PRICE $8.99 NOV. 27, 2017

NOVEMBER 27, 2017

5 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 19 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Amy Davidson Sorkin on sexual harassment; Lee Ann Womack in hi-fi; a director’s sister act; pups behind bars; Lois Smith, looking back. A CRITIC AT LARGE Anthony Lane 24 For the Win Winston Churchill’s many faces in film. SHOUTS & MURMURS Colin Nissan 29 My LinkedIn Photo ANNALS OF CRIME Alec Wilkinson 30 The Serial-Killer Detector A program to connect unsolved murders. THE SPORTING SCENE Nick Paumgarten 36 Confidence Game The intense discipline of a skiing prodigy. A REPORTER AT LARGE Alexis Okeowo 46 The People’s Police In Mexico, a woman who became the law. COMIC STRIP Edward Steed 53 “A Brief History of Time” FICTION Will Mackin 56 “The Lost Troop” THE CRITICS POP MUSIC Carrie Batton 62 Taylor Swift’s “Reputation.” BOOKS James Wood 65 Jon McGregor’s subtle fictions. Ruth Franklin 70 Reassessing Mary Oliver. 73 Briefly Noted Paul Bloom 74 Looking for the root of human cruelty. THE ART WORLD Peter Schjeldahl 78 Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Edvard Munch. POEMS Eileen Myles 40 “The West” Timothy Donnelly 60 “Unlimited Soup and Salad” COVER Barry Blitt “Nowhere to Hide”

DRAWINGS Mitra Farmand, Tom Toro, P. C. Vey, Will McPhail, Bruce Eric Kaplan, David Sipress, Liana Finck, Shannon Wheeler, Roz Chast, Harry Bliss, Emily Flake, Julia Suits, Frank Cotham, Drew Dernavich, Emma Hunsinger, Michael Maslin, Sofia Warren, Paul Noth, Edward Koren SPOTS Andy Rementer

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 1 CONTRIBUTORS

Nick Paumgarten (The Talk of the Town, Alexis Okeowo (“The People’s Police,” p. 20; “Confidence Game,” p. 36) has been p. 46) is a staff writer. Her first book, writing for the magazine since 2000. “A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extrem- Eileen Myles (Poem, p. 40) is a poet who ism in Africa,” came out in October. lives in New York and Marfa, Texas. “Afterglow (A Dog Memoir)” is their Will Mackin (Fiction , p. 56) retired from most recent book. the Navy in 2014. His début story col- lection, “Bring Out the Dog,” will be Alec Wilkinson (“The Serial-Killer published in March. Detector,” p. 30), a regular contributor, has published ten books, including Ruth Franklin (Books, p. 70) is the au- “The Protest Singer” and “The Ice Bal- thor of “Shirley Jackson: A Rather loon.” His next book is on learning math. Haunted Life,” now out in paperback.

Carrie Battan (Pop Music, p. 62) is a Barry Blitt (Cover) is a cartoonist and contributing writer for the magazine illustrator. His latest book, “Blitt,” is a and for newyorker.com. collection of his illustrations for The New Yorker, the Times, Vanity Fair, and Anthony Lane (“For the Win,” p. 24), The elsewhere. New Yorker’s film critic since 1993, pub- lished “Nobody’s Perfect,” a collection Amy Davidson Sorkin (Comment, p. 19) , of his writings for the magazine, in 2003. a staff writer, is a regular contributor to Comment and writes a column for Paul Bloom (Books, p. 74) is the Brooks newyorker.com. and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psy- chology and Cognitive Science at Yale. Edward Steed (Comic Strip, p. 53) has His latest book is “Against Empathy: been contributing cartoons to the mag- The Case for Rational Compassion.” azine since 2013.

NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more.

DAILY SHOUTS VIDEO Maggie Larson explores the Ronan Farrow discusses his investiga- emotional roller coaster of a last-minute tion of the sexual-assault allegations Thanksgiving trip to the supermarket. against Harvey Weinstein.

SUBSCRIBERS: Get access to our magazine app for tablets and smartphones at the

App Store, Amazon.com, or Google Play. (Access varies by location and device.) COUCIERO CRISTIANA RIGHT: LARSON; MAGGIE LEFT:

2 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 THE MAIL

HOMING INSTINCTS MacFarquhar briefly mentions the changing demographic of Orange Larissa MacFarquhar, in her profile of City’s farmworkers. Many rural towns my home town, Orange City, Iowa, nationwide are collapsing because of describes why it hasn’t stagnated the the loss of family farms. More than way many rural communities in the half of U.S. cropland is controlled by United States have (“Our Town,” No- farms larger than two thousand acres, vember 13th). As MacFarquhar writes, while the country loses forty acres of people in Orange City tend to stay farmland every hour. As our small and there, and to account for this she cites medium-sized farms are increasingly the attraction of its culture: an abun- unable to compete with industrial ag- dance of churches, a proud ethnic her- riculture or developers and disappear, itage, and the reality that everybody we lose not only land but also entire knows your genealogy. (“If you ain’t communities. Dutch, you ain’t much!”) But she Sarah Newman doesn’t give enough credit to the role 1Bethesda, Md. that thrift plays in sustaining the com- munity. Orange City residents exhibit THE END OF EXERCISE a Calvinist work ethic that avoids con- spicuous consumption. Extra cash is Nicola Twilley’s wry examination of put in banks, which in turn extend one of the pharmaceutical industry’s loans to finance long-term investments many quests for eternal youth—this in the community. This is the essence time in the form of GW501516, a drug of what it means to be conservative, a that, she writes, “confers the beneficial term that is misused in today’s polit- effects of exercise without the need to ical discourse. Washington, D.C., could move a muscle”—provides a fine ex- learn a lesson. ample of the vanity of human desires Daniel van der Weide (“The Exercise Pill,” November 6th). Madison, Wis. Even the term “exercise pill” is an oxy- moron, along the lines of “jumbo I’m a transplant to Orange City, and shrimp”; the idea that swallowing a still a bit of an outsider even though pill can harmlessly “mimic” a vigorous I’ve lived here for twenty-four years, half-hour swim defies logic. The en- teach math at the college in town, thusiastic endorsement of a man on married a local, and raised children the Web site MuscleChemistry.com, who are more than half Dutch in an- who goes by the handle Iron Julius, cestry. Despite my love for the moun- does little to recommend it. Indeed, tains and my issues with the regional after Twilley cites researchers’ claims politics here, I wouldn’t live anywhere that their creation works by tricking else. Without glossing over its flaws, “cells into thinking they are running MacFarquhar absolutely nails the out of energy,” she says that the ma- qualities that make Orange City a jority of the scientific community has wonderful place to call home. How- warned against ingesting a “likely car- ever, I do have a historical bone to cinogen.” It remains axiomatic that you pick with the article’s references to can’t fool Mother Nature. the Dutch Reformed Church, a con- Alan Dunn gregation affiliated with Northwest- Beaverton, Ore. ern College. Actually, it has not gone by that name for nearly two hundred • years, and officially adopted its cur- Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, rent name, the Reformed Church in address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited America, in 1867. for length and clarity, and may be published in Kim Jongerius any medium. We regret that owing to the volume Orange City, Iowa of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 3

NOVEMBER 22 Ð 28, 2017 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

The British painter David Hockney turned eighty this year. The Met, in cahoots with the Tate and the Pompidou, celebrates with a retrospective. Landscape and autobiography recur as entwined motifs, from the sun-splashed swimming pools of Los Angeles, the artist’s adopted home town, to the rolling hills of his native Yorkshire. After a trip to Japan in 1972, Hockney painted “Mt. Fuji and Flowers” (above),

COURTESY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART OF MUSEUM THE METROPOLITAN COURTESY jogging his memory with a postcard and a guide to flower arranging. The exhibition opens on Nov. 27. NIGHT LIFE

in 1983, halted by a towering drug habit, he left the scene to become a social worker and didn’t d.j. again for thirteen years. As Siano moved on, disco went with him; in its wake emerged new club customs that shape the spheres of music, fashion, and art to this day. Downtown New York hit puberty in the nineteen-eighties, a messy re- bellion from the shimmer of Studio 54, complete with stars of its own. It was in the burgeoning neighborhood of Tribeca that a young Justin Strauss came of age at the Mudd Club and the Paradise Garage, and eventually served as the Saturday-night d.j. at Area. Genres like post-punk, new wave, and hip-hop forced their way into d.j. sets; celebrities bopped alongside young aspirants like Keith Haring, Madonna, and Jean-Michel Basquiat; and clout peaked at being recognized by a door- man. Throughout the mid-eighties, Area reinvented its décor every six weeks: Jennifer Goode, who directed these changeovers, would load her pickup truck with retired Coney Island rides or props lifted from the set of “Mad Max,” hoping they’d fit in Area’s thirteen thousand square feet. “It started off as something that wasn’t meant to last,” Strauss said recently. “It was an art project—with an amazing sound system.” Today, photography books, docu- On Thanksgiving eve, the “Native New Yorker” party series returns to Good Room, in Greenpoint. mentaries, and museum exhibits pine over New York’s club history. But Siano Set Tables York City,” Lillian Lopez sings, and Strauss are more inclined to look mournful; her home isn’t a point of forward. Siano returned to d.j.ing in Nicky Siano and Justin Strauss recall pride but a burden to escape, even for 1996, playing a party dedicated to his night life’s loftiest eras. a night. late protégé Larry Levan; his “Native Boasting of being a native New Yorker By the time “Native New Yorker” New Yorker” night, at which he spins counted for more in the Big Apple’s cracked Billboard, the d.j. Nicky Siano marathon sets of disco soul and new ruder times; these days, the claim had long been dubbed the Master of earworms, arrives at Good Room this rarely has any social benefit. Still, we Disco Soul as a resident jockey at Stu- Thanksgiving eve. Strauss will be there can all agree that it made for a great dio 54—the club that taught celebrities as well, playing with Billy Caldwell for Odyssey song. In 1977, at the height of what to do with all their fame. As the the Greenpoint club’s second dance disco fever, the group released the sim- likes of Bianca Jagger, Calvin Klein, floor, Bad Room. The party’s holiday mering 45 “Native New Yorker,” nar- and Diana Ross made front-page news timing nods considerately to those rating the life of a savvy city lady who’s for their hedonism, a teen-age Siano with local roots, who can dance till the heart and soul of her town. “There pioneered mixing techniques (match- dawn and still make it to dinner with you are, lost in the shadows, searching ing tempos, extending intros) and took the family that evening.

for someone to set you free from New other young d.j.s under his wing. But —Matthew Trammell WROTEN KELSEY BY ILLUSTRATION

6 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017

1 NIGHT LIFE ROCK AND POP ances with EPMD, and eventually for his own ter’s buffed artistry is not to be overlooked in slapstick personality and triple-stuffed enten- the rush of euphoria. Her new album, “Mem- Musicians and night-club proprietors lead dres. The two artists’ styles were complemen- phis . . . Yes, I’m Ready,” a celebration of vin- complicated lives; it’s advisable to check tary on various collaborations; when they re- tage Southern R.&B., is a righteous conduit for in advance to confirm engagements. leased the joint album “Blackout!” together, her irresistible vitality. (Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd in 1999, they became hip-hop’s in-house buddy St. 212-475-8592. Nov. 21-26.) Liam Gallagher comedy, with beloved music videos and stoner “Well, the cops are taking over / While every- flicks to boot. Method Man is still flexing his Electric Miles one’s in yoga / ’Cause happiness is still a warm acting chops on HBO’s “The Deuce,” but he’s Once Miles Davis plugged in, at the close of the gun / What’s it to be free, man? / What’s a Eu- making time to spar with his old partner at this nineteen-sixties, he basically never looked back, ropean? / Me, I just believe in the sun.” Liam reunion show. (B. B. King Blues Club & Grill, 237 so any ensemble dealing with his electric period Gallagher rarely minces words, and he makes no W. 42nd St. 212-997-4144. Nov. 22.) has a good twenty-plus years of material to draw exception on his recent single “Chinatown”; the on. The trumpeter Randy Brecker and the sax- music video, which finds him brooding through, Spoon ophonist Greg Osby take care of the horns, but yes, Chinatown, is outfitted with subtitles, pre- Since its inception more than twenty years ago, three guitarists, including Steve Cardenas, will sumably so that fans can keep up. Musicians of Spoon has distanced itself musically from its he- provide the necessary whomp. (Iridium, 1650 his stature often have a knack for getting ev- roes, such as the German experimentalists Can, Broadway, at 51st St. 212-582-2121. Nov. 24-26.) erything right in a song even when it shouldn’t with elongated jam sessions taking the place of work at all: as a guiding member of Oasis, one heady pop numbers. They have flirted with funk- Hush Point of the biggest British bands of the nineties, laced pop and lysergic psychedelia on their many Controlled dynamics, mindful counterpoint, Gallagher still knows where the notes should releases. But on “Hot Thoughts,” their recent rec- and a leaning toward the serene pleasures of go. He’s also enjoying a resurgence of pub- ord, the band delves into new territory: deliber- cool jazz define Hush Point. The group weaves lic notoriety spurred by his explosive social- ately sultry, shimmy-worthy breakup and make- John McNeil’s brainy trumpet lines and Jeremy media presence and a few viral clips, gleefully out jams. (Brooklyn Steel, 319 Frost St., East Wil- Udden’s ultra-lyrical alto saxophone into the demonstrating that rock stars can still ruffle liamsburg. 888-929-7848. Nov. 28-29.) work of a contained yet ever-alert bass-and- feathers. (Terminal 5, at 610 W. 56th St. 212-582- drum team. (Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia 6600. Nov. 27.) Kamasi Washington St. 212-989-9319. Nov. 24-25.) “The Epic,” the début studio album from this Jay-Z tenor saxophonist from Los Angeles, features The New Drum Battle: Kenny Washington With more than three decades of albums and winding free jazz in the sixties spirit of John and vs. Joe Farnsworth accolades to his name, Sean Carter didn’t have Alice Coltrane. (There’s a refernce to “Acknowl- There’s always been a gladiatorial aspect to jazz. to release a quiet album of soul samples and edgement” in Washington’s “Final Thought.”) For a taste of this blood sport, head uptown for self-reflection this summer, but he did it with It was released on the independent L.A. label this mano-a-mano fight to the finish between characteristic cool. “4:44” is still settling into its Brainfeeder, home to many musicians, produc- two supremely accomplished drummers with legacy; diehards are split on its mature themes ers, and d.j.s who stray from jazz’s stricter tra- a mutual taste for hard-bop intensity. Stoking (marriage, credit, the eighties) and defiantly an- ditions. The record was warmly reviewed, and the contestants will be such familiar cohorts alog sound (manned entirely by one producer, it found new fans among listeners who discov- as Gary Smulyan on baritone saxophone and No I.D., mentor to a young Kanye West), but ered the composer through his work with the Brian Lynch on trumpet. (Smoke, 2751 Broad- it undoubtedly holds up against his rare per- knotty producer Flying Lotus (the founder of way, between 105th and 106th Sts. 212-864-6662. sonal work, such as “Song Cry” or “Meet the Brainfeeder) and the Grammy-winning hip- Nov. 24-26.) Parents.” Carter spent the past decade estab- hop wunderkind Kendrick Lamar. This head- lishing himself as a capitalist rapper motivated lining set features a guest appearance by the Jack Wilkins / Howard Alden by the expansion of his reach, only to make a pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph. (Termi- Two more elegant mainstream guitarists are record that aimed small; at this concert, in an nal 5, at 610 W. 56th St. 212-582-6600. Nov. 22.) hard to find. They deftly balance each other: arena he once owned a slim share of, his mus- 1 Wilkins leans toward the modern, while Alden ings will extend from the floor to the stands. can look over his shoulder to the pioneers of the (Barclays Center, 620 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn. JAZZ AND STANDARDS nineteen-thirties and forties. The position of the barclayscenter.com. Nov. 26-27.) veteran jazz musician who has expertise yet still Dee Dee Bridgewater wants for broader acclaim is a puzzling one, but Dua Lipa The near-feral energy of this veteran vocalist these two handle it with ease. (Jazz at Kitano, One typically turns to the Billboard Hot 100 for is always something to witness, but Bridgewa- 66 Park Ave., at 38th St. 212-885-7119. Nov. 22.) escapist entertainment, not nuggets of relation- ship wisdom. Occasionally, you get both: judg- ing by the towering chart performance of “New Rules,” fans have taken to heart the dictates laid out by this English-Albanian pop auteur in her hit single. She formulates a plan for not falling back into bad habits with an old flame, telling DANCE her inner self, “Don’t let him in / You have to kick him out again” and observing, “If you’re under him / You ain’t getting over him.” It’s one New York City Ballet / “The Nutcracker” The Chase Brock Experience of the many pearls on the twenty-two-year-old’s As a young dancer in St. Petersburg in the nineteen- Only thirty-four, with choreography credits self-titled début album of taut tropical pop, cast tens, George Balanchine performed the lead in the that include a video game for Nintendo’s Wii in the image of the early-aughts singers (includ- Harlequins’ “Hoop Dance” in the Mariinsky Ballet’s and the ill-fated Broadway musical “Spider- ing Demi Lovato and Pink) whom she used to “Nutcracker.” By all accounts, he was rather proud man: Turn Off the Dark,” Brock is already cel- cover on her YouTube channel. (Hammerstein of his performance, and in 1954, when he created ebrating the tenth anniversary of his troupe. Ballroom Manhattan Center, 311 W. 34th St. 800- his own “Nutcracker” for the New York City Bal- His sensibility is peppy, poppy, amped up with 745-3000. Nov. 24.) let, he included the dance verbatim in the second theatre-geek zeal. His on-the-beat, on-the- act, and renamed it “Candy Cane.” With its double nose illustrations of music and lyrics have a Method Man & Redman hoop jumps, it is still one of the most beloved sec- let’s-put-on-a-show innocence. This anniver- These two blown-out characters remain one tions of the ballet, performed by one adult dancer sary program ranges chronologically from the of rap’s greatest unofficial duos. Method Man, and eight children from the school. This merging of 2007 work “Slow Float,” which treats Laura born Clifford Smith, was the unchallenged star past and present, adult prowess and youthful flair, Nyro songs in the manner of “Hair,” to the of the Wu-Tang Clan, with a charisma that has helped insure this production’s enduring appeal première of “Men I’ve Known,” which is set, earned him his own self-titled solo single on the for more than sixty years. It returns for a month- more ambitiously, to Satie’s austere “Ogives.” ten-man group’s début album. Reggie Noble, long run. (David H. Koch, Lincoln Center. 212-721- (Clurman, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200. Nov. a.k.a. Redman, was first noticed in his appear- 6500. Nov. 24-26. Through Dec. 31.) 27-28. Through Dec. 9.)

8 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 Piano Trio in E Minor, “Dumky”; the violinist Mark Peskanov, Bargemusic’s director, is joined by two old friends, the cellist Nicholas Tzavaras CLASSICAL MUSIC and the pianist Doris Stevenson. Nov. 24 at 8; 1 Nov. 25 at 6 and Nov. 26 at 4. (Fulton Ferry Land- ing, Brooklyn. bargemusic.org.) OPERA his strengths, is prominent on the program, which begins with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Suite Juilliard String Quartet from the opera “The Legend of the Invisible In the world of the American string quartet, no Metropolitan Opera City of Kitezh” and closes with Rachmaninoff’s two names are more distinguished than those The Met first performed Verdi’s searing“Re- Third Symphony; in between comes music by of the Juilliard and the Emerson, and Lincoln quiem” in 1901 to mark the composer’s death, and Saint-Saëns, the Violin Concerto No. 3 in Center is hosting both of them, in back-to- it most recently revived it in 2008, when another B Minor (with the orchestra’s concertmaster, back evenings. First comes the Juilliard, still legend, Luciano Pavarotti, passed away. But Frank Huang). Nov. 22 at 7:30 and Nov. 24-25 anchored at the premier conservatory after sev- given its mammoth proportions and dramatic at 8. (David Geffen Hall. 212-875-5656.) enty years. The group’s current personnel (in- style—the German conductor Hans von Bülow cluding the recently appointed cellist Astrid called it an “opera in ecclesiastical dress”—it’s Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity Schween) performs three bedrock works at unsurprising to encounter a concert of it out- Lutheran Church Alice Tully Hall: Haydn’s Quartet in D Major, side of a commemorative context. James Levine The church’s admired tradition of presenting Op. 76, No. 5, Bartók’s Quartet No. 5, and conducts the Met orchestra and the powerhouse concerts of Bach cantatas, in a reverent setting Dvořák’s Quartet in C Major, Op. 61. Nov. 27 soloists Krassimira Stoyanova, Ekaterina Se- on Sunday afternoons, has hit the half-century at 7:30. (events.juilliard.edu.) menchuk, Aleksandrs Antonenko, and Ferruc- mark. Now under the sure command of Don- cio Furlanetto, in a run of four performances. ald Meineke, an esteemed member of New Go: Organic Orchestra: “Murmuration” Nov. 24 at 8 and Nov. 27 at 7:30. • The New York York’s early-music community, the church’s This week’s walk on the wild side comes cour- City Ballet has “The Nutcracker,” so, in a bid to choir, with instrumentalists, is offering a sea- tesy of Adam Rudolph, the acclaimed percus- carve out its own holiday tradition for families, son filled with “greatest hits”—including the sionist who has explored jazz, experimental- the Met has been presenting one opera every Cantata No. 70, “Wachet! Betet!,” performed ism, and world music for some four decades. year in English translation. The most success- this Sunday. Nov. 26 at 5. (Central Park W. at Go: Organic, his personal orchestra of thirty- ful of these adaptations is the hundred-minute 65th St. No tickets required.) five (on Western and non-Western instru- abridgment of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” in 1 ments), joins him on his latest journey: fol- Julie Taymor’s often enchanting production. Na- lowing his signature practice, he conducts the than Gunn—this version’s original and irresist- RECITALS group improvisationally, using a nonlinear ibly hammy Papageno—leads a cast that includes score to create music of exceptional sponta- Charles Castronovo, Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, Bargemusic neity. Nov. 27 at 8. (Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave., and Kathryn Lewek; Evan Rogister conducts. Many of the city’s classical musicians take it Brooklyn. roulette.org.) Nov. 25 at 2. • Also playing: Massenet’s “Thaïs” easy during the long Thanksgiving weekend, is unquestionably a star vehicle—when Renée but at the floating chamber-music series the Emerson String Quartet Fleming sang in the première of John Cox’s beat goes on. Friday night’s concert is offered Next at Lincoln Center are the celebrated Em- production, in 2008, she was lavishly costumed by the pianist Philip Edward Fisher, who, wrap- ersons, who have lately been continuing their by Christian Lacroix—but it also requires two ping up a series devoted to the Beethoven so- longtime passion for two favorite compos- compelling singing actors who can carry a story natas, performs a relatively early work, No. 16 ers, Beethoven and Shostakovich. This con- that’s light on plot. For the current revival, the in G Major, as well as the composer’s vale- cert concentrates on powerful late works from Met has entrusted Ailyn Pérez and Gerald Fin- dictory masterpiece in the genre, the Sonata both: Beethoven’s Quartet in B-Flat Major, ley to flesh out the inner conflicts of the cour- No. 32 in C Minor. Beethoven endures on the Op. 130, with the alternative ending, as well tesan title character and the holy man who is Saturday-night and Sunday-afternoon con- as the quartet’s original ending, the Grosse captivated by her; Emmanuel Villaume. Nov. certs, with the “Magic Flute” Variations for Fuge, performed separately, and Shostako vich’s 22 and Nov. 28 at 7:30 and Nov. 25 at 8. (Metro- Cello and Piano as the centerpiece of a pro- harrowing, one-movement Quartet No. 13 politan Opera House. 212-362-6000.) gram that also includes Bach’s Sonata No. 3 in B-Flat Minor. Nov. 28 at 7:30. (Alice Tully in E Major for Violin and Piano and Dvořák’s Hall. 212-721-6500.) “BAC Salon”: Pauline Oliveros The writer, director, and performer Ione pre- sents excerpts from “The Nubian Word for Flow- ers,” an opera that was unfinished when her collaborator and spouse, the celebrated exper- imental composer and improviser Pauline Oli- veros, died, in November of 2016. In advance of the work’s formal première (at Roulette, in Brooklyn, on Nov. 30), the intrepid Interna- tional Contemporary Ensemble—fiercely de- voted to Oliveros’s work—joins Ione for a casual hour-long preview performance and discussion at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Nov. 28 at 7:30. (4501 W. 37th St. bacnyc.org.) ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES

New York Philharmonic The conductor Gianandrea Noseda’s perfor- mances in New York in recent years (at the Metropolitan Opera and with the London Sym- phony Orchestra on tour) have been of such sterling quality that many observers were mys- tified when he was passed over as the Philhar- monic’s new music director. It’s been twelve years since he led this band, and his return to

ILLUSTRATION BY MIKKEL SOMMER BY ILLUSTRATION its podium is welcome. Russian music, one of The dynamic Italian maestro Gianandrea Noseda conducts the New York Philharmonic this week.

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 9 acting with the musician and entrepreneur Fab 5 Freddy on a street in Harlem, both men sport- ing overcoats that shield them against the chill A RT of a city that, historically speaking, has been as 1 intolerant of black men as it has been shaped by them. You can’t hear what Davis and Freddy MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES stated insight into the ambivalent humanity of are saying, but you don’t need to: their bodies his saintly characters. Jerome has stopped mor- and their gestures tell us that they share a lan- tifying his flesh with a rock to gaze up at a cru- guage, the complicated, flowing language of Frick Collection cifix, but the way he holds his arm suggests that black men in cities. Joseph concludes his film “Veronese in Murano: Two Venetian he might suddenly toss the stone at his distant with a reference to Chris Marker’s documen- Renaissance Masterpieces Restored” Saviour instead. Agatha turns her head only half- tary “Sans Soleil” (1983), an urtext on film as In between jobs for doges and popes, the six- way, as if unwilling to withdraw full attention fragments, film as journey. In “Fly Paper,” after teenth-century Italian painter, who was born from her own suffering merely on the strength of the parade of disparate lives, bound together by Paolo Caliari in Verona, completed two large St. Peter’s promises. Through March 25. aesthetics, politics, belief, and love, has ended— paintings for a chapel in a convent graveyard we see the actor Ben Vereen, the singer Lauryn on the Venetian island of Murano. One por- New Museum Hill, and Joseph’s late brother, the artist Noah trayed St. Jerome during his stint as a hermit in “Kahlil Joseph: Shadow Play” Davis, among others—the screen goes dark. The the Syrian desert; the other showed St. Agatha, Joseph has created intellectually and emotionally world has stopped. The excellence is gone. But imprisoned by a Roman consul for resisting his dense short films showcasing black excellence, the blackness onscreen is as rich and textured as advances. Recently restored and leaving Italy strangeness, and history for artists and commer- skin. And that’s when we hear a woman, in calm for the first time, the canvases are remarkable cial clients including Beyoncé Knowles, Shabazz voice-over, quoting from “Sans Soleil”: “If they for the subtlety of their color. Under matte and Palaces, Kendrick Lamar, and Kenzo. He draws don’t see happiness in the picture, at least they’ll powdery surfaces, Jerome’s cardinal-red loin- very little distinction between his commercial see the black.” Through Jan. 8. cloth shimmers like real silk, the dark-green work and the art that he produces on his own. 1 leaves of an overhead laurel branch look waxy, Now he has made his most personal film to date, and a line of clouds at the bottom of the sky are the twenty-three-minute “Fly Paper,” which is GALLERIES—UPTOWN simultaneously pink and orange. Agatha, shar- the high point of this installation. It features ing her cell with an apparition of St. Peter and a Joseph’s late father, Keven Joseph Davis, who Françoise Grossen small blond angel, is perfectly distinct in every practiced sports and entertainment law (he was One of the most enthralling objects in this detail while still chromatically at home in a dim named one of Sports Illustrated’s “101 Most Influ- decades- spanning exhibition is the sprawling prison. Equally remarkable is Veronese’s under- ential Minorities” in 2003). We see him inter- “Mermaid I,” from 1978. Woven from twisted rope, a trio of eight-foot-long fish-tail braids meet where the mythic creature’s torso would start, and end in curved fins of concentric strands. “Inter- polations XXI,” from 1982, is a lovely outlier, a small, caterpillar-like form made from buffing pads and wooden buttons, rather than the art- ist’s signature knots and plaits. The Swiss-born, New York-based artist, who is best known for her gracefully gnarled, abstract hanging works and large public commissions, broke early with the constraints of tapestry to reflect the coun- tercultural aesthetics of the nineteen-seventies. At times, though, Grossen’s works can feel too close to the handmade post-Minimalism of Eva Hesse, particularly in this gallery setting. Through Jan. 6. (Blum & Poe, 19 E. 66th St. 212-249-2249.)

“Ileana Sonnabend and Arte Povera: Curated by Germano Celant” In a 1967 essay, Celant, a critic and curator, coined the term “arte povera”—poor art—for the sardonically subversive work then being made in his native Italy. But he first came up with the phrase in conversation with the legendary gal- lerist Ileana Sonnabend, who abetted the move- ment’s international influence when she gave the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto a show at her Paris gallery, in 1964. Three of Pistoletto’s original “mirror paintings” from that year—wall-mounted sheets of mirror-polished steel with dinged-up corners—are the highlight of this taut and excit- ing fiftieth-anniversary event. Across the right edge of a work titled “Marzia con la Bambina,” the artist’s wife, who is painted at nearly life size on tissue paper affixed to the steel, turns a shoul- der to the viewer, while cradling a little girl in her arms. In its equivocal feelings about art and the art world, its rebuke of the high gloss of Amer- ican Minimalism, and its suggestion that for- mal and conceptual rigor are enhanced through a theatrical sense of humor, the piece encapsu- lates the values that also animate works by Pier Paolo Calzolari, Jannis Kounellis, Gilberto Zorio, The American photographer Curran Hatleberg’s new on-the-road series includes “Untitled Giulio Paolini, Giovanni Anselmo, and Mario

(Snake)” (2017), on view at Higher Pictures through Dec. 23. Merz. Don’t miss Anselmo’s untitled, two-foot- PICTURES THE ARTIST/HIGHER COURTESY

10 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 A RT tall pillar of gray granite, conceived in 1968, to which a fresh lettuce leaf is bound every day with a copper wire—you could spend the rest of your life arguing about what it means. Through Dec. 23. (Lévy Gorvy, 909 Madison Ave., at 73rd St.1 212-772-2004.) GALLERIES—CHELSEA

Gail Thacker The punk photographer Mark Morrisroe, who died of AIDS, in 1989, bequeathed his cache of Polaroid 665 stock, which creates both a nega- tive and a positive print, to his friend Thacker. This show assembles several dozen of the pic- tures that she made with the film, many of them hand-colored or finished with collage el- ements. Like her peers from the so-called Bos- ton School (Morrisroe, Nan Goldin, and Jack Pierson, among others), Thacker took her in- timate circle as her subject, embracing the dia- ristic. “Self-Portrait the Day John Died,” from 1985, is a blurred, Polaroid closeup of the art- ist’s stunned face, accidentally decorated with fingerprints and a light-exposed corner. Por- traits of the drag artists Tabboo! and Rafael Sanchez are, in contrast, rich and sharp, their expert poses dramatized by velvety shadows or surprising sunlight. Through Dec. 22. (Cooney, 508 W. 26th St. 212-255-8158.)

William Villalongo The men portrayed in the American artist’s new gut-punching collages and paintings are almost entirely composed of cuts. Sliced out of imported black velour paper, the swooshes, loops, and hearts are stark white; on painted wooden pan- els, they’re a mellower violet. With the addition of acrylic eyes, hands, and feet, these characters convey a dancerly élan—the figure in “Corner Office” flexes under a view of the Empire State Building, while the man in “Obertura de la Espo- ra (Time Dancer)” wears a collaged necklace of African masks. However sprightly Villa longo’s works may appear, he is rendering trauma, and his men also convey something heavier. In “Free, Black and All American No. 3,” it’s the phrase “2.3 million incarcerated”; in the otherwise pen- umbral “Vanitas,” a silver tray holds rotting fruit and a photograph of the racist mass murderer Dylann Roof. Through Dec. 9. (Inglett, 522 W. 24th St.1 212-647-9111.) GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN

Sylvie Fleury The Swiss artist’s fantastic new sculptural paint- ings were inspired by eye-shadow and blush compacts, but they also suggest high-style con- trol panels. Fleury based their geometry on ac- tual products, rendering the sleek black or gold frames and the shimmering, convex insets of pigmented powder with hard-edged precision. She also, cleverly, simplifies forms. One quar- tet of canvases takes the shape of Chanel’s dis- tinct curved yet square compacts, but, thanks to the omission of the applicator brushes, they be- come Minimalist. While the elegant show takes a jab at the grandiose machismo of modernism, mimicking its formal experiments with sym- bols of feminine artifice and consumer fetish- ism, it also comes off as a paean to the tiny ab- stractions and paint sets of everyday life. Through Dec. 23. (Salon 94 Bowery, 243 Bowery, at Stanton St. 212-979-0001.)

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 11 THE THEATRE

Known for her zippy adaptations of classic books, Kate Hamill plays Elizabeth Bennet in her screwball rendition of “Pride and Prejudice.”

