yourself in a deeper way than Bogaard, at Knopf, expressed cautious cret.” The business was swarming with most media today,” he wrote, inviting optimism. “I think it’s great that Mark “handicappers,” betting on which title his acolytes to join him on the jour- is reading,” he said. “If all of his fol- had been picked. “It was like Lad- ney. “I’m looking forward to shifting lowers were to join him in his endeavor, brokes at tables at Michael’s and Union more of my media diet towards read- the publishing industry would be in- Square Café.” ing books.” sured of record profits in 2015.” Still, McDuffie remembered a downside

18 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 1 as well. Every author asked the same AWARDS-SEASON POSTCARD “She knew all the dirty words in question: “ ‘Do you think you can get CINEPHILES French,” Mancia said. Oprah to pick my book?’ You’d tell “She could really curse. She could them, ‘We have no control over what really, really curse,” Murray added. she picks.’ ” Not that they didn’t try. Mancia, who was born in Brooklyn, “You’d hear rumors like ‘Her hairdresser spent much of her three-decade tenure told her this was a great book,’ ” Mc- at MOMA travelling to film festivals Duffie said. Sloane Crosley, an author around the world, finding new work. and a former Vintage publicist, recalled he New York Film Critics Circle She also encountered a half century’s “FedExing the same book multiple TAwards, held last Monday at Tao, in worth of luminaries, among them Ro- times to the same address in Chicago” the Maritime Hotel, united filmmakers berto Rossellini, Lillian Gish, Dolores and writing long letters addressed to and movie stars with the critics who had del Rio, Luis Buñuel (“He invited me Jill Adams, the producer in charge of nominated them. Before the ceremony, to his house. He had a case of guns”), Oprah’s Book Club. Winfrey’s choices near the bar, Ellar Coltrane, the star of Leni Riefenstahl, in a startling phone tended toward female-oriented fiction, “Boyhood,” talked with Pawel Pawlikow- call (“I happen to be Jewish. I couldn’t but eventually they broadened to in- ski, the director of “Ida,” and a civilian; talk to her”), Pasolini (“I’m in one of clude authors like Cormac McCarthy Bob Balaban bumped into a writer and his poems—he talks about ‘walking in and Ken Follett. Crosley said, “It was said, “Please forgive me.” In a corner, away New York with Adrienne Mancia’— like living with the perpetual possibil- from critics, the recipient of the ceremo- the biggest thrill of my life!”), and Ste- ity of Christmas.” ny’s Special Award, Adrienne Mancia— ven Spielberg, who had a movie in the So far, the Zuckerberg book club an eighty-seven-year-old longtime MOMA 1974 New Directors/New Films series, has proved to be more haphazard. and BAM film curator, who introduced which Mancia co-founded (“And look Zuckerberg posted his first choice at New York audiences to Pasolini, de Ol- what happened to him!”). 11:05 P.M . on a Friday night. David iveira, Cinema Novo, European anima- In 1998, she became a founding Steinberger, the C.E.O. of Perseus tion, Bertolucci, and other provocative Books, the publisher of “The End of delights—talked with her friend Bill Mur- Power,” said that he found out about ray, who would present her award. his good fortune when people began Mancia, who is short (“I used to be posting angry messages on Facebook five-two; now I’m hoping I’m five”) and and Twitter, complaining that the book is known for wearing dark glasses every- was out of stock: “It was, like, ‘Con- where (“We all have our specialties”), gratulations! Everyone’s mad!’ ” Stein- wore a thick black sweater embroidered berger had helped publish an Oprah with red flowers. Murray, gray-haired selection at a previous job (Wally Lamb’s and nattily turned out, reminisced about “I Know This Much Is True”), and he their long friendship. “Let’s get our story said, “It was like the difference between straight,” he said. “We met through Helen the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Scott, in New York.” That was around and a flash mob.” 1983. “Helen Scott was a famous—” Still, as “The End of Power” at- “Wonderful, very important woman,” tests, such is the new world order. Mancia said. We live in an era of mini-Oprahs. “Who I met through Bob Benton,” Bill Murray and Adrienne Mancia Cary Goldstein, at Simon & Schus- Murray said. (“Kramer vs. Kramer.”) ter, pointed out that when Misha Col- “She was head of the French Film curator of BAM Cinématek. (“I was fired lins, who plays an angel on the CW Office.” at MOMA,” she said. “It was because of television series “Supernatural,” wrote “She brought the Nouvelle Vague to my character and personality. I was, like, a Facebook post about “We Are Not the States, and brought it to Adrienne.” a dangerous person to have around.”) Ourselves,” a literary début novel, pre- “She was a close friend of Truffaut.” At BAM, in 2004, she organized a ret- orders for the book shot up. Gold- “She was the translator in ‘Hitch- rospective called “What About Bill stein said, “All of a sudden, you have cock/Truffaut,’ ” Murray said. He held Murray?,” attended by hundreds of eager a bunch of twenty-year-old girls buy- up a yellowed typewritten note. “I have fans. ing this multigenerational Irish-Amer- a letter from her that Adrienne found, “I admired his work,” Mancia said. ican saga that takes place in Queens— and I’m mentioned in it.” He said it “And also, just to look at him I laugh.” and is about, by the way, Alzheimer’s!” was about “these grandes dames of the “That’s one of those double-edged McDuffie pondered Zuckerberg’s cinema—what were they going to do swords,” Murray said. announcement. “Shifting my media when time marches on?” It mentioned “Those twinkly eyes—they put me diet to books,” she said. “It’s not as im- Murray escorting Scott around Paris. in a good mood,” Mancia said. passioned as Oprah, but, hey—we’ll “I enjoyed taking her around. That’s “ ‘I look at you and I laugh,’ ” Mur- take it!” sort of my job sometimes, I understand ray said. “Well.” —Lizzie Widdicombe that,” he said. A waitress came by with a tray

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 19 of red wine, and someone suggested “I was going to call you today and see mounts, disassembles, moves, stores, and ordering “something stiffer.” Murray if you wanted to go to the movies,” Mur- replicates dinosaur skeletons and other asked Mancia, “What would you like, ray said. “But I figured you were proba- fossils—figured it to be new. Then he Stiffo?” bly, you know, getting your hair done.” noticed the date: Sunday, November 12, “Water,” Stiffo said. In his introductory speech, Murray 1944. In the lead strip, Joe Palooka, a “You can’t drink wine at one of these told the audience that when Mancia fictional boxer stationed overseas during affairs,” Murray said. “You know what was at MOMA she vowed not to show the war, receives an embarrassing CARE I’d like to have? If you could get me films by anyone who was “either a friend package containing a pink nightie. a rum and water, like a Sailor Jerry or a lover.” He said, “None of my films Crawford set his crowbar aside. Stoop- with water.” are at MOMA.” ing near the dinosaur’s hindquarters, he Murray removed his jacket and vest. Mancia said that the N.Y.F.C.C. looked closer. From the torn-up floor, he “Did you have ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ had never given an award “to some- removed a crude wooden box, held to- at BAM?” he asked Mancia. “It’s a spec- one who was dumped, fired, kicked gether with nails. “Friday, January 10, tacular film, and the only one Tom Schil- out of so many jobs. That someone is 1947,” someone had pencilled on an ex- ler ever made.” The conversation turned me.” She thanked the critics and men- terior slat. Crawford next found a Boy to great directors who made just a sin- tioned a favorite film title: ShÔhei Scouts of America membership card dated gle film (Charles Laughton, “The Imamura’s “Vengeance Is Mine.” June 30, 1945, that certified Arlton C. Night of the Hunter”) and to watch- —Sarah Larson Murray as the scoutmaster of Troop 226, ing a double feature in which, Murray 1 in Green Meadows, Maryland. Last, he suggested, one movie unfairly out- OLD BONES pulled out a slip of paper bearing neatly shined the other (“The Night of the MESSAGE IN A BOX sloped handwriting, which read, “Pieces Hunter” and “Shadow of a Doubt”; from Right side of caudal vertebra 4— Murray’s movie “Quick Change,” from specimen No. 15492, mounted 1947; 1990, which is dedicated to Helen F. Pearce, A. Murray & N. H. Boss.” Scott, and “Kung Fu Hustle,” next to Turning to a colleague, Crawford said, which “pretty much anything is Cream “I think we just found a time capsule.” of Wheat”). No. 15492 referred to the tail of Ca- The waitress brought Murray two rett Crawford was demolishing the marasaurus lentus, a Jurassic Period sau- rum-and-water options. He took one B floor of the dinosaur exhibit at the ropod (the ones with a very long neck, and said, of the other, “You give that to Smithsonian’s National Museum of Nat- a small head, and legs like redwoods) the kids at the orphanage.” Mancia’s ural History recently when a crumpled that lived in what is now Utah, about a water came in a clear sealed cylinder newspaper blossomed from an opened hundred and fifty million years ago. The that evoked a pneumatic tube. “It’s a pocket of plywood near the bony tail of skeleton was collected in 1923 and later grenade, too,” Murray said. “ ‘Nothing the resident Camarasaurus. It was a acquired in an exchange with the Car- Lasts Forever’ was on TV today, I think.” Washington Post comics page. The ink negie Museum of Natural History, in “I don’t like to watch on TV,” was so vibrant that, at first, Crawford—a Pittsburgh. The names inscribed on the Mancia said. “I like to go out and see metalworker with Research Casting In- slip of paper belonged to three early fos- films. I try to go almost every day.” ternational, a Canadian company that sil preparators—the people who clean, repair, and mount fossils—including Murray and Norman Boss, the chief preparator. The men had worked closely with Charles Gilmore, the legendary mu- seum curator and paleontologist, at a time when the Dinosaur Hall was known as the “Hall of Extinct Monsters.” By the time Crawford found the capsule, the Camarasaurus specimen had been on display for nearly seventy years—the skeleton was soon to be disassembled and stored, along with all but a few di- nosaurs, as part of the largest renovation since the museum opened, in 1910. The fossil exhibit will reopen in 2019. The time capsule soon wound up in the office of Siobhan Starrs, the exhib- it’s developer, and one morning in De- cember several of her colleagues dropped “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather eat this not by to see it. As they peered at the items, knowing what the latest science suggests.” now stored in a conservation box with a clear plastic lid, Starrs said, “I wish I gallery, a throng of Fleetwood Mac fans member. They were thrilled to have could ask Murray why he decided to put were looking at an exhibition of Pola- her back at the piano—with a few ca- his Boy Scout pack-leader card in here.” roid self-portraits taken by the band’s veats. “Stevie told me I had to get in The museum’s historical records held Stevie Nicks. (“These are, like, the orig- shape, because the road was gruelling, a clue. As a child, during a 1928 scout- inal selfies,” one woman, dressed in and I said, ‘Stevie, you must recall that ing trip on the Chesapeake Bay, Mur- witchy layers, in homage to Nicks and I was in the band before you were. I ray found a skull, which he took to the McVie, said.) know how hard the road is.’ And then museum for assessment. Gilmore deter- “I’m only here for Stevie,” McVie said. Lindsey said, ‘You cannot just waltz in mined it to be that of a fossil porpoise. At seventy-one, she was dressed like an and waltz back out. You have to be in The Boy Scouts led Murray to his life’s off-duty rock star: narrow jeans, pointy it for the whole nine yards.’ ” She con- work. Later, after a religious conversion, boots, a gauzy scarf. Shaggy blond bangs he became a “creation scientist” and used nearly covered her eyes. “Everyone thinks paleontology to argue against evolution. this is quite the glamorous life, but it’s The records made no mention of the axe-grinding. Like this opening—I was time capsule, though. Ryan Lavery, a dreading it. I’m so tired, I’m barely human. press officer, noted the jumble of dates And I thought there might be old pic- found inside the box: “They put those tures of me, God forbid.” (There weren’t.) vertebrae in the box ten days after the She scooped up a small white Maltese New Year—and then what, continued named Rodney, the property of Nicks’s to prepare the specimen? I can’t recon- manager. “Oh, I miss my pups,” she said, cile the dates.” burying her face in the fluff. Starrs noted that the three prepara- Mick Fleetwood, the band’s drum- tors “were clearly all consummate pro- mer, put a glass of white wine in McVie’s fessionals about how they dealt with dog-free hand. She nodded at a color- specimens.” Stepping over to a shelf, she ful scarf that hung around his neck. “Is pulled out a piece of cast mastodon bone, this cut from a kimono you used to Christine McVie made partially of beeswax (“It smells own?” she asked. “I recognize this fab- like a piano”). The preparators, she said, ric.” She and Fleetwood have an ease tinued, “So I found a psychiatrist and “were individual artisans with their own with each other, which, she says, is what got over my flying thing.” tradecraft. A lot of them came from brought her back to the band after six- She toyed with a silver chain on her backgrounds of art sculpture, bronze- teen years away. wrist, looking out over Columbus Cir- work, whatever.” Earlier that afternoon, lounging in cle. “Stevie gave me this chain. It used Lavery asked Starrs if she knew how her suite at the Trump International to have a diamond feather on it. It’s a curators wrapped fossils in the early nine- Hotel (“It’s such a diva thing, but I need metaphor, you know. That the chain teen-hundreds. one room for my suitcases and one for of the band will never be broken. Not “I don’t know,” she said. “Now we use me”), she talked about her decision to by me, anyways. Not again by me.” toilet paper.” rejoin Fleetwood Mac, despite years of She added that she had one stipu- —Paige Williams drama (divorces, addictions, solo ven- lation of her own for coming back. “I 1 tures, illnesses). “I went for years with- wanted it to be fun. That sounds like THE MUSICAL LIFE out seeing Stevie or Lindsey”—Buck- a hollow word, but, with this group, PLAY ON ingham, the band’s lead guitarist—“but that is not a given. I didn’t want to go Mick was always just there, on my shoul- back into the Dark Ages and into the der,” she said. negativity and the gloom and the ex- “I left the band because I developed hausting melodramas that have gone a terrible fear of flying,” she explained. on in this band for years and years.” “I wanted to restore an ancient house On the tour so far, the mood seems in Kent, and that’s what I did. It was a bright. “We are all smiling ninety-nine y the time Christine McVie ar- heap—this Tudor building with the per cent of the time,” she said. “Which, B rived at the Morrison Hotel Gal- beams painted lime green, so hideous. by this band’s standard, is phenomenal.” lery, in SoHo, she had been up for six- And I had this idea that I’d love the She described the band’s pre-show teen hours and was dying to remove her small village life, with the Range Rover ritual, which it will be performing be- false eyelashes. “They’re so heavy,” she and the dogs and baking cookies for fore its gig at Madison Square Gar- said, as she tilted her head onto her the Y.W.C.A. But then it got so bor- den on January 22nd: “Before shows, clasped hands for the benefit of her ing. You couldn’t walk down the road we rub elbows and growl. It started manager, who had promised her an early without meeting two people related to once when someone had a cold, and exit. McVie, who had recently decided each other. I missed the songs. And I we didn’t want to hug each other. So to reunite with her old bandmates in missed the audience.” we started rubbing elbows. And we Fleetwood Mac for a tour, was in a make- Before rejoining Fleetwood Mac, don’t kiss. We just go, Grrrr!” shift V.I.P. room in back. Out in the McVie asked permission of each band —Rachel Syme

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 21 square, under a roof that has been painted ANNALS OF PLAY indigo to represent a sky in the twi- light hours, as if it were always—ex- citingly—just past bedtime. WHEN I GROW UP Whereas Disney’s Magic Kingdom parks promise fantasy and wish fulfill- The theme-park chain where children pretend to be adults. ment, KidZania is a proudly mundane municipality: children can work on a BY REBECCA MEAD car assembly line, or move furniture, or put out a fake fire with real water. everal decades ago, the district of children between the ages of four and KidZania has its own currency, kidzos, S Santa Fe, on the western edge of fourteen the chance to enact the roles which can be used in branches around Mexico City, was an industrial zone of grownups in a lavishly realized, the world, or deposited in the central devoted to strip-mining. After the scaled-down world. If the neighbor- bank and accessed with a realistic-look- gravel and sand pits were depleted, they hood of Santa Fe is the realization of ing debit card. Children receive a check became enormous garbage dumps a contemporary urban vision—corpo- for fifty kidzos upon arriving at Kid- where scavengers roamed. In the nine- rate, sanitized, market-driven—then Zania, and can supplement that with ties, the government initiated a recla- KidZania is a quirky, child-size itera- the “salary” they earn for participat- mation project, and the area is now tion. Known before its international ing in an activity. The most popular of

Children at KidZania spend the day role-playing at various careers. Among the simulated jobs are pilot, dentist, and judge.

filled with high-rise condominiums, expansion as La Ciudad de los Niños them, like training to be a pilot on a luxury hotels, and office towers occu- (The Children’s City), the KidZania simplified flight simulator, are not as pied by multinationals, set along man- in Santa Fe—like all the franchises it remunerative as the less popular, like icured highways that are free of trash has spawned—is uncanny in its real- being a dentist. (You peer inside a dum- or pedestrians. In the middle of this ism. Its brick-paved streets are lined my’s mouth.) Children can spend their invented neighborhood is the Centro with buildings in the style of different kidzos on renting a car—small elec- Santa Fe mall, one of the largest in historical periods, like an authentic tric vehicles moving around a go-kart Latin America. With more than five cityscape that has evolved over centu- track that is sponsored by companies hundred stores and an indoor skating ries, with storefronts bearing the logos like Mercedes-Benz or Renault—or at rink, it draws twenty-two million vis- of familiar brands like McDonald’s the mini city’s department store, which itors a year. At one end of the mall is and Sony. From a child’s perspective, bears the name of a regional chain and KidZania, a theme park for children KidZania is an enclosed, enticing is stocked with covetable trinkets. that opened fifteen years ago, and has world—resembling the outside one KidZania even has its own “lan- since spread to cities in a dozen other but oriented to children’s capacities guage”—short phrases that are deliv- countries, including Tokyo, Kuala Lum- and interests. Kids can roam freely, ered in a combination of English and pur, Mumbai, and Istanbul. since the only traffic is a slow-moving, something that an alien in a low-bud- Rather than offering thrill rides, like if clamorous, fire truck and a similarly get sci-fi movie might speak. “Kai!” is Disney World, or video-game arcades, unhurried ambulance, both of which an informal greeting usually delivered like Chuck E. Cheese’s, KidZania gives perpetually circulate through the town with a gesture peculiar to KidZania:

22 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 ILLUSTRATION BY NISHANT CHOKSI the first two fingers of the right hand is a good platform in terms of build- drivers. KidZania tries to be sensitive splayed over the heart. “Zanks!” sub- ing brand loyalty,” Maricruz Arrubar- to local mores, but López also sees a stitutes for “thanks.” The valediction rena, one of KidZania’s Mexican ex- role for the company in implicitly pro- “Z-U!” is used everywhere from San- ecutives, told me. “Kids don’t have a moting the values of a Western, mar- tiago to Seoul. The adults who staff lot of loyalty—they have a lot of op- ket-driven democracy. In KidZania the establishments and guide the chil- tions. In KidZania, the brands can work Jeddah, which is scheduled to open in dren through the activities are called with the kids when they are kids, and Saudi Arabia later this month, girls Zupervisors, and when speaking to in the future build a more loyal client.” will be permitted to drive cars, a priv- children in their native language they The Santa Fe park was so success- ilege denied their mothers. end conversations with the exhorta- ful that, in 2006, López expanded to A few years ago, López’s marketing tion “Have a productive day.” the Mexican city of Monterrey. (Lar- department came up with an origin esgoiti had sold his share to López in myth for KidZania: kids, having seen he founder and C.E.O. of Kid- 2002 and moved to Florida, where he what a mess adults had made of the TZania, Xavier López Ancona, is a launched Wannado, a theme park sim- world, founded their own country, tall, energetic man of fifty, with sculpted ilar to KidZania. It closed in 2011.) whose borders children cross every time black hair, a broad smile, and an air Like the Santa Fe park, the Monter- they visit the park. A KidZanian Dec- of ebullient conviction. I met him re- rey branch was owned and operated laration of Independence was written, cently at the company’s headquarters, by López’s company, but later that year which outlines the six “rightz” of child- which are not far from the mall in Santa the concept was taken to Tokyo under hood: to be, to know, to create, to share, Fe. Role-playing extends to the cor- a franchise operation. Franchises have to care, and to play. It concludes with porate structure of KidZania, which is since opened in Seoul, where kids can the national motto: “Get ready for a modelled on a national government. manufacture ramen noodles, and in better world.” To López’s frustration, The glass-fronted office of KidZania’s Mumbai, where there is a scaled-down children who visit KidZania are largely accounting department bears an insig- Bollywood studio—one of López’s unaware of this invented history. He nia marking it as the Treasury; human partners is Shah Rukh Kahn, the actor. hopes eventually to educate them about resources is known as the Ministry KidZania opens a London branch this it—perhaps by producing a KidZania of Labor. The manager of each Kid- spring. movie. “Usually, all these stories start Zania is its mayor, and the regional di- In the past few months, López has with a movie or a TV program, and rector is the governor. López cheer- been visiting all the franchises, to see then that story comes all the way to a fully informed me, “I am the President, what might work better. He told me, theme park—that’s what Disney does,” but nobody voted for me—it is more “Gandhi, when he moved from South he told me. “We started from the theme like I’m a dictator.” Africa to India, said, ‘The first thing I park, and have to go backward.” López grew up in Mexico City, have to do is I have to know my coun- López believes that his young vis- where his father, an immigrant from try—I have to know what are their itors are getting ready for a better world, Spain, had a flour-milling business; he hopes and dreams.’ I want to do the whether they realize it or not. “We was the fourth of seven children. López same.” He is in negotiations with a are empowering them to become in- attended business school at Northwest- potential franchisee in Guangdong, dependent,” he said. “What they love ern University—he speaks fluent, rapid China. In the U.S., López is in discus- most, on the second or third visit, is English—and was formerly the man- sions with a potential partner for the their independence. They have their aging director of the private-equity first of what might ultimately be six- own kidzos; they can make their own business at General Electric in Mex- teen American locations. He’s looked decisions. This is their world, where ico City. In the late nineties, López at the South Street Seaport, in New they are not being told what to do. was approached by a friend from first York, but is more likely to open first Even if you go to Disneyland, you are grade, Luis Javier Laresgoiti, who was in Chicago or Dallas, where the real guided—you are supposed to walk a in the toy-importing business. Lares- estate is cheaper and there are fewer typical way. But here children are by goiti was developing an idea for a com- competing entertainment options. themselves. We don’t tell them any- mercial role-playing park for children, Although KidZanias look much like thing. Just cash your check, get money, inspired by a day-care center he had one another, the behavior of their vis- and start spending money—that is the seen in the United States that featured itors varies by nation. In Mexico, kids only thing we tell them.” a miniature supermarket, a theatre, and tend to spend their kidzos immedi- a bank; López joined the venture. ately after earning them; in Japan, it is wo years ago, KidZania opened a The Santa Fe park opened in Sep- difficult to persuade children to part Tsecond branch in Mexico City, tember, 1999. Eight hundred thousand with their kidzos at all. López jokes named for the nearby archeological people came in the first year, twice the that when KidZania arrives in the U.S. site of Cuicuilco. One day, I visited number anticipated. Corporate spon- kids will demand the introduction of it with López. He explained that he sors, upon whose investment the busi- a credit card. In Lisbon, kids mostly sees Cuicuilco, which cost thirty-eight ness model depends, also embraced the come with their parents, whereas in million dollars to build and is more concept, and there are now more than the Gulf states they are often accom- than three times the size of the origi- eight hundred worldwide. “KidZania panied by nannies or dropped off by nal park, as a laboratory for the future

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 23 of KidZania. There, even more em- ties, providing data for KidZania’s de- while real children darted around us phasis is placed upon educational ex- sign team. López quizzed my son about with fists full of kidzos. “You go to periences. “Education and entertain- his ambitions for the day. “I might Disneyland, and you see all those kids ment, it’s like the two legs of KidZania,” want to be a policeman—it is too dan- walking with their parents, very tired,” he told me. “We want the kids to have gerous, but it sounds fun,” he told López remarked. “There is two min- fun, and while they are having fun to López. “Or a pilot, but I don’t know utes of magic—the ride—and then really learn something.” how to fly.” they see the Disney characters, which In Cuicuilco, KidZania worked with “You’re going to learn how to fly!” no one can surpass. But here, most of the local government to develop activ- López promised him. the time they are running, engaged, ities that are intended to promote good Turning to me, López said, “When happy.” Occasionally we came across citizenship: road safety, health, aware- they are kids, everyone wants to be a an adult wearing the costume of one ness of civic institutions, environmen- policeman or a fireman. Then, when of KidZania’s RightzKeepers—anime- tal sustainability, and tolerance of differ- they grow up, no one wants to be a po- like cartoon characters who represent ence among individuals and groups. liceman or a fireman.” the six rightz of children. They are The program emerged from a series of Cuicuilco is the only KidZania that KidZania’s equivalent of Mickey and crime-reduction recommendations is partly outside—tents shield it from Minnie and include Urbano, a green- made by Rudolph Giuliani, the former rain and sun—and it was less cacoph- haired boy, who represents the “right mayor of New York, who had been onous than Santa Fe, and brighter, its to know,” and Chika, who has purple hired as a consultant by the Mexico streets edged with fake palm trees and hair and cat ears, and represents the City government a decade ago. “One equipped with globe lamps. A high- “right to share.” López said of Chika, of the points Giuliani made was that way system snaking through the park “She’s all about meeting people—her we needed to give more education to was navigated by scaled-down cars, biggest ambition is to get a million the citizens, and he suggested that we available for a rental fee of fifteen kid- friends.” López greeted the Zuper- start with the children, because it is zos. At one bend in the road, a crashed visors and other staff with “Kai!” and easier to make change with the chil- car has been permanently installed, like a splayed hand to the heart. In the dren,” López said. a sculpture in the Whitney Biennial, town square, there was a golden statue I’d brought along my nine-year-old its buckled engine periodically emit- modelled on a celebrated one in Mex- son, who, before departing for Mex- ting steam, to illustrate the dangers of ico City depicting the Angel of Inde- ico, had speculated about what he careless driving. I saw children with pendence. “That one is a naked woman, might find. Do they have police in clipboards acting as insurance agents, but ours has to have clothes, because KidZania? If so, do they have crimi- taking an inventory of the accident. it is for children,” he said. It was like nals? Or do they just split the police Such attention to detail delights being in a reimagined Las Vegas, with into good cops and bad cops? And López. “We immerse our visitors in a the celebration of virtue substituted could you be a writer there? He was simulated reality,” he told me later that for the celebration of sin. dubious: “Not many kids want to be afternoon. “If they want to drive a car, Having been to children’s museums writers.” (Actually, you can be a re- they should drive a car like their par- where kids can wheel trolleys around porter, of sorts: kids are dispatched ents’ car. If they want to use a phone, a play-set supermarket, I thought I with a prepared list of questions to knew what to expect from KidZania, interview a specific Zupervisor, who but nothing had prepared me for its is ready with a prepared list of an- verisimilitude. At a dog-training ac- swers.) We drove into the parking lot tivity, participants are taught to lead a of the shopping center, where part of real dog around a series of small jumps; the fuselage of an Interjet plane stuck they also have to clean up fake feces out from the front of the building, that have been scattered around the heralding the entrance, which was track. And though children’s museums themed like an airline ticket counter. often have some level of corporate The entry fee at Cuicuilco was fifteen sponsorship, the presence of brand dollars and fifty cents per child, but they want the same phone as their names at KidZania was jarring. We it varies from city to city: thirty-eight mother’s. If they want to eat cereal, passed a cell-phone rental store spon- dollars in Tokyo, ten in Jakarta. they want to manufacture the same sored by Telcel, a regional company, At the ticket counter, my son was thing they eat at home. It’s having the where kids can text each other within given his entry ticket, which resem- real buildings, materials, products, and KidZania, and get free downloads of bled an airplane boarding pass, marked services. This is not about fantasy. This video games or screen savers; Coca- with the destination of KidZania, and is not princesses and dwarfs.” Cola was the sponsor of a scaled- his fifty-kidzo check. A security brace- As we walked through the pedes- down soccer stadium. Some visitors let was snapped around his wrist: it trian streets, we passed bronze statues have criticized KidZania’s promotion would set off an alarm if he tried to of inspirational eminences represented of junk food, but López insists that leave the premises unaccompanied, as children—Martin Luther King, Flor- the authenticity enhances the experi- and would track his choice of activi- ence Nightingale, Mahatma Gandhi— ence. “Those companies are all over,

