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Upgrade your Waldorf Astoria 7 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN experience with your ® 21 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Visa Signature card George Packer on the message of Election Day; Rylance and van Kampen; LifeCan; the new voice of NPR; wedding prep.

ARIEL LEVY 26 Thanksgiving in mongolia An adventure and a heartbreaking loss. SIMON RICH 30 gUY Walks inTo a BaR JOHN Colapinto 32 hoT gRease Why used cooking oil is big business. PATRICK RADDEN Keefe 40 BUZZkill How do you set up a legal market for pot? PETER HESsler 52 The BURied Archeologists and looters after Tahrir. DAN Winters 62 The gRaY ghosT A portfolio of a New York apprenticeship.

FICTION JEFFREY Eugenides 68 “Find The Bad gUY”

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pop mUsic Sasha Frere-Jones 84 Katy Perry’s new album.

The cURRenT cinema david Denby 86 “Nebraska,” “At Berkeley.”

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ariel levy (“thanksgiving in mongolia,” p. 26) has been writing for the magazine since 2008.

patrick radden keefe (“Buzzkill,” p. 40) is a staﬀ writer and a senior fellow at the Century Foundation.

george packer (comment, p. 21) has published eight books, including “The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America,” a 2013 National Book Award ﬁnalist.

dan winters (portfolio, p. 62) is an award-winning photographer whose new book, “Road to Seeing,” will be published in December.

JOHN COLAPINTO (“hot grease,” p. 32), a staﬀ writer, is the author of “As Nature Made Him” and “About the Author.” His next novel, “An Upright Man,” is due out in 2014. TIMER LIGHT peter hessler (“The buried,” p. 52) lives in Cairo. “Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West” is his most recent book.

moises saman (photograph, p. 52), an associate member of Magnum Photos, is working on a book about post-revolution Egypt. His work is included in exhibits at the Brooklyn Museum and at the Harry Ransom Center, in Austin, Texas.

jeffrey eugenides (fiction, p. 68), the author of, most recently, “The Marriage Plot,” a novel, is working on a collection of stories.

lawrence joseph (poem, p. 70) has published ﬁve books of poetry, the most STOPPER recent of which is “Into It.”

adrian tomine (cover) is a cartoonist and an illustrator. His latest book, “New York Drawings,” comprises ten years of his work for The New Yorker.

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Subscribers: Get our digital edition for tablets and phones at no extra charge at the App Store or from Google Play. THE Mail a jusT pROFEssiON continue into perpetuity unless “something is done.” James B. Stewart, in his analysis of the Eric Laursen demise of the law firm Dewey & Le- 1Buckland, Mass. Boeuf, attributes the firm’s downfall, in part, to a culture that lacked coöper- iN THE classiFiEds ation and mutual respect (“The Col- lapse,” October 14th). I got to know As a former BBC journalist and the au- some of the principals of the LeBoeuf thor of a book on the assassination of firm in the nineteen-seventies, and John F. Kennedy, I found Adam Gopnik’s the change in attitude toward the essay on the conspiracy theories sur- practice of law since then, from a pro- rounding the event riveting (A Critic at fession emphasizing integrity and Large, November 4th). A respectable seeking societal justice to a business poll earlier this year indicated that nearly seeking profits, is the key to under- sixty per cent of Americans believe that standing its debasement. The publi- there was a conspiracy. The sillier stories cation of legal-income statistics led aside, it’s easy to see why many Ameri- partners to consider themselves free cans believe that. The first investigation, agents rather than bound by profes- the Warren Commission, fingered a lone sional ideals. An emphasis on materi- assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The sec- alism flooded law schools with stu- ond, by the House Select Committee on dents whose objective was financial Assassinations, ended with a probable gain. If this type of environment con- conspiracy finding. As recently as 2006, tinues, we may see additional firm a study published in the Journal of Foren- failures. sic Sciences found that calculations “con- Sigmund R. Balka siderably weaken support for the single- 1Forest Hills, N.Y. bullet theory.” The authors are scientists, not “buffs,” as Gopnik calls the doubters. pOpulaTiON cONTROl In 2007, Robert Blakey, the former chief counsel for the House Select Committee Elizabeth Kolbert, in her review of on Assassinations, and I interviewed a Alan Weisman’s “Countdown: Our witness who provided potentially credi- Last, Best Hope for a Future on ble identification of a man other than Earth?” mischaracterizes two ele- Oswald who admitted before his death ments that contribute to overpopula- that he participated in the assassination. tion and strain on social-welfare sys- Finally, thousands of relevant records, in- tems (“Head Count,” October 21st). cluding 1,171 C.I.A. documents classified First, she reiterates the idea that Social on the ground of national security, re- Security “operates on much the same main withheld. The law requires that all principles as a Ponzi scheme.” There Kennedy-assassination-related records are arguments that Social Security’s in- be released by 2017, unless the President vestment strategy is quite clear: that rules otherwise. If Oswald was a leftist the U.S. economy will generate suffi- loner who killed the President, and if that cient wage growth to keep payroll was all there was to it, why continue to taxes at the level needed to support the conceal documents? program. Hence, it is just as likely that Anthony Summers wage stagnation, not declining birth Cappoquin, County Waterford rates or longer life expectancy, has Ireland been the principal problem facing So- • cial Security. Second, Kolbert fails to Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail note that, historically, birth-rate trends to [email protected]. Letters and Web change dramatically and not always comments may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret predictably. Kolbert perpetuates the that owing to the volume of correspondence one-sided view that current trends will we cannot reply to every letter or return letters.

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nOVemBeR Wednesday • thursday • friday • saturday • sunday • Monday • tuesday 2013 13TH 14TH 15TH 16TH 17TH 18TH 19TH

Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl earring” is in New York for the first time since 1984, looking as DANCE | FOOD & DRINK fresh-faced as ever in a room of her own, at the Frick. It’s one of fifteen seventeenth-century paintings— THE THEATRE | MOVIES including masterpieces by Rembrandt and Frans Hals—from the Dutch Golden Age, on loan to the ART | NIGHT LIFE museum from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, in The Hague. The Vermeer may have pride of place, but the show’s sleeper hit is a trompe-l’oeil picture of a little bird by Carel Fabritius, which also happens CLASSICAL MUSIC to be the subject of Donna Tartt’s new novel, “The Goldfinch.” ABOVE & BEYOND

PHOTOGRAPH BY LAndOn nORdemAn Jérôme Bel and Theatre Hora Much of the provocation in the provocations of this French choreographer derives from the works’ DANCE simplicity. In “Disabled Theater,” he presents this Swiss-German troupe of actors with developmental disabilities. Their responses to the tasks he gave them—state your name and age, choreograph a short dance, critique the show—are their own, repeated each performance but not predetermined by Bel. Our responses—embarrassment, surprise—are as free. (New York Live Arts, 219 W. 19th St. 212- 924-0077. Nov. 12-16 at 7:30 and Nov. 17 at 3.)

Garth Fagan Best known for his choreography for “The Lion King,” Fagan returns to the Joyce with two programs that combine new and older works, including a revival of “Easter Freeway Processional” (1983), an exuberant work full of fluid patterns. His latest, “No Evidence of Failure,” is a duet for Natalie Rogers, still a powerhouse at fifty-one, and the younger company member Vitolio Jeune. Another highlight is an excerpt from Fagan’s collaboration with Wynton Marsalis, “Lighthouse/Lightning Rod.” (175 Eighth Ave., at 19th St. 212-242-0800. Nov. 12-13 at 7:30, Nov. 14-15 at 8, Nov. 16 at 2 and 8, and Nov. 17 at 2 and 7:30.)

Ron Brown / Evidence, a Dance Company Ronald K. Brown’s silky-smooth dancers take over the BRIC House Ballroom for a performance of his 2011 dance “On Earth Together,” set to songs by Stevie Wonder. A celebration of fellowship, the work is generous and easygoing. Brown’s style combines African, Caribbean, and urban club dance; he has invited members of the Brooklyn community—professionals and amateurs alike—to join in. (647 Fulton St., Brooklyn. 718-683-5600. Nov. 13-14 and Nov. 17 at 7:30 and Nov. 15-16 at 8. Through Nov. 24.)

Hofesh Shechter Company Like “Political Mother,” the last work by the Israeli- winter pr�iew born, London-based choreographer to reach New for the first time York, “Sun” features vigorous, eclectic movement in his thirty-year career, the experimental New York set to a vigorous, eclectic score by Shechter him- choreographer Tere O’Connor brings a work to Brooklyn. “Bleed,” an hour- self. It is also episodic in the extreme, hammering long piece, two years in the making, premières at BAM Fisher, an intimate new home unsurprising ideas—such as the notion that bright surfaces often conceal darkness—as if they performance space (Dec. 11-14). In his blog, O’Connor wrote that his work were troubling revelations. (BAM’s Howard Gil- confronts “a morass of contradictory realities that must find a poetic restructuring man Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn. through investigation.” Despite this challenging intellectual approach, the movement 718-636-4100. Nov. 14-16 at 7:30.) is warm and full-bodied. In early snippets posted online, the dancers—including the Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener great Heather Olson and Silas Riener—spiral their torsos and windmill their arms, Even before the disbanding of the Merce Cunning- creating patterns before abandoning them. Sprawling soundscapes by his longtime ham Dance Company forced these two performers to move on from being standout Cunningham collaborator James Baker accompany O’Connor’s “investigations.” dancers, they have been collaborating on works Like other young ballet choreographers, the New York City Ballet corps member of their own, of varying quality. Their offstage Justin Peck found success making works for his colleagues, dancers whose strengths relationship is among the topics addressed, along with taste, race, and sex, in their new “Way In.” and styles he knows well. This winter, N.Y.C.B. welcomes another up-and-comer The former Times dance critic Claudia La Rocco with a similar résumé: Liam Scarlett, the twenty-seven-year-old artist-in-residence at contributes her own text, much of it drawn from London’s Royal Ballet (Jan. 31-May 3). Scarlett began making ballets after five years the rehearsal process. (Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, Second Ave. at 10th St. with the corps, including an accomplished retelling of the Jack the Ripper murders. 866-811-4111. Nov. 14-16 at 8.) His still untitled piece is the first chance for New Yorkers to see his choreography. The keen musicality of the N.Y.C.B. dancers, who were reared on Balanchine, may Arturo Vidich / “142241” Fierce, physical, and smart, Vidich has a dream-like help Scarlett plumb his chosen score, a sweeping concerto by Francis Poulenc. imagination, a lack of inhibition, and an ability to For his new piece, Reggie Wilson explores the Biblical tale of Moses through his catch audiences off guard. For his newest work, he trademark method of choreographic anthropology, uncovering dances of the African transforms the underground theatre at the Abrons Arts Center into a kind of cave, or, as he describes diaspora. “Moses(es),” which premières at BAM’s Harvey Theatre (Dec. 4-7), fuses it, “a retro-futuristic underwater facility,” filled with themes from Zora Neale Hurston’s “Moses, Man of the Mountain” with African and strange sounds, shadows, and sci-fi devices, all de- Middle Eastern dances. His Brooklyn-based troupe, the Fist and Heel Performance signed by him. The palindromic title suggests the work’s inversions: memory and the future, illusion Group, always executes his mix of modern and folk forms with energy and precision. and reality, moving forward and backward in space. —Katia Bachko (466 Grand St. 212-352-3101. Nov. 14-16 at 8.)

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Tables for Two marco’s BAR TAB proletariat 295 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn (718-230-0427) 102 St. Marks Pl. (212-777-6707) At Manhattan’s tiniest beer-zealot late last month, president obama came to Brooklyn and picked up some hideaway, malt-liquor bottles double as cheesecake from Junior’s. He used to live in the borough in the mid-eighties, in Park water carafes, and arrestingly angular stemware hangs behind a copper bar. Slope. Junior’s is an institution, and cheesecake is the sort of food politicians need to “RARE, NEW and UNUSUAL BEER” be seen eating, but if Obama had wanted to observe how his old neighborhood has is scrawled on a mirror, referring to a changed, he could have gone a little further up Flatbush to Marco’s, an Italian restaurant rotating list of dozens of offerings that that is both rustic and refined, and which exemplifies how much Brooklyn dining has range from a Texan farmhouse ale to a changed since he lived there. Swedish stout, along with cider, mead, Marco’s is run by the people who ten years ago opened Franny’s in the same spot. and wine. While the sliver of a space Franny’s, which has moved nearby to a more spacious, stroller-friendly space, is a pasta has expanded to the street, it retains the coziness of a speakeasy—it has and pizza joint, but the back of the menu lists the sourcing of most of the vegetables, just eighteen stools and one table— and they won’t cut the pies into slices for you. (Typical rejoinder: “We prefer to serve though with its framed images of our pizza as they do in Italy, and our customers find it fun to cut it themselves.”) The skulls, roses, and other vintage tattoos “Portlandia”-level preciousness is forgivable because the kitchen is equally meticulous. it brings to mind the rowdier end of At Marco’s, a fancier and more expensive restaurant, the pastas are the primi, rather than St. Marks Place. “Everyone here has the main event. As with Franny’s, though, each ingredient has been carefully chosen worked in both fine dining and dive and is showcased simply, often to revelatory effect. Charred duck hearts and gizzards are bars,” said a server with heavily inked arms, as he manned a playlist heavy skewered and drizzled with a mostarda made from Concord grapes, which for once taste on Japanese garage rock. In keeping more akin to wine than jelly; a mustard-greens salad comes with liberal shavings of Bitto, with the high-low spirit, you might an Italian cheese from the alpine meadows of Lombardy so creamy it makes Pecorino share an expensive bottle of the sour, look like an ugly stepsister; Carolina Gold Rice is dressed only with butter and basil- oaky Jolly Pumpkin Fuego del Otoño, infused vinegar, yet tastes like it’s been scraped from a very good chef’s cast-iron skillet. from Michigan, followed by a five- A meal at Marco’s can feel hectic. Though the restaurant takes some reservations, dollar can of Stillwater Classique, from the mounting stress of Park Slopers waiting out front is palpable. (Babysitters don’t pay Connecticut. The Stillwater, a riff on a grainy American lager, is the closest themselves.) The acoustics are difficult, and the bartenders, who make five impeccable thing they have to Budweiser—an Italian-accented cocktails heavy on the Campari and Averna, are accomplished but unlikely achievement for an ale brewed overworked. Still, the tattooed waitstaff will talk comfortably and at length about tannin with Belgian yeast, much less one levels and the wonders of Castelvetrano olives, “the olive for people who don’t like them.” whose slogan is “postmodern beer.” Don’t go looking for comfort food—one of the more pedestrian selections, a bigoli —Daniel Fromson pasta with cauliflower and anchovies, has the goopiness of cafeteria chow mein. But most of the menu represents a new standard for Brooklyn: spit-roasted pork loin, bathed in drippings, cut with a little grilled escarole; wood-grilled lamb chops served “scottadito,” or finger-blistering; a spectacular tagliatelle, dressed with a spartan butter-and-parmigiano y SERGIO MEMBRILLAS sauce to accentuate the ribbons of twenty-four-month Gran Riserva Prosciutto di Parma.

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PhotograPh by Malú alvarez THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 9 Openings and Previews And Away We Go At the Pearl, Jack Cummings III directs the T TEATRE world première of a comedy by Terrence McNally, a backstage melodrama that skips through historical time periods. In previews. (555 W. 42nd St. 212-563-9261.)

One Night . . . Cherry Lane and Rattlestick present a new play by Charles Fuller (“A Soldier’s Play”), about the conflicts between women in the military and their male fellow-soldiers. Clinton Turner Davis directs. In previews. (Cherry Lane, 38 Commerce St. 866-811-4111.)

Sunset Baby Kamilah Forbes directs a new play by Domi- nique Morisseau, for Labyrinth Theatre Company, about a young Brooklyn woman whose father, a former black revolutionary, comes back into her life. In previews. (Bank Street Theatre, 155 Bank St. 212-513-1080.)

Witnessed by the World Ronnie Cohen and Jane Beale wrote this play, about a journalist who finds out too much about the Mafia’s role in the Kennedy Administration. Karen Carpenter directs. In previews. (59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. 212- 3279-4200.) Now Playing After Midnight Conceived by Jack Viertel and directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, this exquisite theatrical offering imagines an impossibly idealized night at Harlem’s Cotton Club in the nineteen-thirties, packing more than two dozen numbers into ninety buoyant, talent-rich minutes. The Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars, winter prEiew a sixteen-piece onstage big band organized it might be hard to by Wynton Marsalis, sets the high-quality remember, after all the sequels, that the original “Rocky” tone, gorgeously performing many of Duke movie, from 1976, was an honest, hardscrabble ode to the underdog. That Sylvester Ellington’s original arrangements. Dulé Hill, Stallone could barely pronounce his lines made it feel all the more real. The director as master of ceremonies, speaks Langston Hughes’s poetry beautifully, looks cool, and Alex Timbers—who brought a daffy energy to “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” on impresses as a singer and dancer. Fantasia Broadway in 2010 and twisted “Love’s Labour’s Lost” into a zany pop-culture mash-up Barrino is the big draw among the singers, at the Delacorte in August—helms “Rocky,” a musical adaptation, produced by but all the vocalists are excellent. The show belongs to the thrilling dancers, though—es- Stallone, who also co-wrote the book, with Thomas Meehan (“The Producers”). pecially Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Karine Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (the team behind “Ragtime”) wrote the score, and Plantadit, Virgil (Lil’ O) Gadson, and Daniel J. the leads are relative unknowns: Andy Karl stars as the self-made boxer, and Margo Watts. (Brooks Atkinson, 256 W. 47th St. 877-250-2929.) Seibert plays the shy love of his life. (Previews begin Feb. 11, at the Winter Garden.) Another love story, another film adaptation. “The Bridges of Madison County” Betrayal is based on the Robert James Waller novel and, more memorably, the 1995 movie In the current revival of Harold Pinter’s 1978 hit (directed by Mike Nichols), Jerry starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood. Kelli O’Hara stars as the Italian-Iowan (Rafe Spall), a literary agent, is soft with farmer’s wife, and Steven Pasquale plays the irresistible roving photographer; music romanticism and stale beer and a strange and lyrics are by Jason Robert Brown (“Parade”); and the book is by Marsha Norman kind of correctness, even when he’s wrapped up in the deep, cheap excitement of sleeping (“The Color Purple”). It’s a reunion of sorts: O’Hara and Pasquale just played the ill- with Emma (Rachel Weisz), the beautiful, fated married couple in “Far from Heaven,” and Bartlett Sher, who directs, worked troubled wife of his friend Robert (Daniel with O’Hara on her star-making roles in “The Light in the Piazza” and “South Craig), a publisher. Working backward through time, Pinter shows us how Emma and Jerry Pacific.” (Previews begin Jan. 17, at the Schoenfeld.) became lovers and how their affair became Denzel Washington and the director Kenny Leon have chosen to revive a as rote as her marriage. Nichols, rather than classic play, Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 drama, “A Raisin in the Sun.” Washington allowing Weisz to fully embody Emma’s egotism, seems to want her character to and Diahann Carroll star as members of the Younger family, who buy a house in a be more “likable,” a kind of wacky infidel. white neighborhood. The cast also includes the excellent character actor Stephen Onstage Weisz holds herself back, so that McKinley Henderson, the Tony winner Anika Noni Rose, and the director David none of the men around her, her director included, will feel overwhelmed by her Cromer. (Previews begin March 8, at the Barrymore.) abilities. As Robert, Craig isn’t terrible; —Shauna Lyon it’s just that he’s not entirely sure who his

10 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 ILLUSTRATION BY TOMER HANUKA character is. But the biggest issue is Nichols’s The Jacksonian Also Playing All That Fall style, which is not in synch with Pinter’s; he For her latest work, the Jackson, Mississippi, na- 59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200. treats the work like a downer version of Noël tive Beth Henley takes another stab at Southern The Commons of Pensacola Coward’s “Design for Living.” (Reviewed in our gothic. Set in 1964 in the seedy motel of the title, City Center Stage I, 131 W. 55th St. issue of 11/11/13.) (Ethel Barrymore, 243 W. 47th this memory play is seen through the eyes of a 212-581-1212. St. 212-239-6200.) high-school girl (Juliet Brett) watching her parents’ A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder marriage fully unravel. Henley loads the ninety Walter Kerr, 219 W. 48th St. 212-239-6200. Disaster! minutes of this glum one-act with elements of The Glass Menagerie A low-tech, high-spirited, winning-and-winking deceit, insanity, perversion, murder, spectacular Booth, 222 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. parody of not only seventies disaster movies— drug abuse, racism, and vengeful dentistry. If The Good Person of Szechwan principally “The Poseidon Adventure,” with ele- there are metaphors relative to the troubled time Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555. ments of “Earthquake,” “The Towering Inferno,” and place of the play’s setting, or insights into Macbeth and “Ben”—but also the jukebox musical. The the human condition, they’re tough to discern Vivian Beaumont, 150 W. 65th St. clever writers, Seth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnick through the sludge. Turgidly directed by Robert 212-239-6200. (Plotnick also directed) fill the goofy script with Falls, the actors Ed Harris, Glenne Headly, Amy Marie Antoinette dialogue that perfectly dovetails into more than Madigan, and Bill Pullman make game attempts SoHo Rep, 46 Walker St. 212-352-3101. thirty songs from the era. The fourteen-member to creatively inhabit their roles. (Acorn, 410 W. 42nd A Midsummer Night’s Dream cast, wonderfully spiced up by Mary Testa and St. 212-239-6200.) Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Pl., Brooklyn. 866-811-4111. Rudetsky himself, are comically and musically Nothing to Hide The Mutilated adept, bringing just the right amount of ham- New Ohio Theatre, 154 Christopher St. miness to the proceedings. If the post-disaster The sleight-of-hand artists Derek Delgaudio and 888-596-1027. section succumbs a bit to mere jokiness, the setup Helder Guimarães perform some impressive card No Man’s Land / Waiting for Godot contains a surprising number of moving moments, tricks, under the direction of Neil Patrick Harris—at Cort, 138 W. 48th St. 212-239-6200. notably Matt Farcher’s beautiful version of “Alone one point they have several audience members Taking Care of Baby Again, Naturally” and a psychologically astute shuffle and reshuffle piles of cards, furtively pick City Center Stage II, 131 W. 55th St. medley, by Haven Burton and Jonah Verdon, of a card from their shuffled packs, and then stand 212-581-1212. “I Am Woman” and “That’s the Way I Always by their seats as Delgaudio, pointing to them one Twelfth Night / Richard III Heard It Should Be.” (St. Luke’s, 308 W. 46th by one, correctly calls out their chosen cards. How Belasco, 111 W. 44th St. 212-239-6200. St. 212-239-6200.) does he do that? But the two young magicians’ banter is not very funny, and, frankly, card tricks Domesticated aren’t enough magic to keep an audience wowed In Bruce Norris’s new play, directed by Anna D. for seventy-plus minutes: one wishes they’d saw Shapiro, the fantastic Laurie Metcalf plays Judy; a beautiful woman in half, or lock each other in she’s married to Bill (the terrific comedian Jeff a box, drop it into a tank of water, and barely Goldblum), who’s announcing his resignation escape. (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 from office; he’s been involved in a sex scandal. W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200.) The anger, frustration, and humor Metcalf gets to display are amazing—she has more energy than most other humans—and Bill’s lawyer, Bobbie (Mia Barron), is appropriately cold, hysterical, and needy. (The supporting cast is great, too. As the mother of the woman Bill slept with, Lizbeth Mackay is raw, funny, and outstanding.) But the problem with this “ripped from the headlines” play is that the various sex scandals it’s based on are too recent and too tiresome to matter much as art. In the second act, Bill meets a transsexual of color (Robin De Jesus) who lectures him too quickly and too articulately on the differences between men and women. The play is about gender and its various illusions and social conventions, and while there are laughs in it, Norris’s topicality, rather than his artistry, drives the script. (Mitzi E. Newhouse, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200.)

Grasses of a Thousand Colors At the beginning of Wallace Shawn’s magical- realistic play, Ben (played by Shawn) tells the audience that he has had amazing good luck—not only did he become very rich by inventing a grain that increased the animal population so that no one had to starve, but he also has had an amazing best friend, his penis. Ben attracted three beautiful and smart women (Julie Hagerty, Emily Cass McDonnell, and Jennifer Tilly) as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, autograph musical manuscript, bars 52-70 of the sixth movement of adventurous sexual partners, but also a cat, with Serenade in D Major (detail), Vienna, 1773. Estimate $120,000 to $180,000. whom Ben had the most profound sex of all, which he describes in detail. An hour or two of Shawn’s dark and outrageous imagination Autographs might have been a breath of fresh air, but three NOvEMbER 26 and a half hours of witty descriptions of weird sexual exploits feels self-indulgent and, dare Specialist: Marco Tomaschett • [email protected] we say, masturbatory. Under André Gregory’s direction, though, Tilly delivers a wonderfully Preview: Nov 20, 10-6; Nov 21, 10-12; Nov 22 & 25, 10-6; Nov 26, 10-12 larger-than-life and yet nuanced performance 104 East 25th St, New York, NY 10010 • tel 212 254 4710 as Ben’s wily mistress. (Public, 425 Lafayette SWANNGALLERIES.COM St. 212-967-7555.)

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 11 Now Playing About Time Ignore the title. The new Richard Curtis film MOVIES is actually, like every other Richard Curtis film, about love. Our nearly hopeless hero, Tim, is played by Domhnall Gleason—standing in for Hugh Grant, as it were, right down to the dith- ery stutter. The object of his affection is Mary (Rachel McAdams), an American who lives in London and works in publishing (not that work gets more than a mention in this frictionless world). As for the chronological aspect, it’s little more than a trick. Tim is told by his father (Bill Nighy) that the men of the family can travel in time; when boy meets girl, for instance, boy can then turn the clock back and remeet her, hoping that girl will now consider boy to be less of a jerk. As the movie proceeds, though, Curtis, like Tim, loses interest in this device; so sunny is their outlook, and such is the trust that they place in everyday life, that no second chances are required. Some people will revel in this warm front of innocence; others will reach for their Voltaire. With Tom Hollander and Lindsay Duncan.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of 11/11/13.) (In wide release.)

All Is Lost A lonely yachtsman (Robert Redford), sailing the Indian Ocean, is asleep in his cabin when a floating steel shipping container bashes a hole in the side of his craft. The boat then gets assailed by weather and every kind of misfortune; Redford (whose character has no name), struggling to survive, grows increasingly battered and hungry. This remarkably radical experiment by the writer-director J. C. Chandor echoes such literary classics as Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” and Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” But Chandor’s conception is unimaginable as anything but a movie. It’s virtually wordless, soberly spectacular, and vast and intimate at winter prEiew the same time, with a commitment to detailed the grand surprise of physical reality that commands amazed atten- Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest film, “Inside Llewyn tion for a tight hundred minutes. Redford, now Davis” (Dec. 6), set in 1961, in the Greenwich Village folk-music circuit, is that seventy-seven, is in great shape, and the planes they relegate their sardonic humor to the supporting actors and approach their of his face—cheekbones, jawline, forehead—have held up. The shell is wrinkled, but the strength of hero with uninhibited empathy. Oscar Isaac brings a simmering energy to the title character comes through, and he does more acting character, a respected but penniless singer-songwriter, no longer young, whose in this film than he has done in all his earlier increasingly frenzied struggle for a foothold in the business wreaks chaos among ones put together.—David Denby (10/21/13) (In wide release.) friends and family. The Coen brothers re-create the sixties milieu with a disabused fascination, and their portrait of a great man trapped in a mediocre career delivers The Birth of Love straightforward pathos with an ironic sting; as ever, their best joke is a cosmic one. This ardent, muted Parisian melodrama, from 1993, derives its power from the director In “Oldboy” (Nov. 27), Spike Lee remakes Park Chan-wook’s 2003 classic Phi lippe Garrel’s total identification with its of the grotesque, forcefully skewing the tone and the details of the horrific middle-aged protagonists. Paul (Lou Castel), a premise to fit his own world view. Josh Brolin stars as a blustery businessman who paunchy, dishevelled actor, and Marcus (Jean- Pierre Léaud), a blocked writer with delusions awakens from a one-night stand imprisoned in a motel-like room and framed of grandeur, are ready to sacrifice anything or for his ex-wife’s rape and murder; when he’s released, after twenty years, he anyone to their amorous impulses, every tremor investigates the mystery of his captivity—with a vengeance. Rooting the story’s of which is captured by Garrel’s intimate images. The poorly domesticated Paul lives tensely with cartoonish exaggerations in the grit of daily life, Lee focusses on incarceration and his grimly steadfast wife (Marie-Paule Laval), recrimination, on the pathology of punishment that sparks more violence. His their teen-age son, and a newborn daughter, tragic vision spotlights innocents caught in the grip of enablers and disablers alike. yet brazenly philanders with Ulrika (Johanna “ ter Steege), who makes no pretense of lov- Josh and Benny Safdie’s documentary Lenny Cooke” (Dec. 6) looks back ing him. Marcus, whose girlfriend has fled to at the lost glory of a high-school basketball star who in 2001 was ranked ahead Rome, seeks desperately to win her back, while of LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony but never made it to the N.B.A. The Paul encounters an angelic apparition (Aurélia Alcaïs) who, in an age-old transaction, offers filmmakers, best known for their fictional features (notably “Daddy Longlegs”), youth and beauty in exchange for experience. blend archival footage and recent interviews with Cooke and his friends and family; Against a media backdrop of the Gulf War and the wistful portrait—aided by ingenious special effects—shows a living legend its human cost, Garrel, for all of his intense personal sympathy for the artists’ emotional learning to face his real self. turbulence, presents its price as well. The scene —Richard Brody in which Paul—unsurprisingly—leaves home is

12 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 ILLUSTRATION BY DADU SHIN one of the most painful scenes of on a drug deal and gets in over his Yet, although Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Opening Faust paternal anguish ever filmed. In head with psychopathic killers. The film has been met with flaming An adaptation of Goethe’s play, French.—Richard Brody (French script spreads the action worldwide hostility in Britain, there is more set in the early nineteenth century. Institute Alliance Française; Nov. 19.) and paper-thin, and the supporting to it than meets the ear. Watts may Directed by Alexander Sokurov. In German. Opening Nov. 15. (In limited luminaries—including Penélope Cruz, be too short for the role, but she release.) Blue Is the Warmest Color as the lawyer’s girlfriend; Javier nails some vital things: the rangy The Great Beauty Three hours of love, sex, and food, Bardem, as a client; Cameron Diaz, stride and the breathy voice, which, Paolo Sorrentino directed this drama, which won the Palme d’Or at the as the client’s wild lover; Brad Pitt, like Tony Blair’s, could make even about an aging Roman writer (Toni Cannes Film Festival for the direc- as a smooth operator; and Bruno sincerity sound bogus. Also, if you Servillo) who seeks to recapture lost love. In Italian. Opening Nov. 15. (In tor Abdellatif Kechiche and his two Ganz, as a diamond dealer—are could watch the movie with the sound limited release.) main performers. Adèle (Adèle Ex- stuck playing clichés who spout off, you might notice how carefully Nebraska archopoulos), a high-school student clichés. The dialogue alternates the camera plots Diana’s entrapment Reviewed this week in The Current in Lille, is always ravenous, often between throwaway snark and in an endlessly probing world and Cinema. Opening Nov. 15. (In wide blushing, and unsure about the pseudo-philosophical criminal cant; explores her solitude—right down release.) hungers of her heart. After a couple each scene serves as little more than to the final image of her, caught Also Playing of early misses, she finds herself an index card for the mechanistic on closed-circuit television, in the American Promise: In limited release. drawn, or helplessly pulled, toward plot, which Scott films in a glossy elevator of a Paris hotel.—A.L. (In Bad Grandpa: In wide release. Thor: The Dark World: In wide Emma (Léa Seydoux), who is in her and fluid style befitting an industrial wide release.) release. fourth year of art school—older and promotion for the movie’s high-tech Revivals and Festivals wiser, you might think, although it weaponry.—R.B. (In wide release.) It Felt Like Love Titles in bold are reviewed. is Adèle who lusts and suffers her Eliza Hittman’s first feature brings Dallas Buyers Club Anthology Film Archives way into a more lasting wisdom. bracing insight and intimacy to the 32 Second Ave., at 2nd St. The camera studies the women’s Matthew McConaughey, the gleam- familiar subject of a teen-ager’s sexual (212-505-5181)—“Closely Watched faces with unstinting devotion, and ing young man of a few years ago—an awakening, aided by the nuanced, Trains.” Nov. 15 at 7, Nov. 16 at 9, and they repay that curiosity, through easygoing sport who, spiritually, yearning performance of Gina Nov. 17 at 4:30: “Traveling Light” (2012, Gina Telaroli). • Nov. 15 at 9 flirtation and fracas, as we follow never seemed more than fifty yards Piersanti, as Lila, a nerdy Brooklyn and Nov. 18 at 7: “Shanghai Express” Adèle’s fortunes over many years. from the beach—completes his high-school student. Lila spends (1932, Josef von Sternberg).

The movie has gained a certain transformation into a great actor the summer hanging out at Coney BAM CinÉmatek notoriety for its unabashed view with his performance as the real- Island and other nearby playlands 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn of her sexual encounters; those life Ron Woodroof, an electrician, with her much cooler best friend, (718-636-4100)—“Hot Dern!” Nov. 16 at 3, 6, and 9:45: “Coming Home” (1978, desires, however, are not set apart rodeo hot shot, and hetero fornicator Chiara (Giovanna Salimeni), whose Hal Ashby). • Nov. 17 at 1:30 and 7: like islands but folded into the who, in 1985, is diagnosed as being boyfriend, Patrick (Jesse Cordasco), “Marnie.” • Nov. 17 at 4:15 and 9:45: landscape of her life, more of which H.I.V.-positive. After his initial is always around. Tantalized by “Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte” is probably spent in the classroom disbelief, Woodroof pulls himself the seeming ubiquity of sex, the (1965, Robert Aldrich). and the kitchen than in the bedroom. together and begins importing drugs virginal Lila seeks to narrow the Film Forum Three hours, in short, is only just from all over the world, selling a experience gap, passing from fantasy W. Houston St. west of Sixth Ave. (212-727-8110)—The films of Bruce enough. We are left wanting more. kind of pre-scientific cocktail to to the fumbling pursuit of Sammy Weber. Nov. 15-21 (call for showtimes): In French.—A.L. (10/28/13) (In afflicted young men in the Dallas (Ronen Rubinstein), a swaggering “Let’s Get Lost” (1988). limited release.) area. The French-Canadian director college student who recklessly toys French Institute Jean-Marc Vallée shot the bulk of with her. With a sure sense of Alliance Française The Broken Circle Breakdown the movie at trailer camps, scrappy place, Hittman moves the action 55 E. 59th St. (212-355-6160)—The films of Philippe Garrel. Nov. 19 at 4 and By rights, this should be the most construction sites, and seamy rodeo from sidewalks and subways to 7:30: “The Birth of Love.” annoying movie of the year. A tattooist pens. He doesn’t clean anything marshlands suggestive of idylls and IFC Center (Veerle Baetens) falls in love with a up, and he doesn’t avoid scenes mysteries, and lightly sketches Lila’s 323 Sixth Ave., at W. 3rd St. banjo player (Johan Heldenbergh), of suffering. But he has given the complex bonds with her widowed (212-924-7771)—“DOC NYC.” For they have an adorable daughter (Nell film the pace and the verve of a father (Kevin Anthony Ryan) and complete program information, visit docnyc.net. Nov. 16 at 11:30 A.M.: “A Cattrysse) who is stricken by cancer, classic commercial movie such as the too young boy next door (Case World Not Ours” (2013, Mahdi Fleifel; there is a ruinous scene in which our “Erin Brockovich”—both are stories Prime). Keeping the camera in in Arabic and English). • Nov. 17 at hero halts in mid-concert and starts about a cocky, self-taught outsider audacious proximity to her actors’ 7: “Finding Vivian Maier” (2013, John ranting about stem-cell research, and who takes on the establishment. bare skin and revealing the confident Maloof and Charlie Siskel). the whole thing has been put through Woodroof, the American rodeo bum, caste of people at ease with their Museum of Modern Art a chronological blender, so that we is reborn as both a huckster and a bodies, the director portrays her Roy and Niuta Titus Theatres, 11 W. 53rd St. (212-708-9480)—“Best never stay still in time. And yet, savior (in this case, the distinction protagonist as a permanent outsider. Film Not Playing at a Theatre Near from all this, the director Felix Van seems meaningless). Jared Leto gives Condemned by physical and social You.” Nov. 15 at 6 and Nov. 17 at Groeningen has created something a sensational performance as a cross- awkwardness to pleasure mixed 1:30: “It Felt Like Love.” • Nov. 15 at 8:30 and Nov. 17 at 4: “The Island of not just plausible and affecting but dressing AIDS patient who goes with humiliation and desire crossed St. Matthews” (2013, Kevin Jerome sharp and alert in its distress. The into business with Woodroof. The with aversion, Lila is also enabled Everson). • Nov. 16 at 2 and Nov. 18 two leads throw themselves into the tough-minded script is by Craig by her intelligence and sensibility at 8: “Survival Prayer” (2013, Benjamin Greené). emotional mix, and the music that Borten and Melisa Wallack.—D.D. to know it.—R.B. (MOMA; Nov. they make—both of them sing, in (11/4/13) (In wide release.) 15 and Nov. 17.) Museum of the Moving Image English, with the band that supplies 35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria (718-784-0077)—Special screening. the movie’s title—feels less like a Diana Last Vegas Nov. 13 at 7: “Seduced and backdrop and more like the essential If you are going to make a film about An amiable A.A.R.P. comedy about Abandoned,” introduced by the binding of the tale. For any viewer the late Princess of Wales, you are four longtime friends (Kevin Kline, director, James Toback, and Alec Baldwin. who, for one reason or another, has obviously going to choose the guy Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, been shamefully ignorant of Belgian who directed “Downfall,” about the and Michael Douglas) who reunite bluegrass, here is your opportunity last days of Hitler, and the actress for a bachelor party in Vegas and to make amends. In Flemish.—A.L. who played opposite King Kong. have a boozy, geriatric time. The (11/11/13) (In limited release.) But why concentrate on the dull setup is grossly familiar from “The and testy affair that Diana (Naomi Hangover,” but the genial tone The Counselor Watts) enjoyed with a hardworking (there’s laughter, there’s tears) and The director Ridley Scott’s thriller, heart surgeon (Naveen Andrews), musty one-liners are pure corn. The written by Cormac McCarthy, joins given that its dramatic highlight top-shelf cast plays in harmony, a modicum of knowledge about drug comes when he hides in the back of and each actor gets a confident lords’ ruthless violence to a repressed her car? And why burden the story solo to remind the audience how DVD of the Week glee in depicting it. The unnamed with a script, by Stephen Jeffreys, effortlessly he can shine. The film, Richard Brody discusses a clip protagonist is a gangland lawyer that S. J. Perelman would have directed by Jon Turteltaub, has an from Michelangelo Antonioni’s

EVERETT (Michael Fassbender) who goes in considered too ludicrous by half? easy but mediocre charm. With “Zabriskie Point,” from 1970.