Austen, Abridged her niche in the theatre world, adapting Fair” was an exploration of judgment and thick nineteenth-century novels into ki- hypocrisy. With “Pride and Prejudice,” Kate Hamill turns nineteenth-century netic stage concoctions—and starring in she said, the guiding question was “How novels into kinetic downtown theatre. them. This spring, she hacked down do you know if you met ‘the one,’ in mod- It was 2010, and Kate Hamill, an aspiring Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” for the Pearl ern parlance? And, for me, I’ve been actress, was frustrated. The casting notices and took the role of its cunning antiher- super- ambivalent about marriage and all seemed to call for bikini babes, long- oine, Becky Sharp. Now she’s playing romantic love.” That attitude has evolved suffering girlfriends, or thirty-year-old Elizabeth Bennet in her own screwball since she’s been in a long-term relation- MILFs. “I got so swiftly irritated by the adaptation of Austen’s “Pride and Preju- ship, with the actor Jason O’Connell. dearth of good female roles in female- dice,” at the Cherry Lane. (Coming up: Reader, she cast him as Mr. Darcy. “He centric stories,” Hamill said recently. She a version of “Little Women” that explores was psyched! Mr. Darcy’s a really hard bet a friend a hundred dollars (“and I was Jo as a nonbinary character, though Ham- role to play, because so many people play so poor”) that she could create her own ill may cede the role, “because I present him just as a jerk. In my version, he’s not “classic,” based on Jane Austen’s “Sense very much as a cisgender woman.”) The a jerk. He just acts like one, because he’s and Sensibility.” The friend was Andrus second-youngest of six, Hamill had an so socially awkward.” Hamill and O’Con- Nichols, a co-founder of the downtown Austen-like upbringing herself. She was nell first met at the Hudson Valley Shake- theatre company Bedlam. The show had raised in an eighteen-fifties farmhouse speare Festival (which is co-producing a short stint Off Broadway in 2014, then in Lansing, New York, a dairy-farming the show with Primary Stages), and, Ham- returned last year for a hit encore run, at town so remote that when Hamill was ill recounts, “I swear to God, a bell went the Gym at Judson. Eric Tucker’s pro- little it didn’t have 911. Her parents, both off in my head. Like, ding!” Bells are a duction was no staid costume drama but grant writers, thought television rotted recurring motif in her “Pride and Preju- a hyper-caffeinated romp, with a chorus the brain, so she took up books instead, dice.” The couple lives in Forest Hills, and of nattering gossips and wheeled furniture discovering “Pride and Prejudice” as a they are not yet betrothed. “In this play, he that rarely stopped swirling. Hamill and junior in high school. proposes to me, and I wrote the proposal,” Nichols played the Dashwood sisters, How to pare down such doorstoppers? Hamill said, her voice lowering to a hap- Marianne and Elinor. The hundred dol- Hamill starts with a central theme: for less whisper. “This play should be subtitled, lars was never exchanged. “Sense and Sensibility,” it was “Do you like, ‘My Very Public Marriage Journey.’ ”

Hamill, thirty-four, has now found break the rules or follow them?” “Vanity —Michael Schulman IIVONEN JANNE BY ILLUSTRATION

12 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 1 THE THEATRE OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS Today Is My Birthday vokes a wide variety of verbal and physical tics. In Susan Soon He Stanton’s play, directed by Kip The narrative is structured around a week that The Children Fagan for Page 73, a New York actress returns Comfort spent in Washington, D.C., as a nov- In Lucy Kirkwood’s play, a pair of retired nuclear home to Oahu and lands a gig on a radio dating ice lobbyist with the Tourette Association of engineers are visited by an old friend during a show. (New Ohio, 154 Christopher St. 866-811-4111. America, but it feels more like a stream-of- world crisis. Directed by James Macdonald, in a Previews begin Nov. 28.) consciousness zigzag through his mental state, Manhattan Theatre Club transfer from the Royal shifting compellingly from puppy-dog enthu- Court. (Samuel J. Friedman, 261 W. 47th St. 212- 20th Century Blues siasm to square-jawed intensity to psychedelic 239-6200. Previews begin Nov. 28.) Susan Miller’s play follows four women who meet freak-out. Directed by Kel Haney, the show often once a year to take a group portrait and find their feels deliberately unfocussed, as if to mirror the The Dead, 1904 friendships tested when they learn that the pho- experience of Tourette’s itself, and Comfort is Irish Rep brings back its site-specific staging of tos may go public. Emily Mann directs. (Per shing an expressive dancer who does a wonderful job the James Joyce tale, adapted by Paul Muldoon and Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. 212-279- physicalizing what it feels like to be him. But Jean Hanff Korelitz and accompanied by a holiday 4200. In previews. Opens Nov. 26.) he’s occasionally less than generous in depicting feast. With Melissa Gilbert and Rufus Collins. the other people he encounters, and it’s some- (American Irish Historical Society, 991 Fifth Ave., at The Winter’s Tale times unclear how his various asides are meant 80th St. 212-727-2737. In previews.) The Public’s Mobile Unit performs the Shake- to be received. (Fourth Street Theatre, 83 E. 4th speare romance in its home theatre, after a tour St. 866-811-4111. Through Nov. 25.) Describe the Night through New York City community venues. Lee Rajiv Joseph’s new play, directed by Giovanna Sar- Sunday Evans directs. (Public, 425 Lafayette St. Junk delli, tells parallel stories connecting the Russian 212-967-7555. Previews begin Nov. 26.) Ayad Akhtar (“Disgraced”) is a playwright who writer Isaac Babel, a K.G.B. agent in Dresden, and 1 seems the most energized when he has big is- a 2010 plane crash in Smolensk. (Atlantic Theatre sues to dive into, and what could be juicier than Company, 336 W. 20th St. 866-811-4111. In previews.) NOW PLAYING Wall Street greed and maleficence? The year is 1985, and Judy Chen (a superb Teresa Avia Lim) Downtown Race Riot Actually is a business journalist covering new financial The New Group presents Seth Zvi Rosenfeld’s Amber and Tom (Alexandra Socha and Joshua strategies that are redefining the idea of capital play, directed by Scott Elliott and starring Chloë Boone) rendezvous outside of a party for Prince- in America. Robert Merkin (Steven Pasquale) Sevigny as a single mother during the 1976 mob at- ton freshmen. They flirt. They dance. They drink embodies those changes: sleek as a shark, he’s tack in Washington Square Park. (Pershing Square from a shared flask and eventually clamber into the head of an L.A.-based bank that’s been very Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200. Tom’s dorm bed. No one disputes this. But con- aggressive about hostile takeovers. Merkin lives In previews.) tradictory versions of what happens next shape in a world where guilt is a burden and loyalty is the twisted spine of Anna Ziegler’s often an- an inconvenience: money is, as Chen says, “the The Fountainhead guished “she said, he said” drama, produced by thing.” Directed by Doug Hughes, this slick pro- At the Next Wave Festival, the European stage au- Manhattan Theatre Club and directed with un- duction of a thin play features twenty-three ac- teur Ivo van Hove directs Toneelgroep Amster- derstated empathy by Lileana Blain-Cruz. Like tors, so there’s not a lot of room for character dam’s reimagining of the Ayn Rand novel. (BAM Ziegler’s “The Last Match,” “Actually” alternates development. But, in a way, that doesn’t mat- Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafa yette Ave., between two-character scenes and direct address ter: sometimes it’s fun just to sit there and get Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. Nov. 28-Dec. 2.) while moving back and forth in time around a off on the testosterone and the swiftness of the central event—in this case, an administrative action, like most of the play’s guys do. (Vivian Hundred Days hearing to determine whether Tom’s conduct has Beaumont, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200.) The folk-punk duo the Bengsons composed violated Title IX policy. In simpler terms: has this musical (with a book co-written with Sarah Tom raped Amber? Both actors offer charismatic, Latin History for Morons Gancher), about living as if you had only a hun- multidimensional performances, and the play- In his latest comic monologue (a Broadway dred days left on earth. Anne Kauffman directs. wright’s compassion is unstinting. But Ziegler’s transfer from the Public), John Leguizamo is (New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. 4th St. 212-460- obsessive evenhandedness ultimately becomes a class clown turned substitute teacher, sprint- 5475. In previews.) source of frustration, making the piece feel less ing from the Aztecs to Sonia Sotomayor in less like a wrenching character study and more like than two hours—with dance breaks. When his Meteor Shower a dramaturgical brainteaser. (City Center Stage son was in eighth grade, Leguizamo tells us, he Amy Schumer, Keegan-Michael Key, Laura II, at 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212.) was picked on by racist bullies and stumped by Benanti, and Jeremy Shamos star in Steve Mar- a history project in which he had to find a hero. tin’s new play, about a dinner party interrupted by The Band’s Visit Hoping to fortify his boy with heritage, Legui- falling space debris. Jerry Zaks directs. (Booth, 222 It has a wisp of a plot: an Egyptian police or- zamo deep-dived into textbooks, returning with W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.) chestra, conducted by Tewfiq (Tony Shalhoub), pearls of knowledge: did you know that twenty lands in the wrong town in the Negev Desert, thousand Hispanics fought in the Civil War? Once on This Island where the locals, stone-faced and few, put the Still, he struggles to find encouraging tales of Michael Arden directs a revival of Lynn Ahrens musicians up for the night. In the morning, they indigenous forebears, who, like his son, were and Stephen Flaherty’s 1990 musical fable, in leave. And yet David Yazbek and Itamar Moses’s on the losing side of most battles. Directed by which a young Caribbean woman falls in love new musical, based on a 2007 Israeli film, fills up Tony Taccone, the show makes the occasional with a man from the other side of her island. the stage with feeling, the muted kind that dwells hackneyed turn—it’s unclear why Montezuma is (Circle in the Square, 235 W. 50th St. 212-239-6200. in missed connections and half- remembered rendered as a flaming homosexual—but quickly In previews.) tunes. The director, David Cromer, has enor- rights itself, and Leguizamo lands clear comic mous trust and patience in his material, letting punches, especially when sending up his own The Parisian Woman the emotional music of an uneventful night in machismo. (Studio 54, at 254 W. 54th St. 212- Uma Thurman stars in a drama by Beau Willimon the middle of nowhere rise to the surface. But 239-6200.) (the creator of “House of Cards”), as a Washing- the show’s not so secret weapon is Katrina Lenk, ton socialite navigating power and relationships who plays Dina, a café owner with a dry stare and The Mad Ones after the 2016 election. Pam MacKinnon directs. a drier wit. When she finally opens up to Tewfiq, Inspired by Jack Kerouac, Sam (Krystina Ala- (Hudson, 141 W. 44th St. 855-801-5876. In previews.) in a song about the “jasmine wind” that brought bado), a graduating high-school valedictorian, in Umm Kulthum on her mother’s radio, she’s a wants to hit the road like Sal Paradise but in- SpongeBob SquarePants radiant presence. (Ethel Barrymore, 243 W. 47th stead worries her way through a hundred min- A musical based on the anarchic cartoon, with St. 212-239-6200.) utes of indecision that would make Hamlet direction by Tina Landau, a book by Kyle Jar- impatient. The book, lyrics, and music of this row, and songs by artists including Steven Tyler, The Elephant in Every Room I Enter Prospect Theatre Company show are by Kait Sara Bareilles, John Legend, Cyndi Lauper, and In this autobiographical one-man show, the actor Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk, and, while the Flaming Lips. (Palace, Seventh Ave. at 47th St. Gardiner Comfort explores life with Tourette’s their song arrangements are wittier than their 877-250-2929. In previews.) syndrome, the hereditary condition that pro- sitcom-grade dialogue, the whole thing feels

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 13 THE THEATRE marooned in a narrative void—a sensation re- inforced by Adam Rigg’s featureless set, which has all the charm of an empty office cubicle. The actors, directed by Stephen Brackett, do well MOVIES with what they’re given, which is too often con- 1 trived: Sam’s mother wrote a book on driving safety, her boyfriend aspires to take over his fa- NOW PLAYING mother and son leave no ravage a surprise—in- ther’s tire shop, and so on. (59E59, at 59 E. 59th cluding their famous scenes of incest. Yet Berto- St. 212-279-4200.) lucci, leading them through Italy in a voluptuous if Born in Flames anguish- strewn travelogue, heals them with the re- People, Places & Things Lizzie Borden’s fierce and trenchant political fan- discovery of long-abandoned family ties and unites Emma (Denise Gough), the protagonist of tasy, from 1983, is set in New York ten years after a them in a grand tableau of artistic splendor and Duncan Macmillan’s play (a transfer from the second American revolution, peaceful yet drastic, fulfillment. At the edge of the abyss, the director National Theatre in London), is an actress, a which has brought about democratic socialism and retreats to a redemptive humanism that comforts sloppily confrontational, drug-addled mess in sparked new conflicts centered on race and gen- more than it challenges—and dramatizes his own a business populated by handlers who applaud der. Two underground feminist radio stations are good reasons for doing so. Released in 1979.—R.B. inflated self-regard. Like many junkies, Emma in competition—one led by Honey (played by the (Quad Cinema, Nov. 24 and Nov. 26.) is a brutalizing sentimentalist chasing the drag- actress of the same name), a black woman who con- on—a line of coke, a handful of tranquillizers, siders the revolution unfulfilled, and another by Mudbound booze—while also chasing some idea of love, the white lesbian musician Isabelle (Adele Bertei), This historical drama, directed by Dee Rees and which involves regret as well. When she is shown whose activism is cultural. Meanwhile, the vigilante adapted from the novel by Hillary Jordan, is cen- to her room at a rehab facility by an adminis- Women’s Army patrols the city by bicycle, a gov- tered on two families in rural Mississippi, one trator (Alistair Cope, who, like the rest of the ernment employment program provokes riots, and black and one white, during the nineteen-thirties supporting cast, is excellent), she flips him off three female journalists (one of whom is played by and forties. It offers a keen and outraged view of with snotty remarks: she is defiant, or acting Kathryn Bigelow) report on divisions within the the laws and practices of Jim Crow and the mon- defiant. The Irish-born Gough knows how to socialist movement. After an activist (Jean Satter- strous dangers awaiting anyone who defied them. play Emma’s lies without foregrounding them field) dies in police custody, the feminist theoreti- The story shows how the McAllan family, who or trying to make us comfortable with her char- cian Zella Wylie (played by the activist and writer are white—Henry (Jason Clarke), Laura (Carey acter’s psychology. Her performance is greater Flo Kennedy) calls for direct action to get the mes- Mulligan), and their young daughters—slip from than the script, and the script is terrific, if con- sage out in the one way that matters—on television. middle-class Memphis to a bedraggled Mississippi ventional; it gives Gough a framework through Borden’s exhilarating collagelike story stages news farm, where they’re in close connection with their which to express her genius. (Reviewed in our reports, documentary sequences, and surveillance tenants, the Jackson family, who are black—Hap issue of 11/13/17.) (St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water footage alongside tough action scenes and musical (Rob Morgan), Florence (Mary J. Blige), and their St., Brooklyn. 718-254-8779.) numbers; her violent vision is both ideologically four children. When the Second World War starts, complex and chilling.—Richard Brody (Film Society Henry’s brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) becomes What We’re Up Against of Lincoln Center, Nov. 25 and Nov. 27, and streaming.) a pilot, and the eldest Jackson son, Ronsel (Jason This play by Theresa Rebeck (“Seminar”), writ- Mitchell), becomes a tank commander. Both come ten in 1992 and staged by WP Theatre, has aged Lady Bird back heroes, but tragedy looms when they become much better than its protagonists’ office wear of As writer and director, Greta Gerwig infuses this friends. Rees uses voice-overs to bring the many culottes and baggy pleated pants. Set at an ar- comedic coming-of-age drama with verbal virtu- characters to life, but the text is thin; the movie’s chitecture firm where the men and the women osity, gestural idiosyncrasy, and emotional vitality. exposition is needlessly slow and stepwise, and the are pitted in a vicious—and utterly familiar— The loosely autobiographical tale is set mainly in drama, though affecting, is literal and oversimpli- war of the sexes, the story takes off when Eliza Gerwig’s home town of Sacramento, in the 2002-03 fied. With Jonathan Banks, as Henry’s bitter, rac- (Krysta Rodriguez), furious at not getting any academic year, and centered on Christine McPher- ist father.—R.B. (In limited release and on Netflix.) assignments, makes a bold move that shakes son (Saoirse Ronan), self-dubbed Lady Bird, a se- up the power balance. Alliances and betrayals nior at a Catholic high school whose plan to escape Murder on the Orient Express abound, and the deft cast, moving at breakneck to an Eastern college is threatened by her grades On board a train halted by an avalanche, a scoun- speed under Adrienne Campbell-Holt’s punchy and her parents’ finances. Lady Bird’s father (Tracy drel lies dead. When did he die? Who caused the direction, makes a meal of the snappy dialogue. Letts), with whom she shares a candid complicity, is multiple wounds? And just how amazing is it that Fuelled by cathartic fury, this dark feminist com- about to lose his job; her mother (Laurie Metcalf), Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh)—who is prob- edy leaves nobody unscathed, from the dumb, with whom she argues bitterly, is a nurse who works ably, as he hastens to inform us, the world’s great- smugly sexist supervisor (Damian Young) to the double shifts to keep the family afloat. Lady Bird in- est detective—should be on hand? Branagh’s new accommodating older colleague (Marg Helgen- filtrates the world of rich kids and risks losing true film of the Agatha Christie novel, adapted by Mi- berger) who’s deemed “a Nazi collaborator” by friends; she dates a Francophile rocker (Timothée chael Green, is an odd compound of the luxurious the brazen Eliza. Rebeck’s arguments are not Chalamet) whose walk on the wild side is comfort- and the sparse. On the one hand, it comes loaded new, but that doesn’t make them tired. (McGinn/ ably financed. Deftly juggling characters and story with the paraphernalia of wealth: dining cars, por- Cazale, 2162 Broadway, at 76th St. 866-811-4111.) lines, Gerwig provokes aching laughs with gentle ters, valets, and covetable costumes, plus a small 1 touches (Metcalf’s etched diction nearly steals the crowd of expensive stars, including Johnny Depp, show), but her direction remains self-effacing until Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Daisy ALSO NOTABLE late in the film, when several sharply conceived Ridley, and a sad and seductive Michelle Pfeiffer. scenes suggest reserves of observational and sym- On the other hand, so busily does the plot scurry Animal Wisdom The Bushwick Starr. • Harry bolic energy.—R.B. (In limited release.) past, twitching with clues and flashbacks, that we Clarke Vineyard. • The Home Place Irish Reper- are neither drawn into its cunning nor satisfacto- tory. • Illyria Public. • Jesus Hopped the “A” Train Luna rily fooled. The landscape changes with alarming Pershing Square Signature Center. • The Last Channelling a Viscontian elegance, Bernardo Ber- speed from a sunny Istanbul to a vision of crags and Match Laura Pels. • M. Butterfly Cort. • Oedipus tolucci probes the allure of bourgeois excess to its snowstorms that appears to have been borrowed el Rey Public. • Office Hour Public. • Peter Pan core of perverse desire—and ultimately suggests from “The Lord of the Rings,” although the most The Duke on 42nd Street. • School Girls; or, The that it’s made of frustrated dreams of normalcy. prominent feature is Branagh’s mustache, a forest African Mean Girls Play Lucille Lortel. • Shad- He gives Jill Clayburgh what may be her most ex- unto itself. The movie feels cushioned and stately, owlands Acorn. • Springsteen on Broadway Wal- travagant role, as Caterina, a suddenly widowed but, compared with Sidney Lumet’s version from ter Kerr. • Time and the Conways American Air- New York opera singer who, in frenetic mourning, 1974, surprisingly short on fun.—Anthony Lane lines Theatre. Through Nov. 26. • Tiny Beautiful flees to Rome with her adolescent son, Joe (Mat- (Reviewed in our issue of 11/20/17.) (In wide release.) Things Public. • Too Heavy for Your Pocket Black thew Barry). There, the singer’s self-absorption Box, Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for and overbearing expressiveness lock the boy into On the Beach at Night Alone Theatre. Through Nov. 26. • Torch Song Second the shell of his own despair, which he slakes with There’s a dark romanticism powering Hong Sang- Stage. • Uncommon Sense Sheen Center. Through a heroin habit that she discovers on his fifteenth soo’s furious, tautly controlled, yet coolly comedic Nov. 26. • The Wolves Mitzi E. Newhouse. birthday. The destructively passionate bonds of drama. The story is inspired by his own real-life

14 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017

MOVIES relationship with the actress Kim Min-hee. She vel extravaganza. Chris Hemsworth again plays sons unknown. Many months on, the police, stars as Young-hee, an actress who, in the wake of the hero with the hammer; this time, after the headed by Sheriff Willoughby (Woody Harrel- her scandalous affair with an older, married di- death of his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), son), are no closer to finding the guilty party, and rector, flees Seoul for a small German city, where Thor must fight his vengeful sister Hela (Cate Mildred takes matters into her capable hands, she lives in contemplative solitude. Eventually Blanchett) to save his home planet of Asgard renting billboards to advertise the woeful facts returning to South Korea, she reunites with old and its residents from her wrath. But, before of the case. This makes her unpopular with the friends and considers restarting her career—but he gets there, he’s taken prisoner on the remote locals, but she doesn’t care, nor does McDor- she sees the milieu that she left behind, and the planet of Sakaar and forced into gladiatorial com- mand hesitate to make Mildred intimidating, men in it, with a defiant and contemptuous clar- bat against a fearsome monster—who turns out and at times unsympathetic, in her single-minded ity. Young-hee’s deeply insightful, bitterly frank, to be none other than Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). A hunt for justice. You might think that someone and poetically passionate temperament emerges lively set of supporting characters, including a as tough as Mildred would overwhelm the film, in a series of long and far-reaching conversations Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), an Asgardian war- but the writer and director, Martin McDonagh, with friends and colleagues—in parks, over meals, rior (Idris Elba), and a creature made of rocks finds space for the growth of other characters, and in bars—which Hong films in long takes with (Waititi), contribute heart and humor. Waititi especially Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a cop, a ma- brusque zooms and pans matching her decisive makes the most of the churn and flash of bat- ma’s boy, and a racist blowhard. Not that he sees vigor. For all its intimacy, the drama has a vast tles and settings realized with C.G.I., filling the the error of his ways; rather, through a series of scope, a fierce intensity, and an element of meta- screen with wild whirls of color, launching char- events both fiery and farcical, he comes to un- physical whimsy (including one of the great re- acters and vehicles into loopy trajectories, and derstand that other ways exist. The movie is cent dream sequences), which all come to life in shifting from place to place with an antic sense much funnier, in its blistered dialogue, than the the indelibly expressive spontaneity of Kim’s per- of surprise. Even the long exposition and the grimness of the story might suggest, but view- formance. In Korean and English.—R.B. (Film So­ sentimental ending can’t burst the giddy bub- ers who like their mysteries wrapped up like a ciety of Lincoln Center and Metrograph.) ble.—R.B. (In wide release.) gift should probably look elsewhere. McDonagh draws committed performances from Peter Dink- Porto Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri lage, John Hawkes, Lucas Hedges, Abbie Cor- The late Anton Yelchin gives one of his last perfor- Frances McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, nish, and Caleb Landry Jones.—A.L. (11/13/17) mances in this quietly bombastic and emotionally whose daughter was raped and killed by per- (In wide release.) oblivious romantic drama. Yelchin’s character, Jake Kleeman, is an American scholar in Portugal who begins a relationship with Mati Vargnier (Lucie Lucas), a French archeologist who followed her pro- fessor (Paulo Calatré) there from Paris. The direc- tor, Gabe Klinger, plants Mati and Jake in lavishly photographed cityscapes but burdens them with a ABOVE & BEYOND drama that plays like a lonely man’s wet dream. The script (which Klinger co-wrote with Larry Gross) is a hollow batch of clichés, starting with Mati’s hot come-on in a recurring café sequence in which Jake glowers and leers carnivorously at her before they grunt and heave gamely in a long bedroom se- quence (an icky fantasy of phallic expertise). What’s more, Klinger plays coyly with the time scheme, as if to mask the lack of substance with tricks of form. A gratuitously ugly scene of Jake’s physical abuse of Mati is a casually checked-off plot point. With Françoise Lebrun, in the movie’s one well-imagined scene, as Mati’s mother. In English, Portuguese, and French.—R.B. (In limited release.) Thanksgiving Parade Balloon Inflation tween 1932 and 1977, which passengers can ride For a behind-the-scenes look at the biggest up Second Avenue; it sets out on its first voy- Thelma Thanksgiving celebration in the country, visit age on Nov. 25. The show is open to the public The heroine of Joachim Trier’s film has a troubled Macy’s giant-balloon inflation on the afternoon seven days a week through Feb. 4. (New York air, more inward-facing than outgoing, as if some- before the holiday, when seventeen balloons— Transit Museum Gallery, 89 E. 42nd St. grand­ thing were pressing her down. Thelma (Eili Har- iconic parade staples and new additions—will centralterminal.com.) boe) has just started studying biology at college, in bob to life. Arrive early to beat the crowds: most 1 Norway, and at first she finds it difficult to make balloons have started to take shape by five, and friends. Then she meets Anja (Kaya Wilkins), a they’re inflated and ready to march by nine, held READINGS AND TALKS fellow-student, although their meeting coincides to the concrete by hundreds of feet of netting. It’s with the onset of frightening seizures that come an apt pre-party for the ninety-first annual Macy’s Rizzoli Bookstore upon Thelma without warning; they are not epilep- Thanksgiving Day Parade, on Nov. 23, which will Published in conjunction with MOMA’s pop- tic, a doctor concludes, so what could be the cause? draw more than eight thousand participants. This ular exhibit “Items: Is Fashion Modern?,” the The film ripples outward, allowing us to inspect year, balloons inspired by films such as “Ice Age” companion book collects (and alphabetizes) a the stern moral conditions laid down by her Chris- and “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” join SpongeBob, hundred and eleven pieces of clothing and ac- tian parents (Henrik Rafaelsen and Ellen Dorrit Pikachu, and the Pillsbury Doughboy; elaborate cessories from the past two centuries that cura- Petersen), and also backward into her past, to see floats host the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and tors have deemed significant and impactful on if early traumas linger there. We even get spasms Jim Henson’s Sesame Street gang; and Smokey contemporary society. The museum’s first fash- of telekinesis and whispers of witchcraft; the psy- Robinson, the Goo Goo Dolls, Wyclef Jean, 98 ion exhibit since 1944 draws equally from pools chological narrative may be less than convincing, Degrees, and the Rockettes all perform. (Enter at of practicality and piety, placing Levi’s along- but Harboe’s performance holds it tightly together, W. 74th St. at Columbus Ave. Nov. 22, starting at 1.) side saris. It reduces everyday wear to its rawest and the surface—now shuddering with images of utility and design properties—a hooded Cham- shock, now gripped by a chilly calm—is finely con- Grand Central Holiday Train Show pion sweatshirt and, say, a Wonderbra are up- trolled. Some of the medical scenes use flickering At this annual train show, now in its sixteenth held as examples of sculpture and architecture strobes, and sensitive viewers should approach year, the M.T.A’s history is brought to life as in their own right, shaping much of the fabric of with caution. In Norwegian.—A.L. (11/20/17) scale models of classic red subway cars, double- the world around us. At this book launch, Paolo (In limited release.) letter trains, and even commuter-rail cars race Antonelli, the exhibit’s senior curator, and the past iconic stops and dart through labyrinthine assistants Michelle Millar Fisher and Stephanie Thor: Ragnarok tunnels. Back by popular demand is the Tran- Kramer discuss and sign copies of the encapsu- The director Taika Waititi brings exuberant vi- sit Museum’s Holiday Nostalgia Train, fea- lating hardcover. (1133 Broadway. rizzolibookstore.

sual wit and comedic sensibility to the latest Mar- turing restored vintage subway cars in use be- com. Nov. 28 at 6.) AMARGO PABLO BY ILLUSTRATION

16 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 F§D & DRINK

1 TABLES FOR TWO foundation.” Each oblong brought pinsa BA R TA B Camillo further pleasure. Amatriciana, with guan- ciale, pecorino romano, and chili pepper, 1146 Nostrand Ave., Brooklyn (718-576-6886) was cheeky goodness with a kick. The In the Aeneid, Virgil puts forward a Salsiccia & Broccoli, with its islands of prophecy founded on proto-pizza con- pork sausage, creamy mozzarella, and sumption, which foretells where Rome broccoli rabe, disappeared in seconds. shall be built. “When hunger shall drive Other offerings were even more The Penrose you, landed on unknown shores, to eat straightforward—what you might eat in 1590 Second Ave., at 82nd St. (212-203-2751) the tables at your frugal meal,” Aeneas Nonna’s kitchen. Salty anchovies came The Penrose is a long, narrow space with a sinuous, recalls his father telling him, “remember on buttered white toast; the seppie e piselli inviting arc, all dark wood and white hexagonal to place your first buildings there.” These was chewy, peppery squid atop sadly over- tiles, whose dim interior seems to perpetually hold “tables,” Aeneas later realizes, falling to cooked peas; the porchetta, served on a a bustling crowd. On a neon-specked stretch of Second Avenue that belies the sleepy reputation his knees, are plates made of hard bread wooden paddle, was a still-life of carved of the Upper East Side, the bar offers a destination off which his band of Trojan refugees eat roast pork, lettuce, and mustard. Among for the young glitterati who don’t want to travel all lunch. Two millennia later, Camillo the pastas, the carbonara’s fresh spaghetti the way to Williamsburg to guzzle chichi cocktails and indulge in spirited chatter. On a recent (opened in September by the proprietors will please those who scorn anything from Wednesday, the door was thrust open again and of the Clinton Hill standby Locanda Vini a box, but it’s the gnocchi alla romana— again to the cool autumn wind, as a seemingly e Olii) honors pizza’s Virgilian origins— baked into fluffy perfection with semolina endless array of patrons sought to elevate the eve- ning to something that would make a compelling in the ultimate old-timey Brooklyn flour, tomatoes, and parmigiano—that Instagram story. The sound of fashionable boots move—with pinsa, a Roman flatbread. provoked one diner to hail the gods. striking the white floor was muted by a staccato The pinsa dough is made from a mixture For those who don’t live in Prospect- prog-rock soundtrack; a young woman in a cling- ing leather blazer frowned at her companion by of organic wheat, soy, and rice flours, Lefferts Gardens, getting to Camillo the light of a tiny candle and flicked beer foam which rises for more than two days before might require a long ride through the at his lush red beard. Steps from the new Second being baked in a Moretti Forni electric city’s underworld. Fortune, of course, fa- Avenue subway stop, the Penrose rewards those who take advantage of its convenient location oven. The result, the chef and owner Mi- vors the bold, and upon arriving patrons with stuporously alcoholic drinks like the Baby chele Baldacci says, is easier to digest than will find a warm, unpretentious atmo- Zombie (applejack, pineapple rum, absinthe), its Neapolitan cousin. sphere and food that even Dido might served in a mug with the likeness of a glaring bird, or milder concoctions like the Free Thinker One recent evening, a table of frequent have thought comforting. After dinner, (Jameson, pamplemousse liqueur), which slides pizza eaters tried out a capricciosa pinsa, four selections of house-made amari— down as easy as dancing feels to the drunk. with artichokes, mushrooms, prosciutto one infused with dandelion and rhubarb, There’s food, too—creamy, cheesy, spicy—in- cluding a fried-chicken sandwich that serves as cotto, olives, tomatoes, and mozzarella. another with blessed thistle—smooth the excellent ballast for the booze. Under the low The crust was thin, airy, and crispy with- descent back underground, making easy ceiling, even in the brick-walled room at the very out being brittle; it sturdily held its many the way home, prophecies of pinsa back, the sounds of merriment seem strangely close, as if each peal of brittle laughter, each toppings. “Architecturally, it’s a well-built fulfilled. ($12-$24.) gleefully spilled secret, were directed toward

PHOTOGRAPH BY DOLLY FAIBYSHEV FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW FOR FAIBYSHEV DOLLY BY PHOTOGRAPH slice,” one diner said. “It’s got a solid —Carolyn Kormann your own ready ear.—Talia Lavin

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 17

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT gear and a Kevlar helmet. If you are a lion dollars to settle claims of harass- TESTS FOR LIBERALS liberal and love Al Franken, would you ment and other forms of workplace dis- decide—indeed, know—that these al- crimination, while keeping those pay- t the press conference last week in legations are a political farce? The an- ments secret. Speier also said that there Awhich Beverly Young Nelson de- swer, properly and unambiguously, is no. were two cases involving current mem- scribed how when she was a high-school A number of Franken’s Senate col- bers of Congress. student, in 1977, Roy Moore, the Ala- leagues, including Amy Klobuchar, also In some ways, the Franken story is bama Republican nominee for the U.S. of Minnesota, and Elizabeth Warren, of a small, sad proxy for his party’s Bill Senate, who was then a deputy district Massachusetts, condemned his acts. Clinton problem. Last week, as more attorney, tried to physically force her to Franken, after a first, halting apology, sexual- harassment and assault charges engage in oral sex with him, she also offered a fuller one, in which he said that came to light, some people started look- talked about her vote in last year’s elec- he was “disgusted” by his own behavior ing again at a rape allegation that Juan- tion. “My husband and I supported Don- and that he will coöperate with an ethics- ita Broaddrick brought against the for- ald Trump for President,” Nelson said. committee investigation into the alle- mer President. In 1978, Broaddrick, a “This has nothing whatsoever to do gations. The committee, though, hasn’t nursing-home administrator, met Clin- with the Republicans or the Demo- sanctioned anyone in years. Last week, ton, at that time the Arkansas attorney crats.” Yet Moore, and his campaign, several women lawmakers reported that general, for a business meeting in her wanted to make it exactly about that, sexual harassment on Capitol Hill is hotel room—to avoid the press, she even as other women came forward with pervasive, and that, as Representative thought—and there, she said, he at- charges against him. (As of last Friday, Jackie Speier, Democrat of California, tacked her. (A lawyer for Clinton has a total of nine had done so.) In a state- put it, the system for dealing with it is denied this.) A colleague says that she ment to the Washington Post, the cam- “a joke.” During the past twenty years, heard the story from Broaddrick imme- paign said, “If you are a liberal and hate Congress has paid out seventeen mil- diately afterward, when she found her Judge Moore, apparently he groped with torn panty hose and a swollen lip. you. . . . If you are a conservative and Broaddrick’s story came out, in 1999, love Judge Moore, you know these al- largely thanks to Lisa Myers, of NBC legations are a political farce.” News, after Clinton’s acquittal in his im- From this perspective, the news, last peachment trial—a case that grew out Thursday, that Senator Al Franken, of a sexual-harassment suit brought by Democrat of Minnesota, also had mis- Paula Jones—and the charge was left conduct allegations against him looked unresolved. Early in the impeachment to some like an opportunity to test a imbroglio, Hillary Clinton had attributed similar formulation. Leeann Tweeden, her husband’s troubles to “a vast, right- a radio host, said that in 2006, two years wing conspiracy.” There was a well- before Franken ran for office, she joined funded conservative effort to target the him on a U.S.O. tour to Afghanistan President, but, in this instance, the charge and Iraq, and he kissed her during a re- feels too close to Moore’s assertion that hearsal, although she told him not to. liberals simply believe one thing, and He later posed for a photograph in which conservatives another. he appeared to grab her breasts while When Clinton ran for President in

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROMAN MURADOV BY ILLUSTRATIONS she was sleeping, wearing camouflage 2016, she may not have gauged how

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 19 profoundly Bill Clinton’s record with heavily, by keeping “Access Hollywood” transgression can cancel out another sug- women would hurt her. Just a month from costing Trump the election. As hard gest that the problem is just one of cal- before the election, after the “Access as it is to hear, particularly given the his- culating how many Frankens add up to Hollywood” video emerged, in which toric nature of Clinton’s candidacy and a Moore—how many charges of grop- Trump bragged about grabbing wom- her laudable record on everything from ing for one of attempted statutory rape. en’s genitals, he brought Broaddrick and climate change to children’s health, her There is no abuse-indulgence account Jones to a Presidential debate. Clinton nomination compromised the Demo- that each party can draw on, though. dismissed this as a stunt, meant to throw cratic Party. There were other choices, That is also true in assessing their her off her game. But the key audience early on; perhaps one of the fourteen ideologies. The national Republican lead- for it was purple-state women, partic- Democratic women in the Senate in 2015 ership has, to an extent, backed away ularly middle-aged or older working- might have emerged. Voters in Alabama, from Moore—the Alabama state Party class women, who might identify with where Moore is on the ballot in Decem- has not—but it had earlier supported Broaddrick, or be receptive, based on ber—and in Minnesota, where Al Fran- him even though he said that he did not their own experience, to the contention ken is up for reëlection next year—might believe that Muslims ought to be seated that, as Trump put it, Hillary was Bill’s remember that they have choices, too. in Congress or that gays and lesbians “enabler.” (Polls after the election President Trump, for his part, tweeted should have basic rights. That shows not showed that Clinton performed less that the “Al Frankenstien picture is re- only who Moore is but what the G.O.P. well with those voters than her cam- ally bad,” adding, “And to think that just has become. Franken has worked hard paign had hoped.) For others, Clinton’s last week he was lecturing anyone who for progressive causes in his political life. decision to make her husband an ac- would listen about sexual harassment.” But, here, too, whatever points that earns tive part of her campaign—and the po- Some of that “lecturing” has been di- him, or his colleagues, are not spendable tential First Spouse—constrained it. rected, with good cause, at Trump him- in some market in women’s dignity. The Many factors played into Clinton’s self; he shouldn’t expect it to end. Efforts, Democratic Party is better than that. defeat, but at that juncture Bill cost her like the President’s, to act as though one —Amy Davidson Sorkin

DEPT. OF HOOPLA vania, in an old mill Weiss renovated for jeans and a navy long-sleeved T-shirt, GOOD TASTE this purpose twenty years ago. Weiss, milled around Weiss’s big, rustic who is fifty-three, believes that most of kitchen, drinking wine, as the Impe- us listen wrong; we settle for horribly ria, at the other end of the loft, resur- compressed recordings on crappy com- rected Patsy Cline and John Coltrane. ponents. “If you don’t know what good “I grew up in East Texas, and I had sound is, trying to describe it is like ex- my idea of the kinds of music I wanted plaining the taste of salt,” he said recently. to make,” Womack said. “And then I ne way to think of New York City For his amplifiers, Weiss uses vintage signed a record deal in Nashville, where Ois as a vast complex of towering vacuum tubes originally meant for bal- they have a certain way they market speaker cabinets—thousands of rect- listic missiles or Second World War ra- things and a way they want the music angular buildings full of woofers and dios, and he favors so-called horn speak- to sound.” She was on the hook for tweeters, Klipsches and Beats, sound ers made of wood. His top-of-the-line eight commercial country albums, systems great and small. If everyone loudspeaker system, at three hundred cranked the same song at the same time, and forty thousand dollars (no wonder we could tear the roof off this sucker, we settle), is the Imperia: two seven-foot or at least blow out the bricks and glass, steel towers, each with a couple of huge and a giant all-seeing audiophile could flared wooden horns, one atop another, peer in and assess the city’s speaker along with some smaller aluminum- stacks. He (and this giant sound snob alloy horns. Between them, on the floor, would have to be a man, in pull-on are the boxed bass horns. The standing boots) would perhaps linger longest horns, fashioned out of Pennsylvania over the steampunk components and ash, bring to mind an old gramophone, curiosities to be found in a spacious loft or a morning glory. They make it sound on the top floor of an industrial build- as if the musicians are in the room. ing in Dumbo—the showroom of Os- On a recent evening, a few dozen walds Mill Audio, and the lair of its guests came to Dumbo for what Weiss principal and founder, Jonathan Weiss. calls a sound tasting—in this case, to O.M.A. designs and manufactures hear a new album by the country singer meticulous, beautiful, and very expensive Lee Ann Womack, who was in town machines for the reproduction of re- from Nashville. Womack, in gold sti- corded music. The company’s headquar- lettos and a black dress, and her hus- ters are in Lehigh County, in Pennsyl- band and producer, Frank Liddell, in Lee Ann Womack

