The New Yorker Crossword Puzzle Jill Lepore (“Sirens in the Night,” P

MAY 21, 2018

9 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

33 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Robin Wright on Trump’s Iran-deal outrage; the N.R.A. Hulk; the Duplass brothers; techno Germans; Carol Burnett’s youngest fans.

ANNALS OF GAMING Nick Paumgarten 40 Weaponized The latest teen video-game craze.

SHOUTS & MURMURS Josh Gondelman 46 Recommendations

AMERICAN CHRONICLES Jill Lepore 48 Sirens in the Night Do victims’ rights harm justice?

THE POLITICAL SCENE Evan Osnos 56 Only the Best People Trump’s government purge.

LETTER FROM CALIFORNIA Adam Gopnik 66 Bottled Dreams The quest to make a truly American wine.

FICTION John L’Heureux 74 “The Long Black Line”

THE CRITICS BOOKS Lauren Collins 82 A reading list for the royal wedding. 86 Brieﬂy Noted Tobi Haslett 89 Alain Locke, dean of the Harlem Renaissance.

MUSICAL EVENTS Alex Ross 94 Harpsichord smackdown!

POP MUSIC Amanda Petrusich 96 Courtney Barnett’s laid-back angst.

THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 98 “First Reformed,” “The Seagull.”

POEMS Cynthia Zarin 62 “Marina” Peter Cooley 79 “Bear”

COVER John Cuneo “The Swamp”

DRAWINGS Mick Stevens, Edward Steed, Seth Fleishman, Pia Guerra, P. C. Vey, Liana Finck, Will McPhail, Harry Bliss, Roz Chast, Carolita Johnson, Frank Cotham, Maddie Dai, David Sipress, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Lars Kenseth, Jon Adams SPOTS Serge Bloch Introducing CONTRIBUTORS The New Yorker Crossword Puzzle Jill Lepore (“Sirens in the Night,” p. 48) Evan Osnos (“Only the Best People,” is a professor of history at Harvard. p. 56) writes about politics and foreign Her new book, “These Truths: A His- afairs for the magazine. His book “Age tory of the United States,” will be pub- of Ambition” won the 2014 National lished in September. Book Award for nonﬁction.

Tobi Haslett (Books, p. 89) has contrib- Lauren Collins (Books, p. 82) has been uted articles to the magazines n+1, Art- a staf writer since 2008. She is the au- forum, and Harper’s. thor of “When in French: Love in a Second Language.” Emma Allen (The Talk of the Town, p. 35) is the magazine’s cartoon editor and Nick Paumgarten (The Talk of the Town, edits humor pieces on newyorker.com. p. 38; “Weaponized,” p. 40) has been writing for the magazine since 2000. Adam Gopnik (“Bottled Dreams,” p. 66) is a staf writer and the author of, most Peter Cooley (Poem, p. 79) teaches at recently, “At the Strangers’ Gate: Ar- Tulane University. His tenth poetry rivals in New York.” collection, “World Without Finish- ing,” was published in February. Robin Wright (Comment, p. 33), a joint fellow at the United States Institute of Amanda Petrusich (Pop Music, p. 96) is Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Inter- a staf writer and the author of “Do national Center for Scholars, has cov- Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Ob- ered the Middle East since 1973. sessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records.” John Cuneo (Cover) has been drawing for the magazine since 1994. “Not Wav- John L’Heureux (Fiction, p. 74) has pub- ing but Drawing,” a collection of his lished eleven novels and three story sketches, came out last year. collections.

NEWYORKER.COM 1. Schmaltz, literally. Everything in the magazine, and more. 2. Stud alternative. 3. A 1928 Virginia Woolf “biography.” 4. “A ludicrous invention,” per Germaine Greer.

Do the rest of the puzzle, and find a new one every week, at newyorker.com/crossword NEWS DESK Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow report on four women who accused New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, of physical abuse. Read the story that led Schneiderman to resign.

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

App Store, Amazon.com, or Google Play. (Access varies by location and device.) OLIVER MUNDAY

2 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 THE MAIL

THE HISTORY OF HITLER play, adapted from the novel by Chris- GEORGIA O’KEEFFE: topher Hampton, was staged in Lon- VISIONS OF HAWAI‘I Alex Ross, in his survey of recent lit- don in 1982. People were so shocked by erature on Adolf Hitler, conducts a de- Hitler’s eloquent monologue that they tailed examination of American in- condemned, boycotted, and picketed fluences on Nazi ideology (A Critic at the production. Large, April 30th). My only note is that William Fried he might have placed greater empha- Bronx, N.Y. sis on the American eugenics movement, and specifically on Granville As Ross notes, liberals and neo-Nazis May 19–October 28 Stanley Hall, the first president of the alike have compared Donald Trump to Discover the artist’s little-known American Psychological Association Hitler. But another analogy from the depictions of the Hawaiian and the founding editor of the journal period might be more apt. In the early Islands — and the plants and Eugenics. In the early twentieth cen- thirties, the Nazi Party was financially landscapes that inspired them. tury, Hall wrote extensively about how distressed, losing voters, and dissatisfied a society might develop a healthy citi- with Hitler’s leadership. More main- zenry, and he vocally supported forced stream conservative politicians at- sterilization of the poor, the sick, and tempted to co-opt the Party to broaden the developmentally disabled. His work their electoral base. Alfred Hugenberg, arrived in Germany at the height of the a wealthy media mogul and the leader völkisch movement, which romanticized of the German National People’s Party, German ethno-cultural heritage and supported a plan to bring the Nazis hailed his writings as scientific ratio- into the governing coalition as a bul- nales for racial cleansing. After the Sec- wark against leftist movements. (The ond World War, Nazi attorneys at the plan backfired, and Hitler maneuvered Nuremberg trials used Hall’s writings, his way into the chancellorship.) and those of Eugenics contributors, as Hugenberg’s behavior is typical of élit- palliatives for Nazi atrocities. ist politicians in a world of mass pol- Roger R. Rideout itics. Convincing the public to support Norman, Okla. policies that primarily benefit the wealthy is an uphill struggle. The al- Ross’s account of Hitler’s rise to power ternative is appealing to voters’ bigotry, ascribes particular importance to his populist nationalism, and irrational fear. skill as an orator. Paraphrasing Peter This has been the strategy of the Re- Longerich’s book “Hitler: Biographie,” publican Party for the past fifty years. Ross writes, “Even those who found Trump has flirted with white nation- his words repulsive were mesmerized alism during his Presidency, but so far by him.” Another relevant work is his only major legislative achievement George Steiner’s 1981 novel, “The Por- has been a tax cut for the rich. His tage to San Cristobal of A.H.” In Stein- Presidency doesn’t yet signal a victory er’s alternative history, Hitler does not for fascism but, rather, the continuing commit suicide as the war ends but success of a dangerous form of tradi- flees to a remote reach of the Amazon tional conservative politics. Trump isn’t rain forest. An Israeli Nazi-hunting a Hitler; he’s a low-rent version of Al- team is commissioned to find him, and fred Hugenberg. is warned to keep him gagged. “You Roger L. Albin must not let him speak,” their leader Ann Arbor, Mich. Any views, fi ndings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those says. “His tongue is like no other.” They of the National Endowment for the Humanities. • Georgia O’Keeffe, Hibiscus with Plumeria (detail), 1939, Oil on silence him until, in the last section of canvas, 40 x 30 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Sam Rose and Julie Walters, 2004.30.6 © 2018 Georgia the novel, they put him on trial in the Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York jungle. When they remove his gag, he address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to delivers a speech that they find irresist- [email protected]. Letters may be edited LOCATED IN BRONX, NY, 20 MINUTES for length and clarity, and may be published in FROM GRAND CENTRAL ON METRO-NORTH ibly compelling. (The novel ends be- any medium. We regret that owing to the volume TICKETS AT NYBG.ORG fore the trial’s verdict is announced.) A of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 3 If your advanced non–small cell lung cancer has high levels of PD-L1, KEYTRUDA could be used alone as your ﬁ rst treatment.

“LAST YEAR, I WASN'T SURE I'D SEE MY SON'S GRADUATION. THANKFULLY, I WAS WRONG.” -ROGER

KEYTRUDA will not work for everyone. Results may vary.

KEYTRUDA is used to treat a kind of lung cancer called non–small cell lung cancer 71% of patients treated with KEYTRUDA (NSCLC). KEYTRUDA may be used alone as were alive at the time of patient your ﬁ rst treatment option when your lung follow-up, compared to 58% treated with cancer has spread (advanced NSCLC) and chemotherapy that contains platinum. tests positive for “PD-L1” and your tumor does not have an abnormal “EGFR” or “ALK” gene.

PD-L1 = programmed death ligand 1; EGFR = epidermal growth factor receptor; ALK = anaplastic lymphoma kinase.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION Call or see your doctor right away if you develop any • Kidney problems, including nephritis and kidney failure. symptoms of the following problems or these symptoms Signs of kidney problems may include change in the amount or get worse: color of your urine. • Lung problems (pneumonitis). Symptoms of pneumonitis may • Skin problems. Signs of skin problems may include rash, itching, include shortness of breath, chest pain, or new or worse cough. blisters, peeling or skin sores, or painful sores or ulcers in your mouth • Intestinal problems (colitis) that can lead to tears or holes or in your nose, throat, or genital area. in your intestine. Signs and symptoms of colitis may include diarrhea • Problems in other organs. Signs of these problems may or more bowel movements than usual; stools that are black, tarry, include changes in eyesight, severe or persistent muscle or joint sticky, or have blood or mucus; or severe stomach-area (abdomen) pains, severe muscle weakness, or low red blood cells (anemia), pain or tenderness. shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat, feeling tired, or chest pain • Liver problems (hepatitis). Signs and symptoms of hepatitis (myocarditis). may include yellowing of your skin or the whites of your eyes, • Infusion (IV) reactions that can sometimes be severe and nausea or vomiting, pain on the right side of your stomach area life-threatening. Signs and symptoms of infusion reactions may (abdomen), dark urine, feeling less hungry than usual, or include chills or shaking, shortness of breath or wheezing, itching bleeding or bruising more easily than normal. or rash, l ushing, dizziness, fever, or feeling like passing out. • Hormone gland problems (especially the thyroid, pituitary, • Rejection of a transplanted organ. People who have had an organ adrenal glands, and pancreas). Signs and symptoms that your transplant may have an increased risk of organ transplant rejection if hormone glands are not working properly may include rapid heartbeat, they are treated with KEYTRUDA. weight loss or weight gain, increased sweating, feeling more hungry Getting medical treatment right away may help keep these or thirsty, urinating more often than usual, hair loss, feeling cold, problems from becoming more serious. Your doctor will check you constipation, your voice gets deeper, muscle aches, dizziness or for these problems during treatment with KEYTRUDA. Your doctor may fainting, or headaches that will not go away or unusual headache. treat you with corticosteroid or hormone replacement medicines.

Important Safety Information is continued on the next page. IT’S TRU.

Learn more at keytruda.com

Roger is a real patient.

The clinical trial compared patients with advanced KEYTRUDA is a type of treatment called NSCLC who received KEYTRUDA (154 patients) immunotherapy that may treat certain with those who received chemotherapy (151 patients). cancers by working with your immune All patients in the trial tested positive for the system. KEYTRUDA can cause your biomarker PD-L1 at a level of 50% or more and had no previous drug treatment for their advanced immune system to attack normal organs non–small cell lung cancer. Patients with an abnormal and tissues in any area of your body and EGFR or ALK gene were not included in this trial. can a ect the way they work. These problems can sometimes become serious or life-threatening and can lead to death.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION (continued) Your doctor may also need to delay or completely stop treatment breastfeed during treatment with KEYTRUDA and for 4 months with KEYTRUDA if you have severe side effects. after your nal dose of KEYTRUDA. Before you receive KEYTRUDA, tell your doctor if you Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including have immune system problems such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and colitis, or lupus; have had an organ transplant; have lung or herbal supplements. breathing problems; have liver problems; or have any other medical Common side effects of KEYTRUDA include feeling tired; pain in problems. If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant, tell your muscles, bones, or joints; decreased appetite; itching; diarrhea; doctor. KEYTRUDA can harm your unborn baby. Females who are able nausea; rash; fever; cough; shortness of breath; and constipation. to become pregnant should use an effective method of birth control during treatment and for at least 4 months after the nal dose of These are not all the possible side effects of KEYTRUDA. Tell KEYTRUDA. Tell your doctor right away if you become pregnant during your doctor if you have any side effect that bothers you or that treatment with KEYTRUDA. does not go away. For more information, ask your doctor or pharmacist. If you are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed, tell your doctor. It is not known if KEYTRUDA passes into your breast milk. Do not Please read the adjacent Medication Guide for KEYTRUDA and discuss it with your oncologist.