24 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 kids go to any shopping center, any street, they are there,” he told me. Nonetheless, healthier options are being introduced. In Cuicuilco, I vis- ited a culinary school, sponsored by Nestlé, where a Zupervisor was pre- paring a session on how to make a tuna sandwich cut in the shape of a fish. While wandering through the Cuicuilco park, I watched a group of children from a local preschool—wear- ing hairnets, matching neckerchiefs, and jackets bearing the name Quaker— solemnly pouring sugary sprinkles into small cups. It was a granola-bar fac- tory. For all the emphasis on realism, there is a lot of sleight of hand. Most of the industrial processes are simu- lated: the packaged granola bars that pop out of the final machine are fac- tory made, switched in at the last mo- “I’m leaving you for someone who does care what we have for dinner.” ment. The natural suspicions of kids, particularly older ones, can be hard to •• overcome. New activities sometimes must be tweaked after introduction. Children making “hand sanitizer” I stepped into the courthouse, and of KidZania U.K., points to a recent pointed out that the product they had found the proceeding eerily convinc- survey reporting that almost one in been manufacturing—colored water— ing, with microphones on the desks, a ten middle-school-age children in was less viscous than the liquid inside KidZanian flag hanging in the back- Britain thinks that tomatoes grow un- the sample-size bottle they received at ground, and sober-looking children derground. KidZania, he said, could the activity’s end. sitting in the jury box. A girl who help to address that kind of deficit. KidZania Cuicuilco also has several looked to be about ten was in the dock, “We are convinced that this is an in- activities, funded by government agen- reading from a cue card. She was play- tegral part of the educational process cies, that were developed with the cul- ing the part of the accused in a case for the next generation,” he told me. tivation of civic responsibility in mind. that concerned garbage being thrown And the process of earning kidzos in There is a tax office, because a “tax” of illegally into a river. Another girl sat exchange for labor will be an educa- twenty per cent is deducted from all behind a central desk, playing the part tion in itself for children. “We’re going KidZanian salaries. “Of course, in Mex- of the judge, faced by two other chil- to have kids who will benefit from ico nobody wants to pay tax—most dren representing the lawyers. All du- learning the harsher side of life,” he people don’t pay tax,” López said. “So tifully followed along with their own added. At the other end of the eco- here is a fun way we teach them to pay cue cards, interjecting a line or two nomic spectrum, “we have families in tax.” Children can choose what they when necessary. The girl was found London who have never had a job in would like to see funds spent on—ed- not guilty. three or four generations.” ucation, the environment, hospitals, or A key tenet of much education the- roads—and then claim a percentage of idZania has hired its first Head ory is that children’s play is not mean- their taxes back. There’s also a minia- K of Education for the upcoming ingless fun but, rather, an important turized police station. “In Mexico, we London park. The post is filled by a developmental process that serves as have all this crime and nobody reports former elementary-school teacher a preparation for adulthood. In pro- it, because people don’t trust the po- named Richard Barry, who has been gressive kindergartens, building with lice,” López told me. “Kids can come working with corporate sponsors to blocks or dressing up is often referred here and report that someone skipped create activities that complement the to as “work.” Maria Montessori was the line, or somebody took their kid- U.K.’s national curriculum. A smoothie- so struck by the preference shown by zos. So we are teaching kids to tell. In making activity, sponsored by Inno- children for practical activities, like Mexico, no one tells.” In back is a small cent Drinks, a Coca-Cola subsidiary, sweeping, over playing with toys that jail cell, equipped with a bunk bed with will underscore the curriculum’s re- she remarked, “In the life of a child, a sad beige blanket and pillow; its black quirement that children learn about play is perhaps something of little im- bars look forbidding but are made of nutrition, seasonality, and food sources. portance which he undertakes for the foam, and can be bent for easy exit. Joel Cadbury, one of the co-founders lack of something better to do.” Jean

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 25 Piaget, the Swiss developmental psy- chologist, who argued that play was an essential element of children’s so- PROBABILITY cial and moral maturation, identified several developmental stages. In the Most coincidents are not preschool years, play is often symbolic: miraculous, but way more a child might pretend a box is a car common than we think— that he or she is driving. Later, chil- it’s the shiver dren introduce rules into their games, of noticing being which accounts for the byzantine vari- central in a sequence ations on tag that emerge among third of events or fourth graders. that makes so much At first glance, the experience offered seem wild and rare— by KidZania appears to draw on as- because what if it wasn’t? pects both of symbolic play—the “let’s Astonishment’s nothing pretend” aspect of dressing up as a fire- without your consent. man—and of rule-based play, with its enactment of conformity to civic reg- —Lia Purpura ulation. But by some definitions the activities at KidZania, however enter- taining, barely qualify as play at all. at the Domino’s-sponsored pizza-mak- not like a video game—if you hit the Thomas Henricks, a professor of so- ing activity. After a child completes barrier, you will crash,” he told me, ciology at Elon University and the au- every activity, his or her pazzport is with a conviction that Mayor Giuliani thor of the forthcoming “Play and the scanned and then stamped. “What this would have approved. The following Human Condition,” offers a list of the is, honestly, is a loyalty program, but it week, his teacher reported to me that requirements for play: that children is themed as citizenship,” López said. he had held his classmates rapt during have chosen their own activities and In the past two years, four hundred share time, giving an account of his their own play environment, that chil- thousand children have signed up adventures and fielding their fasci- dren decide whom they play with, that worldwide, enabling López and his nated questions. children decide their own rules and team to see in detail which activities His adventures had included being determine the stakes of the game or are the most popular with which seg- a pilot. “He did it twice,” Mena told activity, that children choose when play ments of the audience, and to market me. “The first time, he crashed right begins and when it ends, and that chil- directly to the adults who are respon- away—the controls are very sensitive, dren get to determine what their play sible for them. The goal is to introduce and he was taking off and lost control. means. the pazzport into every KidZania in But the second time it was perfect.” In KidZania, adults determine the the next year, to track children’s inter- My son wanted to show me his skills, content of activities in advance, and ests and tastes. and so we returned to the interior of Zupervisors follow scripts that offer At the end of my tour, I reunited the plane fuselage, which had been children little room for ingenuity or with my son, who had spent several transformed into a flight school, com- deviation. (There is no activity at Kid- hours in the company of Enrique plete with several rudimentary flight Zania that would do much to nurture Mena Ferreira, López’s chief of staff. simulators. He scanned his wristband the entrepreneurial skills of a young My son looked bashfully excited, and and was given a pilot’s cap to wear. I Xavier López Ancona.) The activities more than slightly overwhelmed. He sat in the co-pilot’s seat and watched last, on average, about twenty min- was eager to show me his pazzport: it a screen in front of us as we acceler- utes—and are far from open-ended or hung around his neck in a red wallet ated shakily along the runway, then exploratory. Even artistry is directed. that also contained a stash of kidzos. lifted into the air. Soon we were aloft I passed by the art studio, where small He’d earned much of it by delivering above an urban airport. The intended children sat before easels, coloring in DHL packages, which he had discov- flight path was indicated by a series of preprinted cartoon images of Urbano ered was a quick and easy way of mak- squares hovering in the air. For a few or Chika. ing money, even if you didn’t speak minutes, my son flew through the One innovation, at KidZania Cui- Spanish. He had particularly enjoyed squares as directed. Then, without say- c uilco and a handful of other locations, being a detective for KidZania’s crime ing a word, he turned the controls de- is the introduction of a passport office: lab, in which he had tried to identify cisively to the right, skimming the outer for a payment of three kidzos, children a suspect who was allegedly plotting edge of one square and steering out can apply for a “pazzport,” which bears to rob the bank that day by drugging over the ocean, away from the flight their photograph and date of birth. the staff—a story in whose truth my path. I didn’t know whether to be hor- Kids with pazzports receive extra kid- son had utter faith. He had passed his rified by the insubordination or de- zos at the end of each activity, and get driver’s test—he proudly brandished lighted by the show of independence. such rewards as a larger slice of pizza his license—and had rented a car. “It’s But before the KidZanian authorities

26 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 had time to scramble the virtual jets ment as the Ministry of Propaganda. keting team stressed to Dunaway the the screen went black, and the activ- At the KidZania Kuwait headquar- importance of social media in the lives ity was over. ters, in a characterless office park owned of their young audience. Seven- or by the Alshaya company, Dunaway eight-year-old Kuwaitis have the lat- ll KidZanias are attached to shop- met with the marketing team, whose est smartphone, and the KidZania A ping centers, and the company energetic young members were Ku- Kuwait Instagram account has more has targeted sprawling megacities where, waiti-born but of international de- than fifty thousand followers, many for reasons of security or climate, a scent—Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian— of them kids who post selfies from mall culture has flourished, and par- and often educated in the U.S. Kuwait, the town square or other attractions. ents can, in theory, drop off their chil- it was explained to her, has almost no Dunaway urged caution. “As company dren at the park and then go to browse tourist industry—its only visitors are policy, we don’t communicate directly the stores or eat lunch at one of the Saudis for whom Dubai is too racy— with kids,” she said. “We don’t want mall’s restaurants, tidily completing and so drawing local visitors back re- to be engaging directly with children. a circuit of consumption. The ideal peatedly would be key to KidZania’s But we can’t control what we don’t location for a KidZania is a place success. One particular concern was know.” However, she suggested, Kid- where there is a high disposable in- attracting parents, for whom there is Zania might be productively promoted come and an ethos of spending pre- little to do inside KidZania, and who to parents as a place for kids to get vails; where children are sophisti- had been voicing objections to the unplugged. “So it becomes an advan- cated consumers of popular culture twenty-seven-dollar adult entrance fee. tage for us—we are about role play, and users of digital media, and expect Dunaway suggested placing a salon and hands on,” she said, to murmurs novelty and stimulation; and where offering manicures in the parents’ of agreement. “It’s not about criticiz- there are few cultural or historical lounge—one in Cuicuilco had worked ing the technology. But there’s a need attractions, and little else to do in well. The team also discussed the ne- for something to balance it out—a the way of entertainment. Best of all cessity of reaching populations like need for kids to become more involved, for KidZania would be a spectacular the Bedouins, who had yet to dis- and face to face, and hands on, and and well-trafficked mall that is other- cover KidZania or who were suspi- for teamwork.” wise surrounded by a barren, inhospi- cious of what they knew of it. Already, The next day in the park, Dunaway table desert. KidZania had fallen afoul of local had the opportunity to see for herself This is an apt description of one of sensibilities: a festival of “Scary Fun,” the teamwork of young Kuwaitis, most KidZania’s newer outposts, in Kuwait planned for late October, was hastily of them visiting with school groups. City, which opened in 2013, in the Av- cancelled after there were protests on Many of the attractions were famil- enues Mall, one of the world’s largest. social media that KidZania was pro- iar: at ten-thirty in the morning, kids The mall offers elegant, simulated pe- moting Halloween, which observant in school uniforms of green sweat- destrian streets, edged with trees and Muslims do not celebrate. (An earlier pants and sweaters were mobbing the lined with cafés and luxury-brand social- media protest, indicting the park Burger King-sponsored make-your- stores, all under a translucent glass roof for immorality on the ground that its own-fast-food venue. But some areas that admits natural light but keeps at name included the Arabic word zania, had been developed with local in- bay the hostile outside temperatures, which means “adulteress,” had been dustry in mind, including a plastics- which can rise above a hundred and quietly ignored.) making activity, sponsored by Equate, twenty degrees. The mall is Kuwait’s Even when the company was tak- a petrochemical company. We watched principal recreational resort: twenty- ing care to avoid violating religious in- as half a dozen boys, between the ages two million visitors went there in 2013, terdictions, it was acknowledged that of nine and eleven, took part, wearing eight times the population of the coun- the very premise of KidZania, with its overalls and protective goggles. First, try. In 2014, four hundred and fifty rhetoric of children’s independence, the Zupervisor directed them to turn thousand of them went to KidZania, ran counter to deep cultural sensibili- stainless-steel wheels on an industrial- which ranks as Kuwait City’s No. 1 ties. Mariam Draz, who has the title looking tank—supposedly full of gas— attraction on TripAdvisor. of Ambassador for the Middle East to produce a cannister full of translu- In November, Cammie Dunaway, and North Africa, and was visiting cent pellets. After putting their gloved KidZania’s head of global marketing, from KidZania Cairo, said, “We are hands inside a glassed-in tank, the visited KidZania Kuwait for the first telling the children things that are not kids manipulated the pellets from time. Dunaway, who was formerly an encouraged in the Middle East—all a funnel into a beaker, then poured executive at Yahoo and Nintendo, was the old ways of parenthood. People them into a hole that led into what appointed in 2010 to head KidZania’s don’t know what KidZania is: Is it a the Zupervisor told them was a melt- U.S. expansion, and to manage mar- school? Is it a nursery? Is it some devil- ing machine that produced small plas- keting the company internationally. run thing that isn’t acceptable in our tic disks—one per child. She brings an American corporate sen- culture?” The children seemed engaged by sibility to the endeavor: it was Dun- KidZania had to figure out how to the machines, though the hands-on away who advised López not to refer sustain the fickle interest of those chil- part of the activity might not have to the KidZania marketing depart- dren who were already fans: the mar- been very challenging to a child half

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 27 their age. After the disks emerged from d’oeuvres and Middle Eastern sweets. They were all frequent visitors to the melting machine, they were placed Twenty children wearing red Kid- KidZania—one girl told me that be- on a conveyor belt leading into an- Zania sports shirts and serious faces fore the school term had begun her other apparatus, while the kids pressed sat on the stage, at desks that resem- driver had brought her there every some brightly colored flashing buttons bled those in the Security Council day—but they also had ideas about labelled “mold” and “color,” as inscru- chamber at the United Nations. Fer- how the place might be improved. “I tably connected to the process of trans- nando Medroa, KidZania Kuwait’s gov- love KidZania, but there are not as formation as the “Drink Me” label on ernor, a veteran of Disney Europe and many activities as there are in other Alice in Wonderland’s bottle. After a Six Flags, went to the lectern to her- countries, like Japan,” another girl said. lot of clanking, a molded white plas- ald the new Congrezzmembers. “Kai, “They have trains, but we don’t have tic helmet, complete with elastic chin everyone—good afternoon, ladies and trains, and I think we could incorpo- strap, popped out of the other end of gentlemen. I would like to zank you rate it.” One child said that she wanted the machine, to the delight of the all for coming today,” he began, ex- to see a recycling plant; another young petrochemical engineers. Out plaining that this Congrezz, the first wanted a taller tour bus, to provide a of earshot of the children, Stephen in the Middle East, was “giving chil- better view. They all agreed that they Putzeys, the mayor of KidZania Ku- dren a platform to voice their opinions, loved getting paid for their work. wait, told us that the Zupervisors had express themselves, and work together One girl withdrew from her handbag to remember to remove the “Made in as a team improving their own city.” a thick wad of bills: five thousand China” stickers from the helmets be- There were further speeches, and kidzos, she said. They all carried fore loading them into the machine. then Medroa invited the children to iPhones—“my social-media folder As the boys surrendered their goggles rise and swear an oath, pledging to has over a thousand notifications,” one at the end of the activity, I asked one maintain the rights of children as out- eleven-year-old boy told me, with of them what he and his friends had lined in the Declaration of Indepen- affected weariness—but insisted that learned. “We learned how to make a dence, and to fulfill their duties as Con- they would much rather be at Kid- helmet,” he said. grezzmembers. Medroa announced Zania than in a virtual world. “On the Later that evening, KidZania hosted the national anthem, and a swelling phone, you can’t really feel your hap- a grand ceremony for the inauguration tune sounded over the loudspeakers, piness,” one girl said. “What a boring of a pseudo-Congress: a cohort of the kids joining in at the refrain, “Kid- thing, just touching a screen,” another twenty kids whose yearlong participa- Zania, KidZania, you’re always in my added. tion in a series of focus groups is in- heart.” Then Medroa distributed cer- They said that KidZania gave them geniously themed as public service. emonial buttons to them all, and posed what they desired most of all: a sense “We really treat the kids with respect,” with each for a photograph mid-hand- of autonomy. “Whenever you’re at Dunaway told me. “We really convey shake—a politician’s grip-and-grin. home, your parents say, ‘You need to to them that they have a sense of re- The proceedings seemed to be over, do this, this, and this,’ and you say, ‘I sponsibility, and that they are training but then, from the back of the theatre, don’t want to do this,’ ” the boy with and learning to be great leaders.” Mem- figures wearing the costumes of the the overwhelming social-media pres- bers of the Kids Congrezz, as it is five RightzKeepers processed down ence told me. “But, when you’re in known, are drawn from the pool of the aisles and stood before the stage. KidZania, you feel like you’re an adult, regular visitors by means of an online They waved KidZanian flags in time and you say what you want to do.” His election that is monitored, and some- to quasi-martial orchestral strains, like favorite activity was the karaoke bar, times heavily manipulated, by a team participants in a synchronized perfor- because he wanted to be a singer—a of marketing executives and clinical mance celebrating the birthday of Kim quite different career from that of his psychologists. “It keeps us very tuned Jong-un. At the tune’s end, confetti father, who works for the al-Sabah in to what kids need, to what they think, exploded from a cannon, and the chil- family, Kuwait’s ruling dynasty. But and to what we need to do differently,” dren finally burst forth from behind KidZania also helped him to better Dunaway said. their desks and gleefully threw hand- understand the challenges his parents The ceremony took place in Kid- fuls of it around the room. face. “In Kuwait, parents and adults Zania’s theatre, most recently used for Afterward, I huddled with sev- have responsibility for everything you an adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz” eral of them at the foot of the stage, do,” he said. “But in KidZania it’s that conformed to local mores. (The while their parents looked on proudly. different—it’s like kids rule the world. representation of wizards is forbidden Though the four hours of rehearsal That’s really fun, but you can also in Kuwait, so in KidZania’s version had been tedious, they said, they all learn how hard and complicated it is, the wizard was on vacation.) Local seemed thrilled by the ceremony, and and how adults feel when they work. dignitaries had been invited, includ- by the honor of being chosen to rep- I have learned that being an adult is ing representatives from the ministry resent their peers. One girl admitted actually hard.”  of education, and the chargé d’affaires to having campaigned in the park, at the Mexican consulate. There were handing out sweets and flyers; others swarms of press photographers, and said that their schools had urged their newyorker.com waiters passed around platters of hors classmates to vote for them. A conversation with Rebecca Mead.

28 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 do Monday because I have to help my SHOUTS & MURMURS roommate pick up a kitchen island she bought on Craigslist. (Loooong story.) LET’S GET DRINKS *

A: I can’t believe we never scheduled this! I miss u! I’m gonna stop being BY KELLY STOUT brokers’ fees atop a cake made out of unlicensed plastic surgery and say . . . A: Hey, girl! So great to see you at Mike’s sis. Tomorrow’s no good. This is embar- Tuesday? party on New Year’s. You free this week? rassing, but I signed up for a yoga work- B: Jesus. I am, like, the Spanish Civil Want to grab drinks? shop. (I know, eye roll.) Anyway, War riding in a subway car with broken hopefully I’ll get my shit together and A.C., seated between Kim Jong-un and * stop being the 2004 Indian Ocean tsu- the phrase “said no one ever.” But I nami by next week. Xo. could do coffee like midday on Tues? B: Yo!!!!! Sorry it took me so long to A: I’m sorta, kinda trying to get off respond. I’m the worst. Yes! I’d love * caffeine (I know, I know—I’m worse to! First round is on me because I’m than the Hobby Lobby verdict dancing so terrible. Tuesday??? B: Heya—we both totally dropped the with Vladimir Putin on Elaine Stritch’s grave while the Vietnam War plays “All About That Bass” on the didgeridoo), but lunch would be great. B: OMG, do not worry about it. I’m the one who should be apologizing. I’m a smoothie blended in an Amazon fulfill- ment center, containing “Songs of Inno- cence,” Reaganomics, and old hot-dog water. I seriously cannot believe I forgot you quit coffee. Lunch it is.

*

B: So excited about our lunch date! 12:30? A: This is basically just a joke at this point, but I have this dumb meeting about records retention or something that got pushed back to one. You don’t have to tell me that I’m mercury poison- ing hooking up with the Crusades in the A: Ugh, Tuesday is my friend Rachel’s ball on this! Our bad! We are, like, the bathroom at trans fat’s wedding to voter birthday. I am the actual worst. What subprime-lending crisis of hanging out, suppression, because I know. Ugh . . . about Weds? right? You around on Weds? I want to sorry. B: Weds works! Let’s e-mail next week go back to that tapas place we went to B: Don’t worry about it, dude. How’s about where to go. Yayyyyyyyyyy. on the Fourth of July. tonight? A: Shoot, Wednesday doesn’t work. My B: Oh, wait, shit, sorry to be Aaron Sor- * mom and stepdad are in town, so I have kin eating toothpaste straight from the to take them to dinner, which is going tube. I forgot that my writing group B: I am total garbage at scheduling and to be worse than the rollout of health- meets tonight. Then tomorrow I have a forgot we were supposed to meet up to- care.gov, but whatever, I have to do it. thing—too hard to explain—and on night. Could you do Mon? SO SORRY. Hmm . . . dare I say Friday? Friday I have dinner with some work I feel terrible. B: Shit. Friday is no good. I am literally people. You’re going to think that I’m A: OMG, do not feel terrible. You are Operation Rolling Thunder mixed with the Salem witch trials giving Osama bin not as bad as I am. If you’re garbage, the N.F.L.’s policy on domestic violence. Laden a massage at a spa run by the then I am, like, the Deepwater Horizon But whatcha gonna do? Monday? California drought, but I’m also pretty oil spill, because Monday doesn’t work. A: Stop it. You’re fine. I, on the other busy next week. How about the ninth, What about tomorrow? hand, am seriously Vermont’s heroin ep- tho?  EDWIN FOTHERINGHAM EDWIN B: I am worse than the global food cri- idemic multiplied by Bill Cosby. I can’t A: The ninth works great! Yay.

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 29 salaries for civil servants, to minimize DEPT. OF DEVELOPMENT any temptation to sell their influence, and instituted harsh jail terms for those caught taking bribes. In 1986, Lee’s CORRUPTION AND REVOLT minister of national development, an architect named Teh Cheang Wan, was Does tolerating graft undermine national security? investigated for accepting kickbacks from two real-estate developers. He BY PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE killed himself with a fatal dose of bar- biturates, maintaining, in a suicide note addressed to Lee Kuan Yew, “It is only right that I should pay the highest pen- alty for my mistake.” By the time Lee stepped down as Prime Minister, in 1990, Singapore had gone from being one of the more cor- rupt countries on the planet to one of the least. According to Transparency International’s most recent Corruption Perceptions Index, Singapore now ranks seventh in the world for transparent government—less corrupt than Aus- tralia, Iceland, or (by a good margin) the United States. The story is heart- ening but anomalous. It is almost un- heard of for a nation to expunge a cul- ture of corruption so thoroughly. Some countries get slightly better, some get slightly worse, but, the world over, cor- ruption tends to endure. “Everybody does it,” John Noonan, a federal judge in California, wrote in his eight-hundred-and-thirty-nine- page volume, “Bribes: The Intellectual History of a Moral Idea” (1984): “Ro- mans and Visigoths, Englishmen and Africans, Catholics and Jews, pagans and Protestants, capitalists and Com- munists, imperialists and patriots.” The word “corruption” derives from the n October, 1951, a band of thieves Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, announced Latin corrumpere, which can mean to I hijacked a large shipment of opium that he was “sickened” by decadence bribe, but also to mar or destroy. Yet, in the port town of Punggol, in north- and corruption, and pledged to rid Sin- on the available evidence, corruption east Singapore. The Singapore of that gapore of graft. Members of his gov- has always permeated so many fields era bore little resemblance to the one ernment wore white shirts and trousers of human endeavor that it may be we know today: as a key entrepôt in the when they were sworn into office, as a not a corruption of anything—but, drug trade between India and China, signal of the purity of their intentions. rather, a regrettable feature of our nat- the island was beset by crime and cor- New leaders often condemn the ve- ural condition. Accountable govern- ruption. When British colonial author- nality of their predecessors, only to ex- ment is an ideal, to be sure. It may also ities investigated the theft, they discov- ceed it when they assume office. From be an aberration. ered that the culprits included several Duvalier, in Haiti, to Fujimori, in Peru, Definitions of corruption tend to high-ranking members of Singapore’s to Erdoğan, in Turkey, it’s a predict- focus on the conflict of interest that arises police. In the aftermath of the scandal, able twist in the drama of political tran- when private imperatives intrude upon the colonial administration created the sition. But Lee delivered on the rhet- the public sphere. Robert Klitgaard, an Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau. oric, enacting new anticorruption economist who has done field work on When Singapore achieved indepen- legislation and bestowing real power corruption in dozens of countries, once dence, some years later, the new Prime on the anticorruption bureau. He raised posited a formula: Corruption = Mo- nopoly Power + Discretion - Ac- Much of the hundred billion dollars the U.S. spent to rebuild Afghanistan was stolen. countability. In Klitgaard’s reckoning,

30 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 ILLUSTRATION BY SHOUT corruption is a crime of calculation. If story of her own quixotic effort to launch States has a history of falling for strong- that’s the case, shouldn’t the problem a Singapore-style anti-corruption cam- men in dicey locales and overlooking be susceptible to rational solutions? paign in one of the most corrupt coun- their sins in the interests of some larger Any country could simply take Singa- tries on earth. strategic agenda. Mobutu was a hedge pore as a blueprint and tinker with the against the Communists. Mubarak was variables, as Lee Kuan Yew did, recal- hayes arrived in Afghanistan, in a hedge against regional war. The Sau- ibrating the risk/reward ratio for offi- C 2001, as a correspondent for Na- dis are a hedge against paying too much cials who might feel inclined to betray tional Public Radio, covering the fall for gas. The culture of warlordism in their office. Scholars and activists who of the Taliban. She ended up in the Afghanistan that we know today took focus on corruption often describe the arid and dusty southern city of Kan- shape not in this recent conflict but in problem as one that might eventually dahar, which she once described as an earlier one—during the nine- be eradicated, like smallpox. Even “like the moon, with goats on it.” She teen-eighties, when the United States Noonan concludes his sprawling chron- had not been in Afghanistan long be- paid local surrogates to fight the So- icle of millennia of graft on an improb- fore she decided to give up journalism viets. As American military and intel- ably hopeful note, arguing that, just as and join a nonprofit called Afghans ligence operatives entered the country slavery was once widely accepted and for Civil Society. Her remit was am- after September 11th, they sought out is now reviled, bribery may one day bitious but diffuse: develop a sis- regional brokers, empowering a new “become obsolete.” ter-school program, establish a radio generation of hard and unscrupulous But corruption has outlived all station, rebuild a village that had been partners. predictions of its demise. Indeed, it destroyed by allied bombing. Afghans In an irony that Chayes dwells appears to be thriving. According to for Civil Society was established by on perhaps too briefly, her own initial the African Union, during the nine- Qayum Karzai, an exiled Afghan busi- proxies in Afghanistan were all mem- teen-nineties a quarter of Africa’s gross nessman who had been living in Bal- bers of the Karzai coterie. Qayum Kar- domestic product was siphoned off by timore before the U.S. invasion and zai had ambitious plans for his coun- graft. The United Nations estimates happened to be the older brother of try, and became something of a men- that corruption adds a ten-per-cent Hamid Karzai, the man coalition forces tor to Chayes. Her fixer was a man surcharge to the cost of doing busi- installed as Afghanistan’s interim Pres- named Abdullah, whom another Kar- ness in many parts of the world. Cor- ident, in 2002. zai brother—the shady power broker ruption infects every level of govern- “The classic error that outsiders and reputed drug kingpin Ahmed Wali ment, bedevils foreign development, make in Afghanistan is to single out a Karzai—had commended to her. In enables terrorism, and fuels transna- proxy,” Chayes writes. The predicament Chayes’s account of her gradual edu- tional crime. It is a recurring conun- is familiar: the foreign interloper, cation in the politics of occupied Af- drum in business, in religious institu- whether a journalist, a general, or a co- ghanistan and her belated revelation tions, in education, in sports. Yet our lonial administrator, arrives ignorant that the Karzais were a bunch of crooks, conceptual vocabulary for under- of the local languages and customs, and the creeping transition from naïveté to standing this pathology, let alone com- needs someone who can serve as in- disillusionment is not so different from batting it, remains conspicuously mea- terpreter and guide. The foreigner often what the United States encountered, gre. The very term “corruption” is so pays (or overpays) for this arrangement, on a broader level. In a December, 2002, inclusive as to be almost meaningless, with money or some other inducement, interview with the Boston Globe, Chayes encompassing bribery, nepotism, bid- and thus a codependence between proxy said that Hamid Karzai, whom she had rigging, embezzlement, extortion, and patron is born. A central theme of not yet met, reminded her of her fa- vote-buying, price-fixing, protection “Thieves of the State” is the subtle ther: “a dyed-in-the-wool political an- rackets, and a hundred other varieties power that these proxies can accumu- imal, and yet such a deeply good per- of fraud. late and the tendency for the un- son that he instinctively believes good Corruption creeps in, unnoticed, “like schooled yet profligate outsider to be- of everyone around him.” It was only some odorless gas,” Sarah Chayes writes come hopelessly stymied by his man later that she began to reconsider the in her new book, “Thieves of the State: on the ground. Karzais. Qayum’s charity was incorpo- Why Corruption Threatens Global Se- Because the soldiers and civilians rated in Delaware, yet he seemed cu- curity,” and confounds policy objectives who flooded into Afghanistan after the riously indifferent to bookkeeping. At without attracting much policy atten- fall of the Taliban did not know how a dinner in 2003, Chayes watched as tion. Chayes spent most of the past de- to (or, in some cases, care to) engage Ahmed Wali took delivery of foil- cade living in Afghanistan. Her book, with the local population except wrapped bundles of cash. which is part memoir and part treatise, through their designated fixers, the Eventually, Chayes cut ties with the argues that the United States has a ten- fixers ended up controlling the aper- Karzais and set out on her own, estab- dency not just to ignore international ture through which key members of lishing a soap factory in Kandahar, in corruption but to compound it, and the international community perceived 2005. Most Westerners who came to that in places like Afghanistan this will- the conflict. Chayes’s use of the word Afghanistan during this period tended ful ignorance can be destabilizing and “proxy,” with its Cold War connota- to cycle in and out of the country, and dangerous. Chayes tells the fascinating tions, seems deliberate; the United to live in fortified residences, insulated