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 13 Mary Steenburgen, who steals the These Birds Walk show as a lounge singer ready for Beginning with a look at a living a good time.—Bruce Diones (In saint—the octogenarian Abdul Sattar wide release.) Edhi, whose foundation provides a ART refuge for runaways and abandoned Marnie children in Karachi, Pakistan—the Tippi Hedren’s cool grace in “The documentary filmmakers Omar Birds” hardly prepares a viewer for Mullick and Bassam Tariq turn their her porcelain froideur as a sexually attention to the young residents of traumatized kleptomaniac in Alfred Edhi’s group home as well as to Museums and Libraries Hitchcock’s psychologically resonant, Asad, a once desperate orphan who Metropolitan Museum visually transcendent film, from has remade his life as a driver for “William Kentridge: 1964. Sean Connery co-stars as a the organization and functions as The Refusal of Time” businessman who hires Marnie as the children’s unofficial advocate. In the South African artist’s room-size installation, his secretary, lusts mightily after They certainly need one; the boys a contraption with a pumping bellows churns her, and, catching her with a hand whom Mullick and Tariq follow most in the center of the gallery, accompanied by a in his till, takes it upon himself to closely, Omar and Rafiullah, have five-screen projection. Imagery of old maps of win her heart—and, above all, her grown up with terrifying violence at Africa, dancing paper figures, Duchampian bicycle body—by healing her mind. Borrow- home. The smart and unsentimental wheels, and vignettes featuring chronologists at ing liberally from himself (notably, Omar, a tough customer who is also the Royal Observatory in Greenwich are joined several tropes from “Spellbound,” a sensitive and vulnerable friend, by footage of Kentridge repeatedly walking into “Vertigo,” and “Psycho”), Hitchcock displays scars from cuts inflicted an armchair, as if trapped in a screwball-comedy gives his obsessions luridly free by his father. The quiet Rafiullah, version of an Eadweard Muybridge film. Whether rein—intentionally and not. He who cries on his way home in fear the separate segments are synchronous or con- was, in fact, obsessed with Hedren, of beatings, is greeted by members trapuntal, they add up to a searing indictment of whose rejections he repaid with of his extended family with the wish European colonialism, as well as an inquiry into harsh treatment, and it shows in that his dead body had shown up the nature of time itself. Kentridge insists on, and his images: few films have looked instead, and Asad negotiates with creates, such an elastic sense of duration that, if as longingly and as relentlessly at them to spare him from punishment. you stay for the video’s entire half hour, by the a woman, few on-screen gazes at The filmmakers capture extraordinary end, the very concept of minutes and hours may an actress have so perfectly crystal- adventure on the wing, as when they strike you as hopelessly quaint. Through May 11. lized an integral and unique style enter Taliban territory to bring Omar of performance, and few perfor- home; along the way, the boy visits a Bronx Museum mances have so precisely defined shrine against Asad’s wishes, result- “Tony Feher” a director’s world view, even unto ing in one of the most exciting and The fifty-seven-year-old New York sculptor is a the vanishing point. He could, and daringly filmed chase scenes in the poet of the small, the found, and the ordinary. did, go no further.—R.B. (BAM recent cinema. In Urdu.—R.B. (In In this mid-career retrospective, sixty insouciant Cinématek; Nov. 17.) limited release.) works—made from plastic bags, bottles, and consumer packaging, among other materials—sug- Seduced and Abandoned 12 Years a Slave gest that Feher’s interests lie less in transforming In this boisterously reflexive docu- Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejio- objects than in finding alternate uses for forms. mentary, the director James Toback for), an African-American born and Jars are filled with colored marbles or liquids lays his intentions on the line: educated in New York State, is a (Windex, brake fluid, tinted water) and hung accompanied by Alec Baldwin, he musician living a gracious life with his in clusters, lined up on shelves, or grouped on visits the Cannes Film Festival in family when, in 1841, he’s kidnapped the floor. In Feher’s kitchen-sink minimalism, order both to interview directors, while on tour in Washington, D.C., slender straws are used to construct a grid, and actors, and producers whom he and sold to the owner of a Louisiana green plastic strawberry baskets create a Sol admires and to raise money for plantation, where he’s traded, loaned LeWitt-like ziggurat. Next door to the museum, a movie that he wants to shoot. out, and used as collateral for a the artist winningly updates the art-historical Toback’s project, which he describes mortgage. Throughout his brutal concept of “sculpture in the expanded field” as “Last Tango in Tikrit,” would be years of captivity, he maintains the by spray-painting a narrow vacant lot Day-Glo an erotic drama starring Baldwin, enraged consciousness of a free man, pink. Through Feb. 15. as a C.I.A. agent in Iraq, and Neve yet he can’t reveal much of his mind 3 Campbell, as a left-wing journalist and temperament without incurring with whom he falls in love. As the wrath of men and women whose Galleries—Uptown Toback and Baldwin seek to raise self-esteem is based on the belief David Smith twenty-five million dollars from that he’s an animal. This true story These ten slender, six-foot-high steel totems, sales agents who offer no more than (based on Northup’s 1853 book) has nine varnished and one lacquered black, were five million and private financiers been turned into a soberly powerful, made by the great American sculptor in 1955, who turn them down flat, Toback’s beautiful film by the British director produced by a fabricator, then textured by directorial intuition proves to be Steve McQueen, who, after several Smith using a power hammer. Reunited for the spot-on: their self-revealing brave ritualized features (“Hunger” and first time since their production, these proto- face on humiliation and despair “Shame”), has powerfully entered minimal sculptures seem like outliers in the is deeply cinematic. As for the the larger world of social reality, artist’s career and may make you long for the interviews, they’re done with skill landscape, history, and narrative con- invention—and joy—of his better-known welded and insight; Ryan Gosling’s account struction. With Michael Fassbender, works. Although they lack the surreal beauty of of a day in the life of young Ryan as a psychotic plantation owner; Smith’s strongest work, these sculptures convey Gosling is smart and touching, and Sarah Paulson, as his calculating a persuasive clarity. Cheerier than a Giacometti Francis Ford Coppola’s regretful wife; Lupita Nyong’o, as his slave figure, more resolute than a Newman zip, each confession is almost unbearably mistress; Paul Giamatti, as a fussy varnished steel column could be an abstract painful to hear. With many no- slave broker; Alfre Woodard, as a self-portrait. Through Dec. 21. (Gagosian, 980 tables, including Martin Scorsese, cynical plantation mistress; and Paul Madison Ave., at 76th St. 212-744-2313.) Bernardo Bertolucci, James Caan, Dano, as a brainless overseer. Some 3 Jessica Chastain, Diablo Cody, and of the scenes are almost unbearable Jeffrey Katzenberg and a festive cast in their cruelty. Written by John Galleries—Chelsea of thousands.—R.B. (Museum of Ridley. Cinematography by Sean Sarah Anne Johnson the Moving Image; Nov. 13, and Bobbitt.—D.D. (10/21/13) (In wide In the past, the Canadian artist has combined video on demand.) release.) photography and model-making in extended,

14 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 engaging narratives. Her lively new work dispenses with story lines but remains un- conventional, with nearly every photograph involving a different stylistic approach to an evergreen subject: sex. Pictures of nudes and of couples making love are painted on, col- laged, roughly incised, or digitally distorted, usually to suggest the transformative power of intimacy. Gold leaf, glitter, and splattered paint turn sexual ecstasy into décor; drawn-on clown noses and a happy face nod to the goofy aspect of romance. Through Dec. 14. (Saul, 535 W. 22nd St. 212-627-2410.)

Jacob Kassay From shiny and seductive, the market phe- nom Kassay has gone drab and pedantic with something very like a vengeance. Eccentrically shaped canvases in dirty off-whites sport block- lettered words along their stretched edges: “swollen variable,” for example, or “he is now his parents”—suggesting Monday-morning Ed Ruscha. Library books mounted, shelf-like, to walls have glass wedges stuck in them, for reasons too exhausting to explain. In unpublished notes, Kassay addresses “particle frequency” and other scientific arcana. Come as a viewer; stay (or don’t) as a student. Through Dec. 20. (303 Gallery, 507 W. 24th St. 212-255-1121.)

Konrad Lueg An art-historical footnote gets illustrated at last. Before he rebranded himself as the great Düsseldorf gallerist Konrad Fischer, in 1967, Lueg teamed up with Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke to hatch the German Pop movement they friskily dubbed Capitalist Realism. Here, we see how he painted: coolly and rather daintily, it turns out. But for the crude heads winter pr�iew with holes cut in them, which Lueg made in radical is beautiful 1963, he favored mildly kitschy decorative pat- in the art of Carrie Mae Weems, whose terns in primary-colored paint or ready-made pointedly lyrical photographs, films, and videos reveal hard and tender fabrics. Imagine yourself savoring the works in truths about race and gender. In her staged scenes and appropriated a bachelor pad with topnotch American jazz on the stereo. Through Nov. 16. (Greene Naftali, pictures, which often incorporate words, Weems, now sixty, insists that 508 W. 26th St. 212-463-7770.) history and identity are constructions as well. The African-American artist, who was recently awarded a MacArthur fellowship, has said, Richard Serra He does it again. The greatest yet of Serra’s curvy “Getting rid of that stereotype so that this person’s humanity actually steel labyrinths is “Inside Out,” on Twenty-first shines through, that’s the project.” The Guggenheim surveys her three- Street: more than eighty feet long, forty wide, decade-long career, beginning Jan. 24. and thirteen high, made of two-inch-thick, tenderly red-rusted plates. (We still lack the On March 7, the always divisive Whitney Biennial opens, organized right social protocol for sudden encounters with by Michelle Grabner, an artist and an influential professor at the Art others in Serra’s snaking corridors; sheepish Institute of Chicago; Anthony Elms, a young curator at the Institute smiles abase us.) Three of four new angular steelworks, on Twenty-fourth Street, deploy of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and Stuart Comer, who was just flat plates in ranks, a star configuration, and named chief curator of media and performance at MOMA. This is not leanings against a wall; the fourth stacks massive the first time the Whitney has assigned the biennial job to a team: the blocks. Ancient Egyptians, when the pyramids premièred, may have felt as we do here: happily mishmash of 2000 was conceived by a group of six. What is new is the intimidated, vicariously proud. Through Jan. 25. decision to allocate a separate floor to each curator. Smart money would (Gagosian, 522 W. 21st St. 212-741-1717; 555 bet that the approach results in a hat trick. W. 24th St. 212-741-1111.) It’s hard to believe Paul Gauguin started out as a stockbroker, Karl Wirsum but, then, his life was marked by metamorphosis. He went from Remedial justice to stridently cartoonish being a collector of Impressionism to becoming one of history’s most Chicago Imagist painting—also known as the Hairy Who movement and snooted by important (and popular) painters, moving from Paris to Pont-Aven, New Yorkers when it burst forth in the six- and from France to the South Pacific. But Gauguin’s most revolutionary ties—continues apace with a strong show of contribution to art may be the experimental prints and transfer drawings new work by the founding member Wirsum. (His reascendant peers include Jim Nutt, Ed he made between 1889 and 1903, the year he died. More than mere Paschke, Roger Brown, and Gladys Nilsson.) innovations in the mediums of woodcut and monotype, these works Wirsum’s crisply outlined, spankingly colored, collapse distinctions between original and copy. MOMA organizes the first chipper grotesques—jagged or blobby figures, often amid enigmatic whatsits in woozy land- major show on the subject, opening March 8.

“May Flowers” (2002), Courtesy JaCk shainMan Gallery, new york new shainMan Gallery, JaCk Courtesy (2002), Flowers” “May scapes—punch you in the eye. Your mind reels. —Andrea K. Scott

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 15 Stylistic erudition brings qualities Museums short list Metropolitan Museum of German Expressionism, Japanese Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. prints, Mesoamerican ceramics, Dick (212-535-7710)—“Interwoven Tracy comics, and more to bear Globe: The Worldwide Textile NIGHT LFE Trade, 1500-1800.” Through on a project of hellbent deracina- Jan. 5. tion. Through Nov. 16. (Eller, 615 Museum of Modern Art W. 27th St. 212-206-6411.) 11 W. 53rd St. (212-708-9400)—“Magritte: The Rock and Pop and Montreal’s Bloodshot Bill share “Vietnam: The Real War” Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926- Musicians and night-club the stage with La La Brooks, who This excellent show of photographs 1938.” Through Jan. 12. proprietors lead complicated lives; was just a schoolgirl at P.S. 73, in from the Associated Press takes an MOMA PS1 itÕs advisable to check in advance Brooklyn, when she was tapped to unflinching look at the Vietnam 22-25 Jackson Ave., Queens to confirm engagements. be the lead singer of the Crystals, (718-784-2084)—“Mike Kelley.” War with images that are, in most Through Feb. 2. in the sixties. (61 Wythe Ave., Wil- cases, more famous than the pho- Macklemore & Ryan Lewis liamsburg. nortonrecords.com.) Guggenheim Museum tojournalists who took them. Nick Fifth Ave. at 89th St. These two scored big this summer Ut’s picture of a naked girl running (212-423-3500)—“Christopher with “Thrift Shop,” an inescapable Rick Ross screaming down the road after a Wool.” Through Jan. 22. smash powered by a great hook Having painted over his history as a

Napalm attack and Eddie Adams’s Whitney Museum of from the featured singer Wanz, off corrections officer, the titanic rapper image of the execution of a Viet American Art their début album, “The Heist,” now seems to exist solely to further Cong captive on a Saigon street Madison Ave. at 75th St. built around a loop of what sounds his own legend as a gangster. Brag- (212-570-3600)—“Rituals of are just two of the history-making Rented Island: Object Theater, like a saxophone sneezing. The rest gadocio is common in hip-hop, of works here. More than a hundred Loft Performance, and the New of the release is also engaging and course, but Ross’s music is strikingly others follow the course of the war, Psychodrama—Manhattan, 1970- commercially aware: there’s a song one-dimensional, mostly repeated 1980.” Through Feb. 2. both on the front lines and in the named after Jimmy Iovine, the head of declarations of his own greatness, protests staged on the home front. Brooklyn Museum Interscope Records, and the first track, delivered through loosely connected Through Nov. 30. (Kasher, 521 200 Eastern Parkway “Ten Thousand Hours,” mentions the couplets that usually aren’t all that (718-638-5000)—“War/ W. 23rd St. 212-966-3978.) Photography: Images of Armed highly influential music-review site great themselves. This makes some of 3 Conflict and Its Aftermath.” Pitchfork (as well as the New Yorker the songs nearly intolerable, and also Through Jan. 19. writer Malcolm Gladwell). With Talib renders others absolutely fascinating. Galleries—Downtown American Museum of Kweli, the acclaimed rapper whose (Beacon Theatre, Broadway at 74th Eileen Quinlan Natural History Central Park W. at 79th St. lyrics are often far too thoughtful St. 212-465-6500. Nov. 15.) The New York artist, a standout in (212-769-5100)—“The Power of to be as easily marketed. (Theatre at MOMA’s current “New Photogra- Poison.” Opens Nov. 16. Madison Square Garden, Seventh Ave. The Scene Is Now phy” show, is known for turning Bronx Museum at 33rd St. 800-745-3000. Nov. 13-15.) This compelling group from a close-up images of small-scale 1040 Grand Concourse bygone Lower East Side musical constructions into complex and (718-681-6000)—“Paulo Bruscky: Alison Moyet community celebrates its thirtieth Art Is Our Last Hope.” colorful abstractions. She breaks Through Feb. 9. The English singer first made it anniversary with an expansive three- with that approach in a strong Stateside in the early eighties as the set retrospective. The group, whose Frick Collection show of black-and-white work that 1 E. 70th St. vocal half of Yaz (known as Yazoo at only constant members have been the mixes representation (including (212-288-0700)—“Vermeer, home), a synth-pop duo with Vince guitarist and singer Chris Nelson rephotographed old snapshots and Rembrandt, and Hals: Clarke which had a series of hits, and the keyboardist Philip Dray, Masterpieces of Dutch Painting recent portraits of Quinlan’s sister from the Mauritshuis.” Through including “Only You” and “Nobody’s has remained active in fits and starts and a male friend) and visceral, Jan. 19. Diary.” But Yaz split up in 1983, and through the decades, releasing an process-driven abstraction. The Moyet has been on an extended excellent album, “Magpie Alarm,” Jewish Museum most sensational images are records Fifth Ave. at 92nd St. roller-coaster ride as a solo artist only two years ago. Many of the of their own corrosion: prints left (212-423-3200)—“Art Spiegelman’s ever since, with periods of triumph band’s protagonists came out of New for days in a chemical bath that Co-Mix: A Retrospective.” (her début album, “Alf,” from 1984) York’s No Wave scene, and its sound disintegrated or peeled back layers Through March 23. and periods of retrenchment (after echoes that style, with fragmentary of emulsion. The resulting pictures Studio Museum in Harlem her 1994 album, “Essex,” she went to lyrics and flashes of angularity. But feel unfixed and furious, like a blast 144 W. 125th St. (212-864-4500)— war with her record label, Sony, and there are moments of sweetness, too, “The Shadows Took Shape.” site or a brewing storm. Through Opens Nov. 14. didn’t record for almost a decade). especially in Nelson’s disarming, Dec. 8. (Abreu, 36 Orchard St. Moyet recently released her eighth quavering vocals, along with forays 212-995-1774.) solo album, “The Minutes,” which into Americana-tinged songwriting. was produced by Guy Sigsworth, (Bowery Electric, 327 Bowery, at 2nd Scott Reeder and it returned her to her roots in St. 212-228-0228. Nov. 16.) The Detroit-based painter approaches electronic pop and netted her some art history with a mix of sendup of the strongest reviews of her career. A 70th Birthday Tribute to and sincerity. Canvases covered with (Grand Ballroom, Manhattan Center, Joni Mitchell lines and squiggles nod to Abstract 311 W. 34th St. 800-745-3000. Nov. 14.) Hannah Reimann, a classically trained Expressionism but the marks are New York City pianist, who is also made with alphabet noodles. A Norton Records Hurricane an actress and a rocker, has formed punch line, sure, but the results are goings on, online Sandy First Anniversary a seven-piece group to mark the Ca- as lovely as a star-flecked night sky. For more dance listings, Weekend Blast nadian songsmith’s birthday. They’ll A row of deadpan text paintings including a broadcast of the The Brooklyn retro-rock label suf- be taking on Mitchell’s songs from of four-letter words—“Post Cats,” Bolshoi’s “Le Corsaire” and an fered catastrophic losses at its Red the late sixties and early seventies, “Moot Meme,” “Cool Shit”—nod experimental folk-dance Hook warehouse when Sandy hit, and Reimann is a determined and to Ed Ruscha. The funniest work performance, visit nyr.kr/dance. just over a year ago. But it survived, uncanny performer of Mitchell’s is a chalkboard list, of “alternate and is celebrating in high style. On canon—earlier this year, she performed titles for recent exhibitions I’ve Nov. 15, at Warsaw, the Flamin’ the 1971 album “Blue” at the Bitter seen,” including “Fake Casual,” “The Groovies (“Shake Some Action”), End. (Littlefield, 622 Degraw St., Mens Movement,” and “Important who have reunited and are about between Third and Fourth Aves., Art Referenced Unimportantly.” Is to release their first new album in Brooklyn. 718-855-3388. Nov. 15.) this the artist’s preëmptive self- twenty years, split a bill with those critique? Call him and ask—his legends of Northwest proto-punk the Wooden Shjips phone number is rendered in neon ON NEWYORKER.COM Sonics. With Daddy Long Legs. (261 The guitarist Erik (Ripley) Johnson in another work here. Through Art Spiegelman gives a video Driggs Ave., Brooklyn.) On Nov. 16, founded this scraggy psychedelic-drone Dec. 22. (Cooley, 107 Norfolk St. tour of his career retrospective at the Brooklyn Bowl, Memphis’s outfit in 2003, and ever since he’s been 212-680-0564.) at the Jewish Museum. Reigning Sound, Brooklyn’s A-Bones, getting grilled about the oddity of

16 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 the “j” in the band’s name. An avid fan of classic “progg,” a Swedish form of progressive rock, Johnson added the wayward consonant to make the name look more Scandinavian. Johnson sports facial hair that rivals Z.Z. Top’s Billy Gibbons’s, and while his appearance might be ornate, his music is not. He favors a simple approach: no drum solos, no noodling bass lines, and heaps of fuzzy feedback. (Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. 212-260-4700. Nov. 13. Knitting Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn.3 347-529-6696. Nov. 14.) Jazz and Standards Melissa Aldana With her win this year at the annual Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition (she was the first woman to take first place in any of the competition’s instrumental categories), the Chilean-born musician has made good on the promise that her mentor Greg Osby detected early on. Aldana, who is twenty-four and who has two albums under her name on Osby’s Inner Circle Music label, unites a commanding tenor tone with the structural poise of an ever-alert improviser. (Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St. 212- 576-2232. Nov. 12-13.)

“A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair” Wynton Marsalis has been delving into the theatrical world of late (notably his stewardship of the new Broadway hit “After Midnight”), and this production, created in collaboration with New York City Center, finds him leading the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and a number of vocalists, including Bernadette Peters, Cyrille Aimee, winter pr�iew Norm Lewis, and Jeremy Jordan, in a program of the twenty-nine-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter Basia Bulat specially arranged classics by Stephen Sondheim, celebrating a city that has fed the creativity of plays the Autoharp, the piano, the violin, and a variety of other instruments, but both the Broadway genius and the jazz icon. (City she can make remarkable music without any of them. Bulat has a singular voice, Center, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. Nov. 13-17.) with a confident yet vulnerable tone, and she sings with an impassioned yearning George Cables that suggests the vast wilderness of her homeland. She’s been nominated for a The pianist, who has been a trusted associate of Juno Award and short-listed for the Polaris Music Prize, and her third album, such legendary figures as Freddie Hubbard, Dexter Gordon, and Art Pepper (who bestowed on him “Tall Tall Shadow,” recently released, shows her maturing as a songwriter. Bulat the title of “Mr. Beautiful”), has long been both a is touring the States, and is at the Bowery Ballroom on Nov. 23, with backing steadfast supporting player and a whirlwind soloist. musicians—not that she really needs them. To celebrate his sixty-ninth birthday, he leads a trio featuring the drummer Victor Lewis and the Christmas comes early for fans of sterling soul and R. & B. The legendary bassist Essiet Essiet on the first two nights and a singer Bobby Womack is playing three nights at City Winery, with a thirteen- sextet with the vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles piece band, Dec. 20-22. These are his first full-length shows in New York in on the last two, focussing throughout on his own tunes. (Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Broadway at 60th more than a decade, since he had to cancel last year’s SummerStage appearance St. 212-258-9595. Nov. 14-17.) for health reasons. Expect treats from his rich back catalogue, as well as songs from his latest album, “The Bravest Man in the Universe,” his first in nearly Marty Ehrlich There’s hardly a manner of saxophone, clarinet, twenty years, which was co-produced by Damon Albarn. or flute that Ehrlich can’t extract stirring music There might be more musical options for New Year’s Eve than there are out of, a gift that this superb instrumentalist, snowflakes, including Phish at Madison Square Garden, the Punch Brothers at farsighted composer, and intrepid bandleader has been exhibiting in the new-jazz world for the Bowery Ballroom, Jill Scott at Radio City Music Hall, and the Bad Plus at the nearly four decades. In a well-deserved weeklong Village Vanguard, but after the holidays are over, bands—and showgoers—slip into residency, he’s leading different bands each night. hibernation. This year, though, Neil Young, another Canadian, is doing four nights (The Stone, Avenue C at 2nd St. thestonenyc. com. Nov. 12-17.) at Carnegie Hall, starting Jan. 6. Also, the APAP|NYC, the annual membership conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, lures thousands Sheila Jordan of artists, agents, producers, promoters, and other professionals to the city. The In 1962, the innovative but unknown vocalist appeared on an album by the visionary jazz conference (Jan. 10-14) is for the pros, but there are a few concurrent showcases open composer George Russell, singing a bluesy and to the public. One highlight is GlobalFest, which brings world-music acts to Webster disquieting version of “You Are My Sunshine” Hall on Jan. 12. This year, the performers include Brushy One String, a Jamaican which shook all who heard it. She hasn’t stopped surprising us since, and she celebrates her eighty- artist making his New York City début, who sings and plays a one-string guitar. fifth birthday with a longtime collaborator, the —John Donohue luminous pianist Steve Kuhn. (Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd St. 212-475-8592. Nov. 18.)

illustration by soPHia FostEr-DiMino THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 17 clsical MUSIC

Opera Metropolitan Opera The brilliant young conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, who just gave a superb concert with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (and who will lead the Philharmonic in April), comes to the Met to show New Yorkers what he can do with opera. His task is “Rigoletto,” a revival of Michael Mayer’s effective (if shallow) Las Vegas-themed production from last season. The cast features Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the title role, Irina Lungu as Gilda, Matthew Polenzani as the Duke, and Stefan Kocán, a gifted scene-stealer, as Sparafucile. (Nov. 15 and Nov. 18 at 7:30.) • Also playing: A revival of “Tosca” features the estimable Patricia Racette, Roberto Alagna, and George Gagnidze in the leading roles; Riccardo Frizza conducts. (Nov. 13 at 8 and Nov. 16 at noon.) • The final performance of Nico Muhly’s “Two Boys” features Nicky Spence, who created the role of Brian in the world première at English National Opera, replacing the fine Paul Appleby. The strong cast also includes Alice Coote and Jennifer Zetlan; David Robertson. (Nov. 14 at 8.) • Herbert Wernicke’s glorious and glittering 2000 production of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” (“The Woman Without a Shadow,” a “Magic Flute” for older and wiser adults) returns to the house with a promising cast headed by the young American soprano Meagan Miller; Vladimir Jurowski, a young master of late-Romantic repertory, conducts. (Nov. 16 at 7:30.) (Metropolitan Opera House. 212-362-6000.)

White Light Festival: “Era la Notte” winter pr�iew When the soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci when the epic symphonies made a much belated New York recital début of Mahler and Bruckner were brought into last year, hundreds wondered why an artist of the repertory, at the end of the last century, other composers got crowded out. such high calibre had never appeared at the Met. Remember Borodin? His atmospheric tone poem “In the Steppes of Central (It’s complicated.) Lincoln Center is, however, presenting the U.S. première of her one-woman Asia” was once a regular in the concert hall—as were the “Polovetsian Dances,” a show (accompanied by soloists from the orches- vibrantly tuneful excerpt from his opera “Prince Igor.” Now Borodin’s opera, a tra Les Siècles), a journey of a wounded heart mythic tale of early Russia which few in the West have ever heard before, is back: built from music by such early-Baroque geniuses as Monteverdi (“Lamento d’Arianna” and the the Metropolitan Opera, for the first time in ninety-eight years, will mount the “Combattimento”), Barbara Strozzi, and Biagio work (beginning Feb. 6), in a production by the daring young director Dmitri Marini. (Rose Theatre, Broadway at 60th St. Tcherniakov, whose recent staging of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Czar’s Bride” was a 212-721-6500. Nov. 13-14 at 7:30.) hit in Berlin. Gianandrea Noseda, well versed in the Russian classics from his years Teatro Grattacielo: “Sakùntala” at the Mariinsky Theatre, conducts; Ildar Abdrazakov takes the title role. Once a year, this doughty company gathers its The operas of Benjamin Britten are joining the repertory as new classics, so we energies to present a concert performance of a work by one of the little masters of verismo. don’t really need the excuse of the composer’s centenary season to justify a staging This installment is especially notable: the North of “Billy Budd.” But the authenticity of a production at BAM by Glyndebourne American première of the best-regarded opera Festival Opera—with the London Philharmonic in the pit—makes the prospect all by Franco Alfano, better known as the man who undertook the most thankless musical job of the the more welcome (Feb. 7-13). Mark Padmore, as Captain Vere, leads the cast. last century—completing Puccini’s “Turandot.” Leave it to Leon Botstein and his intrepid American Symphony Orchestra Michelle Johnson takes the exotic title role; to champion first-rate composers who have slipped out of fashion, or who never the excellent Israel Gursky conducts. (Skirball Center, New York University, 566 La Guardia really made it in the first place. William Walton’s First Symphony has its place Pl. 212-352-3101. Nov. 19 at 8.) in the canon, but the Second Symphony, from 1960, has always been an outlier: 3 the luxury and glamour of the composer’s nineteen-thirties style now has a spiky, Orchestras and Choruses Stravinskyan edge and a chilly touch of Cold War frenzy. Botstein conducts it New York Philharmonic in “This England,” a concert at Carnegie Hall (Jan. 31) that also features Robert Alan Gilbert’s latest program gives the old soloists- Simpson’s “Volcano,” a brooding, courageous work from 1979 that sums up all the from-the-orchestra formula a special twist. At the center is the New York première of Christopher indomitable idiosyncrasy of its composer. Rouse’s Oboe Concerto, featuring the Philharmonic’s —Russell Platt principal, Liang Wang; it’s bookended by Strauss’s

18 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 illustration by JEFFrEy alan loVE “Also Sprach Zarathustra” and “Don anniversary concerts in the same Juan,” both of which include lavish city on the same night. The elegant repertory by Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Alarm Will Sound: Steve Reich violin solos performed by Glenn Scholars, now in their fortieth season, and Brahms (the symphonic-scaled Alan Pierson and his vibrant new- Dicterow, who is serving his final sea- sing not only music by Tallis and Sonata No. 3 in D Minor for Violin music ensemble, no longer newcom- son as the orchestra’s concertmaster. Taverner but also contemporary and Piano) and works on the more ers, celebrate another pillar of the (Avery Fisher Hall. 212-875-5656. works by Arvo Pärt and Nico Muhly, modern side by Stravinsky (the Di- establishment at the Metropolitan Nov. 14 and Nov. 19 at 7:30, Nov. presented by Lincoln Center’s White vertimento) and by one of his Curtis Museum—Steve Reich, who will 15 at 2, and Nov. 16 at 8.) Light Festival. At Miller Theatre, the Institute teachers, David Ludwig (the receive assured performances of Consort performs “A Love Affair,” world première of “Swan Song”). such works as “Clapping Music,” San Francisco Symphony a twenty-fifth-anniversary program (212-247-7800. Nov. 14 at 7:30.) “New York Counterpoint,” and Michael Tilson Thomas brings his focussed on Machaut’s secular work “Radio Rewrite” (based on songs by radiant orchestra to Carnegie Hall “Le Voir Dit” which also features Hagen Quartet Radiohead). (Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. in two programs, doing the music pieces by Dufay, Ockeghem, and Beethoven Cycle 212-570-3949. Nov. 16 at 7.) they do best. The first concert Josquin. (Alice Tully Hall. 212-721- This Austrian ensemble, long re - mixes music by Beethoven and 6500. Nov. 16 at 7:30.) • (Columbia nowned for its combination of energy, Marc-André Hamelin and Mo zart (the Piano Concerto No. 25 in University, Broadway at 116th St. exactitude, and taste, completes its the Pacifica Quartet C Major, with the always impressive 212-854-7799. Nov. 16 at 8.) six-concert cycle of the complete Bee- On the first half of this Zankel Hall Jeremy Denk) with two vanguard tho ven string quartets this week at the program, the fearless and formidable American works, Steven Mackey’s Arcangelo 92nd Street Y. The fourth concert Canadian pianist joins the Pacifica recent “Eating Greens” and Copland’s If the harpsichordist Jonathan Cohen includes, among other works, the in a true rarity, the Piano Quintet “Symphonic Ode” (from 1929); is good enough to pass muster with Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 127; by Leo Ornstein, one of the great the second offers Mahler’s titanic William Christie’s formidable Les the fifth features the Quartet in American twentieth-century “ultra- Ninth Symphony. (212-247-7800. Arts Florissants (which he serves C-Sharp Minor, Op. 131; and the moderns”; on the second, the fine Nov. 13-14 at 8.) as associate conductor), then he’s finale offers three powerful works, quartet goes it alone in Beethoven’s probably qualified to go out on the “Razumovsky” Quartet No. 3, String Quartet in B-Flat Major, American Symphony his own. He leads the U.S. début the Quartet in B-Flat Major, Op. 130, Op. 130 (with the “Grosse Fuge”). Orchestra: “Elliott Carter: of his ensemble of instrumentalists and the “Grosse Fuge.” (Lexington (Zankel Hall. 212-247-7800. Nov. An American Original” and singers at Zankel Hall, a pro- Ave. at 92nd St. 212-415-5500. Nov. 19 at 7:30.) One year after his death, the great gram featuring music both famous 14 at 7:30, Nov. 16 at 8, and Nov. composer’s legacy is celebrated by (including Bach’s Violin Concerto 17 at 3.) Chamber Music Society of Leon Botstein and his invaluable in A Minor and Handel’s cantata Lincoln Center orchestra, who perform music from “Apollo e Dafne”) and obscure (from Roulette: Anne LeBaron David Shifrin, the primus inter pares across Carter’s career (including the cantata “Meine Freundin, du The essential Brooklyn new-music of the Society’s virtuoso clarinettists “Pocahontas,” the Clarinet Concerto, bist schön,” by J. Christoph Bach, hub gives the stage to this admired for twenty-three years, gathers with and the Concerto for Orchestra). one of Johann Sebastian’s cousins). West Coast experimentalist, who several of his superb colleagues The Met clarinettist Anthony (212-247-7800. Nov. 18 at 7:30.) is an innovative performer on the (including the mezzo-soprano Sasha Mc Gill and the vocalists Mary 3 harp as well as an unusually in- Cooke and the clarinettist Romie de Mackenzie and Teresa Buchholz ventive composer. Joined by the Guise-Langlois) in music celebrating are the featured soloists. (Carnegie Recitals Flux Quartet (among others), she his instrument by Mozart, Pon chielli, Hall. 212-247-7800. Nov. 17 at 2.) Benjamin Beilman performs the world première of Mendelssohn, and Stravinsky, as The phenomenal young violinist, a her work “Breathtails” in a concert well as New York premières of Tallis Scholars / winner of the Avery Fisher Career that also features the premières of pieces by Lowell Liebermann and Orlando Consort Grant, comes to Carnegie’s Weill two pieces written for the pianist Christopher Theofanidis. (Alice Two of Great Britain’s leading Recital Hall to perform a program Ana Cervantes. (509 Atlantic Ave. Tully Hall. 212-875-5788. Nov. 19 early-music vocal ensembles offer nicely balanced between Romantic roulette.org. Nov. 14 at 8.) at 7:30.)

ABOVE & BEYOND

That Tiny Playful God AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES sively impastoed canvas by Joan the Moon”) and a Matta (“La The Basque poet Kirmen Uribe first The horse race enters its final round, Mitchell. The house then presents Rosa”). (20 Rockefeller Plaza, at came together with the musicians with a spate of contemporary-art a palate-cleansing sale that offers 49th St. 212-636-2000.) • Doyle Mikel Urdangarin, Rafa Rueda, sales. Sotheby’s leads off its evening a single item, a document signed offers a slice of Gotham history and Bingen Mendizabal and the auction (Nov. 13) with a substantial by George Washington in 1789 at its Nov. 18 and Nov. 25 auctions visual artist Mikel Valverde in Warhol, “Silver Car Crash”; other declaring Thanksgiving to be an of items from the estate of the 2003, for the show “Zaharregia, contenders in the sale include a late official holiday (Nov. 14). Two colorful former mayor Ed Koch; Txikiegia Agian” (“Too Old, Too De Kooning (“Untitled V”) and days of Latin-American art follow the first sale contains furniture and Small Maybe”). They performed one of Barnett Newman’s signature (Nov. 19-20), starting off with an decorations from his apartment, it at the Bowery Poetry Club that “zip” paintings, “By Twos.” Then, auction that features two pieces which overlooked Washington year, and later it became a book after a large daytime auction (Nov. from the Cleveland Museum: a Square Park. (175 E. 87th St. and a CD. They are back now with 14), the house turns its gaze to Tamayo (“Women Reaching for 212-427-2730.) the première of a new multimedia Oceanic, African, and Indonesian presentation, combining poetry, art from the collection of the late Readings and Talks song, and projections. The poet New York dealer Allan Stone (Nov. National Book Award Finalists Elizabeth Macklin, who did the 15). (York Ave. at 72nd St. 212- Rachel Kushner (“The Flamethrowers”), George Saunders (“Tenth of English translations, says to expect 606-7000.) • After a star-studded December”), George Packer (“The Unwinding: An Inner History of “anything zoragarria—enchanting evening sale of contemporary art the New America”), Lawrence Wright (“Going Clear: Scientology, Hol- in the most literal sense.” (Bow- (Nov. 12), Christie’s holds two lywood, & the Prison of Belief”), Frank Bidart (“Metaphysical Dog”), ery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, at day sales (Nov. 13), with the lots Lucie Brock-Broido (“Stay, Illusion”), and all the other finalists for the Bleecker St. 212-614-0505. Nov. ranging from a small sculpture by National Book Awards read from their work on the eve of the crown- 18 at 9.) Saint Clair Cemin to an aggres- ing ceremony. (New School, 66 W. 12th St. 212-229-5488. Nov. 19 at 7.)