20 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 1 which took sixteen years to complete. SECOND ACT a collection of Mother Teresa’s letters,” “The entire time I was doing that, I WOMEN IN LOVE she said. “They were obsessive about would go to events with my friends, her love for her husband, and I was thor- who are, like, Buddy Miller, Jim Lau- oughly confused until I realized they derdale, Patty Griffin, and they were were about God, and that she was in so the cool kids, you know? I was, like, much pain because he had abandoned ‘The cool kids are over there. I can’t her for long periods across thirty or forty wait till I can go join the cool kids.’ years. That was the moment of revela- And so now I can. I’m able to do what he writer-director Maggie Betts cir- tion—that nuns were married to God. I want to do, what I really love.” Tcled the fanciful Japanese garden: a You associate nuns with stodgy old la- Womack and Liddell recorded the white plastic tree, a pink wooden border, dies, but to me they’re romantic extrem- new album, “The Lonely, the Lone- a glowing disk for a moon. It was an in- ists.” She laughed. “That’s the way I am, some & the Gone,” in a very non-Nash- stallation at Cadillac House, in SoHo, a too—all or nothing.” vegas way—old microphones, live takes, brand-experience space where you mostly Behind Betts, hipsters on Mies-style traditional instruments—at SugarHill experience the Cadillac brand. With her lounge chairs were drinking flat whites. Studios, in Houston, a venerable cinder- still, calm face and long floral dress, Betts “My producer, Celine Rattray, told me block hutch where Lightnin’ Hopkins, appeared more serene than the garden. before I’d even written a script how to get George Jones, and Willie Nelson, among “Since I started making films,” she said, your first feature made,” she said. “Set it many others, got their wings. studying the tableau, “I weirdly have in a novel world, in a contained location, Liddell said, “If you’re in a studio in these images in my dreams where it’s and write a super-complex part for a Nashville, and there are three studios, like the camera is pushing in”—her right woman over forty-five. You’ll get the pick you’re always, like, ‘Wonder what they’re palm dollied forward in staccato pulses. of the litter.” She solved that equation doing in there—probably something “But I don’t even use those.” with “Novitiate,” in which eighteen- shitty.’ It’s all this competition, whereas Her first feature is “Novitiate,” an un- year-old Cathleen (Margaret Qualley) in Houston you’re making music.” expectedly sensual look at life inside a leaves a broken home for God—for com- Liddell is from Houston. He and Midwestern convent in 1964, just after fort, really—and finds a life constrained Womack stayed at his mother’s house. Vatican II. A self-described party per- by bells, rules, and abuse. Her guide and “We went there to get away, get off the son until she was thirty, Betts says that nemesis, a rivetingly sadistic Mother beaten path. The things that came out her life changed in 2005, when the First Superior (Melissa Leo), rages at the nov- of it were not the things that we nec- Lady, Laura Bush—whose husband had ices because God has deserted her. essarily sought going in. East Texas is been a fraternity brother of Maggie’s fa- The film quivers with forgone possi- a strange place. No one wants anything ther, Roland, at Yale—urged her to do bilities. “My mother grew up poor and to do with it. But all the greats—you something with it. Betts got involved in black, with thirteen brothers and sisters, know, George Jones, Ray Price, Lefty preventing mother-to-child H.I.V. trans- and the Episcopal religion was all they Frizzell, Johnny Horton—great sing- mission in Africa. “I left the Paris Hil- had,” Betts said. “She gave up going to ers came from there. Guys that were ton stuff behind and started to become church, so my dad could play with us on poor and stuck and broke, it brought myself,” she said, settling at the bar of a the weekends, could have those extra two that blues element. Could be the pine Joe Coffee that had also been randomly hours. I’ve been with her in church on trees. Sometimes you don’t see the light curated by Cadillac House. “I wouldn’t Mother’s Day and felt her sense of loss. of day. Anyway, we were looking for a say I was wayward before that—I’d writ- So when my mom told me, ‘I love this place where we could just get dirty, ten screenplays and refurbished a build- movie,’ I was very happy.” which is what we did.” ing—but I was unfocussed. She continued, “But, really, I hope The hope was that Weiss’s Imperia “In fairness,” she went on, “I really the movie gets at how women love. horns would do justice to the dirt. The wanted to make movies since I was a Mother Teresa spent her life torturing guests fanned out around the towers, kid.” At eight, she handwrote a “Star herself, and I and so many of my girl- and Weiss snuck in behind them to Wars” sequel, and her father, a film finan- friends also got into that dynamic with fiddle with some dials and place sty- cier, then introduced her to such R-rated men of ‘How do I make him love me?’ lus on vinyl. Kick drum, E string, pedal movies as “The French Connection” and Sophisticated New York women!” She steel, an intake of breath: the players “Dressed to Kill.” “But it seemed so hard smiled. “My therapist pointed out that were as present in the room as Weiss for women to do it—there was an in- another great question—which had himself, as he nervously checked on timidation factor.” She made her first never occurred to us—was ‘Is he wor- his components. Ten songs in, there film, the documentary “The Carrier,” in thy of you loving him?’ ” was Womack’s stark take on “Long 2011. “The seriousness of my subject, an After Vatican II reduced nuns’ status Black Veil.” Womack, who’d been hang- H.I.V.-positive woman in a household to that of ordinary Catholics, ninety thou- ing back, stepped up close to one of of nine children in rural Zambia, pro- sand nuns renounced their calling. “Vat- the Imperia stacks and leaned against pelled me to not let her down,” she said. ican II was a good thing, but it had its a steel beam, a quizzical look on her On one of Betts’s trips to Africa, she casualties,” Betts said. “This institution face. The pines? picked up a book called “Come Be My in Rome, far, far away, dictated what’s —Nick Paumgarten Light” at a newsstand at J.F.K. “It was inside you”—her hands hovered above

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 21 her heart. “And when nuns left the church Stoga, a member of Rudy Giuliani’s may- raisers, two small black Labs demon- later in life, some didn’t know how to oral administration, and Close was an strated that they could open a door by use money, they weren’t employable. They early enthusiast. Despite her famous role tugging a strap attached to its handle. were helpless.” as Cruella de Vil, she said, “I’m a natu- The room erupted in shouts of “Good Rising, she said that she was work- ral dog person. My mom and dad were boy!” Zito, a big black Lab, demonstrated ing on two new projects. “I don’t want both great dog lovers.” peekaboo, a position used to comfort to jinx them by talking about them, but Eight years ago, she cold-called P.T.S.D. sufferers. His handler, Nicole, they also have predominantly female Oprah Winfrey to tell her about the stood with her legs apart and said, “Peeka- casts—I want that to be my thing.” And program. Winfrey bit. Not only did she boo.” Zito ducked through them and sat how did her therapist’s suggestion go? feature Puppies Behind Bars on “The at her feet, leaning cozily against her. Betts laughed. “I’m single,” she said. “So Oprah Winfrey Show,” she became a It was Tom’s turn. “Let’s do retrieval,” that’s how that went.” donor. Close had arrived to celebrate Gilbert Stoga said. A stick of deodor- 1—Tad Friend the opening of a new “puppy yard,” ant was placed on the floor. Danielle which Winfrey had financed, for a hun- said, “Tom! Get it. Hold.” Tom deli- MAN’S BEST FRIEND dred thousand dollars. Also in atten- cately picked up the deodorant in his TEAMWORK dance were two of Close’s assistants; mouth and took it to her. Then he lay Gilbert Stoga, a wiry blond woman with down at her feet. glittery earrings; and an Iraq War vet- “Wow,” Close said, clapping. “He has eran whose service dog, Bettine, had great focus.” been trained at the prison, sponsored Afterward, the puppy raisers discussed by Close. “I named her Bettine after the program and what it meant to them. my mom,” Close said. They talked about the pain of spending “ ave you ever been to a maxi- The new yard had a fresh Astro-Turf years away from their families, and the Hmum-security prison?” the ac- surface and was planted with evergreens. pride they felt at being able to contrib- tress Glenn Close asked on a recent The puppy raisers were waiting: twenty- ute to society. Kim, an older woman with morning at the Bedford Hills Correc- three women of all ages, who wore util- bleached bangs, called puppy raising “a tional Facility for Women. Inside the ity belts loaded with puppy gear—plas- reason to wake up every day.” She went prison walls, past the security check- tic baggies, kibble—over their prison on, “I’ve been here about five years. And points and the razor-wire fence, was a uniforms. The fifteen dogs were off I’m not a spring chicken. So I’m strug- campus-like environment. Women in leash, creating a melee of barking, gling. And every day, no matter what I’m green uniforms walked from cell blocks squeaking squeaky toys, and the voices going through, when I look at the dog to jobs and daily programs. Close, who of puppy raisers shouting “Leave it!,” wore a gray suit and had sunglasses “Bring it!,” and “Good puppy!” Close propped in her short silver hair, has been entered the yard and was mobbed by coming to Bedford Hills for more than dogs. She hugged an inmate named twenty years, since she visited to re- Danielle, a middle-aged woman with a search a documentary film. She has sup- ponytail, and greeted her by name. ported prison initiatives, including a “Hi, Glenn. How are you?” Dan- children’s center for incarcerated moth- ielle said. Close had sponsored Dan- ers and a writing class taught by the ielle’s charge, a honey-colored Lab playwright Eve Ensler. “Unless you’ve named Tom. Danielle said, “Good boy, been in here, you don’t know what it’s Tom. Sit!” Tom sat. like,” she said. “You learn—there but for “Look at his big paws!” Close said. the grace of God . . . ” “I love him already,” Danielle said. “I This morning, Close was headed for got him last night, and he came in my the Puppy House, a low brick building room and right away took all the toys that is home to a program called Pup- out of my bucket.” pies Behind Bars, which operates in six There was a brief ceremony. The in- prisons in New York and New Jersey. mates unveiled a bone-shaped dedica- Glenn Close Inmates train puppies to become service tion plaque whose inscription read “In dogs for veterans of the wars in Iraq and honor of Oprah and Glenn, whose lives all the problems go away.” She thanked Afghanistan. The puppies—all Labra- have always included dogs.” Then the Close: “Beyond the fact that the yard dor retrievers—enter prison when they group went inside the Puppy House for looks beautiful, the dogs just love it.” are eight weeks old and live for up to a demonstration. “I’m just proud to see Tom,” Close three years with their inmate “puppy rais- “Let’s show some commands,” Gil- said. “And I remain committed to ers,” who teach them special commands bert Stoga said. “Who’s the youngest helping you in any way I can.” On her to help veterans suffering from traumatic here?” She meant the youngest dogs. way out, she said, “I wish Oprah could brain injury and P.T.S.D. The program “Craig and Oscar?” see this. ” was founded in 1997 by Gloria Gilbert Following prompts from their puppy —Lizzie Widdicombe

22 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 1 THE PICTURES REMEMBERING

n the foyer of Lois Smith’s apartment, Ion the Upper West Side, where she has lived since the seventies, hangs a Jo- seph Cornell box containing a picture of her from 1955. It was the year she starred on Broadway in “The Young and Beau- tiful,” based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jo- sephine stories. Cornell, who knew Smith through the writer Donald Windham, cut out her image, in a white tulle gown, from the Playbill cover. “The back of it is wonderful,” Smith said recently, flip- “I just can’t understand how they keep unlocking the door.” ping the box to reveal papier-mâché text. “It has a quote from Hölderlin: ‘Home, poor heart, you cannot rediscover, if the •• dream alone does not suffice.’ ” That same year, Smith made her dinner where we were staying in Mon- connect things, or measure memories, film début, in “East of Eden,” playing tauk,” she said of Hamm, “and I remem- had been blasted.” The same thing hap- a flustered barmaid opposite James ber saying, ‘Have you gotten your head pened in the mid-nineties, around when Dean. “It was his first movie, too,” she around the fact that we’re the parents Smith was in “Dead Man Walking” and recalled, leaning back on a sofa, below of Geena Davis?’ ” She laughed loudly. “Twister,” and had broken up with the a framed photograph of her great-grand- “Marjorie Prime”—based on a play actor David Margulies, with whom she father in his Union Army uniform. by Jordan Harrison, in which Smith had an on-and-off relationship. “I sup- Dean died five months after “East of starred—could be classified as science pose my own sense of thrust forward Eden” was released, and Smith returned fiction, but it’s more a meditation on in work was connected to the absence to New York, studying with Lee Stras- memory, invoking William James’s the- of David,” she said. “I really didn’t think berg at the Actors Studio and playing ory that when we remember something we would get together again, but we Helen Hayes’s daughter in “The Glass we’re really remembering our memory did. So the last part of his life”—Mar- Menagerie.” “I felt intimidated by her, of it. Smith wasn’t sure what to make gulies died in January of last year—“we and what I remember is a sense that I of the idea, but said, “I certainly don’t were together, very strongly together.” was playing Laura as part of that in- feel I remember anything.” She recalls Her earliest memory (she was born timidation,” she said. little about working with Jack Nichol- in Topeka, the youngest of six) is of hav- Smith wore a black shirt, black pants, son, in “Five Easy Pieces,” in 1970, but ing an earache and tearing herself from and black Crocs. She was days away does remember that her daughter was her mother’s arms in pain. “I have some from turning eighty-seven, which she twelve during the filming: “She was at memories of being on the floor,” she said. would celebrate by joining Twitter an age of change. She first got her pe- “I remember what the rug was like. There (“Hello World. This is my first day riod when we were in California to- was a big puzzle with a train, and the let- on Twitter. What am I doing here? gether. That was exciting.” ters across it were C-H-I-C-A-G-O. I would #myfirstTweet”) and then flying to Actors, particularly those with IMDb ask my brothers and sisters how to say Windsor, Ontario, to promote her role pages as long as Smith’s, tend to plot it, but I couldn’t remember. So I would in “Marjorie Prime,” for which she has the chronology of their lives onto cred- look and look at it and I would say chick- been making the Oscar campaign cir- its, and vice versa. “There was a period a-go.” She smiled at the sound. “That’s cuit. (She also steals several scenes as a when I felt that was the only way I what my mind is like now: I’ll almost plainspoken nun in Greta Gerwig’s could keep things straight,” Smith went have it, but I can’t quite remember it. I’m “Lady Bird.”) In “Marjorie Prime,” di- on. “That’s how I managed time in my going to Windsor in a few days, but I rected by Michael Almereyda, she plays memory, what went with what. My mar- keep coming up with ‘Win-n-n’—and a widow, living in the nearish future, riage ended—we were living in Phila- not being able to get the rest of it.” Her who spends her days talking to a com- delphia, in the late sixties—and I re- thoughts returned to the puzzle. “I would puterized hologram of her late hus- member feeling that I had lost that study it and study it, and not be able to band ( Jon Hamm) and arguing with ability. Maybe not forever, but some- say ‘Chicago.’ ” her daughter (Geena Davis). “We had thing that had been the way I could —Michael Schulman

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 23 into a microphone. Cigars must be A CRITIC AT LARGE smoked, although Lithgow has revealed that, now that tobacco is taboo, his ci- gars, as deployed in “The Crown,” are FOR THE WIN made from some more innocuous, and therefore disgusting, vegetable substi- Churchill at the movies. tute. (Brave is the doctor who would have dared to propose such a ruse to BY ANTHONY LANE Churchill himself.) And, yes, you will be compelled to don the standard Win- stonian outfit, which is now as recog- nizable as the Batsuit. Consider, for instance, “The Gath- ering Storm.” In fact, consider it twice. There was a TV movie by that name in 1974, and another in 2002. (The title is borrowed from the first volume of Churchill’s history of the Second World War.) Each is a dramatization of the testing period, in the second half of the nineteen-thirties, during which Chur- chill, out of both power and favor, strug- gled to convince others of the threat that was posed by German rearma- ment. In the first film, he is played by Richard Burton; in the second, by Al- bert Finney, who won an Emmy for his endeavors. As both men take up the Churchillian props, it’s tempting to scroll back through their respective filmographies and to recall the impact they made, at the dawn of their careers, in fierce blue-collar roles—Burton as the resentful Jimmy Porter in “Look Back in Anger” (1959), and Finney as the pleasure-hunting factory worker in “Saturday Night and Sunday Morn- ing” (1960). In postwar Britain, it seems, even actors had to climb the rope lad- der of the class system; start by look- he hat. The jowls. The spotted nence, naturally blessed with a mien ing back in anger and, God willing, Tbow tie. The spectacles, descend- like a full moon, it seems inevitable you could end up as a portly blueblood ing the bridge of the nose. The fat cigar, that, once you have attained the req- on the steps of 10 Downing Street, brandished like a broadsword. The uisite age and girth, you will be asked looking forward in gutsiness and hope. waistcoat, the watch chain, and the to play Winston Churchill. Your obli- The latest actor to make that jour- whiskey. And the voice—hark to the gation to do so lies somewhere between ney, and to try his luck at the noble boom of it, rumbling up from caverns a contractual clause and a rite of pas- sport of Churchill-playing, is Gary measureless to man. Put all these ele- sage, not unlike marrying Elizabeth Oldman, in Joe Wright’s “Darkest ments together, and who do you get? Taylor in the nineteen-fifties. You could Hour.” Oldman grew up in a rough Albert Finney, that’s who. Or Richard refuse the role, but that would be un- patch of southeast London, and the Burton. No, wait—Michael Gambon. gracious and perverse; you might as resulting movie, “Nil by Mouth” (1997), Maybe Robert Hardy. How about Bren- well turn down a medal. As with every which he directed, is one of the best dan Gleeson or Brian Cox? Or John privilege, this one comes bedecked with and the most oath-stuffed portraits Lithgow? Timothy Spall? Oh, and responsibilities. You are expected not of working-class British life ever cre- there’s Viktor Stanitsyn, four times merely to stand and declaim in the ated. Now he stars as Churchill, who over. You can’t forget him. House of Commons, or in a passable was born in Blenheim Palace in 1874, If you are an actor of some emi- facsimile of it, but also to sit and growl and whose grandfather was the Duke of Marlborough. “Darkest Hour,” set Churchill worked like an actor, rehearsing lines and perfecting his public image. in the late spring of 1940, covers the

24 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY JEFF ÖSTBERG resignation of the besieged Prime Min- Oldman’s vocal range, likewise, is suited to Oldman’s depiction of Chur- ister Neville Chamberlain (Ronald more tenor than bass, yet he makes the chill than these backroom mumbles Pickup) and his replacement, after lightness work for him. Of all those and self-goadings? Instead, we get the much ill-tempered wrangling, by Win- who have tackled Churchill onscreen, greatest hits, out loud. We get the blood ston Churchill. the majority tend to weight their words and the sweat, barked to the House of On the face of it, Oldman is an un- as though even badinage were an ora- Commons, and, needless to say, we get likely candidate—the face, indeed, being tion, but this new Churchill, sotto voce, the most celebrated speech of all, un- the main impediment. The young Old- dithers and huffs. All of which is not leashed on June 4th, when the Prime man was a stranger to genial rotundity. just dramatically plausible but histor- Minister informed the world that Brit- He looked and moved like a human ically accurate, based on the testimony ain would fight the Germans on the flick-knife, sharp and thin and stropped of John Colville, who served two terms beaches, in the streets, and wherever for mischief. He played Sid Vicious, of as Churchill’s private secretary during else they chose to intrude. the Sex Pistols, in “Sid and Nancy” the war and kept a diary, assessing, from These arias of formal rhetoric de- (1986), and the rascally playwright Joe the closest quarters, every wrinkle in serve their fame, but, as with Hamlet’s Orton, in “Prick Up Your Ears” (1987), his master’s temperament: soliloquies, that very ubiquity makes it neither of whom is an obvious precur- almost impossible for us to give them sor to Churchill. Then came “The Firm” Sometimes it took him weeks of cogitation a fresh hearing. (Burton was once play- before he reached an answer which satisfied (1989), in which Oldman, armed with him. He would talk half aloud, half under his ing Hamlet, and was disconcerted to a lethal mustache, led a gang of soccer breath, about some matter which was occupy- find that Churchill, seated in the front hooligans, and advocated to two rival ing his mind. He might address apparently in- row of the stalls, was uttering the lines gangs that they all club together and consequential remarks to his family or his staff, at the same time, like someone at a take on the Continental thugs. “In two or even to the yellow cat, while under his breath concert singing along to his favorite you could hear him preparing some Minute to weeks’ time, there’s going to be ’alf of the Chiefs of Staff Committee or speech to song.) Worse still, “Darkest Hour” Europe waiting in Germany for us,” he the House of Commons. deems it necessary to beef up Chur- says. “If we don’t stick together, they’re chill’s climactic address with the addi- going to trample all over us.” His plea What does this remind you of, if tion of a muscular musical soundtrack, is rousingly plain: “Look, I’m recruitin’ not of an old-school actor-manager, just in case we aren’t sufficiently stirred. for a national firm. Do you want in, or rehearsing his lines for a grand pro- That beefing is common practice. what?” The sentiment is Churchillian duction that he himself must oversee? We hear it at the end of “The Gath- enough, but the cause at stake is not Is it any wonder that real actors have ering Storm,” where Burton—who the survival of Christian civilization, swarmed toward such a man? sounds an awful lot like Richard Bur- as Churchill phrased it, so much as the ton and nothing like Winston Chur- right to apply an iron bar to a Dutch- he most potent of Churchill’s re- chill—gets a musical accompaniment, man’s groin. Thearsals occurred on the morning whether he likes it or not. So does Bren- And now look. Here, in “Darkest of May 13, 1940, three days after he had dan Gleeson, reassuring the nation that Hour,” is Oldman as the old man, pad- been appointed Prime Minister. Mal- “we shall never surrender,” in a 2009 ded and wadded, the cheeks plump, colm MacDonald, a Member of Par- TV movie about Churchill’s vicissi- the hair yellow-white and sparse. You liament who hoped for a place in the tudes of wartime fortune, titled “Into could forgive this Churchill for being wartime Cabinet, was summoned to the Storm.” (As far as Churchill mov- freighted with cares, for Germany is his presence. MacDonald was taken ies are concerned, the climate is one of rampant and Britain is on the rack. aback when Churchill said, “I’ve noth- perpetual tempest.) Even the director Something sprightly is afoot, however, ing to offer you except”—pause— Christopher Nolan, who ends this year’s and it’s Oldman’s feet, among other “blood and toil, tears and sweat.” It “Dunkirk” with a young man reading things, that make the difference. His later transpired that a colleague of Mac- the June 4th speech aloud from a news- tread is not heavy and forlorn but pur- Donald’s had been offered the same paper, cannot resist the lure of a grand poseful and deft. (Though leonine, things. (Both men were, in fact, given score, ladling souped-up Elgar onto Churchill had surprisingly small paws— ministries to run.) What Churchill was the richness of the words. Can they size 6. Fred Astaire took an 8½. When doing, as was confirmed that afternoon, not be trusted to stand by themselves? a sculptor depicted Sir Winston with in Parliament, was limbering up for If you are a seasoned Churchill- large feet, he was reportedly displeased. this: “I would say to the House, as I watcher, it can be a relief to slip away “How was I to know?” the sculptor would say to those who have joined from the Second World War and to asked, adding, “I visualized him as a this Government: ‘I have nothing to inspect less vaunted passages of his life. Colossus bestriding the world!”) We offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.’ ” Make your way forward, for example, get the impression of someone in a The screenwriter of “Darkest Hour,” to the first half of the nineteen-fifties, hurry, whose life hitherto has led to Anthony McCarten, has written a new when Churchill was Prime Minister this point, with an enemy clearly in his book of the same name, in which he once more, though beset by the dras- sights, and who is energized afresh cites the scene with MacDonald. I wish tic waning both of British global in- by a crisis that might deflate a more that he had found room for it in the fluence and of his own health. (One wavering soul. movie; what could be more beautifully morning, in 1953, he held a Cabinet

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 25 warrior has just wounded a British officer: I forgot everything else at this moment ex- cept a desire to kill this man. I wore my long cavalry sword well sharpened. After all, I had won the Public Schools fencing medal. I re- solved on personal combat à l’arme blanche. The savage saw me coming. I was not more than 20 yards away. The thing to bear in mind, amid such carnage, is that Churchill was at the time not strictly a combatant at all but a journalist, permitted to cover the conflict on the orders of—wait for it—Major-General Sir Bindon Blood. The writing of history, in this man- ner, is indistinguishable from yarn- spinning or from the narrative liber- ties taken by motion pictures, and, for young Winston, the limelight was the only place to be: From the beginning of 1895 down to the “We knew technology would replace us someday.” present time of writing I have never had time to turn around. I could count almost on my fingers the days when I have nothing to do. •• An endless moving picture in which one was an actor. meeting after suffering a stroke the he is elected as a mere Member of Think of the more sober inhabi- night before. Nobody noticed the differ- Parliament, in 1900, without any sign tants of Parliament, reading this the- ence.) On television, in 2016, both Mi- of swordplay. The tale that “Young atrical bombast in 1930, when “My chael Gambon, in “Churchill’s Secret,” Winston” tells is not as tall as it ap- Early Life” was published, and qui- and John Lithgow, in “The Crown,” pears: Simon Ward, in the title role, etly rejoicing that Churchill was no incarnated a Churchill with whom bears a closer resemblance to Chur- longer in their midst. Only a year be- age has finally caught up. In the latter, chill, with the eyes set wide apart on fore, he had been Chancellor of the he stands before his youthful Queen that eager face, than any actor before Exchequer; now he was out of a job. (Claire Foy) in some perplexity, as she or since, and we are reminded that This epoch is well covered in “The raises the “delicate matter” of “your po- the more outrageous elements of the Wilderness Years,” which aired on sition.” It turns out that she is refer- Churchillian fable did actually hap- British television in 1981, with Rob- ring to his placement at a forthcom- pen. During the Second Boer War, for ert Hardy as Churchill. Sprawling ing dinner, but for a moment she has example, he was captured by the Boers across eight episodes, it ends with a grazed a sore spot, and it’s salutary to and escaped, hiding first in a rat- freeze-frame of his triumphant grin, see Churchill, of all people, caught off infested coal mine for three days and in 1939, as he is admitted to the war- guard. Lithgow is far too tall for the then under a tarpaulin, on a train that time Cabinet. As with all Churchill role, but he skillfully turns that lofti- crossed the frontier to freedom—a feat dramas, it suffers from our retrospec- ness to his advantage—bending to a ardently covered in the British press, tive wisdom: because we know that near-stoop, as if bowing not only to his and replayed in the movie. By the age this man will weather one storm after sovereign, whom he reveres, but to the of twenty-five, he was stuck like a mote the next, and that his doubters will be gravitational summons of time. in the public eye, never to be dislodged. proved wrong, it’s difficult to imag- Equally, you can start at the begin- The principal source for Attenbor- ine an era when doubting—indeed, ning and work back up to 1939. ough’s film is “My Early Life,” Chur- loathing—was the norm. Exhibit A would be “Young Winston,” chill’s sublimely impetuous memoir. It Yet for much of his career Chur- Richard Attenborough’s protracted is not just the best of his many books chill was indeed seen as changeable to but upbeat film of 1972. This rewinds but one of the most eventful—and least the point of treachery, having switched to Churchill’s school days (which were squeamish—works ever written by a from the Conservative Party to the far from illustrious) and traces his mul- politician. Try this, from his headlong Liberals in 1904, over the issue of free tifarious career as a cavalry officer, a recitation of close combat in the trade, and back again in 1924. (“Any- war reporter, and an avid participant Mohmand Valley, on what is now the one can rat, but it takes talent to re- in the Battle of Omdurman, in Sudan, border between Pakistan and Afghan- rat,” he said.) Resentment at his atti- in 1898. You feel a bit deflated when istan. The year is 1897, and a Pashtun tudes toward India, Irish Home Rule,

26 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 and domestic industrial strikes ran fath- old Winston, and what was left un- ings.) As we witness the exploits of the oms deep. Many people could or would changed in the process, is the tale that General in his salad days, so well in- not forget his record as First Lord of no film has told. There may be too tentioned toward his fellow-man—his the Admiralty during the First World much for the telling. dearest friend is a German officer with War; in 1915, he was demoted, after a whom he fights a duel in 1902—we feel naval campaign in the Dardanelles f anything links the bio-pics of Chur- half drawn to the chivalrous blusterer which he had championed turned into Ichill, whatever their span, it is this: that he swells into in his dotage. Cling- a disaster, entailing severe losses for they’re not very good. All make some ing to the notion that war can be con- Britain and its allies. At the outbreak contribution to the teeming treasure ducted according to a gentlemanly code, of the Second World War, he returned house of the Churchill myth, and, were he is rudely interrupted and shamed, to the Admiralty and devised a mine- you to catch them in reruns on TV, you at the height of the Second World War, laying operation off the Norwegian might well stick with them for com- by a unit of up-to-date fighting men. coast. Applied too late, it faltered, fort’s sake, and in the mild hope of Grumbles of official discontent and the German invasion of Norway learning something new. But, while the plagued the film from the start, when went ahead: further proof, to the anti- central role has lured performers of the it was still no more than a script. Pow- Churchill brigade, of his rash mettle. highest rank, no director of equal stat- ell, in his autobiography (which, being The country could not be defended ure has tackled so redoubtable a theme, vastly entertaining, is not always to be by so loose a cannon. Roy Jenkins, and the strange fact remains that the trusted), recounts that he went to see in his 2001 biography, sums up the most distinguished film, by far, with Brendan Bracken, the Minister of In- view that prevailed for the bulk of which Churchill was involved was one formation, and asked if the film could Churchill’s career: that he despised. Had he had his way, go ahead as planned. Bracken said: There are lines of attack to which some it might not have been made at all. Oh my dear fellow, after all we are a de- politicians, whether or not they are “guilty as “The Life and Death of Colonel mocracy, aren’t we? You know we can’t for- charged,” are peculiarly vulnerable because they Blimp”—“written, produced and di- bid you to do anything, but don’t make it, be- seem to fit in with their general character and rected by Michael Powell and Emeric cause everyone will be really cross, and the behaviour. Thus a charge of trickiness in Lloyd Pressburger,” as the opening credits Old Man will be very cross and you’ll never George or indolence in Baldwin or indiscre- get a knighthood. tion in Hugh Dalton clung to them like a spot state—came out in 1943, and was, de- of grease on a pale suit. And there was always spite being even longer than “Young The more the Old Man learned of sufficient of the “galloping major” about Chur- Winston,” favorably received by Brit- the project, the crosser he got. In a chill to make it easy to assume that he was act- ish audiences. Colonel Blimp was a memo to Bracken, dated September 10, ing with over-boisterous irresponsibility, power familiar figure, established in a long- 1942, he launched a broadside: “Pray having gone to his head. running newspaper cartoon of the propose to me the measures necessary Hence the near-disbelief that nineteen- thirties by the left-leaning to stop this foolish production before gripped the House of Commons, artist David Low, who intended to sat- it gets any further. I am not prepared in 1939, when he came once more to irize the outmoded jingoism that en- to allow propaganda detrimental to the the fore. A consuming new book by crusted the higher ranks of British so- morale of the Army, and I am sure the Nicholas Shakespeare, “Six Minutes ciety. The Blimp in the film is one Cabinet will take all necessary action. in May: How Churchill Unexpect- Who are the people behind it?” That edly Became Prime Minister,” takes note of menace is uncharacteristic, and an accurate reading of the moral at- Bracken was uneasy with the form of mosphere, but the historian’s poise, censorship at which Churchill appeared on the page, is neither matched nor to be hinting. In the end, “Colonel sought onscreen. Movies like “Dark- Blimp” was finished and released, but est Hour” are impatient to press on- Bracken was right: Powell never did ward, and the momentum is all with become Sir Michael. What was it about Churchill. Film after film mounts the the film, now hailed as a masterpiece, same inspiring thesis: as he gained that riled the Prime Minister so? control of the war effort, a lifetime’s Major-General Clive Wynne-Candy, Certainly, “Colonel Blimp” pre- recklessness was transfigured into the an elderly buffoon with a set of soggy sents no detriment to morale. Indeed, one virtue—a refusal to yield—that opinions and a mustache that makes the gist of the plot is that the future suddenly seemed indispensable. The him look like a walrus. But the film is and the defeat of Hitler lie squarely gallop led a nation to victory; the spot significantly gentler than the cartoon, in the hands of modern soldiery. Did of grease became a badge of honor. humanizing Wynne-Candy in a series Churchill fear that viewers might see Even the enduring British joke, ac- of flashbacks that usher us through his in this fuchsia-faced, harrumphing knowledged in “Darkest Hour,” that life and illustrate how he became what old grump a trace of their determined all babies look like Churchill was no he is. (He is played, with warmth and leader, his jaw jutting out like the prow handicap, for people were well dis- gusto, by Roger Livesey; Powell’s first of a dreadnought? Did he maybe see posed toward such stubborn benevo- choice had been Laurence Olivier, who that trace himself? “War, which used lence. How young Winston grew into might have lent a chill to the proceed- to be cruel and magnificent, has now

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 27 become cruel and squalid,” he declared watched at their peak by twenty-five act. Here, as described by Colville, is in “My Early Life,” in an outburst of million Americans every month. The the lone leader of the fight against Na- pure Blimpery. He added, “In fact it films were pasted together from docu- zism, in 1940, flat on his ass: has been completely spoilt. It is all mentary footage and pumped up into I got to bed at 3.00 a.m.; but the P.M., the fault of Democracy and Science.” semi-dramas, with excitable voice-overs. throwing himself on a chair in his bedroom, He and Wynne- Candy even attended You will know the style, because it is collapsed between the chair and the stool, end- the same boarding school, Harrow. In parodied, without mercy, in the mock ing in a most absurd position on the floor with other words, Powell and Pressburger newsreel that prefaces “Citizen Kane.” his feet in the air. Having no false dignity, he treated it as a complete joke and repeated sev- had conjured a fictional life that veered No surprise, perhaps, that Welles’s eral times, “A real Charlie Chaplin!” perilously close to Churchill’s, as dense movie, when shown for Churchill, failed with derring-do, divisiveness, emo- to strike a chord. Colville writes: It remains a close call as to which tional extremes, and lurching rever- of the two men, the statesman or the After dinner we had a deplorable Ameri- sals of fortune as his had been. By can film, Citizen Kane, based on the personal- comedian, is the most recognizable En- showing the ages of Blimp, they made ity of William Randolph Hearst. The P.M. glishman of the twentieth century. Both the Churchill film that never was. And was so bored that he walked out before the can be identified from their silhouettes what they omitted, perhaps to his dis- end. Kathleen Harriman thought it wonderful alone, and the Tramp’s costume, right may, was his extraordinary late bloom. and said that all Americans did. The fact that down to the hat and the cane, is like a we did not, revealed to her much about En- That would be more than enough to glish people. I replied that the fact Americans pauper’s response, roughed up and hurt the Prime Minister’s pride. did, revealed to me nothing about Americans. slimmed down, to the well-fed Chur- chillian look. Both men, moreover, had e know something of Churchill’s Churchill’s coolness may have been a self-proclaimed gift for reaching over Wcinematic tastes, because he exacerbated by memories of his trip to the heads of the bien-pensants and an- made a habit of sitting down, toward Hollywood, in 1928, during which he swering to popular prejudice and pop- the end of a crammed wartime day, to was invited to Hearst Castle, the man- ular taste. When Churchill, on the watch a film after dinner. (Afterward, sion in San Simeon that was the model morning of V-E Day, took time to in- he would return to work, often expect- for Xanadu in “Citizen Kane.” It was sure that there was no shortage of beer ing others to do the same.) Colville’s in Hearst’s company that Churchill in London for the imminent celebra- diary lists many of the screenings: Bette first encountered Charlie Chaplin. The tions, he was obeying a principle—hu- Davis in “Dark Victory” (1939) on one two men got on famously, as only the mane and humbug-hating—that Chap- evening, say, followed by Edward G. famous can; the former pronounced lin, and indeed Dickens, would instantly Robinson in “The Woman in the Win- the latter to be “bolshy in politics & have grasped. dow” (1944) the next. In December, delightful in conversation,” and there By that robust standard, most of the 1940, after following the travails of the even arose the question of a profes- Churchill films that we possess, though characters in “Gone with the Wind,” sional partnership. Churchill advanced dutiful, come across as doughy and se- Churchill announced himself “pul- the idea for a film about the young Na- date. Had he watched “Darkest Hour,” verised by the strength of their feel- poleon, saying that Chaplin should di- he might have been flattered to see ings”—a loaded verb, in the Blitz, when rect and play the lead, and that he, himself take the national helm; abashed parts of London were being reduced Churchill, would write the script. Two to hear himself grousing at a secretary to rubble and dust. Now and then, the world-straddling egotists discussing (Lithgow does the same, as does Brian films’ proximity to nonfictional dramas the life of a third: what a spectacle it Cox in this year’s “Churchill”); and of the time can verge on the surreal: must have made, though not as star- amused to hear a parliamentary foe tling as the lunch at Chartwell, Chur- scorn him as “an actor, in love with the We saw a film in the Great Parlour: Mar- chill’s country house, two years later, sound of his own voice.” In truth, how- Seven Sinners lene Dietrich in —very alluring. when the host inquired of Chaplin ever, Churchill continues to slip the All ships are converging on the Bismarck and the C. in C. proposes to attack at 9.00 what part he would play next. “Jesus clutches of modern movies, and I sense a.m. tomorrow. Christ,” Chaplin replied. There was a that the full force and the flavor of his pause, then Churchill said, “Have you life would have been most happily The next day, Colville writes, the cleared the rights?” caught by the early silent cinema, which choice is “Western Union (with Red In- There is an important affinity here, burgeoned under Chaplin’s spell, and dians and all the Wild West trappings) and it touches upon the alarming de- thrived on the implausible and the and the P. M.’s favourite March of Time.” sire, rare in regular mortals but com- breakneck. Oldman, Hardy, Finney, This erodes the lingering rumor that mon among the great and the mad, to and the rest of the team are stalwart Churchill rated “That Hamilton envisage one’s stint on earth as a per- and assiduous in their care for detail, Woman” (1941), with Laurence Olivier formance. David Copperfield, like most and what they arrive at, in every in- as Lord Nelson and Vivien Leigh as of us, was unsure as to whether he would stance, is far more than a mere imper- Emma Hamilton, above all other mov- be the hero of his own life; Churchill sonation. And yet they fall short, as ies, but then “The March of Time” is and Chaplin had no such qualms, and they are doomed to do. The best per- a special case—not a movie at all, but every gesture, be it a cavalry charge or son at playing Churchill, in the end, a regular series of short productions, a pratfall, was proffered as part of the was Winston Churchill himself. 