KEYTRUDA has more FDA-approved uses for advanced lung cancer than any other immunotherapy.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs Having trouble paying for your Merck medicine? to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088. Merck may be able to help. www.merckhelps.com

Copyright © 2018 Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc. All rights reserved. ONCO-1247229-0004 04/18 keytruda.com MEDICATION GUIDE KEYTRUDA® (key-true-duh) KEYTRUDA® (key-true-duh) (pembrolizumab) for injection (pembrolizumab) injection What is the most important information I should know about KEYTRUDA? KEYTRUDA is a medicine that may treat certain cancers by working with your immune system. KEYTRUDA can cause your immune system to attack normal organs and tissues in any area of your body and can affect the way they work. These problems can sometimes become serious or life-threatening and can lead to death. Call or see your doctor right away if you develop any symptoms of the following problems or these symptoms get worse: Lung problems (pneumonitis). Symptoms of pneumonitis may include: • shortness of breath • chest pain • new or worse cough Intestinal problems (colitis) that can lead to tears or holes in your intestine. Signs and symptoms of colitis may include: • diarrhea or more bowel • stools that are black, tarry, sticky, • severe stomach-area (abdomen) pain movements than usual or have blood or mucus or tenderness Liver problems (hepatitis). Signs and symptoms of hepatitis may include: • yellowing of your skin or • nausea or vomiting • pain on the right side of your • dark urine • bleeding or bruising the whites of your eyes stomach area (abdomen) • feeling less hungry than usual more easily than normal Hormone gland problems (especially the thyroid, pituitary, adrenal glands, and pancreas). Signs and symptoms that your hormone glands are not working properly may include: • rapid heart beat • feeling more hungry or thirsty • feeling cold • muscle aches • weight loss or weight gain • urinating more often than usual • constipation • dizziness or fainting • increased sweating • hair loss • your voice gets deeper • headaches that will not go away or unusual headache Kidney problems, including nephritis and kidney failure. Signs of kidney problems may include: • change in the amount or color of your urine Skin problems. Signs of skin problems may include: • rash • itching • blisters, peeling or skin sores • painful sores or ulcers in your mouth or in your nose, throat, or genital area Problems in other organs. Signs of these problems may include: • changes in eyesight • severe or persistent • severe muscle weakness • shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat, muscle or joint pains • low red blood cells (anemia) feeling tired, or chest pain (myocarditis) Infusion (IV) reactions, that can sometimes be severe and life-threatening. Signs and symptoms of infusion reactions may include: • chills or shaking • itching or rash • dizziness • feeling like passing out • shortness of breath or wheezing • lushing • fever Rejection of a transplanted organ. People who have had an organ transplant may have an increased risk of organ transplant rejection if they are treated with KEYTRUDA. Your doctor should tell you what signs and symptoms you should report and monitor you, depending on the type of organ transplant that you have had. Complications of stem cell transplantation that uses donor stem cells (allogeneic) after treatment with KEYTRUDA. These complications can be severe and can lead to death. Your doctor will monitor you for signs of complications if you are an allogeneic stem cell transplant recipient. Getting medical treatment right away may help keep these problems from becoming more serious. Your doctor will check you for these problems during treatment with KEYTRUDA. Your doctor may treat you with corticosteroid or hormone replacement medicines. Your doctor may also need to delay or completely stop treatment with KEYTRUDA, if you have severe side effects. What is KEYTRUDA? KEYTRUDA is a prescription medicine used to treat: • a kind of skin cancer called melanoma that has spread or cannot be removed by surgery (advanced melanoma). • a kind of lung cancer called non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). • KEYTRUDA may be used alone when your lung cancer: has spread (advanced NSCLC) and, tests positive for “PD-L1” and, • as your rst treatment if you have not received chemotherapy to treat your advanced NSCLC and your tumor does not have an abnormal “EGFR” or “ALK” gene, or • you have received chemotherapy that contains platinum to treat your advanced NSCLC, and it did not work or it is no longer working, and • if your tumor has an abnormal “EGFR” or “ALK” gene, you have also received an EGFR or ALK inhibitor medicine and it did not work or is no longer working. • KEYTRUDA may be used with the chemotherapy medicines pemetrexed and carboplatin as your rst treatment when your lung cancer: has spread (advanced NSCLC) and is a type of lung cancer called “nonsquamous”. • a kind of cancer called head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) that: has returned or spread and you have received chemotherapy that contains platinum and it did not work or is no longer working. • a kind of cancer called classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) in adults and children when: you have tried a treatment and it did not work or your cHL has returned after you received 3 or more types of treatment. PD-L1 = programmed death ligand 1; EGFR = epidermal growth factor receptor; ALK = anaplastic lymphoma kinase; HER2/neu = human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. • a kind of bladder and urinary tract cancer called urothelial carcinoma. KEYTRUDA may be used when your bladder or urinary tract cancer: has spread or cannot be removed by surgery (advanced urothelial cancer) and, you are not able to receive chemotherapy that contains a medicine called cisplatin, or you have received chemotherapy that contains platinum, and it did not work or is no longer working. • a kind of cancer that is shown by a laboratory test to be a microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) or a mismatch repair decient (dMMR) solid tumor. KEYTRUDA may be used in adults and children to treat: cancer that has spread or cannot be removed by surgery (advanced cancer), and has progressed following treatment, and you have no satisfactory treatment options, or you have colon or rectal cancer, and you have received chemotherapy with luoropyrimidine, oxaliplatin, and irinotecan but it did not work or is no longer working. It is not known if KEYTRUDA is safe and effective in children with MSI-H cancers of the brain or spinal cord (central nervous system cancers). • a kind of stomach cancer called gastric or gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) adenocarcinoma that tests positive for “PD-L1.” KEYTRUDA may be used when your stomach cancer: has returned or spread (advanced gastric cancer), and you have received 2 or more types of chemotherapy including luoropyrimidine and chemotherapy that contains platinum, and it did not work or is no longer working, and if your tumor has an abnormal “HER2/neu” gene, you also received a HER2/neu-targeted medicine and it did not work or is no longer working. What should I tell my doctor before receiving KEYTRUDA? Before you receive KEYTRUDA, tell your doctor if you: • have immune system problems such • are pregnant or plan to become pregnant • are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, KEYTRUDA can harm your unborn baby. It is not known if KEYTRUDA passes or lupus Females who are able to become pregnant should into your breast milk. • have had an organ transplant use an effective method of birth control during Do not breastfeed during treatment and for at least 4 months after the nal dose of with KEYTRUDA and for 4 months • have lung or breathing problems KEYTRUDA. Talk to your doctor about birth control after your nal dose of KEYTRUDA. • have liver problems methods that you can use during this time. • have any other medical problems Tell your doctor right away if you become pregnant during treatment with KEYTRUDA. Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Know the medicines you take. Keep a list of them to show your doctor and pharmacist when you get a new medicine. How will I receive KEYTRUDA? • Your doctor will give you KEYTRUDA into your vein through an • Your doctor will do blood tests to check you for side effects. intravenous (IV) line over 30 minutes. • If you miss any appointments, call your doctor as soon as possible to • KEYTRUDA is usually given every 3 weeks. reschedule your appointment. • Your doctor will decide how many treatments you need. What are the possible side effects of KEYTRUDA? KEYTRUDA can cause serious side effects. See “What is the most important information I should know about KEYTRUDA?” Common side effects of KEYTRUDA when used alone include: feeling tired, pain in muscles, bones or joints, decreased appetite, itching, diarrhea, nausea, rash, fever, cough, shortness of breath, and constipation. In children, feeling tired, vomiting and stomach-area (abdominal) pain, and increased levels of liver enzymes and decreased levels of salt (sodium) in the blood are more common than in adults. These are not all the possible side effects of KEYTRUDA. For more information, ask your doctor or pharmacist. Tell your doctor if you have any side effect that bothers you or that does not go away. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088. General information about the safe and effective use of KEYTRUDA Medicines are sometimes prescribed for purposes other than those listed in a Medication Guide. If you would like more information about KEYTRUDA, talk with your doctor. You can ask your doctor or nurse for information about KEYTRUDA that is written for healthcare professionals. For more information, go to www.keytruda.com. What are the ingredients in KEYTRUDA? Active ingredient: pembrolizumab Inactive ingredients: KEYTRUDA for injection: L-histidine, polysorbate 80, and sucrose. May contain hydrochloric acid/sodium hydroxide. KEYTRUDA injection: L-histidine, polysorbate 80, sucrose, and Water for Injection, USP. Manufactured by: Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of MERCK & CO., INC., Whitehouse Station, NJ 08889, USA For KEYTRUDA for injection, at: MSD International GmbH, County Cork, Ireland For KEYTRUDA injection, at: MSD Ireland (Carlow), County Carlow, Ireland U.S. License No. 0002 For patent information: www.merck.com/product/patent/home.html usmg-mk3475-iv-1709r012 Revised: September 2017 ------This Medication Guide has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Copyright © 2014-2018 Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc. All rights reserved. ONCO-1247229-0004 04/18 THE TYRANNY OF METRICS Jerry Z. Muller CHANGING THE “Jerry Muller has brought to life the many ways in which numerical evaluations result in deleterious CONVERSATIONS performance: in our schools, our universities, our hospitals, our military, and our businesses. THAT CHANGE This book addresses a major problem.” — George A. Akerlof, THE WORLD Nobel Prize–winning economist

CÉZANNE PORTRAITS John Elderfield “ An impressive and important volume. Superbly written.” — Matthew Simms, author of Cézanne’s Watercolors Published in association with the National Portrait Gallery, London

A HISTORY OF JUDAISM Martin Goodman “Taking in three millennia of religious thought and practice, Goodman’s scholarship is formidable.” —Daniel Beer, The Guardian

GOREY’S WORLDS Erin Monroe Featuring a sumptuous selection of Gorey’s creations alongside his fascinating and diverse collections, Gorey’s Worlds reveals the private world that inspired one of the most idiosyncratic artists of the twentieth century. Published in association with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

THE FATE OF ROME Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire Kyle Harper “Original and ambitious. . . . [Harper] provides a panoramic sweep of the late Roman Empire as interpreted by one historian’s incisive, intriguing, inquiring mind.” —James Romm, Wall Street Journal SUMMER PREVIEW

MAY 16 – 22, 2018 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

It’s impossible to take your eyes of the performance artist Erin Markey, who matches sirenlike self- possession with of-the-wall non-sequitur humor. Imagine Tilda Swinton crossed with Yogi Berra, but weirder. In “Singlet” (at the Bushwick Starr, May 16-June 3), Markey draws on everything from Jean Genet’s 1947 play “The Maids” to downloadable couples counselling and Olympic weight lifting to explore “the erotic undertones of a friendship,” in a piece featuring Markey and Emily Davis (above, back to front).

PHOTOGRAPH BY PARI DUKOVIC SUMMER PREVIEW American Ballet Theatre All but one of the season’s eight weeks feature a diferent evening-length story ballet. The Ro- DANCE mantic “Giselle”—the tale of a young woman who is betrayed, dies, and returns as a spirit—is up irst, performed by seven casts. On May 18, David Hallberg and Natalia Osipova will reunite for a single performance. (Many will remember their irst “Giselle” here, in 2012; the roof practically came of.) But the other casts also have much to ofer. Stella Abrera, a delicate and naturalistic actress, dances with the handsome and noble Cory Stearns on May 17; Misty Copeland is paired with Herman Cornejo on May 15. On May 21, the company holds its spring gala, at which it will unveil a new work by Wayne Mc- Gregor (“Afterite”), a pièce d’occasion by the tap dancer Michelle Dorrance, and excerpts from Alexei Ratmansky’s new reconstruction of Pe- tipa’s 1900 commedia-dell’arte ballet, “Harlequi- nade.” • May 14-15 and May 17-18 at 7:30, May 16 at 2 and 7:30, and May 19 at 2 and 8: “Giselle.” • May 21 at 6:30 (spring gala): “Harlequinade” excerpts, pièce d’occasion by Michelle Dorrance, and “Afterite.” • May 22 at 7:30: “Firebird” and “Afterite.” (Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center. 212-477-3030. Through July 7.)

New York City Ballet The season includes works by Rennie Harris, Alexei Ratmansky, and Lucinda Childs. This is the last week of the “Robbins 100" retrospective, a rare chance to see the Jerome Robbins pieces “Dybbuk” and “Les Noces.” Both ballets There is no more joyous celebration of The dance-rich Lincoln Center Fes- reference folk traditions—Jewish and Russian, summer in the city than “Midsummer tival is no more, alas, but some of the slack respectively—a subject close to Robbins’s heart. “Dybbuk” is his take on S. Ansky’s play about Night Swing” ( June 26-July 14), a series is being picked up by the newly expanded a malevolent male spirit who inhabits the body of social-dance evenings with live music Mostly Mozart Festival ( July 12-Aug. 12). of his beloved, promised to another man; the held in Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park. Despite its name, none of the dance ofer- music is by Leonard Bernstein, whose cente- nary is also this year. “Les Noces,” which is set These open-air soirées bring out lovebirds ings—Lucinda Childs’s “Available Light” to Stravinsky’s thrilling orchestral-and-choral of all generations, the clumsy but enthu- and a program by Mark Morris Dance work of the same name, depicts a Russian folk siastic, and, best of all, dapper, highly Group—are set to Mozart. But no mat- wedding—a heavy, unjoyful afair that stresses the oppressive weight of ritual. • May 16 at 7:30: proﬁcient devotees (often of a certain age) ter. The Childs is a study in cool mini- “The Goldberg Variations” and “Les Noces.” • who come to strut their stuf. Every eve- malism, arranged above and below a two- May 17 at 7:30: “Interplay,” “In the Night,” “The ning features a diferent style, from big- tiered set designed by Frank Gehry, with Cage,” “Other Dances,” and “Fanfare.” • May 18-19 at 8: “Opus 19/The Dreamer,” “Dances at band swing (on June 30) to Indian folk shimmering musical accompaniment by a Gathering,” and “Glass Pieces.” • May 19 at 2: dance ( July 3) to the Lindy Hop ( July 11). John Adams. The M.M.D.G. program “In G Major,” “Afternoon of a Faun,” “Antique In “Funkediﬁed,” the hip-hop cho- includes a Morris première, which tack- Epigraphs,” and “The Concert.” • May 20 at 3: “Dybbuk,” “Fancy Free,” and “West Side Story reographer Rennie Harris pays tribute les one of the most beloved scores in the Suite.” • May 22 at 7:30: “Dance Odyssey,” “Pic- to the dance parties of his nineteen- chamber-music repertory, Schubert’s tures at an Exhibition,” and “Year of the Rab- seventies Philadelphia youth and their alpine-themed “Trout” quintet. bit.” (David H. Koch, Lincoln Center. 212-721- 6500. Through June 3.) funk-music soundtrack, a bass-and- With its idyllic setting in the Berk- downbeat-heavy mix of James Brown, shires, the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana Parliament-Funkadelic, and Dennis ( June 20-Aug. 26) is a good excuse to To create the centerpiece of its thirty-ifth- anniversary season, this stalwart local troupe has Cofey. The show (at the New Victory, get out of town. This summer’s edition hired Belén Maya, a long-established innovator June 1-10) is part autobiography, part includes appearances by the tap inno- with a Gypsy pedigree. Her new piece “Mujeres cultural history. But it’s the dancing, and vator Michelle Dorrance (“Myelination” Valientes” celebrates deiant Latin-American women—in particular, the seventeenth-century its deep, playful connection to the music, and a première), the French hip-hop poet-philosopher Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and that really gets under your skin. ensemble Cie Art Move Concept, and the nineteenth-century revolutionary Manuela The latest project by Alexei Ratman- a rare and welcome visit by a group of Sáenz. Also on the program are two younger Spaniards: the hunky, virtuosic José Maldo- sky, American Ballet Theatre’s choreog- dancers from the Royal Danish Ballet, nado and the passionate Guadalupe Torres. A rapher-in-residence, is a reconstruction who will present excerpts of works ive-member band accompanies. (BAM Fisher, 321 of Marius Petipa’s comic 1900 ballet “Har- by the Danish choreographer August Ashland Pl., Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. May 15-20.) lequinade” (at the Metropolitan Opera Bournonville (“Napoli,” “A Folktale,” Parsons Dance House, June 4-9), based on a mountain of “La Sylphide”), lovingly preserved in Enthusiastic, athletic, and eager to please, the archival sources, leavened by his own fan- the company’s buoyant, sunny mid- company of David Parsons returns to the Joyce with a few premières. One is “Microburst,” cre- ciful imagination. The costumes, by Rob- nineteenth-century style. ated by Parsons in collaboration with the tabla —Marina Harss ert Perdziola, are as delicious as the steps. player Avirodh Sharma, who contributes live PETRA ERIKSSON BY ILLUSTRATION

10 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 SWITCH OFF as soon as they switch on

EMIRATES ECONOMY

Because “Are we there yet?” gets old fast, we oﬀ er over 90 channels of kids programming, including the latest movies and TV shows, Disney classics, plus loads of games. You might even watch some yourself. Learn more at emirates.com/us More to do, more to enjoy DANCE classical Indian rhythmic complexity. Another is “Relections,” a solo that Parsons has made with the longtime company member Abby Silva Gavezzoli, who performs it as a farewell to the troupe. (175 Eighth Ave., at 19th St. 212-242-0800. May 15-20 and May 22. Through May 27.)