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 19

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

cOMMENT MixEd REsuLTs

ast Tuesday, a conservative Republican governor with an chise, the story about last Tuesday should be what didn’t hap- L aura of moderation won big in pale-blue New Jersey, a pen. Color 2013 neither blue nor red but cynical gray. liberal Democratic mayoral candidate with a talent for The Times columnist Joe Nocera predicted these dismal re- speechmaking won even bigger in midnight-blue New York sults, and he proposed a number of reforms to pump some City, and a moderate Democratic moneyman was barely healthy, less toxically partisan blood into American democracy, elected governor of burgundy Virginia. The percentage of such as moving Election Day from Tuesday—an agrarian Virginia voters between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine anachronism from the mid-nineteenth century that is nowhere dropped by six points from last year, while the percentage of mentioned in the Constitution—to the weekend; opening pri- those older than sixty-five rose by four points and the percent- maries to all voters; matching small campaign donations with age of women fell by two. In Colorado, a proposal to raise the public funds, a system that greatly benefitted both Bill de Bla- state income tax to fund education was soundly defeated, sio and his Republican opponent; and ending gerrymandering while in New Jersey an increase in the minimum wage re- by having nonpartisan commissions, rather than highly partisan ceived even more overwhelming approval than did Chris legislatures, draw up congressional districts. Nocera even im- Christie, who opposed it. The winners in Virginia and New plied that it might be a good idea to make voting mandatory, as Jersey raised far more money than their opponents, but the it is in Australia, where failure to vote is punishable by fine. winning side on the Colorado ballot initiative was vastly out- Fixes like these recall the high-minded revulsion toward the spent by the losers. Seattle threw out its third mayor in a political and corporate machines of a century ago, which found row. The lessons that the 2013 elections hold for the 2014 expression in the Progressives’ faith in procedural cures for the midterms and beyond are not immediately clear. country’s arteriosclerosis. (Proposals then included having Na- But here’s one: the electorate is alienated. Polling places are tional Convention delegates chosen in Presidential primaries, sparsely populated in every off-year election, particularly when instead of by party leaders; replacing big-city bosses with com- the outcomes are predicted to be landslides, but 2013 marked mission government; and having senators elected directly by a depressing low. In New Jersey, the voters rather than by state legislators.) turnout of eligible voters was 37.6 per Such reforms, long overdue, are based on cent, down an astonishing ten points the idea that, if only more Americans from the governor’s race of four years could be encouraged to participate and ago. In New York, the turnout for the make their voices heard, the extremes in mayoral race hit what may be a historic politics would fade, and the basic com- low of twenty-four per cent (in 1993, it mon sense of the average citizen could was fifty-seven per cent), but at least guide public policy once again. New Yorkers beat their counterparts in But polarization has been a stubborn Atlanta, Houston, Pittsburgh, and De- fact of American politics for almost four troit, where the percentages barely broke decades. It’s mostly an élite phenome- into double digits. In Virginia, with a non, among politicians, donors, activ- close race for governor, the turnout was ists, and pundits; voting patterns on slightly higher than in the 2009 race, but Capitol Hill scarcely reflect broad pub- was still only forty-three per cent of eli- lic views. Yet year by year it deepens, gible voters. In 1989, it was sixty-seven and in a lopsided way, with Republicans per cent. When so many Americans becoming dramatically more conserva-

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM BY ILLUSTRATIONS don’t even bother to exercise the fran- tive. The profoundly negative Virginia

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 21 governor’s race had everything that Americans claim to hate Party’s current hope for 2016, just because he doesn’t act or talk about politics, pitting big money (Terry McAuliffe, a banker, like an extremist. Democrats needed twenty years and repeated prodigious fund-raiser, and Clinton crony) against ideological losses to get from George McGovern to Bill Clinton. It took extremism (Kenneth Cuccinelli, the Tea Party-backed attor- a long time for the Republican Party to fall into the hands of ney general). It was close, but ideology lost. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, and it won’t easily extricate itself, as The same decades of political polarization have also seen Cuccinelli’s near-victory shows. But 2013 might turn out to be soaring economic inequality. If you graph both trends, starting the high-water mark of Republican extremism, the year the around 1977 they follow almost exactly the same upward trajec- polarization line finally levelled off. tory. According to “Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology Here is the other revelation: for the first time in memory, a and Unequal Riches,” a study published a few years ago by three major candidate based an entire campaign on fighting inequal- political scientists, the two phenomena are intimately con- ity and won a resounding mandate. If, without sacrificing pub- nected, and they reinforce each other: the growing gap between lic safety and efficiency, Bill de Blasio can make New York a rich and poor widens the division between the parties, and, in place of more truly equal opportunity for all, a city where the el- turn, “polarization reduces the possibilities for policy changes emental unfairness of America’s new gilded age is finally dimin- that would reduce inequality.” ished a little, then he will open up the range of policy alterna- This recent history leads to the two most interesting reve- tives and show the way for a new wave of Democrats around the lations from last week’s elections. The first is that Republicans, country. But he must understand that New Yorkers are not fresh from the disastrous government shutdown and near-de- completely different from other Americans, who, in the past fault, have woken up to their own self-destructive elements and generation, have lost much of their trust in government. This is gone into a very public panic. In many states, the Party estab- why the technical troubles and substantive turmoil around the lishment is trying to broaden participation in choosing candi- launch of the Affordable Care Act are so damaging: they dates by replacing conventions, dominated by far-right activ- confirm voters in the expectation to which they’ve been condi- ists, with primaries. Governor Christie—a skillful and tioned for decades. There’s never more than a slender chance to self-infatuated politician, whose contempt for public services bend the lines on the graph away from cynicism. and employees outstrips Ronald Reagan’s—has emerged as the —George Packer

THE BOaRds lived down here. So we follow their tion of “The Wandering Jew” at the Na- PlaY ON example.” tional Theatre. “I met her on the first “Are we both perching on the settee? day of rehearsal and very much admired Shall we?” an upbeat Englishwoman her walk,” Rylance recalled, snapping asked, leading Rylance to a sofa. The open a protein shake. He wore a fedora, woman was Claire van Kampen, Ry- black jeans with dangling keys, and pearl lance’s wife of twenty-four years. A di- earrings. “I thought I’d follow that walk.” rector and a composer, van Kampen is “It took me quite a while to notice omewhere in the bowels of the Be- her husband’s frequent collaborator; for him, because my job on that show was Slasco Theatre, long considered to be the current productions, which aspire to so difficult,” van Kampen, who has haunted by its namesake, the actor Mark Elizabethan authenticity, she has as- feathery blond hair and a Carly Simon Rylance has installed a Ping-Pong table. sembled a band of early-music special- mouth, said. “By about the third month, “I like to encourage a playful place back- ists, who play from a balcony overlook- stage,” he said the other night. Rylance, ing the stage. Their instruments are the former artistic director of the Globe, rarely heard on Broadway: sackbuts, in London, has played most of Shake- rauschpfeifes, shawms, lutes, theorbo, speare’s leading men, and a good share pipe and tabor, cittern, field drum, of his women. At the moment, he is al- hurdy-gurdy. ternating between the title character in “We’re trying to re-create a world “Richard III” and Countess Olivia in that Shakespeare would recognize,” van “Twelfth Night,” in an all-male reper- Kampen said. The shawm, or hautbois tory production that includes the actor (an ancestor of the oboe), she explained, and writer Stephen Fry. Two hours be- was “associated in Puritan England with fore curtain, Rylance bounded into a the music of the Devil,” and underscores cavernous backstage area fitted as a rec Richard III’s scheming. The recorder, room. “This is the Two Elephants Pub, which comes in during the ghost scene, where Houdini kept two elephants,” he was a “signifier of death” in Shake- explained. “He would drop one of them speare’s England, unlike in modern-day through a trapdoor into a big pool of Manhattan, where it signifies the pres- water to make it disappear, and then ence of neighbors with a third grader. walk another one on to make it appear Rylance and van Kampen began dat- again. When they weren’t acting, they ing in 1987, while working on a produc- Claire van Kampen and Mark Rylance

22 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 somebody pointed out that this young man was hanging around the piano rather a lot, and maybe he had other motives than learning his song.” She began whistling a tune in his ear. “The Agricola song!” Rylance said. “I played a character called Agricola, who was a worker, and I came home whistling from work.” “We did ‘Hamlet’ after that, didn’t we?” van Kampen went on. “I composed the music for that. He was an amazing Hamlet from ’88 to ’90 at the R.S.C.” “R.S.C. and then up at the A.R.T., in Boston,” Rylance said. “And then in “Home office, O.K. Office home, not O.K.” Pittsburgh as well.” “We founded our own company in •• ’91, didn’t we? And did ‘The Tempest’?” “ ‘The Tempest,’ yeah. We directed and you composed for ‘As You Like It’ Rylance excused himself—he was Edward Arrocha was fishing from a in the early nineties, here at St. Clem- about to go on as Olivia and was due for rock nearby. Arrocha is a former light- ent’s Church. And then, four or five a jig rehearsal and a shave. “I don’t know bulb eater, a former law student, and a months after I got the job at the Globe, what’s wrong with men,” he said. “They retired circus performer. “I was the guy I said, ‘You know, I’m just going home just won’t take a hairy woman.” at Coney Island who got squeezed be- every night and talking with Claire 1—Michael Schulman tween the beds of nails with a thousand about every decision, so it would really pounds on my chest,” he said. “Also, I be better for her to be my associate NEaT TRicK dEpT. used to introduce the electric chair and director.’ ” dRiNK up the sword-swallower.” Arrocha’s face They were married at dawn on De- is lavishly tattooed with drawings the cember 21, 1989—the winter solstice— color of blue smoke portraying an at the Rollright Stones, a circle of an- outer-space motif. Between his eye- cient limestone monuments in Oxford- brows, more or less in the position of a shire. “It was bitterly cold,” van Kampen third eye, is Saturn. Now and then he recalled. “And most of Mark’s family looked over at Sharpe as he and the had come from California and would he recent New York rollout of the young women filled the jerrican with a stand shivering. It was absolutely won- TLifeCan, a water-purifying device, pail of water from the Pond. derful.” Van Kampen had children from began with Jeff Sharpe wheeling a black LifeCan includes two cylinders, a previous marriage, one of whom, Juliet suitcase to the edge of the Pond, in about eight inches long. The cylinders Rylance, has entered her stepfather’s Central Park. Sharpe is the C.E.O. of attach to the jerrican. “This is the tech- profession. “When I saw her play Des- SimpliPure, the company that makes nology part here,” Sharpe said, of the demona at Theatre for a New Audi- LifeCan. He lives in Southern Califor- cylinders. “One’s got a little carbon- ence—oh, I could hardly bear to watch nia, near Laguna Beach, which is nearly and-mesh filter that removes sediment, her be murdered!” Rylance said. (His an ideal place to live, he said, except then sends the water through an ultra- other stepdaughter, Nataasha van Kam- that he has trouble getting his teen-age filtration membrane. It has a .01-micron pen, died last year, of a brain aneurysm.) daughters off the beach. Sharpe or his filter, small enough for 99.99 per cent The couple now live in London, with partner, Tareq Risheq, the inventor of of the viruses and 99.9999 per cent of their Jack Russell terrier, Apache, and the LifeCan, have demonstrated their bacteria that are out there.” The Life- their cat, Ethel. product beside the Nile, the Amazon, Can is meant for car campers or boaters “You prefer me when I’m doing cer- and the Chicago River and by the foun- or for emergency preparedness in situ- tain characters than other ones, don’t tain of the Bellagio hotel, in Las Vegas. ations such as “hurricanes when there’s you?” Rylance said. In the Park, Sharpe was accompanied so much water the system gets over- “Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled about liv- by two young women from the P.R. whelmed and sewage gets into it.” ing with Rooster Byron,” van Kampen firm The Woods & Co. One of the Sharpe’s plan was to purify some water said, referring to Rylance’s showboating women, Mallory Liebhaber, who had and persuade passersby to drink it. drunkard from “Jerusalem,” for which he dark hair and wore a black-and-white Pulling the plunger on the pump won an Olivier and a Tony. “Hamlet’s tent dress and black tights, bent down seemed difficult. “It’s a prototype,” another one. When you’re living with and wrote @thelifecan decisively in blue Sharpe said. “The real one will be much Hamlet, the sky goes dark at four in chalk on the pavement of the walkway more efficient.” Then, “I’m wondering the afternoon.” by the Pond. if I broke it,” he said. “Uh-oh, I did just

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 23 1 break it.” He unscrewed the mount, and VOICE-OVER DEPT. aged” and “traditional,” back to back. a little sliver of plastic fell onto the AMBIGUOUSLY GENUINE “The variety of credits is such that things pavement. don’t get too repetitive,” he said recently, “I can fix it,” he said, then he knelt from his office on campus. “We had one and removed the cylinders from the for ‘Squirrel Away—the natural way to can. Standing up, he said, “It still works. keep squirrels at bay,’ and I remember I’m just not able to get the leverage.” He thinking, That’s poetry!” forced some pond water through the Tavares has not tired of his signature filters and out one end of a plastic tube, rank Tavares teaches organizational phrase, like a veteran rock star still happy into a cup held by Liebhaber. Fcommunication at Southern Con- to answer the crowd’s call for his biggest “You guys going to drink that?” Ar- necticut State University, and he recently hit. But a record company inevitably goes rocha asked. published a not quite best-selling collec- looking for a new sound, and so, this Beside Sharpe, a woman was taking tion of short stories—both fine accom- spring, NPR told Tavares that it would a photograph of a man and two girls. plishments, but not ones that are likely “Where you guys from?” Sharpe asked. to get him recognized on the street. “Saudi Arabia,” said the man, Ali Strangers do occasionally pause, how- Mohammed Hakami, who held one of ever, when they hear him speak, at which his daughter’s hands tightly. point they ask, “Have we met?” They Sharpe extended the glass. “Will you usually haven’t, but Tavares knows why drink that water?” they think they have, so he will recite the “No,” Hakami said firmly. words “Support for NPR comes from” “If I drink it?” and wait for their eyes to light up. “No.” For the past thirty-one years, Tavares “If I show that I’m crazy enough to has been the voice of National Public drink it?” Radio’s underwriting credits, declaring “No, you could be crazy enough,” in a consistent monotone that funding Hakami said. has been provided by the John D. and Meanwhile, Arrocha said that he Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation or takes long walks around the city each Lumber Liquidators or, around the hol- day, and that he had come across a per- idays, the Pajamagram Company. Tava- Sabrina Farhi formance by Banksy, whom he called res has held the job since its creation, Bansky. “I was walking to buy worms making his voice, by unofficial estimate, be holding a national casting call to find a on Delancey Street, because there’s the most widely heard in the history of replacement for him. “People said we an enormous large-mouth bass in the public radio. He has been parodied in should just hire Morgan Freeman,” Eric Pond I call Moby-Dick, and by the comedy sketches and once recorded vo- Nuzum, NPR’s vice-president of pro- McDonald’s there’s a huge crowd. A cals for a pop song, which his students gramming, said. Other suggestions, like homeless-looking kid is bending over thought was cool because the track fea- David Attenborough and Benedict Cum- the shoes of a Ronald McDonald statue tured André 3000, the rapper, but which berbatch, were problematically British. and polishing them, and he’s shaking Tavares, who is sixty-eight, thought was NPR received four hundred and and he looks scared, and we felt bad cool simply because it reminded him twenty-nine applications, which were about it. Six cop cars pulled up, and of Phil Rizzuto’s cameo in Meat Loaf ’s divided, Nuzum said, into two groups: then suddenly the kid stood and people “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” “those who had the perfect voice of applauded, and a guy people said was Tavares admits that his job “is not God,” much like Morgan Freeman, and Bansky put the statue over his shoulder brain surgery,” but says that it does require those “who actually sounded like human and walked away fast.” stamina and an attention to detail. He re- beings.” Some at NPR thought that the Sharpe persuaded Arrocha to try the cords up to six hundred different credits voice should emphasize its “institutional water. “I can’t believe I’m going to try every other week from his home studio, bigness,” but Nuzum and others liked pond water,” he said. “All the time I’ve which doubles as his clothes closet, and the humans. “The phrase I use is ‘ambig- fished here.” While Sharpe filled a cup, during recording sessions he places a sign uously genuine,’ ” he said. “They sound Arrocha said that he had seen a great in an upstairs window asking his neighbor like a real person, but they don’t sound blue heron recently in the Pond. “I got to refrain from mowing his lawn. Each like a specific age, or as if they were from very excited, and I said to this guy next credit is recorded to a specific half sec- a specific region.” to me, ‘Can you believe how majestic ond—adding a shout-out to the Corpo- Congratulations, then, to Sabrina that bird is?’ And he said, ‘What’s the ration for Public Broadcasting, he discov- Farhi, the owner of America’s most ambig deal?,’ like I was a tourist. He asked ered, could fill a moment of dead air—and biguously genuine voice. Born in New me, ‘Where are you from?,’ and I said, must be read as written. That leaves no York, Farhi, who is thirty-three and has ‘New York.’ And I asked, ‘Where are room for improvisation around difficult curly, chin-length hair, moved with her you from?,’ and he said, ‘Houston.’ ” enunciations, as when a dairy company family to Singapore, Belgium, and Swit- —Alec Wilkinson wanted its cheese described as “naturally zerland before eventually returning to

24 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 Brooklyn to work as an actress, a journey a stressful time. We’re all trading tips and “One bridesmaid comes in crying, and that left her with an accent more or less taking notes.” On the menu she was hold- says something to her husband, and he from nowhere. “My mom was a banker ing, she’d put a star by “crudités station.” turns around and punches the best man and my dad was an engineer—I did the- A hundred and forty people—en- in the face,” Kamioner recalled. Another atre,” she said last month, after one of gaged couples, a smattering of future time, a bride who had a bagpiper playing her first NPR recording sessions. Farhi mothers-in-law and best friends— her processional made a run for it before has previously done commercials for schmoozed at the cocktail hour, in what heading down the aisle. “I found her cry- T.I.A.A.-CREF and Bioré, and she ad- felt like an awkward wedding recep- ing,” Kamioner remembers. “Finally, she vertised her voice on a job board as tion. Instead of making individual ap- said, ‘Everyone’s looking at me! ’ ” Kami- “warm, intelligent, sincere and confi- pointments for couples to select menus— oner laughed. “The poor piper had never dent . . . as well as hip and friendly,” and the Botanic Garden hosts two hundred stopped playing and was turning purple. said she was available to dub voice-mail weddings annually—the house caterer, But she made it.” systems, video games, and adult content. CharlesSallyCharles, holds two mass As people filtered into the Palm Talking about her audition tape, Farhi tastings a year. Each couple gets two House for dinner, “I’m in the Mood for said that NPR has a “feel and tone” that tickets, with an option to bring guests, Love” played over the sound system. she tried to match. for seventy-five dollars a head. (In the Alexis Thames and Jim Bearden ( July 3, Farhi’s voice will start appearing on early days, clients could bring guests 2014) lingered outside. He’s a photogra- the radio this month, but NPR asked free; feeding frenzies ensued. “We ended pher who has worked three weddings at Tavares to stick around while she learns up with a whole lot of pissed-off brides the venue. the job’s quirks. (She has already stum- and grooms,” Charles Krause, one of the “It’s the hardest building I’ve ever bled over the phrase “Forever stamps.”) partners, said.) shot, by far,” he said, gesturing toward In his office at S.C.S.U., Tavares men- Sitting by the fountain nibbling on the glass walls and hoisting a shrimp that tioned one of the last credits he had re- sashimi and sushi rolls were Allison he approvingly noted was “as big as a tur- corded, for an A.A.R.P. initiative called Moore and Andrew Perlgut (October 18, key leg.” Life Reimagined. “Obviously, I have 2014) and Andrew Rabensteine and Joe Inside, Cristina Thompson intro- mixed feelings about this,” he said, ad- Schulz (October 4, 2014). “How funny is duced her fiancé, Matt Tokeshi ( June 14, mitting that it would be odd to hear that, we’re two weeks apart!” Raben- 2014). “He’s getting his Ph.D. in politi- someone else reading his lines. But he steine, an actor whose Web site lists “ex- cal science,” she said. Her mother, Eva, was excited to have more time to spend cellent mover” under special skills, said. quickly inserted, “At Princeton.” on a novel that he was writing, and The pair met when Rabensteine was cast A plate holding three entrées— hadn’t ruled out more work behind the in a play, “The Chicken Snake,” written chicken with caramelized onions, cod microphone, taking particular encour- by one of Schulz’s friends. Schulz was set with lemon-scented jasmine rice, and agement from a friend’s recent remark to play the lead, a character based on him, lamb chops with panko-herb crust—ar- about his future prospects: “All you need but it took ten years to get the play pro- rived, followed by a dessert of ices in a is one good car commercial.” duced. “By that point, I was too old to Martini glass. Rion Stassi was taking a 1—Reeves Wiedeman play myself,” Schulz said, biting into a smoke break outside. He’d met his miniature Reuben sandwich. Raben- fiancée, Jennifer DiNoia (April 14, 2014), up lifE’s laddER steine got the part, and then Cupid had on Match.com. She was on tour as El- TasTE TEsT one less arrow. phaba, the green-skinned witch in Rachel Karnovsky and Sidney Coren, “Wicked,” so he brought her best friend, both twenty-eight (May 25, 2014), told Andrew Turteltaub, as a stand-in. the story of how she’d proposed. “I got “You gotta have a best gay,” Turtel- him this Batman trinket”—the groom taub said. said that he identified with Batman— Stassi, a designer, showed an iPhone “and we were all upstate at my grandpar- photo of the engagement ring he’d made. achel Roth, a physician, and her ents’ house, and I just asked him.” It was on a green hand. “That’s her in her R fiancé, Jon Cohen, who works in Sue Kaplan, the mother of the bride- makeup,” he said. finance, are getting married on May 18, to-be, chimed in, “Afterward, we were all Inside, Aiko Iizuka and Timothy 2014. On a recent Thursday evening, crying and hugging, and my mother said Lum (May 17, 2014) were sharing a cu- they went to the Brooklyn Botanic Gar- to me, ‘You know, I proposed to your fa- cumber ice as Blondie’s “The Tide Is den to attend a cocktail hour and a sit- ther.’ ” Kaplan turned to her husband. High” played to an empty dance floor. down-dinner tasting for couples who are “And I proposed to you, right?” Her hus- They got engaged in April, 2011, and planning to be married in one of the gar- band shrugged. “It runs in the family!” were supposed to get married at the den’s wedding venues, the glass-domed she said. South Street Seaport. “Then Sandy hap- Palm House and the slightly smaller The tasting also functions as a dry run pened,” Lum said. Iizuka looked around. Atrium. of sorts; not every wedding goes smoothly. “This is such a pretty place,” she said. “It’s nice to talk to people who are in the Leigh Kamioner, who was the caterer’s “And there are no rivers around here, same position,” Roth said. “It’s a really sup- event coördinator for years and now con- you know?” portive environment during what can be sults, told a few war stories. —Sophie Brickman

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 25 of woman I wanted to become: one who pERsONal HisTORY is free to do whatever she chooses. I started keeping a diary in third grade and, in solidarity with Anne Frank, gave THaNKsgiViNg iN MONgOlia it a name and made it my confidante. To this day, I feel comforted and re- Adventure and heartbreak at the edge of the earth. lieved of loneliness, no matter how foreign my surroundings, if I have a pad BY aRiEl lEVY and a pen with which to record my experiences. I’ve spent the past twenty years putting myself in foreign surroundings as frequently as possible. There is nothing I love more than travelling to a place where I know nobody, and where everything will be a surprise, and then writing about it. The first time I went to Af- rica for a story, I was so excited that I barely slept during the entire two-week trip. Everything was new: the taste of springbok meat, the pink haze over Cape Town, the noise and chaos of the corrugated-tin alleyways in Khayelitsha township. I could still feel spikes of adren- aline when I was back at my desk in New York, typing, while my spouse cooked a chicken in the kitchen. But as my friends, one after another, made the journey from young woman to mother, it glared at me that I had not. I would often listen to a Lou Reed song called “Beginning of a Great Adven- ture,” about the possibilities of imminent parenthood. “A little me or he or she to fill up with my dreams,” Lou sings, with ragged hopefulness, “a way of saying life is not a loss.” It became the soundtrack to my mulling on motherhood. I knew that a child would make life as a professional explorer largely impossible. But y favorite game when I was a child ferred make-believe that revolved around having a kid seemed in many ways like M was Mummy and Explorer. My adventure, featuring pirates and knights. the wildest trip of all. father and I would trade off roles: one of I was also domineering, impatient, re- I always get terrified right before I us had to lie very still with eyes closed lentlessly verbal, and, as an only child, travel. I become convinced that this and arms crossed over the chest, and the often baffled by the mores of other kids. time will be different: I won’t be able to other had to complain, “I’ve been search- I was not a popular little girl. I played figure out the map, or communicate ing these pyramids for so many years. Robinson Crusoe in a small wooden fort with non-English speakers, or find the When will I ever find the tomb of Tut- that my parents built for me in the back people I need in order to write the story ankhamun?” (This was in the late seven- yard. In the fort, I was neither ostracized I’ve been sent in search of. I will be ties, when Tut was at the Met, and we nor ill at ease—I was self-reliant, brave, lost and incompetent and vulnerable. I came in from the suburbs to visit him ingeniously surviving, if lost. know that my panic will turn to excite- frequently.) At the climax of the game, The other natural habitat for a child ment once I’m there—it always does— the explorer stumbles on the embalmed who loves words and adventure is the but that doesn’t make the fear before Pharaoh and—brace yourself—the page, and I was content when my par- takeoff any less vivid. So it was with mummy opens his eyes and comes to ents read me “Moby-Dick,” “Pippi childbearing: I was afraid for ten years. life. The explorer has to express shock, Longstocking,” or “The Hobbit.” I de- I didn’t like childhood, and I was afraid and then says, “So, what’s new?” To cided early that I would be a writer that I’d have a child who didn’t, either. which the mummy replies, “You.” when I grew up. That, I thought, was I was afraid I would be an awful mother. I was not big on playing house. I pre- the profession that went with the kind And I was afraid of being grounded,

26 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 ILLUSTRATION BY JEFFREY DECOSTER sessile—stuck in one spot for eighteen them where I was going, but I was coal, gold, and copper ore; its wealth years of oboe lessons and math home- pleased with myself. I liked the idea of was expected to double in five years. But work that I couldn’t finish the first time being the kind of woman who’d go to a third of the population still lives no- around. the Gobi Desert pregnant, just as, at madically, herding animals and sleep- I was on book tour in Athens when I twenty-two, I’d liked the idea of being ing in gers, burning coal or garbage for decided that I would do it. My part- the kind of girl who’d go to India by heat. Until the boom, Mongolia’s best- ner—who had always indicated that I herself. And I liked the idea of telling known export was cashmere. As Jackson would need to cast the deciding vote on my kid, “When you were inside me, we Cox, a young consultant from Ten- parenthood—had come with me, and went to see the edge of the earth.” I nessee who’d lived in Ulaanbaatar for we were having one of those magical wasn’t truly scared of anything but the twelve years, told me, “You’re talking moments in a marriage when you find Mongolian winter. The tourist season about an economy based on yak meat each other completely delightful. My winds down in October, and by late and goat hair.” Greek publisher and his wife took us November, when I got on the plane, the I got together with Cox on my first out dancing and drinking, and cooked nights drop to twenty degrees below night in town. He sent a chauffeured for us one night in their little apart- zero. But I was prepared: I’d bought car to pick me up—every Westerner I ment, which was overrun with children, snow pants big enough to fit around my met in U.B. had a car and a driver—at friends, moussaka, and cigarette smoke. convex gut and long underwear two the Blue Sky Hotel, a new and sharply “Americans are not relaxed,” one of the sizes larger than I usually wear. pointed glass tower that split the cold other guests told me, holding his three- To be pregnant is to be in some kind sky like a shark fin. When I arrived at year-old and drinking an ouzo. Greece of discomfort pretty much all the time. his apartment, he and a friend, a min- was falling apart. The streets of Athens For the first few months, it was like wak- ing-industry lawyer from New Jersey, were crawling with cats and dogs that ing up with a bad hangover every single were listening to Beyoncé and pouring people had abandoned because they morning but never getting to drink—I champagne. The place was clean and could no longer afford pet food. But our was nauseated but hungry, afflicted with modern, but modest: for expats in U.B., hosts were jubilant. Their family didn’t a perpetual headache, and really qualified it’s far easier to accumulate wealth than seem like a burden; it seemed like a only to watch television and moan. That it is to spend it. We went to dinner at a party. The idea bloomed in my head passed, but a week before I left for Mon- French restaurant, where we all ordered that being governed by something other golia I started feeling an ache in my ab- beef, because seafood is generally terri- than my own wishes and wanderlust domen that was new. “Round-ligament ble in Mongolia, which is separated might be a pleasure, a release. pain” is what I heard from everyone I from the sea by its hulking neighbors I got pregnant quickly, to my sur- knew who’d been pregnant, and what I (and former occupiers) China and Rus- prise and delight, shortly before my read on every prenatal Web site: the sia. Then they took me to an under- thirty-eighth birthday. It felt like mak- uterus expanding to accommodate the ground gay bar called 100 Per Cent— ing it onto a plane the moment before baby, as he finally grew big enough to which could have been in Brooklyn, the gate closes—you can’t help but make me look actually pregnant, instead except that everyone in Mongolia still thrill. After only two months, I could of just chunky. That thought comforted smoked indoors. I liked sitting in a hear the heartbeat of the creature inside me on the fourteen-hour flight to Bei- booth in a dark room full of smoking, me at the doctor’s office. It seemed like jing, while I shifted endlessly, trying to gay Mongolians, but my body was feel- magic: a little eye of newt in my caul- find a position that didn’t hurt my round ing strange. I ended the night early. dron and suddenly I was a witch with ligaments. When I woke up the next morning, the power to brew life into being. Even When my connecting flight landed the pain in my abdomen was insistent; if you are not Robinson Crusoe in a sol- in Mongolia, it was morning, but the I wondered if the baby was starting to itary fort, as a human being you walk gray haze made it look like dusk. Ulaan- kick, which everyone said would be this world by yourself. But when you are baatar is among the most polluted cap- happening soon. I called home to com- pregnant you are never alone. ital cities in the world, as well as the plain, and my spouse told me to find a coldest. The drive into town wound Western clinic. I e-mailed Cox to get y doctor told me that it was fine through frozen fields and clusters of felt his doctor’s phone number, thinking M to fly up until the third trimester, tents—gers, they’re called there—into a that I’d call if the pain got any worse, so when I was five months pregnant I crowded city of stocky, Soviet-era mu- and then I went out to interview people: decided to take one last big trip. It nicipal buildings, crisscrossing tele- the minister of the environment, the would be at least a year, maybe two, be- phone and trolley lines, and old Tibetan president of a mining concern, and, fore I’d be able to leave home for weeks Buddhist temples with pagoda roofs. finally, a herdsman and conservationist on end and feel the elation of a new The people on the streets moved quickly named Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, who place revealing itself. (It’s like having a and clumsily, burdened with layers became a folk hero after he fired shots new lover—even the parts you aren’t against the bitter weather. at mining operations that were divert- crazy about have the crackling fascina- I was there to report a story on the ing water from nomadic communities. tion of the unfamiliar.) Just before country’s impending transformation, as I met him in the sleek lobby of the Thanksgiving, I went to Mongolia. money flooded in through the mining Blue Sky with Yondon Badral—a smart, People were alarmed when I told industry. Mongolia has vast supplies of sardonic man I’d hired to translate for

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 27 new world. For a length of time I cannot delineate, I sat there, awestruck, transfixed. Every finger, every toenail, the golden shadow of his eyebrows coming in, the elegance of his shoulders—all of it was miraculous, astonishing. I held him up to my face, his head and shoulders filling my hand, his legs dangling almost to my elbow. I tried to think of something maternal I could do to convey to him that I was, in fact, his mother, and that I had the situation completely under control. I kissed his forehead and his skin felt like a silky frog’s on my mouth. I was vaguely aware that there was an enormous volume of blood rushing out of me, and eventually that seemed interesting, too. I looked back and forth between my offspring and the lake of blood consuming the bathroom floor and I wondered what to do about the umbilical cord connecting those two things. It was surprisingly thick and ghostly white, a twisted human rope. I •• felt sure that it needed to be severed— that’s always the first thing that happens in the movies. I was afraid that if I me in U.B. and to accompany me a ticket. I thought about my uncomfort- didn’t cut that cord my baby would few days later to the Gobi, where we able flight over and said that it was somehow suffocate. I didn’t have scis- would drive a Land Rover across the probably worth it. “You’re being a prin- sors. I yanked it out of myself with one cold sands to meet with miners and no- cess,” Cox’s friend told him tartly, but I swift, violent tug. mads. Badral wore jeans and a sweater; couldn’t laugh. Something was happen- In my hand, his skin started to turn a Munkhbayar was dressed in a long, tra- ing inside me. I had to leave before the soft shade of purple. I bled my way across ditional deel robe and a fur hat with a food came. the room to my phone and dialled the small metal falcon perched on top. It felt I ran back to my room, pulled off my number for Cox’s doctor. I told the voice like having a latte with Genghis Khan. pants, and squatted on the floor of the that answered that I had given birth in In the middle of the interview, bathroom, just as I had in Cambodia the Blue Sky Hotel and that I had been Badral stopped talking and looked at when I had dysentery, a decade earlier. pregnant for nineteen weeks. The voice my face; I must have been showing my But the pain in that position was unsaid that the baby would not live. “He’s discomfort. He said that it was the same bearable. I got on my knees and put my alive now,” I said, looking at the person for his wife, who was pregnant, just a shoulders on the floor and pressed my in my left hand. The voice said that he few weeks further along than I was, and cheek against the cool tile. I remember understood, but that it wouldn’t last, and he explained the situation to Munkh- thinking, This is going to be the craziest that he would send an ambulance for us bayar. The nomad’s skin was chapped shit in history. right away. I told him that if there was pink from the wind; his nostrils, eyes, I felt an unholy storm move through no chance the baby would make it I and ears all looked as if they had receded my body, and after that there is a brief might as well take a cab. He said that into his face to escape the cold. I felt a lapse in my recollection; either I blacked that was not a good idea. little surge of pride when he said that I out from the pain or I have blotted out Before I put down my phone, I was brave to travel so far in my condi- the memory. And then there was an- took a picture of my son. I worried tion. But I was also starting to worry. other person on the floor in front of me, that if I didn’t I would never believe he I nearly cancelled my second dinner moving his arms and legs, alive. I heard had existed. with the Americans that evening, but I myself say out loud, “This can’t be figured that I needed to eat, and they good.” But it looked good. My baby was hen the pair of Mongolian offered to meet me at the Japanese res- as pretty as a seashell. W E.M.T.s came through the door, taurant in my hotel. Cox was leaving the He was translucent and pink and I stopped feeling competent and numb. next day to visit his family for Thanks- very, very small, but he was flawless. His One offered me a tampon, which I giving, and he was feeling guilty that lovely lips were opening and closing, knew not to accept, but the realiza- he’d spent a fortune on a business-class opening and closing, swallowing the tion that of the two of us I had more

28 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 information stirred a sickening panic night on the bathroom floor. And I and burst into tears. (Once, this hap- in me and I said I needed to throw up. knew, as surely as I now knew that I pened with a man.) Within a week, the She asked if I was drunk, and I said, wanted a child, that this change in for- apartment we were supposed to move offended, No, I’m upset. “Cry,” she said. tune was my fault. I had boarded a plane into with the baby fell through. Within “You just cry, cry, cry.” Her partner bent out of vanity and selfishness, and the three, my marriage had shattered. I to insert a thick needle in my forearm dark Mongolian sky had punished me. started lactating. I continued bleeding. and I wondered if it would give me I was still a witch, but my powers were I cried ferociously and without warn- Mongolian AIDS, but I felt unable to do all gone. ing—in bed, in the middle of meetings, anything but cry, cry, cry. She tried to That is not what the doctor said sitting on the subway. It seemed to me take the baby from me, and I had the when he came back to the clinic in the that grief was leaking out of me from urge to bite her hand. As I lay on a gur- morning. He told me that I’d had a pla- every orifice. ney in the back of the ambulance with cental abruption, a very rare problem I could not keep the story of what his body wrapped in a towel on top of that, I later read, usually befalls women had happened in Mongolia inside my chest, I watched the frozen city flash who are heavy cocaine users or who my mouth. I went to buy clothes that by the windows. It occurred to me that have high blood pressure. But some- would fit my big body but that didn’t perhaps I was going to go mad. times it happens just because you’re old. have bands of stretchy maternity elas- In the clinic, there were very bright It could have happened anywhere, the tic to accommodate a baby who wasn’t lights and more needles and I.V.s and I doctor told me, and he repeated what there. I heard myself tell a horrified let go of the baby and that was the last I he’d said the night before: there is no saleswoman, “I don’t know what size ever saw him. He was on one table and correlation between air travel and mis- I am, because I just had a baby. He I was on another, far away, lying still carriage. I said that I suspected he was died, but the good news is, now I’m under the screaming lights, and then, being a gentleman, and that I needed fat.” Well-meaning women would confusingly, the handsomest man in the to get out of the clinic in time for my tell me, “I had a miscarriage, too,” and world came through the door and said eleven-o’clock meeting with the secre- I would reply, with unnerving inten- he was my doctor. His voice sounded tary of the interior, whose office I ar- sity, “He was alive.” I had given birth, nice, familiar. I asked if he was South rived at promptly, after I went back to however briefly, to another human African. He was surprised that I could the Blue Sky and showered in my being, and it seemed crucial that tell, and I explained that I had spent room, which looked like the site of a people understand this. Often, after time reporting in his country, and then murder. I told them, I tried to get them to we talked a bit about the future of the I spent the next five days in that look at the picture of the baby on my A.N.C. and about how beautiful it is in room. Slowly, it set in that it was prob- phone. Cape Town. I realized that I was cov- ably best if I went home instead of to After several weeks, I was looking at ered in blood, sobbing, and flirting. the Gobi, but at first I could not leave. it only once a day. It was months be- Soon, he said that he was going Thanksgiving came and went. There fore I got it down to once a week. I home and that I could not return to the were rolling brownouts when every- don’t look at it much anymore, but Blue Sky Hotel, where I might bleed thing went dark and still. I lay in my people I haven’t seen in a while will to death in my room without anyone bed and ate Snickers and drank little say, “I’m so sorry about what hap- knowing. I stayed in the clinic over- bottles of whiskey from the minibar pened to you.” And their compassion night, wearing a T-shirt and an adult while I watched television programs pleases me. diaper that a kind, fat, giggling young that seemed as strange and bleak as my But the truth is, the ten or twenty nurse gave me. After she dressed me, new life. Someone had put minutes I was somebody’s she asked, “You want toast and tea?” It a white bath mat on top of mother were black magic. was milky and sweet and reminded me the biggest bloodstain, the There is no adventure I of the chai I drank in Nepal, where I one next to my bed, where I would trade them for; there went backpacking in the Himalayas had crouched when I called is no place I would rather with a friend long before I was old for help, and little by little have seen. Sometimes, when enough to worry about the expiration of the white went red and then I think about it, I still feel a my fertility. It had been a trip spent brown as the blood seeped dark hurt from some primal pushing my young body up the moun- through it and oxidized. I part of myself, and if I’m tains, past green-and-yellow terraced stared at it. I looked at the snow outside alone in my apartment when this hap- fields and villages full of goats, across my window falling on the Soviet archi- pens I will hear myself making sounds rope bridges that hung tenuously over tecture. But mostly I looked at the pic- that I never made before I went to black ravines with death at the bottom. ture of the baby. Mongolia. I realize that I have turned We consumed a steady diet of hashish back into a wounded witch, wailing in and Snickers bars and ended up in a hen I got back from Mongolia, I the forest, undone. blizzard that killed several hikers but Wwas so sad I could barely breathe. Most of the time it seems sort of somehow left us only chilly. On five or six occasions, I ran into O.K., though, natural. Nature. Mother I had been so lucky. Very little had mothers who had heard what had hap- Nature. She is free to do whatever ever truly gone wrong for me before that pened, and they took one look at me she chooses. 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 29 Public Programs sHOuTs & MuRMuRs this fall at The Jewish GuY WalKs iNTO a BaR Museum BY siMON RicH Thursday, Nov. 14 7:30 pm Moment Magazine presents Joyce Carol Oates in conversation with Alan Cheuse

Monday, Nov. 18 11:30 am The Saul and Gladys Gwirtzman Lecture Author Talk: Julie Orringer

Thursday, Nov. 21 7:00 pm o a guy walks into a bar one day and And the guy orders a beer, like every- Performance: No S he can’t believe his eyes. There, in thing is normal, but it’s obvious that Further Instructions the corner, there’s this one-foot-tall something has changed between him man, in a little tuxedo, playing a tiny and the bartender. grand piano. And the bartender’s, like, “I feel like Sunday, Nov. 24 So the guy asks the bartender, I should explain myself further.” 6:30 pm “Where’d he come from?” And the guy’s, like, “You don’t have Painting Beyond And the bartender’s, like, “There’s a to.” genie in the men’s room who grants But the bartender continues, in a Belief 1: Amy Sillman wishes.” hushed tone. And he’s, like, “I have and Peter Doig So the guy runs into the men’s room what’s known as penile dysmorphic dis- and, sure enough, there’s this genie. order. Basically, what that means is I

The Jewish Museum is under the auspices of The Jewish Theological Seminary. Theological Jewish The of auspices the under is Museum Jewish The And the genie’s, like, “Your wish is my fixate on my size. It’s not that I’m small command.” So the guy’s, like, “O.K., I down there. I’m actually within the nor- Plus wish for world peace.” And there’s this mal range. Whenever I see it, though, I Art Spiegelman big cloud of smoke—and then the room feel inadequate.” fills up with geese. And the guy feels sorry for him. So & Tony Kushner So the guy walks out of the men’s he’s, like, “Where do you think that in conversation room and he’s, like, “Hey, bartender, comes from?” I think your genie might be hard of And the bartender’s, like, “I don’t on December 5 hearing.” know. My dad and I had a tense rela- And the bartender’s, like, “No kid- tionship. He used to cheat on my mom, ding. You think I wished for a twelve- and I knew it was going on, but I didn’t For details & ticketing: inch pianist?” tell her. I think it’s wrapped up in that TheJewishMuseum. So the guy processes this. And he’s, somehow.” org/PublicPrograms like, “Does that mean you wished for a And the guy’s, like, “Have you ever or call twelve-inch penis?” seen anyone about this?” 212.423.3337 And the bartender’s, like, “Yeah. And the bartender’s, like, “Oh, yeah, Why, what did you wish for?” I started seeing a therapist four years 5th Ave And the guy’s, like, “World peace.” ago. But she says we’ve barely scratched So the bartender is understandably the surface.” at 92nd St ashamed. So, at around this point, the twelve- KEBBI YANN inch pianist finishes up his sonata. And And the bartender’s, like, “Whoa, Celebrate the lost art of he walks over to the bar and climbs calm down.” letter writing with onto one of the stools. And he’s, like, And the pianist is, like, “Fuck “Listen, I couldn’t help but overhear you!” And he’s really drunk, because Simon Garfield, the end of your conversation. I never he’s only one foot tall and so his toler- New York Times bestselling author of told anyone this before, but my dad and ance for alcohol is extremely low. And I didn’t speak the last ten years of his he’s, like, “Fuck you, asshole! Fuck Just My Type and On The Map life.” you!” And the bartender’s, like, “Tell me And he starts throwing punches, but more about that.” And he pours the pi- he’s too small to do any real damage, anist a tiny glass of whiskey. and eventually he just collapses in the And the twelve-inch pianist is, like, bartender’s arms. “He was a total monster. Beat us all. And suddenly he has this revelation. Told me once I was an accident.” And he’s, like, “My God, I’m just like And the bartender’s, like, “That’s him. I’m just like him.” And he starts horrible.” weeping. And the twelve-inch pianist shrugs. And the bartender’s, like, “No, you’re And he’s, like, “You know what? I’m not. You’re better than he was.” over it. He always said I wouldn’t And the pianist is, like, “That’s not amount to anything, because of my true. I’m worthless!” height? Well, now look at me. I’m a And the bartender grabs the pianist professional musician!” by the shoulders and says, “Damn it, And the pianist starts to laugh, but Brian, listen to me! My life was hell be- it’s a forced kind of laughter, and you fore you entered it. Now I look forward can see the pain behind it. And then to every day. You’re so talented and kind he’s, like, “When he was in the hospital, and you light up this whole bar. Hell, “Simon Garf eld is charming he had one of the nurses call me. I was you light up my whole life. If I had a company.” going to go see him. Bought a plane second wish, you know what it would —USA Today ticket and everything. But before I could be? It would be for you to realize how make it back to Tampa . . .” beautiful you are.” And then he starts to cry. And he’s, And the bartender kisses the pianist like, “I just wish I’d had a chance to say on the lips. goodbye to my old man.” So the guy, who’s been watching all “Reading what Garf eld has And all of a sudden there’s this big this, is surprised, because he didn’t to say will change the way cloud of smoke—and a beat-up Plym- know the bartender was gay. It doesn’t outh Voyager appears! bother him; it just catches him off guard, you perceive the written And the pianist is, like, “I said ‘old you know? So he goes to the bathroom, word forever.” man,’ not ‘old van’!” to give them a little privacy. And there’s —The Los Angeles Times And everybody laughs. And the pi- the genie. anist is, like, “Your genie’s hard of So the guy’s, like, “Hey, genie, you hearing.” need to get your ears fixed.” And the bartender says, “No kid- And the genie’s, like, “Who says ding. You think I wished for a twelve- they’re broken?” And he opens the door, Now available in paperback inch pianist?” revealing the happy couple, who are And as soon as the words leave his kissing and gaining strength from each Explore the lips he regrets them. Because the pianist other. fascinating is, like, “Oh, my God. You didn’t really And the guy’s, like, “Well done.” want me.” And then the genie says, “That bar- relationship And the bartender’s, like, “No, it’s tender’s tiny penis is going to seem huge between not like that.” You know, trying to from the perspective of his one-foot-tall man and map backpedal. boyfriend.” And the pianist smiles ruefully and And the graphic nature of the com- says, “Once an accident, always an acci- ment kind of kills the moment. dent.” And he drinks all of his whiskey. And the genie’s, like, “I’m sorry. I And the bartender’s, like, “Brian, I’m should’ve left that part unsaid. I always sorry. I didn’t mean that.” do that. I take things too far.” And the pianist smashes his whiskey And the guy’s, like, “Don’t worry Available where books glass against the wall and says, “Well, I about it. Let’s just grab a beer. It’s on and e-books are sold didn’t mean that.” me.” 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 31 under the name Darling International. U.S. JOURNal Stuewe instituted the snappier “Dar Pro” as part of his efforts to improve rendering’s public image. “As an industry, I’d HOT GREaSE have to give us a C-minus, maybe a D,” he says. “We never told anybody what we The Wild West of used-cooking-oil theft. were doing. And we did that because we were making money. Money is perceived BY JOHN COlaPINTO as evil sometimes in this country—which is a whole other discussion.” Dar Pro is now valued at two billion dollars, and its improved fortunes have come largely from used cooking oil, collected in steel bins behind restaurants all over the country. Not long ago, the oil was used mostly by livestock farmers, who spray it onto animal feed to fatten up hogs, chickens, and cows. Lately, it has found a new life, by being cleaned, filtered, and chemically modified into biofuel. The process isn’t tidy. The wastewater has to be cooked off, and the scraps of hash browns and wontons and buffalo wings filtered out—to say nothing of the old shoes, dirty diapers, and used hypodermic needles that can end up in a bin in a back alley. But used cooking oil, correctly processed, burns eighty per cent cleaner than fossil fuels, has a smaller carbon footprint than corn ethanol, and doesn’t compete with the food supply. Nathanael Greene, at the Natural Resources Defense Coun- cil, told me that it provides “probably the best of the biofuels out there.” There isn’t enough grease to solve the energy crisis, but it does put a dent in the problem—and grease that’s converted isn’t dumped in landfills. To encourage biofuel production, governments have enacted incentives. According to a fed- few months ago, in a clanging, “We process two billion pounds a year.” eral law passed in 2007, thirty-six billion A hissing plant on the outskirts of Stuewe, a former farm kid from Kan- gallons of biofuel must be blended into Newark, a tanker truck backed up to a sas with a wide girth and a booming transportation fuel by 2022. There is also deep reservoir and delivered thousands voice, explained that for decades his a dollar-a-gallon subsidy for refineries of dollars’ worth of raw material—what company’s business model was simple: that mix renewable fuel into their prod- people in the rendering industry some- collect discarded animal parts from the ucts. This year, KLM Royal Dutch Air- times refer to as “liquid gold.” The plant’s food industry, render out the fat and pro- lines, in partnership with the Port Au- owner is a company called Dar Pro, teins, and sell them to companies that thority of New York and New Jersey, and the C.E.O., Randall Stuewe, looked make cosmetics, soap, fertilizer, and pet started a daily transatlantic flight pow- on while a hose from the truck gushed food. Fifty-nine billion pounds of animal ered by fuel that is twenty-five per cent a brown fluid, filled with fine sediment parts are processed each year in the converted fryer oil, collected at Cajun and the occasional mysterious solid. United States; Dar Pro, with a hundred restaurants in Louisiana. Slowly, the pit became a pool, whose and twenty plants in forty-two states, is The increased demand has made the surface frothed and eddied and gave the country’s largest processor. In 2010, price of used cooking oil skyrocket. A de- off a potent odor of old French fries, the company, then known as Darling cade ago, used grease traded on the Chi- onion rings, and batter-fried shrimp. Rendering, bought its main competitor, cago commodities exchange for less than “Used cooking oil,” Stuewe told me. Griffin Industries, and began operating eight cents a pound. Now it can go for more than four times that price, providing An enterprising thief can steal four thousand dollars’ worth of grease in half an hour. criminals with a potent incentive to get at