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 31 but it may also have the paradoxical virtue of drawing together an other- wise fractious society. In a 1968 essay, “Corruption Is Not Always Scandal- ous,” the political scientist James Q. Wilson suggested that a blinkered Pu- ritanism prevents Americans from being able to make pragmatic distinc- tions between “harmful and not-so- harmful varieties of corruption” and from “allowing our moral outrage to be proportional to the problem.” Some scholars have argued that cor- ruption can be not just benign but use- ful in states that are undergoing polit- ical transition. Samuel Huntington, the political theorist, once suggested that some amount of corruption could be a “welcome lubricant,” easing the path to modernization, and that if economic “Could you repeat that confirmation number?” growth is what you are after “the only thing worse than a society with a rigid, •• over-centralized, dishonest bureaucracy is one with a rigid, over-centralized, honest bureaucracy.” Economists often from the general population. But four billion dollars on rebuilding the maintain that corruption is a bar to de- Chayes effectively went native. She country (nearly as much, in today’s dol- velopment, but many countries—most lived in a compound with a large Af- lars, as was spent on the Marshall Plan), notably, China—have enjoyed tremen- ghan family. She grew close to her col- a large but untold fraction of which was dous economic growth in spite of ram- leagues and neighbors and became skimmed away by middlemen before it pant graft. Some observers contend known around Kandahar as an oddity: could produce any tangible improve- that China’s economic boom would a tall American woman who dressed ment for the Afghan people. “We know not have been possible if the leader- like an Afghan man, spoke Pashto, and all this money is coming in,” a farmer ship hadn’t tolerated a symbiotic and slept with a Kalashnikov propped be- outside Kandahar told Chayes, yet there often corrupt relationship between gov- side her bed. was little the local population could do ernment and business interests. Bei- At the factory, employees complained as it vanished. For the average Afghan, jing has now instituted an anti-corrup- about the demoralizing toll of cor- it was like watching a slow-motion heist tion campaign that some worry may ruption. Reconstruction money was in broad daylight. slow productivity. “In the past, with entering the country in torrents, but A certain reliance on foreign lar- corruption, you could pay an official managed just as quickly to disappear. Infra- gesse was not exactly new to the coun- and get something done,” a Chinese structure projects seemed never to be try. In “Afghanistan: A Cultural and economist, Mao Yushi, recently said to completed, while contractors, subcon- Political History” (2010), Thomas Bar- the Times. “Now the officials won’t ac- tractors, and cronies grew rich. It was field observes that payment to leaders cept money, but don’t approve things, no secret who the profiteers were: they by wealthy outside powers has been a either.” would “thrust around town in slick regular feature of Afghanistan’s history Was the corruption that was flour- S.U.V.s worth years of an ordinary farm- since the nineteenth century, and, in- ishing in Afghanistan a necessary ex- er’s harvest.” A private security indus- deed, that the distribution of these igency at a precarious moment in its try sprang up to meet the needs of the spoils has often constituted “the main history? The economist Mancur Olson international community and morphed glue that held the Afghan state in one described the transition from anarchy overnight into a lucrative protection piece.” Any highly corrupt society is to some nascent political order as one racket. Every day, millions of dollars in bound together by a series of interlock- in which roving bandits become sta- cash were declared by couriers at Kabul ing reciprocities: the local policeman tionary bandits. The roving bandit will International Airport, and then flown who shakes down a passing civilian plunder what he can and move on, but to the United Arab Emirates, where must in turn pay tribute to his police at a certain point he realizes that he the new Afghan élite invested in real supervisor, who must pay his supervi- will be able to steal a lot more in the estate and Bentleys. According to the sor, and so forth; favors or spoils may long run if he performs the minimal Special Inspector General for Afghan- be distributed in the other direction. state functions necessary to increase istan Reconstruction, the United States The durability of these relationships economic production and institution- has, since 2002, spent a hundred and makes corruption difficult to eradicate, alize his theft—“in the form of taxes.”

32 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 Thus he is driven, purely by his own self-interest, to “settle down, wear a crown, and replace anarchy with gov- ernment.” This is what George Wash- ington Plunkitt called “honest graft”: a scenario in which there is no conflict of interests, at least in theory, because the selfish interests of the leader and the broader interests of the state are aligned. But, as Chayes studied the graft of the Karzai government, she concluded that it was anything but benign. Many in the political élite were not merely stealing reconstruction money but ex- propriating farmland from other Af- ghans. Warlords could hoodwink U.S. special forces into dispatching their ad- versaries by feeding the Americans in- telligence tips about supposed Taliban ties. Many of those who made money from the largesse of the international community enjoyed a sideline in the drug trade. Afghanistan is often de- scribed as a “failed state,” but, in light of the outright thievery on display, Chayes began to reassess the problem. This wasn’t a situation in which the Afghan government was earnestly try- ing, but failing, to serve its people. The government was actually succeeding, albeit at “another objective altogether”— the enrichment of its own members. Washington supported Hamid Karzai and his ministers and adjutants in the hope that they could establish a stable government, help pursue Al Qaeda, and keep the Taliban at bay. But the Karzai government wasn’t a government at all, Chayes concluded. It was “a vertically integrated criminal organization.” The United States was treating Karzai like a stationary ban- dit, when he was really a roving ban- dit in disguise.

ne explanation for why some O countries are more corrupt than others and why so few have managed, like Singapore, to dramatically curtail corruption is that graft may be endemic in certain cultures. In “Economic Gang- sters: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations” (2008), the econ- omists Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel describe an experiment in which they sought to determine whether cor- rupt behavior was governed more by cultural background or by the relative

severity or permissiveness of the law. Norway, her respect for the law may desire for revenge. Nurallah, an em- In order to test the question, they ex- tell you less about some deep, im- ployee at the factory who once worked amined five years of unpaid park- mutable cultural DNA than about a as a police officer, told her about the ing tickets in New York City that were series of civic reflexes that she has been humiliation that his brother experi- associated with cars driven by foreign taught as a citizen of Norway. “The enced during a shakedown by Afghan diplomats who worked at the United Confucian theory was man could be police. “If I see someone plant an I.E.D. Nations. Lee Kuan Yew believed that improved, but I’m not sure he can be,” on the road, and then I see a police if you introduced tough penalties for Lee Kuan Yew once told an interviewer. truck coming . . . I will not warn them,” corruption you could curb behavior. “He can be trained, he can be disci- Nurallah said. This is the central rev- Fisman and Miguel sought to test the plined.” The example of Singapore elation in “Thieves of the State”: at a opposite hypothesis: who, in the ab- would seem to indicate that, if you certain point, systemic corruption be- sence of any legal penalty—the diplo- change the laws, you can eventually came not just a lamentable by-product mats enjoyed immunity and would change people’s outlook, too. of the war but an accelerant of conflict. never be punished for failure to pay Noonan notes, in his history of brib- All those bribes and kickbacks radical- parking tickets—would pay, rather than ery, that while some amount of corrupt ized the local population, turning it abuse this prerogative? They discov- behavior may be a constant feature against the Afghan government and, ered that diplomats from some coun- across cultures and across historical ep- at least some of the time, toward the tries had no unpaid parking tickets, ochs, a certain moral revulsion toward Taliban. whereas diplomats from other coun- corruption is just as common: even in Chayes cites a survey conducted by tries had many. In a single year, one nations where bribery is part of daily U.S. military commanders in Kabul, fellow accumulated five hundred and life it tends to be publicly frowned upon, in which captured Taliban prisoners twenty-six unpaid tickets. (He was from and is almost always at least techni- were asked why they joined the insur- Kuwait.) Using a corruption index from cally illegal. Noonan likens corrupt be- gency. The leading reason, according the World Bank, the economists cor- havior to another human practice that to Chayes, “was not ethnic bias, or dis- related these results with levels of cor- is no less widespread for all the moral respect of Islam, or concern that U.S. ruption in the relevant nations. Dip- and religious opprobrium—sex. To the forces might stay in their country.” It lomats from countries where corruption jaded expats of Kabul, an easy cultural was “the perception that the Afghan tends to be high were very likely to essentialism suggested that Afghans government was irrevocably corrupt.” generate unpaid parking tickets; those simply like corruption, that it is the There is by now an extensive literature from countries where corruption was way they have always done things. But on the revival of the Taliban after the low tended, if they racked up tickets in her workshop Chayes heard some- invasion of 2001, and Chayes may be at all, to pay them. The Norwegians, thing different. In the face of flagrant somewhat reductive in her handling of needless to say, were without blemish. misappropriation, she found, ordinary the evidence here, in order to support Even so, there could be explanations citizens could experience a sense of her thesis. But in another recent book, for this data that aren’t neatly deter- grievance so potent that it filled them “No Good Men Among the Living,” minist. If you take a Norwegian out of with something worse than anger—a a searing account by Anand Gopal of the unintended consequences of the invasion, one of the central figures is Akbar Gul, a Taliban commander who gave up the insurgency and returned to civilian life, only to grow demoral- ized by the outlandishly predatory cor- ruption of the Afghan national po- lice—and reënlist. The notion that U.S. support for despotic, disreputable regimes ends up fuelling radicalism is by now a famil- iar argument. But, by applying the logic of “blowback” to the issue of graft in Afghanistan, Chayes develops a mus- cular new vocabulary for talking about the problem of corruption. Good gov- ernance is often construed as an essen- tially humanitarian preoccupation, a civil-society concern that is forever trumped by more pressing strategic ob- ligations. But Chayes became convinced that in Afghanistan kleptocratic rule “My New Year’s resolution is to lose thirty-eight thousand pounds.” was actually “manufacturing Taliban,” providing fodder for the expanding cess of shifting its military strategy in insurgency. In unstable and potentially Afghanistan to focus on counterinsur- explosive places like Afghanistan, she gency, one element of which was an argues, the dilemma of corruption is effort to promote good governance so not, as it might appear, one in which as not to further alienate the Afghan American values and interests are in population. As the Arab Spring began, tension. Even a hard-nosed realist should Chayes travelled to Tunisia, Egypt, and regard corruption as a dire concern, she other regional hot spots, taking inven- maintains, because it is not merely a tory of the popular antipathy toward matter of the rule of law and demo- kleptocratic regimes and the ways in cratic principles—it is “a matter of na- which it could spark revolt. She re- tional security.” This is the turned convinced that a real intellectual innovation link between kleptocracy of Chayes’s book: she takes and violent religious ex- what has always been the tremism was “a global phe- losing position in policy de- nomenon.” Here Chayes bates and imbues it with a may be overreaching. What new rhetorical power. are we to make of all those corrupt African despots hen Barack Obama whose greed prompted no Wwas elected Presi- religious extremism? Or dent in 2008, Chayes saw an opportu- of Russia, for that matter, where vast nity to make her case for a reconsid- wealth has been expropriated by a hand- eration of the importance of Afghan ful of oligarchs and bureaucrats with- corruption, and travelled to Washing- out stirring widespread disaffection? ton. Her revelation about the threat Still, it’s hard to dispute her general that venality poses to national security point—that a state engaged in preda- had provided her with a mode of ar- tory corruption is gambling with its gument that might prove persuasive own political legitimacy and runs the with a critical audience—the military. risk of breeding insurrection. Rather than speak in the soft rhetoric But, now that Chayes could get peo- of social justice or development, she ple to care about corruption, there re- fashioned an argument around narrow mained the question of what they could self-interest: “Corruption, in army do about it. If you want to turn Af- speak, was a force multiplier for the ghanistan into Singapore, where do enemy.” Chayes is, by her own admis- you start? With her access to military sion, a “strident” campaigner, and even- decision-makers in Kabul, Chayes sug- tually she found herself in the E-ring gested a series of practical reforms: of the Pentagon, having secured an au- Washington could be more discrimi- dience with Mike Mullen, the genial, nating about its partnerships in Af- bookish admiral who had recently be- ghanistan; local officials and power bro- come chairman of the Joint Chiefs of kers who were known to be corrupt Staff. As Chayes made her case that should be isolated; and U.S. officials coalition forces should recalibrate their should work with Afghan prosecutors priorities in Afghanistan, Mullen opened to pursue criminal charges against those a spiral notebook and took notes. At who were especially shady. Military the end of the meeting, he inquired, commanders like Stanley McCrystal with concern, about her personal safety. and David Petraeus appeared recep- Asked a similar question by a PBS re- tive, at least in theory, to Chayes’s the- porter in 2003, Chayes had replied that sis. But any time she proposed mea- she enjoyed “powerful backing,” add- sures that might antagonize President ing, “I am connected with the Karzais.” Karzai and his circle she encountered Now she told Mullen that, if he should resistance; the perception among Amer- see President Karzai anytime soon, he ican officials in Kabul, both military might “let it slip” that he and Chayes and civilian, was that these were part- were friends. “That will reduce the ners in the fight against the Taliban, threat to me,” she said. and the United States could not afford Mullen took Chayes on as an ad- to alienate them. “If you want intelli- viser. The United States was in the pro- gence in a war zone, you’re not going

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 35 to get it from Mother Teresa or Mary icle of Sarah Chayes’s ultimate failure rots from the head,” Chayes observes, Poppins,” one U.S. official told the to launch an ambitious anticorruption and, in the absence of national lead- Times, in 2010. campaign in Afghanistan, one does ers with integrity and political will, it Even so, with American assistance, wonder what such a campaign would doesn’t appear that the United States Afghan prosecutors prepared a test case have looked like. It might be tempting will be able to reverse the pathologies against a Karzai aide named Muham- to extrapolate lessons from a country in Afghanistan, Iraq, or any other coun- med Zia Salehi, who had been cap- like Singapore, but Singapore is a tricky try, notwithstanding Washington’s share tured on a wiretap soliciting a bribe. analogy for Afghanistan. With just in creating and sustaining some of those As soon as he was arrested, Salehi tele- over five million people in a territory pathologies. Indeed, we may struggle phoned Karzai, and was promptly re- of less than three hundred square miles, to differentiate between the kinds of leased; the prosecutor who indicted Singapore is tiny, centrally controlled, patronage that might assuage a popu- him was investigated and later fired. peaceful—and rich. And it is not just lation—the “glue” that Thomas Barfield When Chayes tried to generate a black- describes—and the state-sanctioned list of especially nefarious Afghans, her larceny that Chayes argues, convinc- efforts were blocked, because, she im- ingly, is a threat not just to Afghani- plies, the Central Intelligence Agency stan’s national security but to that of appeared to be making payments to the United States. multiple people on the list. The Times Perhaps the soundest course for U.S. revealed in 2013 that the agency had foreign policy when it comes to inter- been delivering clandestine bags of cash national corruption would be to adopt directly to the offices of President Kar- a Hippocratic precept: significant re- zai, and the paymaster in this opera- form must come from within, but, at tion turned out to be none other than corruption that has been abolished on a minimum, the United States should Salehi. (Little wonder the President the little island but a variety of lesser do everything it can to insure that it released him so quickly.) When Chayes human infractions, from spitting on does not exacerbate the problem. This watched Ahmed Wali Karzai take those the sidewalk to failing to flush a pub- is no small step, given that the money packages of money back in 2003, the lic toilet: the population is subject to of many a kleptocrat finds its way into people handing him the money were an authoritarian penal code. Most im- the U.S. financial system (and high- American spies. portant, perhaps, Singapore had, in Lee end real-estate market), and that the Singapore’s corruption investigators Kuan Yew, a leader who was truly in- front companies that foreign officials were free to pursue even high-level offi- vested in the anticorruption agenda. use to hide stolen assets are often reg- cials without fear of reprisal. But if the When Singapore was ruled by the Brit- istered in this country. American banks United States was going to make any ish—or, during the Second World War, reliably accommodate financial shell effort to reform Afghanistan’s political occupied by the Japanese—corruption games, and when these banks are culture, it would do so only from the prevailed. Only when the outsiders de- caught facilitating offshore criminal- neck down. In practice, though, even parted did it really get cleaned up. As ity the U.S. Justice Department tends investigations of relatively minor play- a general rule, occupying powers tend to let them off with a fine and a warn- ers produced fierce reactions from more to push countries into corruption, not ing, rather than file criminal charges. senior Afghan officials. In the hierar- pull them out of it. Although Chayes’s But then that is a reflection of the soft, chy of corruption, those senior officials book does not dwell on Iraq, Ameri- civilized form that corruption fre- secured the loyalty of junior function- ca’s relationship with Nuri al-Maliki quently takes in America. We can lec- aries by allowing them to shake down has striking similarities to its relation- ture the Afghans about the evils of their own subordinates—and to steal ship with the Karzai government. In kickbacks and patronage networks, but from the local populace—with impu- both instances, Washington sheltered what would an Afghan make of a eu- nity. “How well the regime defended and fattened its proxies until, eventu- phemism like “campaign finance,” or even its lowliest officials would broad- ally, they turned into monsters. of the fact that next year our Presiden- cast a message throughout the system It seems unlikely that any outside tial election may come down to the about the strength of the protection force can introduce enough carrots and wife of one former President and the guarantee,” Chayes writes. The effort sticks to persuade a country to reform son of another? Even upright Singa- to prosecute malefactors foundered. its political system. When Romania pore, in 2004, elected, as its third Prime One U.S. official who worked along- was campaigning for admission to the Minister, Lee Kuan Yew’s son, Lee side Afghan investigators expressed his European Union, in 2003, it launched Hsien Loong. Corruption endures, frustration: “We can’t find a fish little an anticorruption drive, and appointed legal and otherwise. In September, the enough to go after.” Following some a tough justice minister who spurred a former World Bank official and good- inconclusive discussion at the White series of corruption cases against se- governance expert Ashraf Ghani was House about tackling Afghan corrup- nior officials. As soon as Romania sworn in as the new President of Af- tion, the question was quietly set aside joined the E.U., in 2007, the campaign ghanistan, amid widespread allegations in 2011. fizzled, the justice minister was fired, of vote-tampering. He has promised If “Thieves of the State” is a chron- and the cases were dropped. “A fish to tackle corruption. 

36 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015

LETTER FROM WEST AFRICA WHEN THE FEVER BREAKS

Government measures have proved inadequate, but communities in Liberia and Sierra Leone are coming up with ways to battle the Ebola virus.

BY LUKE MOGELSON

An isolation ward in a former classroom in Monrovia. The World Health Organization has documented eight thousand deaths in Liberia

38 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 obertsport, the capital of Grand R Cape Mount County, in northern Liberia, lies at the remote end of a long peninsula, between Lake Piso and the sea. Even during the dry season, the road that leads to it is punishing. In late July, Omu Fahnbulleh made the trip on the back of a motorcycle, in the rain. She was returning home after burying her younger brother, who had died from a brief, intense illness in another district. Fahnbulleh, who is thirty years old, knew that Ebola had recently spread to parts of Liberia, but, so far, no one from Grand Cape Mount had become infected. When she arrived at the small beachside house she shared with her husband, Abraham, their three children, and Abraham’s fam- ily, Fahnbulleh’s body ached and she had a fever; she attributed her condition to the hard journey and to the fact that she was three months pregnant. Over the next couple of days, her condition worsened, and she asked Abra- ham to take her to St. Timothy, a rudi- mentary hospital on a steep hill above their home. There she miscarried. In the morning, a doctor collected a blood sam- ple and put her in isolation. Later, when Abraham visited, he was not allowed to enter the room. After a harrowing week of sharp internal pain and constant vom- iting and diarrhea, Fahnbulleh was told that she had tested positive for Ebola. An ambulance van arrived to take her to the country’s capital, Monrovia. By then, Abraham was also sick. They were loaded into the back of the ambulance, on stretchers side by side. Fahnbulleh and her husband be- lieved that they were going to a hos- pital. Instead, several hours later, the ambulance turned onto a narrow lane that ran past low-slung shops and shan- ties. Fahnbulleh realized that they were in West Point, Monrovia’s largest slum. A police officer opened a metal gate, and the ambulance stopped inside a compound enclosed by tall walls. In the middle of the compound stood a schoolhouse. The driver helped Fahn- bulleh and Abraham through a door, down a hall, and into a classroom. A smeared chalkboard hung on one of the walls, which were painted dark blue. Dim light filtered through a latticed window. On the concrete floor, ailing

JOHN MOORE/GETTY people were lying on soiled mattresses. and neighboring countries, and the actual toll is almost certainly much higher. When Fahnbulleh lay down, she saw

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 39 that the two men beside her were dead. Fahnbulleh told me this story in No- had lost his wife and brother. The boy That night, a man in a biohazard vember, on the porch of her house. Her who was sweeping up was now an or- suit appeared. On his back, he wore a two remaining children chased mangy phan. All their belongings, in accor- rectangular tank, filled with chlorine, chickens through the grass. A breeze dance with decontamination procedures, connected by tubing to a black wand. moved the palms. Nearby, one of Abra- had been confiscated and destroyed. The He moved deliberately through the ham’s brothers boiled water on a fire. At landlord built Titanic with his brother, room, spraying the floor and walls, the several points—while explaining how the more than a decade ago, after serving patients, the two dead men. He was police officers at the gate of the school- in the Army for sixteen years; the boy about to spray Abraham, but Fahn- house had been unwilling to stop her, was the son of his former commander. bulleh told him not to. and how she’d walked through West Point The landlord had adopted the boy, and The next morning, another suited with badly swollen ankles—Fahnbulleh he was confident that as soon as they man brought cornmeal. Neither Fahn- grinned, rocked forward, and laughed. got Titanic back in shape renters would bulleh nor her husband could eat. Abra- return. When I expressed surprise, he ham told her that he felt that he would ne day in early November, I fol- asked, “Where else should we go?” die; Fahnbulleh decided that they needed O lowed several young men down In West Africa, people who catch to get away from the dead men. She a warren of sandy alleyways, veined by Ebola and do not die are called “survi- dragged her mattress to the hall and found rivulets of sullage, that wound through vors.” That term could apply just as well an empty classroom. When she returned West Point, the slum to which Fahn- to the entire region, and to everyone in to fetch Abraham, he was lying on the bulleh and her husband had been taken. it. The World Health Organization has concrete. The man in the suit was spray- West Point occupies a bent thumb of documented more than twenty thou- ing him. He told Fahnbulleh that Abra- land that juts abruptly from downtown; sand Ebola cases, including eight thou- ham had fainted while trying to walk. from above, it must look like a solid sand deaths, in Guinea, Liberia, and Fahnbulleh sat beside her husband patchwork of corrugated tin—a rusty Sierra Leone, and the real toll, no doubt, and waited for him to wake up. She flotilla about to drift into the sea. On is much higher. I spent the month of understood that he had wanted to fol- the ground, it’s a labyrinth of crude November in Liberia and Sierra Leone, low her. After a while, she touched his squatter dwellings that accommodate the two most severely affected coun- mouth and felt no breath. She touched some eighty thousand people. With the tries, and everywhere I went the epi- his chest and felt no heartbeat. She Atlantic on one side and the Mesurado demic was compared to a military strug- raised his arm, and it was limp. Even- River on the other, the slum cannot ex- gle. The language is familiar; both tually, she unfolded an extra shawl that pand—it only grows more crowded. countries have only recently emerged she had brought with her from Rob- High tides regularly destroy the houses from years of civil conflict that killed ertsport and covered his face. on the periphery, and, when the water two hundred and fifty thousand peo- At daybreak, after spending the night ebbs, new structures are erected. Resi- ple. Long before Ebola struck, West in the other classroom, she walked out dents relieve themselves in the cramped Africans were versed in cataclysm and of the school. Policemen loitered in the gaps between the walls; trash is repur- what is required to endure one. yard. When Fahnbulleh reached the gate, posed as a bulwark against eroding riv- The epidemic began in December they let her pass, afraid to touch her. erbanks. We passed dilapidated block- of 2013, in a small village in Guinea, Her ankles had grown progressively when the virus spilled over from an un- inflamed since her miscarriage. Every known animal host into the human step was painful as she made her way population. In March, patients seeking through West Point, past video clubs, medical treatment crossed the border fufu shops, and tables of dried fish. She into Liberia, carrying the virus with headed to Clara Town, a mile away, where them, and in May the first case was Abraham’s sister lived, but when she ar- confirmed in Sierra Leone. Most health rived her sister-in-law, who had heard officials now agree that the epidemic that Fahnbulleh was infected, refused could have been contained earlier, if to let her in. Unsure where to go, Fahn- not averted, by a more robust and bet- bulleh found a carpenter’s shop and houses, children taking bucket baths, ter-organized international response. curled up amid the lumber scraps and and old women spreading rice over tat- Previous outbreaks of Ebola had mostly tools. The next day, someone discovered tered tarpaulins to dry. On the beach, occurred in remote areas, and the worst her and called an ambulance. This time, fishermen sat on dugout skiffs, stitch- had killed no more than three hundred she was taken to an Ebola Treatment ing grain sacks together to make sails. people before being stopped. In speak- Unit at a government hospital. After Eventually, we arrived at a sprawl- ing to some local health officials, the two weeks, she was discharged and went ing sheet-metal assemblage known as W.H.O., which advises African nations to a safe house in Robertsport to recover Titanic. Ebola had killed fourteen of on epidemic preparedness, had dis- for a month before returning home. In its ninety-plus residents. The landlord, missed the likelihood of a major urban her absence, the virus had killed others, who manned a provisions shop attached Ebola outbreak. When the virus reached including her father, mother, sister, and to the complex, stocked with canned Monrovia, in June, Liberia’s health twelve-year-old daughter, Mariama. goods and plastic sacks of fresh water, system collapsed. For most of the