Basil Twist / “Symphonie Fantastique” This musical puppet extravaganza premièred twenty years ago. To Berlioz’s fantastical score, Twist creates a world out of bits of fabric, plastic, and tinsel, all of which move in mesmerizing slow motion inside a giant tank of water, resulting in a kind of magical mystery realm. The music, in a piano arrangement by Franz Liszt, is played live by Christopher O’Riley. Not to be missed. (HERE, 145 Sixth Ave., near Spring St. 866-811- 4111. May 15-20 and May 22. Through June 17.)

Milka Djordjevich Djordjevich is fond of the slow build, and is often good at it. In her structurally intricate but phys- ically rough-edged “Anthem,” four women move through evolving repetitions in a hybrid of folk dance, social dance, and postmodern pedestrian tasks. The work takes place within a boundary of four equal sides, but it isn’t itself totally square. It picks up some attitude and sexual charge from the distortion and drive in Chris Peck’s score. (The Chocolate Factory, 5-49 49th Ave., Long Island City. 866-811-4111. May 16-19. Through May 26.)

Full Circle Souljahs Ana Garcia, a.k.a. Rokafella, and Gabriel (Kwik- step) Dionisio have been presenting hip-hop theatre for more than twenty years, and the premise BEST ORIGINAL SCORE of their new show, “Boxed In,” is an old-school chestnut. It’s a demonstration (for those who KRISTEN ANDERSONLOPEZ AND ROBERT LOPEZ still need one) that hip-hop, ballet, and classical music aren’t mutually exclusive. Dancers, a TONY AWARD, OUTER CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD NOMINEES d.j. (Dionisio), a pianist (Michael Bond), and a beatboxer (Gene Shinozaki) all try to break out of the preconceived boundaries that might be seen to limit their chosen forms and themselves. BEST BOOK (Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, Second Ave. at 10th St. 866-811-4111. May 17-19.) JENNIFER LEE TONY AWARD NOMINEE La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival The second week of the festival opens with a miscellaneous program shared by the veteran choreographer-performers Parijat Desai, BEST ACTRESS Angie Pittman, and Paz Tanjuaquio. Then comes “Obeah,” by the rising dancemaker Jonathan PATTI MURIN González. A cross between a solo for the self- possessed dancer Katrina Reid, a duet for her and OUTER CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, DRAMA LEAGUE AWARD NOMINEE the sound artist Rena Anakwe, and an immersive social gathering amid plants, the work draws upon Afro-Caribbean folklore and sorcery but has its eye on the present and the future. (La Mama, 74A BEST ACTOR E. 4th St. 800-838-3006. May 17-20. Through June 3.) JELANI ALLADIN Andrea Miller/Gallim DRAMA DESK AWARD, DRAMA LEAGUE AWARD NOMINEE For her second work as artist-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Miller responds to the exhibition “Like Life: Sculpture, Color and the Body.” While that show collects repre- BEST PROJECTION DESIGN sentations of bodies through the ages, Miller works with the living bodies of dancers, usually FINN ROSS in a sweaty, intentionally awkward style that’s meant to seem organic but frequently comes of OUTER CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD NOMINEE as mannered. For “(C)arbon,” created with the ilmmaker Ben Stamper, Miller’s subject is the body, in its cycles from dust to dust. Three diferent pieces in three diferent gallery spaces repeat BEST PUPPET DESIGN in ninety-minute loops during museum hours. (Met Breuer, 945 Madison Ave., at 75th St. 212-731- MICHAEL CURRY 1675. May 18-20 and May 22. Through May 24.) DRAMA DESK AWARD NOMINEE

12 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018

SUMMER PREVIEW

ART

tures are accompanied by drawings, photographs, and archival material. (Opens July 22.) But the big news at MOMA this summer is the retrospective of Bodys Isek Kingelez, the Congolese sculptor who died in 2015, at the age of sixty-seven. Kingelez was working as a museum conservator in Kinshasha when he began to construct intricate, candy-colored models of fantasy buildings—and, later, cities—out of paper, soda cans, bottle caps, packaging, and plastic. His hope, according to the show’s curator, Sarah Suzuki, was to inspire people to imagine “a more har- monious, peaceful, beautiful, lively world.” (Opens May 26.) Bill Cunningham, the beloved style photographer for the Times, who died in 2016, was just as captivated by a chic person shopping for vegetables at the Union Square greenmarket as he was by a society swan in haute couture at a gala. The New-York Historical Society celebrates his long career in a show that includes hats from his days as a milliner (under the moniker William J), selections from the series “Façades” (devoted to the city’s architecture), pictures doc- umenting his long friendship with the floral designer Suzette, and such mem- orabilia as a bicycle, a camera, and Cun- ningham’s signature blue French work- man’s jacket. (Opens June 8.) New York inspired both a ferocious Shows by Bodys Isek Kingelez, David Wojnarowicz, Brancusi, and Giacometti are upcoming. beauty and an urgent activism in the paintings, photographs, films, writings, In 1955, the Guggenheim held the first- and seventy-five sculptures, paintings, and performances of David Wojnaro- ever museum exhibition of the Swiss and drawings by Giacometti will once wicz, the subject of the retrospective artist Alberto Giacometti, installed in again grace the museum’s rotunda. “History Keeps Me Awake at Night,” a temporary location while its Frank (Opens June 8.) at the Whitney. The New Jersey native Lloyd Wright building was under con- A smaller, but still vital, exhibition died in 1992, at the age of thirty-seven, struction. Nineteen years later, it at MOMA spotlights the great Roma- a casualty of the AIDS epidemic; the mounted a posthumous, full-dress ret- nian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, who country’s denial of the crisis fuelled his rospective of the painter and sculptor, was twenty-five years older than Gia- passionate art. After he was rejected by then recognized as a titan of mod- cometti and a strong influence on his from an exhibition for being too polit- ernism, both for his early, brutal Sur- development. Indeed, it’s impossible ical, Wojnarowicz wrote, “I’m in the realist works and, especially, for his later to imagine the course of art in the throes of facing my own mortality and attenuated figures in plaster and bronze, twentieth century without Brancusi’s in attempting to communicate what works of such bare-bones intensity that vision, in which the known world— I’m expressing or learning in order to his friend Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote fish, birds, a newborn baby—is com- try and help others I am efectively si- that “to sculpt, for him, is to take the pressed to its essence in objects of lenced. I am angry.” (Opens July 13.) —Andrea K. Scott fat of space.” This summer, a hundred stone, brass, and wood. Eleven sculp- PETRA ERIKSSON BY ILLUSTRATION

14 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 1 1ART MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES GALLERIES—UPTOWN modes and meanings, if you think about them. But thinking is no cinch when you’re rocked Museum of Modern Art Anne Collier with wonderment. Through June 16. (Marks, 522 “Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, At the entrance to this wistful and intelligent W. 22nd St. 212-243-0200.) 1965-2016” show, a Benday-dot ield of yellow and red is This expansive and invaluable retrospective of disrupted by a pendulous blob of white. It’s a 1 the American Conceptualist occupies the mu- photograph—a cropped closeup of a cartoon tear GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN seum’s entire sixth loor—still not enough space rolling down a cheek, one of a series of eleven to contain her media-spanning works, which on view. If you’re familiar with Collier’s cool, Ivy Haldeman / Douglas Rieger confront and engage in equal measure, illumi- post-Pictures Generation brand of Conceptu- Two exciting newcomers, both in their early nating issues of race, gender, and power with alism, you might assume that the image zooms thirties, are united by an exhibition title lifted insistent complexity. In short, Piper has ex- in on a reproduction of a Roy Lichtenstein from a young poet (“This Liquid Life,” by Dan- panded the very deinition of political art, mak- painting. But Collier isn’t appropriating a pa- iel Feinberg) and a voracious taste for the weird. ing this retrospective feel superbly acute. In the triarch’s art to make her own work, as Sherrie Rieger, a sculptor who clearly worships at the earliest works on view, she experimented with Levine did when she rephotographed Walker altar of the great, category-defying H. C. Wes- LSD-inspired iguration and systems-based art, Evans. Instead, she bypasses the man and goes termann, combines carved-and-polished wood but her performances of 1970 marked a turn- straight to the source, shooting the same kind with hot-pink silicone in freestanding and ta- ing point, as she began testing the bounds of of vintage romance comics on which Lichten- bletop funkfests that invite anthropomorphic social acceptability by riding public transport stein based his paintings. Still, Collier’s im- associations. Haldeman, a painter who mines in clothes reeking of vinegar, for example, or pulse is similar in spirit to Levine’s project, as the same richly informed vein of iguration as with a towel stufed in her mouth. Documenta- she casts a slyly feminist eye on clichés about Emily Mae Smith—whip-smart, but also smart- tion of these and other actions spawned related, emotional women. Through May 19. (Kern, 16 alecky—has yet to exhaust her unlikely muse, performance-based pieces, in which the artist E. 55th St. 212-367-9663.) an ultra-feminine hot dog, rendered in a coyly captioned photos of herself with thought bub- restricted palette of orange-red, mustard yel- bles to reveal unspoken truths, whether about 1 low, and bun beige. Cracking wise about gen- the racist dynamics of interpersonal interactions GALLERIES—CHELSEA der and bodies—consider that the skin of a hot or American disregard for Cambodian refu- dog is an intestine—Haldeman’s seriously silly gees. Piper’s art can be concurrently playful and Jane Freilicher pictures are, above all, about the process of pro- angry, propelled by her dynamic triangulation Lyrical interiors and cityscapes, painted in the ducing a painting—seeing how the sausage gets of personal material, mass-media imagery, and nineteen-ifties by this beloved New York art- made. Through June 17. (Anrather, 28 Elizabeth St. direct-address performance and text. To enter ist, who died at the age of ninety in 2014, are a 212-587-9674.) “The Humming Room,” conceived in 2012, visi- balm for the eyes. “Early New York Evening,” tors must hum a tune of their choice as they ap- made in 1954, frames a vista of reddish-brown Jerry the Marble Faun proach the guard posted at the entrance. Once apartment buildings between a vase of irises in The scent of lowers and cool earth greets visitors inside, they’re instructed to imagine what it was the foreground and four distant smokestacks at the entrance to this enchanting show, in which like to be Trayvon Martin as they view a small in a violet sky. In an interior painted the same weathered sculptures, the size of small boulders, print of his face in the crosshairs of gun, copies year, the threshold between a living room and a rest on the loor. The Queens-based artist was of which are free for the taking. Through July 22. bedroom becomes an adventure of yellow high- christened “the Marble Faun” by Edith (Little lights and lavender shadows. The show’s grace- Edie) Bouvier Beale when he was a handyman Jewish Museum ful mood is so seductive that you might over- at the tumbledown Grey Gardens mansion, in “Chaim Soutine: Flesh” look how daringly improvisational a painter the nineteen-seventies; he took the nickname The centerpiece of this small, potent, and Freilicher really was. Through June 9. (Kasmin, as a sign to pursue art. In 1987, he began hand- timely retrospective of the Russian-French 293 Tenth Ave., at 27th St. 212-563-4474.) carving dragonlike creatures and otherworldly painter, elegantly curated by Stephen Brown, abstractions inspired by gargoyles, sarcophagi, is “Carcass of Beef,” made circa 1925. (The pic- Mernet Larsen and classical sculptures. Here, three ornate, rect- ture is on loan from the Albright-Knox Art Gal- Heads become cubes and torsos are blocks with angular lion heads, chiselled from rose-hued lery, in Bufalo.) Painted in reds and blues as razor-sharp edges in Larsen’s large acrylic paint- limestone, share space with the ancient-looking luminous as those of Gothic stained glass, it ings. It’s a trick—marrying abstract planes of “Spirit,” from 2016, which evokes Mesoameri- crackles with formal improvisations (one swift color to intensely observed iguration—that the can iconography. A regal horse’s face, muzzle white line rescues a large blue zone from in- Queens-based painter perfected decades ago. to brow, has a special signiicance. The sculptor coherence) and wild emotion. It’s an event— What’s new in this terriic show, titled “Situa- says the piece, now installed in the ad-hoc gar- an emergence, an emergency—that transpires tion Rooms,” is the complexity of her compo- den in the gallery’s window, may someday serve ceaselessly while you look. Clement Green- sitions. Men and women (diferentiated from as his headstone. Through June 3. (Situations, 127 berg, in 1951, adjudged Soutine’s work “exotic” their colleagues by absurdly raised blips on their Henry St. situations.us.) and “futile,” owing to its lack of “reassuring chests) sit at a series of tables in postures that unity” and “decorative ordering.” But today the sometimes defy gravity. In “Cabinet Meeting Laurie Simmons painter feels of the moment, amid quite enough (with Cofee),” twenty-three black-clad strat- In a departure from the aloof images for which reassurance and decorativeness in recent art. egists are seen ringing a table in a disorient- she’s best known—exquisitely staged, strangely Soutine was once cited as a major forebear of ing, ish-eye perspective, their bodies ranging poignant scenes starring dummies, dolls, or Abstract Expressionism; Willem de Kooning from fantastically small to impossibly large, as doll-like models—the American photographer called him his favorite painter and also made a if to dramatize anxiety’s perception-skewing ef- shoots her friends and family. But that doesn’t remark that applies not only to the likes of Ti- fects. Through June 16. (Cohan, 533 W. 26th St. mean she’s dispensed with artiice: she portrays tian, whom he probably had in mind, but also 212-714-9500.) her daughters, Grace and Lena Dunham, as Ru- very neatly to Soutine’s meat pictures: “Flesh dolph Valentino and Audrey Hepburn, respec- is the reason oil paint was invented.” Green- Charles Ray tively. Clad in trompe-l’oeil body paint instead berg, while maintaining his authoritative dis- Five new sculptures labbergast in exquisitely of clothing, they appear at once protected and missal of Soutine, had to begrudge that “one machined solid metal, almost realist but sub- exposed. The vibrant palettes of these striking has to go back to Rembrandt to ind anything tly abstracted. They include a stainless-steel, prints are mirrored in the panoramic photo- to which his touch can be likened.” (That’s spot larger than life-size, middle-aged nude, stoi- graph facing them—a twenty-foot-wide mural on. Like Rembrandt’s, Soutine’s brushstrokes cally posed like a pinup (her obviously near- of household plastics, from squeeze bottles to can feel sensate, as if talking back to the painter sighted gaze makes us less shy about staring); ice-cube trays, arranged by color. Drone footage with ideas of their own.) But being favored by an aluminum copy of the ancient Greek “Great of this rainbowscape plays in the gallery win- fashion incurred a cost when Pop and Mini- Eleusinian Relief,” which is owned by the Met; dow, its alien topography recalling the tableaux malism conquered the art world, in the early a silver mountain lion savaging a silver dog; and of miniatures from early in Simmons’s career, sixties. Ever since, the painter has occupied a two stainless-steel, ilmily white-painted garage with their illusion of scale and uncanny depic- blind spot in contemporary tastes. That should mechanics at work. Collectively, they efectively tions of domesticity. Through June 2. (Salon 94 end now. Through Sept. 16. condense two and a half millennia of sculptural Bowery, 243 Bowery, at Stanton St. 212-979-0001.)