32 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 PhotograPh by ChristoPher griffith spent oil before renderers do. Thieves use and left greasy stains on his furniture, but marry him right away, but when she saw bolt cutters to remove locks on container Jaworski—a goateed man with slicked- his police paycheck—three hundred and lids, or cut through steel with blow- back hair who collects Three Stooges sixty dollars a week—she was aghast. She torches; they use vacuum hoses to suck memorabilia and exotic firearms—fell in told him that she had an idea for how to grease into tanker trucks. A thief driving love with the work. “They’re fun cases,” supplement his income. down a strip-mall alleyway can collect he says. “Lots of interesting characters.” JoAnn was second-generation grease. four thousand dollars’ worth in half an Since the advent of biodiesel, his typ- Her father, José, born and raised in hour. “It’s right up there next to Rolexes,” ical defendant is as likely to be a guy Corpus Christi, was twenty in 1958, Stuewe told me. Dar Pro, he says, loses with a science degree who runs a biofuel washing dishes in a hospital cafeteria in millions of dollars to theft each year. startup—“environmentalists,” Jaworski Pittsburgh, when a man came in and Like other big renderers, Dar Pro has says. But the central issue in grease litiga- offered twenty dollars for the grease turned to security firms to protect its tion remains the same, he told me: the drum in the corner. “My dad said, grease. In 2011, Stuewe hired Total national renderers like Dar Pro are not ‘What are you doing with that?’ ” JoAnn Compliance Associates, a Manhattan- actually concerned with trying to stop told me. “The man said he sells the based firm headed by Stuart GraBois, a grease theft, which he insists has a far grease to companies who process animal former U.S. assistant district attorney, smaller effect on their bottom line than feed, and my dad said, ‘I’m going to and Mike Ferrandino, a former F.B.I. they claim. “Half the time, they aren’t move back to Texas, and I’m going to supervisor. When I visited the firm’s even paying restaurants for the grease,” make myself a millionaire doing this!’ ” offices, in a Times Square high-rise, he told me. Instead, Jaworski says, they José’s wife, pregnant with JoAnn at the GraBois, an elegantly dressed, white- are simply trying to crush independents time, was game. haired man, admitted that he was non- and gain a monopoly. In those days, restaurants simply plussed when he got the call from Dar His favorite case to illustrate that dumped their spent oil into unmarked Pro. “I thought, Grease?” he said, laugh- charge involves a fifty-four-year-old barrels out back and were happy to have ing. “I didn’t want to say, ‘Who cares?’— Houston native named Everett Henley. grease rustlers take it. The only obliga- but grease? Then you find out what a In the eighties and nineties, Henley ran tion was that you had to replace each huge business it is, and how much a small rendering plant, buying spent barrel you took with a clean one for the they’re losing.” cooking oil from the city’s haulers, restaurant. “Take a barrel, leave a bar- In the past two years, GraBois and cleaning it up, and selling it to feed com- rel,” JoAnn says. “That was the rule.” Ferrandino have pursued more than a panies. According to Griffin Industries, José sold the grease he collected to Ernie hundred grease cases, using classic crime- he was also the kingpin in a used-grease Allison, a successful independent oper- busting techniques: surveillance and crime ring—and has still not entirely re- ator, and eventually they became part- stakeouts, undercover operations, stings, formed. “Everett knows grease,” Jawor- ners. “My whole family—aunts and un- hidden cameras. They still struggle to ski says. “And they will do anything to cles, everybody—got in the grease persuade law-enforcement officials to get him out of business.” business,” JoAnn told me. take grease theft seriously, but GraBois Henley is a ruggedly built man, with José raised six kids and sent them to insisted that they’re making headway. a salt-and-pepper brush cut, a toothy college, all on grease. As a young girl, “You speak to a prosecutor a year ago,” he smile, and a guileless good-ol’-boy man- JoAnn rode with him on collecting runs said, “and it’s ‘What are you calling me ner. Many who work in grease grew up and dreamed of having her own business, about?’ Now I think it’s reached a point in the business; Henley came to it late. but instead she went to school, got mar- where they’re believing that it’s real.” After high school, he did a couple of se- ried, had kids. At the age of thirty-one, mesters of college, and worked for a time she found herself divorced and managing ot everyone is convinced that theft at his father’s engineering firm, but he the clothing store. When she first saw Nis the problem. Jon Jaworski is an hated being confined to a desk. He ran a Henley, she thought, “This is the guy I’m attorney in Houston with a practice in car-repossession business, worked in a going to marry, and we’re going to be in family law and a sideline defending jewelry store. Then one day he put his the grease business!” grease thieves. His first case, he said, was name in for the fire department, and the Henley took a little convincing. “I’d in 1986: “I had a couple of guys get city passed along his application to the never heard of selling used cooking oil,” busted in Galveston County at a Pop- police force. “I said, ‘What the heck. he says. But he was willing to try. On an eye’s Fried Chicken.” Back then, grease Why not?’ ” Henley told me. That’s how evening off from the police force, he and went for only a few pennies on the Chi- he became a cop. “I worked some pretty JoAnn went out in his pickup with some cago exchange, but, if you collected bad parts of town,” he says. “Then I went empty drums, and traded them for the enough of it and knew where to sell it, to Special Operations, where I did Pres- grease-filled barrels that she pointed out. you could make some money. Jaworski idential details, parades.” He liked the He collected thirty of them and brought won the case, and then sued the renderer job, but it didn’t pay much, so he took on them to an independent rendering plant for malicious prosecution, winning a some hours as a security guard at the called the Grease Man. The owner wrote forty-two-thousand-dollar settlement. Galleria mall. There, he met a clothing- him a check for seven hundred and Accused thieves flooded his office. “I be- store manager named JoAnn Villegas, a eighty dollars—more than Henley made came the hero of all the little grease guys,” brunette divorcée with two small kids. in two weeks as a cop. he says. His clients stank of rancid oil, They started dating. JoAnn wanted to On his days off, he started collecting

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 33 grease. Friends told him the stuff his own collection routes. “Everything grease theft. “I said to JoAnn, ‘What smelled “dirty and nasty,” but Henley seemed to be going real well,” he told do we do now?’ ” Henley recalls. “She just laughed. “To me,” he says, “it me. Then Griffin Industries came to said, ‘Call Jon Jaworski.’ ” smelled like money.” Business became Houston. more lucrative as he learned the fine or accused grease thieves throughout points of the trade. Renderers who buy ike many other grease companies, FTexas, Jaworski had become the first raw used grease put a sample in a cen- L Griffin began as a family outfit, resort when they got into trouble. Jawor- trifuge, spin off the sediments, and pay but by the nineteen-eighties it was a ski, who once dreamed of being a labor according to the proportion of pure big business, operating in twenty states. lawyer, saw the cases as a way to fight for grease. The accepted limit for sediment Griffin imposed the system that still the little guy. He also recognized in grease is perhaps twenty per cent. prevails: making contracts litigation the kind of inside-the-business The best grease, two per with restaurants, and plac- complexities that allow an agile defender cent or less, usually comes ing locked, labelled steel con- to introduce doubt into jurors’ minds. from high-volume places tainers out back. At estab- One of his preferred tactics is to ques- that change out their grease lishments where Griffin had tion who actually owns the grease. The frequently, preferably big not yet placed a container, it containers that renderers put behind res- chicken chains—Popeye’s, claimed ownership of the bar- taurants are locked and labelled, and have Church’s—because poultry rels that were already there. a clear warning that anyone removing doesn’t break up much and The days of “Take a barrel, grease is breaking the law. But since ren- contaminate the oil. Barbe- leave a barrel” were over. derers pay at the end of the month, Jawor- cue places are the worst: the grease is For the city’s independent grease ski argues, for the thirty days that the filled with water, because cooks throw haulers, Griffin’s arrival came as a shock; grease sits in the container it still belongs frozen meat into the fryers. people who had serviced accounts for de- to the restaurant. If the restaurant isn’t Henley quickly decided that simply cades had their livelihoods threatened bothering to prosecute (and restaurants hauling grease was no way to make real overnight. Many of them kept on taking usually have other things to occupy them), money; he wanted to get into rendering, barrels from locations that had not con- what’s the problem? too. JoAnn told him to call her dad’s old verted to locked containers. When they Then there’s the value of the stolen partner, Ernie Allison, who had retired did encounter locks, some didn’t scruple grease. Is it what restaurants charge the and moved to Kansas. Allison flew to about using bolt cutters to remove them, renderer? Some ask for more, some less; Houston the next day. Henley recalls, or employing a “stinger,” a PVC siphon some take nothing. The commodity price? “He says, ‘You got a dollar? Give it to me.’ threaded through the screens on top of The number on the Chicago exchange I did. He said, ‘O.K., you hired me as a the bins. For many of them, each act of fluctuates, and in any case it’s for rendered consultant.’ He called his wife and said, theft felt like taking back something that grease, not for the raw stuff. And how do ‘Pack everything up, we’re moving back to had been stolen from them. you even determine how much grease was Texas.’ He said he was born in the grease, Griffin Industries had a different taken? If you arrest a hauler as he pulls and he wanted to die in the grease.” view. Robert Griffin, one of the fami- away from a container, he might have hit Allison showed Henley how to build ly’s five sons, controlled the company’s five other companies’ containers that a rendering plant for a fraction of the western territories; he hired Larry night, or picked up at his own legitimate going rate, using discarded gas-station Findley, a former San Antonio police restaurant accounts. Renderers train secu- tanks with steam-heated pipes inside, officer, and put him in charge of two rity people to read the “grease line,” the and demonstrated how to get every moonlighting detectives from the oily horizontal left inside a drained tank. penny from every load. Raw grease con- Houston Police Department. The But what about the density of the oil, tains “heavies” (big chunks of food and officers, sergeants Steve Felchak and which affects the weight? For juries, it be- garbage) and “fines” (silt-like sediment Danny Spurlock, staked out the hard- comes very difficult to establish value— made up of food particles). Allison est hit of Griffin’s containers, and began and thus what kind of crime was commit- shovelled the heavies and the fines into to make some busts. ted, or even if one was committed at all. a perforated steel box, and applied heat One night in February, 1990, a In Henley’s trial, Jaworski tried his fa- and pressure to sweat out the oil. One Griffin driver in the Houston suburbs vorite arguments. But, with videotape ev- day, he laid burlap sacks over the drain was out collecting grease and noticed an idence and the compelling narrative of a in the floor to catch drips. Henley abandoned Ford pickup. There were “dirty cop,” it was no use. Henley was con- thought he was crazy. After a week, Al- grease barrels in a trailer attached to the victed of a Class B misdemeanor, for theft lison poured off two hundred dollars’ truck. Felchak ran the plate number, of property valued at between twenty and worth of grease. and found that the truck was registered two hundred dollars, and was given a Soon, Henley was buying close to a to a police officer: Everett Henley. In- year’s probation and three hundred hours million pounds of grease a month, ternal Affairs put a tail on him, and a of community service. He was suspended cleaning it up, and selling it to an ex- few nights later agents videotaped a from the police force, and quit soon after- porter. He worked three days a week for man getting out of the pickup behind ward. “So that’s how Griffin Industries can the police force; the other four days and a restaurant and taking a barrel of say I’m a grease thief,” Henley says. nights, he bought used grease and ran Griffin’s oil. Police arrested Henley for There was only one problem. The

34 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013

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Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. man in the video was not Henley. It was Joann’s brother, Omar, who had been staying at the Henleys’ house while his FuTuRE PERFEcT place was being fixed up. One night, he borrowed Henley’s pickup to go on a Where you were grease run and had hewed to the take-a- before you were born, barrel, leave-a-barrel ethos. (When I and where you are called Omar and asked if it was him in the when you’re not anymore video, he chuckled and said, “Well . . . yeah.”) might be very close. I asked Henley why he didn’t tell the po- might be the same place, lice who the real perpetrator was. “I wasn’t though neither is going to accuse him,” he said, “and I wasn’t as slippery going to tell on him.” as being here but “That’s the way Everett is,” Joann imagining where said, with considerable exasperation. you will have been— “I just said, ‘Whatever,’ ” Henley told that point me. “ ‘We’ll take a chance with going where things land, to court.’ ” are finished, over, and gone but not yet. he impediment to convicting ren- Tderers for buying stolen cooking —Lia Purpura oil—then as now—is that they can always claim that they did not know the product was stolen. In a six-page memo about grease theft in Houston. Findley to the room phone. rice began calling up to Bob Griffin, Findley suggested a solu- took note of the driver’s description of his former colleagues in the grease trade. tion. To secure testimony that local ren- the man—“big, bearded, and toothless,” In one call, Kenny mcGlothlin, a twenty- derers knew they were buying stolen with a limp, and “possibly panhan- four-year-old hauler who’d been collect- grease, he proposed stepping up arrests of dling”—and drove to austin, where he ing with his dad since he was nine, admit- small-time thieves. In Texas, misde- quickly located the man among the city’s ted that he’d just taken a full load from meanor-theft charges, after a third in- street people. The man introduced him- Popeye’s—top quality, four per cent. fraction, become felonies, and, he ex- self as David rice and said, “I’ve been ex- “I bet old Griffin’s going to be mad plained, “It is reasonable to expect that a pecting you.” as it turned out, he had about that,” rice said. percentage of the thieves caught will give been questioned months before by Fel- “Oh, they know I’m the cat Daddy,” statements in exchange for leniency.” chak and Spurlock, and had admitted to mcGlothlin said. “They let cat Daddy Henley knew he was a target, given the stealing Griffin’s grease. Now, he said, he get away. I’m the man, the main man.” unfamiliar cars parked, day and night, wanted to “go straight.” Findley offered rice called a half-dozen haulers, in- across the street from his rendering plant, a deal: if rice could gather evidence that cluding his cousin ronny Lemond. “You the frequent visits from Griffin’s security Henley knowingly bought stolen grease, ain’t hitting Griffin no more, are you?” people, and the fact that Felchak stopped Findley would help him out. rice agreed, rice asked. “Hell,” Lemond said, “I’m him and confiscated a set of keys from his and said that he knew enough about making a living off of Griffin.” pocket, claiming that they fit Griffin’s Henley “to send him to the penitentiary.” With each call, rice took care to estab- locks. Throughout, Henley maintained Findley later recorded a statement lish that his interlocutors sold to Henley’s his innocence. “I was raised that right is from rice. In the transcript, Findley es- Grease Service. He also strapped a tape re- right and wrong is wrong,” he says. “and tablishes that rice had stolen grease from corder to his leg and made secret recordings I wasn’t doing anything wrong.” He knew more than a hundred Griffin containers, inside Henley’s plant, following Findley’s that some haulers might skim from a and then asks rice where he sold the instructions on how to act. “He told me, Griffin container when no one was look- contraband. “Henley’s Grease Service,” ‘Be like any other day,’ ” rice later said in a ing. But, he insists, short of riding on every rice says. according to rice, Henley deposition. “ ‘Don’t agitate nothing. Let truck with every hauler on every route, knew the grease was stolen. “How did he them do the speaking.’ ” rice visited repeat- there was no way he could be certain. know?” Findley asked. edly, hanging around for hours, but failed On Jaworski’s advice, he got haulers “ ’cause he told us to go out there and to capture any evidence of theft. Henley to sign a legal disclaimer with each load, steal it.” and Joann recall rice showing up with a saying that their grease was not stolen, as In a gleeful note to Griffin, Findley tanker of grease that he ostentatiously an- a hedge against a potential prosecution. wrote that rice “is, in fact, the ‘inside nounced was stolen—a tactic known as a Then, in the spring of 1991, Findley man’ we have needed to do irreparable “reverse sting.” (Findley denied taking part found a way around this obstacle. In damage to these people.” He drove rice in this.) Joann ran him off the property. austin, a mysterious man had presented to Houston, put him up in a Western Inn With other haulers, rice established himself to a Griffin driver and said that motel near Henley’s plant, and showed where and when they planned to strike, he knew everything there was to know him how to use a tape recorder hooked up and tipped off Felchak and Spurlock. In a

36 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 month, fifteen people were arrested. “Like account at the canteen. Upon his release, duce a fuel that is identical to petroleum shooting fish in a barrel,” Findley noted. Himes was given regular work at Griffin. yet burns far cleaner. But the process is ex- One November morning, around 4 a.m., “Do you know why they did any of pensive and complex, requiring high tem- they swooped in on Kenny mcGlothlin those things for you?” Jaworski asked peratures and intense pressure. So Stuewe while he was inspecting a Griffin bin be- Himes in a deposition. “Was it because approached Valero Energy corporation, hind a Popeye’s. “We kind of got you by they wanted you to testify against Everett an oil refiner based in San antonio, to your nuts this morning, don’t we?” Fel- Henley?” manufacture the fuel. In June, the two chak observed. He said that they might “Objection!” Griffin’s lawyer said. companies opened the Diamond Green take mcGlothlin downtown and book “calls for speculation.” Diesel plant, in Norco, Louisiana, which him, or they might not. “Depends on what Jaworski insists that he could have will produce a hundred and thirty-seven you tell us.” won the case, given the chance. But de- million gallons of renewable diesel a year. mcGlothlin wavered at first, but, fending a rIcO charge against a wealthy To operate at capacity, Stuewe said, it will under duress, he agreed to testify that corporation would have cost Henley and need to capture “up to fifty per cent of all Henley knew he was buying stolen loads. his co-defendants ninety thousand dol- the used cooking oil in the country.” Several other independent haulers, facing lars, Jaworski estimates. “I told him, ‘You The biofuel boom has injected into possible jail time, also coöperated, and the can fight it and spend your life savings on the trade a degree of money and profes- charges against them were dropped. me—which I would appreciate.’ ” In- sionalism that was unthinkable in what In an attempt to secure a grand-jury stead, Henley chose not to contest the Jaworski calls “the Wild West days.” Ja- indictment, Findley met with an assis- lawsuit. Griffin was awarded a default worski has lately been getting calls from tant D.a., Larry Standley—a meeting judgment of almost $1.9 million for lost as far away as australia from people with that he later called a “complete disaster.” grease, damaged equipment, and legal chemistry degrees trying to figure out The D.a., whom Findley described as fees. Jaworski describes the suit as an act how to get into the biofuel business. One “rude, uninterested, and belligerent,” of corporate aggression. Findley argues of the new entrepreneurs was Jason Bur- blamed Griffin’s problem on the compa- that Griffin was merely protecting itself. roughs, a thirty-nine-year-old former ny’s own lax security, and dismissed the “anyone who intimates that Griffin In- skate punk who had helped build a mul- testimony of the thieves. “Who’s going to dustries set out to put independents out timillion-dollar data-storage company. believe them?” he said. an attorney sug- of business is a bald-faced liar,” he said. He told me that he had had an epiphany gested to Findley and Bob Griffin that a Henley declared bankruptcy, which on the day after the September 11th at- civil suit, under rIcO statutes, might be temporarily allowed him to avoid pay- tacks—the same day he picked up his easier. “Hearsay is usually accepted,” ment. Though he continued running Dodge Viper. “It was awkward,” he says, Findley wrote, “and you must only show his grease service, the judgment gave “because pretty quickly we learned why ‘a preponderance of the evidence,’ not Griffin the rights to any profits—and these terrorist attacks were happening— ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ ” In Decem- Henley, who was determined not to the connection with oil and all that. Here ber, 1991, Griffin Industries filed suit give up a penny, was forced to put what- I am driving around this nine-mile-per- against Henley and a dozen independent ever he made back into the business. gallon car.” Burroughs sold his Viper and haulers, accusing them of taking part in after two years, Joann says, “we couldn’t bought a Prius, and in 2005 launched a an organized grease-theft ring. do it anymore.” In 1996, they closed the cooking-oil-collection venture, Diesel- But during the early legal proceedings plant and moved to the countryside Green Fuels. If the business fell through, Griffin’s strongest witness, David rice, north of the city. There they ran a small Burroughs said, he could just get a pickup was nowhere to be found. Findley finally farm, launched a wrecker business, and truck and go out collecting. “It’s such easy tracked him down in West Virginia, raised the kids. money,” he told me. where he was serving a nine-month jail The changes in the business have sentence for negligent homicide; he had hen Stuewe took over Dar Pro as only sharpened Dar Pro’s desire to stop killed a man in a car accident and then Wc.E.O., in 2003, the company was theft. During my visit to Total compli- fled. Findley also learned that rice had doing everything it could to extract added ance associates, the security company, been living under an assumed identity; his profit from its rendered fat and bonemeal. in may, GraBois outlined the firm’s real name was David Himes. Jaworski saw “We tried making particleboard, land- plan. “What we’re trying to do is cut off an advantage. In the depositions, he ques- scaping timbers—we tried everything, and the head of the ultimate recipient,” he tioned Griffin’s tactics: coöperating with a nothing really works,” he told me. al- said, referring to the smaller renderers felon, wringing testimony from haulers, though biofuel from used cooking oil was and biofuel companies who buy stolen and dispensing money to key witnesses. clearly the frontier, it was a seemingly lim- grease. “Once we put these people out For weeks, Griffin had paid for Himes’s ited one. “It doesn’t work real well as road of business and there’s no place to sell motel room and living expenses, and fuel,” Stuewe said. The glycerine in bio- it, the gypsies”—his term for street- promised him a hundred dollars for every diesel leaves glasslike deposits in engines, level thieves—“will go on to a differ- arrest that resulted from his phone work. and it freezes. Dar Pro enlisted the tech- ent crime.” It was the same strategy Himes testified that he was given twelve nology arm of Honeywell to fix the prob- that Griffin employed twenty years ago hundred dollars to help pay for a leg oper- lem, using a method called hydrocrack- against Henley. Indeed, GraBois de- ation, and that, during his time in jail, ing—essentially knocking a carbon atom scribed to me a classic reverse sting— Findley visited him and put money in his off of each molecule of the oil—to pro- or started to. “We’ve set up undercover

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 37 operations, where we try to get people to spreadsheet. Dressed in a backward base- Henley works as a “consultant.” So Dar deliver the stuff— Mike,” he said, inter- ball cap, designer jeans, and a Supreme Pro seized the only property that was in rupting himself and turning to Ferran- T-shirt with a silk screen of Kate Moss, Henley’s name: two grease-collection dino, “stop me if I’m going too far.” Mike he looked like a Silicon Valley entrepre- trucks. Two weeks later, an injunction no- stopped him. neur. JoAnn, his mother, was working at tice arrived, claiming that Service First had a computer at an adjacent desk. Michael illegally placed a container at a Denny’s enley also took note of the rise of telecommutes from home. where Dar Pro had an account. If the con- H biofuel. When his stepsons, Nick Nick explained that Service First has tainer wasn’t removed, Henley could be and Michael, announced a desire to get collection contracts with many of the city’s found in contempt of court and sent to jail. into the business, in 2002, he and JoAnn top restaurant chains: Chili’s, Texas Road- When I returned to Houston, in May, were all for it. Henley built a holding fa- house, Church’s Chicken, Popeye’s. Hav- Henley had been dodging a process server cility on the farm, and began soliciting ing learned from Henley’s experience, Nick for weeks, and had developed a habit of local restaurants and hauling raw grease renders only grease that his own haulers driving cautiously around lone trucks down to Houston to be rendered. After collect—“I wouldn’t buy grease from any- idling in parking lots. The server had a few years, Henley recalls, “We had a body in this town,” he says. Although Dar camped in front of his house for three days. meeting with the kids, and we said, ‘O.K., Pro pays more for grease than he can afford, To sneak out for our meeting, Henley had what do y’all really want to do? Want to he stays competitive by offering personal sent JoAnn first, as a decoy. Henley drove go big or go home?’ Nick said, ‘Let’s go services, like power-washing a restaurant’s with me and Nick to the disputed Denny’s big.’ ” In 2011, they bought a warehouse back area every time a driver picks up franchise, on a heavily trafficked stretch of and offices on the northern fringe of grease. “It can take hours,” Nick says, “but Highway 6. They were planning to remove Houston, acquired five enormous render- the big companies don’t do it.” He also the offending Service First container—not ing tanks, applied for a license, and equips all his drivers with iPads to snap on Dar Pro’s orders, they said, but because launched Service First Grease Recycling. time-stamped photographs after each the restaurant was closing. As Nick hosed When I visited Service First in April, pickup, to show that they left things clean. out a final load of grease, I sat in the din- the office had tasteful gray tile underfoot Competitors are not above spreading ran- ing room with the franchise holder, a and an elegant reception desk beyond a cid grease around to make a rival look bad. woman named Debi Haq, under a forlorn set of French doors. It might have been a In March, a constable and a phalanx of banner announcing, “Baconalia! Celebrat- boutique ad agency—although, with an- Dar Pro lawyers visited Service First, hoping Our Bacon Obsession!” nual revenues of more than two million ing to collect on Henley’s outstanding Haq told me that she owned five Den- dollars, Service First does better than a lot judgment—which, with accrued interest, ny’s locations in the city, and had ended her of ad agencies these days. In the main is now about ten million dollars. Nick in- association with Dar Pro at all of them. She office, Nick, now twenty-six, sat at a formed his visitors that Service First le- balked at Dar Pro’s agreements, which large-screen iMac, typing figures into a gally belongs to him and to his brother; were binding for five years and insisted that she pay damages if she didn’t renew. “I used to work for HUD,” Haq said, “so I can read a contract like nobody’s business.” But the real deal-breaker was Dar Pro’s whimsical approach to payment: promising top dollar, then finding excuses not to pay. “Obvi- ously, it’s not a big income stream,” she says. “I make my pennies selling pancakes. But, hey—every little bit helps.” After Haq broke off her arrangement, Dar Pro never picked up its container; a slime-encrusted box was still sitting out back. (“They’ll leave their container here and whoever takes over the building will think, Oh, there’s our grease container,” Henley said. “Automatic account.”) Haq brought in Service First, and in April Nick placed a container in the only available spot—a few feet in front of Dar Pro’s abandoned container. Within a week, Henley received the injunction notice. Haq calls Dar Pro’s actions “vindictive,” but isn’t surprised. “Just like Walmart or anyone else, they’re trying to squeeze out the little guys and have a monopoly.” Stuewe scoffs at the notion that Dar Pro is seeking a monopoly. “If we look at bushy beard, was driving a refurbished said, pointing at the Clean & Green box. our market share in the United States,” 1997 International truck with a fifteen- “Money,” the woman said in a heavy he says, “we may have anywhere from hundred-gallon tank on the back—a accent, pointing at the new box. “Money. fifteen per cent to twenty per cent— chipped, painted-over relic with a greasy He give.” which is far from a monopoly in any way, hose coiled around it. His wife, Elaine, a Davis asked if he could talk to some- shape, or form. Besides, monopolies are blond woman with a round, dimpled face, one who spoke English. She dialled a formed when barriers to entry are so high rode in the back seat, marking in a note- number on her cell phone and passed it that no one else can play in the game. book how much grease they collected. to Davis. “She broke the contract?” Davis Well, the barrier to entry in this business As we drove, Davis told me that he said into the phone. He listened, then is a pickup with a fifty-five-gallon drum was happy to let Service First and Dar Pro said, “So this new guy says he’s going and a five-gallon Home Depot bucket.” fight it out for the corporate to give you money? Forty? A accounts. He is determinedly check? Once a month? What “ y dad always had a vision that this small-scale—a legacy, in part, about our contract—our M was going to be a huge business,” of the time, in the nineties, agreement?” Until now, he JoAnn told me one day over a lunch of when a security agent from hadn’t had to pay anything take-out tamales at Service First. But José one of the big renderers held a for their grease—they’d been Villegas died in 1993, long before the bio- gun to his head. In a semi-res- happy to have it carted off. As fuel boom. Six months before his death, idential part of town, we saw a Davis spoke into the phone, José was arrested collecting a barrel at a sedan with tinted windows the woman turned to me. Popeye’s, and began a long court battle idling at an intersection. “Could be Dar- “Three and a half years,” she said. “No that put him under great stress. While ling security,” Davis said. “They usually money. No penny. No good.” She waved collecting grease one night, he collapsed have dark windows.” He chuckled. “Of a hand dismissively at Davis’s container. behind a restaurant, dead of a heart attack. course, it could also be a drug dealer.” “Look,” Davis said into the phone, “He died on a grease run,” Nick said. In the city’s desolate southern stretches, “tell your mother that I’ll pay her three “Died in the grease,” JoAnn said. Davis pulled up behind a restaurant in a hundred and fifty bucks for the year. If I I asked Nick if he and his brother brick building and removed the top of a pay that up front—cash, not a check— planned to stay in. “I hope so,” he said. barrel, releasing a nauseating reek. The you’ll stay with my service? And what will “But with Darling around . . .” top of the grease was foaming with bac- you tell the other company?” He listened. JoAnn spoke ominously of the Dar teria. “They said it was a wine bar,” Davis “Fine,” he said. “Tell your mother.” He Pro-Valero plant in Louisiana. “It’s going said, rolling the stinking barrel to his handed the phone back. to need all the grease that it can get, any- truck. “But this smells like rotten fish.” “Got poached,” he said to Elaine, as where and everywhere. It needs it.” He drained the barrel, hopped into the he climbed back into the truck. She Nick, the company’s C.E.O., has driver’s seat, and said to Elaine, “About a noted that down. “Paying three-fifty worked in grease since his early teens. hundred pounds—very smelly.” She to keep it.” He put the truck in gear. He says that sucking used oil from a con- made a note. “They’ve got lousy grease,” he said, tainer used to be a little humiliating. Around 2 A.M., he backed his tanker “about a third water. I won’t make any- “You’d get the dirtiest looks from peo- into a narrow alleyway in a deserted stretch thing on it, but I’ll keep their business.” ple,” he says. “Like, ‘That’s why you go of buildings. He strapped on a battery- And in this new grease economy, Davis to college—because otherwise you’ll end powered headlamp, then climbed out and says, he can’t afford to lose any stops. Ten up like him.’ It really bothered me for a went down the alley, which was heaped years ago, he had eight hundred accounts, while.” He points out that his brother re- with garbage. At the touch of his light, which kept him out every night of the cently bought a custom Bentley, which roaches scuttled for cover. At the end, he week. “Of course, that was back when cost three hundred and seventy-five found his container, battered from years of there was four or five people doing it,” he thousand dollars, to add to his collection sitting out. Beside it was a bright new box said. “There was enough to split between of vintage sports cars. Nick says, “People with a fresh label that read “Clean & everybody. In the last probably five years, ask, Why would anyone risk going to jail Green Grease Recycling.” Davis nudged everybody wants to get a truck, get a li- for stealing something so petty? Because his box with his foot. Empty. He nudged cense, and haul oil.” Davis concedes that nobody knows.” the Clean & Green box and heard the there are benefits to the current price of slosh of grease. “Poaching my stop,” Davis grease, but he misses the old days. n Houston, I went out collecting with said. “I’ve lost a few lately to them.” “To me, I’d rather see it lower,” he I a hauler named Jeff Davis, a former He opened the screen door at the said. “Then you don’t have all this stuff Henley employee who now has a company back of the restaurant—an all-night Chi- going on. I mean, you wouldn’t have to called A-Quality. Like most haulers, Davis nese place—and called, “Hey!” A cook in worry about all this if it was a nickel works only at night—there’s little traffic on a white apron was stirring something in a1 pound.”  the roads, and, because restaurants have a wok. “Grease man,” Davis said. “I need emptied out, his presence won’t discomfit to talk to the owner.” department of clear skies patrons. We met at midnight, in a Pappa- A harassed-looking middle-aged Tweeted by @FOX8NOLA. sito’s parking lot. Davis, a wiry man of woman came out into the alleyway. A dense dog advisory remains in effect forty-one with tousled brown hair and a “You change the oil company?” Davis until 6 pm tonight. a REpORTER aT laRgE BuzzKill

Washington State discovers that it’s not so easy to create a legal marijuana economy.

BY paTRicK RaddEN KEEfE

ne morning in August, Mark Klei- not intervene to halt the initiatives in Oman, a professor of public policy at Washington and Colorado. Instead, it U.C.L.A., addressed the Seattle city will adopt a “trust but verify” approach, council on the subject of marijuana. Klei- permitting the states to police the new man is one of the country’s most promi- market for the drug. Many other states nent and outspoken analysts of drug pol- appear poised to introduce legalization icy, and for three decades he has argued measures, and the Obama Administra- that America’s cannabis laws must be lib- tion’s apparent acquiescence surely will eralized. Kleiman’s campaign used to hasten this development. seem quixotic, but in November, 2012, Washington’s initiative, called I-502, voters in Washington and Colorado received fifty-six per cent of the vote, with passed initiatives legalizing the use and especially strong support in western commercial sale of marijuana. Immedi- Washington, around Seattle. Voters saw ately afterward, the State of Washington a lot to like: the end of prohibition of a decided that it needed help setting up a drug that many people enjoy and consider pot economy. State bureaucrats don’t harmless; a fresh source of tax revenue; an generally sit around pondering the im- end to the punitive, and racially discrimi- probable, so they had made no contin- natory, enforcement of marijuana laws. gency plans. A call for proposals was is- Each year, U.S. authorities make more sued. Kleiman assembled a team that beat than three-quarters of a million arrests for out more than a hundred other contend- marijuana offenses. Blacks are more than ers for the job. He calls himself a “policy three times as likely to be arrested for such entrepreneur,” and offers advice through offenses as whites are, though they are no a consultancy that he runs, BOTEC Anal- more likely to use the drug. Pete Holmes, ysis Corp. In a nod to the ambiguity in- the city attorney of Seattle, told me that herent in studying illicit economies, state prosecutors had stopped indicting BOTEC stands for Back of the Envelope people for marijuana possession, because Calculation. local jurors found the prohibition so ob- Washington and Colorado have jectionable that they tended to acquit on launched a singular experiment. The principle. A few years ago, Holmes Netherlands tolerates personal use of stopped prosecuting misdemeanor mari- marijuana, but growing or selling the drug juana-possession cases. He then publicly is still illegal. Portugal has eliminated endorsed I-502. criminal sanctions on all forms of drug The law, which was sixty-four pages use, but selling narcotics remains a crime. long and contained hundreds of specific Washington and Colorado are not merely provisions, assigned the liquor-control decriminalizing adult possession and use board the role of regulating the pot mar- of cannabis; they are creating a legal market. Yet many difficult questions re- ket for the drug that will be overseen by mained: Who would be allowed to grow the state. In a further complication, the legal marijuana? Who would be allowed marijuana that is legal in these states will to sell it? How much would an ounce of remain illegal in the eyes of the federal legal pot cost? The legislation gave government, because the Controlled Sub- Washington officials only a year to come stances Act of 1970 forbids the growing up with answers. Randy Simmons, the and selling of cannabis. “What the state is state’s project manager for I-502, says, doing, in actuality, is issuing licenses to “From the week after the initiative passed, commit a felony,” Kleiman says. In late it’s been about a hundred and fifty miles August, after months of silence, the De- an hour.” partment of Justice announced that it will The liquor-control board instructed Washington’s law gave state officials only a year

40 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013

to answer diﬃcult questions: Who could grow legal pot? Who could sell it? How much would an ounce of the drug cost?