28 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 when I’m at work. It’s playful, yet awk- SHOUTS & MURMURS ward, yet very awkward. It also offers a glimpse into how efficient I am even when I’m on the clock. Imagine that you’ve just stopped me while I’m on my way to a meeting, and I turn to- ward you, but only with the body parts I need for talking. My arms are folded to demonstrate that I get things done, and then cel- ebrate by folding my arms. In this particular case, I got this photo done, which took, like, a year. Of course, I’ll unfold my arms as needed for explo- sive fist bumps in the hallway and even for nonexplosive ones. My shoulders are positioned in a way that says, “I’m ready to use my shoulders in this job if I have to.” Maybe you can’t imagine a scenario in which you’ll need my shoulders. That’s what my last employer said, too, until the day my shoulders were giving you-know-who a boost up to the supply-closet heating duct where he’d stashed a gram of you-know-what to snort into his you-know-where. So never say never. My legs aren’t included in this photo because their potential contri- bution pales in comparison with what my torso brings to the table. I didn’t want you to be distracted by a busy background, so I blurred it out. In real-life workplace environ- MY LINKEDIN PHOTO ments, I have zero problems stand- ing out against all sorts of back- BY COLIN NISSAN grounds, even aquariums. I chose this shirt to show you that I wear this shirt a lot. It has a collar his is the face I make at work. like that, please?” And I said, “Like with a space for a necktie right in the TIt’s the face of a team player who what?” Then you said, “Like that.” middle, meaning that, at any moment, wants the ball and knows that “the And I said, “Like, confidently?” Then I could dial up the business intensity ball” is a metaphor for a business thing. you said, “Please just let me pee.” in a major way and start doing so many My expression is conveying that I can I made the decision to expose my work-related things that you won’t handle anything you throw at me with teeth in this photo so you can see that know what hit you. For example, I a weird smile on my face. Not the I’m the type of person who doesn’t might spearhead something out of kind of weird smile that says “I’m here hide things in his mouth. No Ping- nowhere, then turn around and start to goof around” but the kind that says Pong balls or trick handkerchiefs. facilitating something else, then go “I’m here to work hard, then blow off After all, you aren’t hiring me for my ahead and implement both of those a little steam with my weird mouth.” magic tricks, right? Right? things on top of what I already did After you hire me, I’m going to be One of my eyebrows is raised in to them. looking at you like this a lot. In a good the photo to show that I’m inquisi- I’m currently working on a résumé way. So I’ve captured this expression tive. The other one is just regular, to as a complement to this photo. When in my profile pic to help you imagine show that I’m also not inquisitive. you see it, I think you’ll realize pretty that you’re already having a conver- There are many facets to me. quickly that there are so many busi- sation with me. Like you just said, My head is facing forward, while nessy things that I do so good. And “Hey.” And I just said, “Hey.” Then the rest of me is turned to the side. if you play your cards right I can stare

LUCI GUTIÉRREZ LUCI you said, “Can you stop staring at me This is my body’s natural position at you while I do them. 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 29 and a board of nine members, who ANNALS OF CRIME include former detectives, homicide scholars, and a forensic psychiatrist. By a process of data aggregating, the THE SERIAL-KILLER algorithm gathers killings that are re­ lated by method, place, and time, and DETECTOR by the victim’s sex. It also considers whether the rate of unsolved murders How an algorithm is discovering new links between unsolved murders. in a city is notable, since an uncaught serial killer upends a police depart­ BY ALEC WILKINSON ment’s percentages. Statistically, a town with a serial killer in its midst looks lawless. In August of 2010, Hargrove no­ ticed a pattern of murders in Lake County, Indiana, which includes the city of Gary. Between 1980 and 2008, fifteen women had been strangled. Many of the bodies had been found in vacant houses. Hargrove wrote to the Gary police, describing the mur­ ders and including a spreadsheet of their circumstances. “Could these cases reflect the activity of one or more se­ rial killers in your area?” he asked. The police department rebuffed him; a lieutenant replied that there were no unsolved serial killings in Gary. (The Department of Justice ad­ vises police departments to tell citi­ zens when a serial killer is at large, but some places keep the information secret.) Hargrove was indignant. “I left messages for months,” he said. “I sent registered letters to the chief of police and the mayor.” Eventually, he heard from a deputy coroner, who had also started to suspect that there was a serial killer in Gary. She had tried to speak with the police, but they had Hargrove estimates that two thousand serial killers are at large in the U.S. refused her. After reviewing Har­ grove’s cases, she added three more homas Hargrove is a homicide from lovers’ triangles, gang fights, rob­ victims to his list. Tarchivist. For the past seven years, beries, or brawls. Each year, about five Four years later, the police in Ham­ he has been collecting municipal rec­ thousand people kill someone and mond, a town next to Gary, got a call ords of murders, and he now has the don’t get caught, and a percentage of about a disturbance at a Motel 6, where largest catalogue of killings in the these men and women have undoubt­ they found a dead woman in a bath­ country—751,785 murders carried out edly killed more than once. Hargrove tub. Her name was Afrikka Hardy, since 1976, which is roughly twenty­ intends to find them with his code, and she was nineteen years old. “They seven thousand more than appear in which he sometimes calls a serial­killer make an arrest of a guy named Dar­ F.B.I. files. States are supposed to re­ detector. ren Vann, and, as so often happens in port murders to the Department of Hargrove created the code, which these cases, he says, ‘You got me,’ ” Justice, but some report inaccurately, operates as a simple algorithm, in 2010, Hargrove said. “Over several days, or fail to report altogether, and Har­ when he was a reporter for the now he takes police to abandoned build­ grove has sued some of these states defunct Scripps Howard news service. ings where they recover the bodies of to obtain their records. Using com­ The algorithm forms the basis of the six women, all of them strangled, just puter code he wrote, he searches his Murder Accountability Project (MAP), like the pattern we were seeing in the archive for statistical anomalies among a nonprofit that consists of Hargrove— algorithm.” Vann had killed his first the more ordinary murders resulting who is retired—a database, a Web site, woman in the early nineties. In 2009,

30 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY CAMPBELL he went to jail for rape, and the kill- such as a hospital, where his victims to Mount Vernon or along the Poto- ings stopped. When he got out, in come to him. mac, while listening to recordings of 2013, Hargrove said, “he picked up The F.B.I. believes that less than one books—usually mystery novels. He where he’d left off.” per cent of the killings each year are car- was born in Manhattan, but his par- ried out by serial killers, but Hargrove ents moved to Yorktown, in West- esearchers study serial killers as if thinks that the percentage is higher, and chester County, when he was a boy. Rthey were specimens of natural that there are probably around two thou- “I lived near Riverside Drive until I history. One of the most comprehen- sand serial killers at large in the U.S. was four,” he said. “Then one day I sive catalogues is the Radford Serial “How do I know?” he said. “A few years showed my mom what I learned on Killer Data Base, which has nearly five ago, I got some people at the F.B.I. to the playground, which is that you can thousand entries from around the run the question of how many murders make a switchblade out of Popsicle world—the bulk of them from the in their records are unsolved but have sticks, and next thing I knew I was United States—and was started twenty- been linked through DNA.” The an- living in Yorktown.” five years ago by Michael Aamodt, a swer was about fourteen hundred, Hargrove’s father wrote technical professor emeritus at Radford Univer- slightly more than two per cent of the manuals on how to use mechanical sity, in Virginia. According to the da- murders in the files they consulted. calculators, and when Hargrove went tabase, American serial killers are ten “Those are just the cases they were able to college, at the University of Mis- times more likely to be male than fe- to lock down with DNA,” Hargrove souri, he studied computational jour- male. Ray Copeland, who was seventy- said. “And killers don’t always leave nalism and public opinion. He learned five when he was arrested, killed at least DNA—it’s a gift when you get it. So practices such as random-digit-dial- five drifters on his farm in Missouri two per cent is a floor, not a ceiling.” ling theory, which is used to conduct late in the last century, and is the old- polls, and he was influenced by “Pre- est serial killer in the database. The argrove is sixty-one. He is tall cision Journalism,” a book by Philip youngest is Robert Dale Segee, who Hand slender, with a white beard Meyer that encourages journalists to grew up in Portland, Maine, and, in and a skeptical regard. He lives with learn survey methods from social sci- 1938, at the age of eight, is thought to his wife and son in Alexandria, Vir- ence. After graduating, in 1977, he have killed a girl with a rock. Segee’s ginia, and walks eight miles a day, was hired by the Birmingham Post- father often punished him by holding his fingers over a candle flame, and Segee became an arsonist. After start- ing a fire, he sometimes saw visions of a crimson man with fangs and claws, and flames coming out of his head. In June of 1944, when Segee was fourteen, he got a job with the Ringling Broth- ers circus. The next month, the circus tent caught fire, and a hundred and sixty-eight people were killed. In 1950, after being arrested for a different fire, Segee confessed to setting the tent ablaze, but years later he withdrew his confession, saying that he had been mad when he made it. Serial killers are not usually partic- ularly bright, having an average I.Q. of 94.5, according to the database. They divide into types. Those who feel bound to rid the world of people they regard as immoral or undesirable— such as drug addicts, immigrants, or promiscuous women—are called mis- sionaries. Black widows kill men, usu- ally to inherit money or to claim in- surance; bluebeards kill women, either for money or as an assertion of power. A nurse who kills patients is called an angel of death. A troller meets a vic- tim by chance, and a trapper either ob- serves his victims or works at a place,

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 31 Herald, in Alabama, with the under- logic and programming,” Isaac Wolf, ifornia to SIDS. In the aftermath of standing that he would conduct polls a former journalist who had a desk his story, the C.D.C. created the Sud- and do whatever else the paper near Hargrove’s, told me. “A combi- den Unexpected Infant Death Case needed. As it turned out, the paper nation of resourceful thinking and Registry to evaluate each death. Frank needed a crime reporter. In 1978, Har- an innovative approach to collecting Lautenberg, a New Jersey senator, met grove saw his first man die, the owner and analyzing data through shoe- with Hargrove and then introduced of a convenience store who had been leather work.” the Sudden Death Data Enhance- shot during a robbery. He reported In 2004, Hargrove was assigned a ment and Awareness Act, which Pres- on a riot that began after police story about prostitution. To learn ident Obama signed in 2014. After officers shot a sixteen-year-old which cities enforced laws against the SIDS story, Hargrove’s stock rose African- American girl. the practice and which “insanely high in the newsroom,” he Once, arriving at a stand- didn’t, he requested a copy said. He told his boss that he still off, he was shot at with of the Uniform Crime wanted to try to teach a computer to a rifle by a drunk on a Report, an annual com- detect serial killers, and this time his water tower. The bullet pilation published by the boss said, “You’ve got a year.” hit the gravel near his feet F.B.I., and received a CD and made a sound that containing the most re- argrove began by requesting ho- “was not quite a plink.” cent report, from 2002. Hmicide reports from 1980 to 2008; He also covered the ex- “Along with it, at no extra they included more than five hun- ecution of a man named cost, was something that dred thousand murders. At the start, John Lewis Evans, the said ‘S.H.R. 2002,’ ” he he knew “what the computer didn’t first inmate put to death said. It was the F.B.I.’s know,” he said. “I could see the vic- in Alabama after a Supreme Court Supplementary Homicide Report, tims in the data.” He began trying abrogation of capital punishment in which includes all the murders re- to write an algorithm that could re- the nineteen-sixties and seventies. ported to the Bureau, listing the age, turn the victims of a convicted killer. “They electrocuted people in Ala- race, sex, and ethnicity of the victim, As a test case, he chose Gary Ridgway, bama in an electric chair called the along with the method and circum- the Green River Killer, who, starting Yellow Mama, because it was painted stances of the killing. As Hargrove in the early eighties, murdered at bright yellow,” Hargrove said. “Enough looked through it, “the first thing I least forty-eight women in Seattle, time had passed since the last exe- thought was, I wonder if it’s possi- and left them beside the Green River. cution that no one remembered how ble to teach a computer to spot se- Above his desk, Hargrove taped a to do it. The first time, too much rial victims.” Hargrove said that for mugshot of Ridgway in which he current went through too small a six years he told each of his editors looks tired and sullen. Underneath conduit, so everything caught fire. at Scripps Howard that he wanted it, he wrote, “What do serial victims Everyone was crying, and I had trou- to find serial killers using a computer, look like statistically?” ble sleeping for days after.” and the response was always, “You’re Creating the algorithm was labo- In 1990, Hargrove moved to Wash- kidding, right?” rious work. “He would write some ington, D.C., to work for Scripps In 2007, Hargrove did an investi- code, and it would run through what Howard, where, he said, “my primary gation into SIDS, Sudden Infant Death seemed like an endless collection of purpose was to use numbers to shock Syndrome, after wondering why, ac- records,” Isaac Wolf told me. “And people.” Studying the Social Secu- cording to the Centers for Disease we did not have expensive computer rity Administration’s Death Master Control’s infant-mortality records, so equipment, so it would run for days. File—“where we will all end up one many more babies in Florida died It was sort of jerry-rigged, Scotch- day,” Hargrove said—he noticed that from accidental suffocation than did Taped. He was always tinkering.” some people were included for a given babies in California, even though Cal- Ridgway was eventually identified year and dropped a few years later: ifornia had many more babies. During by DNA and was arrested in 2001, as people who had mistakenly been de- the following year, Hargrove inter- he was leaving his job at a Kenworth clared dead. From interviews, he viewed coroners and pathologists truck plant, where he had worked as learned that these people often have around the country. “A growing num- a painter for thirty-two years. He told their bank accounts suddenly frozen, ber of them began saying, ‘To be hon- the police that strangling women was can’t get credit cards or mortgages, est, I might get in trouble for saying his actual career. “Choking is what I and are refused jobs because they fail this, but SIDS doesn’t exist as such,’ ” did, and I was pretty good at it,” he background checks. Comparing a list he said. Hargrove concluded that SIDS said. Ridgway’s wife—his third—was of federal grants for at-risk kids in wasn’t a diagnosis or a mysterious dis- astonished to find out what he had inner-city schools against Census ease but the result of people putting done. They had met at a Parents With- Bureau Zip Codes, he found that babies in their cribs in such a way out Partners gathering and had been two-thirds of the grants were actu- that they suffocated during sleep. married for seventeen years. She said ally going to schools in the suburbs. Florida tended to attribute these that he had always treated her like a “He did all this through really clever deaths to accidental suffocation, Cal- newlywed. Ridgway had considered

32 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 killing his first two wives but decided that he was too likely to get caught. Mostly, he killed prostitutes, and, if he killed one who had money on her, he regarded it as his payment for killing her. Hargrove began each day with a review of what had failed the day be- fore. He sorted the homicides by type, since he had been told that serial kill- ers often strangle or bludgeon their victims, apparently because they pre- fer to prolong the encounter. He se- lected for women, because the F.B.I. said that seventy per cent of serial- killer victims are female. Each test took a day. He had no idea if any - thing would work. For a while, the only promising variable seemed to be “failure to solve.” “After a hundred things that didn’t work, that worked a little bit,” Hargrove said, holding his right thumb and forefinger close together. “I started making the terms more specific, looking at a group of factors—women, weapon, age, and location.” With those terms, the algorithm organized the killings into approxi- mately ten thousand groups. One might be: Boston, women, fifteen to nineteen years old, and handguns. Another might be: New Orleans, women, twenty to fifty, and strangu- lation. Since “failure to solve” had produced results, even if feeble, Har- grove told the computer to notify him of places where solution rates were unusually low. Seattle came in third, with most of the victims women whose cause of death was unknown— unknown because the bodies had been left outside and sufficient time had passed that the coroners could no longer determine how they had died. The computer, Hargrove knew, had finally seen Ridgway’s victims.

y reading meaning into the ge- Bography of victims and their kill- ers, Hargrove is unwittingly invok- ing a discipline called geographic profiling, which is exemplified in the work of Kim Rossmo, a former po- liceman who is now a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Texas State University. In 1991, Ross mo was on a train in Japan when he came up with an equation that can be used to

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 33 predict where a serial killer lives, based on MAP’s board, worked on the F.B.I.’s law­ enforcement deep thinkers in on factors such as where the crimes Violent Criminal Apprehension Pro­ the world involved, but we exist at were committed and where the bod­ gram, ViCAP, which was started by a MAP because they failed.” ies were found. As a New York City Los Angeles homicide detective homicide detective told me, “Serial named Pierce Brooks. Witzig told me AP has its own limitations. Since killers tend to stick to a killing field. how, in the fifties, Brooks worked on Mthe algorithm relies on place as They’re hunting for prey in a concen­ the case of Harvey Glatman, who be­ a search term, it is blind to killers who trated area, which can be defined and came known as the Lonely Hearts are nomadic over any range greater examined.” Usually, the hunting ground Killer. Glatman was a radio­and­TV than adjacent counties. There is also a will be far enough from their homes repairman and an amateur photogra­ species of false positive that Hargrove to conceal where they live, but not so pher who would invite young women calls the Flint effect: some cities, such far that the landscape is unfamiliar. to model for him, saying that the pho­ as Flint, Michigan, are so delinquent The farther criminals travel, the less tographs were for detective maga­ in solving murders that they look as if likely they are to act, a phenomenon zines. He would tie his victim up for they were beset by serial killers. that criminologists call distance decay. the shoot, and then never remove the Someone versed in statistics can Rossmo has used geographic pro­ bonds. “The victim, a young woman, run the algorithm, which appears on filing to track terrorists—he studied was not just tied up, but the turns of MAP’s Web site. The rest of us, who where they lived, where they stored the bindings were sharp and precise, might, for example, wish to know how weapons, and the locations of the indicating that the offender took a lot many killings are unsolved where we phone booths they used to make calls— of pleasure in it,” Witzig said. live, can use the site’s “search cases” and to identify places where epidem­ Brooks started to research the way function. Deborah Smith, who lives in ics began. He also worked with zool­ that some killers seemed to commit New Orleans, is a hobby MAP searcher ogists, to examine the hunting patterns the same crime repeatedly. He began and a forum moderator on Websleuths, of white sharks. Recently, Rossmo stud­ putting all his murder records onto an online watering hole for amateur ied where the street artist Banksy left three­by­five cards, and after becom­ detectives. “I keep spreadsheets of mur­ his early work, and found evidence to ing interested in computers in the dered and missing women around the support the British Daily Mail’s asser­ late nineteen­fifties he asked the L.A. country, with statistics, and I high­ tion, made in 2008 but never corrob­ police department to buy him one. light murders that I think might be orated, that Banksy is a middle­aged He was told that it was too expen­ related,” she told me. “I have them for man from Bristol, England, named sive. In 1983, he presented the idea nearly every state, and that comes from Robin Gunningham. of a homicide­tracking computer da­ MAP. If I have a killer, like, say, Israel “In a murder investigation, when tabase to Congress, after which the Keys, who was in Seattle about fifteen you step away from the Hollywood F.B.I. offered him a job at Quantico years ago, I’ll look up murders in Se­ mystique, it’s about information,” and bought him the equipment to attle and parts of Alaska, because he Rossmo told me. “In any serial­ start ViCAP. The program was meant lived there, too, and see if there were murder case, the police are going to to be an accessory to investigations, any the police might have overlooked.” have thousands and thousands, even She added, “MAP is just extremely, ex­ tens of thousands, of suspects.” In the tremely useful for that. There isn’t re­ Green River case, the police had eigh­ ally anything else like it.” teen thousand names. “So where do MAP’s board hasn’t determined you start? We know quite a lot about what to do with the algorithm’s find­ the journey to a crime. By noting ings, however, and the question pre­ where killings took place or the bod­ sents moral and practical difficulties ies were discovered, you can actually for Hargrove. “We have to figure out create probability distributions.” In our rules of engagement,” he told me. his book “Geographic Profiling,” “Under what scenario do we start Rossmo notes research that found, but detectives didn’t take to it. “The calling police?” A few months ago, among other things, that right­ first and maybe main problem was Hargrove informed the Cleveland handed criminals tend to turn left the original ViCAP reporting form,” police that there appeared to be about when fleeing but throw away evidence Witzig said. Brooks wanted to re­ sixty murders, all of women, that to the right, and that most criminals, cord every element of a homicide might involve a serial killer, or, from when hiding in buildings, stay near and, as a result, there were more than the range of methods, perhaps even the outside walls. a hundred and fifty questions. “Of three serial killers. Twelve of the Using computers to find killers has course, there was user resistance,” women had convictions for prostitu­ historical precedent. Eric Witzig, a Witzig said. “No one wanted to do tion, and their bodies were found in retired homicide detective and a for­ more paperwork.” He added that the two distinct geographic clusters. Har­ mer F.B.I. intelligence analyst who is program had “some of the brightest grove can’t say anything about his

34 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 exchange with the Cleveland police, because MAP’s rules dictate that such communications are privileged. The police wrote me that, as a result of Hargrove’s analysis, “a small taskforce is being considered to look at several unsolved homicides.” The head of the department’s special-investiga- tions bureau, James McPike, told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, of MAP, “We’re going to be working with the group to help us identify what we might be able to do.” Hargrove is pleased about the in- vestigation but he also worries that something may go awry. “What if they arrest the wrong guy, and he sues?” he asked. “I contacted a bunch of police departments in 2010, when I was a re- porter, because I wanted to see if the algorithm worked. Now I know it works—there’s no question in my mind. In certain places, we can say, ‘These victims have an elevated prob- ability of having a common killer.’ In 2010, though, I had a big media com- pany behind me, with lawyers and media insurance. Now I’m a guy with a nonprofit that has fourteen hundred dollars in the bank and a board of nine “As soon as it clusters into a cultural bubble, it’s done.” directors and no insurance.” One of MAP’s most public benefits •• has been making people aware of how few murders in America are solved. In 1965, a killing led to an arrest more tims were African-American, and all tool and is “very interested in sitting than ninety-two per cent of the time. were strangled. From the Atlanta po- down with Arntfield.” In 2016, the number was slightly less lice, Arntfield got names for forty-four Hargrove told me he hopes that than sixty per cent, which was the of the women, and has been learning eventually detectives will begin to use lowest rate since records started being more about them. (Studying the back- the algorithm to connect cases them- kept. Los Angeles had the best rate grounds of murder victims in the selves, and that MAP will help solve a of solution, seventy-three per cent, hope of discovering how they met their murder. Meanwhile, he is considering and Detroit the worst, fourteen per killers is a discipline called victimol- creating a companion site that tracks cent. As Enzo Yaksic, a MAP board ogy.) Arntfield and his colleagues sep- arson, and has begun compiling data member and the director of the arated the victims into two groups: a on fires, though he hasn’t had time to Northeastern University Atypical Ho- small group of older women, who were post it yet. “There’s a link between se- micide Research Group, told me, the killed in their homes, and a larger group rial arson and serial killings,” he said. project “demonstrates that there’s a of young women, many of whom may “A lot of guys start out burning things.” whole population of unapprehended have been prostitutes. From newspa- We were walking in Alexandria by killers that are clearly out there.” per accounts, Arntfield has found two the river, along Hargrove’s usual route, Another of MAP’s board members, men who have committed crimes with and he said, “Our primary purpose is Michael Arntfield, is a professor at the strikingly similar attributes, both of to gather as many records as possi- University of Western Ontario, where whom are already in prison. Adam Lee, ble.” He paused. “It’s seductive how he runs a cold-case society. It is focus- the head of Atlanta’s Major Crime Sec- powerful these records are, though. sing on the largest finding of the algo- tion, which includes homicide, told me Just through looking, you can spot rithm, a collection of a hundred un- that the police haven’t yet linked these serial killers. In various places over solved murders of women in the Atlanta murders to a particular killer, but he various years, you can see that some- area over forty years. Most of the vic- said that he considers MAP a useful thing god-awful has happened.” 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 35 THE SPORTING SCENE CONFIDENCE GAME

Mikaela Shiffrin is the best slalom skier in the world. What could go wrong?

BY NICK PAUMGARTEN

ikaela Shiffrin, the Alpine favor of the sunny, chalky Rockies. But lifetime in the sprint of a ski race. (The ski racer, should win at least the Northeast has the higher concen- margins are typically tenths or even hun- M one gold medal at the Olym- tration of racers, the deeper ski-racing dredths of seconds.) A few weeks later, pics this winter in South Korea. She history, and the more fanatical fan base. at just sixteen, she became the young- might even win three. It’s a fair bet she’ll It is also, in a roundabout yet essential est skier ever to win a U.S. national get the Wheaties box and the full-on way, Shiffrin’s home turf. (She lives in championship. At seventeen, she started Up Close and Personal. She’s a bright, Vail, Colorado, but her formative train- winning World Cup slalom races in affable American who dominates her ing years were spent on the East Coast, bunches. (Lindsey Vonn, the greatest corner of the sport with the kind of where her forebears are from.) American skier ever, won her first race predictability and grace that draws in The races, held at Killington, in Ver- at the age of twenty.) By eighteen, casual viewers, awes the experts, and mont, over the weekend of Thanksgiv- Shiffrin had won a gold medal at the inspires a lot of super-slo-mo check- ing, attracted thirty thousand fans, far Sochi Olympics and become something that-out. There’s something about tran- more than you’d ever get out West. They of a household name. She has won all scendent talent that causes people to were there to see Shiffrin win both the three slalom World Championships she root for it, no matter their allegiances slalom and the giant-slalom races. “Kil- has competed in and four of the past or their usual embrace of the underdog. lington was a lot of pressure, and I didn’t five World Cup slalom titles. (She was Excellence creates its own weather. realize it till I was there,” Shiffrin told injured for half the season the year she Yet so much can go wrong. For ski- me. “I was kind of freaking out.” Her ex- didn’t win.) Last March, at the World ers, the Olympics are a brief fever dream tended family, including her grandmother, Cup finals, in Aspen, Colorado, she also in the middle of the five-month odys- who was ninety-five, came to watch her clinched the over-all title—compiling sey of their season. There are a lot of race. The scrutiny brought on self-con- more points across all the disciplines chances beforehand to get hurt. In a sciousness. “Instead of just answering than anyone else—the ultimate prize, short race, anyone can make a ruinous questions, I started to hear myself an- in the eyes of practitioners, far greater mistake (lose an edge, hook a tip, choose swering them,” she said. She took fifth than Olympic gold. the wrong line) or encounter bad luck in the giant slalom, a disappointment. I first heard of Shiffrin the winter of (equipment malfunction, snow squall, She won the slalom, as she almost always her first World Cup race. Ski-racing peo- gust of wind). And what about food does, but by less than a second, which ple spoke of her with the same aston- poisoning? Or even geopolitics: the time was, by her standards, a narrow margin. ishment that greeted the kid-phenom would seem inopportune for an inter- A pattern was developing of Shiffrin’s incarnations of Wayne Gretzky and national sporting carnival on the Ko- dominating in training but encounter- Tiger Woods. Once she hit the tour, I rean peninsula. ing nerves and some tactical indeci- tuned in when I could, eager to see a Athletes are taught, and sometimes sion on race day. Her mother, Eileen, manifestation of genius. What I saw even born, not to think this way. Con- her de facto coach, taskmaster, and was a skier who looked flawless and trol what you can. Eliminate distraction. wingman, suggested that she talk to a smooth but not revolutionary or en- Preparation is perspiration. Yet even sports psychologist. Shiffrin had a cou- thralling. She was so good at going fast Shiffrin, a stone-cold killer on snow, has ple of consultations, via Skype. “It didn’t that she didn’t look fast. Technique dis- recently found herself more susceptible feel like I was seeing a shrink,” she said. guised athleticism. to the whisperings of “what if.” “I never “It was a reminder that sometimes it’s Did I know what to look for? I’d used to feel nervous,” she told me. “Just better to be oblivious, but I’m not obliv- been admiring the top racers for years. excited. But this past season I got so ious anymore, so how do I handle that?” I raced (poorly) in high school, in New nervous I had to throw up a couple of Hampshire. My grandfather skied in times.” The first wave of her new anxi- hiffrin, who is twenty-two now, was the Olympics, in the thirties, and his ety came a year ago, when the Interna- Sfifteen when she first appeared on sister was a slalom world champion. tional Ski Federation (F.I.S.) World Cup the World Cup tour—the top interna- (Ski racing may be the only sport in tour came to the Eastern United States, tional tier of racing, as big in Europe, which women have been competing for the first time in a quarter of a cen- you might say, as Nascar is in America. alongside men, on a fairly equal foot- tury. The circuit typically passes over She’d been routinely obliterating her ing, from the get-go, a century ago.) New England’s relatively diminutive peers in the ski-racing equivalent of the So, watching Shiffrin on TV, I’d ven- mountains and variable conditions in minor leagues by several seconds—a ture remarks about her fine balance,

36 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 PHOTOGRAPHS: FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: ALEXIS BOICHARD/AGENCE ZOOM/GETTY (SKIER 1); 1); (SKIER ZOOM/GETTY ALEXIS BOICHARD/AGENCE RIGHT: TO FROM LEFT PHOTOGRAPHS: 4) (SKIER HOW/GETTY 2, (SKIER 3); HARRY EZRA SHAW/GETTY Shiffrin said, “Sometimes it’s better to be oblivious, but I’m not oblivious anymore, so how do I handle that?”

ILLUSTRATION BY CRISTIANA COUCEIRO THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 37 composure, and edge control. Strong Now they train like astronauts. Shiffrin variations on freakishly fit. When I ankle pressure. But I was mostly full of spent this past summer in a series of asked Shiffrin to identify the biggest it. The subtler mechanics of the ski turn training blocks, both on and off the beast in the place, she pointed to Ste- are obscure, even to most people who snow—in Colorado, California, Chile, ven Nyman, a veteran American down- know how to make a good one. New Zealand, and Park City, Utah. I hiller, and then said, “Or me.” My presumption was that her excel- spent a few days with her in June in Shiffrin is lean, of medium height, lence was innate. One sometimes thinks Park City, where the U.S. ski team and with broad shoulders and, like every- of prodigies as embodiments of pecu- its eighty-five-thousand-square-foot one there, powerful legs. She had on liar genius, uncorrupted by convention, training facility, the Center of Excel- black shorts and a purple tank top. You impossible to replicate or reëngineer. lence, are based. Since the Winter Olym- could see traces of boot-bang bruises But this is not the case with Shiffrin. pics in 2002, Park City, flush with the on her shins. She began by warming She’s as stark an example of nurture state-of-the-art facilities that were built up for ten minutes on a stationary bike over nature, of work over talent, as any- for the Games, has become a hub of and then doing some stretching. Em- one in the world of sports. Her parents hale but half-broke world-class com- inem on the speakers, trash talk on the committed early on to an incremental petitors in obscure frozen-water sports. mats. She said that the day before had process, and clung stubbornly to it. And When Shiffrin and I had dinner one been a rough one—lifting weights, so Shiffrin became something besides night in town, the waiter, knowing a jumping up stairs. a World Cup hot shot and a quadren- jock when he saw one, asked her, “What’s Young said, “When Mika got home nial idol. She became a case study. Most your sport?” Then he announced that last night, she said, ‘Whoever invented parents, unwittingly or not, present their he was on the national skeleton team. stairs is the biggest asshole.’ ” way of raising kids as the best way, even Shiffrin was staying with her phys- “Today is more anaerobic,” Lackie when the results are mixed, as such re- iotherapist, Lyndsay Young, and Young’s said. “You’ll have to perform consecutive sults usually are. The Shiffrins are not husband, Chris, in their condo, and days on tour, so we’re training for that.” shy about projecting their example onto checking in for daily torture sessions at First up was interval training. She the world, but it’s hard to argue with the Center of Excellence, under the lash sprinted the length of the gym while their findings. “The kids with raw ath- of her coach, Jeff Lackie. (Young and pulling a weighted sled, then ran back letic talent rarely make it,” Jeff Shiffrin, Lackie travel with her on tour and for while pushing a heavier sled, then did Mikaela’s father, told me. “What was much of the off-season.) bouncy squat-like reps on a contraption it Churchill said? Kites fly higher against June is the busiest time of year at that seemed to mimic skiing over bumps, a headwind.” the C.O.E. On the first morning I vis- then dragged a weighted sled backward, ited, its vast gym, girded with giant then rowed hard on an ergometer, then kiers have long been psycho about photos of past American medallists skated side to side in her stocking feet Stheir off-season workouts. In the old (there has been more excellence, through on a slide board while holding a ten- days, they chopped wood, baled hay, ran the decades, than one might recall or pound medicine ball. When Shiffrin up and down mountains, and rode mo- assume), slowly filled with snow-slid- works out, you are not supposed to cheer torcycles at a hundred miles an hour. ers of many disciplines and body types— her on. “The motivation must come from within” is a mantra I heard her and others repeat. Still, as she did the slide board, Lackie harangued her: “Stay low, c’mon. Push, push, push, push.” He told me, “This is a skiing-like exercise at the end of the circuit to see whether she can maintain composure and form even under fatigue.” She could. She rested for two minutes, and then did the circuit again. After the second go-round, she collapsed to the ground and crawled, like a parched man in a desert cartoon. “This is not the most flattering workout,” Lackie observed. By the end of the third circuit, as she crawled along the mat, leaving a trail of sweat, I had to look away. And this was a recovery day. After a couple of minutes spent cool- ing down on the stationary bike, she could speak. “I’ve never puked,” she said. “I’ve come close. I’d pass out before I’d “Small, medium, or that.” puke. We have a grading scale that I fill out for every workout. Ten is dying or passing out. I rate nine fairly often. That may have been a nine, maybe.” Her pulse had topped out at a hundred and sixty- six beats per minute. She’s never seen it above a hundred and eighty-five. Her resting heart rate is forty b.p.m. Rap music had given way to hair metal. Shiffrin put in an hour of bal- ance work. Toward the end, she walked back and forth on a slack line and picked up cones, which she put on her head or threw at Lackie. “Motivation comes from within,” she said. Afterward, she spent half an hour on the physio table, with her legs encased in NormaTec pressure pouches, which apparently squeeze out the lactic acid, like toothpaste from a tube. On the table next to her was Joss Christensen, the 2012 slopestyle Olympic gold medallist, “I thought I would wander around, vaguely forgetting what who’d recently torn up his knee and I was just doing, until the Presidency is over.” would likely be off snow for six months. They didn’t talk. Instead, Shiffrin tended her social-media feeds. Then she drove •• back to the condo, where she reheated the last of a batch of chicken strips with Lanesborough, Massachusetts, in the raced locally at Great Gorge, and on salsa, cheese, and rice that she’d cooked Berkshires. Her father was an engineer weekends up in Vermont, and then on earlier in the week. Lunch. She said that at General Electric, in neighboring the B-team at Dartmouth. He brought she consumes about twenty-five hun- Pittsfield. She learned to ski when she Eileen to Killington one weekend. He’d dred calories a day. She averages nine was three, in a dairy pasture across the recently taken up Masters racing—a hours of sleep a night and is famous for street, which she and her siblings called recreational circuit for adults. “I dragged her naps—she requires an hour a day, Killer Hill. She was soon a regular at the Eileen into it,” he said. and has been known to snooze in the Mount Greylock Ski Club, a private set Eileen, a meticulous and studious snow in the starting area of a race. She of runs and rope tows on the northern woman, was soon obsessed. She pored has only once had more than one alco- flank of Mt. Greylock, the state’s high- over videos of World Cup champions, holic drink at a time and has never ex- est peak, and the site of the Thunder- read everything she could about the art perienced a hangover. In her spare time, bolt Trail, an early crucible for racers of carving a turn, and mastered the me- she binges on TV shows in sync with from all over Europe and North Amer- thodical process of tuning skis. “I learned her mother (“Bones,” “Blue Bloods”) or ica. The Condrons volunteered at the as much as a lot of the racers had in studies German, the language of the club, clearing trees and brush in the fall their ski-academy days,” she said. Be- World Cup, checking in now and then with a sickle. Later, Eileen was a season- fore long, she was winning national and with a tutor in Denver, via Skype. “It’s pass-holder and regular after-schooler international Masters championships. a work in progress,” she said. Last fall, and night-skier at Brodie, another hill Jeff liked to tell her that she could prob- at an Austrian sports-awards ceremony in the area, which is now defunct. In high ably walk on to the national team. “Hey, in Vienna, she presented a trophy, in school, she took up racing. “I got good she might have been an Olympic skier,” German, to the world’s best male sla- results, but had little formal training and Jeff told me. lom skier, Marcel Hirscher. “I made one didn’t take it seriously,” she said. “For me, But, of course, such things aren’t mistake,” she said. “Athlete of the year, it was totally social.” possible; she’d started too late and it was between Hirscher and Dominic She had to quit skiing for four years, failed to take it seriously early on. Thiem, the tennis player. I said, ‘Mar- while she got a nursing degree at the When she and Jeff had children, they cel’s a great athlete, and so am I.’ ” University of New Hampshire. “We wouldn’t make this mistake. Mikaela weren’t allowed to do sports,” she said. was their second child. Her brother, hiffrin’s parents are products of New But, in 1985, while working in the I.C.U. Taylor, is two years older. “He was the SEngland’s mid-century ski-area at the St. Elizabeth Hospital, outside practice brother,” Jeff said. They had boom, when you could hardly find a hill Boston, she met Jeff Shiffrin, a resident settled in Vail. “We had this concept that didn’t have a rope tow or even— anesthesiologist. Jeff had grown up in that there had to be a gradual progres- height of luxury—a chairlift or two. northern New Jersey, where his father sion of skill acquisition,” Jeff said. As Eileen Shiffrin, née Condron, is from ran a couple of liquor stores, and he had with Taylor, they dragged Mikaela

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 39 around the living room and the drive- way on skis when she was a toddler, and then taught her to cross-country THE WEST ski on the golf course. Next, hard boots, skis with edges, and then follow- There might be nothing me. They hardly bothered with the the section of the paper snowplow, the customary introductory I save for later gravity-mitigation technique. The goal about buildings, the was a proper turn, with the skis par- home, inside. allel. (Kids are typically taught “pizza” Outside too. Yard before they graduate to “French fries.”) The garden. Things that do When Mikaela was in kindergarten, well. What I have in mind. the teacher for the kids’ Friday skiing My favorite class, not accustomed to such small- radio show is garden fry French-frying, said, “I don’t have a compass. It’s like gossip group for her.” about someone else’s “So she kept skiing with us,” Jeff said. life and how “That became Eileen’s job.” to save them and their Eileen and Mikaela started logging plants and their the hours. After Mikaela began to ski flowers. It’s like Heloise with other kids, Eileen became their the road is long coach. She was the hands-on drillmas- I mean it. All I need ter, the fastidious worrywart. She was is to hear a certain also homeschooling Mikaela. “I taught designer plans myself to do the things I was teaching to be alone for the rest the kids,” she said. “Play guitar, play of his life and I piano, paint.” Whatever they took up, think I’m like him. whether it was soccer, tennis, the uni- And I’m dying to see cycle, or Ping-Pong, they studied video. that movie “We had a methodical way of doing how he does things,” Eileen said. “Let’s see if we can every little thing. simplify this chaotic life.” It’s as simple as being “We always said, ‘If we’re going to a sculpture, having do it, let’s do it right,’ ” Jeff told me.