40 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 summer and into the fall, hospitals were overrun, the wait for an ambulance was often many days, people were dying in the streets, and infectious corpses were left in crowded homes to rot. The W.H.O. did not declare a global emergency and call for a coÖrdinated international response until August, and by then a thousand people had died. In October, the United States allocated seven hundred and fifty million dollars and began deploying soldiers to the re- gion to construct Ebola Treatment Units, or E.T.U.s, set up mobile labo- ratories, provide logistical support, and train local medical staff. Twenty-eight hundred U.S. troops eventually arrived, following advisers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Americans were joined by hundreds of British military personnel, hundreds of Chinese and Cuban nurses and physi- cians, and aid workers from interna- tional nonprofit organizations. Even so, the epidemic continues. Last month, Doctors Without Borders, which has been in the forefront of treating Ebola •• patients and sounded the earliest and loudest alarms for aggressive foreign ease—malaria, typhoid, acute diarrhea— the government. When we met at the intervention, published an assessment abounds. There is no garbage collec- headquarters of an American nonprofit, warning that efforts by donor countries tion, sewage system, or reliable running in Monrovia, he was wearing a pressed “have been sluggish and patchy, falling water. Initially, many residents of the shirt that strained over his broad shoul- dangerously short of expectations.” slum gave credence to a rumor that the ders each time he leaned across the table Regular West Africans, in the ab- virus was a ploy to solicit foreign donor to emphasize a point. Martu recalled sence of rescue, by the world and by their money; the theory only vindicated long- the waves of poor, displaced Liberians own governments, which are among the standing disenchantment with the gov- who settled in West Point between 1989 poorest on earth, have proved remark- ernment. The landlord of Titanic told and 2003, during the country’s succes- ably adept at finding ways to live and to me, “When Ebola came here, we sive civil wars. “It’s a community of no- help others do so. Neighborhoods have doubted.” The single public school that bodies,” he said. “Politicians pay atten- mobilized, health-care workers have vol- served West Point closed in July, after tion to us only when there’s an election.” unteered, and rural villagers have formed the government cancelled education As agitation with the holding center local Ebola task forces. Individuals who across the country. The school was re- increased, Martu tried to reassure his survive Ebola are usually immune to in- opened in August as a holding center neighbors, but, a couple of hours after fection, and in many places they have for Ebola patients. The government as- Fahnbulleh left for Clara Town, hun- become integral to stemming the epi- sured suspicious residents that the fa- dreds of demonstrators pushed through demic. “Communities are doing things cility had been established for their the gates and stormed the schoolhouse. on their own, with or without our sup- benefit, but many of the patients, such One man carried out a young infected port,” Joel Montgomery, the C.D.C. as Fahnbulleh and her husband, turned girl in his bare arms; other patients ab- team leader in Liberia at the time, told out to be from counties as far away as sconded or were expelled. Looters ran- me when I met him in Monrovia. “Death Grand Cape Mount. As patients inside sacked the rooms, running off with is a strong motivator. When you see your began to die, health officials publicly bloody mattresses. friends and family die, you do some- attributed the deaths to the commu- The next morning, Martu and a del- thing to make a difference.” nity, and West Point residents grew egation of nineteen other community more distrusting and resentful. representatives met with officials from s one of Monrovia’s poorest and “They wanted it closed,” Kenneth the National Ebola Task Force, at its A most densely populated neigh- Martu, a local organizer, told me. Martu, offices across town. The task force had borhoods, West Point was also among who is thirty-eight, was born and been formed by Liberia’s President, the worst hit. Squalor in the slum has brought up in West Point; he frequently Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who had declared always outstripped sanitation, while dis- serves as a liaison between the slum and a state of emergency and warned that

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 41 civil liberties might be suspended. Dur- the family toward the buffer zone, the average of ten to twelve contacts per pa- ing the meeting, officials raised the pos- mob pursued them, throwing stones. tient, it’s just mind-blowing how many sibility of quarantining the entire slum. Tear gas was deployed. Martu was contacts you end up following.” “We said that would not be a good shoved into a vehicle. Moments later, In West Point, the job fell to the thing to do,” Martu told me. “And we he heard gunfire. A man and a fifteen- neighborhood. “We had to guarantee gave them several reasons.” At least half year-old boy were shot; the boy died. that the things that needed to be done of all West Pointers make their living As Martu had predicted, once the would be done by ourselves,” Archie from the local fishing industry: the gill- exits were sealed in West Point food Gbessay, another local leader, who netters who catch the fish; the service prices soared. Many residents went hun- worked with Martu to carry out the in- men who ferry it to shore in handmade gry. The police had abandoned their terventions, told me one afternoon in wooden canoes; the mongers who smoke one station in the slum, and theft en- November. We were walking down the it, using salvaged metal oil drums; the sued. Meanwhile, Ebola proliferated. main road that snakes through West market women who hawk it at side- It took the West Point emissaries ten Point. Gbessay wore a knapsack filled walk stands and street fairs. If the boats days to persuade the government to with case-investigation forms and kept were beached, if no one was allowed to end the quarantine. During the nego- his thumbs hooked on the chest-strap go to town, the economic impact would tiations, Martu and his colleagues clipped across his sternum. He is twenty- be ruinous. agreed to implement vigorous contain- eight years old but exudes a quiet force Despite Martu’s plea, two days later ment measures in the slum: identify- that seems to have accrued over a much West Point’s exits were blockaded with ing sick people, removing them from longer life; his face quivers with inten- metal ramparts and barbed wire. Secu- the community, quarantining their sity when he talks about Ebola. “If we rity forces forbade anyone to leave. Gun- houses, tracking down their recent con- didn’t do this, nobody was going to do ships patrolled the coast. As incensed tacts, and monitoring those contacts it for us,” he said. residents gathered on the road, Martu for twenty-one days—the maximum To build a network of active case- was summoned by the task force. After amount of time the virus has been finders who could cover all of West Point, being escorted through a buffer zone, known to incubate before manifesting Gbessay recruited three volunteers from he watched a mob approach the barri- symptoms. Previously, all this was the each of the slum’s thirty-five blocks. Most cades. Helmeted soldiers beat people responsibility of highly trained special- of them were young and had a degree with batons; police in riot gear closed ists. In the Democratic Republic of the of social clout—“credible people,” Gbes- ranks behind their shields. Uniformed Congo, where several Ebola outbreaks say called them. The quarantine had men huddled around West Point’s com- had occurred, epidemiologists could done little to alleviate popular skepti- missioner and several of her relatives. personally keep tabs on every house- cism of the government’s Ebola-con- The commissioner, as Martu learned hold in an infected area. “That’s been tainment policies, however, and, for a later, had decided to evacuate her fam- our biggest challenge in this outbreak,” while, hostility persisted. “At first, the ily, which tipped the outrage into vio- Montgomery, the C.D.C. team leader, cases were skyrocketing,” Gbessay said. lence. As military officers shepherded told me. “In an urban setting, with an “We used to see seventy, eighty cases a day. But by the middle of September everyone started to think, Look, I bet- ter be careful. Today, you talk to your friend—tomorrow, you hear the guy is gone. So they started to pay attention.” Outside the West Point police sta- tion, we encountered a group of pro- testers waving signs and chanting. The Independent National Commission on Human Rights had just released a re- port on the shooting of the boy in Au- gust; some of the signs featured pho- tographs of him bleeding in the street. Gbessay led me past the melee, and we soon reached the gates of the former schoolhouse. A guard took our tem- peratures, then waved us through. In- side, we found a half-dozen nurses, in blue scrubs, looking bored. The holding center, which had closed after the riot, had since reopened as a tran- sit center. Now, when residents of the slum felt unwell, they came here to be “Tonight? I thought it was tomorrow night.” diagnosed and, if necessary, wait for an ambulance that was staffed by West Mount County, had one of the high- September, by Global Communities, Pointers and managed by Martu. The est concentrations of Ebola in the coun- an international N.G.O. It operates average wait time had become a mat- try. A month earlier, the U.S. military under the supervision of the county ter of minutes, rather than days. had begun rolling out a plan to install health team, which is based in Sinji and In September, at the height of the up to seventeen state-of-the-art E.T.U.s comprises various local agencies and outbreak in Monrovia, the C.D.C. across Liberia, one of them in a town foreign partners. As an environmental- warned that Ebola could infect 1.4 mil- in Grand Cape Mount named Sinji. health technician, Jah was trained in lion West Africans by late January. The Many politicians had criticized Presi- safe burials and disease prevention, and prediction assumed that no “changes in dent Obama for deploying troops in her team resumed the practice of in- community behavior” would occur. By West Africa, and Pentagon officials terning victims in their home villages. November, that assumption was obso- had emphasized that no military doc- Still, until recently, Jah and her men lete in West Point. Gbessay’s active case- tors or medics would provide treat- had been unable to get to Jene-Wonde. finders had largely prevailed on their ment. Although massive white and About a month earlier, they had gone neighbors to come forward with symp- green tents already occupied a graded there to collect a body and had been toms and observe basic precautions such hilltop in Sinji, the facility there was turned back by a group of angry men as avoiding physical contact with each not scheduled to open until Novem- wielding machetes. A couple of weeks other and washing their hands several ber 30th, when enough Liberians could later, two epidemiologists from the times a day at the hundreds of chlorine be trained to run it. (It finally opened C.D.C. arranged a parley with the vil- buckets stationed throughout the city. in late December.) lagers, to find out why they were so re- As a result, cases were waning. “Every I first visited Jene-Wonde with the sistant to outside intervention. The vil- day, patients come,” the supervisor of county burial team, after the wife of lagers admitted that nineteen people the transit center told me. “But it’s going its imam died. The team was led by had died in Jene-Wonde since Septem- down. It’s getting less and less.” Lisa Jah, an authoritative twenty-eight- ber. Early on, they said, an ambulance Gbessay gestured at the nurses, all year-old who, despite the heat, wore had taken a number of victims to the of whom were from West Point, and faded bluejeans and a matching denim nearest E.T.U., in Monrovia. Not one all of whom were volunteers. “It is be- jacket. Jah was originally from south- of those people had been seen again, cause of love we are in the field,” he eastern Liberia, but had come to Grand nor had health officials provided any said. “It is because of love they are here, Cape Mount two years earlier as an updates on their status. If treatment they are working, and have not gotten environmental-health technician, work- meant death, the residents of Jene- a dime.” Gbessay peered at me. He ing for the government on public Wonde reasoned, they would rather die wished the outsider to see. “Just because awareness of infectious diseases. She at home. of love.” and the six men she supervised set out When we arrived, several people from Sinji in two four-wheel-drive were standing in the shade of the pa- ecently, the government had begun trucks. At the end of a long and cra- vilion. Jene-Wonde’s chief, Jebbeh San- R sending Gbessay to other com- tered road, they pulled into a small noh, wore a ceremonial head tie and a munities to help set up similar grass- square where there was an outdoor pa- bright-colored lappa. Although San- roots initiatives. Even as Ebola was de- vilion and two weathered headstones noh was only thirty-five, a woman, and clining in the capital, new hot spots inscribed with faded epitaphs. one of the few Christians in the village, were cropping up throughout the coun- Ebola victims are most contagious she commanded wide respect. During try. It was the end of the rainy season, when they are no longer alive, and in the meeting with the epidemiologists, and Liberians were on the move: re- West Africa—where burial rituals, for Sannoh had remained silent, regarding turning to their farms, visiting their both Christians and Muslims, entail them with a wary expression. But over families, incubating the virus. “There’s anointing the deceased—many people the next several days she had come the risk of it becoming endemic, where have contracted the virus from a corpse. around and endorsed the county health you have this continuous cycle of in- During the summer, when Omu Fahn- team. One sign of the shift in attitude fection,” Montgomery told me. He and bulleh’s family members died in Grand was the imam’s agreement to allow Jah others were concerned that if the rural Cape Mount, a team had to come from to bury his wife. outbreaks, however small, were not Monrovia to retrieve the bodies. In Au- “Where’s the body?” Jah asked when quickly suppressed the virus could be- gust, the government had requisitioned she stepped out of the truck. come persistent, travelling with people a crematorium—built just outside the Sannoh motioned to a small general back and forth between the city and capital by the Indian consulate, for In- store across the square. Laundry was the jungle. “You control it in one area dian expatriates—and mandated that drying on its metal roof. A dozen or and then you get transmission into an- all Ebola corpses in the city be incin- so villagers crowded a veranda. The other area by population movements,” erated. (The mandate has since been imam—an older, mustachioed man in Montgomery said. “So you have to com- lifted.) Cremation is alien to Liberian a red caftan—sat in the middle of the pletely eliminate person-to-person traditions, and there was concern that group, his bare feet resting on the par- transmission in these hot spots.” the practice could discourage people apet. Jah approached him. The imam In mid-November, a small village from reporting deaths. Jah’s team was told her, flatly, that his wife’s corpse was called Jene-Wonde, in Grand Cape established in Grand Cape Mount, in still inside their house, and he assured

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 43 her that he would be quarantining him- Jene-Wonde to importune its leaders. had insisted on staying were still inside self in the home of his other wife, who Under the pavilion, three elders seated their houses, with their relatives, and I owned the store. themselves behind a wooden table, as- asked Sannoh what she planned to do. Jah called over the two members of suming regal frowns. Sannoh sat in a “They are afraid,” she said. “The her team who were responsible for dis- plastic chair. The imam opened the person goes, and doesn’t come back. infecting. Many West Africans fear meeting with a prayer. Who knows?” sprayers. It is a common belief that the The health officer, Lorraine Cooper, liquid in the tanks is poison, and that was a physician and former hospital di- o propagate, some viruses take ad- this poison, not any virus, is what kills rector. A charismatic speaker, she ad- Tvantage of their hosts’ eating hab- you. Jah had a plan to debunk the mis- dressed the villagers in the booming its, others their reproductive habits, oth- conception. She showed the imam a and mellifluous cadences of Liberian ers their migratory habits. The human bag of powdered chlorine, explained English. After an emotional plea for qualities that Ebola has most ruthlessly what it was, and let him watch as she the residents of Jene-Wonde to forgive exploited are empathy and the impulse scooped a spoonful into a bucket of the county health team for its failure to assist and comfort people who are water provided by a villager. The imam to keep them informed about their loved suffering. Fear of Ebola, on the other nodded, impressed by the demonstra- ones in Monrovia, Cooper leaned for- hand, can completely suppress these tion. Then he got up and walked Jah ward. “I beg you,” she said. “We have impulses. Vigilance can give way to stig- to the house that held his wife. come here today to find out if people matization, caution to callousness. This A driver parked one of the trucks are still sick among you.” is something that communities as in- near the front door, and Jah’s team began Sannoh and the elders assured Coo- sular and self-reliant as Jene-Wonde the tedious process of donning their per that the imam’s wife had been the cannot afford. gear. Jah looked on, chastising the men last sick person in Jene-Wonde. One day, while I was walking for any lapses. A few villagers gathered On our way out of the village, we through the village with Sannoh, she to watch. The spectacle, by now, was passed through a deserted bazaar. In pointed out a young boy, Ben Ballah, familiar. When they were ready, Jah told July, President Sirleaf closed all gen- who was playing under some trees with them, “Go in, it’s to the left.” eral markets near the country’s border, several friends. Ben’s father had been The sprayers went first—a pair of and the empty wood stalls, half-col- the first person in Jene-Wonde to die minesweepers clearing a path. Then the lapsing from disuse, felt like pillaged from Ebola. Later, his mother, his sis- others entered with the bag and the ground. Behind them stood a former ter, and three brothers had died. Each stretcher. They emerged several min- health clinic that was being converted time another family member fell ill, utes later and loaded the corpse into the into a rapid-response center. Two weeks Ben’s twenty-one-day quarantine would back of the truck. As the truck made earlier, Sannoh had met with the reset. Even when I saw him, he should its way across the square, women and C.D.C. epidemiologists and agreed to not have been outside. At the time, children spilled out of their houses, sat enlist a group of local men to work on eleven households in Jene-Wonde, with down in the dirt, and keened. I followed the building. The project was part of a a hundred and eight inhabitants, were on foot, along with a few locals, all of national plan to supplement the large- quarantined. They were identifiable by whom turned back when the truck scale E.T.U.s that the U.S. military was blue plastic barrels outside their doors, stopped at a wall of trees. The team filed putting up with more easily deployable in which neighbors deposited water, down a narrow trail, carrying the facilities appropriate to the emergence food, and firewood. Isolation is oner- stretcher through dark jungle. After of hot spots in far-flung villages. Once ous in rural communities where most about a hundred yards, unmarked the rapid-response center was com- families depend on subsistence farm- mounds of rich orange soil rose here pleted, sick people could be isolated ing and no longer have markets for and there from the grass. Beside a shal- and tested for Ebola without having to trading. Although the World Food low, rectangular hole, an elderly man in leave the village. Program supplies quarantined house- flip-flops, cargo shorts, and a white skull- Until then, it seemed certain that holds with rice, beans, and oil, the ra- cap leaned on the handle of an old spade. some residents of Jene-Wonde would tions are sometimes slow to arrive, or He had dug all the graves. No one else continue to reject treatment. The day never do. from the village, he told me, was will- after Sannoh and the elders promised In Bowaterside, a larger town in ing to tread in that place. Cooper that everyone was healthy, Jah Grand Cape Mount, I met two sib- The team lowered the imam’s wife and her team were called back to Jene- lings, seven-year-old Augustine and into the grave. On top of her, they Wonde. Two middle-aged women had his six-year-old sister, Kou, who were dropped a heap of freshly hacked died during the night, and three men quarantined in a mud house by them- branches and leaves. Then they stripped were violently ill. Although one of the selves. Ebola had arrived in the town off their suits, gloves, and masks and men agreed to go with the ambulance, in late September, when the drug dis- deposited them in the grave as well. the others refused. penser at the local clinic fell ill. She When we got back to the square, more After the ambulance left, I found had given herself a diagnosis of ty- members of the health team were pull- Sannoh in the square, sitting on a raised phoid and told her neighbors that she ing up in trucks and Land Cruisers. slab that extended from the pair of an- was not contagious. The children’s The county health officer had come to cient headstones. The sick men who mother, a close friend of the woman,

44 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 subsequently died. So did their in- surviving through the mercy of God meltdown of the health system in Mon- fant brother. Their father had left a and these people here.” rovia over the summer, responders in year earlier, to work in a gold mine; From the doorway, Augustine and Freetown have worked hard to stave no one had heard from him in months. Kou watched mutely. off a similar catastrophe. In the offices During most of Augustine and Kou’s of the British Council, a large audito- quarantine, their ten-year-old sister, ot far from the house, a metal gate rium serves as a command center to Massa, had been with them. Then N blocked the road; on the other manage response efforts in the city. Massa developed a fever and was taken side was Sierra Leone. Before the bor- (Throughout the epidemic, Britain has to Monrovia. der here was sealed, in July, the market led foreign assistance for Sierra Leone, The house was one among a clus- where Augustine and Kou’s aunt sold which was once a British colony.) In ter, set back from the road, with a roof cassava garri, and where their mother October, the Minister of Defense was poorly fashioned from sheet metal and sold fufu, was held on Fridays in Sierra appointed head of a new committee palm leaves. Augustine and Kou sat on Leone and on Saturdays in Liberia. responsible for confronting Ebola, and a low bench just inside the doorway. Some forty illegal routes, on the out- the command center is a quintessen- Earlier, representatives from the United skirts of Bowaterside, still linked the tial war room. Operational flowcharts Nations Children’s Fund had paid a two frontiers. cover the walls; colored pushpins dot visit, bearing toys. Augustine wore a red In November, the W.H.O. recorded giant laminated maps; tracker boards firefighter’s helmet and held a plastic more than eighteen hundred new cases catalogue daily “live” and “dead” alerts space gun. A doll was strapped to Kou’s of Ebola in Sierra Leone, three times received through an emergency hot back. Their bed, a stain-covered duvet, the number in Liberia. So far, the epi- line that people are supposed to call lay in the dirt to dry. center of the outbreak has been the whenever someone becomes sick or I’d come to Bowaterside with a young capital, Freetown. After witnessing the dies. A British Army major presides, woman who used to run the clinic in Jene-Wonde and was now a social worker with the county health team. Neighbors gathered around her, agi- tated. The children’s aunt, who had been setting daily bowls of rice outside their door, complained that she could no longer feed them. She used to sell cassava garri at the local market: now, with the market closed, her own chil- dren were at risk of going hungry. A neighbor, Lawrence Magoma, said that rain was leaking through Augustine and Kou’s roof, and he was upset that the village had yet to hear any news about Massa. If Massa tested positive, Augustine and Kou would have to start their quarantine all over. “We told the ambulance!” Magoma shouted at the social worker. “When they carry patients to the hospital, they do not check back. You cannot carry patients and then you just abandon that patient! How will we be in contact? We care for our people!” The social worker opened her arms, in appeal. “We ourselves, we are con- cerned,” she said. “It’s really bothering us. I beg you, people, let’s just hold our peace for now.” She promised to find out about Massa, but she wanted Ma- goma’s assurance that Augustine and Kou would remain sequestered in the house until she confirmed that their sister was negative. Magoma shook his head and sighed. “These children,” he said, “they are only with advisers from the C.D.C. and a higher-ranking chief from the area, had intervened in the village only two days earlier, and the headman had already implemented their recommendation to form a task force, much like Gbessay’s active case-finders in West Point, to seek out sick people and quarantine their contacts. I discovered similar task forces al- most everywhere I went. Most of them had been formed in reaction to a rash of deaths. When Ebola finds its way to secluded communities, the impact can be devastating. In the far east of Tonko- lili, we drove down a road so ravaged and seldom used that we had to ford creeks and stop several times to pry boulders out of the way. The road led to a village where twenty-two mem- bers of the same family had died. The virus had been introduced by the local imam, after he travelled to the capital to care for and bury his infected son. Shortly after the imam returned, he and several of his relatives succumbed. “We’d “I’m not stalking you. I’m binge-watching you.” never seen anything like that before,” the headman told me. “People began •• to die in twos and threes. Everyone was scared. Overwhelmingly scared. It put terror in our hearts.” We were sitting unflappably, over the various sections. mountains, reaching places that make outside the mosque, surrounded by the Despite the impressive logistical or- Jene-Wonde look metropolitan. At- dozens of villagers who remained. Sev- chestration, six months after Ebola ar- tempts to identify and quell hot spots eral of them were survivors; many of rived in the country, actual resources in the countryside have resembled a them looked underfed. While Ebola remained unequal to dealing with the game of Whac-A-Mole, with the mal- rampaged through the village, people epidemic. The system that the hot line let invariably landing late. In Tonko- had been too afraid to leave their houses was meant to activate was overloaded. lili, a twenty-seven-hundred-square- and had left their farms unattended. All of Freetown’s hundred and twenty mile district in the very center of the Insects had destroyed the harvest. treatment-center beds were occupied. country, I accompanied the district sur- The headman was the son-in-law The holding center in the country’s veillance officer to a village where Ebola of the imam. He had struggled to pre- main hospital had been continuously had recently killed more than thirty vent his wife and fifteen-year-old full since August. Outside the hospi- people before officials found out. To daughter from going to him. His wife tal, patients were obliged to wait in a get there, we followed barely discern- relented; his daughter did not. “She makeshift tent, sprawled on sheets of ible tire tracks, for miles, through grass loved her grandfather very much,” he cardboard, sometimes for two days. so tall and close you felt as if you were explained. “I tried to keep her away, but “We’ve always felt like we’re six weeks in a car wash; no one in the village had I could not.” She later died. behind Liberia,” Oliver Johnson, who a cell phone or had heard about the hot Another young relative, a niece of heads a team of British advisers at the line. The local chief, or headman, had the imam, lived outside the village, in hospital, told me. “Liberia was worse, been told that somewhere a plane had a concrete house shared by three broth- so a lot of organizations were going crashed and for every passenger who ers and their wives and children; soon, there. If they had the capacity to set up died a villager must fall ill. The head- the headman heard that she, too, was one treatment unit, they were doing man wore a ski cap and a trenchcoat sick. Each time he went to investigate, it in Monrovia.” (By late December, and sat squarely in the sun. When I he found the house abandoned. “They more E.T.U.s had opened, relieving asked about the plane crash, he ex- moved into the bush,” he told me. “They the backlog.) plained, “That was the information that kept moving their location. I just wanted In the rural provinces, the virus has we had. We have our culture. We be- to fish out the infected girl. But they travelled on the backs of motorcycle lieved. Now we know they were wrong hid her.” Eventually, the girl died, fol- taxis deep into the jungle and across reports.” The surveillance officer, along lowed by her mother, father, and infant

46 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 sister. “Then we suspected that some- took nine hours to reach. (Doctors ited and defecated profusely, and some body else was sick,” the headman said. Without Borders has since opened an- of the fluids seeped beneath the barrier “We tried to go there, to cajole them, other E.T.U. in Magburaka.) between the rear compartment and the and they refused. We got to know that The ambulance, a four-wheel-drive cab, mixing with the water on the floor. two more among them had died and Land Cruiser with a blue light on the A few days later, Kamara woke to a they had buried them in the bush. They roof, left almost every morning from pain in his side. He was taken to an are very stubborn.” Tonkolili’s main holding center, a small E.T.U. that treated health-care work- When I went to the house, which government hospital in Magburaka. ers and was given a diagnosis of Ebola; was painted yellow and brown and Early one morning, I found the Land after two weeks, he became one of the looked as if it had several rooms, it ap- Cruiser parked near an open breeze- first ambulance drivers in the country peared empty. Wood shutters blocked way outside the isolation ward. The to survive the virus. the windows. I called through the door breezeway was blocked off at both ends Before falling ill, Kamara had re- several times. After a while, a teen-age with tape and pink sheets that read, in cruited Conteh, who had previously girl emerged with a baby on her hip. black marker, “Ebola Is Real.” Armed imported and sold motorcycles from Then a young boy joined her. Then an- soldiers stood guard. The first patient Guinea, and a family friend to help him. other child, and another, and another, to emerge from the ward was a nine- At the time, they were volunteers; later, until more than a dozen stood outside: teen-year-old girl. She wore a striped the government pledged to pay them barefoot and dirty and too thin. They skirt and looked frail. Her two younger ninety-five dollars per week, but Ka- were the siblings of the first sick girl. sisters were already undergoing treat- mara and Conteh told me they had yet When I asked who took care of them, ment at the E.T.U., and she had told a to receive the salaries. By November, they said their uncles. Both men, who nurse that she was frightened to join Kamara was mostly working as a me- had fourteen more children between them. As the girl hiked up her skirt and chanic for the district, while Conteh them, lived in the jungle. struggled to step onto the rear bumper and the friend alternated between col- One of the boys led me into the trees, of the ambulance, the nurse and two lecting patients from the villages and and, after a few hundred yards, we came drivers stood back several feet and making the long haul to the E.T.U. (I to a small clearing. Two flimsy huts, watched. met Kamara when my car broke down made of branches and palm leaves, stood “Don’t be afraid,” the nurse called, and he appeared on a motorcycle, with side by side. A broken pot sat in a pit. in Krio. “Other people have gone there a toolbox strapped to the rear seat.) The A few chewed ears of corn were scat- and come back.” morning I visited the holding center, it tered on the ground. The two uncles The girl nodded. was Conteh’s turn to go. Under the were there. Both men wore filthy rags. In a lower voice, to the drivers, the breezeway, Kamara watched his brother They told me that more than thirty of nurse said, “She’s been vomiting a lot.” don his gear and stock the cab with their relatives were currently staying in The drivers, thirty-four-year-old water. the bush. A few days earlier, an ambu- Abdul Kamara and thirty-five-year-old Meanwhile, another teen-age girl lance had taken away their dead broth- Idrisa Conteh, were brothers. In Au- and a boy squeezed into the back, on a er’s second wife and her two sons. I gust, when Ebola became more than short bench seat opposite a gurney. The asked whether any health officials were a sporadic problem in gurney was reserved for aware of their situation, and they said Tonkolili, Kamara had an elderly man who was no. They didn’t seem interested in re- been the only ambulance pushed out of the ward in ceiving food rations; they preferred to driver in the district. Soon, a wheelchair by a hospi- be left alone. I’d seen families like this he was taking patients to tal attendant in full pro- before: hungry, homeless, traumatized, the distant E.T.U. several tective kit. It took a while and fearful and suspicious of everyone. times a week. Even if he for the attendant to get They were refugees. left by dawn, he often the man out of the chair didn’t get back until three and onto the gurney. The n Tonkolili, even when infected vic- the next morning. There man wore a black fedora I tims were identified promptly, treat- was no air-conditioning in the Land and a collared shirt. He was very weak ment was very far away. From the dis- Cruiser, and, when patients were in the and seemed embarrassed to be causing trict capital, Magburaka, the drive to back, he had to wear a suit, a hood, so much inconvenience. Freetown—on a paved highway whose three pairs of gloves, a mask, and heavy “Lie down now,” Conteh said softly, only obstacles are periodic military rubber boots. The heat was powerful. and the man obediently curled up on checkpoints and a few farmers spread- For relief, Kamara liked to pour water his side. ing grains of rice to dry atop the bak- over the outside of his suit and feel the “Will he survive the road?” Kamara ing asphalt—takes about three hours. lukewarm liquid trickle over its imper- asked the nurse. But, because all the E.T.U.s in the city meable polyethylene. By the time he The nurse wore a surgical mask; were at capacity, patients who tested arrived back in Magburaka, a puddle her expression was inscrutable. She positive for Ebola in Tonkolili had to had formed on the floorboards, which said again of the first girl, “And she’s be transferred to an E.T.U., run by Doc- he cleaned. During a trip in Septem- vomiting.” tors Without Borders, that sometimes ber, one of Kamara’s passengers vom- Sometimes, Conteh and Kamara