PhotograPh by Maureen Drennan of an illegal business. . . . In the short run, though, the answer is just the opposite.” When legal marijuana goes on sale, sometime next spring, the black market will not simply vanish; over-the-counter pot will have to compete with illicit pot. To support the legal market, Kleiman argued, the state must intensify law-enforcement pressure on people who refuse to play by the new rules. A street dealer will have to be arrested in the hope that “you will migrate that dealer’s customers into the taxed-and-regulated market.” Officials in Washington had been ex- pecting a peace dividend, yet Kleiman was calling for a crackdown. It was the kind of logical argument that nobody wants to hear. Not even law enforcement: to a narcotics detective, pot legalization can feel like an existential affront. As if to deepen the insult, tax revenue from the sale of legal cannabis will be devoted to substance-abuse prevention and research— not to police or prosecutors. Who, then, was going to pay for such a crackdown? Although Kleiman urged state officials to set aside funds for increased law enforcement, he can get impatient with such complaints. He likes to say, “You don’t get “Russia’s always bigger than you think.” any of the revenue for arresting robbers, either.” •• He left the city councillors with a warning: without intensified law enforcement, pot legalization might not succeed. Kleiman and his associates at BOTEC to downer. Allergic to cant, he speaks with “The illicit market is a paper tiger,” he submit research papers outlining the ad- the bracing candor of a scientist in a disas- concluded. “But a paper tiger doesn’t fall vantages and disadvantages of rival ap- ter movie, and appears to derive grim over until you push it.” proaches to legalization. They were to be pleasure from informing politicians that paid two hundred and ninety-two dollars they have underestimated the complexity s an undergraduate at Haverford, an hour. In the spring and summer, Klei- of a problem. A Kleiman was a triple major in po- man’s team engaged in the often surreal The council meeting took place at litical science, economics, and philoso- enterprise of conducting market research City Hall, a glass-and-steel building phy, and he readily concedes that he ana- on a black market: producing reports on overlooking Puget Sound. Council mem- lyzes things to death. His friend Phil the number of active marijuana users in bers sat around a long table, looking Heymann, a professor at Harvard Law each county; estimating how many retail scrubbed and upbeat, as Kleiman—a School, recalls having lunch with Klei- cannabis outlets would be needed to serve large man of sixty-two, with a lumbering man at a university cafeteria. Kleiman that population; assessing how various tax gait and an unruly gray beard—took a launched into an impromptu analysis schemes might affect the price of the seat before a microphone. “One of the of the arrangement of the buffet tables drug. They also investigated protocols for ideas that has actuated the cannabis-le- and the traffic patterns of his fellow- “product quality standards and testing.” galization movement is that law enforce- diners, riffing on the optimal layout for Kleiman’s mandate was to offer officials ment really has bigger fish to fry,” he said. the efficient allocation and consumption options, rather than prescriptions. But he “We’d rather have cops chasing burglars of lunch. “There’s a puzzle-solving qual- has a lot of opinions, and does not excel at than pot sellers. And that’s a reasonable ity to Mark,” Heymann says. “He loves hiding them. viewpoint.” He paused. “But the implica- to think through the decision theory of If Seattle has welcomed the legal- tion of . . . a legal commercial market is everything.” ization of marijuana with utopian opti- not that you need less enforcement.” The Jonathan Caulkins, a professor at mism—a conviction that Washington’s city councillors looked anxious. “That’ll Carnegie Mellon, worked with Kleiman experiment will eventually sweep the na- be true in the long run,” Kleiman allowed. in Washington. In drug-policy circles, he tion—then Kleiman can seem like a total “In the long run, there shouldn’t be much says, Kleiman is known as a prodigious

42 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 generator of unorthodox solutions: “Not that he’s been thinking about these question but “a severe enforcement cutback.” all of these ideas turn out to work in prac- tions for decades,” Thomas Schelling, the In 1996, California passed an initiative tice, but a lot of what happens in the Nobel Prize-winning economist, told me. to legalize medical marijuana. Studies whole field is Mark throws out an idea “He is the best there is on drugs.” Last suggest that cannabis can help relieve the and then we all investigate it, check it, re- March, when Washington’s liquor-con- debilitating pain caused by chronic ail- spond to it.” Kleiman has never been mar- trol board announced the appointment of ments and the nausea associated with ried and has no children, which allows the BOTEC team, Kleiman wrote in a blog chemotherapy. It was a decisive moment him to crisscross the country, bestowing post, “All the claims we’ve made over the for the public image of the drug. “The policy advice, most often on matters of years about knowing how to make smart only thing more potent than drugs as a criminal justice. This year, he is on track drug policy are about to be put to the test.” negative symbol is cancer,” a medical- to hit a hundred thousand miles. marijuana advocate told Kleiman at the Kleiman prides himself on being un- annabis is the most widely used illicit time. “We’re going to make people choose constrained by fixed ideas, and tends to C drug on the planet. For millennia, it between drugs and cancer. And they’re discuss policy as if it were an engineering has been cultivated for both its medicinal going to vote for drugs.” problem—a dispassionate tabulation of and its psychoactive properties. Ancient Since then, nineteen other states and costs and benefits. He has been fiercely Chinese texts recommend the plant as a Washington, D.C., have passed similar critical of the excesses of drug enforce- surgical anesthetic. Herodotus describes measures. A 1991 survey found that only ment, but he also distrusts the unfettered the Scythians inhaling cannabis fumes, seventeen per cent of Americans sup- libertarianism of those who would like to then shouting in ecstasy. In America, can- ported fully legalizing marijuana. A Pew see all narcotics legalized. Harold Pollack, nabis became illegal only in 1937, and the poll in 2010 showed that the number had the co-director of the University of Chi- ban has never been especially effective. jumped to forty-one per cent. By now, a cago Crime Lab, says, “Mark has a kind According to a Pew poll, more than thirty majority of respondents favor the change. of iconoclastic credibility that comes from million Americans have used pot in the Young voters are twice as likely as the el- the fact that he doesn’t fit neatly into the past year. derly to embrace legalization. Shifts in at- usual ideological camps you find in crim- Before Kleiman entered academia, he titude are discernible even in conservative inal-justice policy.” worked in the government. In 1979, he constituencies. The evangelist Pat Rob- Ethan Nadelmann, the executive di- joined the Department of Justice, where ertson recently told the Times, “We rector of the Drug Policy Alliance, a na- he wrote a series of memos arguing that should treat marijuana the way we treat tional group that advocates the decrimi- aggressive enforcement of marijuana laws beverage alcohol.” nalization of all drugs, is more skeptical. would be counterproductive. At the time, Alison Holcomb, a lawyer with the “Mark has always caricatured the drug de- most pot in America was a low-potency A.C.L.U. in Seattle, wrote the ballot ini- bate as the hawks on one side and the product from Mexico; when U.S. author- tiative that became known as I-502. She doves on the other, and he’s the wise owl ities tried to impede smugglers, they suc- told me that her public-outreach efforts sitting in the middle,” he says. ceeded mainly in driving up the price, had targeted moderate voters who were Although Kleiman has consistently which enriched the smugglers without not necessarily cannabis consumers them- pushed for a relaxation of cannabis laws, significantly dissuading users. Moreover, selves. “The majority of people don’t like on the ground that marijuana is less harm- by squeezing the supply from Mexico, marijuana, but they also don’t like our ful than alcohol and that the war on drugs U.S. authorities inadvertently encouraged laws,” she said. “So the message pivot is has not worked, he has expressed wariness domestic cultivators, who produced more that you can support reform while not lik- about full legalization, which he once de- intense strains of the drug. ing marijuana.” Holcomb highlighted the scribed as “a heavy wager on a coin flip.” In 1980, ten per cent of high-school role of Mexican drug cartels, which have As recently as 2010, he condemned a bal- seniors reported daily use of marijuana, made billions of dollars by supplying the lot measure to legalize the commercial and Ronald Reagan denounced it as American black market, and have been sale of marijuana in his home state of Cal- “probably the most dangerous drug in responsible for more than sixty thousand ifornia. In an op-ed in the Los Angeles America.” As President, he quadrupled deaths in Mexico in the past seven years. Times, he observed, “The only way to sell federal spending on drug enforcement. Murderous cartels may be an even more a lot of pot is to create a lot of potheads— Kleiman continued writing memos, but potent negative symbol than cancer. not casual, moderate recreational users nobody was paying attention. In 1983, he In her campaign, Holcomb empha- but chronic, multiple-joints-per-day left government for the Kennedy School, sized that Washington had successfully zonkers.” The initiative was voted down. at Harvard, turning his memos into a legalized medical marijuana, in 1998. But as the costs of prohibition accu- Ph.D. thesis and then his first book, Crime did not go up. The streets were not mulated—and legalization began to seem “Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of overrun with dazed potheads. Instead, the not just possible but inevitable—Kleiman Control.” Kleiman argued that, although black market gave way to a quasi-respect- began to reconsider his views. “We’re now legalization represented “a radical, near- able, if mostly unregulated, scene. in 1928,” he told me, likening this mo- complete solution to the problem of the One afternoon, in the comfortable Se- ment to the final days of alcohol prohibi- illicit marijuana market,” it also risked “a attle neighborhood of Capitol Hill, I vis- tion. “It’s about to collapse under its own potentially huge increase in the social ited Muraco Kyashna-Tocha, who runs weight.” He was uniquely positioned to costs of consumption.” A better solution, Green Buddha, one of the oldest medical- offer guidance. “Mark has the advantage therefore, was not the lifting of prohibi- marijuana dispensaries in town. A woman

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 43 in her fifties with short gray hair, she an- boutique cannabis growers can resemble allowing naturopaths to authorize canna- swered the door in yoga wear, a giant an encounter with an earnest sommelier. bis patients, and “the whole scene com- white cockatoo balanced on her shoulder. There are two subspecies of cannabis, she pletely blew out—you went from five dis- “Come on upstairs,” she said. “I’ll show explained: indica, which mellows you out, pensaries to sixty-five in, like, three you my grow.” and sativa, which boosts your energy and months.” Some dispensaries stopped Kyashna-Tocha has been cultivating gives you a buzz. She added, “I used a lit- growing their own pot, because it was marijuana for more than half her life. tle sativa before you arrived.” cheaper (if illegal) to import large quanti- For many years, she did it illegally, until In Washington, operating a dispensary ties from California. she was ratted out by a landlord, and is a legally ambiguous enterprise. Patients Kleiman considers the dispensary busted, in 1997. Although the charges who obtain a “green card” from a sanc- business to be farcically unregulated. were dropped, the experience traumatized tioned medical provider can grow up to “Anybody can make you a ‘patient,’ in- her, and when Washington legalized the fifteen cannabis plants. These users can cluding a nurse practitioner,” he says. “I medical use of marijuana she went into pool their plants and form a collective, in don’t think they’ve gotten to plumbers the dispensary business. She sells high- which the growers are “reimbursed” for and veterinarians yet, but they’re get- end sinsemilla—unpollinated female can- their costs. Kyashna-Tocha stressed that ting there.” It’s not clear how dispensa- nabis flowers—to medical-marijuana pa- Green Buddha is nonprofit, adding that ries will fare once legal pot stores open. tients. Kyashna-Tocha is a patient herself: it generates only a modest income for her. The framers of I-502, not wanting to she told me that she has a seizure disor- But many medical outlets in Washington alienate enthusiasts for medical cannabis, der, degenerative disks, and lingering pain openly pursue profits. In a 2007 raid, Se- pointedly sidestepped the fate of the dis- from old operations. attle police recovered fifteen hundred pensaries and scarcely mentioned medi- Upstairs, we entered a humid, win- plants from the home of one dispensary cal marijuana. Kleiman, however, was dowless room. Thirty cannabis plants owner. (The owner, who maintained that adamant from the start: he argued that stood beneath a canopy of fans and lights. he represented twelve hundred patients, the new regulated market was more “I can pull twelve pounds a year out of this was not prosecuted.) Moreover, many likely to succeed if the state supplanted room,” Kyashna-Tocha said. She pointed “patients” are recreational users who have dispensaries with I-502 stores. Medical at the bristly plants: “That’s an Alaskan obtained a green card from a lax or un- marijuana is not taxed, so it may remain Thunderfuck. That’s Lemon Haze. Feels scrupulous medical provider. In 2010, cheaper than legal cannabis; Kleiman like espresso. Really big buzz.” Talking to Kyashna-Tocha told me, the state began maintained that the solution was to make sure that only genuinely sick people could receive medical cards, and then set up the I-502 stores so that such patients could purchase pot tax-free. One advantage of the I-502 stores is that their marijuana will be tested for mold, fungus, pesticides, and other impurities. The state’s dispensaries are not required to subject their product to such evaluations. Several years ago, Kyashna- Tocha established the Evergreen State Cannabis Trade Alliance, which encouraged dispensary owners to submit marijuana for testing, and issued a label for “patient-ready” weed. But her effort stalled: few dispensary owners were willing to incur the additional expense, and their customers were apparently untroubled by the possibility of impurities. When Alison Holcomb started promoting the legalization initiative, the strongest opposition came not from law enforcement but from dispensary owners. “It was a horrible split that went right down the middle of this community,” Kyashna-Tocha said. She supported the measure, and wept with joy on election night. She hopes that the state can keep the new pot industry small. “Think mi- crobrew,” she likes to say. At her house, “Everything I know about being human I learned from animals.” she spoke excitedly about the possibilities of pot tourism: “I completely see bed-and- breakfast tours! You go to where the grow facilities are in the day, and then, toward dinnertime, you land in a couple of the stores and make your selection.” Even so, Kyashna-Tocha conceded that many consumers are not attuned to horticultural subtleties. “Budweiser is what sells,” she said. The sativa seemed to be wearing off. She hoped to keep her dispensary alive by catering to connoisseurs, she told me, but legalization might well render her obsolete. “I may need to find a job about a year from now,” she said.

elying primarily on survey data, Klei- R man and his colleagues determined that Washingtonians consume a hundred and sixty-five metric tons of pot a year. The BOTEC team concluded that Wash- ington could accommodate this demand with approximately three hundred I-502 stores, most of them distributed along the “You’re amazing! Where do you even find the time to shave your legs?” Pacific Coast, where use is highest. Kleiman’s team next addressed the •• vexing issue of price. Economic theory would suggest that prices in the black market—and even in the quasi-legal ijuana is through taxes. Under I-502, the jected that legal cannabis in Washington medical market—are artificially high, be- state will take an excise tax of twenty-five will initially sell for at least forty-two dol- cause there is a “prohibition premium” as- per cent when the producer sells to the lars for an eighth of an ounce. Outdoor sociated with products that are less than processor (unless the producer does the growing will lower that figure, but proba- completely legal. You’re not just paying processing himself ). Another twenty- bly not enough to undercut street dealers. for the commodity; you’re compensating five-per-cent tax will be imposed when Ben Schroeter, who goes by Ben Jammin, everyone who undertook risk in getting it the processor sells to the retailer. Finally, has been selling pot in the Seattle area for to you. In Washington, legal cannabis consumers will pay an additional thirty- forty years, and offers high-quality, locally should be cheap to produce. Growing five per cent or so in taxes at I-502 stores. grown product for twenty-eight dollars an costs are minimal, and curing marijuana is Washington’s liquor-control board esti- eighth. He sells weed from California at less costly than curing tobacco. mates that the state will receive up to two twenty dollars an eighth. Some customers If you make cannabis too cheap, how- billion dollars in marijuana taxes over the may be willing to pay a premium for the ever, you run the risk of “diversion,” in next five years. convenience, and the peace of mind, asso- which pot that is legal in Washington Kleiman has wondered out loud, ciated with buying legal pot that has been feeds the black markets in surrounding “What if we threw a legalization and no- tested for impurities. But Ben Jammin states. In a recent letter to the Depart- body came?” During the initial months of says, “I assume that a lot of people are still ment of Justice, a coalition of former his contract, the liquor-control board going to come to me.” drug-control officials warned that “diver- maintained that outdoor cultivation of At the city-council meeting in Seattle, sion of the drug will explode” once mari- marijuana would not be permitted. But Kleiman said that the tax scheme outlined juana becomes fully legal in Washington cannabis, like any agricultural product, in I-502 was rigid and shortsighted. Be- and Colorado. Alison Holcomb, the takes time to grow. Unless illegally culti- cause of the state’s heavy surcharges, legal I-502 author, is untroubled by this possi- vated plants were grandfathered into the marijuana will likely be more expensive bility. She asked me, “If people in New new system, the I-502 stores might not than the illicit equivalent; but, as produc- York are smoking Washington mari- have sufficient inventory when they tion costs plunge, legal pot will become juana, isn’t that better than smoking opened. Kleiman and others pushed the much cheaper. “We’re gonna have a tax Mexican marijuana?” Diversion is an- board to allow outdoor plants, which have that starts too high and winds up too low,” other reason for Kleiman’s call for a law- a higher yield, and to create a “path to cit- Kleiman said. He laid out a better ap- enforce ment crackdown: if the Feds izenship” for cannabis plants that had proach: “The optimal tax system . . . if determine that cheap weed is flowing out been grown illegally. Troubled by the I were doing it on a blackboard, would of Washington, they might shut the ex- prospect of pot shortages, the board even- have been somewhat homeostatic. You’re periment down. tually relented on both points. looking to maintain a price maybe a One way to raise the price of legal mar- Early in the summer, Kleiman pro- little bit below, or a little bit above,

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 45 the current illicit price. And, therefore, dens.” Many of Berneburg’s clients have though he doesn’t drink it himself. In you’d like to have the tax be low at the worked in the marijuana industry for de- another departure from convention, he beginning . . . and rise as the cost in the cades. When the liquor-control board prefers hot chocolate, even in high sum- industry falls.” The state didn’t recon- starts issuing licenses, he told me, his cli- mer. “I like chocolate, and it’s a stimu- sider its tax plan, however; the prospect ents will have to decide whether it’s worth lant,” he explained. of an immediate windfall was perhaps it to “come in from the cold.” In 1995, after many years as a lecturer too tempting. He introduced me to a client—a at Harvard, Kleiman moved to U.C.L.A. One group is definitely not coming to longtime grower who asked that I not He enjoys the West Coast, but his pallor Washington’s legalization party: minors. use his name. The man planned to apply marks him as an outsider. He grew up in Scientific evidence suggests that mari- for a license to grow pot, but complained a Jewish enclave of Baltimore, where his juana poses few long-term that, because of all the taxes father was a surgeon, and he misses the health risks to adults but can and restrictions, he’d have East Coast, where his ardor for policy is harm adolescents whose brains to “grow more to make less less exotic. are still developing. The li- money.” Berneburg said that When I asked Kleiman about his ex- quor-control board has made it many of his clients are am- perience with marijuana, he replied, “If a priority to keep people under bivalent. “I can get a bag of you do drug policy and you’re asked the age of twenty-one out of weed as easy as I can get a whether you use drugs, you’ve got two I-502 stores. But, according to dozen eggs,” he said. “That’s choices. You can say, ‘Yes, I’m a law- some studies, a quarter of mar- the way it has been, and breaker. Please come arrest me and ignore ijuana consumers are under- that’s the way it will be. The everything I say, because I’m a bad per- age. Kleiman told the city council that it black market’s not going anywhere.” son.’ Or, ‘No, actually, I don’t know what would be better for children to get mari- Allen Ginsberg once suggested that the hell I’m talking about.’ Since neither juana from parents or friends who buy it the paranoia that sometimes results from of those is an advantageous admission, I at I-502 stores than to obtain it through smoking marijuana is an effect “not of the don’t answer the question.” the black market, because of the testing narcotic but of the law.” Berneburg and He was more forthcoming about and the quality control. Moreover, if kids his clientele are dubious about the state’s psychedelics. He told me to look up a keep resorting to the black market, they intentions, and Kleiman’s presentation to YouTube video that captures a raucous will sustain the criminal enterprises that Seattle’s city council did not help matters. conference organized in 1990 by the I-502 was designed to eliminate. “Once “We’re going to have the toughest enforce- Multidisciplinary Association of Psyche- you have a licensed-store system, you ment in the country to make our legaliza- delic Studies. Kleiman, appearing along- should expect—and in fact want—most tion plan work?” Berneburg sputtered. side Timothy Leary and Ram Dass, of the pot that goes to kids to go through “That is ass backward!” wears a tie-dyed T-shirt and speaks that system,” Kleiman said, adding, with In his view, Kleiman’s proposal was about a future of “performance-enhanc- a seditious grin, “You can’t say that out driven not by high-minded policy consid- ing” drugs. Kleiman told me, “I’ve never loud. But I can.” Young people who can erations but by the logic of the street: met anybody who used cocaine thirty obtain a green card already purchase pot “Look at what a thug will do for a thou- years ago and says, ‘You know, I really from dispensaries. “Nineteen-year-old sand dollars. The state wants to make mil- learned a lot from my cocaine use.’ But kids on skateboards with a medical-au- lions! I’m predicting a bloodbath, as the li- you know the Steve Jobs quote about thorization card,” Ben Jammin told me. quor-control board tries to capture market how Windows would be a better operat- “That’s the cash cow now.” share. We’re going to see some weird shit ing system if Bill Gates had dropped acid go down.” just once?” One of Kleiman’s books is he morning after Kleiman’s presen- Berneburg began talking feverishly called “Against Excess”—the title refers Ttation at the city council, I drove to about jackboots and mass resistance, and both to the war on drugs and to drug Tacoma to meet with Jay Berneburg, a I was reminded that part of the allure of use. Leary, he told me, was undone by lawyer who works exclusively on pot cases. cannabis is its historical connection to the excess: “The tragedy of the sixties is that Along the way, I heard a radio report on counterculture. Berneburg recalled, “I was people managed to apply the drug-use Kleiman’s presentation, which high- at a Grateful Dead concert once when I practices of an Irish drunk to a very lighted his call for a police crackdown. was a graduate student. I complained that different chemical.” In the reception area outside Berne- there were cops there. And the guy I was In 1986, Kleiman and a collaborator, burg’s office, I spotted a bowl of match- with said, ‘It wouldn’t be any fun without Peter Reuter, published a seminal paper, books. Each one was emblazoned with his the cops. If there wasn’t that risk and dan- “Risks and Prices,” which argued that the phone number and the words “Drive Fast, ger, who the fuck would care?’ ” drug trade should be analyzed not as a Take Chances, Call Collect.” Berneburg moral issue or a justice issue but as a mar- is in his fifties, and has a ponytail and hen Kleiman is not on the road, ket that is dynamic and adaptive. After wire-framed glasses. His voice has an Whe lives in the Brentwood neigh- the paper was published, Kleiman told ebullient rasp, and he walks with a pirati- borhood of Los Angeles, in a book- Reuter, “We’re monopolists in selling cal swagger. “I have two hundred dispen- lined apartment overlooking a narrow drug-policy analysis. If only there were a sary clients,” he told me, before catching courtyard. After I arrived there one demand for it, we’d be rich!” himself. “Well, I represent collective gar- morning, Kleiman prepared coffee, Kleiman and Reuter garnered an aca-

46 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 demic following, and more scholars ad- season, armed guards patrol the facility. is arbitrary: because marijuana affects opted their rigorously empirical approach In order to obtain weed from Waller, ac- users differently, the presence of a cer- to drug policy. But Kleiman achieved his ademics must first seek approval from the tain level of THC in the blood does not first mainstream policy victory only re- Department of Health and Human Ser- correlate predictably with a level of im- cently, for advancing an idea called “swift vices and from the Drug Enforcement pairment. And if you are only an occa- and certain.” Traditionally, criminals who Administration. Although these entities sional user your THC level tends to drop have been placed on probation or parole have enthusiastically supported research rapidly about an hour after ingestion, are subjected to random drug testing. A into marijuana’s dangerous properties, whereas if you are a regular user the failed test is a violation, and offenders they have been wary of inquiries into chemical can linger in your system for sometimes receive extended jail sen- possible benefits of the drug. A few years days. Because many medical users con- tences. But the timing of tests is sporadic, ago, a team of researchers developed an sume cannabis daily, the Washington and many probationers take their chances experiment to explore whether cannabis test could have the practical effect of bar- and use drugs, either because they can’t eased post-traumatic stress in combat ring sick patients from the road, even control themselves or because the mini- veterans. The team was denied access to though their heightened tolerance may mal likelihood of a test encourages risk. pot from Waller. Kleiman calls such in- leave them unimpaired. For decades, Kleiman argued that it cidents “a disgrace.” No one is happy with the solution. would be better to schedule frequent drug In a 2012 federal survey, ten million The Marijuana Policy Project, a national tests for people on parole or probation, people reported having driven under the organization urging reform of cannabis followed by relatively minor sanctions for influence of an illegal drug in the previ- laws, argues that the THC test “criminal- those who fail. The idea was unpopular ous year, most commonly marijuana. Al- izes sober drivers.” Studies co-authored by both with policymakers who wanted to ison Holcomb decided that I-502 should researchers at the National Institute on severely punish drug use and with those include provisions for testing drivers for Drug Abuse, meanwhile, suggest that a who viewed addiction as a medical con- drug intoxication. But scientists know five-nanogram baseline may be too per- dition. Then, in 2004, a judge in Hawaii little about how the key components missive—that impairment is possible with instituted a pilot program mirroring the of marijuana—tetrahydrocannabinol lower levels of THC. Kleiman points out swift-and-certain approach. People in the (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD)—affect that a blood test for THC cannot tell au- program were significantly less likely to different users. So Holcomb opted for a thorities whether the driver took a puff use drugs when they knew they would be blunt test: if you are stopped while driv- five minutes or five days ago. “You’d need sanctioned for it, even minimally. And ing erratically, and your blood contains some fairly fancy chemistry with metabo- Hawaii’s criminal-justice system saved five nanograms of active THC, you will lites to determine when the subject used,” money, in part by reducing the number of be issued a D.U.I. citation. The number he told me. “A mouth swab might work, prisoners serving long-term sentences. In 2010, Kleiman promoted the idea in a widely praised book, “When Brute Force Fails,” and other jurisdictions across the country—including Seattle—adopted the program. Kleiman is gratified by this belated success, but he is frustrated that most drug policy remains influenced more by ideology than by data. There are few reliable studies about the dynamics of the illegal drug market, and scientists are shockingly ignorant of the pharmacology of cannabis. The Controlled Substances Act placed marijuana in the most restrictive category of narcotics, which meant that it had “a high potential for abuse” and no medicinal value. When scientists have sought to study, say, the role of cannabis in easing pain or diminishing seizures, they have faced considerable difficulty obtaining plants for testing. Only one facility in the U.S. grows marijuana for scientists: the Coy W. Waller Laboratory, at the University of Mississippi. Established by the government in 1968, it can produce hundreds of pounds of pot in a year. During harvest “Do you, Ashley, take Nesbitt and his genome to be your husband?” but that remains to be developed.” (Some product so that it contained segments, as Seattle’s Space Needle. A crowd of about of the tax revenue from legalization will in a chocolate bar, and inform the con- a hundred assembled to hear the board fund research on marijuana intoxication.) sumer about the buzz he might anticipate members give short presentations. Citi- The lack of a proper test is symptom- from each piece. “We need to know at zens then approached an open mike. One atic of a larger problem. As Kleiman puts least as much about cannabis as Pillsbury speaker introduced himself as Arthur it, “We have done essentially no research knows about brownie mix,” Kleiman likes West. A medical-marijuana advocate, he about the effect on individuals of different to say. “And we don’t.” began reading aloud from a six-page mixes of chemicals.” I-502 declares that statement denouncing the board. The each legal pot plant should be traced and his summer, the liquor-control board board members whispered in anxious tracked “from seed to sale.” Bureaucrats Theld dozens of public meetings across consultation. Then Sharon Foster, the seem to agree that cannabis should be sold Washington, soliciting input about I-502. chair, announced, “Mr. West has filed a with a label describing the drug’s effects. In the eastern part of the state, which is lawsuit against us. So, given that, we will But if you don’t have the science, what do more conservative, board members were not respond.” you put on the label? lambasted for flooding the community The next speaker was a paunchy man Increasingly, consumers are moving with drugs. In western Washington, they in his sixties. “My name is Steve Sarich,” away from smoking pot and shifting to were decried for being too stringent. he said. “I have not filed a lawsuit against extracted oils, concentrates, and “edibles” When I asked Randy Simmons, the you—yet.” The crowd laughed. Sarich is such as pot-infused cookies. Kleiman sees I-502 project manager, to describe the well known in Seattle. He is an erotic this as a potentially promising develop- hearings, he said, “A circus.” photographer turned pot impresario who ment: if you knew the precise quantity of One such meeting was held on Au- operates a dispensary; until recently, he THC in an edible, you could design the gust 6th, in a cavernous event space near also ran a company that makes edibles and a service for obtaining medical-marijuana authorizations. The 2007 raid that recovered fifteen hundred cannabis plants took place at Sarich’s home. He was one of the loudest opponents of I-502, which, he claimed, would enable the government to persecute cannabis patients through the D.U.I. provision. Several people suggested to me that Sa- rich’s opposition was driven by a desire to play the provocateur—and to protect his position in the medical-marijuana market. He turned to the room and announced, “I can guarantee that you’ve been lied to when they say, ‘We are not looking to take over medical.’ ” Foster was looking haggard. “Truly, folks,” she said. “We do not have a role in medical marijuana at this time, and we don’t know if we ever will.” A tall, gray-haired man introduced himself as John Dickinson. He announced that, at six earlier forums on I-502, he had incorrectly said that he was once the largest importer of hashish in the country. In fact, he had been No. 2. “Thank you,” Foster said, tightly. Dickinson was not finished. Referring to the pot that will be sold at I-502 stores, he said, “I heard out in the hallway that you were going to put a limit on how high the THC will go.” “Rumors abound,” Foster said. Dickinson noted that some countries, like the Netherlands, had considered ban- ning strains whose THC content ex- ceeded fifteen per cent. “Is there any word “I’m a bird dog.” about limiting the THC level?” he asked. “No,” Foster said. people pitching startups wore tags with circle in the Midwest, asked that I not “Good!” Dickinson exclaimed, smil- their full names, whereas potential inves- divulge his name. ing. “Because I was going to share with tors wore tags that said only “Rick R.,” or The cannabis market, Kennedy in- people the strongest marijuana in the “John T.,” as if they were members of an formed the investor, is already “bigger world.” He held aloft a baggie of weed, to addiction support group. than corn.” He added, “The objective is to laughter and applause. “It’s twenty-nine When Kleiman learned of Shively’s build a vertical conglomerate of compa- per cent!” press conference, he wrote a lacerating nies in the medical-cannabis industry and, Another speaker was Linzy Burton, a blog post: “It was inevitable that the legal- ultimately, the cannabis industry.” drug-treatment counsellor for young peo- ization of cannabis would attract a certain As long as selling pot remains illegal ple. A middle-aged black man, he stood number of insensate greedheads to the in- under federal law, any business that is out in the crowd. The proponents of le- dustry. And I suppose it was also inevita- openly connected to the trade will find it galization in Washington appear to skew ble that some of them would be terminally difficult to put its money in a bank, be- white and middle class, but the popula- stupid.” Kleiman believes that the nega- cause financial institutions do not want to tion of users is considerably more diverse. tive social consequences of legalization risk the legal exposure. According to the “My family has a history of drugs and may be severe if profiteers can turn canna- National Cannabis Industry Association, alcohol,” Burton began. “Everybody bis into a largely unregulated commercial fewer than half the medical-marijuana knows that marijuana is one of the gate- product. He suggested to Washington’s dispensaries in the U.S. have bank ac- way drugs.” This claim has been compre- liquor-control board that it limit the vol- counts. They struggle to make payroll, hensively debunked, and there were ume that any individual grower can pro- and have trouble paying taxes. One dis- some groans of protest. But Burton per- duce under I-502, in order to curb the pensary owner told me about taking seven sisted. He said that in the south end of “power of large producers.” In October, thousand dollars in cash to the Washing- Seattle, where he works, there was al- the board announced that the largest pro- ton Department of Revenue, to pay his ready a heavy concentration of medical- ducers will be limited to growing mari- monthly tax bill. He was turned away, be- marijuana establishments, many of them juana fields of thirty thousand square feet. cause the teller refused to deposit his near schools. “How many more store- Because marijuana remains illegal “drug money.” fronts will be allowed to open up in our under federal law, Kleiman is highly skep- Privateer has had its bank accounts community?” he asked. tical of the Green Rush. “Making money shut down more than once. But, Ken- One of Foster’s colleagues assured by selling marijuana is a very risky propo- nedy explained to the potential client, him that I-502 would not permit many sition,” he told me. “Making money by the firm does not “touch the plant” when stores to open in a single neighborhood. fleecing investors is much safer.” (The Fi- making its investments. Privateer has so Burton had more to say, but Foster re- nancial Industry Regulatory Authority re- far acquired only one company, Leafly, minded him that there were many others cently issued a warning to investors about which aims at becoming the Yelp of can- waiting to ask questions. He pointed out “marijuana stock scams.”) nabis—a sleek online guide to strains that prior speakers had been permitted to Under I-502, new pot businesses can- and dispensaries. Privateer recently ramble, and that he was one of the few not be vertically integrated: growers and closed a seven-million-dollar round of attendees who represented “the youth.” processors must remain separate entities funding, which it intends to invest in He began to shout. “There’s people here from sellers. This provision is aimed, in other ancillary businesses, so that when who want to make money on this! People part, at preventing a single business from pot becomes legal nationwide it can as- like me will be dealing with the fallout.” dominating the industry. But boosters sume a dominant position in the market for the new pot economy have taken for cannabis itself. his past spring, a former Microsoft to citing an adage attributed to Mark In the interim, Kennedy said, he and Texecutive named Jamen Shively held Twain: “When everyone is looking for Blue planned to “professionalize” the in- a press conference in Seattle. Announcing gold, it’s a good time to be in the pick- dustry, starting with its image. They dis- his intention to raise as much as a hun- and-shovel business.” So-called ancillary dain iconography involving cannabis dred million dollars and invest it in the pot businesses are not barred by federal law, leaves or Bob Marley. Leafly’s Web site business, he proclaimed, “Yes—we are and the most careful investors are focus- presents pot varieties in a grid that wittily Big Marijuana.” The national pot market sing on these markets. alludes to the periodic table. Kennedy and may exceed thirty billion dollars, and a Brendan Kennedy and Michael Blue Blue have sought advice from the Seattle wave of media stories this spring heralded run a private-equity firm, Privateer, that marketing company Heckler Associates, the birth of a new industry. A headline in invests in the “cannabis space.” They met best known for inventing the name Star- Vice: “GET RICH OR HIGH TRYING.” at Yale’s business school, and take pride bucks. Scott Lowry, the Heckler executive Investors, prospectors, speculators, in looking painfully square: they are who handles the Privateer account, told and salesmen are scrambling to join the clean-cut and athletic, and most days me, “When we started working with Star- so-called Green Rush. At investment they wear suits. When I visited them one bucks, nobody was drinking upscale summits, marijuana entrepreneurs pitch day, in a borrowed conference room in coffee. It was pretty much Folgers in a potential angel investors. The continued Seattle, they were making a pitch to a po- can.” The cannabis industry represents a taboo on cannabis can give these pro- tential investor who had flown in from similar opportunity, he said. ceedings a strange vibe. At one summit I Chicago. The investor, concerned that The investor had a question. If mari- attended, in a Manhattan office tower, word might get back to his professional juana became legal across the U.S.,

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 49 wouldn’t the price plummet, decimating The big riddle, Kleiman believes, is license for using cannabis. We issue li- profits? Before Kennedy and Blue could whether marijuana might become a sub- censes to drive a car or to own a gun— respond, he supplied the answer himself: stitute for alcohol. He would be happy if why not a license for consuming recre- “Volumes are going to go up, right?” a switch to cannabis caused a decline in ational drugs? Any adult could obtain Kennedy and Blue exchanged an awk- drinking. Alcohol use has far more detri- such a license, and the license could stip- ward glance. Then Kennedy told the in- mental social costs than marijuana use, by ulate a quota for personal monthly use. vestor, “I think volumes will go up.” virtually any measure: addiction, acci- This quota would be set by the user, and This is the most politically delicate dents, violence, illness, death. But what if could be large or small. But, once the con- aspect of Privateer’s sales pitch: the un- users instead “complement” alcohol with sumer had set a quota, it could be changed spoken premise that legalization will pot? A recent paper in the Journal of Pol- only in writing—with a month’s notice. probably entice more Americans to use icy Analysis and Management suggests Such an innovation could counteract the marijuana. Presumably, there are poten- that, “as marijuana becomes more avail- dangers of excessive, impulsive use by en- tial consumers who do not use cannabis able, young adults in Colorado and couraging individuals to set their own today because it is illegal, or because they Washington will respond by drinking limits. Users could set very high quotas for don’t want to navigate the black market or less, not more.” But the truth is that themselves, of course, but the provision obtain a dubious medical recommenda- scholars have done almost no research on would nudge at least some citizens into tion. For others, the process of legaliza- consumer preferences involving mari- being more responsible. To work prop- tion may diminish whatever stigma they juana and alcohol, and how they might erly, a personal-quota system would need associate with the drug. If legalization change under full legalization. a central database of marijuana users, lowers the price of pot, some people may Kleiman is fond of saying that the which would allow I-502 stores to deter- choose it over other intoxicants, like beer. U.S. government should triple taxes on mine if customers were trying to exceed One of Kleiman’s research papers suggests alcohol. In his dealings with Washing- their monthly allotments. that kids are very likely to be “price sensi- ton’s liquor-control board, he did little to Kleiman’s solution was ingeniously tive,” as are chronic users and the poor, hide the contempt he feels for the coun- eclectic—a hybrid that balanced individ- because cannabis “forms a larger share of try’s lax regulation of alcohol, and he ual liberty and state control. Nobody liked their household budgets.” warned that I-502 blindly applied the it. He floated the idea to the liquor-con- If you’re looking to invest in marijuana, state’s alcohol policies to marijuana. “The trol board, but its members never seriously all this is good news. But Kleiman finds it alcohol model is a very, very bad model considered it. “In their liquor-board hat, troubling, from a policy perspective. He that’s had very, very bad outcomes,” Klei- they don’t think of themselves as having has long argued that the problem with le- man told the board. “We shouldn’t want primarily a drug-abuse-control mission,” galizing any vice—whether it be alcohol, to do that again.” he said to me. “Their job is to make sure nicotine, or gambling—is that “addiction One afternoon this summer, Kleiman the taxes are paid, hours are observed, and is where the money is.” Twenty per cent went to Washington, D.C., to attend a no direct sales are made to minors. The of the Americans who drink account for symposium on legalization hosted by the idea of a personal quota has no place in almost ninety per cent of all alcohol con- National Institute of Justice. In a speech, that system.” sumption. It cannot be news to beer and he said, “The primary impact of legalizing Phil Heymann told me, “Mark’s in- liquor companies that their key demo- cannabis is there will be probably six hun- stincts are not to think too much about graphic is the problem drinker. dred and fifty thousand fewer arrests every political feasibility. That would be a waste According to surveys, people who use year and forty thousand fewer people be- of his talents.” marijuana “more than weekly” hind bars. And there will be an At the symposium in D.C., Kleiman account for roughly ninety additional . . . fifteen billion told the audience that his greatest worry per cent of cannabis consump- stoned hours.” He looked out about I-502 was advertising. What could tion. A RAND study indicates at the half-empty auditorium. the type of marketing that turned millions that this trend is increasing: “You have to decide whether of Americans into Starbucks addicts do the number of “use days” re- a stoned hour is a good thing with marijuana? I-502 will restrict adver- ported by the heaviest con- or a bad thing,” he went on. tising near schools, and campaigns cannot sumers has risen markedly in “That decision is going to be aimed at children. But the Supreme recent years. Marijuana may drive a lot of your judgment Court has interpreted the protections of not be physiologically addic- about whether legalization is a the First Amendment to extend to “com- tive—you don’t go into severe physical good idea or a bad idea. But, even if you mercial free speech,” and a ban on adver- withdrawal if you abruptly stop using it— had your values straight, you’d have to tising a legal product might be deemed and no one has ever died of an overdose. know the facts. And we mostly don’t.” unconstitutional. For Kleiman, one flaw But even the most ardent advocates of le- For years, Kleiman’s resistance to out- of I-502 is that the state will simply regu- galization generally concede that it can right legalization was based, in part, on a late stores owned by private individuals. It become a problematic habit for some fear that commercialization of the drug would be better for the state to own and users. According to the National Survey could triple its use. But when he arrived in operate the stores—that way, government on Drug Use and Health, more than eight Washington State he proposed an auda- officials could opt not to advertise at all. million people reported trying to reduce cious solution. In order to curb problem- But states cannot order their employees to their marijuana consumption in 2011. atic consumption, you could introduce a violate federal law, so state ownership is

50 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 not yet an option. In any case, many states have eagerly marketed vice for tax money, most notably with state-run lotteries and casinos. Earlier this year, the liquor-control board unveiled a logo for Washington State marijuana, with a cannabis leaf su- perimposed on a map of the state. After an outcry that the state was “promoting” pot, the design was abandoned. “I don’t like stores,” Kleiman told me. “Stores are basically marketing centers.” He tried to sell the liquor-control board on an alternative approach: home delivery of pot. Such services already exist for medical marijuana. But, to Kleiman’s frustration, the board rejected the idea. At the symposium, he said, “It’s very hard, in the somewhat Manichaean world of politics, not to go from ‘Cannabis is illegal and you should go to jail for selling it or using it’ to ‘Cannabis should be tightly regulated,’ without going all the way to ‘We should sell it like cornflakes.’ ” •• Ethan Nadelmann, of the Drug Policy Alliance, thinks that Kleiman’s fears are ting stores up, getting stuff into stores,” he solutions here.” It appears that I-502, like overblown: when the Netherlands de- said. “I think we did some good by sort of so many government programs, will be criminalized marijuana, consumption lev- urging them to look beyond that.” In mid- flawed from the start, and will demand els rose, but they remained lower than in October, a working group appointed by patchwork modification in the coming many countries where pot was prohibited. the state legislature proposed abolishing years. One imperative of political life is The popularity of the drug has risen and the dispensary business, tightening the that, at a certain point, you have to stop fallen over the decades, and nobody really system for authorizing medical-cannabis formulating a policy and start selling it, understands why. If marijuana consump- use, and channelling patients into the and when this transition occurred with tion goes up in Washington in the com- I-502 stores—all ideas that Kleiman had I-502 Kleiman may have become an im- ing years, it wouldn’t be possible to attri- proposed. pediment. He is not one for the unequiv- bute this shift entirely to I-502. Still, I got a strong sense that his ex- ocal endorsement. Yet, in his judgment, When I asked Alison Holcomb perience in Washington had not been drug-policy questions are so complex whether she could live with a big increase entirely happy. By the time the liquor- that, if you are not at least somewhat in marijuana consumption, she paused. control board hired Kleiman’s team, the equivocal, you aren’t thinking hard Holcomb knows that legislators in other state had only seven months left to con- enough. He said of Washington’s state states are monitoring the experiments in struct a new economy. Officials had to officials, “ ‘Complicated’ is not one of Washington and Colorado. “Would it barrel ahead, Kleiman told me, and did their objectives at the moment.” bother me if problematic use went way not have the time to integrate innova- For now, Kleiman will watch the up?” she said. “Yes. Would it make me tions such as personal licenses and home- rollout of I-502 from the sidelines, and think that we should go back to treating it delivery systems. blog about it. “It’s disappointing,” he as a crime? No.” Randy Simmons, the I-502 project told me. During one of our conversa- manager, observed that an academic can tions, he paraphrased a famous joke fter Kleiman’s speech, we walked to a conceive regulations and mechanisms about Hubert Humphrey: “Poor Hu- A coffee shop, where he ordered a hot that seem brilliant on paper but is spared bert—he’s got solutions the rest of us chocolate. His work for the liquor-control the need to reconcile that vision with “the don’t even have problems for.” board was drawing to a close, he told real world of politics and all the different By January, Washington will have me. He and his BOTEC colleagues had stakeholders and making different groups started dispensing licenses to grow and proposed several follow-up studies—“I happy.” Simmons added, “They get to sell marijuana. Ben Jammin, the dealer, think we have a way of measuring the just say, ‘This is how we think it should told me, “We’re not sure what’s coming— cross-elasticity of demand between alco- be.’ ” When James Cole, the United but it’s coming.” Kleiman is happy to see hol and cannabis,” he noted—but the States Deputy Attorney General, was prohibition end, and he hopes that legal- board said that it had only so much asked recently about the Obama Admin- ization is a great success, but he is no lon- money. “They are properly quite focussed istration’s decision to allow Washington ger optimistic. He told me, “I think com- on the nuts and bolts of getting rules out and Colorado to legalize and regulate mercial production and sale of cannabis is to the world, getting licenses issued, get- cannabis, he said, “There are no perfect going to end in tears.” 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 51 rom Cairo, it’s only about three Fhundred miles to Abydos, in Upper Egypt, but the distance feels much greater. This region has been a world apart ever since Pharaonic times. The ancient Egyptians separated their land into Upper and Lower, a division that confuses moderns who orient themselves by the compass rather than by the Nile. Upper Egypt lies to the south, where the river has carved a deep gorge into the North African plateau. At Abydos, the gorge is about fifteen miles wide, flanked on both sides by high cliffs that are the color of sand. There’s no rain to speak of, and the surrounding desert is absolute: from the air, the narrow corridor of green along the Nile appears hopelessly iso- lated. Head due west and the next river you cross is in South Florida. But more than thirty million people live in this arid place, representing about forty per cent of the country’s population. An even greater miracle is how long they’ve been here. This was the cradle of Egyptian civilization, and the earliest known hieroglyphics, dating to around 3200 B.C., were discovered inscribed into relics that had been buried near those Abydos cliffs. Abydos is the ancient name for a cluster of villages at the western edge of the gorge. During much of Pharaonic times, this was the most sacred spot in the country, and today there’s still an elevated stretch of desert next to town that’s largely protected from any farming or development. Locals call it al-Madfuna: the Buried. For more than five millennia, this ground was used as a cemetery, and it’s been the focus of intensive archeological work since the mid-eighteen-hundreds. It’s also attracted looters during times of political instability. In February of 2011, as the revolution gathered strength in Tahrir Square, all across the country the police disappeared, and in the Buried teams of looters opened more than two hundred pits. It wasn’t until the end of March, after President Hosni Mubarak resigned and the national situation had stabilized somewhat, that village police resumed patrols of the site. Nearly two years later, in January of 2013, a team from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University arrived to undertake an archeology of the revolution. They followed the thieves’ tracks across the Buried, seeing where they had magnum gone, and how they had dug, and what The temple of Seti I, in Abydos, which dates to the fourteenth century B.C., was the site of

52 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 LETTER fROM ABYdOs THE BuRiEd

Excavating the Egyptian Revolution.