hen Mikaela was eight, the fam- “bullet” (short for “bulletproof surface”) back to Vermont, to train and board at Wily moved back East, to a house is, and has long been, a great training Burke. Eileen and Taylor eventually fol- in rural New Hampshire. Jeff had got a and proving ground for young racers. lowed, while Jeff stayed behind. job at Dartmouth Hospital, but the kite- Mikaela Shiffrin, a budding masoch- Mikaela arrived at Burke in Decem- in-the-headwind principle factored in, ist, took to this ungenerous ratio of plea- ber, 2009, as a freshman. One of her too. “We thought, Maybe we have some- sure to woe. She thrived on bullet. At roommates was a racer from Connecti- thing special here,” Jeff said. “We need the age of twelve, she began working cut called Bug Pech, the niece of the to see if the kids love skiing in condi- with Kirk Dwyer, the head coach at Olympian Chip Knight. (New England tions where it’s pretty easy to hate it.” Burke Mountain Academy, where he skiing, like medieval Scotland, can seem Northeastern skiing is infamous for was also the headmaster. Burke, in north- to be dominated by a handful of hardy its ice. The climate is damper and gen- ern Vermont, is a boarding school de- clans: the Cochrans, the Shaws, the erally more miserable than in the Rock- voted to ski racing—it was the first of Knights.) “We were inseparable,” Pech ies or the Alps; cycles of thaw and freeze its kind when it was founded, in 1970. said recently. “Piglet and Pooh Bear. transform the snow surface into a rink. There are only about a dozen students She’s Piglet. She was shy, quirky. I was Recreational skiers abhor ice, but it has per grade, some of whom wind up on lost in la-la land.” its virtues. A firm surface, as the under- the national team. Taylor enrolled as a Pech had been competing with, and statement goes, provides a better test boarder, but Mikaela was too young. losing to, Shiffrin since they were eight. for élite racers and bears up better under After two good years, the family moved Now she began to see why. “It was bi- the erosive effect of their powerful carv- back to Vail, where Jeff had a new job. zarre in the most extreme way that this ing turns. On the World Cup circuit, in Mikaela was despondent. She missed kid, at this place, Burke, where every- friendlier climes, course workers repli- her friends, her coaches, and the ice. She one is absolutely absorbed in ski racing, cate these conditions by injecting water lost interest in her training and her stud- had this whole other level of devotion. into the snow—with hoses, not syringes. ies. She began taking four-hour naps. Her need of ski racing is like a need for So the Northeast’s naturally occurring Alarmed, Jeff and Eileen sent Mikaela oxygen.” Pech recalled a day when it

40 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 “Here’s the thing,” Mikaela told me one day. “You can’t get ten thousand a life. This is not the book hours of skiing. You spend so much of instruction I had intended time on the chairlift. My coach did a but this is calculation of how many hours I’ve been when the emptiness noticed on snow. We’d been overestimating. I its own beginning like think we came up with something like that church I saw when eleven total hours of skiing on snow a I was young year. It’s like seven minutes a day. Still, that was simply melting at the age of twenty-two, I’ve probably This is for those who had more time on snow than most. I would not name always practice, even on the cat tracks that building. But simply or in those interstitial periods. My dad step in, noticing says, ‘Even when you’re just stopping, when that has happened be sure to do it right, maintaining a an elaborate piece good position, with counter-rotational like being a candelabra force.’ These are the kinds of things my that that is the road dad says, and I’m, like, ‘Shut up.’ But if you are on. I thought bring you say it’s seven minutes a day, then your camera. I thought consider that thirty seconds that all the don’t bring your camera others spend just straight-lining from that’s what I mean. the bottom of the racecourse to the bot- There will be plenty for everyone tom of the lift: I use that part to work and my style is adequate on my turns. I’m getting extra minutes. to that. Has been planning If I don’t, my mom or my coaches will this moment for years. stop me and say something.” Ushering it in. Tonight I will do The psychologist Ellen Winner books. I am leaving my house. has identified a prodigy’s essential Which ones do I need traits as “a rage to master” and an I think you can come ability to learn rapidly. Shiffrin had on the long & horizontal road of reading. both. “Her attention to detail and focus on the task at hand is like no one I’ve ÑEileen Myles ever met,” her former coach Brandon Dyksterhouse said. Whereas most ski- ers could handle, say, six training runs, snowed several feet—a rare treat, in those Daniel Coyle book “The Talent Code” she could sometimes do eighteen, and hills, and by custom an excuse to blow was scripture. They studied the train- whereas most skiers saw their perfor- off practice and ski for fun. “We were ing methods of the Austrians, Alpine mances tail off in the last three or four, all ripping powder, hucking cliffs in the skiing’s priesthood. The Shiffrins along with their ability to get any- woods. Meanwhile, Mikaela was doing wanted to wring as much training as thing useful out of them, Shiffrin got drills on her racing skis. She’d rather do possible out of every minute of the day faster with each run, and her focus drills than ski powder with her bud- and every vertical foot of the course. never wavered. dies.” (“Powder? There’s no room for They favored deliberate practice over Shiffrin, incredibly, almost never that,” Jeff told me. “That’s for also-rans. competition. They considered race days “skis out” in training. She completes Sorry, that’s the way it is.”) an onerous waste: all the travel, the every practice run without missing a Eileen had a condo a few minutes waiting around, and the emotional stress gate or losing control. Dyksterhouse from the Burke campus, but she spent for two quick runs. They insisted that recalls that at one point she went fifty most of her time on the ski hill with Shiffrin practice honing her turns even practice days in a row without skiing Mikaela or in Mikaela’s triplex. “She when just skiing from the bottom of the out, and that she beat every skier who was very much a presence,” Pech said. racecourse to the chairlift. Most racers practiced with her on each of those “They’d constantly go over video in our bomb straight down, their non chalance runs. This is not a balance beam: every room, watching winning World Cup a badge of honor. day the snow and the course are differ- runs every night before bed. Eileen has Jeff Shiffrin said, “One of the things ent. She also had the capacity to ab- an amazing eye for it.” I learned from the Austrians is: every sorb criticism and integrate refinements “I just wanted Taylor and Mikaela turn you make, do it right. Don’t get into her technique. “You have to have to make perfect turns,” Eileen said. “It’s lazy, don’t goof off. Don’t waste any the brain to conceptualize technique like looking for the perfect wave.” time. If you do, you’ll be retired from and apply it to your body,” Shiffrin said. The Shiffrins were disciples of the racing by the time you get to ten thou- “If you don’t, you should stop right ten-thousand-hours concept; the 2009 sand hours.” now.” She was, in a word, eminently

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 41 ended up being a pretty nasty split.” Pfeifer was reassigned and then left for the Canadian team. For the next two years, the wom- en’s coach was Dyksterhouse, who was a kind of emergency call-up from the Vail ski club. Perhaps his rela- tively humble credentials, or his non- Austrianness, made him a bit more comfortable with Eileen’s omnipres- ence. Eileen said, “You have to have a couple of coaches who don’t have huge egos, who aren’t territorial and all alpha- male macho about it.” Still, the situation could get a little intense. “Eileen watches more video than any coach on the planet,” Dyk- sterhouse said. She texted Mikaela at all hours with observations from her “Hey, pal—this isn’t the quiet car.” sessions. Dyksterhouse remembers get- ting a text from Eileen at 5 a.m. the day before the 2015 World Champi- •• onships, in Vail, saying that she had noticed something. She wanted to wake coachable. This was opportune, be- stressful for me to watch her go through Mikaela up to show her. Dyksterhouse cause she happened to be very heavily the stress of that.” objected. (“She knows better but she coached—by her mother. The U.S. ski team’s European base can’t help herself,” one ski-team offi- So, here was this rare combination was until recently in Sölden, Austria, cial told me.) On a few occasions, an- of tiger mom and willing cub. “I didn’t where a giant glacier enables racers to ticipating that Eileen might pick apart have that relationship with Taylor,” train early and late in the season. Ei- the footage from a day’s session, Dyk- Eileen told me. “He wanted to do the leen got an apartment in the neighbor- sterhouse would speed the video up, U.S. ski team. But he didn’t want to ing village of Längenfeld. “I tried to give just enough to elide certain flaws and make the other boys feel bad. I didn’t her distance,” Eileen said. “I needed to perhaps shield Mikaela, or, more to the understand that. It was like he had not be around.” The team travelled by point, Dyksterhouse and his assistant, three heads.” Taylor raced at the Uni- van, and Eileen trailed it in a rental car. from an inquisition. versity of Denver, an élite program, At hotels, Mikaela bunked with a team- “I got to the point where I didn’t and completed an M.B.A. there. An mate, and Eileen got her own room. But agree with certain things, but how can also-ran, by some lights. by her third year on tour Mikaela was I argue with the result?” he recalled. sleeping with her mother instead. “It “They’ve found an approach that works hen Shiffrin, at the age of six- was more healthy than rooming with a better than anything in the history of Wteen, set out on her first full sea- thirty-year-old racer,” Eileen said. the sport.” He had a behind-the-scenes son on the World Cup tour, her mother Ski-team officials didn’t necessarily Web series called “World Cup Dia- travelled with her. “That first year, I agree. “We were told it was not good ries,” and on one occasion he posted a didn’t know what I was doing,” Eileen for me to be there,” Eileen said. “They’d side-by-side video comparison he’d told me. “We were deer in the head- been through it before, and it hadn’t worked up of Shiffrin and Frida Hans- lights.” Competition aside, the routine worked out.” dotter, one of her top competitors, was disorienting. The circuit started in The coach for slalom and giant sla- which he’d annotated, frame by frame, the Alps, moved to North America, then lom was an old-school Austrian named to illustrate Shiffrin’s prowess at gain- returned to Europe—every few days, a Roland Pfeifer. “Luckily, he was O.K. ing speed. Shiffrin told me, “I woke up new course, a new town. It was a long and open to my mom being around, but and had a million texts, from Kilian”— way from Burke, from Piglet and Pooh he wasn’t so O.K. with it that he wanted her manager, Kilian Albrecht—“and Bear. “All the personalities, the ski-team her to be coaching me,” Mikaela said. my mom, saying, like, What was he girls,” Eileen said. “We were a little iso- “Eventually, as time went on, he got thinking? Here we are working our lated from them. They didn’t want a kid more and more sensitive to her being tails off, trying to stay one step ahead, tagging along, and she didn’t want to one of my coaches. I never would’ve and that’s my career, my profession, tag along.” Mikaela, Eileen said, “wasn’t called her a coach when I was working and why is my coach giving this stuff into the party scene. She was thinking, with him.” She went on, “After the last away?” She made him take it down im- How am I going to get my math done Olympics, my skiing started to fall off, mediately, but not before some of the and where are the bathrooms? It was and he got really aggressive about it. It European teams had downloaded it for

42 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 careful study. “I ended up parting ways after you’d passed. As a result, skiers Still, invincibility is irresistible. A with him very quickly after that.” started pursuing straighter lines, thrash- couple of years ago, as Shiffrin’s pur- “They went berserk,” Dyksterhouse ing through the hinged poles in the suit of the perfect turn reached a new told me. “They hated, hated, hated that. manner of an explorer cutting through level, she drew me in. In the fall of 2015, They’re very secretive.” Nonetheless, a thicket with a machete. The progress the World Cup season commenced in he said, it was his decision to leave, downhill became more abrupt and vi- Aspen. In the opening race, a giant sla- owing to his eagerness to work with olent. Racers began to wear body armor, lom, Shiffrin, carrying a lead into the other racers on the team. Shiffrin helmets, and face guards, and to use final pitch, wiped out—uncharacteris- mostly trains alone, both because of shorter and shorter skis, the better to tically—three gates short of the finish. her demanding schedule and because whip their feet around the gates. To my The next day, she showed up for the none of the other women on the team eyes, the motocross getups and the slalom in an angry mood. She’d won can keep up or handle the workload. herky- jerky descents leached much of four in a row to end the previous sea- (Lindsey Vonn is a team unto herself the beauty and grace from the sport. son. After the first run, she held a lead as well, under the Red Bull flag.) Soon, the tech events were ruled by of nearly a second and a half over the The coach since then has been Mike obscure specialists with names I couldn’t next-fastest racer, a Slovakian named Day, but Day recently had back sur- retain and an appeal I couldn’t see. The Viktoria Velez Zuzulová. As the leader, gery and will miss the first half of the downhillers, the speed demons who Shiffrin was the last out of a field of season, so Lackie has taken over. Often risked life and limb on the classic sheer thirty to ski a second run (forty others the coaches will convey their pointers courses of the Alps, like the Streif, in had either crashed or failed to qualify), or critiques to Eileen, who then relays Kitzbühel, and the Lauberhorn, in Wen- and was thus facing a degraded snow them to Mikaela. When I talked to gen, carried on the sport’s swashbuck- surface. She wore a tight white body- Tiger Shaw, the head of the whole pro- ling spirit. Even if their best runs seemed suit and a stars-and-stripes helmet—a gram, he told me, “The No. 1 thing to reckless and a little haywire, the elegance touch of Evel Knievel. The north- facing recognize is that Eileen is the coach.” and power of a well-carved turn, at that slope, in full shadow, was a crepuscu- As it stands, she has been doing the speed and in that context, is magiste- lar blue, out of which the fluorescent job, all these years, on her own dime. rial. No shin pad can mitigate the pain yellow trim of her shin and knuckle The ski team doesn’t pay her a salary, and misery of cartwheeling into the guards popped like the chest feathers and she covers most of her own travel safety netting at eighty miles an hour. of a chat bird. Banner ads for Milka expenses. This might be another rea- son for her to keep bunking with her daughter. You can take the girl out of New England, but you can’t take New England out of the girl.

lalom and giant slalom are known Sas the technical disciplines—tech, for short. The turns are tightest in sla- lom, wider in G.S. Each turn consists of a pair of poles, several yards apart, and you have to ski through the invis- ible plane between them—a “gate.” You ski two runs, each lasting less than a minute. The winner is the skier with the lowest combined time. The so-called speed events, downhill and super giant slalom, or super G, have fewer gates, more jumps, greater speed, and higher risk. You get one run. For decades, slalom courses were set with bamboo poles. You could brush them or whack into them, but it hurt, and they could slow you down or alter your course. So you mostly skied around them, stringing together elegant “S”s. In the eighties, bamboo was replaced by plastic breakaway poles, with a hinge at the base of each, so that you could knock it out of your way; it flopped to the snow and snapped back into place chocolate (the venue may have been the race again recently, on YouTube, I speed. Some of the American stars, Stateside, but the main television au- thought of her in high summer, slid- like Vonn and Bode Miller, started out dience was still overseas) lined the run, ing side to side in her socks, holding a as tech specialists, and then, as they along with the dim silhouettes of course medicine ball.) She knocked away the got bigger and stronger and perhaps workers, many of them wearing cram- second-to-last gate with both arms, so more courageous and ambitious, began pons to maintain their footing on the that for a moment they were raised as to master the dangers and the demands icy pitch. (It never looks as steep on though in triumph, and then she ducked of the downhill. It’s all skiing, but sla- TV.) Often, Shiffrin’s first few turns across the finish line, swooped into a lom is Jack-be- nimble while downhill are careful, as she establishes a tempo, big turn to check her speed, and finally, is Jack-be-nuts. One is fast-twitch, the but on this occasion, despite her al- snowplowing (pizza!), looked up at the other is barn-on-your-back. The speed most impregnable lead, she came out scoreboard. She seemed almost disap- and the tech events take place in differ- “blasting,” as the TV commentator said, pointed. She’d won by 3.07 seconds, the ent locations at different times, with so that, by the time she hit the eigh- largest margin of victory ever in a World different practice and pre-race regi- teenth gate (out of sixty), the speed Cup slalom race, breaking a record that mens. Training for both means train- and some cruddy snow seemed to cause had stood for forty-seven years. ing less for each. It may be that inter- her to stumble. But she recovered her The following day, there was an- disciplinary speed is a zero-sum form—metronomic tempo, skis paral- other slalom race (the second of the game—that the faster you get in the lel, body crouched, “knees to skis and season’s nine), and she won again, by downhill the slower you go in slalom. hands in front,” as the family mantra 2.65 seconds, the amount of time that This has been true, more or less, of goes—and took on the meat of the separated the second-place finisher Miller and Vonn, and might well be course with calm determination, to the from the twenty-third. She said that true of Shiffrin, although she doesn’t extent that calmness can be attributed she’d imagined she was being chased have the high tolerance for risk that to a woman punching aside heavy, rub- downhill by a bear. the others do, and that the speed events bery poles at a rate of more than one A few days later, at Lake Louise, in seem to require. She and her team wres- a second, while pogoing from side to Alberta, Canada, Shiffrin entered a tle with the problem of giving up a side in flat light down a wall of rutted super-G race. She came in fifteenth. bird in hand to go after one in the ice. Her style was “quiet,” in the argot, The winner was Lindsey Vonn. Shiffrin bush. “I’m still sort of a risky invest- the upper body still, skis biting, tip to is the best technical skier of her gen- ment there,” she told me. tail, with hardly a chatter. (Watching eration, but she aspires to the élite in wo years ago, the Shiffrins tried to Tsend Mikaela out on tour on her own. “I had decided that that would be the year,” Eileen said. This was after Mikaela’s dominating performance at Aspen. Shiffrin travelled to Sweden without her mother. On the morning of a race, Mikaela crashed and injured her knee, and missed the next couple of months of competition. “I’m not superstitious, not saying my not being there is why she got hurt, but maybe it was something subconscious,” Eileen said. “Maybe she didn’t approach the day the way she might have. I might have said, ‘Be careful.’ ” According to Eileen, Mikaela called her and said, “I’m not ready for you to be gone. Clearly, I’m not ready to do this on my own.” Mikaela told me, “I can’t really picture a time when she won’t be on tour with me. Mom has always been my best friend. But, yes, eventu- ally she might get sick of it.” Bug Pech, when she and Shiffrin were sixteen, promised Shiffrin that she’d watch every race of hers, and so for years, while she was at Boston Col- lege and Shiffrin was in the Alps, she got up at four in the morning to tune in. Shiffrin often FaceTimes with her from the physio table. Pech told me, “It’s sort of weird. She’s travelling with three or four middle-aged men, her mom, and her physio, who’s older, too. It can get lonely. When she needs to vent or is frustrated, I get the call.” The last time Pech saw Shiffrin was at Killington, last year. “I saw her for, like, three minutes,” Pech said. “My mom and sister started tearing up when we had to say goodbye. My sister joked that Mikaela and I have a Romeo-and- Juliet romance.” This past summer, Mikaela started dating a French giant-slalom skier named Mathieu Faivre. “I don’t know if this is a smart thing to do long dis- tance,” she told Pech. Pech told her, “For you, everything is long distance.” As she explained to me, “She’s got to have something that’s normal, even if it’s not normal.” It was her mother who first alerted me to Faivre. “I’m sure you’ve heard, she has a boyfriend in France,” Eileen said. When I mentioned it to Mikaela in a ¥¥ text, she replied with a facepalm emoji: “Oh boy. Hahaha no big deal. He’s a cutie.” Shiffrin made time to visit Faivre ski-team scene, one can find it hard to officials, wondered aloud if she’d got it in France, and in the fall he went to see suss out which of the Shiffrins—if ei- right. The next day, Mikaela, in second her in Vail. He stayed in a hotel. When ther—might be the one chafing under place after the first run, hit a rutted, Shiffrin is home, which isn’t often, she the current arrangement, or to predict shadowy patch of snow on the steep lives with her parents, in the nearby how long it might last. People are pitch near the top of her second run, town of Avon. She still doesn’t have a watching, with interest. nearly blew out of the course, recovered, place of her own. (She has earned mil- and finished a disappointing fifth. lions of dollars, in prize money and en- n October, Mikaela and Eileen left Two weeks later, at the inaugural dorsements. Her father watches over it, Ifor Austria. Mikaela trained for three slalom of the season, at Levi, in Fin- with the help of a financial adviser.) days on the Mölltal Glacier, for a week land, Shiffrin, taking a lead into the “Some of this for me is about my in Sölden, and then for a few days in second run, again failed to close, los- being able to let her go,” Eileen told me. the Val Senales, in South Tirol, while ing by a tenth of a second to a Slova- “My presence is its own burden.” the F.I.S. prepared the course at Sölden kian, Petra Vlhová, of whom Eileen had She went on, “I have my own inter- for the traditional season-opening giant recently said, “Petra skis like Mikaela ests. I like to work out. I like to run. I slalom there. The day before the race, more than Mikaela skis like Mikaela.” want to take a nursing refresher course. the International Association of Ski Was the gap between Mikaela and When Mikaela was at Burke, I was Journalists awarded Shiffrin the Skieur the field shrinking? Was there some- finally getting my career going again, d’Or trophy, as racer of the year. She is thing amiss in her form? Was it the but once she started travelling, what the third American, after Miller and gear, the tactics, the training, the with Jeff the main breadwinner, it was Vonn, ever to win it. (Though Shiffrin chemistry among the coaches, some ‘You’re the one to go.’ I don’t regret it. I has not yet become a marketing jugger- new warp in her mental makeup? Or love spending time with Mikaela. It’s naut like Vonn, the association called was it just the any-given-Sunday prin- been a privilege for me to do this. But her “a pleasant interlocutor for ski re- ciple? A roll of the dice, a bounce of my entire life has been this.” porters.”) At the bib-drawing ceremony the ball. Second place wasn’t exactly This will be Mikaela’s seventh year the night before, the announcer, allud- disaster—the top American finisher on the tour, and her second trip to the ing to Shiffrin’s boyfriend, had said to in the men’s slalom, the next day, Olympics, where, at least in the Amer- her, onstage, “I hear you learned some placed twenty-third. Still, to the ex- ican marketplace, reputations and for- French last summer.” Shiffrin, blushing, tent that invincibility is a kind of spell, tunes can be made. She is not oblivi- ventured a pronunciation of “croissant.” one can never guess when and under ous. Talking to people around the Eileen, standing with some ski-team what conditions it might break. 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 45 A REPORTER AT LARGE THE PEOPLE’S POLICE

When Mexico’s authorities could no longer be trusted, Nestora Salgado organized her own force.

BY ALEXIS OKEOWO

ate one night last January, in the to track down and arrest kidnappers down. “There are some guys racing on southern Mexican state of Guer- and murderers. Its success helped in- motorcycles here,” he said, waving at L rero, a group of community po- spire a surge of community police; of the street, which was wide enough for licemen met in the courtyard of a friend’s eighty-one municipalities in Guerrero, only one lane of traffic. “They’re using house to discuss the murders, kidnap- fifty-four now have forces. But the the street as a drag strip. If you see them, pings, and extortion that had beset group, founded with the intention of please get them to calm down.” Olinalá, a remote town high in the Si- fighting criminals, had ended up fight- Around another corner, the commu- erra Madre del Sur. Nearly all were in- ing the Mexican government as well. nity policemen encountered a group of digenous farmers, and their skin was In 2013, Salgado was arrested, and au- young people with a red motorbike, but burnished by the sun. Most carried guns. thorities accused her of murder, kid- they turned out not to be the culprits. The group’s coördinator, a slim man napping, organized crime, and robbery. “If that was the motorcycle, we would with a mustache named Bernardo Ayala, After almost three years in prison, she have just taken it,” Julia Silva, one of laid his cell phone on a table, put it on was cleared of charges, but many of her two women on patrol that night, joked. speaker, and called their leader: Nestora colleagues still had open arrest warrants. “We need them for rapid response.” Salgado, a grandmother of five who The force, which at one point had two A municipal-police truck passed, and lives outside Seattle. hundred and forty volunteer officers, turned down a parallel street. One of “Hello, commander,” Ayala said. “All was down to eighty, and they were strug- the men looked at the vehicle with dis- of the compañeros are here.” Salgado gling to keep working. gust. “The police,” he said. “Whenever greeted them, her voice echoing in the “Does anyone have questions for they see us out, then they remember courtyard, which was decorated with Nestora?” Ayala asked the group. they have a job to do.” shrines to Catholic saints. In person, “Compañera Nestora, the thing that Salgado, who is forty-five, has dark has most stopped us is that we don’t linalá is a modest place of nine bangs that sweep over a cherubic face have any money to operate,” a heavy- Othousand people, with sloping with kohl-rimmed eyes; she has a cheery set man named Calixto Reyes said. “We streets, a scenic plaza, and the reddish disposition and a deceptively guileless pay for everything out of our own pock- spectre of mountains looming in the manner. Since 2012, she has divided her ets and from whatever people give us. distance. The town is known for its or- time between Washington State and And there are many communities that nate lacquerware, and the mountains Guerrero, where she was born, in the have requested our support.” for fields of poppies. Mexico is the hope of helping her town resist an influx Salgado urged them not to give up. world’s third-largest producer of opium, of drugs and violence. “The government is trying to stop our and Guerrero grows fifty to seventy per For more than a decade, the Mexi- work,” she said. “But we have to con- cent of the country’s poppies; the moun- can government has been waging war tinue.” As the community policemen tains near Olinalá are among the most against organized crime, deploying tens prepared to begin the night’s patrol, she productive regions. When Nestora Sal- of thousands of troops. That war has signed off. “I would like to send a very gado was growing up there, the drug failed; more than a hundred and fifty strong hug to all of you,” she said. “We trade was negligible, and the town was thousand people have been killed and will stay in touch.” poor but safe. “It was beautiful,” Sal- another thirty-two thousand have dis- Ayala began chanting the group’s gado said. “My family, my friends, ev- appeared. Amid the violence, the gov- motto: “Respect for our rights—” erything was there.” Surrounded by six ernment forces have often been no less The others joined in: “Will bring siblings and many aunts, uncles, and venal and corrupt than the drug car- justice!” cousins, she felt that she was related to tels they were dispatched to fight. In Ayala said, “Vámonos, compañeros,” almost everyone. Her family lived in an many places, citizens have grown so and the group walked to two white adobe house with a tin roof on a vast distrustful of the security forces that trucks, emblazoned with the community- farm, and she was free to roam. Though they have formed armed community police insignia. They eased their vehi- her mother urged her to “behave like a self-defense groups to restore order to cles down a near-vertical road into town, little woman,” she preferred to go horse- their battered towns. past kids nestled in doorways and shop- back riding and shoot birds with her In less than a year, Salgado trans- keepers closing down businesses. Most brothers. She often came home with formed a group of untrained local cit- offered friendly greetings. A slender bruises and a bloody nose. izens into an armed force that was able man with graying hair flagged them Salgado’s mother, Aurora, had come

46 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 “We tried to bring peace to the town,” Salgado said. “We didn’t want to start a war.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY IAN C. BATES THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 47 to Olinalá from a nearby indigenous time, she made it to San Diego. During ton. Her daughters didn’t like the town, Tlapanec village. “People were very dis- the crossing, though, she lost Miguel’s which seemed too foreign, too small, criminatory toward indigenous people,” phone number. “I didn’t know how I too quiet. To Salgado, it was paradise. Salgado said. “It’s why she didn’t teach would find my husband,” Salgado re- She gardened, farmed, and rode horses; us to speak her language. She thought called. “I was scared and didn’t know on an undeveloped part of her father’s that if I spoke it people would laugh at what I was going to do.” She thought land, she began building a house. me.” Aurora hadn’t gone to school, but of going home, but she owed money to Yet the area was becoming increas- she was intelligent and resourceful. She her coyote—the smuggler who had ingly unrecognizable. For years, the Bel- taught herself to sew clothes and to helped her cross. A woman who worked trán Leyva cartel had controlled Guer- make cookware; in addition for the coyote, providing rero’s opium production. But, starting to taking care of the children, meals for the migrants, hired in 2009, the government killed or ar- she helped with planting and Salgado as a nanny for her rested most of its leaders. With the Bel- harvesting crops. Salgado’s young children. trán Leyvas gone, and with U.S. demand father, Fernando, a playful, After three months, Mi- for heroin rising, more than a dozen easygoing man with deep- guel found her, and the two gangs began a fierce struggle for raw blue eyes, worked as a farmer moved to Bellevue, Wash- material and transport routes. Their and a practitioner of tradi- ington, where a cousin of his members committed kidnappings and tional medicine. He housed lived. Miguel worked as a murders; they took over the commerce patients at the farm while dishwasher. Salgado found of towns, and then forced residents to they recuperated, giving them a job as a housekeeper at a pay taxes to them. food and a place to sleep. hotel, and another at a dry The government was little help. Mex- When Salgado was twelve, her cleaner. “I remember waking up in the ico’s then-President, Felipe Calderón, mother died, of a heart attack, and her mornings and going to work happy,” she had sent a surge of troops to the region, father started disappearing on drink- said. “Walking the streets, I saw every- but the presence of the military often ing binges, sometimes for a week at a thing as beautiful—the plants, the flow- intensified the violence. Local forces time. Not long afterward, Salgado began ers. Olinalá doesn’t have any parks. I were no better. Mike Vigil, a former spending time with a friend named Mi- wanted my daughters to see this.” After Drug Enforcement Administration chief guel, the first boy she ever liked. He a year, she had saved enough money to of international operations in Mexico was funny and friendly, and within a bring their daughters to Bellevue. But City, told me, “The municipal police few months they married. She was four- she had to hire a babysitter while she were endemic with corruption.” The teen and he was nineteen. “My father was at work; Miguel couldn’t be relied drug trade had saturated the govern- looked at me like I was crazy,” she said. on to watch the children. Salgado would ment with corruption, and few politi- “My husband was very scared. He come home to find her husband drink- cians evaded it. “You can count them on thought my father wanted to hurt him.” ing with his friends, the kitchen empty one hand, the ones who are clean,” Sal- She moved to Miguel’s family farm and of food for their daughters. Once, the gado said. Leaked government docu- soon had a daughter, Saira. Miguel sheriff came to her house to put their ments from 2014 assert that state secu- wouldn’t allow her to return to school, belongings outside because they hadn’t rity knew of at least twelve mayors in but she didn’t mind. “I played like a lit- paid rent. “The terrible thing was that Guerrero who were connected to orga- tle kid at their house,” she recalled. I saw my husband not worrying about nized crime. “This is the true nightmare: Things became harder, though, as she anything,” she said. Miguel physically that the enemy, the Mafioso, who is tear- had two more daughters, Ruby and Gri- abused her so viciously that he was even- ing society apart, goes unnoticed in pub- sel. There was very little work outside tually sent to prison. lic office,” Anabel Hernández wrote in the farm, and barely enough money to At twenty-six, she finally left him. the book “Narcoland.” Guerrero became buy milk for the children. “We had noth- She got a job as a waitress, and at the one of the most violent states in Mex- ing,” Salgado said. restaurant where she worked she met ico, with thousands of killings each year. Miguel sometimes went to the United a cook from Jalisco named José Luis During my visit, security forces found States for stints of work, but Salgado Ávila. “My life changed,” Salgado said. six decapitated bodies in a car in the never saw the earnings. “I would be wait- Ávila helped her with her children and state capital and four tortured corpses ing for him, for him to send money to the rent. They got married, and even- in another town. “A lot of people were us,” she said. “I think he was drinking a tually moved to Renton, a small city scared, but no one said anything,” Sal- lot.” So, at nineteen, she headed to the near Seattle. In 2001, she obtained a gado said. “You can’t live like that.” border, leaving her daughters with her residency card, and, ten years after leav- sister in Mexico City. “It was very hard ing Olinalá, she was able to return for n the fall of 2012, Salgado’s father fell to leave them,” Salgado recalled. She had a visit. “Everyone was so happy,” she Iill, and she went to Olinalá to care nightmares of her daughters drowning. said. “But I was also sad, because I saw for him. She found the town besieged Salgado had to cross illegally, running how truly poor my town was.” Salgado by sicarios, or hit men, connected to the across fields and highways. She was cap- began going back every year, bringing Los Rojos gang. Salgado told me that tured, and sent back to Tijuana by bus. children’s toys, clothes, and other do- they operated freely on the streets, shoot- She tried again the next day, and, this nations she had collected in Washing- ing guns at all hours of the day. They

48 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 kidnapped a hotel owner and extorted was coming in and out of town. “The list) and whom they were working with: money from shopkeepers. A mother of streets were packed,” Ayala recalled. wealthy residents of Olinalá, the head three told me that, after months of pay- More than a hundred townspeople of local government security, the pub- ing protection fees, she closed her shop. headed to a house where several of the lic prosecutor, and the mayor. (The offi- Illicit business proliferated: the sale of sicarios lived, to make them reveal the cials deny working with the sicarios.) bootleg liquor and cigars, stolen cars whereabouts of the second driver. The They showed cell-phone videos of ex- and animals. “The police wouldn’t do men were gone when the group arrived, ecutions that their boyfriends had com- anything,” Bernardo Rosendo, who runs but the townspeople found a car and mitted, and of children being sexually an art school in town, told me. The si- two motorcycles, and torched them. A abused. Salgado and the others put the carios acted with such impunity that few days later, one man called Salgado footage on disks to keep as evidence. some townspeople began to believe that and reported that a group of men had In the sicarios’ home, they discovered the mayor, Eusebio González Rodrí- detained the sicarios’ teen-age girl- shotguns and bulletproof vests, along guez, was tolerating their presence. friends. Furious, they wanted to take with a cache of driver’s licenses from (González denied this, saying, “I have them to the plaza, douse them in gas- various states in Mexico, declaring that always done things within the law.”) oline, and burn them. “I hurried over the men belonged to several branches In the month before Salgado arrived, there,” Salgado said. “I said to them, of the armed forces simultaneously. Be- at least three people had been mur- ‘What are you doing?’ ” She told them fore the townspeople left, Armando dered. That October, during her visit, that killing the girls would just create Patrón Jiménez, the town’s public pros- a taxi-driver named Cecilio Morales trouble. Instead, she suggested ques- ecutor, came to collect the items. He was kidnapped. A group of people, in- tioning them. They had worked as look- and Salgado had been friendly for years, cluding her brothers, went looking for outs for the sicarios, and as prostitutes occasionally going for drinks together, him, and finally found his body near a for the men. but the timing of his arrival made her ravine, his head smashed in with a rock. The next day, they picked up the suspicious. “Why?” Salgado said. “How “People were really angry,” Salgado re- girls from their family homes and took did he know those things were there?” called. At the funeral, the next morn- them to a school, where they had ar- (Patrón Jiménez says that he was there ing, rumors spread that another driver ranged for a lawyer to be present. The as part of a routine investigation, and from the town had been kidnapped. girls told them whom the sicarios were denies that there were weapons.) The “We were fed up,” Tomás Bello Flores, planning to kidnap (Salgado was on the following week, the governor of Guer- a community policeman, told me. People gathered in the central plaza, where the town’s church stood amid trimmed shrubs and palm trees. A few residents rang the church bell, and hun- dreds more came to the square to find out what was going on. “That was the moment that started the movement,” Salgado said. “I was planning how we could work together to defend ourselves.” Some residents had grabbed one sus- pected criminal and turned him over to the police, but he was quickly released. “We realized the police were not going to do anything,” Juan Guevara Ayala, a corn farmer and an uncle of the miss- ing driver, recalled. As the sun was set- ting, Salgado and the other townspeo- ple stopped a police truck near the plaza, and forced the policemen to get out and turn over their guns. “I felt I was in God’s hands,” Ayala said. “Whatever would happen would happen.” For the next two hours, Salgado drove the truck through town, shouting through a megaphone, “Come out! You don’t have to be scared!” People started organizing by neighborhood, and, armed with AK-47s and hunting rifles from home, and sometimes wearing ski masks, they set up checkpoints to monitor who “You, my friend, are a feeble adventurer.” State Law 701, which recognizes the au- thority of indigenous communities to administer themselves, “based on their ancestral customs and traditions that have been transmitted for generations, enriched and adapted with the passage of time.” Law 701 also permits a judi- cial system “for the prevention and res- olution of conflicts” and “to reduce crime, eradicate impunity, and rehabilitate and reintegrate social transgressors.” It en- dorses the idea of collective justice, which is valued in many indigenous Mexican communities. Under the law, towns with indigenous and mestizo residents can reconcile perpetrators and victims in ac- cordance with traditional methods; the community police formed institutions called casas de justicia, which tried peo- ple for minor crimes. Salgado’s new force was made up of farmers, ranchers, engineers, doctors, accountants, and teachers, mostly of in- digenous descent. Boys under eighteen could join if they were married. When Salgado became leader, some men bris- tled, but she offered her position to any- one who wanted it, saying that she would “Dan, Carla’s interests include brooding over failed relationships be happy to be just a community po- and fending off her mother’s pleas for grandchildren. Carla, Dan is licewoman. No one came forward. terrified of commitment and has a negative bank balance.” “Nestora has more balls than anyone in this town,” Bernardo Ayala said. Olinalá has eight neighborhoods, •• and Salgado helped arrange for the com- munity policemen to patrol each one rero, Ángel Aguirre Rivero, came to liferated in the region, even though at night. Each policeman took a cou- Olinalá, and Salgado gave him a disk the Army has tried to extinguish them, ple of shifts a week. Salgado patrolled with the footage from the girls’ cell through extrajudicial killings, abduc- every night, from nine o’clock until two phones. “I said, ‘That’s why my town tion, and torture. In the seventies, the o’clock, driving her pickup with police- needs community police,’ ” she recalled. schoolteacher turned revolutionary men in the bed. Her neighbors donated “And he said, ‘Oh, yes, yes—that’s very Lucio Cabañas lived in the mountains food, water, trucks, and gas money to good. I am proud of you for wanting to and led a guerrilla group that waged a her force, and brought hot coffee and provide security for your people.’ ” But rebellion for the poor; they supported tacos while they patrolled. neither he nor the military attempted themselves through bank robberies and Many nights, Salgado’s force simply to arrest the sicarios. Instead, the gov- other crimes against the wealthy and insured order on the streets: taking ernor later supplied the community po- the state. More recently, indigenous drunks home, driving sick people and lice with trucks and uniforms, and rec- communities have organized grass- pregnant women to the hospital. Other ognized Salgado as head of the force. roots protests against environmentally work was more serious. They rescued She was forty-one years old, and had hazardous infrastructure projects and residents who had been abducted, and recently become a grandmother. “He the incursion of mining companies on arrested people whom they suspected said the security of the town would now their land. of robbery, kidnapping, or extortion. be in my hands,” she said. Salgado’s force grew out of a civil- Salgado received phone calls from peo- ian police organization called Coor- ple threatening to kill her. “A lot of the uerrero has a long history of in- dinadora Regional de Autoridades time, they didn’t have a face,” she said. Gdigenous revolt. The Sierra Madre Comunitarias-Policía Comunitaria. “They were ghosts.” Still, the patrols del Sur was often the site of protests CRAC-P.C., as it is known, was founded, gave her a rush. “We knew that if these against Spanish colonists and post- in 1995, to provide security in the place people were able to get us they would independence Presidents. Since then, of hapless or disinterested police and tear us to pieces,” she said. “Fear can leftist guerrilla movements have pro- military. It is sanctioned by Guerrero make you react, or it can flatten you. I