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 15 SUMMER PREVIEW

THE THEATRE

“Pretty Woman” comes to Broadway, Armie Hammer stars in “Straight White Men,” and Chukwudi Iwuji plays Othello in Central Park.

The thought of Young Jean Lee on the Park series, at the Delacorte, returns comes to Broadway in “Head Over Broadway is enough to boggle the mind. with a tragedy and a comedy. First, Ruben Heels” ( June 23, Hudson), which uses The forty-three-year-old playwright is Santiago-Hudson directs “Othello” (pre- songs by the Go-Go’s to tell a story about one of downtown’s most trenchant, least views begin May 29); the Nigerian- a kingdom trying to stop a prophecy from crowd-pleasing talents, whose stubbornly British actor Chukwudi Iwuji takes the coming true. (Spoiler: that never works.) genre-resistant work melds identity pol- title role, and Corey Stoll, who played Of Broadway, a slew of notable play- itics, Dadaist humor, and metatheatrical Brutus in last summer’s hot-button “Julius wrights return. In “Skintight,” by Joshua mind games. “Songs of the Dragons Caesar,” is Iago. Then, starting July 17, Harmon (“Significant Other”), Idina Flying to Heaven” (2006) was a self- Oskar Eustis and Kwame Kwei-Armah Menzel plays a newly divorced woman excoriating satire of Asian-American stage a musical version of “Twelfth whose father is dating a twenty-year-old stereotypes. “Untitled Feminist Show” Night,” with songs by Shaina Taub. The man (May 31, Laura Pels). Jordan Har- (2011) explored gender expression using production originated as part of the Pub- rison (“Marjorie Prime”) débuts “Log six nude actors and minimal text. lic Works series, which brings together Cabin,” featuring Jesse Tyler Ferguson, “Straight White Men,” which played at professional actors (including Nikki M. in which a conservative streak is revealed the Public Theatre in 2014, is a kind of James, as Viola) and community members within a circle of gay friends ( June 1, topsy-turvy inversion of a naturalistic from recreation centers, military-family Playwrights Horizons). In “Mary Page drama, written by someone who is nei- support groups, and other organizations. Marlowe,” by Tracy Letts (“August: ther a straight white man nor a natural- Who’s that walking down the street? Osage County”), an Ohio accountant istic playwright. Second Stage brings it Those may be the clacking heels of (played by six actresses, including Tatiana to the Helen Hayes this summer (start- “Pretty Woman” (starting July 20, at the Maslany) revisits eleven moments in her ing previews June 29), with direction by Nederlander), a musical adaptation of the life ( June 19, Second Stage). In case sum- Anna D. Shapiro and a cast that com- 1990 movie, with songs by Bryan Adams mer is getting too fun and you need a bines Broadway star power (Armie Ham- and Jim Vallance and direction and cho- downer, look no further than “The mer, Josh Charles, Tom Skerritt) with reography by Jerry Mitchell. Samantha Damned,” Ivo van Hove’s adaptation of Lee’s avant-garde milieu (the transgen- Barks, who played Éponine in the film the 1969 Luchino Visconti film, which der performance artist Kate Bornstein). version of “Les Misérables,” steps into follows a steel dynasty during the rise of Other summer fare is easier to cate- the Julia Roberts role, with Steve Kazee the Nazis ( July 17, Park Avenue Armory). —Michael Schulman gorize. The Public’s free Shakespeare in (“Once”) as her playboy. More nostalgia PETRA ERIKSSON BY ILLUSTRATION

16 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 SETTING A NEW STANDARD IN ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

A Zapotec woman wearing a crown of live iguanas is one of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide’s most iconic works. Author Isabel Quintero and illustrator Zeke Peña explore the stories and creative process behind this and other images in their acclaimed graphic biography Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide. Learn about the collaboration among Quintero, Peña, and Iturbide herself to create a book that Quintero describes as a “mash-up of an art book, biography and graphic novel” at getty.edu/world.

A World of Art, Research, Conservation, and Philanthropy. GETTY CONSERVATION INSTITUTE + GETTY FOUNDATION + GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE + J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM

Pictured: Graciela Iturbide. Text and design © 2018 J. Paul Getty Trust 1 THE THEATRE OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS icant playwright. And that’s because theatre press that self—strong, indomitable, softened is in her bones. The story concerns a small by dreams and wishes—in the language of the The Beast in the Jungle group of amateur pre-teen female dancers (and class that helps her cross over. It can seem as John Kander and David Thompson wrote this one dude) who want to win Tampa Bay’s Boo- though Harry Hadden-Paton were overplay- dance-theatre piece, directed and choreo- gie Down Grand Prix, but at great expense ing Henry Higgins’s snottiness, until you re- graphed by Susan Stroman and inspired by to themselves, and to the group. Friendships member meeting any number of people like Henry James’s 1903 novella, about a man con- are challenged, bodies are damaged, and male him, who frighten you with their chill while vinced he has a terrible destiny. (Vineyard, 108 approval is striven for as the performers, led they try to draw you in with their smarts. E. 15th St. 212-353-0303. In previews.) by their unsmiling dance teacher, Pat (the Ambrose’s Eliza, on the other hand, hurts us wonderfully cast Thomas Jay Ryan), deal with in the best possible way, when we realize too The Boys in the Band stereotypical female behavior, often without late, just as she does, that her love for Higgins Joe Mantello directs a iftieth-anniversary re- questioning it at all. The director, Lee Sunday amounts to a confusion between the construc- vival of the seminal gay drama by Mart Crow- Evans, has assembled a fabulous cast of vari- tion of speech and the true language of feel- ley, starring Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, ous ages to play the dancers, whose dreams are ing. (4/30/18) (Vivian Beaumont, 150 W. 65th Matt Bomer, and Andrew Rannells. (Booth, 222 less life-airming than life-distorting. (Play- St. 212-239-6200.) W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.) wrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200.) A Pink Chair (In Place of a Fake Antique) Dan Cody’s Yacht The Iceman Cometh The Wooster Group pays tribute to the major In Anthony Giardina’s play, directed by Doug Although there are many performers in Polish theatre artist Tadeusz Kantor, who died Hughes for Manhattan Theatre Club, a Boston George C. Wolfe’s staging of Eugene O’Neill’s in 1990, mostly by mimicking ilmed fragments schoolteacher gets an unexpected inancial pro- phenomenal 1946 four-act and nearly four- of an intriguing-looking play called “I Shall posal from a student’s father. (City Center Stage I, hour drama, there is only one actor, and his Never Return”—the penultimate production at 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. In previews.) name is Austin Butler. As Don Parritt, an Kantor created with his experimental ensemble, eighteen-year-old boy who takes up residence Cricot 2. The Polish theatre scholar Anna R. Hercules Didn’t Wade in the Water at Harry Hope’s dive bar and hotel on Man- Burzynska writes that Kantor’s “model for the The Negro Ensemble Company stages Michael A. hattan’s Lower West Side, Butler quietly con- actor was a doll, a tailor’s mannequin, and also Jones’s drama, about two couples who are sepa- veys what many of his castmates try to show a soldier, moving in a mechanized way, de- rated during Hurricane Katrina. (Theatre 80, at by shouting and grandstanding: his charac- void of expression,” so in theory the Wooster 80 St. Marks Pl. 866-811-4111. In previews. Opens ter’s inner life. It’s the summer of 1912, and Group’s stone-faced and scrupulous simula- May 18.) the barlies share a belief in the redemptive tions would seem to be an apt way to illuminate quality of fantasy—it keeps you from yourself, his work. In practice, they’re mostly a distrac- Link Link Circus whoever that may be. Hickey (Denzel Wash- tion. The performances of Kantor’s company, Isabella Rossellini, who previously explored ington), a travelling salesman, wants the men though conined to the TV screen, are nearly wildlife copulation in “Green Porno,” performs to face the truth. In his stage work, Washing- always more compelling than the live actors this one-woman show (with a dog named Pan) ton has sometimes risked letting unpleasant- onstage, with the exception of the unfailingly about scientiic breakthroughs in animal cog- ness show, but Hickey requires something both magnetic Kate Valk. (The Performing Garage, nition. (Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 W. 37th St. more and less than that—a searching, lost qual- 33 Wooster St. thewoostergroup.org.) 866-811-4111. May 16-23.) ity masquerading as a certainty that he himself can’t deine. What Washington lacks—and Summer and Smoke Our Lady of 121st Street it’s essential—is a sense of Hickey’s madness. Tennessee Williams’s 1948 play was produced a In Stephen Adly Guirgis’s 2002 play, a group (Reviewed in our issue of 5/7/18.) (Jacobs, 242 year after “A Streetcar Named Desire” opened of former classmates reunite at a funeral home W. 45th St. 212-239-6200.) on Broadway and took the world by storm, and to honor their late teacher, only to ind that her it is a quieter play than the one that showcased body has been stolen. Phylicia Rashad directs. Light Shining in Buckinghamshire Marlon Brando’s Stanley Kowalski—less re- (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd The seventy-nine-year-old British playwright solved, but still fascinating. Alma (Marin Ire- St. 212-244-7529. In previews. Opens May 20.) Caryl Churchill is a tremendous talent whose land) is a preacher’s daughter who lives across brilliance is deep and strange and certainly the way from John (the handsome Nathan Dar- Peace for Mary Frances not for everyone. This 1976 drama is set during row), a doctor who believes in both science The New Group presents Lily Thorne’s play, the Protestant Reformation in England, which and the ways of the lesh. Alma has longed for directed by Lila Neugebauer and featuring disrupted centuries of religious hierarchy and him since childhood, and the director, Trans- Lois Smith as a nonagenarian born to Arme- said that individuals could communicate one port Group’s Jack Cummings III, makes some- nian refugees who is ready to die at home. on one with God. Naturally, folks took sides thing beautiful out of those early lickerings of (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd during these enormous changes, and the char- love—but then he ruins it, by permitting Ire- St. 212-279-4200. In previews.) acters that Churchill has drawn, from women land’s shtick-ridden performance to get in the approaching the idea of independence to re- way of the other actors and of the text, drown- SummerWorks Festival ligious zealots holding on to the old order, ing out the story’s nuances. (Classic Stage Com- Clubbed Thumb’s annual showcase of new are fully realized. But the mystery at the core pany, 136 E. 13th St. 866-811-4111.) work features plays by Trish Harnetiaux, An- of the piece—which stars a fantastic ensem- gela Hanks, and Will Arbery. (Wild Project, 195 ble cast, well handled by the director, Rachel 1 E. 3rd St. 212-260-0153. Opens May 19.) Chavkin—only deepens over the piece’s nearly ALSO NOTABLE three-hour expanse. (Special note should be Tchaikovsky: None But the Lonely Heart given to the incredible lighting designer, Is- Angels in America Neil Simon. • The Band’s Visit The Ensemble for the Romantic Century pro- abella Byrd.) You either want to see the show Ethel Barrymore. • A Brief History of Women duces Eve Wolf’s play, about the composer’s again, to further parse its layers, or you can’t 59E59. • Carousel Imperial. • Children of a Lesser epistolary relationship with his patroness Na- deal with it at all. (New York Theatre Workshop, God Studio 54. • Escape to Margaritaville Mar- dezhda von Meck. Donald T. Sanders directs. 79 E. 4th St. 212-460-5475.) quis. • Frozen St. James. • Happy Birthday, Wanda (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd June Gene Frankel. • Harry Potter and the Cursed St. 212-279-4200. Previews begin May 17.) My Fair Lady Child, Parts One and Two Lyric. • Long Day’s Jour- 1 Lerner and Loewe’s hit 1956 musical (in a ney Into Night BAM Harvey Theatre. • Mean Girls Lincoln Center Theatre revival, directed by August Wilson. • The Metromaniacs The Duke NOW PLAYING Bartlett Sher) examines the reality of one on 42nd Street. Through May 20. • Mlima’s Tale man’s fantasy of remaking a woman in his Public. • Saint Joan Samuel J. Friedman. • The Dance Nation own image. Part of the pleasure of watching Seafarer Irish Repertory. • SpongeBob Square- Clare Barron is a young scenarist and actress, this staging is observing not how Eliza Doo- Pants Palace. • Summer Lunt-Fontanne. • Three not yet thirty-three, but on the strength of this little (Lauren Ambrose, who has a beautiful, Tall Women Golden. • Transfers Lucille Lor- intermissionless, hour-and-forty-ive-minute if limited, soprano) becomes more herself as tel. Through May 20. • Travesties American Air- piece, she’s on her way to becoming a signif- the show goes on but how she learns to ex- lines Theatre.