BY PETER HEssLER

protests by villagers during the recent revolution. Looters also came to Abydos; since then, archeologists have been assessing what was lost.

PhotograPh by Moises saMan they had destroyed. The archeologists Adams, knelt and studied the bricks, dicated that most thieves hadn’t come excavated every major looting pit, mea- along with a young archeologist named from local excavation crews. For years, suring and mapping with satellite imag- Kate Scott, who was overseeing this par- the Institute of Fine Arts has maintained ery. The team included four excavators, ticular dig. Both wore broad-brimmed a field house in the Buried, and the local three conservators, two surveyors, two hats; at eight o’clock in the morning the staff remained there throughout the early architectural specialists, a photographer, sun was already hot. days of the revolution. They organized an artist, and two inspectors from the “They hacked at the wall top,” Scott teams of volunteer watchmen, who tried Ministry of Antiquities. They hired said. “It’s clear that there was a distur- their best to protect the site, but there more than fifty local laborers. Some men bance here, and that a structure was had been limits to what they could do specialized in digging out sand, and affected. But it’s not clear what this without police support. They believed there were boys who carried it away in structure is.” that most thieves had come from nearby buckets, while other boys poured the “That’s heat-treated brick.” villages, and Adams estimated that about sand through wire screens in search of “No question about it. Those are not half the looting pits were essentially ran- broken artifacts. Six teen-agers were ancient bricks.” dom. Even the more directed attempts hired specifically to handle a custom- “The looters saw the wall and didn’t were usually misguided. In another part built fifteen-foot-tall stepladder that al- know what it was. They hacked at it a bit. of the Buried, a team of German arche- lowed the photographer to shoot the pits But in this area they didn’t appear to be ologists had recently excavated and re- from above, as if they were crime scenes. all that determined.” stored a royal tomb, using modern brick Uncovered relics tended to be forensic The evidence was clear: looters had to fill an ancient hole that had been rather than Pharaonic. Conversations mistakenly targeted a modern structure. punched out by looters at least four mil- could be as crisp as Chandler. Adams speculated that it might have lennia ago. After the revolution, new “There are cigarette butts here.” been a shepherd’s hut from the nineteen- looters arrived and followed the exact “This is our best find of the day.” fifties, or even a field house from an early same path—they even tore out the mod- “So it’s filtered?” archeological dig. Around the turn of the ern brick, as if suspecting that the Ger- “The filter suggests that it’s not one last century, large-scale excavations dra- mans had hidden stacks of euros behind hundred years old.” matically reshaped the landscape, leaving their restoration. “This is round. The ancient Egyp- mounds of backfill all across the Buried. But this is no secret among archeolo- tians did not build round things like Adams told me that looters often tar- gists: the finest minds of post-revolution that here.” geted these mounds, which they assumed Egypt are not involved in grave robbing. A circular brick wall had been partially were situated above buried tombs. “It’s a Adams told me that the haphazard dig excavated from the sand—such a shape mistake,” he said. “But we don’t want pattern was actually one reason that he would never have been used for an an- them to know that.” undertook this season’s project, because cient tomb. The field director, Matthew The misreading of the landscape in- it gave him the opportunity to excavate sections of the Buried that he hadn’t studied before. “We’re sorting out what happened during the looting, but it’s also a preview of what’s out there,” he said. In their own way, the archeologists were trying to make sense of the effects of the revolution, like everybody else in Egypt. “All of this information we can use to structure future excavations,” Adams said. “It has the effect of creating a survey. They did a lot of damage, of course, but it also has a positive effect.” Much of what the archeologists found in the looters’ pits was trash. Sometimes they uncovered the thieves’ tools: buckets, baskets, digging imple- ments. There was a great deal of broken pottery. In one pit, they found the torso of a mummy that had been ripped apart, probably by ancient looters. Another hole contained a scrap of paper with a laundry list of clothing items, written in an elegant hand; most likely, it had been left by Arthur Mace, a British Egyptologist who excavated here “I was supposed to take the shoes off first, wasn’t I?” around 1900. They found beads that had lain underground for three millen- she had left school sick. She slept through ing village whose residents had a reputa- nia. A number of pits contained bullets, a steady stream of citizens arriving with tion as shrewd traders, I saw children sit- likely artifacts of the Arab Spring. requests, including an elderly duck ting curbside with milk cartons full of farmer who complained at field-worker diesel fuel, the Upper Egyptian version of t took almost a year for the revolution volume about problems at a local medi- a lemonade stand. (“If I shake the hand of I to reach Abydos. Even in the first cal clinic. “If you ever need any ducks, someone from Bar el-Khail, I count my month, when demonstrations raged all just ask me!” the farmer shouted, after fingers afterward,” my driver remarked.) across northern Egypt, the villagers Rady had promised to help. “And not And yet somehow it all held together. didn’t protest. They finally held their first just ducks—any poultry!” Abydos remained safe, and I could wan- demonstration in December of 2011, Rady wasn’t interested in discussing der alone at night without worrying. when about a thousand people gathered the national situation or the Muslim Rady told me that he lacked sufficient at the temple of Seti I. It’s the most intact Brotherhood, which at that time was government funds, and since the revolu- Bronze Age temple in Egypt, dating to tion there was no functioning legislative the fourteenth century B.C. In the plaza body that was able to initiate simple de- in front of the temple, Abydos citizens velopment projects. But people found demanded better distribution of subsi- other ways to get things done. In order to dized cooking gas, and they called for the establish a new medical clinic, Rady had resignation of the village rayis, or presi- persuaded a local clan to donate land, dent. They took their cues from Tahrir: because he couldn’t buy it. Another clan they chanted Cairo slogans and held was building a wall for an underfunded signs that read, “The Youth of Abydos: elementary school. There was also a lot We Want to Change the Head of the running the country. He had nothing to of construction noise—my hotel was in Village.” And within a week the govern- say about the breakdown in the security the process of more than doubling in ment announced that the president had forces. “It’s for reasons that we don’t size. I heard about surprising amounts of been transferred to another posting. For know,” he said. “It’s something bigger construction in other parts of Upper the youth, this seemed to follow the ap- than us, something that we can’t talk Egypt, where there’s always been a large, propriate Cairo pattern, and they dis- about.” This was the most common unofficial cash economy, and where persed peacefully, the way that the first complaint in Abydos, and the same was builders may have been taking advantage round of Egyptian protests had ended true in other parts of Egypt, where po- of reduced government oversight. with Mubarak’s resignation. After that, lice had largely disappeared from the Even the gunfire had more to do with there weren’t any more demonstrations streets. In Abydos, they still patrolled economics than with violence. I learned in Abydos. the Buried, but otherwise there was lit- to recognize patterns: a short series of But two months later the village pres- tle activity. The cops I met seemed de- shots usually indicated that a buyer was ident quietly returned to his old office. moralized—they were deeply unhappy testing a gun somewhere at the edge of It’s a block from the temple, and there’s a about Brotherhood rule. A couple of the desert; longer bursts of automatic fire sign above the door that reads, in hiero- police told me that they were waiting tended to come from weddings or other glyphics, “President of the Unit.” When for some more powerful authority to celebrations. Guns had always been part I visited in March, the president told me emerge and define their new role in the of such events, but they had become that he had spent his exile doing govern- post-revolution environment. much more prominent since the revolu- ment work in el-Balyana, a nearby town. At night, it was common to hear tion. Ahmad and Medhat Diab, two “It was for my own safety,” he said, gunfire. Across the country, there has brothers from a powerful clan called the through a translator. “And then I came been a large influx of weapons from Howeitat, explained to me how the wed- back. People welcomed me.” His name Libya, where the security apparatus has ding traditions had changed. was Hussein Mohammed Abdel Rady, disintegrated in the wake of Qaddafi’s “During the days of Mubarak, if you and he was a rugged-looking man with fall. Upper Egyptians have a long tradi- were in a wedding, the best man was the tired eyes. In addition to his political tion of hoarding weapons, but in the past one who gave the most tips,” Ahmad work, he ran a small farm not far from they tended to be discreet, and periodi- said. “But now the best man is the one Abydos, on the eastern bank of the Nile. cally the police conducted searches and who shoots the most bullets.” He grew bananas. On his desk, a copy of confiscated firearms. But now there was He said that high demand had in- the Koran sat next to a box of pills la- essentially no control. In my hotel room creased the price of a bullet to as much as belled, in English, “Provide Relief of in Abydos, I was awakened occasionally three dollars. “If you have a wedding, ev- Pain for Up to Three Days.” Rady told by the sound of automatic gunfire, and erybody comes with a weapon,” he said. me that this was a challenging time to be people often bragged about new weapons “The singer sings for a while, and then in government. He was in charge of nine they’d purchased. At times, it felt as if the he’ll say, ‘Medhat!’ And he’ll shoot three villages with a total population of around state were collapsing in slow motion— bullets. Then the singer will say, ‘Ahmad!’ sixty thousand, and he said that about a every evening, the electricity was cut off, And I’ll shoot ten. Whoever gets his quarter of the youth were unemployed. and lines at gas stations could be more name called shows that he has bullets.” On my first visit, his granddaughter was than a hundred vehicles long. When I In a way, the situation was almost dozing in a chair beside his desk, because drove through Bar el-Khail, a neighbor- reassuring: when authority disappeared,

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 55 from the sand. Originally, such tomb structures would have been visible to the living, who made regular offerings to the dead. Lavish tombs were a key character- istic of ancient Egyptian culture, dating back to prehistoric periods. Barry Kemp, an archeologist who works in Upper Egypt, has noted that such signs of “con- spicuous consumption and display” are among the earliest evidence of the development of the state. Kemp points out that ancient Egypt lacked some factors that moderns assume to be fundamental to early civilization. Egyptians organized no large projects to control the Nile, and they did relatively little in terms of irri- gation, relying on annual flood cycles. There wasn’t a particularly high level of foreign trade or conflict for the first two millennia. Only then was the wheel introduced, well over a thousand years after the most impressive pyramids were built. But Egyptian agriculture was prosperous, because the Nile’s natural cycles worked “Don’t forget the milk. Oh, and pants—we need pants.” so well. and society was highly stratified and competitive. In abydos, this quality •• remained unchanged by deep time— human beings seemed to possess an eter- nal need to acquire and then conspicu- and guns became widely available, the the scholars also couldn’t afford to be too ously spend their wealth, whether by local instinct seemed to be to show off distracted by whatever was happening in shooting it into the air or burying it rather than to fight. I told the Diab Cairo. matthew adams said that out in underground. brothers that I had heard about an epic the Buried he felt a sense of “deep time,” adams told me that the large tomb wedding earlier in the year, when con- which diminished the significance of with the monumental gateway had orig- stant gunfire kept the archeologists daily headlines. During adams’s first inally belonged to Sitepehu, a mayor awake until 2 a.m. season in abydos, in October of 1981, and an overseer of priests. “He was an “That was ours!” ahmad said. “We President anwar Sadat had been assassi- élite,” adams said. “The scale here is a did it on purpose—to show everybody nated. “We didn’t know what would statement of status.” He said that this that this is us.” happen—would we have to escape?” was one of the revelations of the season: I asked who had got married. adams said. “But within a few days it the team had learned that this section of “actually, it wasn’t a wedding,” was clear that things would continue, al- the Buried had been a cemetery for ahmad said. though the media presented what was élites during the New Kingdom, a pe- “It was a circumcision,” medhat said. happening in Cairo as ‘Egypt is explod- riod that spanned roughly 1550 B.C. to “We were just looking for an excuse,” ing!’ ” Back then, adams worked as an 1069 B.C. “This area should become a ahmad admitted. “Some kid got circum- intern in the field-house lab, sorting and focus of major field work and research cised, so we did it. We shot so many bul- analyzing thousands of shards of ancient in the future,” adams said. lets—there must have been ten thousand.” pottery. He told me that the autumn of adams is fifty-one years old, and he medhat smiled and said, “People Sadat’s assassination was the most te- has the well-cooked appearance of any called to compliment us afterward.” dious season he had ever spent in Egypt. Westerner who works in the Sahara. His He much preferred being out in the ears and cheeks are red, and the shadow hen I asked one clan elder about field, and he liked the wide-ranging work of his shirt line has been permanently Wthe revolution’s effects in abydos, of the current season. Sometimes the burned into his neck—a V-shaped hiero- he laughed and said, “What revolution?” looters’ tracks led the archeologists to glyph that means “Egyptologist.” adams Villagers liked to talk idly about national large tombs, and one morning we stood had never wanted to be anything else. as politics, but their focus had to be local at the edge of a grave complex that dated a young child in West Virginia, he was so and practical. The archeologists were to the fifteenth century B.C. “This is the inspired by reading National Geographic different—their perspective tended to be front pylon, a big monumental gateway,” that he copied hieroglyphics onto bed- more theoretical and imaginative. But adams said, pointing to a long wall of sheets and built an ancient Egyptian the effect was much the same, because gray brick that workers were excavating tomb in his grandmother’s garage. He

56 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 studied archeology as an undergraduate ager named Hamed Ahmed said. “Like tomb raiders—wishful thinking by a and a graduate student at the University those big stones they used for building. man who worked during a period of of Pennsylvania, whose museum con- How did they move the big stones? The much more looting than today. Locals tains a statue of Sitepehu. “It’s from this poor people were the ones carrying the call the enclosure the Shunet el-Zebib, tomb,” Adams said, pointing at the dig stones.” He continued, “We’re doing the the Storehouse of Raisins, a name whose in front of us. “It’s a profound experience same thing, just like them.” origins are mysterious. for me, having grown up with that “In the past, we thought it was the In the past decade and a half, teams statue—very nice piece, Eighteenth djinn who did this work,” Ahmed Abdel from the Institute of Fine Arts have stud- Dynasty—and here I am years later, Latif, another boy, said. “That’s what the ied the area around the Shunet el-Zebib, supervising the reëxcavation of that people in the village used to believe. But under the guidance of Adams and David man’s tomb.” nowadays we understand that it was the O’Connor, who directs the institute’s The statue had been removed by Ar- poor who did this work for the rich.” field program. They discovered the bur- thur Mace, the British Egyptologist. But “We see the same thing happening ied ruins of other similar structures Mace, like most early archeologists, was now,” Hamed said. “The rich are doing nearby, and realized that each corre- intent on retrieving relics, and he left only nothing, and the poor do all the work.” sponds to a different king of the First and rudimentary maps and diagrams of his Ahmed said, “The poor don’t get mum- Second Dynasties, which ruled from digs. The current generation of scholars mified, and the rich get mummified.” around 3000 B.C. to 2686 B.C. By that remained unaware of the exact location time, the kings were based in Memphis, of Sitepehu’s tomb until the looters took n the Buried, only one large ancient near present-day Cairo, but they contin- them there. For the first time, Adams I structure still stands. It dominates the ued to be buried in the ancestral home- was able to see details of construction, landscape, a rectangular enclosure with land of Abydos. And each living king but he also found a gray mess of broken walls that are nearly thirty-five feet high. built an enclosure like the Shunet el-Ze- brick where looters had hacked through It was built in the twenty-seventh cen- bib, which archeologists now believe was a wall, unaware that the tomb’s most tury B.C., and it’s one of the oldest sur- used to receive ritual offerings. While ex- valuable relic has been sitting in Philadel- viving mud-brick structures on earth, cavating these structures, Adams found phia for a century. “The effort must have although its original purpose was forgot- evidence that they had been deliberately been tremendous,” he said. “And there’s ten for millennia. Auguste Mariette, a destroyed. After the death of a king, the nothing for them to find.” French Egyptologist who excavated in walls of his enclosure were toppled and Adams has spent nineteen seasons in Abydos in the mid-eighteen-hundreds, buried in some kind of ritual, and then Abydos, and he’s made academic break- theorized that it had been a giant Phara- the next ruler built his own monument. throughs about the construction and the onic police station that guarded against This tradition was changed by the last ritual use of buried structures. But he has yet to find a significant statue or a relic of gold or silver with much monetary value. Most tombs were looted of portable trea- sures in ancient times, and then early archeologists picked through whatever was left. Adams told me that another purpose of this season’s work was “propagandis- tic”: he hoped that the local labor force would see the empty tombs and spread the word around the villages. Most workers were boys who ranged in age from twelve to eighteen. Abydos is in Sohag, Egypt’s poorest governorate, and it’s always been common for boys to quit school early. In the Buried, they earn between four and seven dollars a day. On the first day of the season, so many people showed up looking for work that a fight broke out. Quite a few of them were illiterate, and signed their weekly pay re- ceipts with a thumbprint. After work, the boys often hung out at a coffee shack at the edge of the Bur- ied. One day, I asked what they were learning from the excavations. “What we learn is that ancient Egyp- tian society had social classes,” a teen- “I knew you were always Mom’s favorite!” king of the Second Dynasty. He built Kemp, who directs the current excava- covered the painted bust of Nefertiti that his enclosure with thicker walls, and it tions at Amarna, describes Akhenaten as is now the most famous museum piece in was left to stand. His son designed being ahead of his time, in that he pio- Berlin. But originally it was probably just something even more permanent. Out- neered many techniques that would be a model for artists who produced mass side Memphis, he built the Step Pyra- used by dictators more than three thou- images of the royal family. The Germans mid, the world’s first monumental stone sand years later. In Amarna’s tombs, discovered it in the ruins of a sculptor’s structure. Its six terraced levels form a friezes portray the King performing studio, along with other unfinished busts shape that was further refined by the open-air reviews of military troops. His of the Queen, all of them discarded like king’s descendants, who constructed the bodyguards are prominent. He seems to yesterday’s propaganda. classic pyramids. “This royal monument have invented the palace-balcony scene: is directly inspiring what we see in the the benevolent ruler looks down on ad- henever I travelled to Abydos, I pyramids,” Adams said one morning, miring subjects, who adopt a posture of Wflew into the Sohag International while we walked around the Shunet el- deference. The King’s wife, Nefertiti, is Airport. The facility was opened in May Zebib. “What we see here in Abydos is often pictured, and so is their eldest of 2010, by President Mubarak, who had the ancient Egyptian kings developing daughter, who was elevated to special named it for himself. In the desert in the vocabulary of royal power.” The status. It even seems that Nefertiti may front of the airport, the words “Mubarak concept of monumental architecture be- have served as co-regent, an unusual po- Airport” were spelled out in ten-foot-tall came central to the kings, who were sition for a woman. The King and Queen white letters, propped up by steel rods worshipped as gods. Egyptians traced are often portrayed in statues and carv- against the Sahara wind. After the revo- their rulers back to Osiris, the god of the ings in private homes, the way some lution, the first word was knocked down dead, who was believed to have been Egyptians nowadays hang framed pho- and replaced, so that the sign read “Suhag buried in Abydos. They often created tographs of Gamal Abdel Nasser in their Airport.” The name of the governorate is chronological lists of their rulers, and living rooms. usually spelled with an “o” instead of a the most famous can still be seen in the But Akhenaten’s new traditions died “u,” but apparently locals had decided to temple of Seti I, where artisans deco- with the King. In “Ancient Egypt: Anat- recycle. Other letters still lay in the sand rated a wall with the names of seventy- omy of a Civilization,” Kemp writes, nearby—an “M,” a “B,” a “K”—as if wait- six kings whose reigns spanned more “Akhenaten’s kingship provides an unin- ing for some future change. than a millennium and a half. tended caricature of all modern leaders After two years, the story of Muba- But the temple list leaves out dozens who indulge in the trappings of charis- rak’s fall had become polished, like a of rulers who were judged to be un- matic display. The Egyptians themselves stone that’s passed through many hands. deserving. One omission was King did not like what they saw. It evidently I heard the same things in Abydos that I Akhenaten, who came to the throne offended their sense of good taste.” They did in Cairo: in the beginning, Mubarak around 1351 B.C. and attempted to returned to the former capital; they re- was a good leader, but then he was ruined build on the inheritance of Abydos in sumed the worship of old gods; they ed- by his wife, Suzanne. As First Lady, she unprecedented ways. He introduced ited Akhenaten out of history. The city of had maintained a high profile through monotheism to Egypt, defacing temples Amarna was abandoned and reclaimed N.G.O. work, but now many Egyptians that competed with Aten, his favored by the desert. In the early nineteen-hun- interpreted this as evidence of manipula- deity. He built a new capital, Amarna, in dreds, when the German Oriental Soci- tion. They believed that she had pro- the virgin desert of Upper Egypt. Barry ety excavated the site, archeologists dis- moted the political career of their son Gamal, who had become prominent in the waning years of the regime. And people claimed that corrupt officials took advantage of the aging Mubarak. This story was told everywhere, using the same words and phrases, and it must have reflected some universal pattern of the human mind that extended to Akhenaten and well beyond. I had even heard the same things when I lived in au- thoritarian China. Old Deng Xiaoping wouldn’t have fired on student protesters; his underlings made that decision. Mao Zedong was a good man until his wife, Jiang Qing, gained influence. Most Egyptians never figured out what to make of Mohamed Morsi, the country’s first democratically chosen President, who was elected in June of “O.K. Which one of you worried well is the most worried?” 2012. He had little charisma, and he appeared to be dominated by the Muslim tipped walking stick, with which he In traditional historiography, this pe- Brotherhood, an organization whose swiped at any boy worker who lagged. riod is associated with chaos. Royal secrecy made people uncomfortable. (“You water buffalo! May God destroy monumental construction essentially But probably they would have distrusted your house!”) His father had been the stopped, and dynasties became frag- any leader who seemed to be weaker previous president in the Buried, and mented; one ancient source famously than his group—they wanted a man, his father’s cousin had been the presi- claims that seventy different kings ruled not a party. “We’re Pharaonic people, so dent before that. His grandfather had during a stretch of seventy days. “Be- we want one person in charge,” Ahmed worked for Petrie in the nineteen-twen- hold, things have been done which have el-Rowel, a psychiatrist who worked in ties. Once, I asked if it was possible that not happened for a long time past; the an Abydos elementary school, told me. any Quft native had been involved in King has been deposed by the rabble,” “We want somebody shadid.” That was post-revolution looting. The President a text known as the Ipuwer Papyrus another polished word of the times— stared at me for a long moment, and claims. “Behold, it has befallen that “strong, stern, severe”—and people con- then he said, very quietly, “No Qufti the land has been deprived of the king- stantly applied it to their analysis of would ever do that.” ship by a few lawless men.” In Upper Egyptian leaders. They spoke fondly of We were sitting on the porch of the Egypt, archeologists have excavated the Nasser, who had been shadid, and they Qufti field house, which is situated in grave of a provincial governor named said the same thing about Sadat and the Buried. It was late afternoon, and Ankhtifi, whose tomb inscriptions pro- Mubarak. But Morsi was not shadid. In the President was smoking from a shisha vide a glimpse of what it was like to be early July, when he was removed by a water pipe. A sign above his door said an official far from Memphis at this military coup, most Egyptians re- “President Ibrahim” in hieroglyphics. time: “All of Upper Egypt was dying of sponded with relief. Even his staunch- When the topic shifted to politics, the hunger and people were eating their est supporters often admitted that he President told me that Mubarak had children, but I did not allow anybody to had been too soft—they believed that he been brought down by the corruption of die of hunger in this [district].” The should have been more decisive in neu- his underlings, and that the same thing tomb lists Ankhtifi’s achievements: “I tralizing his enemies. was happening with Morsi, who at that gave bread to the hungry and clothing Out in the Buried, the Egyptian field time was still in power. “Any ruler de- to the naked . . . I gave sandals to the director of the Institute of Fine Arts ex- pends on the people around him,” he barefooted; I gave a wife to him who had cavation, Ibrahim Mohammed Ali, told said, through a translator. “It’s like Morsi. no wife.” me that nothing we witness was new. He’s good, but the consultants and advis- During Adams’s excavation of the He came from the town of Quft, about ers aren’t good. My job depends on the Abydos town site, he found no evidence seventy miles upstream of Abydos. In people around me, too. If there’s some- of warfare, or starvation, or the effects of the late eighteen-hundreds, Flinders thing wrong, they tell me.” He told a political chaos. He uncovered private Petrie, an Englishman who was the story about how one year in the Buried workshops that clearly had been busy most influential of the early Egyptolo- they had excavated the ancient graves of manufacturing jewelry used in burials. gists, hired Quft natives as field workers. some people who clearly had been exe- There was no indication of a top-down Petrie was impressed with their dili- cuted, which he believed had been pun- economic structure: households main- gence, and over time it became a tradi- ishment for treason against the king. tained their own granaries, and agricul- tion for archeologists to hire people from (Scholars theorize that these had been ture and trade seem to have been thriv- Quft. Today, many digs in Egypt in- sacrificial burials.) “When we find the ing. In recent years, other excavators have clude a Qufti foreman, served by a hier- buildings of these people, we feel that ev- made similar discoveries elsewhere in archy of Qufti lieutenants. They oversee erything we’re doing is just copied from Egypt, and the authority of texts like the excavations, operating as intermediaries them,” he said. “When we know the his- Ipuwer Papyrus has been called into between local laborers and foreign ar- tory of the pharaohs, and the way that question. Adams told me that the tradi- cheologists. Few of them have much for- people around them behaved, we can see tional view of the ancient past has been mal education, but they have a deep field this. The pharaohs were corrupted by the dominated by the royal perspective, knowledge of archeology. people around them, and now we find which naturally centers on the capital and In the Buried, everybody called Ibra- that history is being repeated.” portrays all aspects of society as state- him Mohammed Ali simply al-Rayis— controlled. And many people who left the President. And I met nobody in n the nineteen-nineties, Matthew written accounts of the First Intermedi- Upper Egypt, from the governor of I Adams excavated an ancient Abydos ate Period—provincial officials like Sohag to the Abydos village headman, town site as part of his dissertation. Ankhtifi, and scribes from subsequent who had such a physical presence. The Such projects are rare, in part because dynasties—had an incentive to make President was a tall, thin man with dark royal monuments and impressive tombs the national situation look worse than it black skin, and in the field he wore a have always attracted archeologists. really was. white turban, a tan scarf, and a flowing But Adams chose a former settlement “I think that the capital city, with its galabiya. His clothes were always im- that adjoins the Buried, and it dated to court culture and the royal house and the maculate. He handled men, not sand; the First Intermediate Period, which major state institutions—in a sense, it this was clear at a glance. He wore avia- spanned a century, from around 2160 was probably a world unto itself,” Adams tor sunglasses and carried a metal- B.C. to 2055 B.C. told me. “The evidence that we see from

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 59 area to area is that people seem to be for me, I have no time to follow politics.” been touched by the revolution. In fact, doing their own thing. And I wonder While I was sitting there, a farmer came the political upheaval has only strength- frankly if that’s been true for much of to complain about a national utilities law ened the clans, which have more respon- Egyptian history, not just Pharaonic that he believed to be unfair. Rady sibility now that police and government times. The dominant dynamics are local shrugged and said that there was nothing are less active. On the first day of the ar- and regional.” He continued, “When he could do about it. “The guys who cheological season, when the fight broke they had the protests here in the village, made that law are now in prison,” he said, out among potential laborers, clan lead- the concerns were very local. They didn’t and the farmer couldn’t help but laugh. ers came to the Buried and settled the have anything to do with Cairo.” Rady had been appointed village pres- conflict. And their continuity is a major ident during the Mubarak era, but most reason that the region has remained so espite the revolution and its after- locals seemed to like him, and I never peaceful. There’s a large Christian settle- Dmath, there have been almost no heard him described as felool, or a “rem- ment on one edge of the Buried, but no- political changes in the Abydos region. nant,” of the old regime. Rady had noth- body reported any sectarian tensions, After Morsi was elected, he appointed a ing to say about the coup in Cairo—like even in the wake of Morsi’s fall. new governor of Sohag, a professor of other local officials I met, he refused to In Egypt, when people talk about the engineering named Yehia Abdel-Azim comment on national events. Upper national government, they use the word Mukhaimar. Mukhaimar was known to Egypt has a reputation as a Brotherhood nizam, which can be translated as either be sympathetic to the Muslim Brother- stronghold, because the organization’s “regime” or “system.” Both meanings are hood, but he didn’t try to remove lower- political wing, the Freedom and Justice appropriate in Abydos, at least in the ranking officials who had been appointed Party, performed well there in all the negative. There is no regime, and there is by the Mubarak regime. As governor, post-revolution elections. But the longer no system. The old National Democratic Mukhaimar oversaw twelve cities and I spent in the Sohag region the more I Party is gone, and the Muslim Brother- more than two hundred and fifty vil- sensed that such support was shallow. hood has essentially never existed in this lages, with a total population of almost Many people told me that they had voted area. The usual labels—Islamist, secular- four million, and yet when I visited his for Morsi out of a vague sense that he was ist, liberal, conservative, revolutionary, office in April he told me that not a sin- a devout Muslim, but now that they had felool—are meaningless. Without the gle official had been dismissed as a re- seen the Brotherhood’s performance they distraction of modern parties and defini- sult of the revolution. “I believe that no didn’t plan on supporting the movement tions, it’s easier to recognize how much governor will have an efficient man again. And the organization had no of local politics is timeless and elemental. working for him and remove him for grass-roots presence. The nine villages in Everything is face to face; everything is his political views,” Mukhaimar said. “I this region have a population of around personal. Below the level of the governor, want reliable people. There aren’t enough sixty thousand, but there wasn’t a single I never saw a computer on an official’s of them. I can’t afford to get rid of some- office of the Brotherhood or the Free- desk. My interviews took place amid a body just because of his political past.” dom and Justice Party. constant stream of citizens arriving with During the summer, when the military I was able to find only one Brother requests for unrelated things: a construc- removed Morsi, Mukhaimar turned near Abydos. He was a young pharma- tion permit, an electricity connection, a out to be Sohag’s only political casu- cist named Mohamed Wajih, and he land contract. alty—he resigned after local protests tar- lived in a village about two miles from One day in el-Balyana, my translator geted him as a Brotherhood appointee. the Seti I temple. He was active in the and I were talking with the district pres- But otherwise nothing Brotherhood’s district office, ident when we were interrupted by a man changed. A week and a half but he told me that he had whose arms had been amputated below after the coup, I stopped by been prevented from cam- the elbows. “I want an apartment, be- the local government office paigning in Abydos during cause I want to find a wife and get mar- in Abydos, where Rady, the one of the post-revolution ried,” he announced. He spoke directly, village president, was still sit- elections. This wasn’t on ac- without any of the polite introductions ting at his desk with his copy count of the police or the that are standard in Egypt. “I was injured of the Koran and the box of felool—Wajih’s father had in a train accident.” painkillers. On the wall be- forced him to remain quiet. He was twenty-one years old, a stern, hind him, an empty nail “I was banned from leaving bearded man in a blue galabiya, the wide marked the spot where Mubarak’s por- the house, because my father didn’t sleeves hanging slack like broken wings. trait had hung until the revolution. The want me clashing with the other people Since the revolution, a number of seri- wall had been blank for more than two in our clan,” Wajih said. Other Broth- ous train accidents have been caused by years; Morsi’s tenure had been too brief ers in Upper Egypt told me that they breakdowns in safety systems. “Well, and weak for new images to make their also had a testy relationship with clan we have a project right now, and I’m way into lower-level offices. “As for the elders. supposed to get twenty-four units,” the revolutions, they come and go, but we In Abydos, there are five or six main president said. “If you’re lucky, I can put continue to work,” Rady told me. “The families, each with a rigidly hierarchical you at the top of the list. How much can poor people here have nothing to do with structure of male elders. Nothing about you pay?” politics. It’s not important to them. As this system is democratic, and it hasn’t “I can’t pay anything,” the man said. “I

60 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 can’t work without arms. Give me a piece of land to cultivate.” “Forget about that,” the president said. “You’re not going to work a piece of land. We can give you a kiosk with all the goods. You can just stand there and sell things.” The man didn’t hesitate: “I want a kiosk at the entrance to the city.” The president looked up—he seemed impressed by this boldness. His name was Sha’aban Qandil, and he was a heavyset man with a full mustache and a booming voice. Like the president in Abydos, he sat beneath an empty nail; there was a faint smudge on the wall where Mubarak’s portrait used to hang. The president promised the man that his kiosk would have a good location. “I want prosthetic arms, too. I want the kiosk and prosthetic arms.” One of the president’s assistants made a noise of exasperation. “Just work first, my son, and you’ll get the arms!” The young man said that his medical “And thirteen innocent logs perished in that fire they used to burn Joan.” records were in the front pocket of his galabiya. He waited there, sleeves dan •• gling by his side, until the president walked over and fished the papers out of the gown. There was something inti long supported the research and conser ably we’re applying our own experiences mate about the gesture, and the room fell vation of Egyptian antiquities, with and viewpoints. But others counter that silent. And then the president’s voice funding that comes in part from the State the essence of the human mind has boomed out: “Put him at the top of the Department, and it helped pay for this changed very little in thousands of years, list! Give him a flat with three bedrooms, season’s project in Abydos. Adams and basic desires and instincts remain the a living room, a bathroom! You’ll get stopped to chat with Michael Jones, an same, with certain societal patterns re married and enjoy yourself there!” Egyptologist who works at ARCE. The peated endlessly. “We’re just a compo After the young man left, I asked the windows of Jones’s office had been nent of a much longer trajectory than we president if he was affected by distur covered with boards—ARCE is next to realize,” Adams said. “We think that this bances in the capital. “I’m an executive!” Tahrir, and protests had been flaring up, moment is special, that everything has he said, expansively. “I’m removed from with demonstrators occasionally throw led to this point. But our here and now is the politics.” He smiled and added, “If a ing rocks. just a blip along the continuum.” cloud forms in Cairo, it evaporates by the The two Egyptologists talked about The conversation shifted to current time it gets here.” the speculative nature of archeology. events, and Jones mentioned that ARCE “The ancient Egyptians have been dead had briefly considered finding a tempo n the last night of the archeological for thousands of years; nobody alive rary office away from Tahrir, because of Oseason, a team of looters appeared knows what they were thinking,” Jones the protests. “The nature of the flareups in the Buried. Matthew Adams had in said. “We create an image of them, and has changed,” he said. “There used to be a stituted a system of aroundtheclock it’s based on our own ideas. It’s a bit like kind of festive atmosphere. Now it’s much watchmen, and one of them confronted looking in a mirror.” He continued, more aggressive.” We discussed various the thieves and called the police. The “Most of what we find is broken. These theories about the Brotherhood and the cops arrived quickly and the looters fled are things that were thrown away. We’re military, although none of us knew much; without causing much damage. Adams dealing with a jigsaw puzzle where you the modern politics had become as enig seemed optimistic that the system would only have two or three out of thousands matic as any strand of Egyptology. It was protect the site through the summer, of pieces.” hard to believe that two years out of five when nobody would be excavating. Adams explained that this is “post thousand could feel so long.  On his way back to New York, he processual theory,” the archeological ver stopped in Cairo, where he visited the sion of postmodernism. Some believe office of the American Research Center that nothing we observe about ancient newyorker.com/go/outloud in Egypt, or ARCE. The institution has societies can be accurate, because invari A conversation with Peter Hessler. The Coney Island boardwalk, in 1987, shortly after Winters arrived in New York to take part in a workshop with the photojournalist Eddie Adams.

PORTFOLIO BY dan wInTeRs The gRaY ghOsT

an Winters’s forthcoming book “Road to Seeing” (New Riders) is an autobiography in words and images—with the work Dof those who have inﬂuenced him as well as his own photographs. There are portfolios on subjects ranging from ﬁlm stars to gang members and even bees. In the book, Winters recalls that he was working on a newspaper in Southern California when another photographer told him that, to be a magazine photographer, he would have to quit his job and move to New York.

The Empire State Building, in 1989, soon after Winters moved to New York full time. He worked as a photographic assistant at ﬁrst.

64 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013

A boy dressed for church in Harlem, in 1997. Winters left New York in 1991, but, he says, “I still shoot on the street every time I come.”

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 65 A sphinx glides down the East River on a barge, its origin and destination unknown, in 1988. At the time, Winters was living in Park Slope and biking to work over the Brooklyn Bridge every day. He writes that he has come to realize that “countless potential masterpieces happen each moment the world over and go unphotographed.”