50 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 am someone who reacts.” When she couldn’t be reached, she sent detainees us, that they were going to arrest us.” called her family in Washington, she to a casa de justicia, which decided Rather than back away from antag- kept the details of her new life vague; whether to impose “reëducation”—a onizing officials, CRAC-P.C. became she didn’t want them to worry. period in which prisoners lived in basic more aggressive. When a resident called One afternoon, during her first month facilities while they attended talks and Salgado to complain that municipal po- leading the force, an eight-year-old boy performed public works, like picking up licemen were driving recklessly through disappeared from a nearby town. His fa- trash, painting churches, and cleaning town, she and her men located the chief ther, a butcher, received a phone call schools. of police and two officers, who were three hours later: the boy had been ab- Although community police were drunk and carrying alcohol. They ar- ducted, and his kidnappers wanted two legally restricted to small rifles, at times rested the officers, and confiscated their million pesos. The parents were afraid. they carried higher-calibre weapons, guns and their truck. They sent a mes- After realizing that they could not come some of them bought from soldiers sell- sage to the mayor, but heard back that up with the money, they called their ing surplus arms. “I carried a gun that he didn’t consider it his problem. (The town’s community police—“No one was not permitted,” Salgado said—a .38 mayor says that the officers assured him trusts the municipal police anymore,” Super pistol. “If the military had found that they weren’t drunk; in any case, he Salgado said—who then called commu- it, they would have taken it away.” She says, the governor was responsible for nity forces in the surrounding towns. wore a bulletproof vest and practiced the municipal police.) The next day, Salgado and thirty of her men joined a point-blank shooting. “We told the gov- representatives from the state govern- search party of community police and ernment, ‘We’re not going to war with ment came to collect the policemen, residents, looking in abandoned houses slingshots. Respect our lives, because and then returned for their arms and and ranches, amid the weeds and the our lives mean something, too,’ ” she their vehicle. cornfields. One of the searchers, look- went on. “The government wanted us Around that time, four of the teen- ing near a farm a two-hour drive from to have sticks, and our enemies can take age girls who had been involved with town, heard suspicious sounds, and down helicopters.” the sicarios began disappearing for days alerted the community police. They By the spring of 2013, Salgado was at a time, and their mothers came to found the boy there; the men guarding working to organize community police CRAC-P.C. for help finding them. In him had fled. “I was scared, because I forces throughout the state. “All the towns late May, Salgado received a message knew the sicarios were close and could within indigenous territory can, within that the girls had been found in two kill us, but I was happy to see the boy,” the law, organize themselves,” she said. nearby towns, with cocaine and mari- Salgado recalled. The kidnappers were “Every eight days, a town would rise up.” juana on them; she arranged for com- later arrested. In May, the governor’s office dispatched munity policemen to bring them home. Law 701 places few limits on the au- a former CRAC-P.C. coördinator to tell Their mothers told Salgado that she thority of community police, saying only Salgado that the government didn’t like should put them in reëducation, but that they need to operate within “the the way the casas de justicia were oper- some members of the community force’s framework of respect for human rights” ating and wanted her to limit her work internal council were wary, because the and “the limits that the current state of to Olinalá; Salgado said that he offered girls were underage. Salgado told the law imposes.” In practice, the state au- her three million pesos to stick to small mothers that they would need to give thorities expected them to act as ad- written permission. The women pro- juncts of the municipal police. But Sal- vided it, and Salgado took the girls to gado and her men felt increasingly the town La Concordia to live at a con- confident in their parallel system of jus- vent and perform community service. tice. Community police forces were re- Ten days later, Salgado recalls, one luctant to turn prisoners over to the gov- of the mothers returned to her office ernment, because officials sometimes and said that the mayor had offered her allowed suspects to buy their way out money to accuse Salgado of kidnapping of jail. In Olinalá, Salgado’s force kept her daughter. González denied the bribe, detainees on the top floor of her house, saying that he was responding to con- which doubled as her office. “We would matters, such as stolen cattle and family cerns in the community. “These were just guard them,” Gustavo Patrón Cor- disputes. (The governor declined to com- minors who were detained, and the onel, a sixty-six-year-old artisan and ment.) She refused, saying that the net- pressure was on me, because their fam- community policeman, said. “They were work of towns helped keep the roads ilies were asking me, ‘You, as mayor, allowed to receive visitors, they were safe. “The government never left us what are you going to do?’ ” he said. “I fed—very much like a regular jail.” After alone,” Bernardo Ayala recalled. “It was had to go to the state government. It the community police investigated an constant harassment.” The security forces was a serious matter, because unautho- offense, the victim was invited to face intimidated them as well. “We received rized firearms were being used, and I the accused in Salgado’s house, and if direct threats from the Navy,” Juan Ayala had doubts about the legality under the latter confessed reparations were ar- Rendón, a community policeman, said. which they were operating.” ranged. “Everything had a structure,” “They told us that they were going to The next week, two of the mothers Salgado said. When an agreement kill us, that they were going to disappear returned to the office and said that they

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 51 wanted to take their daughters home, imal, and that he was collecting it to her arms and legs, the result of a car ac- which Salgado allowed. When she was return to their families. “She was a cident, a decade ago, that left her tem- later arrested, the warrant claimed that friend,” he said, of Salgado. “Now she porarily paralyzed; she relies on medi- she had unlawfully detained the teen- is perverse, a psychopath.”) cation to manage her discomfort, but agers. “I was part of the recognized The governor called almost imme- she was unable to get it. “I suffered a lot state security,” she said. “But the mayor diately to order Salgado to release Patrón in prison because of the pain,” she said. was working with the governor to put Jiménez. She refused, insisting that he In May, 2015, Salgado went on a hun- me in jail.” was guilty of attempted theft and tam- ger strike, restricting herself to water, pering with crime-scene evidence. lime juice, and honey. After thirty-four n August, 2013, two men from Olinalá “Nestora was always fearless; she was days, authorities consented to move her Iwere murdered near the border with always running around alone, even to the medical wing of a low-security the neighboring town of Cualác. The though we told her to move with ten facility in Mexico City, and she began victims were known as criminals, but or twelve guys,” Juan Guevara Ayala, a to eat again. “I survived, thank God,” they were still members of the commu- community policeman, said. Salgado said. Still, Ávila was unable to nity, and their relatives wanted their Salgado was due to return to Renton visit her. “We had to make hard choices, bodies returned. the following weekend, but, before she because of the money,” he said. “I am The community policemen learned could leave, military personnel spotted the one who had to keep working. It that police in Cualác had taken the bod- her at a gas pump and arrested her. Sev- was easier for my daughters to go and ies to a nearby town, Huamuxtitlán, and eral other members of the community visit Nestora.” Ávila travelled instead to went to retrieve them. “We all got to- police force from Guerrero were also Washington, D.C., to meet with con- gether—there were forty or fifty of us arrested. José Luis Ávila, Salgado’s hus- gressional staff members, asking them in three vehicles,” Patrón Coronel re- band, learned of her detention later that to push the State Department to inter- called. “But the bodies were already day. “When you have family working vene in Salgado’s case. In those meet- gone.” The public ministry in Huamux- against organized crime, you expect ings, Ávila tried to convey his wife’s titlán told them that the bodies had something to happen,” Ávila, who has commitment to her home town. “So been sent on to the state capital; all that a buzz cut and a salt-and-pepper mus- many people from Mexico, they come remained was the victims’ truck, rid- tache, said. “But I thought, Why was to the United States and they truly for- dled with bullet holes, which was being she arrested?” Relatives in Mexico get where they come from,” he said. held at a local impound lot. When the scrambled to obtain news of her. “All “Thank God Nestora is not one of them. community police arrived, they found we knew was that she had been taken She’s a very strong woman.” Armando Patrón Jiménez, the public by soldiers,” Ávila went on. “The gov- The charges against Salgado even- prosecutor, already there, along with ernment kept hiding information.” After tually included organized crime, vehi- two other men. Salgado says that they a day or two, he called the American cle theft, homicide, attempted homi- had set fire to papers in the truck, and Embassy in Mexico and found out that cide, and fifty-three counts of kid- were trying to push a cow that had been Salgado was in a maximum-security napping. Roberto Álvarez, a Guerrero recovered from the dead men’s vehicle prison in Nayarit, more than six hun- state-security spokesman, suggested to into the bed of another truck. One of dred miles from Olinalá. me that much of CRAC-P.C.’s work was the community policemen recognized “We aren’t going to live by the law illegal. “They were not arrests—they the branding on the cow; it had been of the jungle,” Governor Aguirre said were detainments. And, in the reëdu- stolen from his family ranch a few days at the time. “They can’t go around cation process, the liberty of the detain- earlier. Salgado confronted the prose- armed, from one town to the other. ees was taken away,” he said. “The com- cutor and said, “What are you doing?” They can’t make arrests for major crimes. munity police would ask the families Salgado says that Patrón Jiménez When they detain someone, they have of the detainees for money in exchange had no ownership papers, which peo- to turn them over directly to the proper for their freedom.” Mexico’s National ple typically carry, because cattle rus- authorities. . . . She refused.” Human Rights Commission found that tling is pervasive. She asked why he was the community policemen in Olinalá burning evidence, but he didn’t respond. t first, Salgado did not even know had subjected twelve prisoners, includ- “You know what?” Salgado said, ges- Awhat the charges against her were. ing four minors, to physical abuse and turing at the three men. “Take them For months, she was kept in a ten-foot- inhumane treatment, denying their away.” Patrón Coronel told me, “I was square cell with stark-white walls and “right to personal integrity, dignified very nervous arresting Jiménez. But he a bright light that remained on all night. treatment, sexual freedom, and the right was claiming something that was not She ate her meals alone and forced her- to a life without violence.” his.” As Patrón Jiménez shouted at Sal- self to drink the dirty water from the Salgado’s first two lawyers, one gado’s men, calling them brutes, they tap. Later, her lawyer secured permis- state-appointed and the other from put the suspects in their truck and drove sion for her to go onto the patio, but the indigenous-rights organization them to a nearby jail. (Patrón Jiménez she was not allowed to talk to the other Tlachinollan, had difficulty even ac- denies destroying evidence and steal- inmates. Salgado thinks that the prison cessing files related to the government ing the cow; he maintains that the two authorities were afraid she would orga- charges. Nine months passed before dead men had recently bought the an- nize them. She has lingering pains in a lawyer could visit her. “He was not

52 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 COMIC STRIP BY EDWARD STEED allowed to bring a single piece of paper, into evidence. None of the victims side,” she said. It all felt like a plot to and he was allowed to speak with named by the prosecution showed up drive her insane. She wrote in a jour- Nestora for only forty-five minutes,” in court. nal, and tried to avoid the news. Ávila said. “How can you defend In March, 2016, after Salgado had Three days later, she learned that somebody like that?” Ávila recruited been incarcerated for two years and the court had found her innocent: Thomas Antkowiak, the director eight months, a state court cleared her again, the victims named in the arrest of the International Human Rights of all charges. Immediately, the attor- orders hadn’t showed up. Salgado Clinic, at the Seattle University ney general of Guerrero issued three walked out of the prison in an olive- School of Law. “Her rights had new warrants, with further counts of green polo shirt with the CRAC-P.C. been violated,” Antkowiak told me. murder, kidnapping, robbery, and orga- logo and a matching baseball cap. Out- “This persecution against social ac- nized crime. Soon afterward, I met Sal- side, amid a throng of supporters, com- tivists, against human- rights defend- gado in an empty office at Penal de Te- munity policemen from around Guer- ers, against indigenous leaders, is hap- pepan, a women’s prison on the rero had assembled in two rows pening all over Mexico.” In late 2013, southern edge of Mexico City. Salgado extending to the street. In bright sun- he filed a petition to the United Na- had a cold, and she huddled into a brown shine, the men saluted. “They all rec- tions Working Group on Arbitrary leather couch in a neon-green sweat- ognized me as their commander,” she Detention, seeking to establish that shirt and black leggings. She feared said. “It was beautiful.” One of them Salgado’s imprisonment was illegal; what the government would do to her, brought out handcuffs, which she put Mexico’s National Human Rights but she was optimistic: she felt that she on and then dramatically pulled apart, Commission declared that it had would soon be home with her family, as the crowd cheered. “I am free, thanks found violations of Salgado’s right to in Renton. “For sure, I will leave here to the townspeople,” she told them. due process. In the meantime, Salga- soon,” she said. “Thank you for your struggle. Thank do’s fame began to grow. “Nestora be- Salgado’s daughter Grisel calls her you for believing in me.” came a symbol of social rage,” Abel “strong-headed,” pointing out that, when Barrera, the director of Tlachinollan, her children expressed concern over her algado heard little news from Olinalá said. “She had to expose the relation- work, she replied that she would rather Sin prison, but she knew that the ships between the authorities and die fighting than live on her knees. But movement she had helped to revive was organized crime, and, for the state things had changed. She stayed in the troubled. Across Mexico, vigilante mi- authorities of Guerrero, she went too clinic as much as she could; she was litias, called autodefensas, had formed, far. For the people who were defense- nervous about encountering other pris- and were operating outside the law. less against organized crime, she did oners. Misinformation about her was so Some were opportunists, taking advan- what she had to do.” widespread that some inmates thought tage of the chaos to carry out illegal ac- Salgado’s defenders portrayed her she was implicated in the disappearance tivities; some had been infiltrated by case as a matter of political persecu- of forty-three teacher trainees in Ayo- the cartels, which used them to expand tion. “She touched on the interests of tzinapa—an incident that had occurred operational bases and to attack rivals. the governor and the mayor,” Amanda while she was imprisoned. Women had “Once the vigilante groups established Rivero, one of her Mexican lawyers, called her profane names in the corridors. control, they began to criminalize them- said. “The only way to stop the com- selves,” Steven Dudley, a co-director of munity police was to arrest Nestora.” Insight Crime, which investigates or- The state alleged that Salgado forced ganized crime in the Americas, said. business owners to help pay for her “People started to realize many of them group’s operations; she says that she weren’t what they were saying they were.” held fund-raisers but never coerced As violence increased throughout the anyone. Her colleagues on the force region, popular support waned. The said that they had not asked for ran- government saw an opportunity for po- soms; instead, they collected retribu- litical advantage. It began working to tion fines, which were paid to victims. disarm some of the autodefensas, while One of the people Salgado allegedly “It’s dangerous for me to be in the gen- integrating others into a “rural defense kidnapped and tortured, a man named eral population, because people look at corps” and hailing their work as an ex- Francisco Flores Jiménez, told the me like the enemy,” she said. ample of effective local justice. Mexican press that his rights were re- In her cell were piles of books from Around Olinalá, some of the cor- spected during the reëducation pro- supporters: a biography of the indige- rupt autodefensas falsely claimed to work cess, and that his family was never nous guerrilla Lucio Cabañas (“My with CRAC-P.C.—a dangerous situa- asked for a ransom. He also claimed idol”), a history of Catholic nuns, a book tion, because the community police that the young women who accused on the Zapatistas, Paulo Coelho’s “The could be caught between the govern- Salgado of kidnapping were treated Alchemist.” But she found it hard to ment and the cartels. “We’ve had threats well, and were there with the consent concentrate on reading. “Your mind is in our own homes, phone calls, and of their parents; Salgado’s attorneys always thinking about why they think we’ve heard comments on the streets,” entered the signed permission slips you’re a criminal, why they put you in- Calixto Reyes, the community policeman,

54 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 said. They patrolled only occasionally, and believed that the sicarios had moved back into town. “Some people are still trying to do something, but everyone is afraid now, and they don’t have any support from the government,” Anabel Hernández said. “It is not enough to fight them alone.” There were people in Olinalá who felt that Salgado had brought trouble to the town. “Just because no one fol- lows the law doesn’t mean you can make up your own law,” Bernardo Rosendo, who runs the art school, said. He was friendly with both Salgado and Patrón Jiménez, the prosecutor she had arrested. “She should have taken Patrón Jiménez to the authorities with proof. He was being punished under a law we had never heard of. How can you have a state within a state?” For some, it rankled that Salgado was free while several of her “I will now play a familiar seasonal piece.” colleagues were still imprisoned. Among them was Gonzalo Molina, a CRAC- P.C. leader in the town of Tixtla, who •• was arrested after he protested Salga- do’s detention by leading his force to defense groups then it would have to the disappearance of the teacher train- disarm the Tixtla municipal police. Like control them. It’s a situation that spi- ees in Ayotzinapa. In his last days in others, he blames Salgado for not doing ralled out of the state government’s con- office, he claimed that many of the mu- more to negotiate his freedom. trol,” he said. “I didn’t agree with the nicipal police forces were working with Not long after Salgado was released, fact that there was no limit to the com- the cartels; the federal government has I met her at her family’s apartment in munity police’s function.” since disbanded a third of Guerrero’s Renton, a plain, comfortable place in The state still maintains that Sal- municipal police departments. Rogelio a quiet neighborhood. The walls of the gado is a criminal; the Guerrero pros- Ortega, the interim governor of Guer- living room were filled with photos ecutor has appealed her release. Ál- rero, who replaced Aguirre, called the and illustrations of Salgado, sent by varez, the state-security spokesman, imprisonment of community police- well-wishers; her children and grand- said, “Even though she acted within men “a case of political prisoners.” children wandered in and out. Sitting Law 701, she went against the consti- Salgado talks at times about going on the couch, Salgado said that her in- tutional precepts that protect human back to police work, although if she tentions had been good: “We tried to rights.” Wary of the power that the returns, she risks being detained by bring peace to the town, to care for law gives indigenous civilian forces, the government or killed by revenge- and protect everyone. We didn’t want politicians have proposed that it be seekers. Ávila said he would support to start a war.” (Rosendo put it another revised to regulate their work. her. “We have many abandoned little way: “No matter what happens, she Salgado argues that crime fell dra- towns in Guerrero, because people has the conviction that she did what matically while the community police have been forced to leave,” he said. she had to do, and that it was the right were working in Olinalá and the sur- “We need to keep fighting.” He con- thing to do.”) Salgado went on, “I did rounding towns. “There was nowhere sidered for a moment. “Of course, the so many good things in my town. A for criminals to hide,” she said. “Yes, day she decides to go back to Olinalá lot of people liked me. The govern- they can be selling drugs, but not in I’m going to worry a lot.” ment accused me of so many things I plain sight, like they used to.” State au- In her living room, Salgado told me didn’t do. Now they have accepted that thorities also believe that the town’s se- that she still fervently believed in the I was within the law, but they took al- curity improved; they say that reports need for community police. “It’s the most three years.” of crime actually increased, but suggest only choice people have in Guerrero,” Eusebio González Rodríguez, the that it was because people felt more she said. “They know that we can be mayor of Olinalá, told me that, while comfortable alerting authorities. And in charge of our own security.” She he respected Salgado, he found the ac- recent events have lent credence to Sal- shrugged. The cracks in her assurance tions of the community police dubious. gado’s charges of government malfea- were starting to show. “If they don’t “I always told the government of Guer- sance. In October, 2014, Aguirre, the want to do it, that’s on them,” she said. rero that if it was authorizing self- governor, resigned amid outrage over “But it’s the only option that we have.” 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 55 FICTION MAGNUM

56 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY TIM HETHERINGTON e had a dry spell in Logar. brightly the stars shone in the desert. run to from darkened fields as a tor- It was December and the Maybe he’d wanted to share with them nado was bearing down. Digger pos- W weather was dog shit, so a all the strange places the Army had sent tulated that at least one of those graves degree of slowness was expected. But him, way back when. I imagined that was made of fake stones. this went beyond slowness. It was like he’d look over at us and then say, with “Styrofoam balls,” he suggested to peace had broken out and nobody’d understanding and remorse, “Dudes, us in the ops hut, “painted to look like told us. Nights we’d meet in the ops war’s over.” stones, then glued to a plywood sheet.” hut for the mission brief. We’d tune the But, as far as we knew, it wasn’t. Digger thought that, if we sneaked into flat screens to the drones—over Ghazni, Therefore, we met in the ops hut every that graveyard and pulled open that hy- Orgun, and Khost—only to find all night at eight. In the absence of new pothetical door, we might discover a three orbiting within the same cloud. intelligence, we’d review old intelligence. Taliban nerve center, a bomb factory, We’d listen to static on the UHF. We’d We’d double-check dead ends and re- or an armory. Digger had no idea what stare at phones that never rang. We ëxamine cold cases. Finding nothing could be down there, but he’d got a could have left it all behind, walked off mission-worthy, Hal, our troop chief, weird feeling walking past that grave- the outpost into the desert, never to be would open the floor to suggestions. It’d yard that night. seen again. We could have created the be quiet for a while, as everyone thought. “Good enough for me,” Hal said. Legend of the Lost Troop. Instead, we “Come on,” Hal would say. “Let’s make it happen.” chose some place where we imagined He’d be standing in the middle of We rode our helicopters—two dual- the enemy might be hiding—a com- the room. We’d be sitting on plywood rotor, minigun-equipped MH-47s— pound on the banks of the Helmand tables, balancing on busted swivel chairs, northeast from Logar. We sat in mesh River, a brake shop in downtown Mar- leaning against the thin walls. The jump seats, across from one another, jah, a cave high in the Hindu Kush drones, orbiting inside moonlit cumu- roughly ten per side. The MH-47, at al- mountains—and we ventured out there, lonimbi, would beam their emerald vi- titude, stabilized like a swaying ham- hoping for a fight. sions back to us. Lightning would strike mock. Lube, dripping from the crank- I thought of the Japanese soldiers twenty miles away and the UHF would case, smelled like bong water. Beyond on Iwo Jima, who, when their island crackle. I, for one, didn’t have any good the open ramp at the back end of the fell to the Americans, didn’t know that ideas to offer. tubular cargo bay, we watched the night it had fallen. Who, not long after, didn’t One night, Digger spoke up: “Who pass by like the scenery in an old movie. hear that A-bombs had destroyed Hi- remembers that graveyard decorated The 47s dropped us off in a dry riv- roshima and Nagasaki, and that their like a used-car lot, out in Khost?” erbed, three miles east of the graveyard. emperor had admitted defeat. Those I raised my hand, along with a few We patrolled westward under heavy soldiers hid in tunnels, on Iwo, for weeks others. clouds. The clouds carried a powerful after the war was over. For months, “I think we might need to go back static charge, while the earth remained even. For them, the fight continued in there,” Digger said. neutral. Sparkling dust hovered, and those dark and narrow spaces, until they The graveyard in question was on through night vision I saw my broth- ran out of food. Until they drank the the northern rim of a dusty crater. We’d ers, walking with me, as concentrations last of their water. Until, absent the patrolled just to the south of it, a few of this dust. All I heard, as we walked, means and/or the will to take their own weeks prior, on an easterly course. The was my own breathing. lives, they climbed out of ratholes into “used-car lot” decorations were plastic We connected with the crater’s east- the sun, to wander warm fields of lava strands of multicolored pennants. One ernmost point, then walked in a coun- rock in surrender. end of each strand was tied high in an terclockwise direction along its rim I wondered if, one night, we’d drop ash tree that stood at the center of the until we reached the graveyard. We out of the starry sky in our blacked-out graveyard. The other ends were staked found the pennants torn and tattered, helicopters and land near a walled com- into the hard ground outside the cir- the ash tree diseased, the graves crooked. pound in the desert. We’d run toward cle of graves. The graves themselves None of the stones were made of Sty- that compound with the rotor wash at were piles of stone, shaped like over- rofoam. Not one of the graves was an our backs, through the dust cloud that turned rowboats. I couldn’t recall the elaborately disguised entrance to a ne- had been kicked up by our arrival and name of our mission that night, its task farious subterranean lair. Though, upon out the other side. Through a crooked and purpose, its outcome. But that closer inspection, I noticed that the archway in the compound’s outer wall, graveyard stuck with me. I remembered dust that I’d remembered parting we’d enter the courtyard. And there, the pennants snapping in the wind, around the graves, like a current, actu- among the fig trees and goats, we’d find dust parting around the graves like a ally funnelled into the spaces between an American tourist with a camera slung current. the stones. In fact, it seemed to be get- around his neck. Having served his time Digger, who’d been closer to the ting sucked into those spaces, as though in Afghanistan, our fellow-American graveyard than I was, thought that the there were some sort of void below the had gone home, fallen in love, got mar- graves had looked suspicious. He graves, which lent a measure of cre- ried, and had the two bow-haired thought they resembled old cellar dence to Digger’s theory. daughters now hiding behind his legs. doors—the type, I imagined, you’d find From the top of one grave, I selected Maybe he’d wanted his girls to see how outside a farmhouse in Nebraska and a smooth, round stone, about the size

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 57 of a shot-put ball, and I heaved it into these things to remain, I suppose, in the the room. On the one hand, he loved the crater. event that an asteroid should slam into the war. On the other, he loved us. Joe, our interpreter, was right there the planet, sloughing away the atmo- Green clouds floated by on the flat to scold me. “I would expect such dis- sphere, boiling the seas, and instantly screens. Fuzzy static emanated from respectful behavior from the Taliban,” ending life on earth. Our troop—asphyx- the UHF. Archie, who, a month prior, he said, “but not from you.” iated, desiccated, frozen—would lie scat- had replaced Yaz, whom we’d lost in a Joe was Afghani. His real name was tered about the graveyard, preserved in soybean field in Kunduz, stood up from Jamaluddein. After the Soviet invasion the seamless void of space forever, or at the floor. He pulled a tin of breath mints of Afghanistan, in 1980, he’d escaped to least until other intelligent beings came from his shirt pocket. the U.K. with his parents; he was twelve along and discovered us. Perhaps because “I probably should’ve told you guys years old at the time. Now, as a middle- those beings existed as thin bars of blue about this sooner,” he said. aged man, he’d returned to help save his light, incapable of offensive or defensive The tin, Archie explained, had ar- country from ruin. He wore armor on action, they’d puzzle over our armor, our rived in the mail about two weeks ago. missions, but he carried no weapons. rifles, our grenades. They’d wonder, es- It was sent by Yaz’s widow, Connie. His interpretations of our enemy’s mut- pecially, why we’d worn such things to a I knew Connie from troop barbe- tered words were always clear and pre- graveyard. There would be no mystery, cues, Halloween parties, and the like. cise. He had a bad habit of walking two however, regarding the boot prints in the I remembered her, once, dressed as a steps behind me on patrol and closing crater, since they’d know, from the boots cowgirl, dancing in Digger’s kitchen. that distance whenever we made con- still on my feet, that I was the one who’d She’d fired cap guns at the ceiling, which tact with the enemy. Thus, I’d seen left them. Furthermore, they’d deduce, made the fluorescent light hazy. Yaz, conflagrations reflected in the smudged from the groove, that I’d descended into standing by the bean dip, had watched lenses of Joe’s glasses. I’d heard him the crater after a stone. Only one partic- his wife holster her toy pistols. He’d whisper prayers between sporadic det- ular stone could’ve cut that groove. And smiled as she spun an invisible lasso onations. His voice, with its derived they might find it, among a thousand over her head. Roping Yaz, Connie had British accent and perpetual tone of dis- others, right where I’d returned it, atop pulled him in, hand over hand, while appointment, exactly matched that of the grave, just moments before the as- he feigned resistance. His breath must my beleaguered conscience. teroid struck the earth. But none of that have smelled like corn chips. Hers, I So I jumped into the crater after the would explain why the stone had been imagined, smelled just fine. stone. I found it at the end of a long, in the crater in the first place. “Did one The tin that Archie showed us in concave groove in the dust. Turning to- of them throw it?” the curious bars of the ops hut contained a handful of Yaz’s ward the crater’s rim, I saw my boot prints blue light might ask themselves. ashes. in the dust, descending the slope, each “Connie asked me to find a good as perfect as Neil Armstrong’s first step he next night, in the ops hut, we place to spread these around,” he said. on the moon. On my way back up to the Tstill had nothing, intelligence-wise. “And I tried, but no place seems good graveyard, I was careful not to disturb Hal asked for suggestions again. An- enough. You guys got any ideas?” those tracks, or the flawless groove that other hush fell on the troop as we sat Digger suggested that we climb to had been carved by the stone. I wanted thinking. Hal stood in the middle of the top of Mt. Noshaq, the tallest peak in Afghanistan, and release Yaz’s ashes into a spindrift. Tull proposed a ver- dant meadow, north of J-bad, where he and Yaz once went AWOL to hunt elk. I made an argument for the tiny garden of purple flowers that had grown behind Yaz’s tent, where he used to spit out his toothpaste. Hal, however, wanted to return to Kunduz. Kunduz was four hundred kilome- tres north of Logar. The 47s flew higher than usual to get there. Frost formed on the windows. The engines whined, the rotors slipped, and the helicopter wobbled as if we were balancing at the end of a very long pole. I almost hoped that something would go wrong. Noth- ing catastrophic, of course. Just a low- oil light or the engine temperature creeping into the red. Something that would force us to land short and re- “That’s just my agent—pay him no heed.” consider. I didn’t want to see that field in Kunduz again, with its dark pud- dles reflecting the stars, its soybean shoots glowing white. I didn’t want to smell its fertilized tang. But nothing went wrong. We touched down on the western edge of the field, right where we’d touched down before, opposite the ditch that had given me so much trouble. We’d first landed in that field on a clear night in late September. Jupiter had been the focal point of a crescent moon. The ditch where we knew the enemy was hiding was east of our po- sition and outside small-arms range. I thought, at the time, that there were no more than half a dozen Taliban in that ditch. I’d based that estimate, partly, on how the shrubbery had quaked when they scurried around behind it. I’d con- sidered, as well, the frequency of AK fire, which, from that safe distance, sounded like movie projectors running out of film. For six Taliban wallowing in a ditch, I figured that a pair of “I finally got myself organized and unsubscribed from all those e-mails.” thousand- pound bombs, with delayed fuses, ought to do the trick. •• A combination of ash and sissoo grew in that ditch. The aforementioned shrubbery tangled the spaces between his AK, it seemed, was bent. The ma- ent in December. The ditch was un- the trees. I brought two jets in from jority of his volley curved skyward. changed, too, although the trees and the north, in trail formation. The first After Yaz fell, more Taliban came the shrubbery were gone. I stood in the bomb ignited every tree and shrub. The out of the ditch. Dozens, in fact. We same place that I’d stood while con- second launched burning trees like turned them around quickly, then we trolling the jets, back in September. moon shots. I turned to my right, ex- fell back, dragging Yaz. Joe was right The rest of the troop walked into the pecting to find Hal. Instead, I found behind me, breathing hard. Hal called field behind Archie. They formed a cir- Joe—hands in pockets, armored belly for CASEVAC, even though Yaz was al- cle around him at the spot where Yaz protruding. The burning trench was ready dead. Maybe he didn’t want us was killed. Archie took a knee and reflected in his dirty glasses. to think that he wouldn’t have done pulled the tin from his pocket. He Hal appeared from behind me. “You the same thing for us. Maybe he wanted opened the lid, and tapped the side of done?” he asked. us to believe that, as far as he was con- the tin with his finger. I didn’t want to What remained of the shrubbery cerned, none of us would ever be dead. see the ashes fall, so I turned around, was still, and the AKs had fallen silent. Or maybe he just wanted us to fight and there was Joe. “Yes,” I said. and not worry about it. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. We spread ourselves the length of I called out to every jet in the sky. the field for mop-up, then walked to- The first wave arrived just as the ime passed mysteriously in the ward the ditch. Stars jiggled in the pud- CASEVAC was lifting off with Yaz. I Tclouds. Unlike when the drones dles. The mud smelled like turpentine. brought the jets down in a clockwise could see the ground, and a haystack The soybean shoots resembled those spiral. I had them toss everything or a cow would spin around the flat albino creatures which live in the At- they had—five-hundred-, thousand-, screen like the second hand of a clock, lantic’s deepest trench. Hal walked next two-thousand-pounders—into the we had no idea how long we sat watch- to me. Yaz walked five men past Hal. ditch. A second wave of jets joined the ing the spinning clouds. Meanwhile, The machine gun that Yaz carried first, then a third, and a fourth. I the UHF clicked like something ra- weighed as much as the front axle of bombed the ditch until the mud pud- dioactive. This was the night after Kun- a Sentra. Its rounds were the size of dles in the soybean field steamed, until duz, or the night after our return to soup cans. As we stepped into small- the soybean shoots themselves melted, Kunduz. We still had no intelligence. arms range, Tull whistled like a bird, until it seemed as though I were stand- Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I tried in warning. Seconds later, a Taliban ing in the ditch and bombing the field. peace on for size. I felt proud that I’d popped out of the ditch. The barrel of The soybean field looked no differ- fought, but also glad that the war was

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 59 over. Hal asked for suggestions, and Joe raised his hand. Hal said, “You don’t need to raise UNLIMITED SOUP AND SALAD your hand.” “I had a teacher, in primary school, A little goes a long way when it comes to reality who used to hit my knuckles with a and the question of whether we can know it directly ruler,” Joe said. “I would like to pay him a visit.” rather than just through the gauze of our experience “I had a teacher like that,” Hal said. (not that it makes that much of a difference “Me, too,” Digger said. The rest of us nodded, remembering. when you’re right in the thick of it, as when performing Joe had last seen his teacher at his a bank heist, or competitive mummery among old school, in the town of Ghawas, in Wardak Province, in 1979. Joe had been family and friends, in which case your trust that eleven at the time. The teacher had the world is as it appears is more or less inviolate seemed ancient to Joe back then. In hindsight, however, Joe figured that his if unself-reflecting, the way a honeybee trusts nectar teacher had been no older than thirty. inhabits the petunia, or that her venom sac or Which meant that there was a good chance, in 2008, that the teacher was gland or whatever it is will continue pumping its venom still alive. He’d lived in a cabin near a long after the stinger anchors in the forearm forest, Joe remembered, though he couldn’t say exactly where. Joe assured of the intruder—often merely an innocent passerby— us, though, that he could find the cabin having ripped off the hindmost furze of her body if we could find his old school. We’d never had reason to patrol evisceratingly, which is to say, along with much of her through Ghawas, therefore we had no abdomen and digestive tract, plus whatever maps of tactical value. Digger, who al- ways planned our routes, turned to the else happens to come with, a kind of surrendering computer that contained the satellite as means of attack, which reads tragically wrong- imagery. Our imagery of Ghawas was both stale and irregular. Half of it dated from the winter of 2003, the other half It ran north along the river for a snowy way through the forest, the satellite from the spring of 2005. The school, mile, then the imagery switched back imagery ran out. The computer screen Joe said, was a stone building on the to spring, and the path cut east into a turned black. eastern bank of a river. It was situated warm field of grass. Joe, the student, “He lives on the other side of that just north of a bend in the river that used to follow the teacher, at a safe dis- forest,” Joe said. was shaped like a question mark. tance, across this field. Crouching in “How far?” Hal asked. Hal, Joe, and I stood behind Dig- the tall grass, he would fantasize about Joe touched a spot on the dark com- ger as he searched Ghawas for a river leaping out and knocking his teacher puter screen. “Here.” with a question mark. He found it in down. More than revenge, though, he’d The four of us looked at that spot. an image that had been captured by a wanted to study his teacher. He kept “I’m thinking callout,” Digger said satellite on a May afternoon in 2005. his eyes on his desk in class all day, hop- to Hal. Digger zoomed in, and we saw the riv- ing to stay out of trouble. The walk Callouts were best in unknown sit- er’s banks overflowing with snowmelt. home was his chance to actually see the uations. Like, we didn’t know whether Sunlight sparkled in the eddies. Reeds man. Joe described him as tall and pre- or not the cabin existed or how big it grew from stagnant pools. Digger maturely gaunt. He said that the teacher might be. We didn’t know who, other scrolled northbound in search of the had worn a dark robe for the walk home than the teacher, might be hiding in- school. The imagery changed to win- in winter. In spring, he remembered side, or how prepared he or they might ter. The river turned as dark as slate. A butterflies rising in the teacher’s wake be to mount a defense. To mitigate the hundred yards north of the question when he crossed the field. risks posed by these unknowns, a call- mark, on the river’s eastern bank, we “Keep going,” Joe said to Digger. out would proceed in stages. The 47s discovered a stone foundation poking Digger continued scrolling across would drop us off outside the cabin, through the ice. Joe thought it was too the sunlit field to a snow-covered for- beyond small-arms range. If there was small to be the ruins of his old school, est. The image of the forest had been fire from the cabin, we’d keep our dis- but then he realized that it had to be. captured on a January evening in 2003. tance, and I’d call in an air strike. If From the school’s foundation, Joe Shadows cast by the tall bare trees not, we’d run toward the cabin and flank guided Digger along the path that the looked like the minute hands of a clock, it on two sides. Digger would throw teacher had walked on his way home. all showing ten past the hour. Half- a flash-bang through a windowpane.