18 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 Shakespeare NINAGAWA MACBETH Saturday, July 21–Wednesday, July 25 Experience director Yukio Ninagawa’s legendary production in its ﬁ nal performances ever. David H. Koch Theater Tickets from $35

“Achingly beautiful.”

—Guardian (U.K.) Photo: Takahiro Watanabe Photo: Takahiro

Lead Sponsor MostlyMozartFestival.org Alice Tully Hall or David Geffen Hall Box Ofﬁ ce, Broadway at 65th Street | 212.721.6500

The Mostly Mozart Festival 2018 is made possible by: Endowment support is provided by: Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Ofﬁ cial Partners Blavatnik Family Foundation Fund The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Great Performers Circle for Dance The Ford Foundation Samuels Foundation, Inc. Chairman’s Council Public support is provided by New York Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser The Katzenberger Foundation, Inc. Friends of Mostly Mozart State Council on the Arts with the support The Shubert Foundation Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.), Inc. Friends of Lincoln Center of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the Official Coffee of Lincoln Center Official Hospital of Lincoln Center LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust Sumitomo Corporation of Americas New York State Legislature. The Howard Gilman Foundation Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal U.S.A., Inc Artist catering provided by Zabar’s and Zabars.com The 2018 Mostly Mozart Festival presentation of NINAGAWA Macbeth is made possible in part by the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust. Additional support is provided by The Japan Foundation, New York. Corporate support is provided by Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.), Inc, Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, and Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal U.S.A., Inc. SUMMER PREVIEW

NIGHT LIFE

The Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar takes his victory lap, Beyoncé tours with Jay-Z, and Eminem headlines the Governors Ball.

Here in the birthplace of hip-hop, it bag of rockers (Jack White, Yeah Yeah beat-conscious absurdist Nnamdi Og- should come as no surprise that m.c.s Yeahs), soul children (Khalid, James bonnaya, and Liz Phair, celebrating the could dominate the summer, even if New Blake), and d.j.s (Diplo and Mark Ron- twenty-fifth anniversary of her landmark York’s influence on the direction of the son’s Silk City). SummerStage has reg- album “Exile in Guyville.” Erykah Badu, genre has been almost nonexistent for ularly scattered veteran m.c.s through- Miguel, and Tyler, the Creator preside quite some time. And yet even a year ago out the city’s parks (this year brings Big over the popular Afropunk Fest, in Brook- no one could have predicted the pop- Daddy Kane to Coney Island, and EPMD lyn’s Commodore Barry Park (Aug. 25- cultural sway enjoyed by rappers like the to Queens). At Celebrate Brooklyn!, in 26). For those who crave Latin music, it’s recent Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Prospect Park, Common—the summer’s possible to catch Willie Colón, Oscar Lamar, who will be taking what could other rap Academy Award winner, D’León, Andy Montañez, and other be called a victory lap while headlining alongside Eminem—opens up the sea- bandleader heavyweights at the Barclays Top Dawg Entertainment’s Champi- son ( June 5), and the Wu-Tang Clan’s Center for the 34th New York Salsa Fes- onship Tour, at Madison Square Garden RZA gets things started at Lincoln Cen- tival ( June 9), or to spend a more raucous (on May 29). And what about Jay-Z, ter Out of Doors ( July 24). and freewheeling evening at Le Poisson who heads out to MetLife Stadium with Of course, this being New York, Rouge, when the guitarist Marc Ribot his wife, Beyoncé, on OTR II (Aug. 2), there’s a sound somewhere to fit every reunites Los Cubanos Postizos, a band the biggest road show of the year and a taste. Randall’s Island is also home to the that brilliantly and unironically “faked” sequel to their 2014 marital-bliss-if-you- Panorama Festival ( July 27-29), the mid- the music of the Cuban icon Arsenio say-so On the Run Tour? Could it be dle day of which places Janet Jackson Rodriguez ( June 17). And though it’s that this period’s bad, bourgie rappers atop a bill that includes St. Vincent, Jap- been seven years since the funky R. & B. have become—to quote the former anese Breakfast, and Floating Points. auteur Raphael Saadiq released an Beastie Boy Mike D in a recent inter- Adventurous music fans will find much album, the back-to-the-future style he’s view—“the Lionel Richies of their day”? of interest spread across the venues in brought to the music of Solange Knowles The signs are abundant. Eminem and Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Bush- and the TV show “Insecure” insures that the Houston-bred trap star Travis Scott wick that are participating in the his free show for Lincoln Center Out of head up one night each of the three- Northside Music Festival ( June 7-10). Doors ( July 25) will be one of the series’ night Governors Ball, on Randall’s Is- Among the highlights are the sound most anticipated. —K. Leander Williams land ( June 1-3), which contains a mixed sculptor and vocalist Katie Gately, the PETRA ERIKSSON BY ILLUSTRATION

20 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018

1 NIGHT LIFE ROCK AND POP which cast his pub anthems in a contemporary that is both abrasive and thoughtful. (Rough sheen. On the other hand, the Verve was es- Trade NYC, 64 N. 9th St., Brooklyn. roughtrade- Musicians and night-club proprietors lead sentially a one-hit wonder—yet its hit, “Bit- nyc.com. May 21.) complicated lives; it’s advisable to check ter Sweet Symphony,” has shown remarkable in advance to conirm engagements. durability, springing up with a regularity sur- 1 passing the songs of its era’s shinier names. In JAZZ AND STANDARDS Courtney Barnett his solo work, Ashcroft continues his quest for Two years after her excellent début album, majestic rock moments. Both singers seemed Bruce Barth and Dave Baron “Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes like fogies before their time—classic rock stars Barth, a mainstream modernist who wondrously I Just Sit,” earned her a Grammy nomination marooned in the nineties—which makes them calls to mind a host of classic stylists without any for Best New Artist, Barnett returns from Mel- well-equipped to tour as nostalgia-tinged for- loss of distinctive personality, is an unabashed bourne this week with a follow-up, entitled tysomethings. They play the season’s irst con- swinger who can light up a room with his rhyth- “Tell Me How You Really Feel.” The thirty- cert at Central Park’s Rumsey Playield, a tick- mic panache. He’s joined by the adroit bassist year-old singer weaves dreamily observed sto- eted beneit ahead of SummerStage’s series of Baron for an evening of snug duets. (Mezzrow, ries about topics ranging from depression to free programming. (Mid-Park at 69th St. sum- 163 W. 10th St. mezzrow.com. May 18-19.) the inanities of male privilege. Novelistic de- merstage.org. May 16.) tails spill out, delivered in a hangdog Austra- Broken Shadows lian accent that personiies bemusement, and Iceage Free jazz has beckoned successive generations grungy, crackling guitars keep the rhythm These ambitious young punks boast a fan base of innovative musicians since the early-sixties going. Her music packs a powerful and re- that includes consecrated old punks like Rich- breakthrough of Ornette Coleman, the vision- freshing punch. (Music Hall of Williamsburg, ard Hell and Iggy Pop. (Pop has claimed the ary lodestone who died in 2015. Four disciples 66 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. 718-486-5400. May 19.) Danish group as the only current punk band who have gone on to establish their own per- “that sounds really dangerous”—strong words, sonal voices—the saxophonists Tim Berne and Festival of Disruption given the source.) No doubt much of their Chris Speed and the Bad Plus bandmates Reid The David Lynch Foundation for Conscious- forebears’ admiration owes to Iceage’s atti- Anderson, on bass, and Dave King, on drums— ness-Based Education and World Peace has tude. The musicians approach rock and roll unite as Broken Shadows to reinterpret the work been active since 2005, when the ilm director with an all-in swagger, as if the world still of Coleman, his associates Dewey Redman and and Transcendental Meditation practitioner swayed to the genre’s pulse. This quaint delu- Charlie Haden, and another free-jazz titan, Ju- founded it with the intention of initiating sion is its audience’s prize. On “Beyondless,” lius Hemphill. (Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St. 212- stress-reduction programs for prisoners, stu- Iceage’s fourth album (and its third with Mat- 576-2232. May 15-16.) dents in troubled schools, war refugees, and ador Records), the quartet further expands other at-risk populations. This weekend, the upon its hardcore roots, with horns blaring Vijay Iyer chain-smoking art star comes to Brooklyn with above the sullen guitar din. The album also “Far from Over,” the 2017 ECM release from a fund-raiser for his foundation, featuring two continues the ascent of Elias Bender Rønnen- the socially conscious pianist and composer, days of music, meditation, and events, includ- felt, the group’s high-cheekboned lead singer, may not broadcast a speciic political message, ing a special screening of “Blue Velvet” hosted as a clever lyricist. “Help,” he announces in but its pointedly intense nature speaks directly by Isabella Rossellini; an art show featuring the song “Thieves Like Us,” “I think I blind- to our roiling times. Iyer reconvenes the sextet work by Lynch, William Eggleston, and San- folded the chaufeur.” (The Bowery Ballroom, that graces the acclaimed album, including the dro Miller; and a stunning selection of mu- 6 Delancey St. 212-533-3111. May 16.) saxophonists Mark Shim and Steve Lehman. (The sical talent. Angel Olsen, Animal Collective, drummer Jeremy Dutton will sub for Tyshawn and Jon Hopkins lead the program, joined by Oneohtrix Point Never Sorey from Tuesday through Friday.) (Village many artists from last year’s reboot of Lynch’s The electronic-music auteur Daniel Lopatin Vanguard, 178 Seventh Ave. S., at W. 11th St. 212- medium-deining murder-mystery soap, “Twin is academic, even near-clinical, with his use 255-4037. May 15-20.) Peaks.” Au Revoir Simone, Flying Lotus, and the of sound. Like Brian Eno before him, he con- enchanting vocalist Rebekah Del Rio will all ceives of his schizophrenic productions not as Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra: perform. (Brooklyn Steel, 319 Frost St., Brook- passive facilitators but as active exhibitions. Celebrating Ornette Coleman lyn. 888-929-7849. May 19-20.) Still, Lopatin’s techniques have been deftly An innovator who steadfastly rejected harmonic utilitarian: to promote his album “Garden of boundaries, Ornette Coleman was also one of FIXED with Lena Willikens Delete,” he uploaded a batch of the project’s jazz history’s supreme composers of indelible Willikens is a d.j. from Cologne, Germany. She foundational sound iles for his fans to rip, melodies. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orches- made her name at the Düsseldorf club Salon lip, and rearrange before hearing the oicial tra will no doubt put its own elaborate spin on des Amateurs, and has taken its anything-goes release. He’s been keeping the music on his such classics as “Peace,” “Una Muy Bonita,” and, demeanor with her into the world’s night spots. forthcoming album, “Age Of,” a bit closer to of course, Coleman’s signature piece, “Lonely Her sets, built around tracks that unspool dra- the vest. Lopatin premières the record during Woman.” (Rose Theatre, Jazz at Lincoln Center, matically, often favor lorid left turns. Her Au- a multimedia extravaganza he calls “MYRIAD,” Broadway at 60th St. 212-721-6500. May 18-19.) gust, 2017, performance at Dekmantel Festival, at the helm of his irst live touring band. (Park in Amsterdam, for instance, peaked with the Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave. 212-616-3930. Linda Lavin deliciously over-the-top dramatics of the group May 22.) You don’t have to cherish the classic SCTV sketch Mother Destruction’s über-goth set piece, “The featuring the comedienne Andrea Martin as the Serpent Dance.” Her choices haunted the pro- SOB X RBE beloved, Tony-winning Lavin to appreciate the gram’s two hours like a dark beacon, before Coming straight out of Vallejo, California, this fact that the veteran actress takes vocalizing very giving way to some crunching acid-electro. foursome is channelling the same kind of in- seriously. Her Carlyle début program, “My Sec- Expect a similar level of dance-loor mischief tensity and streetwise storytelling that helped ond Farewell Concert,” also features the redoubt- when Willikens plays at Good Room, as part N.W.A. become a legendary act. SOB X RBE able pianist and cabaret mainstay Billy Stritch. of a larger lineup dubbed FIXED. (98 Mese- is a marriage between Lul G and Slimmy B’s (Café Carlyle, Carlyle Hotel, Madison Ave. at 76th role Ave., Brooklyn. goodroombk.com. May 18.) Strictly Only Brothers group and Yhung T.O. St. 212-744-1600. May 15-19.) and DaBoii’s Real Boi Entertainment. In 2015, Liam Gallagher and Richard Ashcroft while still in high school, they started record- Dave Liebman Group In the nineties, Liam Gallagher and Richard ing together in Yhung T.O.’s grandmother’s ga- Dave Liebman doesn’t think small. Complet- Ashcroft served Britain as pop princelings, rage, and their early YouTube videos earned ing his “Elements” tetralogy, the champion sax- the former as the big, brash voice of Oasis, them an obsessive clique of Bay Area teen- ophonist presents “Earth,” an ambitious linked the latter as the equally cocksure front man agers. Since then, they’ve perfected their cha- piece that strives to drape iconic locales (the of the Verve. Gallagher shared Oasis with his otic live show, dropped a blistering feature on Grand Canyon, Mt. Everest, etc.) in musical brother Noel; it might be his destiny to for- Kendrick Lamar’s “Black Panther” soundtrack, garb. Joining him are such committed cohorts as ever play Eric to his alpha sibling’s Donald, and ired rhetorical shots at Migos, their trap the pianist Bobby Avey and the reed player Matt Jr. And yet Gallagher won plaudits last year rivals. They’re hitting Rough Trade in sup- Vashlishan. (Smoke, 2751 Broadway, between 105th for “As You Were,” his irst proper solo album, port of their latest release, “Gangin’,” an album and 106th Sts. 212-864-6662. May 18-20.)

22 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 .