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 47 told me, when the E.T.U. attendants orphans the virus has left behind. When June, while caring for one of his col- opened the back of the ambulance they Omu Fahnbulleh returned to Rob- leagues at Redemption Hospital, in found that one of the passengers had ertsport, to discover that in her absence Monrovia. He was at home when he died on the way. The hard journey re- most of her family had died, people fol- first recognized that he was ill. No am- duced others to a state of such fatigue lowed her down the street, taunting her. bulance was available at Redemption that they died one or two days later. Her husband was a carpenter; now that and after three days a friend took him The nurse gave each patient a plas- he is gone, she is unsure how she will to John F. Kennedy Medical Center, tic bag containing two pieces of bread support her children. “I got no one to another treatment unit in the city. He and a hard-boiled egg. It looked very help me,” she told me when I met her. was put on a gurney, in a fenced-off crowded back there, and Conteh still “I’m not getting nothing. I’m not doing area outdoors, in the rain. Two other had to pick up a fifth person at another nothing.” Communities, employers, patients were isolated alongside Bonar- holding center. He kicked shut the rear friends, sometimes even relatives shun wolo, one of whom suffered frequent doors, careful not to touch them with survivors. In Tonkolili, I accompanied fits of rage. “One time, she dragged me his hands. Then he got into the cab, a social worker who was escorting a to the floor and jumped on my back,” turned on the blue light, and pulled teen-age survivor back to her village. Bonarwolo said. “She beat me until she onto the road. The girl’s neighbors and family were got tired. It was just by the grace of Later, I learned that during the drive clearly uncomfortable, and one woman God she didn’t kill me.” the ambulance broke an axle. At the asked whether it was safe to touch her. Bonarwolo was in the E.T.U. for holding center, Conteh had forgotten “She is free,” the social worker said. “You three weeks. After his discharge, he to move the jack from the back of the are vulnerable; I am vulnerable. But she contracted pneumonia and became ane- Land Cruiser to the cab: he had to re- is free.” mic. Still, the more survivors he met, trieve it from where it was stowed In Monrovia, I heard several stories the luckier he felt. Many had nowhere among the passengers. He fixed the axle of survivors returning home to find that to live and could barely feed themselves. and delivered the patients to the E.T.U. their apartments had been leased to The girl who had abused him in the Not long after he returned to Mag- other tenants. Even when that didn’t E.T.U. had survived but remained un- buraka, he told Kamara that his head happen, many of their belongings had stable. Her family had given up on her, hurt. Kamara arranged for him to be been incinerated. The Liberian govern- and she was living in a church. taken to a treatment facility, where, ten ment issues “survivor kits,” which in- One of the co-founders of Bonar- days later, he died. clude bedding, rice, and basic cookware, wolo’s new association was a survivor Recently, on the phone, Kamara told but I met many survivors who said they in her early twenties named Deconteh me that he still has not been paid and never got them. In Sierra Leone, it was Davis. She had been infected in July, was having no success recouping the left to the E.T.U.s to send something by an aunt of her fiancé. Four days after salary that Conteh, who left behind home with discharged patients. The Davis was admitted to an E.T.U., while four children, was owed. The day Con- teen-age girl in Tonkolili had been given she was lying on a gurney in the corri- teh left on his last trip to the E.T.U., I a bucket containing two plastic cups, dor, she recognized her fiancé’s screams had asked him why he did what he did. two plastic bowls, a mosquito net, a when he was brought into a nearby “This is my land,” he said. “I am fight- sleeping mat, a thin blanket, a tooth- room. Too weak to move, Davis lay in ing for my land.” brush and toothpaste, three bars of soap, the corridor and listened until he was a towel, sanitary napkins, used T-shirts, quiet. Eventually, someone told her that ccording to the W.H.O., an out- a baby’s flip-flops, infant-size under- he was dead. A break is not over until no new wear, and a baby’s corduroy trousers. Two weeks later, when Davis walked cases have occurred during the length Last summer, the Liberian Minis- out of the E. T. U., one of the first peo- of time that is twice the incubation pe- try of Health asked Korlia Bonarwolo, ple she encountered was Bonarwolo. riod of the virus—forty-two days for a physician’s assistant in his mid-twen- She began attending weekly meetings Ebola. No one knows when that will ties, to launch a new department that at the Ministry of Health, where she happen in West Africa. Even when it would help survivors reintegrate into was approached with a job offer. The does, the threat will persist. “The virus society. When I met Bonarwolo, in government was opening a quarantine is not going to go away,” Montgomery, Monrovia, he had just left the govern- center for children whose parents were the C.D.C. team leader in Liberia, told ment, which he found cynical and in- infected with or had died from Ebola. me. “We will stop this outbreak. Per- effective, to form his own association. Because the children had the potential son-to-person transmission will stop. Bonarwolo described Liberia’s reinte- to become contagious, the center needed But the reservoir is still out there.” gration initiatives as a public-relations to be staffed by survivors. Davis, who The trauma done to West African exercise put on for the benefit of do- was a Sunday-school teacher and had society will last for years. Thousands of nors. “They were using us,” he told me. worked with children for a Christian survivors are already struggling to re- He said that the government had mostly charity, agreed to be the supervisor. turn to communities that have been in- arranged for him to appear at organized When I visited the quarantine cen- undated with public-awareness cam- events, and did not provide real resources ter, in Monrovia, a group of children paigns geared toward inculcating a fear to assist survivors. sat in plastic chairs inside the gate, of Ebola, and no one knows how many Bonarwolo contracted Ebola in late near a metal seesaw. Girls braided one

48 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 another’s hair. The oldest, who was thirteen, bounced an infant on her knee. Davis, who seemed to be smiling even when she scolded the children, radiated an energy that precluded gloominess in anyone around her. Once the children have spent the requisite twenty-one days at the cen- ter, they are supposed to be reunited with living relatives, typically aunts and uncles. As of November, no official pro- vision had been made for those with- out aunts and uncles, or for those whose aunts and uncles declined to adopt them.

hildren who contract Ebola and C survive are a separate matter. As soon as they are discharged, if their parents are dead they go to an orphan- age that is an hour and a half outside Monrovia, in the vast rural flatland near the airport and the crematorium. The orphanage is run by Hawa Massaquoi, a middle-aged woman who, before the outbreak, ran a day-care center there. A low, tin-roofed structure contains one room for the boys and one for the girls. Most of the activity takes place outside, on four wooden benches ar- ranged around the trunk of a giant mango tree full of nests and raucous “Did you send your editor the final pages of ‘Organizing Your Life’?” birds. In addition to caring for the orphans, •• Massaquoi must learn, from them, where they are from, and to whom or what place they can return. Sometimes, with dent Sirleaf beneath the faded words to a girl named Esther, whose parents, the younger and more traumatized or- “For the Good of the Country.” grandparents, and six siblings had died. phans, this takes time—a gradual build- While Massaquoi spoke with the Esther and Manu had put their mat- ing of trust. Massaquoi seemed suited social worker, Abraham and Manu si- tresses beside each other, and they spent to the job. Numerous children con- lently watched the other children dance their days playing together. Manu had stantly competed for her attention, to a song playing on the Land Cruis- told Massaquoi where she was from, which she distributed generously. er’s radio. After a few minutes, the so- and Massaquoi had managed to con- One afternoon, I was sitting under cial worker handed Massaquoi some tact her uncle, who was coming for her. the mango tree with Massaquoi and a paperwork and left. “This is all they I found Abraham sitting alone, wear- nine-year-old boy whom she had been give us,” Massaquoi said, flipping ing the same campaign T-shirt he’d trying to draw out for more than two through the documents. Each discharge been discharged in, scribbling jerky lines weeks, without success. As she joked form was a single page. The address on a sheet of paper with a broken pen. with the boy, a Land Cruiser pulled provided for Manu was Kakata High- So far, the only word he had uttered into the lot. A social worker from the way, a road that spans several towns; was his mother’s name; according to Ministry of Health stepped out. In the there was nothing for Abraham. Massaquoi, he called for her repeatedly back sat two survivors, a boy and a girl. Massaquoi looked down at her new during the night. Frowning at Abra- The boy, Abraham Korba, was eight charges, their hands squeezed between ham, Massaquoi shook her head. “He years old; the girl, Manu Paye, was seven. their thighs, faces sullen. “They just wasn’t born like this,” she said. They both wore adult-size T-shirts that came,” she said. “Maybe they don’t want As I was driving away, I looked back fell below their knees. (The clothes that to talk to me. Maybe after a day or two.” and saw about a dozen children, in- Ebola patients wear when they enter I returned a week later, and almost cluding Abraham, huddled around Mas- an E.T.U. must be burned.) Abraham’s everyone was under the mango tree, saquoi—clutching her arms, her legs, T-shirt was from an old political cam- talking and laughing. Manu had new the edges of her clothes, any piece of paign and featured an image of Presi- clothes and was sitting on a bench next her that they could reach. 

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 49 A REPORTER AT LARGE WE KNOW HOW YOU FEEL

Computers are learning to read emotion, and the business world can’t wait.

BY RAFFI KHATCHADOURIAN

hree years ago, archivists at A.T. & T. tions less bothersome. H14, like all headquarters have the trappings of a Tstumbled upon a rare fragment of computers in the real world, was an West Coast startup—pool table, bean- computer history: a short film that Jim imbecile. bag chairs—but the sensibility is New Henson produced for Ma Bell, in 1963. Today, machines seem to get bet- England; many of the employees are Henson had been hired to make the ter every day at digesting vast gulps from M.I.T. From a conference room, film for a conference that the company of information—and they remain as the Amtrak line to Boston is visible was convening to showcase its strengths emotionally inert as ever. But since the beyond a large parking lot. in machine-to-machine communica- nineteen-nineties a small number of When I visited in September, Ka- tion. Told to devise a faux robot that researchers have been working to give liouby walked me past charts of facial believed it functioned better than a computers the capacity to read our expressions, some of them scientific person, he came up with a cocky, boxy, feelings and react, in ways that have diagrams, some borrowed from com- jittery, bleeping Muppet on wheels. come to seem startlingly human. Ex- ics. Kaliouby has a Ph.D. in computer “This is computer H14,” it proclaims perts on the voice have trained com- science, and, like many accomplished as the film begins. “Data program read- puters to identify deep patterns in coders, she has no trouble with math- out: number fourteen ninety-two per vocal pitch, rhythm, and intensity; ematical concepts like Bayesian prob- cent H2SOSO.” (Robots of that era their software can scan a conversation ability and hidden Markov models. always seemed obligated to initiate between a woman and a child and But she is also at ease among people: speech with senseless jargon.) “Begin determine if the woman is a mother, emotive, warm, even flirtatious. She is subject: Man and the Machine,” it whether she is looking the child in a practicing Muslim, and until two continues. “The machine possesses su- the eye, whether she is angry or frus- years ago she wore a head scarf, which preme intelligence, a faultless mem- trated or joyful. Other machines can had the effect of drawing the eye to ory, and a beautiful soul.” A blast of measure sentiment by assessing the her rounded, expressive features. Frank exhaust from one of its ports vapor- arrangement of our words, or by read- Moss, a former director of M.I.T.’s izes a passing bird. “Correction,” it says. ing our gestures. Still others can do Media Lab, where she held a postdoc- “The machine does not have a soul. It so from facial expressions. toral position, told me that she has a has no bothersome emotions. While Our faces are organs of emotional high “emotional intelligence.” As a mere mortals wallow in a sea of emo- communication; by some estimates, mother of two, she worries about tech- tionalism, the machine is busy digest- we transmit more data with our ex- nology’s effects on her children. ing vast oceans of information in a pressions than with what we say, and Affectiva is the most visible among single all-encompassing gulp.” H14 a few pioneers dedicated to decoding a host of competing boutique start- then takes such a gulp, which proves this information have made tremen- ups: Emotient, Realeyes, Sension. After overwhelming. Ticking and whirring, dous progress. Perhaps the most suc- Kaliouby and I sat down, she told me, it begs for a human mechanic; seconds cessful is an Egyptian scientist living “I think that, ten years down the line, later, it explodes. near Boston, Rana el Kaliouby. Her we won’t remember what it was like The film, titled “Robot,” captures company, Affectiva, formed in 2009, when we couldn’t just frown at our the aspirations that computer scien- has been ranked by the business press device, and our device would say, tists held half a century ago (to build as one of the country’s fastest-grow- ‘Oh, you didn’t like that, did you?’ ” She boxes of flawless logic), as well as the ing startups, and Kaliouby, thirty-six, took out an iPad containing a version social anxieties that people felt about has been called a “rock star.” There is of Affdex, her company’s signature those aspirations (that such machines, good money in emotionally respon- software, which was simplified to track by design or by accident, posed a sive machines, it turns out. For Ka- just four emotional “classifiers”: happy, threat). Henson’s film offered some- liouby, this is no surprise: soon, she is confused, surprised, and disgusted. The thing else, too: a critique—echoed on certain, they will be ubiquitous. software scans for a face; if there are television and in novels but dismissed multiple faces, it isolates each one. by computer engineers—that, no mat- ffectiva is situated in an office park It then identifies the face’s main re- ter a system’s capacity for errorless cal- A behind a strip mall on a two- gions—mouth, nose, eyes, eyebrows— culation, it will remain inflexible and lane road in Waltham, Massachu- and it ascribes points to each, render- fundamentally unintelligent until the setts, part of a corridor that serves as ing the features in simple geometries. people who design it consider emo- Boston’s answer to Silicon Valley. The When I looked at myself in the live

50 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 By scanning your face, computers can decode your unspoken reaction to a movie, a political debate, even a video call with a friend.

ILLUSTRATION BY BRYAN CHRISTIE THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 51 feed on her iPad, my face was covered guishing social smiles from those trig- alytic way,” she told me. Capturing an- in green dots. “We call them deform- gered by spontaneous joy, and in differ- alytics, it turns out, means using the able and non-deformable points,” she entiating between faked pain and software—say, during a business nego- said. “Your lip corners will move all genuine pain. They can determine if tiation—to determine what the person over the place—you can smile, you a patient is depressed. Operating with on the other end of the call is not tell- can smirk—so these points are not unflagging attention, they can regis- ing you. “The technology will say, ‘O.K., very helpful in stabilizing the face. ter expressions so fleeting that they Mr. Whatever is showing signs of en- Whereas these points, like this at the are unknown even to the person mak- gagement—or he just smirked, and that tip of your nose, don’t go anywhere.” ing them. Marian Bartlett, a researcher means he was not persuaded.’ ” Serving as anchors, the non-deform- at the University of California, San able points help judge how far other Diego, and the lead scientist at Emo- aliouby created Affectiva with her points move. tient, once ran footage of her family K mentor, Rosalind Picard, a pro- Affdex also scans for the shifting fessor at the M.I.T. Media Lab, whose texture of skin—the distribution of early research laid the groundwork for wrinkles around an eye, or the furrow the company. Picard, who has degrees of a brow—and combines that infor- in electrical engineering and in com- mation with the deformable points to puter science, came to the Media build detailed models of the face as it Lab in 1990, to develop technology reacts. The algorithm identifies an for image compression, but she soon emotional expression by comparing it reached a technical impasse. The with countless others that it has pre- models then in vogue worked inde- viously analyzed. “If you smile, for ex- pendently of the content: a landscape ample, it recognizes that you are smil- watching TV through her software. of the Grand Canyon and a Presiden- ing in real time,” Kaliouby told me. I During a moment of slapstick vio- tial portrait were compressed in the smiled, and a green bar at the bottom of lence, her daughter, for a single frame, same way. Picard believed that the the screen shot up, indicating the pro- exhibited ferocious anger, which faded process could be improved if a com- gram’s increasing confidence that it into surprise, then laughter. Her daugh- puter recognized what it was looking had identified the correct expression. ter was unaware of the moment of dis- at. But to do this it would need to be “Try looking confused,” she said, and pleasure—but the computer had no- capable of vision, not merely sight; I did. The bar for confusion spiked. ticed. Recently, in a peer-reviewed like the brain, it would need to dis- “There you go,” she said. study, Bartlett’s colleagues demon- tinguish objects, then determine which Like every company in this field, strated that computers scanning for ones mattered. Affectiva relies on the work of Paul “micro-expressions” could predict One day, Picard picked up Rich- Ekman, a research psychologist who, when people would turn down a finan- ard Cytowic’s “The Man Who Tasted beginning in the sixties, built a con- cial offer: a flash of disgust indicated Shapes,” a book on synesthesia. Cy- vincing body of evidence that there that the offer was considered unfair, towic made the case that perception are at least six universal human emo- and a flash of anger prefigured the was partly processed in the brain’s tions, expressed by everyone’s face rejection. limbic system, an ancient part of neural identically, regardless of gender, age, Kaliouby often emphasizes that this anatomy that handles attention, mem- or cultural upbringing. Ekman worked technology can read only facial expres- ory, and emotion. Attention and mem- to decode these expressions, breaking sions, not minds, but Affdex is mar- ory seemed pertinent to the problems them down into combinations of for- keted as a tool that can make reliable Picard sought to solve; emotion, she ty-six individual movements, called inferences about people’s emotions—a hoped, was extraneous. But as she delved “action units.” From this work, he tap into the unconscious. The poten- into the neuroscience literature she compiled the Facial Action Coding tial applications are vast. CBS uses the became convinced that reasoning and System, or FACS—a five-hundred-page software at its Las Vegas laboratory, emotion were inseparable: just as too taxonomy of facial movements. It has Television City, where it tests new much emotion could cause irrational been in use for decades by academics shows. During the 2012 Presidential thinking, so could too little. Brain in- and professionals, from computer an- elections, Kaliouby’s team used Affdex juries specific to emotional processing imators to police officers interested in to track more than two hundred peo- robbed people of their capacity to the subtleties of deception. ple watching clips of the Obama-Rom- make decisions, see the bigger pic- Ekman has had critics, among them ney debates, and concluded that the ture, exercise common sense—the very social scientists who argue that con- software was able to predict voting qualities that she wanted computers text plays a far greater role in reading preference with seventy-three-per-cent to have. emotions than his theory allows. But accuracy. Affectiva is working with a “I wanted to be taken seriously, context-blind computers appear to Skype competitor, Oovoo, to integrate and emotion was not a serious topic,” support his conclusions. By scanning it into video calls. “People are doing Picard told me. Nonetheless, in 1995, facial action units, computers can now more and more videoconferencing, but she circulated an informal paper on outperform most people in distin- all this data is not captured in an an- her findings; laced with references to

52 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 Leibniz and “Star Trek,” Curie and day, Amin passed along a review of Undergraduate students (or Ekman Kubrick, it argued that something like Picard’s book, and she ordered a copy. himself) would perform expressions emotional reasoning was necessary “It took four months to get to Egypt— in an exaggerated way, against a con- for true machine intelligence, and also it was held in customs for reasons trolled background. Each frame of that programmers should consider that I don’t understand,” she said. “But video took twenty-five seconds to dig- affect when writing software that in- eventually I read the book, and I was itize, and, in key frames, a person had teracts with people. At first, her ideas inspired.” Without meeting Picard, to hand-label every facial movement. were met with perplexity. One scien- she considered her a role model. “She “There were so many challenges,” an tist told her, “Why are you working was a female scientist, successful, and early researcher told me; one version on emotion? It’s irrelevant!” Unmoved, created this field that I found excit- of his system struggled to track the Picard turned down hundreds of thou- ing.” Kaliouby had settled on her di- deformable points. “It was always a sands of dollars in grants for research rection: to create an algorithm that little off, and as we processed more in image compression, and expanded could read faces. and more frames the errors started to her ideas into a book, titled “Affective accumulate.” Every ten seconds, he Computing.” Without realizing it, she he human face is a moving land- had to re-start. had given a name to a new field of Tscape of tremendous nuance and Kaliouby hoped to create a system computer science. complexity. It is a marvel of compu- that was powerful enough to work in Kaliouby was still in Cairo, an un- tation that people so often effortlessly the real world. But when she began dergraduate at the American Univer- interpret expressions, regardless of the pursuing her Ph.D. at Cambridge Uni- sity. In 1998, she graduated at the top particularities of the face they are look- versity, in 2001, her adviser wasn’t fa- of her class, earning a merit scholar- ing at, the setting, the light, or the miliar with affective computing; nor ship to pursue a master’s. She aspired angle. A programmer trying to teach were her peers. “There was a lot of cu- to teach computer science, but she a computer to do the same thing must riosity, and also questioning: why knew that a tenured job would require contend with nearly infinite contin- would you ever want to do that?” she doctorate work abroad. “My dad was gencies. The process requires machine told me. During a presentation of her like, ‘Well, if you go, by the time you learning, in which computers find pat- research goals, an audience member get back, you will be too old to get terns in large tranches of data, and mentioned that the problem of train- married.’ ” Uncertain, she applied for then use those patterns to interpret ing computers to read faces seemed work at a local tech startup. “It was in new data. to resemble difficulties that his autis- a residential building,” she said. “My From Cairo, Kaliouby contacted tic brother had. Kaliouby knew noth- dad drove me there, then wanted to some of the early research teams for ing about autism, so she began to look come up, and I was like, ‘Please, it will guidance and data. Ekman had begun into it, searching for clues. At the time, look awful,’ so he waited in the car. I working to automate FACS, building Cambridge’s Autism Research Cen- was wearing a skirt, and I looked very systems designed to locate discrete tre was working on a huge project to formal—it was my first interview— action units. With nineties-era tech- create a catalogue of every human fa- and I saw all these guys walking around nology, this was painstaking work. cial expression, which people on the in shorts, barefoot: typical software en- gineers. The guy who interviewed me said, ‘We have run out of chairs,’ and, pointing to my skirt, he said, ‘We can either have this interview on the floor, or, if you are uncomfortable, we can reschedule.’ I was like, ‘O.K., I can sit on the floor.’ ” A few days later, Kaliouby with- drew her application, and enrolled in the master’s program. But she had made an impression; one of the com- pany’s founders, Wael Amin, had grown up an expat in Argentina, and sympathized with the social pressures that she faced. He tracked her down, and encouraged her to continue her education; they were married not long after. In graduate school, Kaliouby searched for focus. “The idea that com- puters can change the way we connect with one another—that was where I was being drawn,” she recalled. One “Have you been reading a lot of exhaustive biographies lately?” autism spectrum could study to assist with social interactions. Rather than trying to break expressions into their REINCARNATION constituent parts, as Ekman had, the center was interested in natural, eas- Who would believe in reincarnation ily understood portrayals; under the if she thought she would return as rubric of “thinking,” it distinguished an oyster? Eagles and wolves among brooding, choosing, fantasiz- are popular. Even domesticated cats ing, judging, thoughtfulness. It hired have their appeal. It’s not terribly distressing six actors—of both genders, and a to imagine being Missy, nibbling range of ages and ethnicities—to per- kibble and lounging on the windowsill. form the emotions before a video cam- But I doubt the toothsome oyster has ever era. Twenty judges reviewed each clip, been the totem of any shaman and near-consensus was required be- fanning the Motherpeace Tarot fore an emotion was labelled. At the or smudging with sage. project’s end, four hundred and twelve Yet perhaps we could do worse had been identified. than aspire to be a plump bivalve. Humbly, Kaliouby recognized at once that the oyster persists in filtering the catalogue presented an unprece- seawater and fashioning the daily dented opportunity: rich, validated irritations into lustre. data, ideal for a computer to learn Dash a dot of Tabasco, pair it from. By the time she completed her with a dry Martini, not only doctorate, she had built MindReader, will this tender button inspire a program that could track several an erotic fire in tuxedoed men complex emotions in relatively un- and women whose shoulders gleam structured settings. As she consid- in candlelight, this hermit praying ered its potential, she wondered if in its rocky cave, this anchorite of iron, she could construct an “emotional calcium, and protein, is practically hearing aid” for people with autism. a molluskan saint. Revered and sacrificed, The wearer would carry a small com- body and salty liquor of the soul, puter, an earpiece, and a camera, to the oyster is devoured, surrendering scan people’s expressions. In gentle all—again and again—for love. tones, the computer would indicate appropriate behavior: keep talking, —Ellen Bass or shift topics. While developing the idea, Ka- liouby learned that Picard was plan- everyone in the lab was playing with conductance. Picard wore one nearly ning to visit her lab. “That was the tiny, wearable cameras, and, Picard told continuously, and kept a diary to track highlight of my summer,” she re- me, “We talked a lot about ‘jacking in.’ ” the data against her experiences. called. “She was supposed to spend During visits home to Egypt, Kaliouby Kaliouby and Picard believed that ten minutes with every student. We would call to participate in meetings. their systems were complementary, ended up spending an hour.” Picard Picard remembered a demonstration and in 2007 they began testing at a thought that Kaliouby’s system was with a robot: “Rana was Skyping in, or facility for children with behavioral the most robust anyone had created. something, through a laptop camera, disabilities. Picard hoped that her bio- The two women decided to collab- and we left the camera on the floor sensor would provide insight into the orate on the emotional aid, and the while we walked over to see the demo. origins of tantrums and other out- National Science Foundation awarded I felt bad, like leaving Rana’s body on bursts; an autistic child might seem them nearly a million dollars to build the floor. So I thought, I need to put calm, even disengaged, but the Q would a prototype. the camera on me. Then, when I walk indicate that her skin conductance was around, Rana has the advantage of being twice normal. Kaliouby’s system helped he Media Lab was devised as a ref- on my body.” navigate social situations. Tuge for tinkerers. Its founder had While Kaliouby focussed on Mind- “One day really stuck with me,” Ka- once commanded, “Forget technical pa- Reader, Picard tested various devices— liouby recalled. “There was this boy pers and to a lesser extent theories. Let’s such as a computer mouse that could who was really avoiding eye contact. prove by doing.” Kaliouby embraced measure user frustration—that at- That is a problem that is very com- the ethos, and, though Picard was in a tempted to discern feelings by tracking mon with a lot of these kids—they are much more senior position, Frank Moss physical responses. The most promis- experiencing information overload. told me that the two women worked ing one, later called the Q , was strapped This boy—we were experimenting together in a “mind meld.” Just about to the body, to record reactions like skin with something like an iPad, but that

54 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 was before iPads—was wearing the with a “dual bottom line”—one that product, and just went totally off the camera, and getting the feedback, ba- not only did well but also changed original mission.” sically using the iPad to shield off face people’s lives. Kaliouby was upset by Picard’s de- contact. He was seeing me through parture, but the company’s new mo- the screen.” The device reinforced aliouby and Picard set out to cre- mentum was undeniable. In March, when he was communicating well, and K ate a “baby I.B.M.” for emotion- 2011, she and her team were invited as they talked he gained confidence. ally intelligent machines: a startup for to demonstrate MindReader to exec- “Then he actually started lowering the myriad products based on affective utives from Millward Brown, a global device, until he and I made eye con- computing. Government agencies market-research company. Kaliouby tact. And it was this special moment. started asking about the technology, was frank about the system’s limita- It was like, Wow, this technology can but, Kaliouby told me, she turned them tions—the software still was having really help.” away. Some of the corporate interest trouble distinguishing a smile from a As the team developed MindReader, alarmed them, too. Picard recalled, grimace—but the executives were im- Kaliouby uploaded the software onto “We had people come and say, ‘Can pressed. Ad testing often relies on large a server, where corporate sponsors were you spy on our employees without surveys, which deal in reasoned reflec- invited to test whatever Media Lab them knowing?’ or ‘Can you tell me tions, rather than in the spontaneous, products they found interesting. To how my customers are feeling?’ and I even unconscious, sentiment that re- her surprise, she said, it quickly be- was like, ‘Well, here is why that is a ally interests marketers; new technol- came the most downloaded item. Pepsi bad idea.’ I can remember one wanted ogy promised better results. A year was curious if it could use the soft- to put our stuff in these terminals and earlier, Millward Brown had formed ware to gauge consumer preferences. measure people, and we just went back a neuroscience unit, which attempted Bank of America was interested in to Affectiva and shook our heads. We to bring EEG technology into the testing it in A.T.M.s. Toyota wanted told them, ‘We will not be a part of work, and it had hired experts in Ek- to see if it could better understand that—we have respect for the partic- man’s system to study video of inter- driver behavior—and perhaps design ipant.’ But it’s tough when you are a views. But these ideas had proved im- a system to detect drowsiness. Inqui- little startup, and someone is willing possible to scale up. Now the executives ries flooded in—from Microsoft, H.P., to pay you, and you have to tell them proposed a test: if Affdex could suc- Yamaha, Honda, Gibson, Hallmark, to go away.” cessfully measure people’s emotional NASA, Nokia—and Kaliouby did what MindReader had been trained with responses to four ads that they had al- she could to accommodate each one. actors, rather than from real-life be- ready studied, Millward Brown would “They had lots of questions,” she re- havior, and the code had to be rebuilt become a client, and also an investor. called. “ ‘Exactly what do the data entirely. In 2011, the company tested “The stakes were so high,” Kaliouby mean?’ ‘How can we adapt this to our it with Super Bowl ads online, build- told me. “I remember, our C.E.O. said, particular environment?’ This V.P. at ing up a database of authentic emo- ‘This is all hands on deck.’ ” FOX basically said, ‘I want to test all tional responses; later, Kaliouby col- One of the TV spots that Millward our pilot shows with this.’ And I was laborated with Thales Teixeira, a Brown had chosen was for Dove. Ti- like, ‘We don’t have the resources to professor at the Harvard Business tled “Onslaught,” it begins with an do that. We’re a research lab.’ ” School, on a more rigorous study, image of a young girl. The camera The requests began to overwhelm screening ads for two hundred and then shifts to her perspective as she her autism research. Kaliouby built a fifty respondents. Affectiva’s C.E.O., is bombarded by a montage of video spreadsheet, to keep track of which David Berman, a former sales execu- clips—a lifetime of female stereotypes sponsors wanted what, and in No- tive, was steering the company away compressed into thirty-two seconds— vember, 2008, she and Picard brought from assistive technology and toward before the ad ends with the girl, all it to Frank Moss, the Media Lab’s market research, which helped attract innocence, and the tagline “Talk to director. “We said, ‘Here are all the millions of dollars in venture capital. your daughter before the beauty things our sponsors need—we need “Our C.E.O. was absolutely not com- industry does.” The ad was critically to double our group size,’ ” Kaliouby fortable with the medical space,” Picard acclaimed, but in surveys Millward told me. “And he was like, ‘No, the said. Tensions rose. After three years, Brown found that many people con- solution is not to add more research- Picard was pushed out, and her group sidered it emotionally difficult to sit ers. The solution is to spin out.’ ” Ka- was reassigned. Matthew Goodwin, through. Affdex scanned more than a liouby was reluctant to leave academia. an early researcher at Affectiva who hundred respondents watching the ad, “We really wanted to focus on the now sits on its scientific board, told and detected the same response. But do-good applications of the technol- me, “We began with a powerful set of it also found that at the moment of ogy,” she said. But Moss argued that products that could assist people who resolution this discomfort went away. the marketplace would make the tech- have a very difficult time with perceiv- “The software was telling us some- nology more robust and flexible: a ing affect and producing affect. Then thing we were potentially not seeing,” device that could work for FOX could they started to emphasize only the face, Graham Page, a Millward Brown ex- also better assist the autistic. It was to focus on advertisements, and on ecutive, told me. “People often can’t possible, he said, to build a company predicting whether someone likes a articulate such detail in sixty seconds,