60 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 I saw a bleary-eyed trucker behind the wheel. As we floated over the moun- headed in retrospect, although it does lend a vividness tains into Wardak, I saw a waterfall to the question of to whom the bee’s business cascading into a crystalline lake. And when we turned above the ruins of Joe’s end belongs now—the one from whose person it old school I imagined the building as juts or her whose torn foreparts lie on the granite it once was—stone walls, slate roof, and leaded-glass windows. pavement lifelessly from having implanted it there). We sped over the field of tall grass But when appetizers alone can fill you up, why bother and over the woods at treetop level. The rotors beat louder as we pulled into a gambling on the main course, it will only distract hover. We touched down on either side you from what you have come to rely on as fact of the teacher’s cabin without taking fire. The 47s lifted off behind us and relies on its verifiability—in silence and so totally rotor wash shoved us through clumps you could almost weep for it, the way they do in Italy of dry grass and over warm boulders. Archie, carrying Yaz’s massive gun, ran at the end of an opera, an era, or even the idea of ahead of me, while Joe, with his red bull- anything familiar dying: a tradition; a truth; an olive horn, ran behind. The teacher’s cabin was the size of a one-car garage. A curl tree fallen to fungus whose narrow leaves made with of smoke rose from its stone chimney. wind a conversation we had found to be rejuvenative A neatly stacked woodpile stood behind it. Empty rabbit traps leaned against a to listen to, whose fruit and oil expressed therefrom wall. We formed lines on either side of we couldn’t get enough of, whose shade could reform, the cabin. Taking my position, I saw myself reflected in a dark-blue window. and whose earliest ancestor Athena’s constant hand We stood, still and quiet, outside did unveil in Attica as the greatest gift to humankind. the teacher’s cabin, as the 47s descended into a valley. Soon enough, their noise —Timothy Donnelly became a memory, then that memory faded. A cold wind rustled the grass. Our breath rose in thick clouds. I imag- Light would tear through the cabin. “No,” Hal interrupted. “You need ined the teacher lying awake in bed, Bangs would echo in the night. Once more fear in your voice.” wondering if he’d only dreamed of he- all was dark and quiet again, Joe would Joe and Digger sat on one side of licopters landing outside. read a statement into a bullhorn, in- the helicopter, Hal and I on the other. Hal nodded at Joe, and Joe raised forming the startled occupants that we Night parted around us and mended the bullhorn. were coalition forces, there to protect in our wake. “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t the rights of the Afghan people. “I don’t think ‘fear’ is the right word,” have any pudding! How can you have “Yeah,” Hal said. “Let’s go with a call- I said. any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!” out. But no flash-bang. And, Joe, I want “It’s Joe’s teacher,” Digger said. “Let Joe’s message echoed. A match flared you to say something different tonight.” him say it however he wants.” inside the cabin, turning the windows Hal chose a line from the end of a “The teacher in the song is staring orange. The teacher emerged in a night- song by Pink Floyd called “Another down an angry mob,” Hal said. “He cap, carrying a lit candle on a brass Brick in the Wall, Part Two.” The can’t just say the words.” candlestick. He squinted at us stand- song opens with the lyric “We don’t “I think my teacher is more crazy ing in the darkness. need no education,” and goes on to than afraid,” Joe said. Digger slapped away the candle. Hal denounce teachers as repressive and “All right,” Hal said. “Let’s hear it stepped on the flame. I zip-tied the old cynical. The song ends in a riot. As again.” man’s wrists, and Joe forced him to the students tear down their school, The windows in the MH-47 were kneel on the hard ground. a teacher’s voice can be heard above made of Plexiglas. They were shaped “What have I done?” he asked, like the din, shouting lessons such as like salad bowls. When you looked all the others. “Wrong! Do it again!” and “Stand still, through them, things on the outside We didn’t answer. Instead, we left laddie!” Hal chose one such lesson for appeared either close and blurry or far him, knees bleeding, to think about it, Joe to shout through the bullhorn. Joe away and blurry. There was a sweet while we pushed into his cabin to see practiced it on the helicopter ride to spot in the lens, however, where some- how he lived. ♦ Ghawas. thing would appear perfectly magnified. “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t Thus, as we banked over the highway NEWYORKER.COM have any pudding.” that ran between Kandahar and Kabul, Will Mackin on capturing the weirdness of war.

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 61 THE CRITICS

POP MUSIC CROSSROADS

The confusions of Taylor Swift.

BY CARRIE BATTAN

here are many inadvertently baby hedonist, meeting men in dark bles have turned: on “Reputation,” the Tcomic moments on Taylor bars, buying a dress just so her lover lovers are the ones offering Swift a Swift’s new album, “Reputation,” but can “take it off,” dropping a curse way out. At several points on the none are as jarring as an admission word—the first in her career stron- album, she focusses on a burgeoning made on “So It Goes.” In the first ger than “damn” or “hell”—and chan- romance that’s enabled her to tune flush of romance, she’s making a con- nelling a “Criminal”-era Fiona Apple. out the scornful noise of the past two fession to her love interest. “I’m so “They say I did something bad, but years. The rest of the world falls away chill,” she sings. “But you make me why’s it feel so good?” she sings when she is with the new man, who jealous.” This is Swift—the unyield- breathily, over a bleating electronic doesn’t bother reading the tabloids to ing perfectionist, the professionally beat, on “I Did Something Bad.” Her see what people are saying about her. heartbroken woman who has built a gaze, once trained on the failures and “My reputation’s never been worse, so career by enacting lyrical revenge on the betrayals of those in her personal you must like me for me,” she whis- her lovers—characterizing herself as orbit, has turned inward, and she rev- pers, on “Delicate.” She has found re- “chill.” She has grown fond of this els in a state of sin—sometimes clum- lief in an unexpected place. But anx- word, which also appears on “Deli- sily, sometimes deftly. (Thankfully, iety lurks beneath this escape, and you cate.” She asks her suitor, “Is it chill the album doesn’t contain much of get the sense that she’s looking over that you’re in my head?” If there is the cartoonish revenge-drama of its her shoulder at every moment. a wink in either of those lines, it’s lead single, “Look What You Made imperceptible. Me Do,” in which she says that the he current landscape of pop is This air of newfound jadedness is “old Taylor can’t come to the phone Tdominated by complicated and one of the many ways in which Swift right now. Why? Oh, ’cause she’s moody young women such as Halsey, broadcasts her long-overdue loss of dead.”) “It’s no surprise I turned you Lorde, and Lana Del Rey, who wear innocence on “Reputation,” an album in / ’Cause us traitors never win,” she their imperfections proudly and allow that captures the singer during the sings, eager to implicate herself, on darkness to surface in their music. most turbulent but commercially suc- “Getaway Car,” a song about leaving Wholesomeness has gone out of fash- cessful period of her career. Swift one man for another. Of course, she ion, and Swift’s abrupt moment of went into hibernation last year: the doesn’t surrender fully to her dis- maturation finds her playing catch-up. budding country star had become an graced status, and she can’t help but In her bid for self-defamation, is she international pop icon before sud- let self-pity seep in. “They’re burn- confessing that she is flawed, like ev- denly finding herself at the wrong ing all the witches, even if you aren’t eryone else, or simply trying to fit in? end of a long-running public feud one,” she sings, on “I Did Something Is she reclaiming the narrative, or ac- with Kanye West. Now she emerges Bad,” making a thinly veiled refer- ceding to it? “Reputation” raises these as a victim turned antihero. On “Rep- ence to political melodrama. questions, but it doesn’t bother an- utation,” she is embittered and vin- Swift, once a master of petty come- swering them. dictive toward a public that she feels uppance, has typically used her music Swift has always been lauded for has abandoned her, but she’s also lib- as a vessel for romantic anguish, in the emotional precision of her words erated from the imaginary harness of which she could connect with the and the nuance of her melodies. Even perfection. “They took the crown, but public imagination by detailing her when the sentiment and the tone were it’s all right,” she sings with a well- tortured relationships with unnamed too precious or wounded, there was rehearsed shrug on “Call It What men. Her songs provided personal ref- still room to appreciate the craft of You Want.” uge, and she was far more loyal to her her lines. “Loving him is like driving

These days, you can find Swift, a listeners than to her lovers. The ta- a new Maserati down a dead-end JOHN ST. TODD ABOVE:

62 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 On previous albums, Swift was far more loyal to her listeners than to her lovers. On “Reputation,” the tables have turned.

ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL CHO THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 63 street,” she sang on the title track of barrassing but unexpectedly thrilling. “Red,” from 2012, an album that boldly On “Reputation,” Swift has once straddled the pop-country divide. Part again teamed up with the producers singer, part diarist, Swift can switch Max Martin and Jack Antonoff, who effortlessly between swelling pop cho- helped imbue “1989” with a modern ruses and intricate, conversational but deferential take on eighties verses filled with wry and revealing synth-pop. This time, Antonoff has asides that point to the shrewd tacti- higher billing than Martin. It’s a leap cian beneath the veil of the whole- for the newly minted back-of-the- some country starlet. house superstar, who has helped to But, as Swift has grown into her revitalize the sometimes direction- pop stardom, she has abandoned much less world of contemporary pop made of the sharpness and specificity of her by white women, refashioning and expression. On both her previous refining the eighties for Lorde, album, “1989,” from 2014, and “Rep- St. Vincent, Pink, and Swift. But utation,” she moves away from her in- here Swift moves from the eighties ternal monologue, grappling instead to the present day, incorporating big- with the desires and the anxieties of room electronic flourishes and the some imagined audience. This ten- stuttering hiccups that are standard dency has produced flashes of cyni- in contemporary hip-hop. On “Del- cism and condescension toward her icate,” she even flirts with a version listeners which were formerly never of the light Caribbean sound that present in Swift’s world. “Don’t Blame has infiltrated pop radio in recent Me” feels like a focus-grouped scrap- years. And she stays within a nar - book of haphazard images concern- rower range in her vocal melodies, ing betrayal and lust. “I’m insane but sticking to chant-like choruses and I’m your baby / Echoes of your name sometimes obscuring her voice with inside my mind / Halo, hiding my a vocoder or burying it deep in the obsession / I once was poison ivy, but mix—another way that “Reputation” now I’m your daisy,” she sings. It is has ceded Swift’s ownership of her one of the most emotionally incoher- sound to a force bigger than her, if ent songs of her career. If she wants there is such a thing. to escape the image imposed on her Maybe this all sounds like a grand by the public, camouflaging herself in reckoning—with her public image, muddled pop cliché is certainly one with getting older, and with the in- strategy. creasingly fractured sound of pop This kind of thing would make today. And yet there is still some- “Reputation” feel generic and disem- thing about “Reputation” that feels bodied if its sound were not so skill- sealed off from the rest of the world. fully executed. Swift has not aban- Swift nods at the forces of hip-hop, doned her ambition, or her perfec- R. & B., and electronic dance music, tion ism. In the era of streaming sin- but she never fully invites them into gles, she is the rare young star who her space, which remains aseptic. For still worships at the altar of the album, Swift, and for Antonoff and Mar- an old-fashioned instinct that serves tin, this may be the last moment her surprisingly well. She is the most during which they can avoid con- consistent singer and songwriter of fronting the streaming-enabled, rap- her generation, and “Reputation” is idly growing margins. “Reputation” impressively short on filler. Every subtly bends the cautious Swift to chorus is huge and memorable, and the whims of the mainstream, but it she pulls off bracing tone shifts within still argues in favor of pop music as a single song. On the opener, “Ready a culturally neutral force. The album for It,” she moves elegantly from tries to nail down the center of pop menacing to exuberant and back at a time when such a thing hardly again, flaunting her old songwriting exists. In the future, when people chops. Even “End Game,” her col- tell the story of pop’s dying days as laboration with Future and Ed Shee- a monolithic entity, they might point ran—on paper, a nightmarish mis- to “Reputation” as one of its final match of styles—is not only not em- chapters. 

64 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 reading “Reservoir 13” (Catapult), the BOOKS fourth novel by the English writer Jon McGregor. Prosaically enough, it is a portrait of an English village during the ALL OVER TOWN course of thirteen years; the book awards roughly twenty pages to each year. Pro- The quietly expansive brilliance of the novelist Jon McGregor. saically enough, nothing much happens. True, at the start of “Reservoir 13,” a teen- BY JAMES WOOD age girl, Rebecca Shaw, goes missing; search parties are dispatched, divers plunge into the river, a helicopter scans the moors, the police stage a reconstruc- tion of her last movements. But Rebecca is never found, and the novel isn’t really about this loss; on the contrary, McGre- gor delicately labors to show with what terrifying ease the quick pulse of life dis- places the lost signal of death. Life grows over death, quite literally; the dead are at our mercy. The villagers continue the rhythms of their lives: they farm the land, run the pub, tend the shops, and teach at the school; they grow up and marry, they procreate, divorce, and die. More implacably even than this human tempo, nature has its own cease- less life rhythms, and it is in McGre- gor’s incantatory, lingering account of the annual rise and fall that his book achieves a visionary power. Like the Pi- randello of “A Breath of Air,” McGre- gor is alive to subtle shifts in the natu- ral world—to the breath that quickens and kindles in spring, to the steady, hazy lengths of summer and the downcome of autumn, and then the slow abeyance of winter. He sees nature in its constancy and its change, and he marks the tran- sitions of the seasons, doing so in a re- petitive, choric manner that displays the ne of my favorite short stories is fore. What has happened? Are they all change as constancy. Before him, in the OLuigi Pirandello’s beautiful, brief in league against him? When he asks English tradition, come the Hardy of “A Breath of Air.” An old man, para- the servant why she is sighing, she laughs, “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” the Law- lyzed by a stroke, sits in his bedroom, and he angrily dismisses her. Later, he rence of “The Rainbow” (whose open- while the life of the household stirs confronts his son, who assures him that ing pages bring alive the Biblical rhythms around him. The old man seethes with nothing is going on, nothing has changed. of generations), and the Woolf of “The anger and resentment, and on this par- But in the early evening, as a perfumed Waves” and “Between the Acts.” ticular day he is unusually perturbed. breeze gently pushes open the balcony In “The Waves,” Woolf returns, at Everyone seems to be acting strangely. door, he understands: spring has come. regular intervals, to painterly, almost rit- His little granddaughter enters the room, “The others could not see it. They could ualized descriptions of the sun’s passage, and is annoying and unruly—she runs not even feel it in themselves because on a single day, from dawn to dusk: toward his balcony, whose glass doors they were still part of life. But he who wedges of prose like the divisions on a she wants to open. His daughter-in-law, was almost dead, he had seen and felt it sundial. In the same way, McGregor uses who comes in to remove the child, seems there among them. . . . That was why certain repeated sentences as crossing not quite herself. Even the old man’s son they had all behaved differently, with- stones, to measure and navigate his dis- seems different: he uses a tone of voice out even knowing it.” tances. Each new year (also the start of that the patriarch has never heard be- I thought of Pirandello’s story while each new chapter) begins in the same way: “At midnight when the year turned McGregor’s latest novel, “Reservoir 13,” thrums with the soft gossip of life itself. there were fireworks.” Throughout the

ILLUSTRATION BY JON MCNAUGHT THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 65 “Penny Lane”-like tapestry of his first novel. “Even the Dogs” is about a group of people that most novels, and proba- bly most readers of novels, avoid or fail to see properly—young drug addicts and alcoholics, the desperate unemployed, drifting from hostel to support housing and on to makeshift squat, roaming around town looking for the next fix, or just for something to eat. We are in an unnamed city somewhere north of Lon- don, and again the narrative moves freely between different centers of conscious- ness. There is formal daring, too: parts of the book are narrated by a collective “we,” a chorus of unillusioned witnesses who, we gather, are dead, and are watch- “We’ve got a 417K in progress. Suspect is a two-foot ing their afflicted friends from beyond Victorian-era American Girl doll accessorized with a plaid frock, the grave. As the novel opens, this cho- matching bow, black Mary Janes, and a nine-inch Ka-Bar.” rus of shades is looking at the corpse of a man named Robert, a middle-aged al- coholic who has been found dead in his •• flat. The spectral witnesses follow the emergency services as they wrap the novel, he returns to an identical image in an unnamed northern city. Borrow- body in plastic, tag it, and take it out- of the river that flows through the vil- ing from old realism and newer mod- side to a waiting van. In the course of lage: “The river turned over beneath the ernism, McGregor activates the privi- the book, we learn something about Rob- packhorse bridge and ran on towards lege of roving omniscience, as he peers ert’s abbreviated life—his service in the the millpond weir.” (The novel carries into kitchen windows, back gardens, up- British Army, his marriage to a woman an epigraph from Wallace Stevens: “The stairs bedrooms. The novel is a repeti- named Yvonne, his alcoholism, and how river is moving. / The blackbird must be tive collage, awarding each character, or his daughter Laura became a heroin ad- flying.”) And, very beautifully, he watches household, only a few sentences or para- dict. We travel with the invisible chorus time and light lengthen and shorten. In graphs before swerving away elsewhere. as they crowd into the morgue; with the first year after Rebecca Shaw’s dis- We meet an exhausted graduate student; them, we witness the autopsy. The novel appearance, in April, the novel poses this some young people who have just come closes in the form of a transcript, the question: “How was it she hadn’t been back from a night of partying; a man re- rec ord of the official inquest into the found, still, as the days got longer and cently diagnosed with lung cancer; kids death of Robert Radcliffe. the sun cut farther into the valley and playing cricket in the street. “Even the Dogs” is a ferocious book, under the ash trees the first new ferns McGregor’s first novel received a lot at once intense and alarmingly unsenti- unfurled from the cold black soil.” All of excited attention (like his second and mental. What is described is so painful, is transition: “There were cowslips under his latest book, it was long-listed for the sordid, and hopeless that it is hard to the hedges and beside the road, offer- Booker Prize), but in comparison with read at times. For long sections, when ing handfuls of yellow flowers to the his later work it seems showy; it glistens we are not seeing events through the longer days.” with anxious youthful effort. The sen- dead eyes of the ghostly chorus we are All this risks making McGregor seem tences are self-consciously lyrical, but in and out of the tumbling mind of a more ethereal novelist than he is. He not quite brilliant enough to earn their Danny, an addict friend of Robert’s who understands that the novel is fed by fact inflation. There are moments of subtlety, discovers the dead body. Fearing the po- and social detail, by human beings and but they have to be dug out of the style. lice’s inquiry, Danny panics and takes off their foolish motives—the mulch of the And the book is uneasily poised on the running, accompanied by a dog named actual. His work is significant, and often lip of a conceit: the street, we learn, is Einstein, and spends a long time search- surprising, because he wants to mix the being described just before a climactic ing around town for Robert’s daughter, mundane and the visionary, and because and terrible moment, withheld until the to tell her what has happened. But he is his books don’t settle down into conven- end of the book. also looking for drugs, because “the rat- tional forms: in his understated English McGregor’s early triumph came with tles” are taking hold, and he needs to way, McGregor is a committedly exper- his third novel, “Even the Dogs” (2010), score. Roving Danny is the narrative de- imental writer. His first novel, “If No- which won the 2012 International IMPAC vice that allows us to gather impressions body Speaks of Remarkable Things,” Dublin Literary Award. That book is of the city, and to get a sense of Danny published in 2002, when he was twenty- also about a community, but one very and his cohort, and their tough life on six, tells the story of an English street different from the fairly wholesome the streets. The lyricism of the first novel

66 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 is cut back to bone-hard demotic, Mc- Gregor sounding at times like an En- glish version of James Kelman’s bleak immersion in Glaswegian despair and rebellion, “How Late It Was, How Late”:

Waiting outside the night shelter for them to open the doors. Hanging around for hours to make sure you get your place. . . . Waiting for the chemist to open to get the daily script. Wait- ing to score when it seems like no cunt can get hold of it, the way it was before Christmas, all of us loading up on jellies and benzos to keep the rattles off. Too much to handle if you score on top of all that and you’re not careful. But care- ful aint really the point. Waiting in the corridors at the courthouse for your case to be called. Waiting in the cells. Ben waiting in the cells for three days over Christ- mas, rattling to fuck in that concrete cube and racing for his dig when they finally let him go.

McGregor’s third novel is scrupu- lously brutal, and full of sadness. Grounded in the language and partic- ularities of its cruelly deposed charac- ters, it nevertheless amasses a rich pic- ture of a certain kind of urban English life, gray and impoverished, peopled by the dead, and the pale near-dead—“the boarded-up petrol station with the weeds where the pumps used to be, weaving up through the estate between the rail- way and the ringroad . . . past all those white walled houses with cars parked in the gardens, and the low wooden fences mostly broken, and ugly- sounding dogs jumping up behind the thin front doors. Two lads waiting by a phonebox on the corner, pacing and fidgeting and looking around so he said You waiting to score?” “ eservoir 13,” with its patient pas- Rtoral accretions, its descriptions of hedgerows and rivers and changing light, seems so utterly different a novel that one can wonder how the same writer produced both. But there are deep con- tinuities. Once again, McGregor de- scribes an entire community, from the vicar to the school caretaker, from the local potter in his studio to the sheep farmer on the moors. Again, we are somewhere in the North, in an unnamed place. Again, he omnisciently darts in and out of his characters’ lives, swerv- ing away and then returning a few pages later, using this repetitive construction to build his gradual collage. And, again, he has written a novel with a quiet but in- sistently demanding, even experimental

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 67 form. The word “collage” implies some- and white against the darkening hill. Gordon son was finding it difficult to get out of bed again, thing static and finally fixed, but the Jackson drove back from a stock sale and saw a but that was more down to the tremendous weight beauty of “Reservoir 13” is in fact rhyth- man by the side of the road, his arm held out as he’d put on than anything to do with the stroke. though asking for help. . . . He stopped and asked mic, musical, ceaselessly contrapuntal. if the man needed a lift. The man looked at Gor- Most conventional novels, after all, are don and didn’t speak. At the parish council there Of course, “things happen”: the last laid out rather like houses—a practical were more apologies recorded than there were passage alone discloses Mr. Jackson’s re- corridor leads to a set of illuminated people in the room, and Brian Fletcher was covery from a stroke, and the slow stealthy rooms, the scenes and dialogue and char- minded to adjourn. But a decision needed reach- onset of Mrs. Simpson’s ill health (prob- ing on the proposed public conveniences, so they acters’ thoughts all clearly delineated went ahead. There were hard winds in the eve- ably dementia), which will eventually but also opening into one another, each nings and the streetlights shook in the square. cause her early retirement. But because narrative moment awarded its own de- Late in the month Miss Carter brought her class the novel is not centered on any single served space. Even at the risk of a cer- to the Jacksons’ farm for the lambing. character or set of characters, it enacts a tain amount of repetitious boredom, radical diffusion of emphasis. Our atten- “Reservoir 13” is nothing like this. There Two hundred pages later, the novel is tion is directed not toward singular mo- are no conventional scenes, because still proceeding with this same imper- ments or events but toward the length nothing is lingered on long enough to turbable patience, the soft gossip of life of a life, and toward the ways in which develop singly. There is little direct di- itself: each life interacts with someone else’s. alogue. There are no moments set aside “Reservoir 13” is a novel without a pro- for privileged epiphany or revelation. At midnight when the year turned there were tagonist but filled with people. We fol- Instead, everyone is, as it were, crowded fires in three sheds at the allotments, and again low many imbricated lives: the teen-agers into one room; the narrative then pro- they had burned out before the fire brigade ar- (Lynsey, James, Sophie) who knew Re- rived. At the school the lights were seen on early, ceeds with the gentle tedium of an al- and when Mrs. Simpson walked from her car and becca Shaw (eventually they grow up manac or a local newspaper report, mix- came into the staff room she was surprised to see and go to university, and some of them ing news of “events” in the natural world Miss Dale already sitting there, working on a les- do not return to the village); the vicar, with their equivalents in the human son plan and eating toast. They looked at each Jane Hughes, who has the usual Angli- realm: other, and Miss Dale asked if Mrs. Simpson had can pallor of faith (“she held out her overslept. I don’t know, Mrs. Simpson said. I In the beech wood the foxes gave birth, don’t, I don’t really know. She seemed confused. hands in a gesture she hoped might re- earthed down in the dark and wet with pain, the The nights were hard with frost. On the high semble prayer”); Martin and Ruth Fowler, blind cubs pressing against their mothers for frozen ground a ewe stumbled and died, and the who run the local butcher shop, until the warmth. The dog foxes went out fetching food. buzzards came to feed. A smell of coal smoke business goes under and the couple sep- The primroses yellowed up in the woods and hung over the village through the days. In his arate (Martin finds work at the local su- along the road. The reservoirs were a gleaming studio Geoff Simmons sat on the sofa and watched silver-gray, scuffed by the wind and lapping the last batch dry. He had left them out too long permarket’s meat counter, while Ruth against the breakwater shores. In the evening a and they were cracking. . . . At the Jacksons’ the opens a fancy organic store in a more single runner came silently down the moor, steady carers were coming only twice a week now. Jack- affluent town); Su Cooper, who works for the BBC and then gets laid off; Rich- ard Clark, who works overseas as a con- sultant and returns to the village only to see his ailing mother (his two sisters, who have remained nearby, judge him for his long absences); and on and on, through thirteen years of sameness and change—“yesterday brought to today so lightly!,” as Elizabeth Bishop has it. And there is, of course, a further diffu- sion—these human lives are seen in coun- terpoint to natural life, the different life rhythms pushed into the same time sig- nature. When Mr. Jones, the school care- taker, is arrested for having child por- nography on his computer, it has been raining for so long “that the cricket field turned into a bog and the bonfire dis- play was called off.” When Richard Clark’s mother dies, the sheep have started to shed their wool, and the shear- ing is to begin. The almanac rolls through the seasons, and as it does, what beau- ties this novel discovers and creates, “I told you it wasn’t ‘bring your own banana.’ ” as profligate as nature itself! “In the mornings the air outside the Jacksons’ her death, and is visited regularly by her lambing shed was dashed with swallows.” son— McGregor capturing in one sen- When there is blasting in the quarry, the tence an experience many of his older villagers hear “a low crumping shudder readers will recognize with pain: “Some that shrugged huge slabs of limestone to mornings when he arrived he thought the quarry floor.” Or this description of she wasn’t in the bed at all.” June nights: “The sun didn’t set so much That entire tableau is the little eco- as drift into the distance, leaving a trail system of the village—the beech woods, of midsummer light that seemed to lin- the allotments, the pub, the school, the ger until morning.” church tower, the cricket ground, the A way of narrating that might be river, and the quarry. At night, far away merely whimsical if played with for a up on the moor, you can see the lights few pages becomes rigorous of speeding cars on the mo- when practiced systemati- torway. The village may be cally over two hundred and physically beautiful, but ninety. McGregor’s book can its inhabitants do not al- sound cozy: the villagers and ways behave as handsomely: the natural world at their ap- McGregor often adopts a pointed tasks; a regulated, passive construction (“The conservative, and somewhat girl’s parents were seen,” and impermeable microcosm; so on), to evoke a world of the dribbling gossip of small close-minded surveillance. happenings. But McGregor’s This is a society built on the uncanny evenness of tone, English arts of omission and the unvaried repetition (the river turn- indirection. Mr. Jones does his time for ing over beneath the packhorse bridge), possession of child porn, and then re- becomes, at length, a demanding kind of joins the community, without great re- inquiry, not least because he is unafraid percussion. Earlier in the book, his do- to court the reader’s boredom. Indeed, he mestic arrangements are described thus: plays with tedium; he teases us with it. “Jones the caretaker lived with his sister The book might be the most prosaic story at the end of the unmade lane by the al- I have ever read (along with being the lotments, next to the old Tucker place. most English). We are taxed with lines His age was uncertain but he’d worked like: “It was a good year for hazelnuts”; at the school for thirty years. His sister “At the allotments Jones planted onions.” was younger and was never seen. She was Or: “Richard Clark’s mother had her up- understood to be troubled in some way.” stairs room redecorated.” And: “Frank McGregor is a masterly understater. Parker submitted his report on verge In the end, though, despite these oc- maintenance to the parish council.” My casional hints of critique, life is seen here favorite, a very English locution, has to as somehow beyond moral accounting, do with weather: “There was weather another remarkable achievement of the and the days began to shorten.” But once book’s slow, riverine form, and another the reader learns to slow down, learns to subtle unravelling of what we think of as watch things grow (and watch things the conventional project of the novel. die), nothing is really tedious, nothing is Down on the ground, moment by mo- alien. And everything belongs together. ment, life is, of course, made up of di- I can’t pretend to be very interested in lemmas, choices, and bargains. But seen Richard Clark’s mother getting her up- from afar, or so McGregor seems to say, stairs room redecorated, but it is a small seen from a position of pagan omni- part of the entire tableau. A few lines science, looked at in the way we might later, the window of this room is opened, look at nature—as an unending cycle of to dispel the paint fumes, and “she could birth and death and eventual obscurity— hear people walking up to the square, the life appears more instinctual than moral, faint background whisper of the weir, the and as animal as it is human. Winter sound of Thompson’s herd unsettled about turns to spring: as in Pirandello’s story, something.” There the narrative pauses part of life quickens while another part for a moment, as it does a few years later of life is dying. Above all, life blindly goes when Richard’s mother is lying in the on, and Rebecca Shaw will eventually hospital, frail and tiny, not long before be forgotten, along with everyone else. 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 69 the Pulitzer Prize, in 1984, and “New BOOKS and Selected Poems” won the National Book Award, in 1992. Still, perhaps be- cause she writes about old-fashioned THE ART OF PAYING subjects—nature, beauty, and, worst of all, God—she has not been taken se- ATTENTION riously by most poetry critics. None of her books has received a full-length re- Fans of Mary Oliver’s poetry understand something that her critics don’t. view in the Times. In the Times’ cap- sule review of “Why I Wake Early” BY RUTH FRANKLIN (2004), the nicest adjective the writer, Stephen Burt, could come up with for her work was “earnest.” In a Times essay disparaging an issue of the magazine O devoted to poetry, in which Oliver was interviewed by Maria Shriver, the critic David Orr wrote of her poetry that “one can only say that no animals appear to have been harmed in the mak- ing of it.” (The joke falls flat, consid- ering how much of Oliver’s work re- volves around the violence of the natural world.) Orr also laughed at the idea of using poetry to overcome per- sonal challenges—“if it worked as self- help, you’d see more poets driving BMWs”—and manifested a general discomfort at the collision of poetry and popular culture. “The chasm be- tween the audience for poetry and the audience for O is vast, and not even the mighty Oprah can build a bridge from empty air,” he wrote. If anyone could build such a bridge, it might be Oliver. A few of her books have appeared on best-seller lists; she is often called the most beloved poet in America. Gwyneth Paltrow reads her, and so does Jessye Norman. Her poems are plastered all over Pinterest and In- “ ary Oliver is saving my life,” consolation: “I immediately felt more stagram, often in the form of inspira- MPaul Chowder, the title charac- sure of what I was doing.” Of her poems, tional memes. Cheryl Strayed used the ter of Nicholson Baker’s novel “The An- he says, “They’re very simple. And yet final couplet of “The Summer Day,” thologist,” scrawls in the margins of Ol- each has something.” probably Oliver’s most famous poem, iver’s “New and Selected Poems, Volume Coming from Chowder, this state- as an epigraph to her popular memoir, One.” A struggling poet, Chowder is ment is a surprise. Yes, he’s a fictional “Wild”: “Tell me, what is it you plan to suffering from a severe case of writer’s character, but he’s precisely the kind of do / with your one wild and precious block. His girlfriend, with whom he’s person who tends to look down on life?” Krista Tippett, interviewing Oli- lived for eight years, has just left him, Mary Oliver’s poetry. (In fact, the en- ver for her radio show, “On Being,” re- ostensibly because he has been unable tire Mary Oliver motif in “The An- ferred to Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese,” to write the long-overdue introduction thologist” may well be a sly joke on which offers a consoling vision of the to a poetry anthology that he has been Baker’s part.) By any measure, Oliver redemption possible in ordinary life, as putting together. For solace and inspi- is a distinguished and important poet. “a poem that has saved lives.” ration, he turns to poets who have been She published her first collection, “No Oliver’s new book, “Devotions” his touchstones—Louise Bogan, The- Voyage and Other Poems,” in 1963, when (Penguin Press), is unlikely to change odore Roethke, Sara Teasdale—before she was twenty- eight; “American Prim- the minds of detractors. It’s essentially discovering Oliver. In her work, he finds itive,” her fourth full-length book, won a greatest-hits compilation. But for her fans—among whom I, unasham- Oliver uses nature as a springboard to the sacred—the beating heart of her work. edly, count myself—it offers a welcome

70 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY DEANNA HALSALL opportunity to consider her body of interested than many of the kids who ceeded,” she has said. She tells of being work as a whole. Part of the key to Ol- did enter into the church.” Nature, how- greeted regularly at the hardware store iver’s appeal is her accessibility: she writes ever, with its endless cycles of death by the local plumber; he would ask how blank verse in a conversational style, and rebirth, fascinated her. Walking in her work was going, and she his: “There with no typographical gimmicks. But the woods, she developed a method was no sense of éliteness or difference.” an equal part is that she offers her read- that has become the hallmark of her On the morning the Pulitzer was an- ers a spiritual release that they might poetry, taking notice simply of what- nounced, she was scouring the town not have realized they were looking for. ever happens to present itself. Like dump for shingles to use on her house. Oliver is an ecstatic poet in the vein of Rumi, another of her models, Oliver A friend who had heard the news no- her idols, who include Shelley, Keats, seeks to combine the spiritual life with ticed her there and joked, “Looking for and Whitman. She tends to use nature the concrete: an encounter with a deer, your old manuscripts?” as a springboard to the sacred, which is the kisses of a lover, even a deformed Oliver’s work hews so closely to the the beating heart of her work. Indeed, and stillborn kitten. “To pay attention, local landmarks—Blackwater Pond, a number of the poems in this collec- this is our endless and proper work,” Herring Cove Beach—that a travel tion are explicitly formed as prayers, al- she writes. writer at the Times once put together a beit unconventional ones. As she writes In 1953, the day after she graduated self-guided tour of Provincetown using in “The Summer Day”: from high school, Oliver left home. On only Oliver’s poetry. She did occasional a whim, she decided to drive to Aus- stints of teaching elsewhere, but for the I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall terlitz, in upstate New York, to visit most part stayed unusually rooted to down Steepletop, the estate of the late poet her home base. “People say to me: into the grass, how to kneel down in the Edna St. Vincent Millay. She and Mil- wouldn’t you like to see Yosemite? The grass, lay’s sister Norma became friends, and Bay of Fundy? The Brooks Range?” she how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll Oliver “more or less lived there for the wrote, in her essay collection “Long through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. next six or seven years,” helping orga- Life.” “I smile and answer, ‘Oh yes— nize Millay’s papers. She took classes sometime,’ and go off to my woods, my The cadences are almost Biblical. “At- at Ohio State University and at Vassar, ponds, my sun-filled harbor, no more tention is the beginning of devotion,” though without earning a degree, and than a blue comma on the map of the she urges elsewhere. eventually moved to New York City. world but, to me, the emblem of every- On a return visit to Austerlitz, in thing.” Like Joseph Mitchell, she col- liver, as a Times profile a few years the late fifties, Oliver met the photog- lects botanical names: mullein, buck- Oago put it, likes to present herself rapher Molly Malone Cook, ten years thorn, everlasting. Early poems often as “the kind of old-fashioned poet who her senior. “I took one look and fell, depict her foraging for food, gathering walks the woods most days, accompa- hook and tumble,” she would later write. mussels, clams, mushrooms, or berries. nied by dog and notepad.” (The occa- “M. took one look at me, and put on It’s not an affectation—she and Cook, sion for the profile was the release of her dark glasses, along with an obvious especially when they were starting out a book of Oliver’s poems about dogs, dose of reserve.” Cook lived near Oli- and quite poor, were known to feed which, naturally, endeared her further ver in the East Village, where they began themselves this way. to her loyal readers while generating a to see each other “little by little.” In But the lives of animals—giving new round of guffaws from her crit- 1964, Oliver joined Cook in Province- birth, hunting for food, dying—are ics.) She picked up the habit as a child town, Massachusetts, where Cook for Oliver’s primary focus. In comparison, in Maple Heights, Ohio, where she several years operated a photography the human is self-conscious, cerebral, was born, in 1935. Walking the woods, studio and ran a bookshop. (Among imperfect. “There is only one ques- with Whitman in her knapsack, was her employees was the filmmaker John tion; / how to love this world,” Oliver her escape from an unhappy home life: Waters, who later remembered Cook writes, in “Spring,” a poem about a black a sexually abusive father, a neglectful as “a wonderfully gruff woman who al- bear, which concludes, “all day I think mother. “It was a very dark and bro- lowed her help to be rude to obnoxious of her— / her white teeth, / her word- ken house that I came from,” she told tourist customers.”) The two women lessness, / her perfect love.” The child Tippett. “To this day, I don’t care for remained together until Cook’s death, who had trouble with the concept of the enclosure of buildings.” She began in 2005, at the age of eighty. All Oli- Resurrection in church finds it more writing poetry at the age of thirteen. ver’s books, to that date, are dedicated easily in the wild. “These are the woods “I made a world out of words,” she told to Cook. you love, / where the secret name / of Shriver in the interview in O. “And it During Oliver’s forty-plus years in every death is life again,” she writes, in was my salvation.” Provincetown—she now lives in Flor- “Skunk Cabbage.” Rebirth, for Oliver, It was in childhood as well that Ol- ida, where, she says, “I’m trying very is not merely spiritual but often in- iver discovered both her belief in God hard to love the mangroves”—she seems tensely physical. The speaker in the and her skepticism about organized re- to have been regarded as a cross between early poem “The Rabbit” describes how ligion. In Sunday school, she told Tip- a celebrity recluse and a village oracle. bad weather prevents her from acting pett, “I had trouble with the Resurrec- “I very much wished not to be noticed, on her desire to bury a dead rabbit she’s tion. . . . But I was still probably more and to be left alone, and I sort of suc- seen outside. Later, she discovers “a small