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 67 FICTION

Jens Mortensen Jens Mortensen

68 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 e’ve owned this house for— It’s Thursday, so where’s Bryce? Right. “Yes. I’m German.” Wwhat—twelve years now, I reckon. Trumpet lessons with Mr. Talawatamy. “Didn’t know they liked country music Bought it from an elderly couple, the Johanna’ll be going to pick him up soon. in Germany.” De Rougemonts, whose aroma you can Can’t stay here long. “They don’t.” still detect around the place, in the master If I were to leave my hideout and “Maybe I should consult over there. especially, and in the home office, where mosey around the side of the house, I’d Spread the gospel. Who’s your favorite the old buzzard napped on summer days, see the guest room, where I used to re- country recording artist?” and a little bit in the kitchen, still. treat when Johanna and I were fighting “I am more into opera,” Johanna said. I remember going into people’s houses real bad, and where, last spring, after “I getcha. Just here for the job.” as a kid and thinking, Can’t they smell Johanna got promoted at Hyundai, I After that, every time I was down San how they smell? Some houses were worse commenced to putting the blocks to the Antone way, I made a point of stopping than others. The Pruitts next door had a babysitter, Cheyenne. by Johanna’s desk. It was less nerve-rack- greasy, chuck-wagon odor, tolerable And if I kept going all the way into the ing if she was sitting. enough. The Willots, who ran that fenc- back yard I’d come face to face with the “You ever play basketball, Johanna?” ing academy in their rec room, smelled glass door I shattered when I threw that “No.” like skunk cabbage. You could never men- lawn gnome through it. Drunk at the “Do they have girls’ basketball over tion the smells to your friends, because time, of course. there in Germany?” they were part of it, too. Was it hygiene? Yessir. Plenty of ammunition for Jo- “In Germany I am not that tall,” Jo- Or was it, you know, glandular, and the hanna to play Find the Bad Guy at cou- hanna said. way each family smelled had to do with ples counselling. That was about how it went. Then bodily functions deep inside their bodies? It’s not cold cold out, but it is for Hous- one day I come up to her desk and she The whole thing sort of turned your stom- ton. When I reach down to take my looks at me with those big blue eyes of ach, the more you thought about it. phone out of my boot, my hip twinges. hers, and she says, “Charlie, how good an Now I live in an old house that proba- Touch of arthritis. actor are you?” bly smells funny to outsiders. I’m getting my phone to play Words “Actor or liar?” Or used to live. At the present time, with Friends. I started playing it over at “Liar.” I’m in my front yard, hiding out between the station, just to pass the time, but then “Pretty decent,” I said. “But I might be the stucco wall and the traveller palms. I found out Meg was playing it, too, so I lying.” There’s a light burning up in Meg’s sent her a game invite. “I need a green card,” Johanna said. room. She’s my sugar pie. She’s thirteen. In mrsbieber vs. radiocowboy I see that Roll the film: me emptying my water From my vantage point I can’t make out mrsbieber has just played “poop.” (She’s bed into the bathtub so I can move out, Lucas’s bedroom, but as a rule Lucas pre- trying to get my goat.) Meg’s got the first while Jenny Braggs weeps copious tears. fers to do his homework downstairs, in “p” on a double-word space and the sec- Johanna and me cramming into a photo the great room. If I were to sidle up to the ond on a double-letter space, for a total booth to take cute “early-relationship” house, I’d more than likely spy Lucas in score of twenty-eight. Not bad. Now I photos for our “scrapbook.” Bringing that his school V-neck and necktie, armed play an easy word, “pall,” for a measly scrapbook to our immigration hearing, six for success: graphing calculator (check), score of nine. I’m up fifty-one points. months later. St. Boniface iPad (check), Latin Quizlet Don’t want her to get discouraged and “Now, Ms. Lubbock—do I have that (check), bowl of Goldfish (check). But I quit on me. right?” can’t go up there now on account of it I can see her shadow moving around “Lübeck,” Johanna told the officer. would violate the restraining order. up there. But she doesn’t play another “There’s an umlaut over the ‘u.’ ” I’m not supposed to come any closer word. Probably Skype-ing or blogging, “Not in Texas there ain’t,” the officer than fifty feet to my lovely wife, Johanna. painting her nails. said. “Now, Ms. Lubbock, I’m sure you It’s an emergency T.R.O. (meaning tem- Johanna and me—you say it “Yo- can understand that the United States has porary), issued at night, with a judge pre- hanna,” by the way, she’s particular about to make certain that those individuals siding. My lawyer, Mike Peekskill, is that—we’ve been married twenty-one who we admit to a path of citizenship by in the process of having it revoked. In years. When we met I was living up in virtue of their marrying U.S. citizens are the meantime, guess what? Yours truly, Dallas with my girlfriend at the time, really and truly married to those citizens. Charlie D., still has the landscape archi- Jenny Braggs. Back then I was consulting And so I’m going to have to ask you some tect’s plans from when Johanna and I for only three stations, spread out over the personal questions that might seem a lit- were thinking of replacing these palms state, so I spent most of every week on the tle intrusive. Do you agree to me doing with something less jungly and prone to road. Then one day I was up in San An- that?” pests. So I happen to know for certain tonio, at WWWR, and there she was. Jo- Johanna nodded. that the distance from the house to the hanna. Shelving CDs. She was a tall drink “When was the first time you and stucco wall is sixty-three feet. Right now, of water. Mr. D.—” He stopped short and looked I reckon I’m about sixty or sixty-one, here “How’s the weather up there?” I said. at me. “Hey, you aren’t the Charlie Dan- in the vegetation. And, anyway, nobody “Pardon me?” iels, are you?” can see me, because it’s February and al- “Nothing. Hi, I’m Charlie D. That an “Nuh-uh. That’s why I just go by the ready dark in these parts. accent I hear?” D. To avoid confusion.”

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 69 “Because you sort of look like him.” “I’m a big fan,” I said. “I take that as a compliment.” IN A POST-BUBBLE CREDIT-COLLAPSE ENVIRONMENT He turned back to Johanna, smooth as butter. “When was the first time No clouds, now, nearer to Brooklyn Bridge you and Mr. D. had intimate sexual than the Bridge is to the Heights. Half a block east, relations?” “You won’t tell my mother, will you?” barefoot on shards of glass, a towel wrapped Johanna said, trying to joke. around his waist, shaving cream on the left side But he was all business. “Before you were married or after?” of his face—a block south, beside a fire hydrant, “Before.” a leg is found severed at the knee. Internal or external— “And how would you rate Mr. D.’s sexual performance?” what difference does it make? I shake the snow “What do you think? Wonderful. I from my coat, take off my gloves, set them married him, didn’t I?” “Any distinguishing marks on his sex on the counter. I step back onto Spring Street, organ?” and, on Greenwich, start downtown. Sight and sound “It says ‘In God We Trust.’ Like on all Americans.” reconfigured, details, truths, colors, and shapes The officer turned to me, grinning. round out the aesthetic. Things changed “You got yourself a real spitfire here,” he said. and unchanged, and not only in abstract ways. “Don’t I know it,” I said. This young man, yellow pants, undershirt,

ack then, though, we weren’t sleep- stands eating from a garbage bin, patches of ice Bing together. That didn’t happen till on the East River esplanade. One World later. In order to pretend to be my fiancée, and then my bride, Johanna had Trade Center’s structural steel has reached to spend time with me, getting to know the fifty-second of a hundred and four stories. me. She’s from Bavaria, Johanna is. She had herself a theory that Bavaria is the The light is in a pink and a coral, moving through Texas of Germany. People in Bavaria are pink and violet scumbled over pink, turning red more conservative than your normal Eu- ropean leftist. They’re Catholic, if not exactly God-fearing. Plus, they like to wear few P.B.R.s, Johanna started holding my “And this?” leather jackets and such. Johanna wanted hand under the table. I didn’t complain. I “Lemme see. Need to reconnoitre. Oh to know everything about Texas, and I mean, there she was, all six-foot-plus of yeah. That’s real real.” was just the man to teach her. I took her her, healthy as can be and with a good ap- Love at fifteenth sight, I guess you’d to SXSW, which wasn’t the cattle call it petite, holding my hand in hers, secret call it. is today. And oh my Lord if Johanna from everyone else. I’ll tell you, I was hap- didn’t look good in a pair of bluejeans pier than a two-peckered dog. look up at my house and cogitate and cowboy boots. My mother put us in separate bed- I some—I don’t rightly want to say Next thing I know we’re flying home rooms. But one night Johanna came what about. The thing is, I’m a success- to Michigan to meet my folks. (I’m from into mine, quiet as an Injun, and crawled ful man in the prime of life. Started d.j.- Traverse City, originally. Got to talking into bed. ing in college, and, O.K., my voice was this way on account of living down here “This part of the Method acting?” I fine for the 3-to-6-A.M. slot at Mar- so long. My brother Ted gives me a hard said. quette, but out in the real world there was time about it. I tell him you gotta talk the “No, Charlie. This is real.” an upper limit, I’ll admit. Never did land talk in the business I’m in.) She had her arms around me, and we me a job in front of a microphone. Tele- Maybe it was Michigan that did it. It were rocking, real soft-like, the way Meg marketed instead. Then the radio itch was wintertime. I took Johanna snowmo- did after we gave her that kitten, before it got back into me and I started consulting. biling and ice fishing. My mama would died, I mean, when it was just a warm and This was in the eighties, when you had never have seen eye to eye on the whole cuddly thing instead of like it had hoof your first country-rock crossovers. A lot green-card thing, so I just told her we and mouth, and went south on us. of stations were slow to catch on. I told were friends. Once we got up there, “Feels real,” I said. “Feels like the them who and what to play. Started out though, I overheard Johanna telling my realest thing I ever did feel.” contracting for three stations and now sister that we were “dating.” On perch “Does this feel real, too, Charlie?” I’ve got sixty-seven coming to me asking, night at the V.F.W. hall, after drinking a “Yes, Ma’am.” “Charlie D., how do we increase our

70 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 as soon as Charlie comes home he goes on violet. That was yesterday’s twilight—this afternoon, out to his fire pit—” white and gray, and hot. Is everything between “You’re always welcome to join me,” I said. six banks and everything else connected, does the old “—and drinks. All night. Every night. money ultimately determine the new? “It’s really, really He is married more to the fire pit than to me.” tight out there, how can you not think about it?” I was there to listen, to connect with is her answer, while seated on the sidewalk at the corner Johanna, and I tried my best. But after a while I stopped paying attention to her of Wall and Broad across from the illuminated words and just listened to her voice, the Stock Exchange, with backpack and smartphone, foreign sound of it. It was like if Johanna and I were birds, her song wouldn’t be mineral water, sleeping bag, bananas, and figs, the song I’d recognize. It would be the police vans parked up on Nassau, helicopters circling song of a species of bird from a different continent, some species that nested in overhead, her presence digitally monitored. cathedral belfries or windmills, which, to In a post-bubble credit-collapse environment my kind of bird, would be like, Well, la-di-da. three-hundred-and-fifty-per-cent interest rates on payday For instance, regarding the fire pit. loans Didn’t I try to corral everyone out there and the multi-trillion-dollar market in credit-default swaps every night? Did I ever say I wanted to sit out there alone? No, sir. I’d like us are history. “Sub-moron”—the assistant district attorney to be together, as a family, under the bursts into laughter—“drops his coin into the pay phone, stars, with the mesquite flaming and popping. But Johanna, Bryce, meg, then goes and orders retaliation from the Tombs.” and even Lucas—they never want to. Sunday’s forecast, the high tide to coincide Too busy on their computers or their Instagrams. with Irene’s heavy rains and hurricane-force winds, “How do you feel about what Johanna sea level to rise four, five feet at the Battery. is saying?” Dr. van der Jagt asked me. “Well,” I said. “When we bought the —Lawrence Joseph house, Johanna was excited about the fire pit.” “I never liked the fire pit. You always market share? Give us your crossover Tell the truth, I wasn’t crazy about think that, because you like something, I wisdom, Sage of the Sagebrush.” (That’s our therapist being a woman, plus Euro- like the same thing.” on my Web site. People have sort of pean. Thought it would make her partial “When the real-estate lady was picked it up.) to Johanna’s side of things. showing us around, who was it said, But what I’m thinking right now At our first session, Johanna and I ‘Hey, Charlie, look at this! You’re gonna doesn’t make me feel so sagelike. In fact, chose opposite ends of the couch, keeping love this’?” not even a hair. I’m thinking, How did this throw pillows between us. “Ja, and you wanted a Wolf stove. You happen to me? To be out here in the Dr. van der Jagt faced us, her scarf as had to have a Wolf stove. But have you bushes? big as a horse blanket. ever cooked anything on it?” Find the Bad Guy is a term we learned She asked what brought us. “Grilled those steaks out in the pit that at couples counselling. me and Johanna Talking, making nice, that’s the fe- time.” saw this lady therapist for about a year, male department. I waited for Johanna to Right around there, Dr. van der Jagt name of Dr. van der Jagt. Dutch. Had a start in. held up her soft little hand. house over by the university, with separate But the same cat got her tongue as “We need to try to get beyond these paths to the front and the back doors. mine. squabbles. We need to find what’s at the That way, people leaving didn’t run into Dr. van der Jagt tried again. “Johanna, core of your unhappiness. These things those showing up. tell me how you are feeling in the mar- are only on the surface.” Say you’re coming out of couples ther- riage? Three words.” We went back the next week, and apy and your next-door neighbor’s com- “Frustrated. Angry. Alone.” the week after that. Dr. van der Jagt ing in. “Hey, Charlie D.,” he says. “How’s “Why?” had us fill out a questionnaire rank- it going?” And you say, “The missus has “When we met, Charlie used to take ing our level of marital contentment. just been saying I’m verbally abusive, but me dancing. Once we had kids, that She gave us books to read: “Hold me I’m doing O.K. otherwise.” stopped. Now we both work full time. Tight,” which was about how couples Naw. You don’t want that. We don’t see each other all day long. But tend to miscommunicate, and “The

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 71 CHIC Volcano Under the Bed,” which was “Omen II”? Did he think “Ave Satani” about overcoming sexual dry spells and was just a catchy soundtrack? “Hey, UNIQUE made for some pretty racy reading. I they’re playing my song!” holiday trunk show in took off the covers of both books and New York City: put on new ones. That way, people at y introspecting must have paid off, CLOTHES, SCARVES AND JEWELRY the station thought I was reading Tom M because I started noticing pat- NOV. 13-23 Clancy. terns. As a for instance, Johanna might details at: www.asiaticakc.com Little by little, I picked up the lingo. come into my office to hand me the cap Find the Bad Guy means how, when of the toothpaste I’d forgotten to screw ASIATICA or call: 800/731-0831 you’re arguing with your spouse, both back on, and, later, that would cause me KANSAS CITY people are trying to win the argument. to say “Achtung!” when Johanna asked Who didn’t close the garage door? Who me to take out the recycling, which left the Bigfoot hair clump in the shower would get Johanna madder than a wet drain? What you have to realize, as a cou- hen, and before you know it we’re ple, is that there is no bad guy. You can’t fighting World War Three. win an argument when you’re married. In therapy, when Dr. van der Jagt Because if you win, your spouse loses, and called on me to speak, I’d say, “On a pos- resents losing, and then you lose, too, itive note this week, I’m becoming more pretty much. aware of our demon dialogues. I realize Due to the fact that I was a defective that’s our real enemy. Not each other. husband, I started spending a lot of Our demon dialogues. It feels good to time alone, being introspective. What I know that Johanna and I can unite did was go to the gym and take a sauna. against those patterns, now that we’re 2425 Years I’d dropper some eucalyptus into a more cognizant.” bucket of water, toss the water on the But it was easier said than done. fake rocks, let the steam build up, then One weekend we had dinner with this turn over the miniature hourglass, and, couple. The gal, Terri, worked with Jo- for however long it took to run out, I’d hanna over at Hyundai. The husband, introspect. I liked to imagine the heat name of Burton, was from out East. burning all my excess cargo away—I Though you wouldn’t know it to could stand to lose a few, like the next look at me, I was born with a shy tem- guy—until all that was left was a pure perament. To relax in a social context, I residue of Charlie D. Most other guys like to throw back a few margaritas. I hollered that they were cooked after ten was feeling O.K. when the gal, Terri, minutes and red-assed it out of there. put her elbows on the table and leaned Not me. I just turned the hourglass over toward my wife, gearing up for some and hunkered on down some more. girl talk. Now the heat was burning away my real “So how did you guys meet?” Terri impurities. Things I didn’t even tell said. anyone about. Like the time after Bryce I was involved with Burton in a con- was born and had colic for six straight versation about his wheat allergy. months, when in order to keep from “It was supposed to be a green-card throwing him out the window what I marriage,” Johanna said. did was drink a couple bourbons before “At first,” I said, butting in. dinner and, when no one was looking, Johanna kept looking at Terri. “I was treat Forelock as my personal punching working at the radio station. My visa was bag. He was just a puppy then, eight or running out. I knew Charlie a little. I nine months. He’d always done some- thought he was a really nice guy. So, ja, we thing. A grown man, beating on my got married, I got a green card, and, you own dog, making him whimper so know, ja, ja.” Johanna’d call out, “Hey! What are you “That makes sense,” Burton said, doing?” and I’d shout back, “He’s just looking from one of us to the other, faking! He’s a big faker!” Or the times, and nodding, like he’d figured out a There’s noThing more recent, when Johanna was flying riddle. “small” abouT Them. to Chicago or Phoenix and I’d think, “What do you mean by that?” I What if her plane goes down? Did asked. Engage the New Yorker’s coveted readership with a small space ad. other people feel these things, or was “Charlie, be nice,” Johanna said. Visit newyorkersmallspace.com or it just me? Was I evil? Did Damien “I am being nice,” I said. “Do you contact Courtney Kelly at 877-843-6967. know he was evil in “The Omen” and think I’m not being nice, Burton?”

72 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 Fine Estate Jewelry “I just meant your different nationali- left. Every guy who offered her a place to (c.1950-60) ties. Had to be a story behind that.” stay only wanted one thing, so finally The next week at couples counsel- Cheyenne ended up sleeping in her ling was the first time I started the Chevy. At that point Johanna, who’s a soft conversation. touch and throws her vote away on the “My issue is,” I said. “Hey, I’ve got Green Party, offered Cheyenne a room. an issue. Whenever people ask how What with Johanna travelling more, we Pair yellow gold, sapphire, ruby we met, Johanna always says she mar- needed extra help with the kids, anyway. and diamond multi cluster earrings $10,500 ried me for a green card. Like our Every time Johanna came back from a marriage was just a piece of theatre.” trip, the two of them were like best “I do not,” Johanna said. friends, laughing and carrying “You sure as shooting do.” on. Then Johanna’d leave and “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” I’d find myself staring out the “What I’m hearing from window while Cheyenne sun- Charlie,” Dr. van der Jagt said, tanned by the pool. I could Pair French platinum, baguette, marquise and round diamond knot earrings $22,000 “is that when you do that, even count her every rib. though you might feel that you Plus, she liked the fire pit. are stating the facts, what it feels Came down most every night. like, for Charlie, is that you are “Care to meet my friend, belittling your bond.” Mr. George Dickel?” I said. “What am I supposed to say?” Johanna Cheyenne gave me a look like she said. “Make up a story to say how we met?” could read my mind. “I ain’t legal, you Pair yellow gold, pear shape ruby (abt. 9.75 cts.), According to “Hold Me Tight,” what know,” she said. “Drinking age.” marquise and pear shape diamond (abt. 6.00 cts.) happened when Johanna told Terri about “You’re old enough to vote, ain’t you? multidimensional earrings $45,000 the green card was that my attachment You’re old enough to join the armed SHOWN ACTUAL SIZE bond was threatened. I felt like Johanna forces and defend your country.” FIRESTONE AND PARSON was pulling away, so that made me want I poured her a glass. No. 8 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02116 to seek her out, by trying to have sex Seemed like she’d had some before. (617) 266-1858 • www.firestoneandparson.com when we got home. Due to the fact that All those nights out by the fire with I hadn’t been all that nice to Johanna dur- Cheyenne made me forget that I was me, ing our night out (due to I was mad about Charlie D., covered with sunspots and the ADVERTISEMENT the green-card thing), she wasn’t exactly marks of a long life, and Cheyenne was in the mood. I’d also had more than my Cheyenne, not much older than the girl fill of the friendly creature. In other John Wayne goes searching for in “The NEW YORKER words, it was a surly, drunken, secretly Searchers.” needy, and frightened life-mate who I started texting her from work. Next COVER PRINTS made the move across the memory foam. thing I know I’m taking her shopping, The memory foam being a point of con- buying her a shirt with a skull on it, or a tention in itself, because Johanna loves fistful of thongs from Victoria’s Secret, or that mattress, while I’m convinced it’s a new Android phone. responsible for my lower-lumbar pain. “I ain’t sure I should be accepting all That was our pattern: Johanna fleeing, this stuff from you,” Cheyenne said. me bloodhounding her trail. “Hey, it’s the least I can do. You’re helping me and Johanna out. It’s part of was working hard on all this stuff, the job. Fair payment.” I reading and thinking. After about I was half daddy, half sweetheart. At three months of counselling, things night by the fire we talked about our started getting rosier around La Casa D. childhoods, mine unhappy long ago, hers For one thing, Johanna got that promo- unhappy in the present. tion I mentioned, from local rep to re- Johanna was gone half of each week. gional. We made it a priority to have She came back hotel-pampered, expect- some together time together. I agreed to ing room service and the toilet paper ERIC DROOKER, NOVEMBER 9, 2009 go easier on the sauce. folded in a V. Then she was gone again. Around about this same time, Chey- One night I was watching “Monday enne, the little gal who babysat for us, Night.” A Captain Morgan commer- showed up one night smelling like a pig- cial came on—I get a kick out of those— Find your favorite cover prints at pen. Turned out her father had kicked her put me in mind of having me a Captain NewYorkerStore.com out. She’d moved in with her brother, but Morgan-and-Coke, so I fixed myself one. there were too many drugs there, so she Cheyenne wandered in.

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 73 the truth is true. The truth will out. Up until that moment, I wasn’t so sure. When our fifty minutes was up, Dr. van der Jagt directed us to the back door. As usual, I couldn’t help keeping an eye out for anyone who might see us. But what were we skulking around for, anyway? What were we ashamed of ? We were just two people in love and in trouble, going to our Nissan to pick up our kids from school. Over in the Alps, when they found that prehistoric man frozen in the tundra and dug him out, the guy they “I always get stuck in the wrong line.” call Ötzi, they saw that aside from wearing leather shoes filled with grass and a •• bearskin hat he was carrying a little wooden box that contained an ember. “What you watching?” she asked. “You gonna raise this baby, Charlie That’s what Johanna and I were doing, “Football. Want a drink? Spiced rum.” D.? You gonna support me and this baby? going to marital therapy. We were living “No, thanks.” You’re old. Your sperm are old. Baby through an Ice Age, armed with bows and “You know those thongs I bought you might come out autistic.” arrows. We had wounds from previous the other day? How they fit?” “Where did you read that?” skirmishes. All we had if we got sick were “Real good.” “Saw it on the news.” some medicinal herbs. There’s a flint ar- “You could be a Victoria’s Secret She didn’t need to think long. I’m anti- rowhead lodged in my left shoulder. model, I swear, Cheyenne.” abortion but, under the circumstances, Ouch. But we had this ember box with us, “I could not!” She laughed, liking the decided it was her choice. Cheyenne told and if we could just get it somewhere—I idea. me she’d handle the whole thing. Made don’t know, a cave, or a stand of pines— “Why don’t you model one of them the appointment herself. Said I didn’t we could use this ember to reignite the fire thongs for me. I’ll be the judge.” even need to go with her. All she needed of our love. A lot of the time, while I was Cheyenne turned toward me. All the was three thousand dollars. sitting there stony-faced on Dr. van der kids were asleep. Fans were shouting on Yeah, sounded high to me, too. Jagt’s couch, I was thinking about Ötzi, all the TV. Staring straight into my eyes, Week later, I’m on my way to cou- alone out there, when he was killed. Mur- Cheyenne undid the clasp of her cut-offs ples therapy with Johanna. We’re com- dered, apparently. They found a fracture and let them fall to the floor. ing up Dr. van der Jagt’s front path in his skull. You have to realize that things I got down on my knees, prayerful- when my phone vibrates in my pocket. aren’t so bad nowadays as you might like. I mashed my face against Cheyenne’s I open the door for Johanna and say, think. Human violence is way down since hard little stomach, trying to breathe her “After you, darlin’.” prehistoric times, statistically. If we’d lived in. I moved it lower. The message was from Cheyenne: “It’s when Ötzi did, we’d have to watch our In the middle of it all, Cheyenne lifted over. Have a nice life.” backs anytime we took a saunter. Under her leg, Captain Morgan style, and we Never was pregnant. That’s when I re- those conditions, who would I want at my busted up. alized. I didn’t care either way. She was side more than Johanna, with her broad Terrible, I know. Shameful. Pretty gone. I was safe. Dodged another bullet. shoulders and strong legs and used-to-be- easy to find the bad guy here. And then what did I go and do? I fruitful womb? She’s been carrying our Twice, maybe three times. O.K., more walked into Dr. van der Jagt’s office and ember the whole time, for years now, de- like seven. But then one morning Chey- sat down on the couch and looked over at spite all my attempts to blow it out. enne opens her bloodshot teen-age eyes Johanna. My wife. Not as young as she At the car, wouldn’t you know it, but and says, “You know, you could be my used to be, sure. But older and more worn my key fob chose right then not to work. granddaddy.” out because of me, mainly. Because of I kept pressing and pressing. Johanna Next, she calls me at work, completely raising my kids and doing my laundry stood on the gravel, looking small, for her, hysterical. I pick her up, we go down to and cooking my meals, all the while hold- and crying, “I hate you! I hate you!” I the CVS for a home pregnancy test. She’s ing down a full-time job. Seeing how sad watched my wife crying from what felt so beside herself she can’t even wait to get and tuckered out Johanna looked, I felt all like a long way off. This was the same back home to use it. Makes me pull over, choked up. And as soon as Dr. van der woman who, when we were trying to have then goes down into this gulch and squats, Jagt asked me what I had to say, the Lucas, called me on the phone and said, comes back with mascara running down whole story came rushing out of me. like Tom Cruise in “Top Gun,” “I feel the her cheeks. I had to confess my crime. Felt like I’d need for seed!” I’d rush home from work, “I can’t have a baby! I’m only nineteen!” explode if I didn’t. stripping off my vest and string tie as I “Well, Cheyenne, let’s think a min- Which means something. Which hurried into the bedroom, sometimes ute,” I said. means, when you get down to it, that leaving my cowboy boots on (though that

74 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 PARK AVENUE didn’t feel right, and I tried not to), and the De Rougemonts. I just didn’t realize it ARMORY PRESENTS there would be Johanna, lying on her back before. I had to get kicked out of my own with her legs and arms spread out in wel- house to be able to come and smell this come, her cheeks fiery red, and I leapt and smell, which I don’t think, even if I were a fell, and kept falling, it felt like, forever, little kid with super-smelling abilities, THE LIFE down into her, both of us lost in the sweet, would be anything other than pleasant. AND DEATH solemn business of making a baby. Upstairs Meg runs out of her bedroom. “Lucas!” she shouts. “What did you of o that’s why I’m out here in the do with my charger!” S bushes. Johanna kicked me out. I’m “I didn’t do anything,” he says back. MAR INA living downtown now, near the theatre (He’s up in his bedroom.) ABRAMOVIĆ district, renting a two-bedroom in the “You took it!” overpriced condos they built before the “I did not!” crash and now can’t fill. “Yes, you did!” december 12–21 I’d wager I’m about sixty feet away “Mom!” Meg yells, and comes to the from the house now. Maybe fifty-nine. top of the stairs, where she sees me. Or Think I’ll get closer. maybe doesn’t. She needs to wear her Fifty-eight. glasses. She stares down to where I’m Fifty-seven. standing in the shadows and she shouts, How do you like that, Lawman? “Mom! Tell Lucas to give me back my I’m standing next to one of the charger!” floodlights when I remember that re- I hear something, and turn. And straining orders aren’t calculated in feet. there’s Johanna. When she sees me, she They’re in yards. I’m supposed to be stay- does a funny thing. She jumps back. Her ing fifty yards away! face goes white and she says, “Guys! Stay Tarnation. upstairs!” But I don’t move. Here’s why. If I’m Hey, come on, I’m thinking. It’s just me. supposed to be fifty yards away, that Johanna presses the speed-dial on her means I’ve been violating the restraining phone, still backing away. order for weeks. “You don’t have to do that,” I say. I’m guilty already. “Come on now, Jo-Jo.” So, might as well get a little closer. She gets on with 911. I take a step to- Up onto the front porch, for instance. ward her with my hand out. I’m not going Just like I thought: front door’s open. to grab the phone. I just want her to hang God damn it, Johanna! I think. Just leave up and I’ll leave. But suddenly I’m hold- the house wide open for any home in- ing the phone, Johanna’s screaming, and, vader to waltz right in, why don’t you? out of nowhere, something jumps me ROBERT WILSON For a minute, it feels like old times. I’m from behind, tackling me to the ground. angrier than a hornet, and I’m standing in It’s Bryce. My son. M A R I NA my own house. A sweet urge of self- He isn’t at trumpet lessons. Maybe he ABR AMOVIĆ justification fills me. I know who the bad quit. I’m always the last to know. ANTONY guy is here. It’s Johanna. I’m just itching Bryce has got a rope in his hand, or an to go and find her and shout, “You left the extension cord, and he’s strong as a bull. WILLEM DAFOE front door open! Again.” But I can’t right He always did take after Johanna’s side. now, because, technically, I’m breaking He’s pressing his knee hard into my and entering. back, trying to hog-tie me with the exten- “T e collaboration of music, Then the smell hits me. It’s not the sion cord. light, sound, text and design is De Rougemonts. It’s partly dinner—lamb “Got him, Mom!” he shouts. … .” chops, plus cooking wine. Nice. Partly, I’m trying to talk. But my son has my exceptional simply beautiful too, a shampoo smell from Meg’s having face smashed down into the rug. “Hey, — T e Guardian (London) just showered upstairs. Moist, warm, per- Bryce, lemme go,” I say. “It’s Pa. It’s Pa fumey air is filtering down the staircase. I down here. Bryce? I’m not kidding now.” can feel it on my cheeks. I can also smell I try an old Michigan wrestling move, ARMORYONPARK.ORG Forelock, who’s too old to even come and scissor kick. Works like a charm. I flip (212) 933-5812 greet his master, which under the circum- Bryce off me, onto his back. He tries to 643 park avenue at 67th street stances is O.K. by me. It’s all these smells scramble away but I’m too fast for him. at once, which means that it’s our smell. “Hey, now,” I say. “Who’s your daddy The D.s! We’ve finally lived here long now, Bryce? Huh? Who’s your daddy?” enough to displace the old-person smell of That’s when I notice Meg, higher on SEASON SPONSORS Photo: Lucie Jansch the stairs. She’s been frozen there the “Yessir. Not gonna lie to you.” just checking in with each other. Doing whole time. But when I look at her now The detective pushes himself back in little kindnesses for each other. At break- she hightails it. Scared of me. his chair. fast, you pass the jam. Or, on a trip to Seeing that takes all the fight out of “We get guys like you in here all the New York City, you hold hands for a me. Meg? Sugar pie? Daddy won’t hurt you. time,” he says. “Hey, I know how you second in a smelly subway elevator. You But she’s gone. feel. I’m divorced, too. Twice. You think ask “How was your day?” and pretend to “O.K.,” I say. “Ah’mo leave now.” I don’t want to stick it to my old lady care. Stuff like that really works. I turn and go outside. Look up at the sometimes? But you know what? She’s Sounds pretty easy, right? Except sky. No stars. I put my hands in the air the mother of my children. That sound most people can’t keep it up. In addition and wait. corny to you? Not to me it doesn’t. You to finding the bad guy in every argu- have to make sure she’s happy, whether ment, couples do this thing called the fter bringing me to headquarters, the you like it or not. Because your kids are Protest Polka. That’s a dance where one A officer removed my handcuffs and going to be living with her and they’re the partner seeks reassurance about the returned me over to the sheriff, who made ones that’ll pay the price.” lationship and approaches the other, but me empty my pockets: wallet, cell phone, “They’re my kids, too,” I say. My voice because that person usually does this by loose change, 5-Hour Energy bottle, and sounds funny. complaining or being angry, the other an Ashley Madison ad torn from some “I hear you.” partner wants to get the hell away, and magazine. He had me put all that stuff With that, he goes out. I look around so retreats. For most people, this com- in a ziplock and sign a form vouching for the room, making sure there isn’t a two- plicated maneuver is easier than asking, the contents. way mirror, like on “Law & Order,” and “How are your sinuses today, dear? Still It was too late to call my lawyer’s office, when I’m satisfied I just hang my head and stuffed? I’m sorry. Let me get you your so I called Peekskill’s cell and left a mes- cry. When I was a kid, I used to imagine saline.” sage on his voice mail. I asked if that getting arrested and how cool I’d act. They While I’m thinking all this, the de- counted as a call. It did. wouldn’t get nothing out of me. A real out- tective comes in again and says, “O.K. They took me down the hall to an in- law. Well, now I am arrested, and all I am Vamoose.” terrogation room. After about a half hour, is a guy with gray stubble on my cheeks, He means I’m getting out. No argu- a guy I haven’t seen before, detective, and my nose still bleeding a little from ment from me. I follow him down the comes in and sits down. when Bryce mashed it against the rug. hall to the front of headquarters. I expect “How much you had tonight?” he There’s a thing they’ve figured out to see Peekskill, which I do. He’s shoot- asks me. about love. Scientifically. They’ve done ing the breeze with the desk sergeant, “A few.” studies to find out what keeps couples to- using cheerful profanities. No one can “Bartender at Le Grange said you gether. Do you know what it is? It isn’t say “you motherfucker” with more joie de came in around noon and stayed through getting along. Isn’t having money, or vivre than Counsellor Peekskill. None of happy hour.” children, or a similar outlook on life. It’s this surprises me at all. What surprises me is that, standing a few feet behind Peekskill, is my wife. “Johanna’s declining to press charges,” Peekskill tells me, when he comes over. “Legally, that doesn’t mean shit because the restraining order’s enforced by the state. But the police don’t want to charge you with anything if the wife’s not going to be behind it. I gotta tell you, though, this isn’t going to help you before the judge. We may not be able to get this thing revoked.” “Never?” I say. “I’m within fifty yards of her right now.” “True, but you’re in a police station.” “Can I talk to her?” “You want to talk to her? I don’t advise that right now.” But I’m already crossing the precinct lobby. Johanna is standing by the door, her head down. I’m not sure when I’m going to see her again, so I look at her real hard. I look at her but feel nothing. I can’t even tell if she’s pretty anymore. old bald head, and he said, “Just you wait.” ADVERTISEMENT Probably she is. At social functions, His spine was all catty-whompered. other people, men, anyway, are always He could only shuffle along. So, in order saying, “You look familiar. You didn’t to stave off the embarrassment of being Here, used to be a Dallas cheerleader, did closer to death than me, he hit me with you?” that grim reminder that I’d end up just Kitty Kitty I look. Keep looking. Finally, Johanna like him someday, shuffling around this At last, an owner’s manual meets my eye. house like an invalid. worthy of its subject: “The Big “I want to be a family again,” I say. Thinking of Mr. De Rougement, I all New Yorker Book of Cats,” Her expression is hard to read. But the of a sudden figure out what my problem featuring cartoons, cover art, feeling I get is that Johanna’s young face is. Why I’ve been acting so crazy. poetry, essays, and yarns from is lying under her new, older face, and that It’s death. He’s the bad guy. contributors such as the older face is like a mask. I want her Hey, Johanna. I found him! It’s death. Margaret Atwood, younger face to come out not only because I keep on walking, thinking about that. T.C. Boyle, Roald Dahl, it was the face I fell in love with but be- Lose track of time. Haruki Murakami, cause it was the face that loved me back. I When I finally look up, I’ll be god- Susan Orlean, John Updike, remember how it crinkled up whenever I darned if I ain’t in front of my house and more—with a foreword came into a room. again! On the other side of the street, in by Anthony Lane. No crinkling now. More like a Hallow- legal territory, but still. My feet led me een pumpkin, with the candle gone out. here out of habit, like an old plug horse. And then she tells me what’s what. “I I take out my phone again. Maybe tried for a long time, Charlie. To make you Meg played a word while I was in jail. THE BIG happy. I thought if I made more money it No such luck. would make you happy. Or if we got a big- When a new word comes on Words New Yorker ger house. Or if I just left you alone so you with Friends, it’s a beautiful sight to see. book of could drink all the time. But none of these The letters appear out of nowhere, like a things made you happy, Charlie. And they sprinkle of stardust. I could be anywhere, didn’t make me happy, either. Now that doing anything, but when Meg’s next word CATS you’ve moved out, I’m sad. I am crying flies through the night to skip and dance every night. But, as I now know the truth, across my phone, I’ll know she’s thinking I can begin to deal with it.” of me, even if she’s trying to beat me. “This isn’t the only truth there is,” I When Johanna and I first went to bed, say. It sounds more vague than I want it I was a little intimidated. I’m not a small to, so I spread my arms wide—like I’m man, but on top of Johanna? Sort of a hugging the whole world—but this only “Gulliver’s Travels”-type situation. It was ends up seeming even vaguer. like Johanna had fallen asleep and I’d I try again. “I don’t want to be the per- climbed up there to survey the scene. son I’ve been,” I say. “I want to be a better Beautiful view! Rolling hills! Fertile crop- person.” This is meant sincerely. But, like land! But there was only one of me, not a most sincerities, it’s a little threadbare. whole town of Lilliputians throwing Also, because I’m out of practice being ropes and nailing her down. sincere, I still feel like I’m lying. But it was strange. That first night Not very convincing. with Johanna, and more and more every “It’s late,” Johanna says. “I’m tired. I’m night after, it was like she shrank in bed, going home.” or I grew, until we were the same size. “Our home,” I say. But she’s halfway to And little by little that equalizing carried her car already. on into the daylight. We still turned heads. But it seemed as though people don’t know where I’m walking. Just were just looking at us, a single creature, Curl up with a I wandering. I don’t much want to go not two misfits yoked at the waist. Us. back to my apartment. Together. Back then, we weren’t fleeing copy today. After me and Johanna bought our or chasing each other. We were just house, we went over to meet the owners, seeking, and, every time one of us went and you know what the old guy did to looking, there the other was, waiting to me? We were walking out to see the me- be found. chanical room—he wanted to explain We found each other for so long be- about servicing the boiler—and he was fore we lost each other. Here I am! we’d walking real slow. Then right quick he say, in our heart of hearts. Come find me. turned around and looked at me with his Easy as putting a blush on a rainbow. 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 77 of the reason. Doris Kearns Goodwin, in a 2011 appearance on “Meet the Press,” THE CRITICS had advice for President Obama: “There is a model for him in Teddy Roosevelt. Similar time to ours: squeezed middle class, up-and-down gap between the rich and the poor.” Teddy Roosevelt, she said, understood that people wanted fairness, and found a way to talk about it. When Goodwin said that, she must BOOKS have been deep into writing her new book, “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden pROgRESS’S pIlgRIMS Age of Journalism” (Simon & Schuster). She is too disciplined to make explicit Doris Kearns Goodwin on T.R. and Taft. comparisons to the present in the book, but it’s infused with a sense that the story BY NICHOlaS lEMaNN she tells may hold lessons for us. Back then, capitalism had generated a wave of “ ore and more each year we have were in the center, not on the left. They miraculous changes in everyday life—rail- M felt about us the pressure of tre- had no respect for the leading Democrat roads, electric lights, telephones, automo- mendous forces,” Amos Pinchot, a prom- during the first part of the era, William biles—and raised the over-all standard of inent Progressive, wrote in a 1912 pam- Jennings Bryan, whom they viewed as a living, but it had also opened up a large gap phlet called “What’s the Matter with nostalgist engaged in a hapless quest to re- between rich and poor and caused a great America.” “Our country is going through create the country he had known in the deal of suffering, social unrest, corruption, a terrific period of unrest. Something is rural Midwest. The Progressives were and dislocation. Companies based on new wrong. . . . Where starts the mighty river modernizers, social-science enthusiasts, technologies were acquiring monopoly of discontent that is destroying our respect technicians. They generally preferred big, power and using it to drive smaller players for government, uprooting faith in politi- new, national institutions to small, tradi- out of business and to disadvantage con- cal parties, and causing every precedent tional, local ones. They were liberals, not sumers. All this sounds familiar, right? and convention of the old order to strain radicals, and they felt threatened by left- Goodwin’s story is about how a super-ag- at its moorings?” wing agitation, of which there was vastly gressive President and press were able to A century ago, when the First World more then than there is now. take on these problems, marshal public War and all the other horrors of the twen- The Progressives were also moralists. opinion, and restore the balance between tieth century were still over the horizon, They talked and wrote about their political market and state. In the book’s preface, the Progressives were convinced that the work as a struggle between good and evil. Goodwin writes, “It is my greatest hope country was in a dire state. They under- They loved the idea of purifying things that that the story that follows will guide read- stood American life before the Civil War were unclean, corrupt, or tainted—from ers through their own process of discovery to have been simple, provincial, agrarian, germ-infested urban tenements to political toward a better understanding of what it and self-sufficient. Nobody had quite an- graft to predatory business practices. They takes to summon the public to demand the ticipated that the Union, once preserved, saw it as their mission to curb the power of action necessary to bringing our country would quickly become a roaring industrial big business and machine politics in order closer to its ancient ideals.” power, with a national economy, mass im- to restore true democracy in the United migration, big cities, an imperialist foreign States. And their legacy was an alternative he kind of history that Goodwin policy, and—for the Progressives, most structure of government agencies (the Fed- Twrites is different from the history significant of all—very big, very powerful eral Reserve Board, the Internal Revenue that’s produced by most academic schol- businesses that seemed to dominate na- Service, the Federal Trade Commission, ars. It’s popular history, which is a sort of tional life. As Pinchot put it, “we have per- and the Food and Drug Administration), journalism about the past: the story and mitted an uncontrolled industrial oligarchy universities, professions, news organiza- the characters are the key elements, and to assume, and use for its own purposes, a tions, foundations, and so on, all of which the argument is secondary. For Goodwin, tremendous and arrogant power.” they regarded as bulwarks against the in- the main challenge would not have been Between the assassination of William dustrial oligopolies. to come up with a new interpretation of McKinley, in 1901, and the nomination Today, it’s natural for liberals who are the Progressive Era; it would have been to of Warren Harding, in 1920, there were feeling dispirited and stymied by their make a book about Theodore Roosevelt four straight Presidential elections with- conservative opponents to look back nos- feel fresh when he has already been the out a major candidate who, by the stan- talgically at the Progressive Era, a time subject of countless biographies—and for dards of the day, would have been con- when liberalism looked muscular and good reason. T.R. is an ideal biographical sidered conservative. On the political triumphant. Its alpha figure, Theodore subject: he wrote copiously; he was al-

spectrum of their time, the Progressives Roosevelt, appears to have been a big part most pathologically active, not only as a of CongReSS LibRaRy HaRRiS & ewing/CoURteSy oppoSite: MoURÃo; vaSCo above:

78 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013

T.R. and Taft’s friendship gave way to a feud. T.R. judged the trust-busting Taft insuﬃciently Progressive; to us, he looks more so.