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 55 and also, when it comes to negative screams with ecstasy. Affdex tracked numeral, Metanautix). While waiting content, they tend to be polite.” Mill- us smiling—women, on the whole, to enter the main hall, I stood beside ward Brown’s parent company, WPP, more than men. Kaliouby noticed that one of the few women there. Her badge invested $4.5 million in Affectiva. Soon the smiles came in three pulses. She simply said “U.S. Government.” Affdex was being used to test thou- suggested that this might indicate a In the darkened hall, audience mem- sands of ads a year. micro-narrative worth exploring, and bers opened laptops, and their screens Kaliouby invited me to try the version it turned out that there was a struc- glowed. In the greenroom, Kaliouby of Affdex that Millward Brown uses, ture behind them: whenever Twombly, reviewed her notes and did breathing and one afternoon in her office she distraught, spoke of the dead cat, the exercises. Onstage, she declared that directed me to a MacBook loaded smiles waned. The Affectiva team often it was the first time a scientist in her with the first fifteen minutes of Spike strives to build a story from this kind field had been invited to join “the Big Jonze’s movie “Her”—about a man of data, but the story remained un- Data conversation”: a throwaway line, who falls in love with an emotion- clear. Were the smiles waning out of but one with a remarkable implica- ally enabled computer operating sys- empathy—because of Twombly’s dis- tion—that even emotions could be tem. After completing a short sur- tress? Or discomfort with the implied quantified, aggregated, leveraged. vey, I watched while the laptop’s violence? Or was the scene simply less She said that her company had an- camera watched me. Fifteen other funny when Wiig stopped talking? In alyzed more than two million videos, people did the same. Then I logged such cases, Kaliouby told me, market of respondents in eighty countries. onto Affdex. Against a black back- researchers would rely on old-fash- “This is data we have never had be- ground, the quantified sentiment— ioned human intelligence: interviews fore,” she said. When Affectiva began, colorful jagged lines—appeared like with respondents. she had trained the software on just a plots on a lie detector. The software Spike Jonze spent months research- few hundred expressions. But once she allowed me to isolate smiles, disgust, ing “Her,” and it’s not hard to find started working with Millward Brown surprise, concentration. real-world intimations of the future hundreds of thousands of people on Kaliouby had seen “Her,” and she he imagined. Recently, researchers at six continents began turning on Web wondered if its mood was too muted the University of Southern California cams to watch ads for testing, and all to invoke responses that the soft- built a prototype “virtual human” named their emotional responses—natural re- ware could measure. In the film’s open- Ellie, a digital therapist that integrates actions, in relatively uncontrolled set- ing, Theodore Twombly ( Joaquin Phoe- an algorithm similar to Affdex with tings—flowed back to Kaliouby’s team. nix), who works for a company called others that track gestures and vocal Affdex can now read the nuances Beautiful Handwritten Letters, narrates tonalities. One of its designers sent of smiles better than most people can. a sentimental letter—from a woman to me video of a woman talking with As the company’s database of emo- her husband, on their fiftieth wedding Ellie. “What were your symptoms?” tional reactions grows, the software is anniversary—which his computer then Ellie asks, and the woman describes getting better at reading other expres- prints out in her handwriting. Leaving her trouble with weight gain, insom- sions. Before the conference, Kaliouby the office, he passes a receptionist, nia, and oversleeping. Ellie appears to had told me about a project to up- played by Chris Pratt, who says, “Who listen, nodding. The woman explains grade the detection of furrowed eye- knew you could rhyme so many words that she often feels the need to cry. brows. “A brow furrow is a very im- with the name Penelope? It’s badass.” Her voice wavers, her eyes fill up, and portant indicator of confusion or The goofball earnestness of Pratt’s de- Ellie sympathetically draws her brow concentration, and it can be a nega- livery—the last word imparted as if into a frown, pauses, and says in a com- tive facial expression,” she said. “A lot congratulating a Navy SEAL on a suc- forting tone, “I’m sorry.” of our customers want to know if their cessful mission—was amusing, and ad is offending people, or not really Affdex noticed: nearly all of us smiled. n October, Kaliouby took the Acela connecting. So we kicked off this ex- In fact, in many moments, everyone I to New York to speak at a confer- periment, using a whole bunch of pa- appeared to be reacting in synch. Dur- ence, called Strata + Hadoop World, rameters: should the computer con- ing a wordless transition, a pan through at the Javits Center. More than five sider the entire face, the eye region, an empty apartment, our reactions thousand specialists in Big Data had just the brows? Should it look at two dipped. I looked at video of myself. I come from around the country—be- eyebrows together, or one and then had shifted in my seat. lievers in the faith that transformative the other?” By the time Kaliouby ar- We all became most expressive patterns exist in the zeros and ones rived in New York, Affdex had run the during a scene in which Twombly has that sustain modern life. The talks tests on eighty thousand brow furrows. phone sex with a woman identified as ranged from “Industrial Internet” to Onstage, she presented the results: SexyKitten—the voice of the come- “How Goldman Sachs Is Using “Our accuracy jumped to over ninety dian Kristen Wiig. In a bizarre, funny Knowledge to Create an Information per cent.” moment, SexyKitten seizes control of Edge.” Some of the attendees wore From the Javits, Kaliouby caught a the call, demanding that Twombly badges for well-known corporations cab to the global headquarters of Mc- strangle her with an imaginary dead (Microsoft, Dell, G.E.); others were Cann Erickson, the ad agency. The cat, and, as he hesitantly complies, she for companies I hadn’t heard of (Poly- company occupies eight floors in a

56 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 midtown skyscraper, and her face brightened as she walked from the elevator and into a retro-modernist lobby with a lofty ceiling. Painted on a wall was McCann’s credo: “Truth Well Told.” Mike Medeiros, a vice-pres- ident of strategy, met Kaliouby and directed her to a conference room with a view across the city. He runs a group called Team America, which provided the U.S. military with the slogan “Army Strong.” Tall with blond hair, he has a plainspoken manner that one could see putting a military officer at ease on Madison Avenue. Within the firmament of consumer persuasion, companies like Millward Brown and McCann often act as ad- versaries: one seeks to evaluate what the other invents. Many advertising “creatives,” Medeiros told Kaliouby, regard ad testing as antithetical to in- spiration. “You know what they say about ‘Seinfeld,’ ” he said. “By the met- •• rics, it should have been killed in the first season.” His group had just ex- A few days later, Medeiros put me this technology is heading,” she once perimented with Affdex, to pitch an in touch with McCann’s Barcelona told me. Tech gurus have for some account worth millions of dollars; he affiliate, which had used emotion-sens- time been predicting the Internet of seemed interested in the technology, ing technology in an unexpected way. Things, the wiring together of all our but not convinced of its necessity. “I In 2012, the Spanish government, fac- devices to create “ambient intelli- tend to go back to the methods that ing a severe budget crisis, imposed gence”—an unseen fog of digital are lower tech, that are simpler—when strict austerity measures, including a knowingness. (Imagine systems that you can sit people in a room with a thirteen-per-cent increase in the tax adjust the temperature of your house, script,” he said. “More than anything, on theatre tickets. Teatreneu, a com- based on behavioral and physiologi- I am watching them to see: are they edy club in Barcelona, lost a third of cal data that your car fed into the fog sitting back, leaning forward? Those its nightly audience, so it approached during your commute home.) Emo- cues tell you what is happening, and the McCann affiliate for help. Instead tion would be a part of this. On our then you get them to talk about them. of drafting an ad campaign, the agency cab ride from the Javits, I had pointed My own experience is that this is more recommended that the club outfit its out the screen on the seat back in front important than what they say. Some- seats with Affdex-like software, then of us: intrusive and emotionally inert. one can say, ‘Oh, I love that,’ and at open its doors for free, promising that Kaliouby saw it as a possibility, pre- the same time they could not care less.” visitors would be charged only .30 dicting that before long myriad de- “That is where our technology can euro per laugh, with an eighty-laugh vices will have an “emotion chip” that come in and quantify it,” Kaliouby maximum. If anyone tried to cover up runs constantly in the background, the said. a laugh, or turn away, the system would way geolocation works now in phones. Medeiros’s superior, Steve Zaroff, charge the full fee: twenty-four euros. “Every time you pick up your phone, stopped by, and Kaliouby gave him Revenue went up. Theatres in Amer- it gets an emotion pulse, if you like, a demo. Sitting at her laptop with ica, France, and South Korea con- on how you’re feeling,” she said. “In childlike enthusiasm, he mugged and tacted McCann, wanting to know our research, we found that people twisted his face into brow furrows and more. check their phones ten to twelve times lip curls. “A disgusted smile—I like A Spanish economist aware of the an hour—and so that gives this many it!” he said. Barcelona experiment had approached data points of the person’s experience.” “We tested some really gross You- Affectiva, to set up a study based on Tube videos of people eating larvae,” the idea, with better technology. Al- oreshadowing the Emotion Econ- Kaliouby said. “People smile, but they ready, Kaliouby saw in the experiment Fomy, it turns out, takes little imag- are also like, ‘Eww!’ ” The same senti- the contours of the near-future—not ination. Already, most of us pay for ser- ment, her software found, had ani- merely P.R. gimmickry, or creative tax vices by a strangely intimate form mated a humorous gross-out ad that evasion, but the glimmer of an Emo- of exchange, trading neurological ac- Doritos aired during the Super Bowl. tion Economy. “Foreshadow where tivity for stuff. “Attention is the hard

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 57 currency of cyberspace,” the authors was six cents per minute. By 2014, the advertising. Represented: A.O.L., Hi- Thomas Mandel and Gerard Van der rate had increased by twenty per cent— tachi, eBay, I.B.M., Yahoo!, and Mo- Leun observed in their 1996 book, “The more than double inflation. The jump torola. Sony had filed several; its re- Rules of the Net”—an early recogni- had obvious implications: attention— searchers anticipated games that build tion that the digital economy would at least, the kind worth selling—is be- emotional maps of players, combin- largely be driven by new forms of tar- coming increasingly scarce, as people ing data from sensors and from social geted marketing. In 2008, Chris An- spend their free time distracted by a media to create “almost dangerous derson, the editor of Wired, wrote a tri- growing array of devices. And, just as kinds of interactivity.” There were pat- umphalist manifesto, “Free! Why $0.00 the increasing scarcity of oil has led to ents for emotion-sensing vending ma- Is the Future of Business,” proclaim- more exotic methods of recovery, the chines, and for A.T.M.s that would ing the dawn of a boundless giveaway scarcity of attention, combined with a understand if users were “in a relaxed world. But, of course, many of the ser- growing economy built around its ex- mood,” and receptive to advertising. vices that we use without payment in change, has prompted R. & D. in the Anheuser-Busch had designed a re- dollars are paid for by other means: the mining of consumer cognition. “What sponsive beer bottle, because sports attention we offer to providers who people in the industry are saying is ‘I fans at games “wishing to use their track our habits and preferences. need to get people’s attention in a beverage containers to express emo- The free economy is, in fact, an shorter period of time,’ so they are try- tion are limited to, for example, rais- economy of the bartered self. But at- ing to focus on capturing the inten- ing a bottle to express solidarity with tention can never be limitless. Kaliouby sity of it,” Teixeira explained. “People a team.” put me in touch with Thales Teixeira, who are emotional are much more Not long ago, Verizon drafted plans the business professor who collabo- engaged. And because emotions are for a media console packed with sen- rated with her, and we met at the Har- ‘memory markers’ they remember more. sors, including a thermographic cam- vard Club in New York. “There are So the idea now is shifting to: how do era (to measure body temperature), an three major fungible resources that we we get people who are feeling these infrared laser (to gauge depth), and a as individuals have,” he said. “The first emotions?” multi-array microphone. By scanning is money, the second is time, and the Many companies are moving to a room, the system could determine third is attention. Attention is the least take advantage of this shift. “We put the occupants’ age, gender, weight, explored.” Teixeira had recently tried together a patent application for a sys- height, skin color, hair length, facial to calculate the value of attention, and tem that could dynamically price ad- features, mannerisms, what language found that, like the dollar, its price vertising depending on how people they spoke, and whether they had an fluctuated. Using Super Bowl ads as a responded to it,” Kaliouby told me one accent. It could identify pets, furni- rough indicator of the high end of the afternoon. I found more than a hun- ture, paintings, even a bag of chips. It market, he determined that in 2010 dred other patents for emotion-sens- could track “ambient actions”: eating, the price of an American’s attention ing technology, many of them tied to exercising, reading, sleeping, cuddling, cleaning, playing a musical instrument. It could probe other devices—to learn what a person might be browsing on the Web, or writing in an e-mail. It could scan for affect, tracking mo- ments of laughter or argument. All this data would then shape the con- sole’s choice of TV ads. A marital fight might prompt an ad for a counsellor. Signs of stress might prompt ads for aromatherapy candles. Upbeat hum- ming might prompt ads “configured to target happy people.” The system could then broadcast the ads to every device in the room. I had wondered if the Verizon sys- tem was an anomaly—perhaps dreamed up by overeager employees. But a num- ber of its features are already available in Microsoft’s Xbox One system, which has a high-definition camera that can monitor players at thirty frames per second. Using a technology called Time of Flight, it can track the movement of individual photons, picking up min- ute alterations in a viewer’s skin color petitor, Emotient—which has Ekman targeted advertising. Medeiros said, to measure blood flow, then calculate on its board, and may well have a more “With the new watch, they are going changes in heart rate. The software powerful algorithm—makes similar to know everything about you.” can monitor six people simultaneously, assumptions. Emotient has already in visible or infrared light, charting tested its technology on willing em- y late fall, Kaliouby’s Google calen- their gaze and their basic emotional ployees and consumers for a major fast- B dar was a dense map of color blocks: states, using technology similar to food company and a big-box store. every minute accounted for. The com- Affectiva’s. If people are moving, it can At McCann, Kaliouby told the pany was preparing to conduct research determine how much force their mus- admen, “In our space, you could very for Facebook, an experiment in placing cles are exerting. The system has tre- easily be perceived as Big Brother, as ads in videos. There was a meeting with mendous potential for making digital opposed to the gatekeeper of your Samsung, which has licensed Affdex. A games more immersive. But Microsoft own emotional data—and it is two very company in San Francisco wanted to give has also been developing non-gaming its digital nurse the ability to read faces. applications, envisioning TV ads tar- A Belfast entrepreneur wanted to know geted to your emotions, and program- if the software would work in night clubs. ming priced according to how many Kaliouby forwarded me an e-mail that a people are in the room. Google, Com- member of her team wrote about a state cast, and Intel have moved in a simi- initiative in Dubai, the Happiness Index, lar direction. Two years ago, Erik Hug- meant to measure social contentment: gers, a vice-president of Intel Media, “Dubai is known to have one of the world’s expressed a common dissatisfaction: tightest CCTV networks, so the infra- “Today, television doesn’t really know structure to acquire video footage to be anything about you.” different positions. If we are not care- analyzed by Affdex already exists. I feel In 2013, Representative Mike Cap- ful, we can very easily end up on the that’s a promising opportunity.” uano, of Massachusetts, drafted the Big Brother side.” Kaliouby doesn’t see herself returning We Are Watching You Act, to com- Steve Zaroff nodded, and said, “It to autism work, but she has not relin- pel companies to indicate when sens- is interesting to think about wear- quished the idea of a dual bottom line. “I ing begins, and to give consumers the able devices—those will become more do believe that if we have information right to disable it. When Capuano open-ecosystem.” He pointed to a Nike about your emotional experiences we can publicly referred to Verizon, the com- FuelBand around his wrist, then he help you be in a more positive mood and pany complained that it was not alone. looked at Mike Medeiros, who was influence your wellness,” she said. She had An industry association, along with wearing a Fitbit. “Fitbit is better, be- been reading about how to deal with diffi- Samsung, quietly began to lobby. (Sam- cause it reads your pulse,” he went on. cult experiences. “The consistent advice sung declined to comment on its lob- “But there is a tremendous amount of was you have to take care of yourself, be bying, but its goals are clear; as one data that the brand knows about you.” in a good place, so that you can handle of its researchers noted, “If we know He began to ask Medeiros if he everything else,” she said. “I think there the emotion of each user, we can pro- would allow Fitbit to sell his data to is an opportunity to build a very, very sim- vide more personalized services.”) Capu- marketers. Before he could finish, Me- ple app that pushes out funny content or ano couldn’t persuade colleagues to deiros, laughing, said, “Not yet.” inspiring content three times a day.” Her sign on to his bill for a hearing. “The “But you can see it,” Zaroff said. tone brightened, as she began looking to most difficult part is getting people “You can see Apple going down that wider possibilities. “It can capture the con- to realize that this is real,” he told path, too,” Medeiros said. Apple had tent’s effect on you, and then you can gain me. “People were saying, ‘Come on. recently launched Health, a fitness app these points—these happiness points, or What are you, crazy, Capuano? What, pre-installed on new iPhones. By gath- mood points, or rewards—that can be do you have tinfoil wrapped around ering data from other apps and de- turned into a virtual currency. We have your head?’ And I was like, ‘Well, no. vices, or from medical providers, it can been in conversations with a company in But if I did, it’s still real.’ ” track weight, respiratory rate, sleep, that space. It is an advertising-rewards Kaliouby expects that notions of even blood-oxygen saturation. This in- company, and its business is based on pos- privacy will shift. She once wondered formation could be used to build emo- itive moments. So if you set a goal to run what it might be like to scan everyone tional profiles; researchers at Dart- three miles and you run three miles, that’s watching YouTube: “Somehow we mouth demonstrated that smartphones a moment. Or if you set the alarm for six figure out a way where people don’t can be configured to detect stress, lone- o’clock and you actually do get up, that’s mind or don’t care, so that every time liness, depression, and productivity, and a moment. And they monetize these mo- you go on YouTube your camera turns to predict G.P.A.s. In September, Apple ments. They sell them. Like Kleenex can on, and as you are watching it is col- also unveiled the iWatch, which can send you a coupon—I don’t know—when lecting this data. It is like a cookie. measure heart rate and physical activ- you get over a sad moment. Right now, Most people today have cookies run- ity, and link these data to your loca- this company is making assumptions about ning on their computers.” The busi- tion. The new products complement what those moments are. And we’re like, ness model for Affectiva’s main com- another line of Apple’s research: mood- ‘Guess what? We can capture them.’ ” 

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 59 FICTION PHOTOGRAPH BY GRANT CORNETT BY PHOTOGRAPH

60 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 ILLUSTRATION BY STEPHEN DOYLE f course I’d seen them, his cus- uploaded it onto the Internet, along while quite safe by city standards, was O tomers, walking past the diner with the caption “Standing in the bread nevertheless the staging ground for and thrift shop and firehouse clutching line! What is this, Soviet Russia?” A most of our town’s violent crimes. For their oil-stained kraft-paper sacks— couple of minutes later, I deleted it. that matter, I didn’t know why the dishevelled and outdoorsy, these people, Pretty soon, the Breadman arrived tchotchke shop had chosen this loca- healthy-looking in an unpremeditated with his assistants. I’m trying to say that tion in the first place; I never saw any- way, their skin unblemished and tanned without particular emphasis, because I body shop there. It seemed to be some and their muscles toned. You wouldn’t don’t like the Breadman and want to kind of craftspeople’s collective, though catch them doing sports, but you might downplay his star power. But it was all the merchandise looked the same— see a pair of them walking down the quite an entrance. He pulled up to the faux-primitive renderings of semirural shoulder of a county highway in big floppy curb in a red boxlike van that resem- small-town life on coffee mugs, greet- hats; you might encounter a group out bled an oven, to gentle applause from ing cards, T-shirts, and, in what could in the woods in summer, casually ford- the customers. The panel door rolled only be seen as a deliberate effort to ing a stream in technical sandals. They open, and a couple of stringy, deeply deter potential buyers, mouse pads. In had money, which they appeared rarely tanned kids in their twenties—a boy any event, all of this had now been to spend. Their glasses were likely to have and a girl—hopped out and, wearing pushed aside, presumably by the assis- hinged clip-on sunshades attached; the serious expressions, unloaded the Bread- tants, to accommodate the ingress of books in their satchels came from the man’s gear: a folding table, a cash box, the Breadman’s customers. Since I was public library. These people had no name. a stool, several large hinged wicker bas- last in line, I spent the first ten min- Though they were many in our town, kets, a freestanding wooden sign with utes of the selling period in the store’s they didn’t self-identify; the idea would “MANNA” painted on it in a bubbly but unventilated glass vestibule, enduring have seemed silly to them. But the Bread- somehow pedantic script, and then un- the magnified summer heat. man brought them together in this oth- derneath, in precise all-caps sans serif, I texted my wife: doors open. erwise nonwhite, working-class neigh- “QUALITY BREADS.” The kids made two don’t forget the focaccia, she texted borhood every Friday morning. It was trips into the tchotchke shop before the back. the only way to get the bread—or, as Breadman emerged, and when he did, that’s a kind of coffee right, I replied. my wife liked to call it, the Bread. You ambling around the snout of the van pls just get it. had to come here, to this little tchotchke while distractedly riffling through pages shop that shared an entrance with the fixed to a clipboard, a chorus of greet- ooking at that exchange now—I have children’s used- clothing store, where the ings went up from the crowd. L never deleted a text—I can see Breadman set up his table at precisely “Anton! Anton!” that trust was the issue. She didn’t trust ten-thirty—or, rather, half an hour be- The Breadman looked up as though me and never had. Which is not to say fore that, if you wanted to get the focac- surprised. He smiled, gave a little wave. that I blame anyone but myself for what cia, which couldn’t be reserved before- “Hello, everybody! Thank you for com- was to happen. hand, and was bestowed only upon the ing. We’ll be set up in just a moment.” I was sweating: marshy pits, swamp prompt. But I’m getting ahead of myself. He was my age, but much better- ass. The women who had been first in I wouldn’t have come here on my own looking and much more at ease in his line now edged past me on the way out, in a million, billion years. I liked the bread, own skin. That skin was white, of course, keeping as great a distance between us but not that much. My wife sent me. She which is not to say pale; it was as if he as they could in the elevator-size space, had a cold. That’s why this happened. had been brushed with egg white and assisted by their giant paper sacks of Of course I was late. Which is to baked to an even brown. He wore out- the Bread, focaccia poking out of the say, ten minutes early. There were thirty sized eyeglasses with black plastic top. people in line ahead of me—men and frames over vaguely Semitic, bookish Chuckles and smiles. “Pardon me.” women, but mostly women. Young to features, and his black hair and beard “Pardon me!” middle-aged, but mostly middle-aged. were shaggy and flecked with gray. The The line accordioned; I emerged into I am middle-aged. But the Breadman’s gray made him more handsome. His the tchotchke shop. I picked up, fon- people had the comfortable, self-pos- short-sleeved silk shirt was also black, dled, a coffee mug made to resemble a sessed air of travellers from some great and dusted with flour, as were his tai- terra-cotta flowerpot. “TEN SQUARE distance, who had at last arrived at their lored jeans. The flour seemed a bit the- MILES OF HAPPY!” read a bold legend ultimate destination. They chatted ami- atrical to me—yes, he was a baker, but superimposed above the silhouette of ably but unostentatiously. They smiled were these the clothes he baked in? I our county. To an outsider, the silhou- and laughed. None of them looked at suspected it had been sprinkled there ette wouldn’t look like anything much their phones. I did, because I was by intentionally, as a marker of artisanal at all: a chip of old latex paint, a torn myself, and because I lived most of my legitimacy. His feet were bare. postage stamp. But an outsider would life at a distance from the things and It was unclear to me why the never buy this mug, except ironically. people I loved. It was also a quality of tchotchke shop had been chosen as the Now that I was inside, the air-con- mine that I invariably became the ter- pickup point. It was situated far from ditioning cooled the sweat patches on minus of any queue I joined. I took a where the Breadman’s customers were my clothes, and I began to shiver. Luck- photo of the people ahead of me and likely to live, in a neighborhood that, ily, there was coffee here, at the front