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SUMMER PREVIEW

MOVIES

including “Leave No Trace” ( June 29), the director Debra Granik’s drama about a teen-age girl (Thomasin Mc- Kenzie) and her father (Ben Foster) who clash with the authorities while living of the grid in rural Oregon. The comedian Bo Burnham’s first feature, “Eighth Grade” ( July 13), is a comedy about a thirteen-year-old girl named Kayla (Elsie Fisher) who’s dealing with her impending transition to high school. “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” (Aug. 3), directed by Desiree Akhavan, stars Chloë Grace Moretz as a high- school student who is caught by her parents in a relationship with another girl and sent to a conversion-therapy camp. In Josephine Decker’s drama “Madeline’s Madeline” (Aug. 10), Hel- ena Howard delivers an inspired performance as a high-school student struggling with mental illness who seeks a creative outlet by acting in a New York theatre troupe. Miranda July co-stars, as the girl’s mother; Molly Parker plays the theatre company’s director. Political tales take many forms this season, as in the drama “The Catcher Was a Spy” ( June 22), based on the true story of the major-league baseball player Moe Berg (played by Paul Rudd), a graduate of Princeton and Columbia Law School who was recruited by the U.S. Army to do espionage during the Second World War. Ben Lewin directed. Lauren The season’s highlights include “Leave No Trace,” “BlacKkKlansman,” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp.” Greenfield, who made the documentary “The Queen of Versailles,” returns to the The summer’s visionary speculations Peyton Reed, whose comedic touch subject of outrageous fortunes with run the gamut from the fanciful to the enlivened “Ant-Man,” returns with “Generation Wealth” ( July 20), a histor- bleak. The science-fiction romantic “Ant-Man and the Wasp” ( July 6), in ical essay-film about the latter-day ob- comedy “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” which Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and session with the ultra-rich. Spike Lee’s (May 25), about teen-age boys who find Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) new drama, “BlacKkKlansman” (Aug. 10), themselves flirting with aliens, is based team up to ward of evil. Amandla based on a nonfiction book by Ron Stall- on a short story by Neil Gaiman; it stars Stenberg (“The Hunger Games”) and worth, tells the story of an African- Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, and Matt Harris Dickinson (“Beach Rats”) star American detective in Colorado who Lucas, and is directed by John Cameron in “The Darkest Minds” (Aug. 3), a goes undercover as a member of a Ku Mitchell. Tessa Thompson and Lakeith dystopian fantasy about a society that Klux Klan chapter and is eventually Stanfield star in “Sorry to Bother You” imprisons everyone under the age of elected as its leader. John David Wash- ( July 6), a metaphysical comedy, di- eighteen and a group of incarcerated ington stars as the detective; Adam rected by Boots Riley, about telemar- teen-agers who rebel against it. Jenni- Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, keters endowed with supernatural pow- fer Yuh Nelson directed. Paul Walter Hauser, and Harry Bela- ers; Armie Hammer, Terry Crews, and The summertime blues come to the fonte co-star.

Danny Glover co-star. The director fore in a variety of teen-centered movies, —Richard Brody PETRA ERIKSSON BY ILLUSTRATION

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GEICO Gecko image © 1999-2017. © 2017 GEICO 1 MOVIES NOW PLAYING als of literary ambitions and familial devotion, assertive, she chats up a shy young man (Rory stories of death and faith, and a bold dramatic Scovel), who becomes her boyfriend; talks her- Avengers: Infinity War structure—based on lashbacks and leaps for- self into a job at the company’s glamorous mid- Behold, the latest monster of a movie to lumber ward in time—set the vagaries of work and love town headquarters; and is soon propelled into a forth from the Marvel stables. This one is dion the irm footing of destiny.—Richard Brody prominent position representing the irm’s new rected by Joe and Anthony Russo, and stars pretty (In limited release.) low-priced line. She also becomes an arrogant much every actor that the studio could round up. jerk who alienates her best friends (Aidy Bry- Robert Downey, Jr., returns as Iron Man, Tom Fig Leaves ant and Busy Philipps) and is tempted to sleep Holland is Spider-Man, Chadwick Boseman is In his second feature ilm, from 1926, Howard with one of the company’s heirs (Tom Hopper). Black Panther, Elizabeth Olsen is Scarlet Witch, Hawks’s efervescent blend of sly sex comedy As written and directed by Abby Kohn and Marc Benedict Cumberbatch is Dr. Strange, Zoe Sal- and riotous slapstick is already on gleeful dis- Silverstein, Renee and her friends remain fea- dana is Gamora, Chris Hemsworth is Thor, Tom play. The title refers to Eve’s garments in the tureless ciphers, though Schumer delivers sev- Hiddleston is the nefarious Loki, and so on. Garden of Eden, and the story begins there, eral moments of antic inspiration (including a Mark Rufalo is back, too, as Hulk, although with the primordial couple living like the Flint- wild dance scene that, unfortunately, is ilmed he has immense diiculty turning angry and stones, with a pet brontosaurus, before leaping clumsily).—R.B. (In wide release.) green, and may need to consult the appropriate ahead to the Roaring Twenties. Adam Smith physician. Ant-Man should be somewhere, but (George O’Brien), a strapping young plumber, Let the Sunshine In he may have been trodden underfoot. The plot is married to the willowy Eve (Olive Borden), The new movie from Claire Denis stars Juliette is the usual small-scale, everyday afair: there who stays at home and yearns for high-fashion Binoche as Isabelle, who seems destined to be un- are six Ininity Stones available to collect, and a inery. Comic accidents bring her to the atten- lucky in love. She is an artist by trade, although mountainous thug named Thanos (Josh Brolin) tion of Josef André (George Beranger), a king only once do we see her at work, feverishly en- wants them all, with a view to commanding the of haute couture, at whose Fifth Avenue salon gaged in a bout of Action painting. She starts the cosmos. The efort to stop him takes two and a she soon becomes the leading model and object ilm by having sex with a banker (Xavier Beau- half hours, though it seems considerably longer, of desire—unbeknownst to her husband. Ad- vois), and ends it by consulting a fortune-teller and the climactic battle is set in Wakanda, which am’s gender-bending games with his gruf busi- (Gérard Depardieu). In between, there is danc- appears to be, in every sense, where the money ness partner, Eddie (Heinie Conklin), and the ing, dining, a brief trip to the country (the rest is. The threat of a sequel seems all too real.—An- viperish wiles of the lapper next door (Phyllis of the tale is incorrigibly Parisian), and a string thony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of 5/7/18.) (In Haver) add ribald laughs, and a loopy fashion of disappointments and demurrals. Denis’s ap- wide release.) show (originally shot as a color insert but surviv- proach is cunningly attuned to this uncertain ing only in black-and-white) suggests the entic- mood; more than once, characters simply appear, Beast ing plumage of exotic birds. Though the ilm is unidentiied and unannounced, as if wander- Michael Pearce’s début feature, set on the Brit- silent, Hawks’s epigrammatic rapidity is already ing onto a stage, while others, like the heroine’s ish island of Jersey, stars Jessie Buckley as a in evidence—the characters talk non-stop with daughter, are conined to the wings. Binoche, young woman named Moll, whose anger feels such lively, pointed grace that viewers might meanwhile, turns Isabelle into a mutable mix- diicult to explain and even harder to appease. swear they hear the intertitles spoken.—R.B. ture of the forthright, the tearfully plaintive, She was in serious trouble as a schoolgirl, and (MOMA, May 20.) and—all too rarely—the blissed out. The ilm a childish restiveness still lingers in her adult is loosely based on “A Lover’s Discourse,” by behavior. It’s therefore no surprise when, to the Filmworker Roland Barthes, and, as such, provides an un- disapproval of her mother (Geraldine James), Tony Zierra’s documentary about Leon Vitali, easy guide to the shifting sands of the roman- she takes up with a local poacher, Pascal Re- Stanley Kubrick’s longtime right-hand man, cov- tic life. With Nicolas Duvauchelle, as a vain nouf (Johnny Flynn), whose own past is, if any- ers a wide range of movie-centric ideas. Vitali, and drunken actor. In French.—A.L. (5/7/18) thing, even darker than Moll’s. To add to the a busy young London actor in the early nine- (In limited release.) fretful mood, their romance—if you can call it teen-seventies, parlayed a role in Kubrick’s 1975 that—unfolds against a background of recent drama “Barry Lyndon” into the fulillment of a Le Pont du Nord crimes. Three women have been abducted and dream: working with the director behind the This nearly lost ilm by Jacques Rivette, from killed, and Pascal is one of the suspects; Moll scenes. Vitali quickly made his mark—he found 1981, captures the visions and moods of a nearly stands by him, and you start to wonder, with and coached the child actor Danny Lloyd, who lost Paris—and of a mode of thought that was growing trepidation, what it would take to pull starred in “The Shining,” and brought R. Lee also on its way out. It starts as a whimsical urban her away. The plot veers into contrivance, and Ermey’s talent to Kubrick’s attention for “Full rif on the theme of chance connections: Marie there’s a slight surfeit of scenes in which social Metal Jacket.” Vitali’s devotion surpassed the (Bulle Ogier), a toughened woman of a certain niceties are cracked or overturned, but the at- bounds of reason, and Kubrick took advantage. age, heads to Paris after getting out of prison and mosphere on the sunlit island grows creepier by Vitali worked on a seven-day-a-week, nearly is joined by Baptiste (Pascale Ogier, her real-life the minute, and Buckley holds the unlikely tale round-the-clock schedule until Kubrick’s death, daughter), a iercely determined dark angel who together. She turns Moll into a creature of earth in 1999, and even beyond. Kubrick’s absurdly ex- travels by scooter. Marie reunites with her boy- and ire.—A.L. (5/14/18) (In limited release.) treme quest for control—over not just the mak- friend, Julien (Pierre Clémenti), a pathological ing of his ilms but also their distribution, adver- gambler whose mysterious briefcase entangles The Day After tising, preservation, and revival—found its all him in big trouble that Baptiste decides to un- The South Korean director Hong Sang-soo in- too willing enabler in Vitali. Whatever Kubrick ravel. The women’s poetic excursions through fuses this impulsively romantic melodrama with wanted, Vitali realized, at great personal sacri- the ruins of industrial sites and Impressionist the ironic echoes of comedy. Bongwan (Kwon ice—but Vitali expresses no regrets. Though the landscapes morph into a spy-versus-spy caper Hae-hyo), the middle-aged head of a small Seoul ilm suggests that Kubrick was a brilliant manip- involving left-wing terrorist plots and govern- publishing house, has been having an afair with ulator, Zierra himself never questions the artis- ment iniltration. Rivette shows the romantically his assistant, a young woman named Changsook tic virtues of Kubrick’s own obsession; his ilm, labyrinthine city and the bloody ideals of revolu- (Kim Sae-byuk). Heartbroken after she leaves too, partakes in the cult of Kubrick.—R.B. (In tionary heroism vanishing together, even as the him, Bongwan—still in need of oice help—hires limited release.) chill of rational order reveals another shimmery another young woman, Areum (Kim Min-hee). layer of ingrained authority. Pascale Ogier brings During Areum’s irst day on the job, Bongwan’s I Feel Pretty an exhilarating feral passion to her role, starting wife, Haejoo (Cho Yun-hee), barges into the of- Amy Schumer works hard to infuse this comedy, with her pugnacious confrontation with a suave ice, certain that Bongwan has been having an af- built around dated self-help clichés, with a bit motorcyclist (Jean-François Stévenin); she died fair with his assistant, and mistakes Areum for of vitality. She stars as Renee Bennett, a frus- in 1984, at the age of twenty-ive, and this movie his lover. Hong tells the story in long dialogue- trated employee of a high-end New York cos- may be her greatest showcase. In French.—R.B. illed takes, done in a soft black-and-white that metics company who’s relegated to its grim base- (Anthology Film Archives, May 17, and streaming.) feels like pencil drawings, to extract deep and ment annex in Chinatown. She’s unhappy with earnest confessions with a graceful touch that her face, her body, and her life; seeking change Sollers Point shudders with the life-shaking emotions at their in a spin class, she falls of a bike, bumps her The title of Matthew Porterield’s quietly an- core. (Those emotions also burst forth physi- head, and awakens with boundless conidence in guished drama refers to a Baltimore neighbor- cally, with violence and drunken frenzy.) Avow- her beauty and her abilities. Suddenly frank and hood that’s near a now-shuttered steel mill and

26 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 MOVIES SUMMER PREVIEW is still home to many of its former employees. There, the twenty-six-year-old Keith Cohoe (Mc- Caul Lombardi), recently released from prison (apparently for a drug-related ofense), is under CLASSICAL MUSIC house arrest and living with his father, Carol (Jim Belushi), a retired mill worker. Keith is white; many of his friends and neighbors, including his former girlfriend, Courtney (Zazie Beetz), are black, but, in prison, Keith belonged to a white-supremacist gang, and when his house arrest ends its ex-con members expect him to re- join them. Meanwhile, unable to ind work and in need of quick money, Keith begins dealing drugs again. His increasingly desperate rounds thrust him into wary yet yearning contact with a wide range of characters, including his grandmother (Lynn Cohen), two young women who work as strippers, a terrifying white-supremacist leader, an art-school student, and a heroin addict hoping to break her habit. Sketching Keith’s inner conlicts and practical struggles with a graceful, mood-rich lyricism, Porterield presses gently but painfully on some of the most inlamed and sensitive parts of American society.—R.B. (In limited release.)