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 71 bird’s nest lined pale / and silvery and ful,” Oliver writes elsewhere—and that It could be what Rilke meant, when the chicks— / are you listening, death?— everything must eventually find its he wrote, warm in the rabbit’s fur.” There are proper place: You must change your life. shades of E. E. Cummings, Oliver’s Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, onetime neighbor in Manhattan, in that the world offers itself to your imagination, Is it, in fact, what Rilke meant? His interjection. calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and poem treats an encounter with a work Oliver can be an enticing celebrant exciting— of art that is also, somehow, an encoun- of pure pleasure—in one poem she imag- over and over announcing your place ter with a god—a headless figure that in the family of things. ines herself, with a touch of eroticism, nonetheless seems to see him and chal- as a bear foraging for blackberries—but In addition to Rumi, Oliver’s spiri- lenge him. We don’t know why it calls more often there is a moral to her poems. tual model for some of these poems on him to change his life; or, if he chooses It tends to be an answer, or an attempt might be Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Archaic to heed its call, how he will transform; at an answer, to the question that seems Torso of Apollo,” a frequent reference or what it is about the speaker’s life that to drive just about all Oliver’s work: point. Rilke’s poem, a tightly constructed now seems inadequate in the face of art, How are we to live? “Wild Geese” opens sonnet, depicts the speaker confronting in the face of the god. The words come with these lines: a broken statue of the god and ends like a thunderbolt at the end of the poem, with the abrupt exhortation “You must without preparation or warning. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees change your life.” Oliver’s “Swan,” a In keeping with the American im- for a hundred miles through the desert poem composed entirely in questions, pulse toward self-improvement, the repenting. presents an encounter with a swan rather transformation Oliver seeks is both sim- You only have to let the soft animal of your than with a work of art, but to her the pler and more explicit. Unlike Rilke, body bird is similarly powerful. “And have she offers a blueprint for how to go love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will you too finally figured out what beauty about it. Just pay attention, she says, to tell you mine. is for? / And have you changed your life?” the natural world around you—the the poem concludes. Similarly, “Invita- goldfinches, the swan, the wild geese. The speaker’s consolation comes from tion” asks the reader to linger and watch They will tell you what you need to the knowledge that the world goes on, goldfinches engaged in a “rather ridic- know. With a few exceptions, Oliver’s that one’s despair is only the smallest ulous performance”: poems don’t end in thunderbolts. Theirs part of it—“May I be the tiniest nail in It could mean something. is a gentler form of moral direction. the house of the universe, tiny but use- It could mean everything. he poems in “Devotions” seem to Thave been chosen by Oliver in an attempt to offer a definitive collection of her work. More than half of them are from books published in the past twenty or so years. Since the new book, at Oli- ver’s direction, is arranged in reverse chronological order, this more recent work, in which her turn to prayer becomes even more explicit, sets the tone. In keeping with the title of the collection—one meaning of “devotion” is a private act of worship—many poems here would not feel out of place in a religious service, al- beit a rather unconventional one. “Lord God, mercy is in your hands, pour / me a little,” she writes, in “Six Recognitions of the Lord.” “Praying” urges the reader to “just / pay attention, then patch / a few words together and don’t try / to make them elaborate, this isn’t / a contest but the doorway / into thanks.” Although these poems are lovely, offering a singular and often startling way of looking at God, the predomi- nance of the spiritual and the natural in the collection ultimately flattens Oli- ver’s range. For one thing, her love po- etry—almost always explicitly addressed to a female beloved—is largely absent. “Our World,” a collection of Cook’s BRIEFLY NOTED photographs that Oliver put together after her death, includes a poignant prose poem, titled “The Whistler,” about Ol- Ants Among Elephants, by Sujatha Gidla (Farrar, Straus & Gi- iver’s surprise at suddenly discovering, roux). “Your life is your caste, your caste is your life,” Gidla after three decades of cohabitation, that writes, in this memoir of her family’s existence as untouch- her partner can whistle. The whistling ables in India. Her narrative centers on her uncle Satyam, a is so unexpected that Oliver at first won- poet and a Maoist revolutionary, who leads a life of unwaver- ders if a stranger is in the house. Her ing resistance, acting in political theatre productions, facilitat- delight turns melancholic as she reflects ing intercaste marriages, and organizing armed insurrections. on the inability to completely possess Despite being elderly when Gidla tries to record his stories, the beloved: Satyam often vanishes to join guerrilla fighters. His feats of I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow activism and sacrifice run parallel to blind selfishness: he has and ankle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. always depended on others, particularly women, to do every- Anger too. And the devotions. And for all that, thing for him, even clipping his nails. Gidla examines how do we even begin to know each other? Who is oppression drives the oppressed to exploit those who are even this I’ve been living with for thirty years? more vulnerable. This clear, dark, lovely whistler? Oriana Fallaci, by Cristina De Stefano, translated from the Ital- Also missing is Oliver’s darker work, ian by Marina Harss (Other Press). Fallaci, one of Italy’s most the poems that don’t allow for consola- famous and feared journalists, died in 2006, leaving an adven- tion. “Dream Work” (1986), her fifth and turous body of work. This engrossing biography portrays a writer possibly her best book, comprises a weird who, in her hunger for action and in her autobiographical style chorus of disembodied voices that might of reportage, always thrust herself into a story. Fallaci lived come from nightmares, in poems detail- many lives: an adolescent anti-Fascist partisan; an intrepid cor- ing Oliver’s fear of her father and her respondent, who was gravely injured during Mexico’s Dirty War; memories of the abuse she suffered at and, late in life, a vehement Islamophobic and anti-immigrant his hands. The dramatic tension of that voice. She drew on inexhaustible reserves of boldness and in- book derives from the push and pull of tensity to establish herself in the boys’ club of international jour- the sinister and the sublime, the juxta- nalism. “Subservience is a mortal sin,” she once said. position of a poem about suicide with another about starfish. A similar dynamic Smile, by Roddy Doyle (Viking). Victor Forde was once a Dub- is at work in “American Primitive,” which lin music journalist, but, as this novel opens, his life has emp- often finds the poet out of her comfort tied. He spends his time alone in the pub, scrolling through his zone—in the ruins of a whorehouse, or estranged wife’s Facebook page. When a stranger approaches visiting someone she loves in the hospi- him and says that he knows exactly who Victor is, a slow, men- tal. More recently, “The Fourth Sign of acing memory game begins. Victor recalls his childhood, in- the Zodiac” ruminates on a diagnosis of cluding abuse at the hands of the Christian Brothers; his ro- lung cancer she received in 2012. “Do you mance with a celebrity chef; the book he has failed, repeatedly, need a prod? / Do you need a little dark- to write. His attempts to reckon with his history leave him both ness to get you going?” the poem asks. enlightened and permanently damaged. In contrast to the manic “Let me be as urgent as a knife, then.” colloquial energy of Doyle’s early work, this novel, his eleventh, We do need a little darkness to get feels moody and spare—a meditation on how wisdom wounds. us going. That side of Oliver’s work is necessary to fully appreciate her in her The Ruined House, by Ruby Namdar, translated from the Hebrew usual exhortatory or petitionary mode. by Hillel Halkin (Harper). Andrew Cohen, the protagonist of Nobody, not even she, can be a praise this début novel, is a star professor at N.Y.U. with a home life poet all the time. The revelations, if they enriched by saintly women—clever daughters, a generous ex- come, should feel hard-won. When Ol- wife, a charming young girlfriend. In chapters dated accord- iver picks her way through the violence ing to both the Gregorian and the Hebrew calendars, he be- and the despair of human existence to gins to experience frequent, graphic visions of ruin and carnage. something close to a state of grace—a The narrative, which culminates in the September 11th at- state for which, if the popularity of re- tacks, oscillates violently between first person and third, past ligion is any guide, many of us feel an and present tense, New York’s daily rhythms and the destruc- inexhaustible yearning—her release tion of Jerusalem’s Holy Temple. Namdar aims to show a com- seems both true and universal. As she placent, secular life rocked by the apocalyptic burden of his- puts it, “When you write a poem, you torical trauma, yet the extent of Andrew’s transformation is write it for anybody and everybody.”  ultimately unclear.

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 73 groes, “though in their Figure they carry BOOKS some resemblances of Manhood, yet are indeed no Men” but, rather, “Crea- tures destitute of Souls, to be ranked BEASTLY among Brute Beasts, and treated ac- cordingly.” Then there’s the Holocaust. Perpetrators of violence, we’re told, dehumanize their victims. The truth is worse. Like many Jews my age, I was raised with stories of gas chambers, gruesome BY PAUL BLOOM medical experiments, and mass graves— an evil that was explained as arising from the Nazis’ failure to see their vic- tims as human. In the words of the psychologist Herbert C. Kelman, “The inhibitions against murdering fellow human beings are generally so strong that the victims must be deprived of their human status if systematic kill- ing is to proceed in a smooth and or- derly fashion.” The Nazis used bureau- cratic euphemisms such as “transfer” and “selection” to sanitize different forms of murder. As the anthropologist Claude Lévi- Strauss noted, “humankind ceases at the border of the tribe, of the linguis- tic group, even sometimes of the vil- lage.” Today, the phenomenon seems inescapable. Google your favorite de- spised human group—Jews, blacks, Arabs, gays, and so on—along with words like “vermin,” “roaches,” or “an- imals,” and it will all come spilling out. Some of this rhetoric is seen as inappropriate for mainstream dis- course. But wait long enough and you’ll hear the word “animals” used even by respectable people, referring to terrorists, or to Israelis or Palestin- ians, or to undocumented immigrants, or to deporters of undocumented im- recent episode of the dystopian of Europe in the nineteen- forties. migrants. Such rhetoric shows up in A television series “Black Mirror” The philosopher David Living- the speech of white supremacists— begins with a soldier hunting down stone Smith, commenting on this ep- but also when the rest of us talk about and killing hideous humanoids called isode on social media, wondered white supremacists. roaches. It’s a standard science-fiction whether its writer had read his book It’s not just a matter of words. At scenario, man against monster, but “Less Than Human: Why We De- Auschwitz, the Nazis tattooed num- there’s a twist: it turns out that the sol- mean, Enslave, and Exterminate Oth- bers on their prisoners’ arms. Through- dier and his cohort have brain implants ers” (St. Martin’s). It’s a thoughtful out history, people have believed that that make them see the faces and bod- and exhaustive exploration of human it was acceptable to own humans, and ies of their targets as monstrous, to cruelty, and the episode perfectly cap- there were explicit debates in which hear their pleas for mercy as noxious tures its core idea: that acts such as scholars and politicians mulled over squeaks. When our hero’s implant genocide happen when one fails to whether certain groups (such as blacks fails, he discovers that he isn’t a brave appreciate the humanity of others. and Native Americans) were “natural defender of the human race—he’s a One focus of Smith’s book is the at- slaves.” Even in the past century, there murderer of innocent people, part of a titudes of slave owners; the seventeenth- were human zoos, where Africans campaign to exterminate members century missionary Morgan Godwyn were put in enclosures for Europeans of a despised group akin to the Jews observed that they believed the Ne- to gawk at. Early psychological research on de- Violent acts are often motivated, rather than countermanded, by ethical norms. humanization looked at what made

74 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY GÉRARD DUBOIS the Nazis different from the rest of Meanwhile, Jewish girls were sexually abused, include suicide bombings, honor kill- us. But psychologists now talk about and older Jewish men were forced to perform ings, and the torture of prisoners the ubiquity of dehumanization. Nick public physical exercise. during war, but Fiske and Rai extend Haslam, at the University of Mel- the list to gang fights and violence to- bourne, and Steve Loughnan, at the The Jews who were forced to scrub ward intimate partners. For Fiske and University of Edinburgh, provide a the streets—not to mention those sub- Rai, actions like these often reflect the list of examples, including some pain- jected to far worse degradations—were desire to do the right thing, to exact fully mundane ones: “Outraged mem- not thought of as lacking human emo- just vengeance, or to teach someone bers of the public call sex offenders tions. Indeed, if the Jews had been a lesson. There’s a profound continu- animals. Psychopaths treat victims thought to be indifferent to their treat- ity between such acts and the pun- merely as means to their vicious ends. ment, there would have been nothing ishments that—in the name of re- The poor are mocked as libidinous to watch here; the crowd had gath- quital, deterrence, or discipline—the dolts. Passersby look through home- ered because it wanted to see them criminal-justice system lawfully im- less people as if they were transpar- suffer. The logic of such brutality is poses. Moral violence, whether re- ent obstacles. Dementia sufferers are the logic of metaphor: to assert a like- flected in legal sanctions, the killing represented in the media as shuffling ness between two different things holds of enemy soldiers in war, or punish- zombies.” power only in the light of that differ- ing someone for an ethical transgres- The thesis that viewing others as ence. The sadism of treating human sion, is motivated by the recognition objects or animals enables our very beings like vermin lies precisely in the that its victim is a moral agent, some- worst conduct would seem to explain recognition that they are not. one fully human. a great deal. Yet there’s reason to What about violence more gener- think that it’s almost the opposite of ally? Some evolutionary psychologists n the fiercely argued and timely the truth. and economists explain assault, rape, Istudy “Down Girl: The Logic of and murder as rational actions, benefit- Misogyny” (Oxford), the philosopher t some European soccer games, ting the perpetrator or the perpetra- Kate Manne makes a consonant ar- Afans make monkey noises at Af- tor’s genes. No doubt some violence— gument about sexual violence. “The rican players and throw bananas at and a reputation for being willing and idea of rapists as monsters exonerates them. Describing Africans as monkeys able to engage in violence—can serve by caricature,” she writes, urging us is a common racist trope, and might a useful purpose, particularly in more to recognize “the banality of misog- seem like yet another example of de- brutal environments. On the other yny,” the disturbing possibility that humanization. But plainly these fans hand, much violent behavior can be “people may know full well that those don’t really think the players are mon- seen as evidence of a loss of control. they treat in brutally degrading and keys; the whole point of their behav- It’s Criminology 101 that many crimes inhuman ways are fellow human be- ior is to disorient and humiliate. To are committed under the influence of ings, underneath a more or less thin believe that such taunts are effective drugs and alcohol, and that people veneer of false consciousness.” is to assume that their targets would who assault, rape, and murder show Manne is arguing against a weighty be ashamed to be thought of that way— less impulse control in other aspects and well-established school of thought. which implies that, at some level, you of their lives as well. In the heat of Catharine A. MacKinnon has posed think of them as people after all. passion, the moral enormity of the vi- the question: “When will women be Consider what happened after Hit- olent action loses its purchase. human?” Rae Langton has explored ler annexed Austria, in 1938. Timothy But “Virtuous Violence: Hurting the idea of sexual solipsism, a doubt Snyder offers a haunting description and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, that women’s minds exist. And count- in “Black Earth: The Holocaust as and Honor Social Relationships” less theorists talk about “objectifica- History and Warning”: (Cambridge), by the anthropologist tion,” the tendency to deny women’s Alan Fiske and the psychologist Tage autonomy and subjecthood, and to The next morning the “scrubbing parties” Rai, argues that these standard ac- scant their experiences. Like Fiske and began. Members of the Austrian SA, working from lists, from personal knowledge, and from counts often have it backward. In many Rai, Manne sees a larger truth in the the knowledge of passersby, identified Jews instances, violence is neither a cold- opposite tendency. In misogyny, she and forced them to kneel and clean the streets blooded solution to a problem nor a argues, “often, it’s not a sense of wom- with brushes. This was a ritual humiliation. failure of inhibition; most of all, it en’s humanity that is lacking. Her hu- Jews, often doctors and lawyers or other pro- doesn’t entail a blindness to moral manity is precisely the problem.” fessionals, were suddenly on their knees per- forming menial labor in front of jeering crowds. considerations. On the contrary, mo- Men, she proposes, have come to Ernest P. remembered the spectacle of the rality is often a motivating force: “Peo- expect certain things from women— “scrubbing parties” as “amusement for the ple are impelled to violence when they attention, admiration, sympathy, so- Austrian population.” A journalist described feel that to regulate certain social re- lace, and, of course, sex and love. Mi- “the fluffy Viennese blondes, fighting one an- lationships, imposing suffering or sogyny is the mind-set that polices other to get closer to the elevating spectacle of the ashen-faced Jewish surgeon on hands death is necessary, natural, legitimate, and enforces these goals; it’s the “law and knees before a half-dozen young hooli- desirable, condoned, admired, and eth- enforcement branch” of the patriar- gans with Swastika armlets and dog-whips.” ically gratifying.” Obvious examples chy. The most obvious example of this

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 75 attitude is the punishing of “bad Manne delves into the case of El- ment, the veneer of bad faith: those women,” where being bad means fail- liot Rodger, who, in 2014, went on a things are evident in a wide range ing to give men what they want. But killing spree, targeting people at ran- of phenomena, from slaveholders’ misogyny also involves rewarding dom, after he was denied entry to a religion- tinctured justifications to the women who do conform, and sympa- sorority house at the University of Nazi bureaucrats’ squeamishness about thizing with men (Manne calls this California, Santa Barbara. He slew six naming the activity they were orga- “himpathy”) who have done awful people and injured fourteen more be- nizing, neither of which would have things to women. fore killing himself. In a videotape, been necessary if the oppressors were As a case study of misogyny, Manne Rodger, who was twenty-two, ex- really convinced that their victims considers strangulation—almost al- plained that women “gave their affec- were beasts. ways performed by men on female in- tion and sex and love to other men If the worst acts of cruelty aren’t timate partners—which she describes but never to me.” And then, talking propelled by dehumanization, not all as “a demonstration of authority and to these women, he said, “I will pun- dehumanization is accompanied by domination,” a form of torture that ish you all for it . . . . I’ll take great plea- cruelty. Manne points out that there’s often leaves no marks. Other forms sure in slaughtering all of you.” nothing wrong with a surgeon view- of expressive violence are very much Manne makes clear that Rodger ing her patients as mere bodies when intended to leave marks, notably “vit- wasn’t objectifying women; he was they’re on the operating table; in fact, riolage,” or acid attacks, directed against simply enraged that their capacity for it’s important for doctors not to have girls and women in Bangladesh and love and romance didn’t extend to him. certain natural reactions—anger, moral elsewhere. Catalysts for such attacks Manne’s analysis can be seen as an ex- disgust, sexual desire—when examining include refusal of marriage, sex, and ploration of an observation made by patients. The philosopher Martha C. romance. Then, there are so-called Margaret Atwood—that men are Nussbaum has given the example of family annihilators, almost always afraid that women will laugh at them, using your sleeping partner’s stomach men, who kill their families and, typ- and women are afraid that men will as a pillow when lying in bed, and goes ically, themselves. Often, the motiva- kill them. For Manne, such violent ep- on to explore the more fraught case tion is shame, but sometimes hatred isodes are merely an extreme mani- of objectification during sexual inter- is a factor as well; and sometimes the festation of everyday misogyny, and course, suggesting that there’s noth- mother of murdered children is left she extends her analysis to catcalling, ing inherently wrong about this so alive, perhaps notified by phone or attitudes toward abortion, and the pre- long as it is consensual and restricted a letter afterward—See what you’ve dations of Donald Trump. to the bedroom. made me do. The victim is also the au- Nor are the mechanisms she iden- As a philosopher, Manne grounds dience; her imagined response figures tifies confined to misogyny. The ag- her arguments in more technical lit- large in the perpetrator’s imagination. gressions licensed by moral entitle- erature, and at one point she empha- sizes the connection between her po- sition and the Oxford philosopher P. F. Strawson’s theory of “reactive at- titudes.” Strawson argued that, when we’re dealing with another person as a person, we can’t help experiencing such attitudes as admiration and grat- itude, resentment and blame. You gen- erally don’t feel this way toward rocks or rodents. Acknowledging the hu- manity of another, then, has its risks, and these are neatly summarized by Manne, who notes that seeing some- one as a person makes it possible for that person to be a true friend or be- loved spouse, but it also makes it pos- sible for people to be “an intelligible rival, enemy, usurper, insubordinate, be- trayer, etc.” She goes on:

Moreover, in being capable of rationality, agency, autonomy, and judgment, they are also someone who could coerce, manipulate, hu- miliate, or shame you. In being capable of ab- stract relational thought and congruent moral emotions, they are capable of thinking ill of “Mind if I put the game on?” you and regarding you contemptuously. In being capable of forming complex desires and intentions, they are capable of harboring mal- ice and plotting against you. In being capable of valuing, they may value what you abhor and abhor what you value. They may hence be a threat to all that you cherish.

If there’s something missing from these approaches to violence, it’s at- tention to first-person attitudes, how we think about ourselves as moral agents. I can resent someone, but I can also feel shame at how I treated him or her. Fiske and Rai sometimes write as if the paradigm of moralistic vio- lence were the final scene of the movie in which our hero blows away the ter- rorist or the serial killer or the rap- ist—a deeply satisfying act that has everyone cheering. But what about doubt and ambivalence? Some fathers who severely beat their misbehaving children, or some soldiers who engage in “punitive rape,” are confident in the moral rightness of their acts. But some aren’t. Real moral progress may in- volve studying the forms of doubt and ambivalence that sometimes attend acts of brutality.

n a masterly and grim book, “One ILong Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps” (Little, Brown), Andrea Pitzer articulates some of the perplexities of her subject. A concen- tration camp exists, she says, when- ever a government holds groups of ci- “We’re already wondering what her legacy might be.” vilians outside the normal legal process, and nearly all nations have had them. They can be the most savage places •• on earth, but this isn’t an essential fea- ture. During the Second World War, of instrumental violence. Typically, As the scholar of warfare Johannes American camps for the Japanese though, the camps do have a puni- Lang has observed of the Nazi death weren’t nearly as terrible as camps in tive aspect. Pitzer tells of how, after camps, “What might look like the Germany and the Soviet Union. There the First World War, Bavaria’s Social dehumanization of the other is in- are even some camps that began with Democratic premier, Kurt Eisner, was stead a way to exert power over an- noble intentions, such as refugee camps slow to demand that Germans be re- other human.” set up to provide food and shelter— leased from French and British camps; The limitations of the dehuman- though they tend to worsen over time, he wished instead to appeal to the ization thesis are hardly good news. evolving into what Pitzer describes as Allies’ sense of humanity. Eisner was There has always been something op- “permanent purgatory.” Jewish, and Hitler fumed about this timistic about the idea that our worst When concentration camps are es- “betrayal” in a speech in 1922, saying acts of inhumanity are based on con- tablished, they are usually said to exist that the Jews should learn “how it fusion. It suggests that we could make to protect the larger population from feels to live in concentration camps!” the world better simply by having a some suspect group, or to be part of Certainly, Pitzer’s description of clearer grasp of reality—by deactivat- a civilizing message, or to be a way various concentration camps contains ing those brain implants, or their ideo- to restrain some group of civilians so many examples of cruelty and deg- logical equivalent. The truth may be from supporting hostile forces. From radation that it’s impossible to see harder to accept: that our best and our this perspective, concentration camps them as a mere failure to acknowl- worst tendencies arise precisely from are a means to an end, an example edge the humanity of their victims. seeing others as human. 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 77 THE ART WORLD MASTERS AND PIECES

Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Munch.

BY PETER SCHJELDAHL

MARKET VALUE ture. With an apparent eye to China, mouth. When you look at one, your Christie’s downplayed the Christian peripheral sense of the other shifts, our hundred and fifty million dol- subject matter and content of the pic- and vice versa. You try to reconcile Flars spent for anything short of a ture by tagging it “the male Mona Lisa.” the impressions, with frustration that next-generation strategic bomber, let Never mind religion. Think Renais- seeks and finds relief in awe.This fea- alone a beat-up old painting, not only sance superstar. ture of the features does argue for makes no sense relative to current mar- A more general aspect of the mania Leonardo’s authorship—or auteur- kets in worldly goods; it suggests that is today’s global infatuation with tech- ship, anyhow, if the handiwork that money has become worthless. Cer- nology, the source and the cult of new- we see isn’t fully his own—despite tainly, what an anonymous buyer laid born exorbitant fortunes. Leonardo some more or less plausible doubts out last week at Christie’s for “Salva- was an eccentric sort of artist but a that Jerry Saltz, in New York, ticked tor Mundi” (circa 1500), a probable tinkerer beyond compare. The famous through, with entertaining zest, be- though to some degree only partial mysteries of his painting are achieved fore the auction. Leonardo da Vinci work that emerged through wizardly experiments in chiaro- Saltz assessed the picture as far be- from overpainted oblivion in 2005, scuro glazing. The undoubted inscru- neath the standards of originality that seems a stuff fundamentally different tability of the “Mona Lisa” skips the Leonardo maintained for himself—not from what you and I use to secure food question of whether there was ever so much that the master didn’t create and housing—or a yacht, even. It’s a anything about the subject to, well, it but that he wouldn’t have. He cited, cash Burning Man. scrute. It’s a stunt, though a sublime for one thing, the archaic, largely Byz- Art is sometimes sentimentally one. Leonardo’s chief quality of per- antine convention of depicting Christ termed priceless. But anything is price- sonal affect—cold calculation—rec- head on, delivering the usual raised- less until someone sells it. Then there ommends him as the geek’s geek of fingers blessing, at a time when Leo- may be a clatter of the tote board for all time. There is about him an air of nardo was doing wonders with figures related items, pegging numbers up or an eternal twelve-year-old prodigy, turning in pictorial deep space—as with down. The purely subjective rating of smitten with warfare, natural disaster, “The Virgin of the Rocks” and “Vir- art works, which are all but devoid of and fantastic invention and twitchy gin and Child with St. Anne,” both at material value, encounters no rational about sex and other grownup preoc- the Louvre. (And the “Mona Lisa” sits financial limit in either direction. The cupations. His racing mind continu- slightly angled toward a receding, im- art market is a fever chart. Its zigs and ally conceived grandiose projects that mense landscape.) But I’m reminded zags call less for explanation than for his immature will then let slide. The of a spate of rampant challenges, in the diagnosis. one thing he never ceased to do was nineteen-eighties, to the authenticity Sentimentality has everything to do to think, brilliantly. of many paintings accepted as Rem- with the marketing of “Salvator Mundi.” The extent to which “Salvator brandts, sometimes with reference to A couple of factors seem involved in Mundi” approaches the effective suc- their relative quality, and of one au- the exaltation of a dicey work, much cess of the handful of Leonardo’s mas- thority’s defensive observation: “Even damaged and the recipient of clumsy terpieces, among his fifteen or so sur- Rembrandt had Monday mornings.” restorations before its recent rescue— viving paintings, is up to each viewer. Accordingly, I class my misgivings to the extent possible—by an expert It looks wobbly to me. What kind of about “Salvator Mundi” as mere dis- New York restorer, Dianne Dwyer guy was Jesus? Every kind in reach of appointment. While never quite lov- Modestini. (Modestini painted the en- empathy, believers believe, and in com- ing any Leonardo, I’m conditioned to tire ivory-black background, guessing prehending the feminine as well. expect from him more terrific paint- at the original look that had been lost Giving an ambiguous character an erly ingenuities. “The Virgin of the when, at some point, it was partly ambiguous mien doesn’t seem a stop- Rocks” has made me laugh, from sheer scraped down to the walnut panel.) the-presses innovation. The trick of marvelling. One inflationary circumstance is the it, by the way, is the same as that of What got exchanged for nearly soaring predilection of big money from the “Mona Lisa”: painting different half a billion bucks at Christie’s wasn’t Asia for touchstones of Western cul- expressions in the eyes and in the an art work. It was an attribution. The

“Salvator Mundi,” believed to be a work by Leonardo da Vinci, sold at auction for four hundred and fifty million dollars.

78 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 PAINTING: VCG WILSON/CORBIS/GETTY VCG PAINTING:

ILLUSTRATION BY OLIVER MUNDAY THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 79 sale transferred a bragging right, pad- sign, and with works by related artists. hyperconscious of his performance. ded with fatuous hype from well- The drawings are stupendous—no Michelangelo could be archly qualified art people singing for their surprise—though strikingly limited ironic, in his poetry and an occasional suppers, in a money-addicted system. in iconography and formal repertoire, bit of cartooning, but is never funny. Should anyone who isn’t invested in except those from a few years when This is rare among great artists, who the game care? I don’t, long benumbed Michelangelo exercised a definitively palpably comprehend the absurdities by such previous, now suddenly lesser, Mannerist panache in gifts to friends of displacing reality with artifice, even mockeries of sense and sensibility as and patrons. In a smoky portrait dated as they do no less. (I can think of only the nine-figure hammer prices for a 1531-34, the hauntingly ambiguous ex- one more insistently humorless: Mark pretty good Modigliani, in 2015, and pression of an adored young friend, Rothko.) God’s animating touch to a second-tier Picasso, that same year. Andrea Quaratesi, qualifies the sitter Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling For anyone with intellectual, emotional, as kissing kin of the Mona Lisa. And is the artist’s own, bifurcated between and spiritual uses for art, the spectacle three renderings of “The Fall of Pha- giver and receiver. The tag “il Divino” might almost be happening on an eton” (1533)—the flying charioteer shot conveys the sole appropriate positive alien planet populated by creatures down by Zeus—establish forever what response to such temerity: surrender. with paddles attached to their arms. horses would look like when plum- The effect alternates between desper- meting from the sky. Otherwise, mus- ately moving and a pain in the neck— THE MARCH OF GENIUS cular male bodies predominate. So does not only literally, when you crane for workaday service to sculpture, in stud- views of the ceiling, but psychically, word in the title of a magnificent ies rather than pictures: hard contour always. Just one quality, the humblest, A show, “Michelangelo: Divine lines popping images off the paper. makes Michelangelo reliably tolera- Draftsman & Designer,” at the Met- The effect is exhaustingly repetitive. ble: workmanship. He chose the most ropolitan Museum of Art, rings with How many times in a row can you difficult art, stone carving, as his spe- telling archaism: “divine.” It derives swoon to marks that sound the same cialty and took on labors to make Her- from “il Divino,” a popular sobriquet cules faint, such as a monumental tomb for the Renaissance demiurge during for Pope Julius II that occupied him most of his eighty-eight years on earth. for forty years. The Met has repro- Michelangelo’s sixteenth-cen tury Ital- duced the Sistine ceiling with an ian contemporaries very nearly wor- overhead light-box photograph, at shipped him for collapsing more than one-fourth scale. That’s a travesty, a millennium of distance between Clas- aesthetically, but it provides useful sical antiquity and a surge of avowedly reference for mapping the destina- Christian but disruptively individual tions of several preparatory drawings. inspiration. Along with his elder Leo- The ceiling was a job of interior nardo da Vinci and his junior Raphael— decoration, undertaken in 1508 and both of whom he competitively de- completed in 1512. (The end-wall tested—Michelangelo sowed the arts mural, “The Last Judgment,” was of religion with the seeds of a virtual added more than twenty years later.) religion of the arts: a forward march Michelangelo filled the bill, with of geniuses, each in turn remaking rhythmic iterations of color—notably the world. From the triumph, when orange against blue—which startled he was twenty-n ine, of his sculpture everybody when the frescoes were “David,” he became his own first fol- cleaned, three decades ago. He was a lower, as an architect of St. Peter’s klutz at painting in rectangular for- Basilica and the doyen of perfervid mats, which went against his figure- Mannerism in painting and sculpture. A study of the Erythraean Sibyl intensive grain by requiring edge-to- His works, however pious in theme, for the Sistine Chapel. edge unity. The eccentric shapes of chiefly advertise Michelangelo as God- the Sistine coffers eliminated that ob- touched. This poses a problem in tak- chord of rippling anatomy? The art- stacle; each snugs around a bespoke ing his measure. It is hard now to use istry never fails, but your stamina will. image in illusory sculptural relief. Is the word “divine” in conversation, This may get you, like me, to musing the result the best work of art ever or even to think it, except facetiously. philosophically about an artist whose made? We can’t say, because nothing But you can’t miss the atavistic power status as the most universal of masters compares to it. But many of the stud- in this show’s hundred and thirty- can seem to balance, like an inverted ies—such as the red-chalk Libyan three drawings, which are beauti- pyramid, on this or that straining bicep. Sibyl, twisting forward with her arms fully installed with a few of his cre- It’s a glory and a vexation. To behold reaching behind her to close a book—

ations in sculpture, painting, and de- Michelangelo’s work is perforce to be are as consummate as any marshalling LONDON THE BRITISH MUSEUM, COURTESY

80 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 of an eye and a hand by an imagina- iconic images from his tumultuous engaging than the formalism, based tion can be. The Sistine opus yields a experience in favor of painting, non- in Impressionism and Cubism, that faint sense of what it must feel like to stop, whatever appealed to him on a was upheld by art historians at the be God, jump-starting humanity, pro- given day: himself, landscapes, inte- time. His sensibility suited a genera- gramming its significance, and then, riors, models, and repetitions (rather tion convinced that it had invented with “The Last Judgment,” closing it spunkless) of his early masterpieces, sex, in the sixties, and the pleasures out. We will never get over Michel- such as “Madonna” (1892), a lover’s-eye and panics of narcissism, in the sev- angelo. But we will also never know view, during intercourse, of a woman enties. “Between the Clock and the quite what to do with him, except gape. who is supremely indifferent to him. Bed” coincides neatly with the im- The old elixirs of angst and eros bub- pending boomer discovery of death. t the Met Breuer, a modern mas- ble up now and then, but tangentially; (We will then mercifully get off the Ater of late-blooming reputation mainly he was absorbed in moving world’s nerves.) But that seems far receives recuperative, gorgeous atten- paint around in his impulsive, whip- from the curators’ intention. tion to his least esteemed body of lash, kinetic manner. There has been “Self-Portrait with Cigarette” (1895) work. “Edvard Munch: Between the a tendency, which I’ve shared, to dis- is the show’s best representation of Clock and the Bed” takes its title from parage the late work as a slackening the echt Munch: the artist as an anx- the last of the Norwegian’s major self- of the artist’s halcyon intensity. I still ious dandy in a choking nocturnal at- portraits—or “self-scrutinies,” as he feel that way, while ready to acknowl- mosphere. That it is beautiful amazes, termed them. Completed a year be- edge that Munch would rank high in with aesthetic detachment tensed fore his death, in 1944, at the age of art history even if these paintings were against naked emotion. You aren’t eighty, it pictures a wizened man all we had of him. being shown what the artist was like. standing in semi-silhouette against In odd effect, the show claims a Rather, you effectively become him as the bright yellow of a studio wall that place for Munch in the modernist you look. His courage dumbfounds. is hung with indistinct paintings. canon of painting for painting’s sake, It persists, however vitiated, through- There’s a faceless grandfather clock which once marginalized, as vulgar, out the show, invoked by every turn to one side of him and, to the other, his specifying of emotional content of his wrist, with expression that states a bed with a spread that is rendered in dramatic subjects. It presents the something, be it only a whim, that is in a bold pattern, on white, of red spectacle of a great visual poet reduced felt to be true. But the experience con- and black hatch marks. The painting to unstructured, though lyrical, paint- veyed—a sleepless night, perhaps a crowns a long period that began after erly prose. Munch’s elevation over the sexual imbroglio with a model, a mem- 1908, when an alcoholic breakdown past half century (saluted by the mar- ory of a former theme—becomes the ended Munch’s twenty-year streak as ket, in 2012, with a hundred and twenty occasion, no longer the point, of a a peripatetic rock star of Symbolist million dollars paid at auction for picture. The older Munch took to sensations—life-changing then and an 1895 version, in pastels, of “The working for himself alone until, with ever since for many, including me— Scream”) has marked the baby-boom “Self-Portrait Between the Clock and of which “The Scream” (1893) is only generation. Like the insurrection of the Bed,” he came upon one new fact the most celebrated. After treatment rock and roll against show tunes and of his life, incidentally relevant to ev- at a Danish clinic, he withdrew to a sugary popular music, Munch’s touch- erybody, that was worth getting just nearly reclusive existence in a house stone images came to satisfy a yen for right. It’s a feat both in and beyond outside Oslo. He left off distilling something grittier and more urgently art: a threshold of eternity. 

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THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 2017 81 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 Maggie Larson, must be received by Sunday, November 26th. The finalists in the November 13th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the December 11th issue. Anyone age thirteen or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

“ ” ......

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“Take away the computers and they’re just sitting ducks.” Gina Buttafoco, Forest Hills, N.Y.

“No Shakespeare yet, but they have reproduced several Presidential tweets.” “It will be worth even more when he’s extinct.” Bob Shiffrar, Boston, Mass. Chip Rodgers, New York City

“I’m afraid this whole experiment is about to go south.” Ken Schimpf, New York City