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 61 of the line. It came from the coffee glanced coolly in my direction at the cle helmet in his hands. I considered shop down the block, and was con- clank of the honor-box lid but didn’t asking to reassume my rightful place tained within a mailbox-size waxed- pause in his monologue. in line, but it didn’t matter, I reasoned. cardboard tote. A stack of paper cups I held up the three singles, mouthed I had signed in first. I wedged myself stood beside it, and an aluminum honor the word “change,” and winked. between him and the door and dispas- box labelled “$1” with a sticky note. As I helped myself to the coffee, my sionately slurped my coffee. Beside that lay an important thing that wife’s text came in. 51093, it read. I du- The old man made no move to- I had forgotten about: the clipboard. tifully copied this into the appropriate ward the clipboard, so I said, “You gotta If you wanted the Bread, you had to box, along with my wife’s name and sign in.” sign in—specifically, to print your last initial, and her forged signature. I haz- He seemed not to hear me. He gazed name and first initial on the neatly arded another look at the text message. out the window at the slow-moving hand-ruled table provided. Then you Could a five-digit number read as hos- people and cars. added your signature and your account tile? Yes, it could. I should call my wife “Hey. Sir.” number. My wife had explained this something other than “my wife.” Let’s He turned. process to me, and we had rehearsed it go with “Kathy,” since that is her real “You gonna sign in?” I said. “Pretty together. name. sure you have to sign in.” “51093,” I said. The Breadman was saying, “It is The man’s placid, wordless smile “Say it again. 51093.” among the most ancient of grains. At served as a dismissal, and he returned “51093.” one time it was plentiful in Europe and to his window-gazing. “Just write it down. You’re going to the Near East, but now it is a relict Fine. forget it.” crop.” He really leaned on that “t.” I No one else entered behind me as “51093,” I said. “I don’t need to write had to look this up later—it’s a word. the line slowly diminished. I was not it down! 51093.” “Relict,” with a “t” at the end. He said frustrated by the wait: I had my coffee, Of course I remember it now, but I it again. “A relict, though some of us I had signed in, and I needed only to didn’t remember it then. I texted her, have had success reviving its use in cer- anticipate receiving the Breadman’s account number?, and then, after a mo- tain enlightened communities. It is also bounty. I didn’t even feel compelled to ment’s thought, added, :) <3. That done, valued as a brewer’s grain.” look at my phone. This way of being I left my place in line to pour myself a “Fascinating,” the blond woman said. was one that Kathy referred to, rather coffee and check in. The Breadman’s “How many focaccia would you like, unimaginatively, as “smug mode.” “You people glared at me as I passed. Why? Angela? One or two?” just stand there,” she said, “with this in- I was obeying the rules! “Two, please.” credible air of self-satisfaction, as though All I had was a five, so I dropped it When I returned to the back of the all is right in the world and you are ma- into the honor box and withdrew three line with my coffee, I discovered that jestically enthroned at the center of it.” singles. The extra dollar was a tip. Anton a man had taken my place. He was This characterization was both apt and himself was now standing six feet to around seventy years of age, with a long extremely flattering, though I gather my left, where he was lecturing a zaf- white beard and ponytail, each kept in the latter was not her intention. tig blond woman about spelt. He place by a scrunchie. He held a bicy- It occurred to me, as I observed the Breadman’s languorous, deliberate ser- vicing of his customers, accompanied by the energetic, even frantic, unsmil- ing efforts of the assistants (removing bread from the baskets, inserting bread into sacks, making change), that the entire operation had been designed first and foremost not as a baked-goods dis- tribution scheme but as a formalized, even ceremonial, vehicle for the expan- sion and strengthening of Anton’s self-regard. Every aspect of it was ob- scure. It was a laboratory maze for the Breadman people, a test of their devo- tion and a method of schooling them in the proper rituals. The odd location; the inconvenient time (which precluded the participation of anyone with a nine- to-five job); the complex, redundant paperwork; the strategic withholding of the one thing that everyone wanted: “Sometimes I think all this postgame analysis has gone too far.” the Focaccia. But I haven’t adequately described special basket, a four-foot rattan cyl- the Focaccia. It presented not as a inder the assistants had to keep lean- conventional flatbread but as a twelve- ing farther and farther into, as though inch-diameter half-round, three inches into a magic hat for a series of rare and high at the center, tapering to an inch desirable rabbits. I had lost hope— at the edges. Its crust was faintly lam- surely it would be gone before I reached bent, aglow with some ineffable crispy the table. glaze, which harbored visibly intact I wasn’t last in line, though—the old crystals of sea salt and an evidently pro- man was. I had to admit to myself, even prietary blend of coarsely chopped herbs inside the protective force field of smug that certainly included rosemary and mode, that this disparity—between the dill, among less immediately identifiable old man’s correct and actual positions vegetative bits. The flesh within was in line—bothered me. And it bothered richly grained, chewy, and very moist— me more and more as the line dimin- oily, even—which gave the bread a deep ished. With only a few people remain- yellow-brown color when toasted. It ing, and the Breadman beginning to was not necessary to butter it, it was repeat his monologue about baking so rich. But you would have been a fool times and temperatures, about the burn- not to. ing qualities of various woods and the The Focaccia’s crust was crisscrossed medicinal properties of certain seeds, with a series of seemingly random slashes I was ejected from smug mode entirely that nevertheless interlocked in a com- and began to huff and puff and steal plex, snowflake-like pattern. It was only glances at my phone. One of the two some time later, while walking to an ap- assistants, the boy, clapped the dust off pointment with the woman who pre- his hands and walked around behind scribes my antidepressants, that I passed me to the door, which he locked, pre- a young man wearing a T-shirt bearing sumably to prevent the entry of new- the anarchy symbol—the slashed letter comers. He remained stationed there “A” inside a rough circle—and it struck as a reverse jailer, to allow each cus- me that the pattern on the Focaccia had tomer out once he or she had accepted been composed of the letters “A” and the Breadman’s largesse. As the last “V,” artfully reiterated: “A” and “V,” as in middle-aged couple exited, the boy as- Anton Vainberg, the Breadman’s full sistant produced a tight smile that was name. I literally jumped as I realized it, gone by the time he’d locked the rest startling the punk rocker who’d prompted of us back in. the revelation, and told my pharmacol- The old man stood at the front of ogist as soon as I entered her office. But the line now—it was just him, me, and she merely nodded, suggested that I save the Manna crew. “Anton,” he said, his it for my therapist, and cut my dosage, voice a dried strap of leather. as she had warned me she was planning The Breadman’s entire demeanor to do. changed. His shoulders sloped, the haughtiness vanished from his face. He ack in the bread line, I did my best held both hands out, palms up, and the B to enjoy my coffee and smug mode, old man took them into his own. as I listened to the Breadman’s patter “Spokefather,” the Breadman said, with his disciples—gratuitous inquiries penitent and husky. He let go of the into their personal lives, and into the man’s hands, came around the buffet lives of their adult children and pets. table, and enveloped him in a brief em- “Where’s Boomer today?” “How’s little brace. The two kissed each other’s cheek. Pete?” If the follower was a woman alone, The assistants, as though released the Breadman always asked after the from a spell by the Breadman’s affec- husband or wife or partner, as if to say, tion, approached the old man, bowed, “Now, now—I know you want to fuck and uttered the word that I now un- me, but think of your significant other. derstood to be his name. How will he or she feel when our affair “Spokefather.” is discovered?” “Spokefather.” Of course, what everyone really Conversation was lively, obsequious. wanted was the Focaccia, two loaves The Manna crew inquired about the for most. The Focaccia lived in its own old man’s “European sojourn,” and his

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 63 “inner quest,” which may or may not ati fic—on his face a faint smile emerged, have been the same thing. They asked and his eyes fell shut. He tipped his after “Old Bones,” who, I gathered, was head back, as though in anticipation of some kind of ailing companion animal. instructions from outer space. But he “Friends,” the old man said, “how didn’t speak. do you roll?” Instead, it was the Breadman who “Well, Spokefather. We roll well.” spoke. He said, “Aren’t you Kathy’s?” And now the old man asked the ques- The phrase was like a jolt, an elec- tions. Anton’s sister: how rolled she? tric shock to my neck and scalp. I must The assistants, did their child thrive? (I have jerked slightly. I raised my hand hadn’t pegged them as to rub the affected area, breeders, those two.) trying to pass it off as a “She rolls well, Spoke- casual hair-smoothing. father. Spokefather, the “I am married to child is strong.” Kathy, yes,” I said. “She For my own part, I felt asked me to pick up some entirely invisible. These focaccia.” I pointed at my four were locked in some pocket, which held my kind of devotional sym- phone. That was where biosis—an energy similar Kathy lived, on my phone. to, but more powerful The Breadman nod- than, that which the Breadman enjoyed ded, not at what I said, it seemed, but with his subjects. Indeed, I wondered at some unfathomably complex skein if I was observing the conceptual an- of interlocking events and personali- tecedent of the Breadman’s fellowship, ties of which I was, could ever be, only the original to which it aspired. dimly, inadequately aware. He trained I briefly forgot why we were all there. a pitying look upon me. Then, with a deep, satisfied sigh, Anton He said, “Kathy would understand.” turned and said, “Spokefather, what Before I had a chance to digest this may I offer you today?” extraordinary remark, the boy assistant “Two focaccia, friend.” stepped up beside me, threateningly “Excellent,” the Breadman said, and close. His face was flushed and slick, he bent over the basket, personally with- and he smelled of sweat and wood- drew the last two loaves, and slid them smoke. He said, “The focaccia are for carefully into a paper sack while the Old Bones.” Then he withdrew to the girl assistant snatched up the empty sidelines, where the mother of his child vessel and whisked it away. waited with a comforting half-hug and It took me a moment to absorb what whispered reassurances. was happening, which left me with lit- “A dog?” I said. tle time to compose my objection. Not “Old Bones is Spokefather’s trusted that more time would necessarily have friend,” the Breadman explained. “He’s improved it. I am rhetorically limited in his last days now. The focaccia are even in the most relaxed of circum- his favorite treat.” stances. “Now wait a minute,” I said. I turned to the old man, hoping for All heads snapped up. They were some kind of clarification. Surely he clearly surprised to be reminded of my wasn’t going to go along with this non- existence. sense? But he was still examining the “I’m here specifically to buy my heavens through the insides of his eye- wife—my sick wife—some of that fo- lids and could not be reached. caccia,” I said. “And I was here before “You have a system,” I said. “That’s this gentleman, and he never signed in.” my understanding. It is very elaborate They stared. and highly specific. What’s the point “So those loaves,” I continued, bor- of having a system if somebody can rowing a phrase from myself, “are right- just walk in here, cut in line, and cir- fully mine to buy.” cumvent it? I signed the sheet. I marked No response. my time!” “Are they not?” I added. The boy assistant snorted and shook The assistants exchanged alarmed his head. The Breadman held out a glances. The old man appeared be- calming hand, nodded, then pressed

64 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 his fingertips together. He leaned The boy assistant lunged for me, but forward. it wasn’t necessary. Before I had com- “But this is Spokefather,” he said. pleted my swing, the man they called “I’m sorry,” I replied. “With all due Spokefather had knocked my feet out respect. I don’t know who the hell that from under me with one sweep of his is. I mean, yes, it’s this guy, but isn’t this bony ankle, and I pitched helplessly over, a business? Isn’t this a publicly engaged driving my face into the corner of the small business? Aren’t I a customer? buffet table before arriving at last on the Aren’t you in the business of selling bread?” floor. The doctors later told me that I “We don’t think of it that way,” the must have struck a loose bit of metal girl assistant hissed. trim, because something thin and sharp “It’s all right,” the Breadman said had sheared a large flap of skin nearly now. “It’s fine. We forgive you for this off my cheek. That’s where all the blood misunderstanding. But the fact is, came out. In any event, I declined to you’re here as an agent of Kathy, and tell them how it happened; the police Kathy will understand when you tell were never summoned, and Kathy’s in- her that the focaccia went to Spoke- surance paid for the emergency treat- father and Old Bones. And her orig- ment. I was later surprised to receive a inal order,” he went on, “is right here.” cleaning bill from the tchotchke shop— He gestured toward a greasy sack the nerve!—but, ultimately, I mastered standing on the table beside him. “One my fury and paid it. semolina ciabatta, a seeded eight- I never did go home. Lying there in grain round, and six cracked-maize my hospital bed, pressing an ice pack dinner rolls. You’ll have all the bread to my face, I took stock of everything you want. Kathy,” he repeated, “will I had observed and put it all together: understand.” the sandals, the unbleached fabrics, the I should have just taken the bag and unshaved legs and underarms. The rosy paid. But instead I said—shouted, I skin and the weight gain and the in- suppose—“What the hell do you know terest in watercolor painting. The jars about Kathy?” filled with dried legumes. Soaps with A silence ensued. The boy assistant’s food in them and food with flowers in muscles tensed. it. Kathy was Breadman People. She “We know Kathy very well,” the had been for quite a while. She had Breadman finally replied. “We’ve heard taken a lover months before (no, not about you, too, Samuel. We are friends Anton, but one of his followers) and to your marriage, and to your bodily had just been waiting—as her letter on and spiritual well-being.” recycled paper eventually told me—for “The fuck?” was my response. me to notice. My unwillingness to do “We—all of us—love you, friend.” so had merely reinforced her confi- I don’t want to give the impression dence that she was in the right. that I regret my actions, because I do She was. I am not, and have never not. These events would prove to be the been, a cad, but I was a terrible hus- beginning of a long quest for self-knowl- band. Kathy would have been a fine edge and self-improvement that con- wife to the appropriate man. Perhaps tinues to this day. I am happier now, she is now. I don’t know. I didn’t reply back in the city of my origin, with a to the letter. Our divorce was amica- calmer job and an earnest hope for a ble and swift, and conducted through more suitable romantic partner, whom intermediaries. I expect to find once I have completed Of course I can still eat bread. I’m my transformation. No, “completed” is not a child. the wrong word: reached, let us say, the Of course I didn’t learn to bake. Why next level of my enlightenment. My only would I do that? I hate those people wish is that I had spent a few additional and everything they represent. seconds plotting my next move, so that Of course I’m not happy. Are you? I might have enjoyed some small stra- Well, good for you, then. ♦ tegic advantage over the Breadman. In- stead, I allowed my impulses to rule, and I did what the man expected: I drew newyorker.com my arm back and swung. J. Robert Lennon on “Breadman.”

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 65 THE CRITICS

POP MUSIC SISTER SAVIORS

Sleater-Kinney returns.

BY SASHA FRERE-JONES

n December, 2011, Carrie Brown- such a devoted following, nor was it I stein was sitting on Corin Tucker’s the first all-female band to make its couch, in Portland, Oregon. Once band- mark in the boys’ club of indie rock. mates in an indie-rock group called But it was solid proof that the idealis- Sleater-Kinney, which they started in tic indie-rock community could sus- 1994 and named after a highway exit tain itself while living out its own be- ramp in Olympia, Washington, Brown- liefs. Even if you had subscribed to all stein and Tucker hadn’t played together the earnest discussion about gender since 2006. Brownstein had become parity and musicians operating with even better known as a comic actor, on complete financial and aesthetic inde- the IFC show “Portlandia,” an affec- pendence which came with much of tionate parody of the city where all the the talk around small-batch rock in the members of Sleater-Kinney now live. eighties, you were likely still aware of Janet Weiss, the drummer, had been the cold possibility that the meatheads playing in groups like Quasi, Stephen would win and nothing would change. Malkmus & the Jicks, and Wild Flag, Sleater-Kinney was part of a new which also included Brownstein. Tucker world of zines and bands—riot grrrl had been raising her children and re- and Bikini Kill being the best known— leasing solo records. But on that day that were committed to promoting in- in 2011 Tucker turned to Brownstein dependent rock for and by women. A and said, “I wonder if we’re ever gonna number of bands started by and con- play again.” sisting mostly of women, based in hubs For some people, this is a bit like such as Washington, D.C., and Olym- John calling Paul in 1975 and asking, pia, Washington, had been making “Hey, should we do some shows?” In music since the early nineties, includ- the nineties and the early aughts, the ing Bratmobile, Autoclave, Heavens respect and passion that Sleater- Kinney to Betsy—Tucker’s group before Sleater- generated was equalled by only a few Kinney—and Brownstein’s Excuse 17. bands. The group’s appeal went beyond Though there were very few bad rec- the ordinary magic of making two gui- ords released by these bands, many of tars, drums, and voices sound like a setup them seemed intermittently thin, a com- that you’d never heard before; in 2001, mon side effect of being autodidacts. Greil Marcus called Sleater- Kinney the But Sleater-Kinney had both weight greatest rock band in America. and grace; the act didn’t sound like a Sleater-Kinney was certainly not self-taught upstart, even if it was. the first independent band to create Sleater-Kinney’s career has followed

Sleater-Kinney is part of a lineage of zines and bands—“riot grrrl” and Bikini Kill

among them—committed to promoting independent rock for and by women. RIGHT) JOHN GOODMANSON (TOP SLEATER-KINNEY; COURTESY OPPOSITE: FRANÇOIS AVRIL; ABOVE:

66 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 67 a sort of template for the indie-rock- Kinney fans had. I remember one show band trajectory: its first album was on at Irving Plaza, in the early aughts, that a tiny independent label, followed by seemed like a floor convention, with releases on larger ones with equally im- each completed song cheered as if it peccable credentials, Kill Rock Stars were a delegate won over. and Sub Pop. The band members are as distinct as those in any canonical he skeptic may be suspicious when classic rock band, where each member TI say that, after “All Hands on the is sufficiently individuated as to be one Bad One” (2000), the new album, step away from being an action figure. “No Cities to Love,” is my favorite Brownstein, who shares guitar and vocal Sleater-Kinney record, but it is: the duties with Tucker, is the lightest of musicians pull it off. The songwriters’ heart, fond of reclaiming rock moves ability to create general but urgent like high kicks and windmilling arms. scenarios is both more substantial and Weiss, the drummer, supplies the band’s more insistent than before. elegance and power. Her playing never The album has a tendency to splin- wanders into textural fills; instead, it ter and change and re-form, unlike drives, continually underscoring the mo- the band’s previous studio album, “The mentum of the song. Tucker’s voice Woods” (2005), which roared, occa- cuts through anything that the band sionally surging and falling back on puts forth. Some of her prowess is tech- itself. The title track of “No Cities to nical—she favors the top end of her Love” sounds like an older Sleater- very loud alto, which often shimmers Kinney song that has been disassem- like a struck bell—but her voice also bled, laid out on a blanket, and then presents itself as simply bigger, as if her reassembled, after extensive polish- entire body had gone into the act of ing. Few bands can make their guitars pushing out the words. sound so different from moment to “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone,” moment without the use of effects. from the band’s second album, “Call the The guitar tones change from section Doctor” (1996), established some of the to section: fuzzed, doubled into oc- band members’ politics and their sound, taves, thin, then soaked, overloading. though it did not represent all of their Tucker conveys something I’ve never range. The song moves ahead swiftly, heard in another singer—the ability as Brownstein and Tucker outline it to suggest both that she has escaped with fragmentary guitar figures and from pain and that she is still pos- barre chords. The two trade singing sessed by something. Almost against roles, addressing someone who sounds their own history, she and Brownstein more like an audience member than sing together, in the chorus of another like some potential partner: “I wanna song, “There are no anthems.” As in be your Joey Ramone,” Tucker sings, many Sleater-Kinney songs, which and then exchanges “yeah”s with Brown- typically avoid storytelling, there seems stein. Tucker finishes by putting herself, to be a problem being solved, and here and her band, in teen-idol territory, with it is, evidently, the spectre of excep- “pictures of me on your bedroom door.” tionalism, of being that band that’s The bridge makes it fairly clear that really great—for a bunch of girls. this isn’t a love song, even when it sounds That patronizing frame surrounds like one. Tucker is taking on an idea of much praise of the band, especially community in rock: “Are you that scared? when men are writing. But ignoring I swear they’re looking right at me. Push the band members’ gender in the name to the front so I can see.” It sounded of fair treatment overlooks the condi- like an anthem that had been waiting tions that made them agitate for fair to be written. treatment in the first place. Think- Going to Sleater-Kinney shows felt ing that the excellence of any act, even vaguely uncomfortable, but not because Sleater-Kinney, is somehow post- there was an atmosphere of girls hav- gender requires a leap of imagination, ing declared war on boys—boys were as if the world were not still short on irrelevant. What was simultaneously gender utopias. As great as Sleater- thrilling and discomfiting was the Kinney is, the band has not brought intensity of enthusiasm that Sleater- that about. 

68 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 safety net and exhaust the national trea- A CRITIC AT LARGE sury. The emphasis falls instead on the high, and sometimes low, workings of legislative government, as bills inched THE POWER OF CONGRESS through committees and subcommittees, nicked and scarred in “mark-up” sessions; Before L.B.J., progressives saw bipartisanship as a blight. What happened? the feint-and-parry of parliamentary maneuver; and, above all, the votes. BY SAM TANENHAUS This patient no-frills approach offers illuminations that a more cinematic he tension between big-tent in- The second came during the three- treatment might not. And if Zelizer, a Tclusiveness and ideological purity year period after the assassination of professor of history and public affairs has bedevilled our two major political John F. Kennedy, when Lyndon John- at Princeton, at times betrays the parties for many years, but for Dem- son and Congress went on a legisla- head-counting instincts of a House ocrats it became especially vexing in tive spree that ended with the mid- whip, well, head-counting is the nuts the middle decades of the twentieth term election in November, 1966. and bolts of congressional lawmaking, century. From 1932 to 1964, the Dem- “The Fierce Urgency of Now” (Pen- as scholars like Nelson Polsby and ocratic Party won seven out of nine guin Press), Julian E. Zelizer’s account of David Mayhew pointed out a genera- Presidential elections and enjoyed an wins and losses in the Johnson years, tion ago, and as Ira Katznelson, Sarah

President Johnson after delivering his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, on January 8, 1964.

almost continuous majority in the combines history with political science, Binder, and Frances Lee have done House and the Senate. But who, ex- as befits our data-happy moment. The more recently. “Overshadowed by pres- actly, was winning and what did vic- information comes at us steadily—there idents and social movements, legislators tory mean? The answer was clear in are useful facts on almost every page— remain ghosts in America’s historical only two intervals. The first was the but the narrative is spartanly furnished. imagination,” Zelizer observed in “The initial phase of the New Deal, when There’s little portraiture, not much drama, American Congress,” the large and very Franklin Roosevelt’s economic-rescue and only enough mood-setting context useful anthology he edited in 2004. Its proposals were swiftly passed into law to let us know what America was up to analyses, by him and thirty-nine others, by Congress and embraced by a nation while L.B.J. and Congress were contriv- begin with the Continental Congress

STAN WAYMAN/LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY WAYMAN/LIFE STAN traumatized by the Great Depression. ing new ways to strengthen the social and go all the way up to the Clinton and

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 69 Bush years—not likely to be known as netism. But it was seldom clear what says, a “graveyard of liberal legislation” the Gingrich or DeLay years, even as L.B.J. really wanted, apart from domi- for more than a quarter century. these scholars cut the Leaders of the nating the game and intimidating the As late as 1960, some thought a vig- Free World down to their proper con- other players. Robert Caro has turned orous new President might single-hand- stitutional size. the question over on a spit in four im - edly revitalize Congress. This was a de- The idea of an imperial Presidency mensely detailed volumes and still lusion. In August, a few weeks after was always an exaggeration. “A Presi- seems undecided. Real-time observers Kennedy promised a “New Frontier” in dent, these days, is an invaluable clerk,” were mystified, too. “The test will come his acceptance speech at the Democratic Richard Neustadt, the dean of Presiden- when he runs out of ideas,” Arthur Convention, the Times’ Tom Wicker tial theorists, pointed out in 1960.The Schlesinger, Jr., remarked in August, cautioned that if Kennedy won he would clerk at the time was Dwight Eisen- 1964. “Up to this point he has been liv- meet the fearsome “roadblock in Con- hower, the general and war hero twice ing intellectually on the Kennedy years.” gress,” the House Committee on Rules, elected in landslides, only to be frus- A year later, L.B.J. had signed Medicare which, under the control of a “six-man trated, like so many popular Presidents and the Voting Rights Act into law, conservative junta,” was “virtually a third before and since, in skirmishes with seven days apart. branch of Congress—equal to and some- well-organized adversaries on Capitol But in politics the truly new idea is a times superior to the Senate and the Hill. Congressmen were the heavies rarity. Much of the agenda presented House.” It was controlled by its chair- then, just as they are today. And yet, with such fanfare in the nineteen-sixties, man, Howard Smith, of Virginia, who however much we say that we dislike first by Kennedy and then by Johnson, decided which bills reached the floor for our representatives, we keep sending had been in congressional circulation a general vote and which did not. many of them back to Washington. To- since the nineteen-forties and fifties, In the Senate, Southern domination gether, Mitch McConnell and Harry and Johnson was well versed in its fine was even greater. Johnson had spent his Reid, each his party’s leader in the Sen- points. As early as 1949, Senator Hubert years as Majority Leader in continual ate, have spent fifty-eight years there. In Humphrey, who had a master’s degree negotiation with the chamber’s true the House, John Boehner and Nancy in political science, was proposing one “master,” Richard Russell, Jr., the Geor- Pelosi have logged a combined fifty- bill after another on national health in- gia segregationist whose weapon was two. These four, and some others, com- surance, Social Security extensions, and the filibuster—not the lone-wolf stunts pose our democracy’s only long-term federally financed school construction. performed recently by Rand Paul and elected class. Not one had a chance of becoming law Ted Cruz but martial epics, involving a What distinguished L.B.J. from al- then, because the votes weren’t there. “platoon” of men who delivered four- most all his predecessors and successors They’d gone missing in F.D.R.’s second hour monologues on a rotating basis. was his profound rootedness in Con- term, when an alliance of Republicans “The Senate might be described with- gress, where he spent a dozen years in and Southern Democrats formed “the out too much violence to fact as the the House and another dozen in the conservative coalition,” a bloc that func- South’s unending revenge upon the Senate. As Majority Leader, he became tioned as an autonomous congressional North for Gettysburg,” the journalist as famous as a senator could be, thanks party, supplanting the two nominally William S. White wrote in “Citadel,” a to his resourcefulness and his genius for major ones. By the time L.B.J. became best-selling account of the Senate pub- compromise and his almost feral mag- President, Congress had been, as Zelizer lished in 1957. White, a Texan, was by no means a critic of the Senate. He was enamored of its rituals and thought it had a “touch of authentic genius.” At a lunch organized by Johnson, not long after the book was published, each freshman senator found a copy of “Citadel” at his place setting with two inscriptions, one by White, the other by L.B.J., who urged them all to study it “as a sort of McGuffey’s Reader,” one of the freshman, Joseph Clark, recalled. Clark, who called Congress “the sap- less branch,” belonged to the grow- ing and restive corps of liberal Demo- crats who found the Senate less the genteel club that White described than a mildewed establishment. Part of the problem was bipartisanship. “L.B.J. has no idea of his own but consensus,” Schlesinger noted. The criticism rings strangely today, when consensus and bipartisanship have become the holy In 1941, the American Political Sci- ing theme of the 1950 report. Schatt- grails of government, but in the mid- ence Association appointed a “Commit- schneider’s team of fifteen scholars and twentieth century they seemed symp- tee on Congress” to explore possible policy experts had talked to congres- toms of stasis and even atrophy. Hum- wide-ranging reforms. Some in Con- sional leaders, to officials in the Tru- phrey, who was in the vanguard of a gress were amenable and put the leader man Administration, and to state and fresh style of Democratic politics—“is- of the A.P.S.A. team in charge of a Joint local politicians. It concluded that the sues-based” rather than interest-group- House-Senate Committee. After many two major parties were “probably the appeasing—inveighed against the “rot- hearings and much delay, a “reorganiza- most archaic institutions in the United ten political bargain” that Southern tion” was approved in 1946. It elimi- States”—scarcely more than “loose as- Democrats, including Johnson, had nated lots of committees, taking the sociations of state and local organiza- sealed with Republicans. Genuine polit- House from forty-eight to nineteen and tions, with very little national machin- ical progress, he maintained, had to the Senate from thirty-three to fifteen. ery and very little national cohesion.” begin with institutional reform. (Today, there are twenty-one and twenty, The Republican or Democrat sent to respectively.) But the reorganization Congress was seldom screened by the here had been talk of overhauling didn’t include the A.P.S.A.’s most im- national party and so felt no obligation TCongress, within the institution portant suggestions: changing the rigid to support the party’s program, if he and outside it, for generations. In 1879, next-in-line “senility system” of chair- even knew what it was. Once in office, when Woodrow Wilson was a senior manships, reducing the power of the he delivered patronage and pork to his at Princeton, he wrote a celebrated Rules Committee, taming the filibuster constituents back home. He operated essay advocating a British-style “cab- with a less onerous cloture rule. The free of a coherent agenda and belonged inet government,” in which the heads streamlining concentrated even more to no “binding” caucus. The parties, in of State, Treasury, and so on would si- power in the hands of those who already other words, were failing because they multaneously serve in the Senate, thus had it. weren’t sufficiently ideological, partisan, linking the legislative and executive Nor did the reforms address the and polarizing. branches in a unified system of major- muddled identities of the two major The solution was a “responsible party ity rule. He elaborated on the idea in parties. In 1944, reflecting on the leg- system”—centralized, idea-driven, seri- his dissertation, “Congressional Gov- islative stalemate of the prewar years, ous-minded. Each party needed stron- ernment,” printed fifteen times be- F.D.R. concluded that the two parties ger central “councils” that met regularly, tween 1885 and 1900. Its targets in- were dysfunctional, “split by dissent- not just in Convention years, to estab- cluded the House’s many committees ers.” That year, he suggested to Wen- lish principles and programs. Candi- and their ducal “elders.” Whenever a dell Willkie, the moderate Republican dates should be expected to campaign bill “goes from the clerk’s desk to a he had run against in 1940, that the on these platforms and then to carry committee-room it crosses a parlia- two form a new “liberal” party. (A de- them out, with dissidents punished or mentary bridge of sighs to dim dun- cade later, Eisenhower, under attack expelled. The party in power would geons of silence whence it will never from isolationists who threatened his enact its program, and the minority return,” Wilson wrote. “The means and ability to conduct his foreign policy, party would provide strong criticism time of its death are unknown, but its talked of a new party of “progressive and develop alternatives to present at friends never see it again.” It is impos- moderates,” perhaps one modelled on election time. sible to imagine anyone today writing Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moosers.) Schlesinger, for one, glimpsed “the such a book and wishing to enter pol- But a second and even more influen- shadow of an infatuation with the itics, much less being elected President tial A.P.S.A. report, “Toward a More British party system.” He was right. twice. Yet when Wilson arrived at the Responsible Two-Party System,” pub- Some drafters of the A.P.S.A. re- White House, in 1913, he tried to im- lished in 1950, sifted through the port had admired recent events in En- provise the “straightforward, inartifi- problem of party discipline. This re- gland, where the Labour Government cial party government” he had cham- port grew out of a project supervised elected in 1945 had nationalized the pioned. He went to Congress to deliver by E. E. Schattschneider, a professor at railroad and coal industries and, over the State of the Union address rather Wesleyan and a leading exponent of Tory opposition, introduced a national than submit a written message, as every Wilsonian party government. A polit- health service. Labour had cam- President since Jefferson had done. He ical party that “does not capitalize on paigned on the promise of a welfare also made the “President’s room” in the its successes by mobilizing the whole state, and voters had known what they Capitol an actual office for meetings power of the government is a mon- were getting. By comparison, Ameri- with committee chairmen. But the in- strosity reflecting the stupidity of pro- can government looked sluggish and stitutional friction was too great. Later, fessional politicians who are more in- ineffectual. President Truman got no- when a proposal was held up by fili- terested in the petty spoils of office where with his health-care proposal, buster, Wilson urged a cloture rule cut- than they are in the control of the largely because of vehement and well- ting off debate. The Senate adopted richest and most powerful govern- funded opposition from the American one, but it set the bar unreachably high: ment in the world,” Schattschneider Medical Association. Schattschneider a two-thirds-majority vote, which had written. had something to say about that, too. stayed in place until 1975. This argument became the overrid- As he had written in his 1942 book