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 79 politician but also as an adventurer and an They met in the early eighteen-nineties, ceeded without the support of a handful explorer; he experienced an unusual num- when Taft was Solicitor General and Roo- of the nation’s leading journalists. (They ber of dramatic twists of fate; and he lived sevelt was U.S. Civil Service Commis- became known as the “muckrakers”—al- in an interesting time. He was incapable sioner. For them, Washington was a very though Roosevelt coined that term in a of blandness in word or deed. small town, and Goodwin lovingly re-cre- speech denouncing another journalistic In her previous book, “Team of Rivals” ates its atmosphere of large houses run by faction.) If you’re a journalist who worries (2005), Goodwin figured out an ingenious small armies of servants, nearly nightly about the profession today, these chapters way around an even more difficult version dinner parties, workdays interrupted for are pure bliss. You meet a coterie of jour- of this problem—writing about Abraham midafternoon horseback rides and golf nalists who are gifted both as investigators Lincoln—by focussing on three mem- games, discussions of Tolstoy, and weeks- and as writers—Ida Tarbell, Ray Stan- bers of Lincoln’s Cabinet: Edward Bates, long vacations. Right away, Taft and Roo- nard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, William Salmon Chase, and William Seward. Lin- sevelt became the best of friends, though Allen White—and lucky enough to be coln was never far offstage, but he didn’t their wives didn’t like each other, and their working for a magazine edited by a ge- have to be put through all the usual bio- careers were interwoven as each rose very nius, S. S. McClure, who gave them all graphical paces. Her solution to the Teddy high very quickly. Roosevelt was only the time and money they needed to pro- Roosevelt problem is somewhat similar: forty-two when, in 1901, he became Pres- duce ambitious feats of reporting. Their she has added one major individual char- ident, after McKinley’s assassination. He stories about corporate, labor, and politi- acter, William Howard Taft, and one col- and Taft seem to have written each other cal corruption appeared in multiple in- lective one, the élite of the Progressive Era hundreds of letters. stallments, made them famous and their press corps, mainly the writers and editors Both were Republicans by inheritance, magazine rich, and triggered the passage associated with McClure’s Magazine. and, as Goodwin presents them, in their of historic reform legislation. At a time There’s little new information in “The youth both absorbed their party’s pro- when the U.S. population was a quarter of Bully Pulpit,” but Goodwin has done a business creed. (Taft was a student of Wil- what it is today, and far less educated, Mc- thorough job of going through a lot of liam Graham Sumner, the Yale professor Clure’s had a circulation of four hundred manuscript collections and stitching to- who coined the term “social Darwinism.”) thousand. Roosevelt spent plenty of time gether a coherent narrative from a wide va- When Roosevelt and Taft first met, no- cultivating its name-brand journalists, as riety of sources. “The Bully Pulpit” pro- body in politics was using the term “Pro- well as notables like Jacob Riis, Richard ceeds at a stately clip, in clear though not gressive.” Yet, like many Republicans of Harding Davis, and Upton Sinclair, who memorable prose, explaining details and their background and instincts, they be- weren’t on the McClure’s staff. He’d ask context as they arise. One of the challenges came uncomfortable with their party’s their advice on crucial matters, suggest of writing Presidential biography is that domination by Senate grandees like Nelson improvements on advance copies of their the Presidency itself is usually devoted to Aldrich and Mark Hanna, who so com- work, travel with them, send them drafts complex legislative and political maneuvers pletely shared the views of men like John D. of his speeches, even provide them with and long-forgotten disputes. As colorful as Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan that it wasn’t carte-blanche access to all the officials of Roosevelt was, his Presidency was devoid necessary to cut them in on the deal, as it his government. Between 1903 and 1905, of war or severe crisis and preoccupied with was for many lesser politicians. Roosevelt, the McClure’s journalists played essential economic regulation. “The Bully Pulpit” at least, had an aristocrat’s contempt for roles in one of the Roosevelt Administra- uses the personal relationship between “the mere money-getting American,” and tion’s highest achievements: the regula- Roosevelt and Taft as its narrative main- both he and Taft thought that they could tion of railroads and the meatpacking and spring, and the relative unfamiliarity of save their party by aligning Republicans patent-medicine industries. Taft to invigorate Roosevelt’s story. with the growing sentiment that the gov- The heyday of McClure’s ended quickly. Roosevelt and Taft were as lengthily ernment should play a bigger role in the The main culprit was what sounds like and intimately connected as any two Pres- economy. To their minds, they were re- bipolar disorder on McClure’s part—he idents who weren’t related by blood. Born formers. Among Progressives, though, conducted a flagrant extramarital affair a year apart, they were both children of there were consequential debates over what and made wildly ambitious plans to ex- the American upper class. Taft’s father, a reform consisted of. Goodwin presents pand his business. In 1906, the core staff prominent lawyer in Cincinnati, served as many of these disagreements as she goes left to start another magazine, The Amer- Attorney General and Secretary of War in along, but, because her focus is so power- ican, which they had to sell a few years the Grant Administration. Roosevelt’s fa- fully on people and their relationships as later. By then, Roosevelt’s conservative ther was a New York businessman rich motivating forces of history, she leaves the Republican enemies, emboldened by a enough so that his son was raised on the too simple impression that all one needs to promise he had impulsively made not to assumption that he would never have to know about the Progressives is that they run for reëlection in 1908, were denying earn a living. (Both Roosevelt and Taft pushed back against big business. him any significant further victories. produced children, grandchildren, and, in Roosevelt had the kind of personality Taft’s case, a great-grandchild who also o the extent that Goodwin wants to often found in the very best politicians: a served in high government positions.) Taft Tmake an argument, rather than tell a combination of flamboyant self-involve- was a member of Skull and Bones, at Yale, story, it’s about political communication, ment and political caution. It’s what Roosevelt of the Porcellian Club, at Har- not the substance of Progressivism. In her yielded the kind of exciting but middle- vard. Both went into government early. account, Progressivism couldn’t have suc- seeking rhetoric that Goodwin urged

80 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 President Obama to copy. Roosevelt dent insufficiently Progressive. Roosevelt difference if Taft had spent more time craved fame and power; as a young man, challenged Taft for the Republican nom- cultivating the press or polishing his he wrote to his sister, “I fear that only a ination in 1912, and, when that failed, he speechifying, because he was not a natu- very mild & moderate success awaits me.” founded the Progressive Party and ran ral politician in so many other ways. He had little sense of personal privacy. for President as its standard-bearer. Ex- Nor is it helpful to think of Roosevelt (Reporters joined him every day while a cept for Eugene Debs, of the Socialist and Taft as two men with identical views, barber shaved him.) He often struck peo- Party, all the Presidential candidates in different merely in style. Although per- ple as a boy in a man’s body; he would in- 1912—Roosevelt, Taft, and the Demo- fect intellectual clarity is a luxury that vite new acquaintances to wrestle and box cratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson— Presidents can’t afford, they ended up with him, or to fight with wooden swords, considered themselves Progressives, and differing significantly on the all-consum- or to climb trees. His rhetorical flourishes the enmity between Roosevelt and Taft ing subject of their time, government’s often included invocations of violence, in- delivered a substantial victory to Wilson. relationship to business. Roosevelt’s cluding jocular threats to have his oppo- muckraker speech—he lifted the reso- nents killed. But he never cut off relations nant metaphor from “The Pilgrim’s with the Republican bosses who disap- Progress”—was a response to David Gra- proved of his attacks on the misdeeds of ham Phillips’s “Treason of the Senate” business, and he grew dismissive of allies (published not by McClure but by Wil- who turned from reform to socialism. He liam Randolph Hearst, a Roosevelt liked to point out that Lincoln had ac- enemy), which had assailed Nelson Al- complished more in the struggle against drich and other leading Republicans. slavery than the abolitionists had. Roosevelt may have tangled with these people, but he had never broken with aft was utterly different—affable (Taft was the only Republican nominee them. During his 1904 election cam- Trather than aggressive, loved rather for President ever to finish third.) paign, Roosevelt received large contribu- than feared. He tried valiantly to exercise The Roosevelt-Taft relationship tions from J. P. Morgan and other corpo- and diet, but even his own family couldn’t would seem to be natural material for a rate villains of the day. And the speech help thinking of him, as we do, in terms grand tragedy. Unfortunately, Taft doesn’t wasn’t merely an exercise in political pru- of his substantial bulk. Although much of make anywhere near as interesting a dence. It had an animating idea, which the story of his rise is taken up by his con- character as Roosevelt. Unspooling his was that the problem the Progressives templation of an endless series of job life’s story, Goodwin, who looks for the faced was not the excessive power of busi- offers, he was not overtly ambitious. His good in her main characters, has to resort ness but corruption. “The danger is not father, Alphonso, his wife, Nellie, and to passages like this, about his term as really from corrupt corporations; it springs Roosevelt had to push him relentlessly to Secretary of War: “It was quickly evident from the corruption itself, whether exer- accept executive-branch jobs. (His natu- that Taft’s innate diplomacy and admin- cised for or against corporations,” Roos- ral home was the judiciary, which is where istrative acumen would bring a jovial, evelt said. “So far as this movement of ag- he wound up, as Chief Justice.) His 1908 effective leadership to the department.” itation throughout the country takes the Presidential campaign was essentially en- The result is a dual biography whose form of a fierce discontent with evil, of a gineered in a private meeting between subjects are genuinely connected but, determination to punish the authors of Nellie and Roosevelt, to which Taft was literarily as well as corporally, unevenly evil, whether in industry or politics, the not invited. When he finally declared his weighted. feeling is to be heartily welcomed as a sign candidacy, he did so with an oddly in- of healthy life. If, on the other hand, it verted statement: “I am not foolish he title of Goodwin’s book conveys turns into a mere crusade of appetite enough to say that in the improbable Ther thesis that Roosevelt was politi- against appetite, of a contest between the event that the opportunity to run for the cally more effective than Taft because of brutal greed of the ‘have nots’ and the bru- great office of President were to come to his superior communication skills. And tal greed of the ‘haves,’ then it has no me, I should decline it, for this would not the space she devotes to the muckrakers is significance for good, but only for evil.” be true.” meant, in part, to show that the enormous McClure’s, at the height of its influence, Roosevelt and Taft’s beautiful friend- attention that Roosevelt lavished on a few made a point of publishing exposés not ship created a mutual political disaster. favored journalists was an essential ele- just of business but also of labor unions Roosevelt was able to install Taft as his ment in his winning elections and passing and political parties. Like Roosevelt, it tar- successor but soon became dissatisfied in legislation. Taft certainly showed little in- geted bad guys in all realms, not just busi- ways that should have been predictable. terest in coöpting the McClure’s crowd, ness. Conversely, the main reason that Each man felt personally slighted by the and he was generally far less concerned Taft fired Gifford Pinchot was that Pin- other, and a major breach arose when than Roosevelt was with broadly dissem- chot shared Roosevelt’s crusading zeal. Taft fired Gifford Pinchot—Amos’s inating his ideas. Goodwin reminds us Crusading made the judicious, procedural brother, and a close friend of Roo- that Taft’s first Presidential address was Taft uncomfortable. It is difficult to make sevelt’s—as Chief Forester for being too only three hundred and forty words. But, a lasting form of governance out of the ardently conservationist. Soon the ex- to judge from Goodwin’s own copious ev- moralizing impulse, much as it animated President found the incumbent Presi- idence, it wouldn’t have made much both Roosevelt and the muckrakers. What

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 81 mattered is how their instincts—and ership of business. Others, like Louis with these people who come here in Taft’s different ones—worked their way Brandeis and John Dewey, were suspi- droves from Eastern Europe to escape into a program. cious of the power of bigness and friendly persecution, from which freedom could Within a few years, a new set of Pro- toward localism, so they wanted to break be bought only with gold, it has enslaved gressive luminaries had emerged, who up the largest conglomerates. These are them in bondage worse than that from were more interested in manifesto-writing not minor differences. Roosevelt shifted which they fled. Money is their God.” than in investigative journalism. Walter the balance of power between govern- William Allen White, the Kansas-based Lippmann, Herbert Croly, of The New ment and business largely through regu- journalist, published a classic Progressive Republic, and Charles Van Hise, the pres- lation. He was primarily responsible for manifesto in 1910 in which he repeatedly ident of the University of Wisconsin—all creating the Department of Commerce assured his readers that Progressive re- of whom had mutually admiring relation- and Labor, the forerunner of today’s De- forms would not cause American civiliza- ships with Roosevelt—looked to the new partment of Commerce, which had an tion to lose its fundamentally “Aryan” regulatory agencies and federal commis- office that was supposed to keep an eye on racial character. sions to create rules for big corporations corporations, and for giving the Interstate One thing all the Progressives agreed and trusts, and to punish them for bad be- Commerce Commission the power to set on, during the period Goodwin covers, havior. But they did not take issue with railroad rates. Business, accustomed to a was that they were unself-interested their bigness itself, and they opposed completely free hand, fiercely opposed champions of the public interest. “I do not breaking up the trusts. In “The Promise of these changes, but they don’t really qual- represent public opinion: I represent the American Life,” Croly wrote that the “eco- ify as the sort of “trust-busting” we associ- public,” Roosevelt once grandly declared. nomic power” of Morgan, Andrew Car- ate with Roosevelt. The real trustbuster But for at least six decades, since Richard negie, and the railroad tycoons James Hill was Taft. His Administration, not Roo- Hofstadter published “The Age of Re- and E. H. Harriman “has been just as sevelt’s, broke up the sugar trust, broke up form,” historians have been skeptical of much earned by substantial service as was Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, and filed an the Progressives’ self-conception. The the political power of a man like Andrew antitrust suit against U.S. Steel—much to Progressives came from a class that had Jackson; and if our country is to continue Roosevelt’s distress. Taft was also far more experienced a loss of status and power in its prosperous economic career, it must re- aggressive than Roosevelt in taking on the face of untrammelled capitalism; the tain an economic organization which will protective tariffs, which were a sacred reforms they championed increased their offer to men of this stamp the opportunity cause of business in those days. own influence in American society. The and the inducement to earn distinction.” Progressive Party’s membership was espe- Lippmann’s book “Drift and Mastery” hen Taft and Roosevelt were po- cially patrician. Roosevelt’s absolute self- (1914) opens with a chapter mocking the Wlitical opponents in 1912, they assurance, his conception of government muckrakers for being anecdotal and for would have agreed that Taft was more po- as a struggle against evil rather than as a lacking a detailed program. “It is impossi- litically conservative than Roosevelt. The clash of interests, his view that there was ble to say that muckraking was either pro- fact that Taft’s economic positions sound nothing wrong with very big businesses gressive or reactionary in its tendency,” more liberal to us is a sign that political per se, and his enthusiasm for a national Lippmann wrote. Roosevelt was so taken categories change over time. The Pro- government operated by the élite class— with the work of Lippmann and Croly that gressives were not quite like the people this wasn’t a politics devoted to the inter- he wrote, “No man who wishes seriously to who call themselves that today. Few ests of the little people. (By the nineteen- study our present social, industrial, and po- prominent Progressives objected to the twenties, Walter Lippmann had become litical life with the view of guiding his Jim Crow system in the South. Taft de- candidly disillusioned with democracy.) thought and action so as to work for na- voted six full paragraphs of his sole Inau- Even someone as superb at command- tional betterment in the future can afford gural Address to a very carefully worded ing attention as Roosevelt could not direct not to read these books through and promise to increase “the already good feel- history to go where he wanted it to. He through and to ponder and digest them.” ing between the South and the other sec- may not even have known where he His enthusiasm makes sense: their version tions of the country,” by which he meant wanted it to go, because his life was so of the Progressive idea fitted with his idea that he’d avoid appointing blacks to fed- bound up in the conditions of the mo- that big business shouldn’t be thought of as eral office in the former Confederate ment. Roosevelt read Tolstoy, but with bad unless it misbehaved. It entailed estab- states. And though Progressive journalists deeply mixed feelings. It didn’t help that lishing an equipoise between big business crusaded on behalf of the ethnic immi- Tolstoy, having retreated to the country- and a national government, staffed by peo- grants crowding into the city slums, they side, had endorsed William Jennings ple as formidable in their way as the busi- also had a hard time seeing them as fully Bryan for President in 1908. But, in a ness tycoons were in theirs, that could ex- human. In “How the Other Half Lives,” larger sense, nothing could have been as ercise countervailing power as needed. an essential Progressive text, Jacob Riis offensive to Roosevelt’s sensibility as Tol- Not all Progressives shared this vision. had this to say about Jews on the Lower stoy’s refusal to understand history as a Some Progressives—like Steffens, who East Side: “Thrift is the watchword of morality play enacted by its leading char- had a long flirtation with Communism Jewtown, as of its people the world over. acters. Roosevelt would surely want us (he’s the one who wrote of the Soviet It is at once its strength and its fatal weak- to remember him as the architect of the Union, in 1919, “I have seen the future ness, its cardinal virtue and its foul dis- Progressive Era. As tempting as that may and it works”)—came to favor state own- grace. Become an over-mastering passion be, it leaves out the heart of the story. 

82 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 BRIEFLY NOTED “Burns

Double Down, by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann (Penguin brighter than Press). “I am wired in a different way than this event requires,” * Barack Obama said, according to the authors, as he prepared for the rest.” his second debate with Mitt Romney and tried to redeem his disastrous performance in their first round. “I just don’t know if I can do this.” The book goes some way toward explaining how he did win in 2012, at least as viewed from certain strata in both campaigns: top aides, establishment brokers, and bundlers. It’s replete with insider dialogue, in and out of quotation marks, and newsy tidbits. Ideology is relatively uncharted, as is the rise of the Tea Party. By the end, Romney’s flaws as a candidate are clear, but there is only a glimpse of the campaign’s place in his party’s wars.

ServantS, by Lucy Lethbridge (Norton). This belowstairs history opens at the close of the nineteenth century, when the system began to break down. As modernity arrives—with a rising middle class, a dwindling aristocracy, electrical appliances, world war, and women’s suffrage—some cling to the elaborate old order with a passion bordering on perversity. Servants, the one indispensable status symbol, continue to be “kept” by all respectable households, even those which can ill afford them. Within half a century, attitudes have shifted so drastically that service, once considered dignified, is seen as demeaning. Draw- ing on primary sources, many written by servants, Lethbridge captures the revolution with both sweep and intimacy, and “Suspenseful.” never loses sight of the workers at its heart. —Abbe Wright, O, Te Oprah Magazine

the Story of a new name, by Elena Ferrante, translated from the “Striking.” Italian by Ann Goldstein (Europa). The second novel in the au- —Megan O’Grady, Vogue.com thor’s Neapolitan series is a story about ambition and the complexities of friendship. In Naples in the nineteen-sixties, the nar- “Enthralling.” rator, Elena, and her wild, brilliant friend Lila are two —Entertainment Weekly (A-) working-class young women. While Elena spends her days “Gripping.” reading books, hoping to further her schooling, the newly mar- —Andrea Walker, Te Daily Beast ried Lila has renounced study for a life of financial security. De- spite shared affection, each comes to envy the other’s perceived “Stellar.” freedom and bravery. The book is artfully written and absorb- —Chas Carey, Daily News ing, and its narrative explores varying routes to happiness, loneliness as the price of independence, and the ultimate power of “Unnerving.” education. “Words,” Elena thinks, “with them you can do and —Charles Finch, Chicago Tribune undo as you please.” “Masterful.” 3 SectionS, by Vijay Seshadri (Graywolf ). “My failure to evolve —Kevin Powers, has been causing me a lot of grief lately,” the author writes, author of Te Yellow Birds imagining himself as a primitive being ill-adapted to glass- “Sometimes a debut novel ... strewn streets and swank soirées. Short poems here often con- ofers up the promise of front contemporary dilemmas with caustic humor. The collec- literary greatness. Te Night Guest tion culminates in two extended pieces. A prose memoir recalls is one of these books.” time spent as a young man among North Pacific salmon —*James McNamara, fishermen. And a remarkable poem, “Personal Essay,” con- Los Angeles Review of Books fronts a creative crisis in which things, emptied of “pathetic, clinging analogies,” symbolize, allegorize, and “embody noth- Faber and Faber, Inc. ing but themselves.” Seshadri urgently explores “how shock- An affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux ing the obvious can be / if you’re not ready for it.” www.fsgbooks.com

she still mentions God in interviews, he pOp Music rarely shows up in her songs these days.) When she returned for another crack at pop stardom, she worked with one THE KaTY sHOW of the industry’s most reliable hit gener- ators, Glen Ballard, who has written Katy Perry’s variety act. songs with Alanis Morissette and Mi- chael Jackson. Perry was signed and BY sasHa fRERE-jONEs then dropped by a couple of major labels, and the collaboration with Ballard was abandoned. Eventually, shuttling from label to label, she had the luck to end up with the team that has dominated almost twenty years of chart pop: New York’s Lukasz (Dr. Luke) Gott- wald and Sweden’s Max Martin, along with the producer Cirkut. Her first single, “Ur So Gay,” released in 2007, was a serious misstep: it is either homophobic or a clumsy approximation of how teens spell and talk, or both. A bomb, it was followed by the hit “I Kissed a Girl,” a sort of cleaned-up Katy Gone Wild. Though the song was probably not convincing to girls who actually kiss girls, it was more than sufficient for boys who hold their red Solo cups high. For this pop fan, it was neither heartening nor intense enough to distract me from worthier artists. Perry’s voice is a steady, not particularly distinctive alto—it’s strong and bright, but it’s not enough to capture you without a killer hook. Her default backing track is a crunchy guitar sound that reaches back to Morissette, was recharged by Kelly Clarkson, and now mostly belongs to Perry. (“PRISM” dials through some variants of dance music but rarely aty Perry has become one of the life on her public persona. (The excep- with the jubilation that she brings to gui- K biggest pop stars in the world by tion to this theory of allegiance is tar rock, so this may have been a wise, not making us worry about her. We usu- younger listeners, who identify strongly and possibly lucky, early choice.) ally see our alpha pop stars—Beyoncé, and specifically.) In the course of her career, Perry’s Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Eminem—as Though her personality is consistent, look has mostly been a series of varia- characters with a story, or as heroes with her style changes from album to album, tions on the fifties bombshell; she care- a mission. Lady Gaga likes to change like a lineup of guests or of TV back- fully dials up and down the sexual innu- her look every few months and has be- drops. Her shape-shifting has paid off: endo, depending on what hour of the come probably the most visible (and “PRISM,” her new album, entered the evening her performance airs. Openly credible) defender of L.G.B.T. rights in Billboard 200 at No. 1, and her first sin- discussing her songwriting teams, pop- pop culture. Rihanna has grown into the gle, “Roar,” has been at the top of the ping up on red carpets and morning Clint Eastwood of pop—slow of step, charts in several categories, both pur- shows without sulking, Perry doesn’t eagle-eyed, and unbiddable. But Perry is chased and streamed. Her previous throw her lot in with any single age or more like a talk-show host, the face for album, “Teenage Dream,” equalled Mi- style. There’s very little of the suffering a team of professional entertainers, chip- chael Jackson’s “Thriller” by generating artist about her. per and on time. We don’t worry that five No. 1 singles. Perry has lost herself to this cult or to Perry, born Hudson, made a Chris- “ RISM” could also be called “Now that bad boyfriend, because she’s never tian-pop album as a teen-ager, which PThat’s What I Call Perry! Vol. 3.” hidden the fact that she’s not staking her immediately sank from view. (Though It’s an omnibus of what the kids are listening to, while supposedly also being Cheerful and competent, Perry favors a look like that of a fifties bombshell. for those kids. Since “Teenage Dream,”

84 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 ILLUSTRATION BY STANLEY CHOW she has solidified her version of good tions, and almost none of her songs de clean American fun. She might shade pict the singer as forlorn or as waiting into something heavier than hard cider, for some dumb boy. But you don’t get but she never flirts with the kind of the sense that she is going to match P.r. disaster that Madonna encoun the Dixie Chicks, who, on “Goodbye tered when she blithely decided, on Earl,” from 1999, sang about killing an stage at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival, abusive husband. Just like a good net last year, to give a shoutout to the drug work player, Perry skews toward the Molly. If Perry has edged away from middle. the teenage insouciance that charac “This Is How We Do” is an odd terized her previous album, it’s perhaps patchwork of dancemusic textures over a recognition that she no longer resem an awkward tempo that seems to have bles a teen. been slowed down to accommodate The album is driven by “roar,” a Perry’s semirapping about “checking pop monster that could have gone to out hotties” and singing Mariah Carey No. 1 even if it were sung in romanian. songs at karaoke. The Carey reference The verses have a springy bounce and a sounds out of date, as does the title of chattering piano, and a noncommittal, “Double rainbow,” a reference to a easy line about being “scared to rock the YouTube meme that’s roughly three boat and make a mess” that remains years old. The interlude on “This Is cheerful. The chorus enters with the How We Do” is a clue to this time trap: subtlety of a Michael Bay plot point, “Yo, shout out to all you kids, buying drums veering toward Zeppelin, guitars bottle service with your rent money!” It geolocating Slash, and it rides straight seems unlikely that the people in Perry’s up the scale: “ ’Cause I am a champion target demographic are paying their and you’re gonna hear me roar.” Once, own rent, and she appears to be playing in conversation, Gottwald told me that to the parents as much as to the kids, Martin’s facility with melody was un who are less likely to be buying concert matched: “If you only have one swing tickets. “Walking on Air” sounds like with the axe to take the tree down, Max Eurodance from 1990, and “Birthday” is the guy to do it.” That swooping is a Prince soundalike, circa “Dirty Valkyries moment is Martin’s trade Mind,” from 1980. mark. The lyrics openly quote Survi Two confusions come together on Adult Dialectical vor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” and the “cham “Dark Horse,” a track with the m.c. Behavior Therapy Program pion” in the chorus is likely a Queen Juicy J, best known as part of the Mem Residential treatment for adults with poor reference, a group that Perry has often phis group Three 6 Mafia. The track is mood regulation, impulsivity and self harm claimed as a touchstone. (Her fragrance bassy and airy, and Perry’s voice dips www.silverhillhospital.org• is called Killer Queen, so this may be slightly lower, where it often sits natu New Canaan, CT (866) 548-4455 Perry’s most solid statement of aes rally (as on “Fingerprints,” from her pop thetic loyalty.) début, “One of the Boys”). But the lyr The video for “roar” depicts Perry ics are like a charm bracelet assembled (safely) crashlanding in a wholesome, in the dark, with Perry claiming to be goofball kind of Disney jungle land Aphrodite, magic, and a horse. Juicy J scape, where she befriends the animals is more familyfriendly than usual, but and loses her hapless malemodel co he still sounds as if he’s wandered onto pilot. The exposed flesh is very PG, as the wrong track. Why not put him on a if Perry has decided to back away from rowdier song? With Perry alleging some Lambswool V-Neck $150 anything approaching nudity. (In the sort of mythical strength, the rapping Lambswool V-Neck Vest $145 Lambswool Roundneck $150 PrISM Lambswool Cardigans $225 booklet for the CD of “ ,” Perry guy doesn’t seem necessary, and the Cashmere V-Neck $350 looks thoughtful and gauzy, as desex album makes no other concessions to ualized as she’s been on a cover yet.) In hiphop. a recent interview on NPr, she called In these songs, Perry doesn’t ap on other female performers to “put it proach the new minimalism that has away”—one of the few times her good trickled down into pop through dub natured sensibility has slipped. What if step, or use any sounds that are in any Miley’s having a nude kind of year? Let way unfamiliar. “PrISM” reflects the very your peers make that call, Katy. Her practical realization that teenage dreams stance typifies her softserve feminism. last only one cycle, but adulthood is a On “PrISM,” Perry takes strong posi lifetime subscription. 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 85 mies and revelations. We seem to have THE cuRRENT ciNEMa entered dim-bulb territory: People are eager to believe that Woody has won a fortune and refuse to hear David tell them aMERicaN gOTHic that the prize isn’t real. Then, suddenly, they turn greedy—they want a piece of it. “Nebraska” and “At Berkeley.” Yet the satire that was so potent an ele- ment in Payne’s “Citizen Ruth,” “Elec- BY DaViD DENBY tion,” and “The Descendants” comes off, in “Nebraska,” as pointless. These people have no pretensions, no power. What is there to make fun of ? Payne is from Ne- braska and still lives there half the year. He speaks affectionately of the state and its people, but if this is his idea of affection I wouldn’t want to see him working on characters that he disdains. In the past, he has taken on sturdier targets. Many of the faces, looming in closeup or in group shots, are sculptured and strong, but Payne is engaged in static portraiture, not drama, and some of it has a heartless Diane Arbus feel—David’s identical rotund cousins spend their days sitting on a couch, obsessed with cars and nothing else. In “Fargo,” the Coen brothers worked with Midwestern blandness, but they had a ferocious plot that mo- tored the movie; blandness was a cover Bruce Dern undertakes a journey in a new movie directed by Alexander Payne. for kidnapping, blackmail, and murder—and for wisdom, too, in the solid he wide-screen black-and-white David also thinks that he should get self-assurance of Frances McDormand’s Timages in Alexander Payne’s “Ne- Woody out of Billings and away from police chief. Payne’s movie has just the braska”—of fields, plains, and distant his rancorous marriage to Kate (June futile journey and a father-son relation- hills—have a stirring vastness, and a great Squibb), David’s mother. When the two ship that is so repetitive it feels like a sub- beauty, too, but the life has been taken men arrive in Nebraska, where Woody plot that somehow got pushed to the out of them. Nothingness is at hand: the grew up, they stop to see his brothers and center. The only fully alive character is vistas are overcast with melancholia, and other relatives, and David tries to get the long-suffering Kate, a quarrelsome the towns—blank, empty, shuttered— closer to the ornery old man and to build woman with a mean tongue. June Squibb are dead. The film chronicles a forlorn for himself some kind of usable past out shows some energy and good comic tim- journey from Billings, Montana, to Lin- of the family history. But he’s grasping at ing; her needling commentary breaks coln, Nebraska, and it could be called a roots that keep disappearing. The movie up the studied desolation of the mise wrong-way epic—it moves East rather keeps disappearing, too. en scène. than West, as mythic American narra- There is much routine sociability: men Woody, in contrast, is hard to read tives once did. Woody (Bruce Dern), an lounge around the TV watching football; and maddeningly elusive—fogged one elderly alcoholic with long, lank white families sit down to dinner; Woody’s minute, demanding and razory the next. hair and a tendency to wander down any boyhood friends, now rasping old sports, Dern’s much lauded performance (he available road, believes that he has won a gather every night in a bar. They speak in was named best actor at the Cannes Film million dollars in a sweepstakes and has cheerful generalities and answer ques- Festival) is physically impressive. He’s a to go to Lincoln to pick up the money. tions with a hyper-literalness that slams big man who, when he heads off down a His son David (Will Forte), whom he the conversation into the wall. Bob Nel- road, stumbles and stumps, like a pirate has always regarded with indifference, son wrote the script, which Payne has with two peg legs. When he sits, he col- knows that the prize doesn’t exist and been mulling over for nine years, and lapses into himself, and, at times, aban- tells him so, but decides to drive him to some of it, enhanced by the deliberate dons himself to sleep, head back, mouth Lincoln anyway. David, who is perhaps pacing of his direction, is funny in a dead- open. Egotistical and self-justifying, thirty-five and going nowhere himself— pan, black-comedy way. But the ab- Woody is largely uninterested in the peo- he’s single and stuck in a lousy job—rea- surdist atmosphere feels thin: the movie ple around him. Essentially, he’s an old sons that Woody, nearing the end of life, is like a Beckett play without the meta- person as the Other—unreasonable and needs something to keep him going. physical unease, the flickering blasphe- unreachable. Dern delivers an affronted

86 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 ILLUSTRATION BY ANTON VAN HERTBRUGGEN glare and an outraged assertiveness, but pond hides the conflict churning in its shows the truly disadvantaged who he has nothing to reveal, and Woody re- depths. In some ways, “At Berkeley” sweep the campus steps, mow the mains unfathomable. David talks to his is an idyll, in which first-class intel- lawns, build new roads, and provide so father’s old friends and lovers, and we lectual work flourishes amid broad pleasant a setting for the students’ self- hear mysterious and contradictory things lawns and in massive buildings set questioning. about his past, but none of it links up against a gentle slope, all of it illu- When Wiseman moves away from with what we see in the present. In the minated by the sunshine and cooled the scenes of administration and pro- end, Woody isn’t conscious enough to be by the breezes of San Francisco Bay. test, he heads for the stuff of learned in- an exciting character. It’s true that some But in 2010, when the movie was shot, quiry. A physicist explains the origins fading people never come back into the university was in turmoil: the Cal- of time to his students. A literature focus, no matter how much loving atten- ifornia state legislature had progres- professor works through the erotic tion they receive, but making such a sively reduced its financial support metaphors in Donne’s “To His Mis- character the protagonist of a movie may from more than forty per cent of the tress Going to Bed.” An entomologist be a well-intentioned mistake. university’s total budget ($1.9 billion describes the varieties of survivalist be- Our concern naturally shifts to David. in 2010) to sixteen per cent, and the havior in insects. Time, sex, death— He’s smart and funny, and Will Forte administration, struggling to preserve classwork gets stirringly to the heart of (from “Saturday Night Live”) has an in- Berkeley’s intellectual distinction while things. There is a long sequence in a triguing face—a handsome strong jaw, retaining its special character as a pub- biomedical-engineering lab in which crestfallen eyes, a worried brow. He lic institution, had begun cutting spend- two graduate students and a professor seems to be exploring the character as he ing and raising student fees. work with a young man whose with- goes, and he surprises us. This comic In the film, the chancellor, Robert J. ered legs have been fitted into comput- may become a fine actor. At first, David Birgeneau, and other administrators erized braces. In order to get the mech- is exasperated, but he reaches an amused hold clenched-teeth meetings about anized part of the therapy right, the acceptance: he wants to see how the trip furloughing faculty and other such mat- students have to investigate the way the will play out. He grabs at a heroic Amer- ters, and the students, like subjects liv- human torso torques in normal walk- ican past—a trip to Mt. Rushmore, a ing within the castle, feel the vibrations ing—they have to understand the na- visit to the Nebraska house (now a from the decisions made above. Wise- ture of walking itself. Wiseman’s movie wreck) that Woody’s father built. But man shoots anguished scenes in which is four hours long, and you come out the search doesn’t yield much. Payne’s the generally liberal students, many of of it reassured: though the university movie “The Descendants” posed the them devoted to an ideal of public ser- may have to learn to walk again, it will question, Who will inherit Hawaii? vice, vaguely long to get away from cap- continue moving into the future. “At “Nebraska” says that there’s nothing left italism while wondering how they are Berkeley” is in limited theatrical release to inherit. It’s a film devoted to inanition, going to fit into it; they hope not to be and will be broadcast on PBS in Janu- made with considerable artistry, but it’s judged on how much they “produce.” ary. I can’t think of another film por- far from a work of art. Some want a less pressured existence. trait of higher education that matches Some demand a free education. The this one for comprehensiveness, intel- uring an English class in Frederick conversations aren’t all that different lectual depth, and hope.  DWiseman’s documentary “At Berke- from those heard on the campus nearly ley” a professor reading Thoreau’s “Wal- fifty years ago. Wiseman records the den” with his students points to a pas- anxieties of this group, and at the same newyorker.com/go/frontrow sage in which the surface calm of the time, putting things in perspective, he Richard Brody blogs about movies.

VOLUME LXXXIX, NO. 37, November 18, 2013. THE NEW YORKER (ISSN 0028792X) is published weekly (except for fve combined issues: February 11 & 18, June 10 & 17, July 8 & 15, August 12 & 19, and December 23 & 30) by Condé Nast, which is a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: The Condé Nast Building, 4 Times Square, New York, NY 10036. Elizabeth Hughes, vice-president and publisher; Beth Lusko, associate publisher advertising; James Guilfoyle, director of fnance and business operations; Lynn Oberlander, general counsel. Condé Nast: S. I. Newhouse, Jr., chairman; Charles H. Townsend, chief executive officer; Robert A. Sauerberg, Jr., president; John W. Bellando, chief operating officer & chief financial officer; Jill Bright, chief administrative officer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement No. 40644503. Canadian Goods and Services Tax Registration No. 123242885-RT0001. Canada Post: return undeliverable Canadian addresses to P.O. Box 874, Station Main, Markham, ON L3P 8L4.

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THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 87 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 Gahan Wilson, must be received by Sunday, November 17th. The finalists in the November 4th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the December 2nd issue. The winner receives a signed print of the cartoon. Any resident of the United States, Canada (except Quebec), Australia, the United Kingdom, or the Republic of Ireland age eighteen or over can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit newyorker.com/captioncontest.

THE WINNING cApTIoN

THE FINALISTS “I’m really more of a painter-gatherer.” Greg Dobbins, Arlington, Va. “Who has the ﬂoor?” “Me thought Ugg just bad artist.” Valerie Vignaux, Northampton, Mass. Michael A. Seitz, Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y.

“We use every part of the animal, even the rhombus.” Michael Porter, Knoxville, Tenn.

THIS WEEK’S coNTEST

“” ALAN CUMMING MICHELLE WILLIAMS in

with LINDA EMOND DANNY BURSTEIN Book by JOE MASTEROFF

Music by JOHN KANDER Lyrics by FRED EBB

Based on the play by JOHN VAN DRUTEN and stories by CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD

Co-directed & Choreographed by ROB MARSHALL Directed by SAM MENDES

FROM THE BEST PRICES TO VIP ACCESS, ROUNDABOUT HAS A PACKAGE FOR YOU. FIND OUT MORE AT ROUNDABOUTTHEATRE.ORG

STUDIO 54 roundabouttheatre.org 212.719.1300

PROUD SPONSOR Major support for Cabaret is provided by The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation.

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