Stations of the Elevated The documentary ilmmaker Manfred Kirch- heimer’s New York street poem, from 1981, begins with a painterly, sun-dappled celebration of This summer, Rubinstein’s opera “The Demon” oers an infernal reply to Bernstein’s “Mass.” graiti on subway trains. But the ilm’s range of subjects and ideas quickly expands to probe the exhilaration of city life. The accidental magic of Leonard Bernstein’s hundredth birthday utes: one for each year since his birth. relections and shadows meshes with the pure has proved an irresistible invitation to Elsewhere in the city, the Metropolitan forms of architecture and the overlooked artistry of advertisements to conjure a feeling of unre- programmers this summer season. Tan- Opera’s Summer Recital Series of six free, lenting sensory adventure. Shots of abandoned glewood, an early haven for the composer, outdoor concerts (two in Manhattan, with buildings, turned into playgrounds by neigh- has gone for a more-is-more approach. one apiece in the other boroughs) show- borhood kids, evoke the care and thought that went into their construction, lending the ambient The highlight may be the Boston Sym- cases a diverse selection of young and degradation an extra layer of tragedy. Music by phony Orchestra’s performance of “Di- exciting singers (various dates, June 11-29). Charles Mingus melds with the urban racket to vertimento” (Aug. 18), his gift to the en- And the idea of an underground venue provide rhythmic counterpoint to Kirchheimer’s incisive editing. In his vision, the aesthetic and semble on the occasion of its own centen- takes on a new realism with the première the utilitarian fuse in a riot of abstract igures nial, in 1980. Maverick Concerts nods to of David Hertzberg’s opera “The Rose- and incidental symbols; a shadow on a red brick the anniversary with programs that include Elf,” in the catacombs beneath Green- building of a person leaning on the railing of an overhead subway station evokes the craggy gran- a new arrangement of “Songfest” (on Aug. Wood Cemetery (starting on June 6). deur of Rodin’s “The Thinker.”—R.B. (Anthology 25, Bernstein’s actual birthday), but the Back upstate, Glimmerglass Opera’s Film Archives, May 18, and streaming.) series focusses more on the music of Len- own Bernstein component, “West Side Tully ny’s friend and contemporary Ned Rorem, Story,” runs alongside operas by Rossini A new collaboration between the writer Diablo whose “Mourning Scene from Samuel” and Janáček. Mark Campbell and Kevin Cody, the director Jason Reitman, and the ac- will be delivered by the Dover Quartet Puts’s “Silent Night,” which won the 2012 tress Charlize Theron, who previously worked together for “Young Adult” (2011). This time and the baritone Andrew Garland ( July Pulitzer for its depiction of the Christmas around, Theron plays a mother named Marlo. 15). In Bernstein’s adopted home town, truce of 1914, completes the lineup (July 7- She and her husband, Drew (Ron Livingston), Mostly Mozart is filled this year with spec- Aug. 25). Meanwhile, Bard SummerScape already have two children, and, after Marlo gives birth again, she falls into every kind of slump— tacular evocations of the natural and the mounts “The Demon” (July 27-Aug. 5), a in body, mind, and spirit. Salvation arrives in the spiritual worlds, culminating in John Lu- supernatural melodrama by the great pi- shape of Tully (Mackenzie Davis), a night nurse ther Adams’s “In the Name of the Earth,” anist and composer Anton Rubinstein. who gives Marlo a chance to sleep and thereby restores order and pleasure to her days. Tully re- which will be premièred at Central Park’s The Russian theme continues with the minds Marlo of her younger self, and the pact be- Harlem Meer (Aug. 11). It also features Bard Music Festival’s exploration of the tween them seems weirdly exclusive. The movie his wild, questioning, syncretic “Mass” music of Rimsky-Korsakov (Aug. 10-19). is founded on a stark dichotomy: motherhood is either a blessing or a burden, and nothing in ( July 17-18), at David Gefen Hall. And true history bufs can get their fix between. The idea that paid help will assuage Eschewing Bernstein fever, the Chel- from Teatro Nuovo, newly established at all problems in the home—including sex, or the sea Music Festival honors Bach, with SUNY Purchase by Will Crutchfield. The want of it—is hardly the most fruitful of revelations, and the late twist unravels the moment events including an evening of music company presents “Tancredi Rifatto” you tug on it. On the other hand, Theron is as written and inspired by the composer (at (Aug. 5), which includes rarely heard al- gutsy and as unabashed as she was in “Monster” St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church, on ternative numbers that Rossini minted (2003), holding little back, and supplying Mar- lo’s lethargy with dramatic zest. With Mark Du- June 9) which, with “culinary interludes,” when his Sicilian drama went on tour.

ILLUSTRATION BY PETRA ERIKSSON BY ILLUSTRATION plass.—A.L. (5/14/18) (In wide release.) lasts three hundred and thirty-three min- —Fergus McIntosh

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 27 1 CLASSICAL MUSIC OPERA Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune,” a Rite of Summer Music Festival mirage of subtly changing colors; Tchaikovsky’s This monthly new-music series, held on a grassy American Lyric Theatre: “InsightALT” impassioned Symphony No. 4; and Shostako- lawn endowed with ample shade, opens with In celebration of the tenth anniversary of its vich’s vividly orchestrated version of Mussorg- performances by Sandbox Percussion, an ex- Composer Librettist Development Program, sky’s “Songs and Dances of Death,” with the acting and exuberant quartet. The program the company presents “Opera in Eden,” featur- powerful mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili. includes works by Steve Reich, Andy Akiho, ing concert performances of three new one-act May 18 at 8. (212-247-7800.) Alex Weiser, and two members of the ensem- works by the program’s current resident artists. ble, Victor Caccese and Jonny Allen. May 19 at “Bloodlines,” by Shuying Li and Lila Palmer, is Freiburg Baroque Orchestra 1 and 3. (Colonels Row, Governors Island. riteof- followed by “The Gospel According to Nana,” The German ensemble, which brings modern summer.com.) by Liliya Ugay and Lorene Cary, and “The Tree verve to period-instrument performance, rounds of Eternal Youth,” by Andy Tierstein and Julian out Lincoln Center’s “Great Performers” series. “Wall to Wall Leonard Bernstein” Crouch. May 17 at 7:30. (Merkin Concert Hall, 129 Kristian Bezuidenhout, a versatile South Afri- This year’s edition of Symphony Space’s free W. 67th St. merkinhall.org.) can keyboardist, plays two of Mozart’s piano con- marathon concert focusses, inevitably, on Bern- certos (No. 17 in G Major and No. 9 in E-Flat stein. The program will be divided into three Center for Contemporary Opera Major) on the fortepiano, a forerunner of the thematic segments. The irst concentrates on Opera fans who know Gertrude Stein’s writing modern pianoforte. Symphonies by Haydn and the forties and ifties, including selections from only from her linguistically loose libretto for J. C. Bach, whose work is said to have inspired “Candide” and “West Side Story”; the second Virgil Thomson’s “Four Saints in Three Acts” Mozart, complete the program. May 19 at 7:30. spans from the sixties through the eighties, a will be surprised to encounter the more sug- (Alice Tully Hall. 212-721-6500.) period of heightened intensity and lofty am- gestive language in Pascal Dusapin’s 1994 cham- 1 bition; and the last surveys Bernstein’s Broad- ber opera, “To Be Sung,” based on one of Stein’s way songs from “On the Town,” “Peter Pan,” short stories. As a work of literature, it still re- RECITALS “Wonderful Town,” and more. May 19 at 3. (2537 tains the author’s casual relationship to syntax, Broadway. symphonyspace.org.) but Dusapin plays of the sexually implicit text Spectrum: “BerioFest” with three tightly harmonized female voices The Baltimore duo Louna Dekker-Vargas and “Joan Tower UpClose” that intertwine in an intimate musical setting; Ledah Finck, known as the Witches, specialize The KeyedUp Music Project presents a pro- Jorinde Keesmaat directs, and Sara Jobin con- in repertoire for violin, lute, and voice. They gram that circles the composer’s works and in- ducts. Also this week, the company’s develop- have mustered an impressive cast of colleagues luences, in celebration of her eightieth birth- ment series presents Act I of Scott Wheeler’s for the irst of two events devoted to the music day (Tower will be in attendance). The pianist opera “The Sorrows of Frederick,” with the bari- of Luciano Berio. The program provides a gen- Marc Peloquin, who directs the series, will per- tone Keith Phares as Frederick the Great of erous sampling of the versatile Italian compos- form “Ivory and Ebony,” a virtuosic essay in Prussia, who composed music, fell in love with er’s extravagant Sequenzas and congenial vio- chromatic invention, and accompany Claudia Lieutenant Hans von Katte, and pursued an lin duets, alongside selections from his “Folk Schaer in Debussy’s succinct Violin Sonata. To- aggressive agenda of military conquests; Beth Songs.” May 17 at 7. (Spectrum, 70 Flushing Ave., gether with the clarinettist Meighan Stoops, Greenberg directs, and Mark Shapiro conducts. Brooklyn. spectrumnyc.com.) they present “Rain Waves,” a sonic exploration May 17-19 at 8. (Irondale Center, 85 S. Oxford St., of liquid forms. May 19 at 8. (Tenri Cultural In- Brooklyn. centerforcontemporaryopera.org.) Aspect Foundation: “Fête Galante” stitute, 43A W. 13th St. keyedupmusicproject.com) The Four Nations Ensemble, a mainstay of 1 New York’s early-music scene, is joined by the Evgeny Kissin ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES lushly expressive soprano and Baroque special- The Moscow-born virtuoso, now in his mid- ist Sherezade Panthaki in a program drawing forties, has left wunderkind status to younger New York Philharmonic on the artistic elorescence that followed the colleagues like Daniil Trifonov and Behzod The estimable Russian conductor Semyon reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King. Cosmopoli- Abduraimov. His annual Carnegie program is Bychkov, a frequent and valued guest at the Phil- tan chamber works by Devienne and Telemann a mighty and serious one: Beethoven’s “Ham- harmonic, arrives for the irst of two programs. are set against Clérambault’s eloquent cantata merklavier” paired with a selection of Rach- This one is anchored by Shostakovich’s Fifth “L’Isle de Délos” and courtly music by Leclair. maninov preludes. The eclectic ireworks of Symphony—a work in which Bychkov is espe- Tav Holmes, an art historian, delivers a com- Kissin’s youth are likely to be found in the en- cially persuasive—and features the stylish pia- panion lecture. May 17 at 7:30. (Italian Academy, cores. May 20 at 2. (212-247-7800.) nist Bertrand Chamayou in Mendelssohn’s Piano Columbia University, 1161 Amsterdam Ave. aspect- Concerto No. 1; Brahms’s portentous “Tragic foundation.net.) Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Overture” opens the proceedings. May 17 at 7:30, The Society concludes its regular season with May 18-19 at 8, and May 22 at 7:30. (David Geen Yuja Wang a celebration of the concerto, ranging from Ba- Hall. 212-875-5656.) The lamboyant pianist, whose technical prowess roque showpieces by Leclair (for violin) and is matched by her musicality, presents a selection Bach (for keyboard) to a chamber-scale arrange- Trinity Church Wall Street of works by great pianist-composers, including ment of Mozart’s tempestuous Piano Concerto To celebrate Leonard Bernstein’s centennial, the Rachmaninof and Scriabin. Three of Ligeti’s in D Minor (K. 466). The form inds more mod- downtown church hosts “Total Embrace,” a se- inventive, iendishly diicult études also fea- ern expressions in pithy, quirky creations by ries of free concerts pairing the composer with ture in a program capped by Prokoiev’s impas- Janáček (his Concertino, for piano, winds, and others whose work resonates in some way with sioned Piano Sonata No. 8. May 17 at 8. (Carne- strings) and Steven Mackey (“Micro-Concerto,” his own. This week, the winsome “Arias and Bar- gie Hall. 212-247-7800.) for solo percussion, winds, strings, and piano). carolles” shares a program with a new Mass by May 20 at 5. (Alice Tully Hall. 212-875-5788.) Jonathan Newman, who, like Bernstein, distills Bargemusic: Brahms and Schubert the strains of pop, blues, and jazz into classical If Schubert’s friend Vincenz Schuster hadn’t been Midori Takada structures. Julian Wachner conducts NOVUS a fan of the arpeggione—an instrument, strung Copies of “Through the Looking Glass,” an NY, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and the and fretted like a guitar but played like a cello, exquisitely recorded 1983 album of medita- singers Melissa Attebury and Christopher Her- which had a brief vogue in eighteen-twenties tive compositions by the Japanese percussion- bert. May 17 at 1. (St. Paul’s Chapel, 209 Broad- Europe—it’s unlikely that the composer would ist Midori Takada, have commanded prices in way. No tickets required.) have written anything for it. It’s a good thing he excess of a thousand dollars among collectors. did, though, since the resulting sonata is lyrical Its reissue, last year, has sparked fresh interest The Met Orchestra and sweet-tempered, despite the occasional gim- in Takada—whose music melds Western clas- At the end of each Metropolitan Opera season, mick. Nowadays, the piece is mostly performed sical, African, and Asian disciplines—result- the house orchestra does a mini-residency of on the cello or, as here by Marcus Thompson, ing in her irst tour of the United States. Her sorts at Carnegie Hall, giving its members the on the viola. Doris Stevenson accompanies on irst stop is at the Kitchen, followed by a show opportunity to stretch themselves in repertoire the piano, in a program that concludes with a at the Murmrr Theatre, in Brooklyn. May 21 at they would not normally encounter. In the irst Brahms sonata (Op. 120). May 18 at 8. (Fulton 8; May 23 at 8. (512 W. 19th St. thekitchen.org; 17 of three concerts, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts Ferry Landing, Brooklyn. bargemusic.org.) Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn. murmrr.com.)

28 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 1 READINGS AND TALKS

New York Public Library ABOVE & BEYOND The rock singer Lou Reed put a good deal of his verse to music, but a recent book culled from his archive, “Do Angels Need Haircuts?,” uncovers the unpub- lished poems he wrote exclusively for the page shortly after he quit the Velvet Underground, in 1970. Anne Waldman and Laurie Anderson, who wrote the collection’s foreword and afterword, respectively, read from the work, along with Don Fleming, Merrill Reed Weiner (the rocker’s sister), and Hal Willner. (Celeste Bartos Forum, New York Public Library, Fifth Ave. at 42nd St. nypl.org. May 22 at 7.)