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 71 “Party Government,” the two parties two groups contained members who has written, the report “called for federal “let themselves be harried by pressure were “ideologically indistinguishable,” assistance and public works in areas groups as a timid whale might be pur- he wrote. But the moment hadn’t yet suffering from chronic unemployment, sued by a school of minnows.” come for them to unite. Zelizer does national standards of unemployment in- To the rising generation of liberal the arithmetic: “In 1957 and 1958, surance, action to fight racial and other legislators, party government made southern Democrats and midwestern discrimination, a youth conservation sense. At the 1948 Democratic Con- Republicans controlled 311 out of 435 corps, expanded vocational training and vention, Hubert Humphrey spoke in seats in the House, and they held 71 federal funding for retraining the job- passionate support of a civil-rights out of 96 seats in the Senate. Even after less.” (The last of these proposals was plank. (Its provisions included an anti- the midterm elections of 1958, which enacted as the Manpower and Develop- lynching law and a fair-employment- increased the number of northern lib- ment Training Act, in 1962.) practices commission.) Instead of try- erals in both chambers, the conserva- The paramount cause for liberals was ing to appease the party’s Southern tive coalition retained a ninety-two- civil rights. The movement was gaining bloc, he met it head on. “The time has vote majority in the House and an momentum in arenas far from Wash- arrived in America for the Democratic eighteen-vote majority in the Senate.” ington. Like other contemporary histo- Party to get out of the shadow of states’ This was why the Speaker of the House, rians, Zelizer stresses the importance of rights, and to walk forthrightly into the Sam Rayburn, though sympathetic to Martin Luther King, Jr., and other black bright sunshine of human rights,” the liberal contingent, tamped down leaders, who boldly calculated that the Humphrey said. talk of a new majority dominated by drama of the freedom rides and lunch- It was an electrifying speech; some “bomb-throwing liberals,” as they were counter sit-ins, and, later, of clashes with sixty million people heard it on the called in the press. white law enforcement in Birmingham radio, and as many as ten million Matters didn’t much improve in and Selma, would force the President more saw it on television. The plank 1960. Kennedy was elected President, and Congress to act. He similarly gives was voted in, and the entire Mississippi but he only just squeaked in, and the credit to the efforts of Republican con- delegation, along with half of Ala- Democrats actually lost nearly two gressmen, including William McCul- bama’s, stalked out. Humphrey, sud- dozen members of the House, many loch, of Ohio, an indispensable advocate denly famous, won his Senate race in of them liberals. And Kennedy’s métier for civil-rights legislation. The layer that November and in 1949 landed on the was not legislation but foreign policy Zelizer adds involves the Democratic cover of Time. Truman paid heavily. and soaring rhetoric. The visionary Study Group, a coalition of liberal The Southerners went ahead with flights of the New Frontier excited in- House members (some of them well their threat to form their own party. tellectuals and the young, but in Con- versed in the A.P.S.A.’s 1950 report), led The States’ Rights Democratic Party gress Kennedy’s proposals—a tax cut, initially by Eugene McCarthy and then nominee, Strom Thurmond, won a mil- a major education bill, civil-rights leg- by such people as the Missouri Demo- lion votes, and captured four states in islation—fizzled back to earth like dud crat Richard Bolling, who turned it into the South. Humphrey had created a rockets. the first modern congressional caucus. wedge issue within his own party. It Congressional Democrats were the These “de facto lobbyists” for insti- was the beginning of the liberal insur- ones who set about trying to push tutional reform, as Zelizer wrote in gency that climaxed in the Great So- his 2004 book “On Capitol Hill,” be- ciety and gave rise to a new politics. came the model for later Republican insurgencies. The strategies iden- urging dissidents was the first step tified today with the Tea Party Caucus Ptoward building a new congressio- (closed-door meetings, public-relations nal party. A second was drawing to- blitzes, bloc voting, continual pressure gether like-minded legislators and vot- on weak-kneed House leaders) were ers who for the time being were kept pioneered by the D.S.G., which origi- apart by the two-party system. If South- nated with twenty-eight signatories ern Democrats and Midwestern Re- to a liberal manifesto in 1957 and publicans could form a congressional through a progressive legislative agenda. grew to an estimated hundred and majority, Northerners in both parties And L.B.J., who had steadily backed twenty-five members—almost half might do the same. By the time L.B.J. away from the Dixie contingent, was the Democrats in the House—by became President, this possibility had helping to coax the new agenda along. 1964. The D.S.G. pushed the House been tossed around for years. In 1958, In 1959, when he was still in the Senate, to increase the size of the Rules Com- after the Democrats’ victories in the he had put together a committee on un- mittee in 1961, weakening the con- midterms cut into G.O.P. strongholds employment and assigned a freshman servative junta. And when the Rules from New England to California, Rich- liberal, Eugene McCarthy, to lead it. Committee sat on the Civil Rights ard Rovere, this magazine’s political After holding more than two dozen Act, Bolling collected enough signa- correspondent, predicted “a coalition hearings in a dozen states, the commit- tures on a petition to force a hearing of Northern Republicans and North- tee issued its report, in March of 1960. in January of 1964, the first step in a ern Democrats, led by the latter.” The As the historian Dominic Sandbrook long march; the obstacles included a

72 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 sixty-day team-relay filibuster orches- trated by the Senate’s Southern bloc. Johnson’s landslide victory gave him the liberal mandate he needed to push through the agenda for the Great Society, but he couldn’t have done it if the right hadn’t been undergoing its own ideological sorting—a convul- sion within the G.O.P. that transferred power from the East Coast to the Sun Belt in the person of Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was a gift to liberals. One of just six Republican Senators to vote against the Civil Rights Act, he seemed the iron-jawed tribune of anti- government extremism. He warned that the new bill would lead to a “fed- eral police state,” turning citizens into informers, an opinion shared by the John Birch Society. Zelizer is probably right to say that Goldwater “built the Great Society,” if only because he ac- complished what the liberals couldn’t: he made civil rights, and the liberal causes that followed, seem intrinsic to American idealism. “You’re gonna take a left at the nondescript white wall, keep going till you One measure of the new order was pass a nondescript white wall, then head right when you hit a nondescript the D.S.G.’s rising influence. The group white wall. If you see a nondescript white wall, you’ve gone too far.” had backed forty House incumbents, of whom thirty-nine won. It also picked forty successful challengers. The mem- •• bership was now larger than the entire Republican caucus, and it exulted in its tion of Reform.” Such issues might in- many of the wrinkles had been worked power. Two Southern Democrats who clude “the problem of perfecting, to the out in advance. When committee mem- had supported Goldwater were stripped highest degree possible, the quality of bers submitted alternative versions of of seniority rights, the kind of “sanction” our lives and of our civilization.” the program, Mills adroitly mashed all the A.P.S.A. report had called for. The Moderate Republicans, afraid of the proposals together. The committee Democratic Study Group successfully being branded Goldwaterites, fled to had only thirteen days to draft a final pressed for another reform that the re- the sanctuary of the Johnson program. version. That was all the time it needed. port had recommended: changing the Most “believed that the President’s mea- makeup of committees to favor the ma- sures were in the national interest,” o modern Presidency follows jority party. The “Goldwater Congress,” Geoffrey Kabaservice points out in “Rule Nthe arc of classical tragedy as in James Reston’s phrase, became the and Ruin,” his history of the modern neatly as Johnson’s. He began as awk- first instance of unlimited majority rule Republican Party. That’s one reason ward steward to a slain hero he re- since the beginnings of the New Deal. Medicare passed, despite the strenuous sented, grew into full command of his “F.D.R. passed five major bills in the lobbying of the American Medical As- powers while beset by self-doubt and first one hundred days,” Johnson boasted sociation. “Approximately thirty-seven self-loathing, and finally seemed to to an aide before the 1966 midterms. legislators who had been considered will his own descent. The story has “We passed two hundred in the last two ‘friends’ of the A.M.A. were defeated” in been told many times, but Zelizer is years.” Actually, Roosevelt had passed 1964, Zelizer writes. Wilbur Mills, the especially good on the unravelling of fifteen. But Johnson had one enor- tightfisted Arkansas Democrat and the the Great Society. At the start of 1966, mous advantage that Roosevelt lacked: chairman of the Ways and Means Com- L.B.J. could reel off mouthwatering a booming economy. “We may now turn mittee, had been blocking health-care numbers on jobs and wages, yet brace to issues more demanding of human in- proposals since the fifties, but had come for losses in the midterm elections. It genuity than that of how to put an end around. He dropped hints of a compro- had happened to F.D.R.; it could hap- to poverty in the richest nation in the mise. L.B.J., with his instinct for con- pen to him. He chose to push ahead world,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an gressional politics, deferred to Mills. for more programs, more agencies, architect of the War on Poverty, wrote in Years of dismantling bills had made rather than to scale back. This heavy- a 1965 essay titled “The Professionaliza- Mills expert in their intricacies, and handed style invited suspicion. The

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 73 social critic Paul Goodman said that question. Against the best advice, he had own rotten bargain, Humphrey insisted L.B.J.’s government, instead of safe- been sending in more troops; ultimately, that the calamitous war policy was guarding citizens, was reducing them the number exceeded half a million, and working and so was lumped in with his to the status of “clients.” “Dependency” total Pentagon spending reached Sec- party’s despised establishment elders. became the new term of art. ond World War levels. Johnson was Humphrey and McCarthy, both Min- Four days before the midterms, afraid to pull out, for fear of being la- nesotans and pioneers of the new liberal Zelizer writes, Johnson stood “in front belled soft on Communism. Still a crea- politics, battled through to the nominat- of a turquoise backdrop, ideal for broad- ture of Congress, he remembered the ing Convention in Chicago. The fac- casts on color television,” and in three convulsions over the “loss” of China tions of the “responsible” Democratic ceremonies signed eight bills that would and the Korean War. Johnson had been Party had stayed together about as long funnel huge sums into Great Society Minority Leader during much of Joe as the Beatles. programs, including $6.1 billion into McCarthy’s rampage and found himself schools. The Democrats lost seats, in powerless to stop it. This time, the pro- ut, like the Beatles, they left an part thanks to a group of constituents test was coming from the left on cam- B enduring legacy, if not one that many had taken for granted: working- puses and among the intellectuals and they had envisioned. Even as the new class, pro-union, Northern whites who the press. liberal party had been forming, a new remained loyal to the New Deal but sus- The broad public hadn’t yet turned conservative party had been, too—along pected that Great Society programs against the Vietnam War. It was the bat- the axis that united the Dixie states weren’t meant to help them—were, in tle at home that was cause for alarm. and the Southwest. Lasting majority fact, coming at their expense. Zelizer Strife over civil rights was moving west rule, however, would elude conserva- again has the numbers: “Only thirty- and north. Protests in Birmingham and tives just as it had Democrats. Begin- eight out of seventy-one Democrats Selma had given way to riots in Watts, ning with Richard Nixon, in 1968, Re- elected” in 1964 “were reelected to the which erupted less than a week after publicans won five of the next six House in 1966. Just twenty-three of the L.B.J. signed the Voting Rights Act. Presidential elections, only to be re- forty-seven freshman Democrats who Riots in Detroit and Newark followed, peatedly thwarted in Congress, out- had been elected in Republican districts in the summer of 1967. Such conflict numbered and bullied and kept off in 1964—not counting the freshmen doomed the “third civil-rights bill”—a committees, just as the liberals had who had defeated Democratic incum- housing law that would have redressed been. Like the liberals, they were ex- bents—were victorious.” discriminatory real-estate practices in asperated by the deals their leaders kept Two years earlier, the conservative the North. The bill cleared the House, making with the other side. In 1973, coalition seemed finished. Now the lib- but it was killed in the Senate by Ever- House bomb-throwers, following the eral one did. Emboldened conservatives ett Dirksen, the Illinois senator who had example of the Democratic Study attacked “Great Society play money,” been instrumental in passing the first Group, formed the Republican Study rallying votes against a modest bill to two bills. There had been racial violence Committee. Forty years later, it helped exterminate rats in city neighborhoods. in Chicago, and although whites had orchestrate a government shutdown. Moynihan was now jeering at antipov- committed most of it, Zelizer explains To date, the most ingenious practi- erty programs in the pages of The Pub- that “Dirksen, like a growing number tioner of responsible party politics has lic Interest: “Toss a rock in the lobby of of Republicans, blamed civil rights ac- been Newt Gingrich. All its principles the Office of Economic Opportunity tivists tied to the black power move- can be found in his “Contract with headquarters in Washington today, and ment.” After losing a skirmish with America”: the stark agenda (balance the one will hit, at random, a steely-eyed Wilbur Mills over taxes, L.B.J. mut- budget, cut back welfare), the institu- budget examiner intent on a systems tered, “I’m not master of nothing. . . . We tional reforms (term limits, limits as analysis of health services in Hough, a cannot make this Congress do one well for committee chairs), the implicit bearded youth determined to overthrow damn thing that I know of.” threat to discipline heretics. With it the ‘entrenched autocracy’ of the Dem- Former allies turned against him, too. came the ideologically unified party that ocratic Party machine in some Eastern Eugene McCarthy, who had helped progressives had once dreamed of, com- industrial slum, a former regional direc- him mount an eleventh-hour run at the plete with caucusing, late-night strategy tor of the Peace Corps worried about 1960 Presidential nomination, became sessions, and political-action commit- Comanche reaction to the latest batch the Pied Piper of the “Dump Johnson” tees. The result was not only a House of VISTA volunteers, and a Negro lawyer movement organized by antiwar Dem- majority, won in 1994, but British-style concerned how to double the number of ocrats. College students converged in cohesion. Under Gingrich, the House of Head Start projects in his home state New Hampshire for the 1968 primary, Representatives became, at last, the before the next election.” and McCarthy’s strong second-place American House of Commons. “The L.B.J. began warning that if Con- finish proved crippling to Johnson. Republican Party in the House is the gress didn’t raise taxes the country would After Robert Kennedy jumped in, most disciplined political party we have suffer a “ruinous spiral of inflation” and Johnson concluded that he might not ever seen in the history of America,” “brutally higher interest rates.” The even get nominated. He withdrew, and Barney Frank said at the time. other option, scaling back the costs of the leaden mantle passed to his Vice- Gingrich’s reign was short-lived, but the Vietnam War, seemed out of the President, Humphrey. Captive to his many of his reforms went forward. In

74 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 2004, House Speaker Dennis Hastert announced a new House rule: no bill would go to the floor for a vote unless “a BRIEFLY NOTED majority of the majority” supported it. He meant a majority of Republicans, in BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, by Malcolm Gaskill (Basic). This his- order to reduce the danger of bipartisan tory of English settlers in seventeenth-century America por- passage. (This is what stopped the im- trays colonists tortured and transformed by a “plaine wilder- migration law passed by the Senate in nesse,” and yearning for an Old World to which they no 2013 from reaching the House.) And longer belong. They splinter into religious factions, suffer when the numbers weren’t there the plagues, butcher and are butchered by Indians. They find that conservative party remained firm in its porpoise tastes “like rusty Bacon”; a colonist gloats that a mas- opposition. L.B.J. had mustered as many sacre has imparted “so bitter a Relish of our English valor”; Republican votes as possible for Medi- another frets that the atrocities of King Philip’s War are “the care, lest it be seen as a “Democratic suden & dreadfull appearance of the great Judge of the world.” bill.” President Obama didn’t have that Gaskill’s homestead-hopping briskness means that forefathers option. It was gone from politics, though and villages blur, but the conversion of English adventurers it took him a while to realize it. into American pioneers emerges, beautifully and brutally. In 1950, when the American Politi- cal Science Association report was pub- SOPHIA, by Anita Anand (Bloomsbury). Born in 1876, Prin- lished, Schlesinger wondered whether cess Sophia Duleep Singh was the daughter of the last ma- the new sorting-out was feasible “with- haraja of the Punjab, who had been deposed, exiled to Brit- out a reorganization of our parties on ain, and given an enormous allowance to dissuade him taut ideological lines” that might in- from returning to foment insurrection. Sophia had a lav- flame antagonisms rooted deep in the ish upbringing; she was a goddaughter of Queen Victoria. native temper. The report, drawing As an elegant, lively young woman, she was a trendsetter comfort from the very consensus it in everything from clothes to dog training. But by her early wished to do away with, confidently in- thirties she had joined the suffragettes, and she became a sisted that sharpening their disagree- key figure in the movement. Providing a rare glimpse into ments wouldn’t put a forbidding “ideo- imperialism’s intimate effects, this biography explores the logical wall” between the two parties. forces that radicalized her, including an early trip to India The Second World War had destroyed and the British aristocracy’s refusal to countenance mixed- all the colossal isms save one, Commu- race unions, which prevented her from marrying. nism, and it had no future in America. Even as Democrats and Republicans THE SEVENTH DAY, by Yu Hua, translated from the Chinese by became more partisan, both sides would Allan H. Barr (Pantheon). Yang Fei, the hapless narrator of gravitate toward the center, where most this absurdist novel, is a dead man. He arrives late to his voters were, and both would offer com- own cremation and later discovers that he has neither an peting solutions to problems most vot- urn nor a burial plot. For seven days, Yang wanders among ers could agree needed solving, such as the “deleted dead,” taking stock of his life and seeking the securing voting rights and providing cause of his death. He encounters people similarly stranded health care for the elderly. between life and death, including many who come from The authors of the report did not the margins of Chinese society—migrant workers, an consider that partisan conviction might abused peasant turned urban outlaw. “Dying is such an ex- create its own pathology. Today, no one pensive business these days,” one of the dead muses. Or- is confused about who is a Democrat dinary Chinese lives, Yu’s tale seems to suggest, come sur- and who is a Republican. But it hasn’t prisingly cheap. made it easier for the parties to govern, separately or together.  MERMAIDS IN PARADISE, by Lydia Millet (Norton). Strange 1 things happen to people who go looking for strange things constabulary notes from all over in this comic novel. Deb and Chip, a quaintly mismatched couple, are on their honeymoon in the British Virgin Is- From the Champaign (Ill.) News-Gazette. lands when mermaids are discovered in the sea near their A 47-year-old Urbana man was setting on hotel. Chip is a thrill-seeking nerd, who likes extreme sports stairs near the sidewalk with a bicycle and a case of beer on Friday and was trying to and medieval-fantasy-themed video games. Deb, the nar- figure out how to get home riding the bicycle rator, likes to comment wryly on bizarre social gatherings with a case of beer. When police discovered and is partial to “a second margarita.” Corporations see the the man had an outstanding warrant for fail- mermaids as an opportunity to make a fortune. After a guest ure to appear, they took him to jail, dropping off the beer at the arrested man’s home at at the resort is murdered, the narrative takes on elements of his request. both thriller and farce. The humor is effective, if fairly broad.

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 75 the tests are reported in a quick phone THE CURRENT CINEMA call, and that’s that: a loss of nerve that tells you much about the movie as a whole. Time and again, as it comes to LOSING YOUR WAY the next stage of deterioration or dis- tress, it flinches. Try laying it beside Mi- “Still Alice” and “Paddington.” chael Haneke’s “Amour,” which shows the effect of a stroke on an elderly BY ANTHONY LANE woman, no less refined than Alice, and on her loved ones. Haneke knows the worst, and considers it his duty to show it; Glatzer and Westmoreland want us to know just enough, and no more. For many viewers, that’ll do fine. Once they’ve seen Alice wet her pants because she can’t remember where the bathroom is, no more details are required. Why push things any further? “Still Alice” re- mains as polite, as informed, and as cau- tiously compassionate as the society that it depicts. It makes sure, from the start, that we grasp the irony of Alice’s plight. Lecturing on “the relationship between memory and computation that is the very essence of communication,” she for- gets a word. Later, speaking to health professionals and fellow-sufferers, she summons the courage to get through her speech, and is applauded at the end— though not by her husband, who is away Julianne Moore stars in a movie directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. on business. You can feel Baldwin itch- ing to make his character not merely he life that is led by Alice How- She goes from minor patches of forget- square and industrious but troublesome Tland ( Julianne Moore) appears to fulness, such as any of us might expe- and even cruel; the rest of the film, be perfect, although it’s not a perfection rience, to near-wipeout. Her kind of though, doesn’t want to go there. It pre- that everyone would crave. She is gra- Alzheimer’s is rare, as though the Fates fers the softening touch: a score, by Ilan cious, beautiful, and fifty years old, with had decided, for a laugh, to butcher the Eshkeri, that urges mourning upon us three equally beautiful children: Anna exclusive, high-achieving joy of her ex- with slow-paced piano and strings; a (Kate Bosworth), Tom (Hunter Par- istence with a no less specialized brand reading, by Lydia, from “Angels in Amer- rish), and Lydia (Kristen Stewart). Alice of disease. In the words of her doctor, ica,” about ascending souls; and even is a professor of linguistics at Colum- “With familial early-onset, things can clips of old home movies, from a grainy bia, and the author of “From Neurons go fast. And actually, with people who past that is now being swept away. That to Nouns.” She dresses well, eats well, have a high level of education, things was a pretty cheap trick when it was and cooks a flawless Christmas dinner. can go faster.” used in “Philadelphia,” and it’s no less She is married to John (Alec Baldwin), In Alice’s case, “familial” means, first, manipulative—and effective—more than a senior research physician, who adores that she probably inherited Alzheimer’s twenty years on. her. They have an apartment on the from her father, who died of alcohol- Despite all that, and in the absence Upper West Side and a house at the ism, and, second, that her children have of the anger and the wildness that are beach. What could possibly go wrong? a fifty-per-cent chance of carrying the crouched and caged within this most The answer is “everything,” as Alice mutated gene. All of them, should they terrible of themes, “Still Alice” is worth would realize if she had read Sophocles want their futures told, will have to be watching, for the sake of Julianne Moore. in college. Or, more recently, if she had tested. This is one hell of a burden for She has always compounded sweetness grabbed a coffee with the heroine of them, and it places hefty dramatic de- with steel, and both are brandished here. Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine,” who was mands on the writers and directors of The smile that Alice gives, as her utter- also married to Alec Baldwin. Look “Still Alice,” Richard Glatzer and Wash ance falters, is more heartbreaking for what happened to her. The mantrap that Westmoreland, who adapted the novel being so radiant; we understand at once ensnares Alice, however, is not poverty by Lisa Genova. How can they dole out what it will cost this particular woman or adultery but Alzheimer’s disease, the perplexity as it descends on each to put on a good show, and a happy face. which snaps into her without mercy. child? Well, they don’t. The results of At the other extreme is the message

76 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON PRADES that, when still compos mentis, she leaves belief that London is a place to dream look of her—the helmet of blond hair, for herself—or for a later version of that about, trust in, and visit. The scene is set. and the tightly buttoned outfits—I self—on her laptop, issuing instructions As a rule, too much backstory is dead reckon that what she really wants is to for suicide. The tone of practical plain- weight, but “Paddington” proves a sur- tie him up and get all grizzly on him, ness is wonderfully caught. “Hi Alice, I prising exception. The writer and direc- whispering “Keep the red hat on” into am you,” she begins. To be and not to tor, Paul King, scatters the tale with his little ears. be, at the same time: that is the ques- handfuls of eccentric charm, first in the Such villainy feels out of whack with tion that Moore would, if unleashed, forest and then in the home of the the Paddington myth, which is remark- have pursued to its tragic limit. “Still Browns. At one point, borrowing freely able for its lack of threat. Bond admit- Alice” gives her only half a chance. from Wes Anderson, he frames it as a ted that the Brown household reflected living doll’s house, with each member “the rather safer prewar world which I t has taken a while for Paddington of the family hard at work or play in a remember from my childhood,” and the I Bear to arrive on the big screen. Mi- different room. There is Mr. Brown movie doesn’t shy from that nostalgia. chael Bond’s “A Bear Called Padding- (Hugh Bonneville), a risk analyst by Mrs. Brown suggests consulting an en- ton” was published in 1958. Sales of that trade, and therefore allergic to shenan- cyclopedia instead of going online, and book and its sequels run to more than igans; Mrs. Brown (Sally Hawkins), ten- the bulk of the wizardry is mechanical, thirty-five million copies, and the hero derhearted and brightly clad; the glum crammed with things that swivel, shunt, has assumed many forms, the largest Judy (Madeleine Harris) and her brother, and lock. Meanwhile, we barely notice being the bulbous inflatable—complete Jonathan (Samuel Joslin); and the house- that Paddington himself, bright-eyed with his trademark duffel coat and floppy keeper, Mrs. Bird ( Julie Walters), who and bushy-pelted, is so modern as to be hat—that has drifted along in the Ma- complains of feeble knees. There is a nonexistent, forged from C.G.I. Even cy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Enor- definite dash of “Mary Poppins” in this more up-to-date is the political timbre: mity, though, does Paddington no fa- setup, the idea being that the father, a calculated move, I suspect, in a year vors; smallness of stature is intrinsic to fussing and frustrated, should have the when both British and American elec- his appeal. In the new film, which is en- starch wrung out of him by the advent tions will be fraught with talk of immi- titled simply “Paddington,” he is de- of a kindly outsider. Families are a puz- gration. “Please Look After This Bear” scribed as being around three feet six. zle, and it is the job of a Paddington, or reads a tag around Paddington’s neck, Its ideal viewers will be of similar height. a Mary, to solve them. and it is to that basic plea, rather than The movie is true to the character’s As for plot, Bond managed to do to the alert of “stranger danger,” which essence, as distilled by Bond: Padding- without one, stringing up episodes like is Mr. Brown’s initial reaction, that the ton, armed with little more than im- handkerchiefs on a clothesline. That movie accedes, reminding us—some- peccable manners and marmalade, is looseness was preserved on British TV, what naggingly—of the hero’s status as dispatched by his Aunt Lucy from “Dark- where a puppet Paddington ambled a refugee. Will children, however, flock est Peru” to London, where he is taken hither and thither in stop-motion. (The to the film because it tells them how in by the Browns. In the stories, Peru narrator was Michael Hordern, whose they should vote if they could? Or be- stays utterly unknown, and our first in- wise and tolerant tones were also used cause they like the bit where Padding- dication that the film will beat a fresh for the voice-over of “Barry Lyndon.”) ton gets his head stuck in a toilet? Wait path comes as it reveals flickering, black- King needs something tougher, and that and see.  and-white footage of a British expedi- means Nicole Kidman. She plays an tion to the Peruvian rain forest, during evil taxidermist, bent on stealing and which an explorer befriends some resi- stuffing this rare Peruvian species Ursa(“ newyorker.com dent bears. They are left with the firm marmalada,” we learn), though by the Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 19, 2015 77 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Liza Donnelly, must be received by Sunday, January 18th. The finalists in the January 5th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the February 2nd issue. The winner receives a signed print of the cartoon. Any resident of the United States, Canada (except Quebec), Australia, the United Kingdom, or the Republic of Ireland age eighteen or over can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.

THE WINNING CAPTION

THE FINALISTS

“Your last job sounds terrible.” Nick Kanellis, Brooklyn, N.Y.

“I’m afraid I can’t discuss my other patients.” “Next time, we can meet at your office.” David Morgan, Sydney, Australia Matt Marron, Greenville, S.C.

“Dress for the job you have.” Rita K. Lomio, Washington, D.C.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

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