Greenlight Bookstore Mary Gaitskill’s iction is noted for its ease with the Pop-Up Magazine Spring Issue Tour Doh (“Play-Doh”), by the art world’s designated uncomfortable. Last year, she displayed the same The stories in “Pop-Up Magazine” are far from prankster, Jef Koons. On May 22, American art, willingness to reveal societal issures in her irst ephemeral, but there’s an element of the hit-and- including a charming genre scene by Norman book of noniction, the essay collection “Somebody run in their presentation. Each issue is staged live Rockwell depicting an elderly gentleman tun- with a Little Hammer,” which covers sex and gender, before an audience, the tales performed aloud and ing a piano, goes under the gavel. (20 Rockefeller music (Talking Heads, Björk, Céline Dion), writ- leshed out with photographs, illustrations, ilms, Plaza, at 49th St. 212-636-2000.) • Phillips gets in ers (Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, Nicholson or animations. They’re even scored with live orig- on the action on May 16, with two sessions illed Baker), travel, and politics. The volume’s title comes inal music by the Magik*Magik Orchestra. The with contemporary art. The more high-powered from this apt passage in the Chekhov short story storytellers have consisted of Oscar winners, best- evening sale on May 17 includes “Flexible,” a “Gooseberries”: “At the door of every contented, selling authors, radio personalities, and journalists; painting by Basquiat that comes directly from happy man, somebody should stand with a little the producers reveal the participants in advance, the artist’s estate and has never before been seen hammer, constantly tapping, to remind him that though an air of secrecy surrounds the exact scope at auction. It depicts a single igure, an African unhappy people exist, that however happy he may of the pieces until they’re performed. Among the griot, arms extended overhead in an enigmatic be, sooner or later life will show him its claws, some contributors to the Spring 2018 installment are gesture. Other highlights include a black-and- calamity will befall him—illness, poverty, loss—and the ilmmakers Lauren Greenield and Veena Rao, white Motherwell (“At Five in the Afternoon”) nobody will hear or see, just as he doesn’t hear or see the photographer Andres Gonzalez, the actors Joy and Mark Bradford’s “Black Venus,” made with others now.” Gaitskill reads and takes questions on Bryant and Franchesca Ramsey, and the writer detritus harvested from the streets of Los An- the occasion of her book’s paperback edition. (686 John Jeremiah Sullivan. Helen Rosner, a contrib- geles. (450 Park Ave. 212-940-1200.) Fulton St. at S. Portland St., Brooklyn. May 22 at 7:30.) utor to newyorker.com, will also be on hand with a story that connects the President’s dinner table to the U.S.-Mexico border. Because these events aren’t taped, the only way to catch them is to attend. (David Geen Hall, Lincoln Center, Broadway at W.1 66th St. 212-721-6500. May 21.) AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES

Sotheby’s leads into its all-important evening auction of contemporary art (May 16) with a sale devoted to the collection of the Cleveland- based tycoon Morton Mandel, which includes pieces by such blue-chip artists as Rothko, de Koo - ning, and Judd. Then it launches into the main event: a selection of contemporary works, led by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1983 painting “Flesh and Spirit,” inspired in part by Robert Far- ris Thompson’s inluential study of African art. Also included are Kerry James Marshall’s “Past Times,” a pastoral scene depicting various African-American igures enjoying an afternoon at the park, and the gumball-colored “Paciic Coast Highway and Santa Monica,” by David Hockney. On May 22, the house returns to the less overheated arena of European academic art and Old Masters, followed by Amer- ican art, including John Koch’s intimate painting of an artist and his nude model peering out of a window, “The Accident No. 2.” (York Ave. at 72nd St. 212-606-7000.) • Warhol, Bacon, and Rothko duke it out for the top spot in Christie’s evening sale of postwar and contemporary art on May 17. There are two major Warhol can- vases on ofer, one depicting Elvis, pistol drawn, cowboy-style, and the other a double mug shot from his “Most Wanted” series, from 1964. The Rothko, “No. 7 (Dark Over Light),” has the dis- tinction of being one of the artist’s largest works, at more than eight feet tall. For the more light-

ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO AMARGO PABLO BY ILLUSTRATION hearted, there is also a giant pile of pretend Play- FßD & DRINK

1 TABLES FOR TWO bonito broth with a jagged-edged shiso BAR TAB Shabu Shabu Macoron leaf. A springy tangle of yuba, the skin that forms on the surface of soy milk as 61 Delancey St. (212-925-5220) it’s boiled to make tofu, came in a pool of On a recent evening, the chef Mako the milk, warm and sweet, topped with Okano stood behind the counter at Shabu lobes of briny uni from Hokkaido and a Shabu Macoron, on the Lower East Side, shaving of real wasabi. It was an overture looking a little like Rosie the Riveter: for the tofu itself, a jiggling slab as soft Jimmy’s Corner bandanna knotted around her head, the and creamy as butter, seasoned with just 140 W. 44th St. (212-221-9510) sleeves of her denim kimono rolled up to a few drops of ponzu, a bit of grated gar- There is a gritty purism about Jimmy’s Corner, her elbows. After two years cooking at the lic, and grassy green onion. where the walls are covered in boxing memora- soba restaurant Cocoron and its outpost, By now, Okano had the diners eating bilia and an old jukebox permeates the atmo- Goemon Curry, she opened this eight- out of her hand. In simmering cauldrons sphere with the velvety tones of Sam Cooke and Sinatra. The proprietor, Jimmy Glenn, is a for- seat place across the street last fall, with a heated by electric burners, she and her mer prizeighter and cornerman for Floyd Pat- small staf made up only of women. And staf carefully plunged vegetables and terson. He opened Jimmy’s in 1971. From a dis- that’s not even the most unusual thing paper-thin slices of meat, then presented tance of half a century, the bar’s survival, in the heart of Times Square, has the feel of an under- about it: according to Okano, it’s the them one at a time, like mother birds dog story. The decades-long makeover of the world’s only restaurant to serve an feeding their chicks, and ofered instruc- neighborhood, from a convivial Gomorrah to an omakase, or tasting menu, that centers on tions on seasoning. Fatty strip loin with outpost of Disneyland, couldn’t dislodge the place. Even the price of booze—draft beers for shabu-shabu, or Japanese hotpot. an exceptionally clean, beefy flavor? “Try three dollars, mixed drinks from the rail for ifty The concept might at first sound an- it with ponzu.” Flufy curl of pork? Ses- cents more—remains stubbornly out of step with tithetical; isn’t the whole point of hotpot ame paste. Both sweet soy and tomato inlation. Glenn, now in his eighty-eighth spring, still drops in nearly every night. On a recent to cook the food yourself? But maybe, sauce for julienned carrot wrapped in Monday, he arrived at the usual hour, just before Okano seems to be gently suggesting, you Chinese cabbage. When the last wonton ten, and took a chair next to a large stone sculp- could use the help of a professional. The filled with mochi and seaweed had been ture of a sparring glove. With his silvery horse- shoe mustache and marble-handled walking cane, other night, a heady flight of appetizers eaten, the now murky cooking liquid was he called to mind a king presiding over his court- more than proved her authority. A spoon- whisked away—only to return for a grand iers. A woman with a lilting Scottish accent asked ful of cured salmon and roe mixed with finale. The closing course before dessert to take a photo with him. A bearded Dutchman in a Yankees cap just wanted to shake his hand. starchy, sour fermented rice was dressed was a deep bowl of the very same stuf, Glenn obliged the admiring tourists, and then with a single minuscule purple flower and repurposed as soup, featuring fresh green- turned his attention to a newly wed Manhattan served with a thimble of warm, cloudy tea soba noodles. It had been doctored couple. “Jimmy, you think my wife could be a heavyweight champion?” the man asked. Glenn sake nigori. In a cast-iron pan, Okano slightly with soy sauce, bonito broth, and sized up the sylphlike woman, who had pink hair gently cooked eggs she had frothed with duck oil, but it didn’t need much, Okano and was gamely jabbing at the air. He chuckled long chopsticks, then rolled the resulting explained. “It has all the umami of what softly and shook his head. “They’d sit on her,” he pronounced, and the woman dropped her arms omelette in a bamboo mat and sliced it was in there.” (Omakase $128.) in mock defeat. Another K.O. for Jimmy into segments, each placed in a cup of —Hannah Goldfield Glenn.—David Kortava SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW FOR ZAVISLAK ZACHARY BY PHOTOGRAPH

30 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018

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COMMENT withdrew from the accord and reim- Korea has nuclear weapons and inter- BAD BETS posed sanctions, saying, “This was a continental ballistic missiles capable of horrible, one-sided deal that should reaching the United States. Trump will n January 20, 1981, John Limbert have never, ever been made.” In a high- be lucky to get a deal as straightfor- Oand fifty-one other American dip- risk gamble, the President is basically ward or as verifiable as the one that he lomats were taken to Tehran’s interna- betting on the Islamic Republic’s de- has just abandoned. tional airport on a bus, after being held mise. The United States has now vio- The fallout was immediate: Britain, in captivity by young revolutionaries lated its obligation; Iran, according to France, and Germany rebuked Trump for four hundred and forty-four days. ten International Atomic Energy and vowed to honor the deal. China and The diplomats were all blindfolded. Agency reports, has not. Tehran is not Russia—the other co-sponsors—will “Listening to the motors of the plane likely to go back to the negotiating table stick to it, too. The European Union is warming up—that was the sweetest under these circumstances. The credi- also considering legislation to nullify sound I’ve ever heard,” Limbert recalled bility of the White House, the coun- the efects of Trump’s sanctions on E.U. last week. The Air Algérie crew waited try’s commitment to diplomacy as an companies for engaging in transactions to uncork the champagne until the flight alternative to war, the strength of Amer- with Iran. Tensions between Israel and had left Iranian airspace. The next day, ica’s alliances, and the mechanisms to Iran threatened to turn Syria’s civil war however, the Times cautioned, “When limit nuclear proliferation have all been into a regional conflagration. For the the celebrations have ended, the hard deeply damaged. first time, Iranian Revolutionary Guards problems unresolved with Iran will re- This uncertainty comes at a partic- in Syria fired rockets into Israel. Israel main to be faced.” ularly perilous moment, as Trump pre- responded with a barrage of air strikes That’s still true, nearly four decades pares for a summit with the North Ko- on Iran’s extensive infrastructure across later. Since Iran’s 1979 revolution, six rean leader, Kim Jong Un, in Singa- the border. And Saudi Arabia said that U.S. Presidents have traded arms, built pore, on June 12th. Unlike Iran, North it would seek its own nuclear weapon back channels, and dispatched secret if Tehran resumed any aspect of a pro- envoys in an efort to heal the rupture. gram aimed at developing either peace- “It’s a bad divorce, like ‘The War of the ful nuclear energy or a bomb. Roses,’” Vali Nasr, the Iranian-born Trump has condemned the accord— dean of Johns Hopkins University’s and Iran—since the start of the 2016 School of Advanced International Stud- campaign. But his new foreign-policy ies, said. “Neither side has ever gotten team, assembled during the past two over it.” Finally, in 2015, Barack Obama months, seems to be pursuing a con- led six major world powers into the frontational course. John Bolton, the na- Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, tional-security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, the most significant nonproliferation the Secretary of State, championed re- pact in more than a quarter century. gime change in Tehran before they joined The deal limited but did not eliminate the Administration. No opposition group Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange has seriously challenged the theocracy for relief from some but not all puni- from the outside. But, almost inexplica- tive U.S. economic sanctions. bly, Bolton and Rudolph Giuliani, who On May 8th, Donald Trump, in his is now one of the President’s lawyers,

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM BY ILLUSTRATIONS biggest foreign-policy decision to date, were among a number of Americans

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 33 who accepted speaking fees to mobilize course that will address the aggressive a challenge for an impatient President. support for Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or the and hostile behavior of our enemies.” (The Iran deal took nearly two years of People’s Holy Warriors, a cultlike Ira- The Islamic Republic is certainly an intense diplomacy after a decade of false nian-exile group that mixes Islam and American nemesis, albeit not the only starts.) The North Korean regime is un- Marxism, and was on the State Depart- one, and not the worst. It redefined war- likely to totally dismantle or permanently ment’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations fare with hostage-taking and suicide surrender nuclear warheads—or the mis- list from 1997 to 2012. Both men lob- bombings. It introduced Islam as a form siles that deliver them—without receiv- bied to get it taken of the list. Last July, of modern governance, and fostered ex- ing significant and simultaneous conces- Bolton told M.E.K. followers in Paris tremism. It created, aided, or armed mi- sions from the United States. The two that U.S. policy “should be the overthrow litias in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian nations may be out of step on basic se- of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran” by its National Authority, Syria, and Yemen quencing, too: who gives what, and when. fortieth anniversary—next February. that targeted U.S. interests. The United Last Thursday, Trump predicted a suc- Trump and his team are old enough States should counter such activities. But cess, but added, “If it isn’t, it isn’t.” to have watched the hostage saga drag the President’s foreign policy—big on Meanwhile, there’s no Plan B on Iran. on, day after day, and remember Amer- headlines and brash in demands but After decades of trying to engage with ica’s vulnerability. “Whoever wrote the short on long-term strategy—risks fail- Tehran met with only erratic and frus- President’s statement is still obsessed ing, in Iran, North Korea, and beyond. trating results, the accord finally tested with it,” Limbert, who now teaches at Trump and Kim Jong Un may an- whether wider coöperation was possible, the U.S. Naval Academy, said. “We’re still nounce a historic breakthrough in June, while limiting Iran’s bomb-making ca- wrestling with the ghosts of that history.” but they have vastly diferent ideas about pabilities. Now the United States and Last week, Bolton explained Trump’s de- what “denuclearization” means. Agreeing Iran are on an ever more dangerous tra- cision in the Washington Post, writing, to broad principles in Singapore will be jectory that could create a new genera- “This action reversed an ill-advised and the easier part; negotiating the complex tion of ghosts. dangerous policy and set us on a new details of disarmament will take years— —Robin Wright

LOCK AND LOAD DEPT. they’d attended in Dallas, a month ear- Ferrigno, who often carries a con- INCREDIBLE lier. “We met Chuck Norris, Jason cealed handgun, joined the N.R.A. years Momoa, and Richard Dean Ander- ago. Since 2006, he’s been a deputy son—you know, MacGyver,” he said. sherif in Los Angeles. “I wanted to “People were having him sign the old give back,” he said. “I’m active with MacGyver knives. I got him to sign a search and rescue. I do thirty hours a picture of his character Jack O’Neill, month when I’m not making films or from ‘Stargate SG-1.’ I had to pay, but TV.” He mentioned an “Apprentice”- he National Rifle Association held it was worth it.” His wife was telling style show called “Pumped,” which he’s Tits annual conference earlier this someone in line about getting a high shooting for the Discovery Channel month, at a Dallas convention center. five from Norris. next month. “I’m the Trump guy,” he Thousands of people milled around hun- Ferrigno showed up at nine-thirty said. “But more heartfelt.” dreds of exhibitors, including Armaged- wearing a black polo shirt with the It was time for autographs. Ferrigno don Gear (beer bivy sacks), WMD Guns Brownells logo, jeans, and black shoes. stood beside a small table with a bottle (not nuclear weapons), and RCBS Pre- He had a graying goatee and a tan, and, of water, hand sanitizer, two pens, and cisioneered Reloading supplies (“leav- for a sixty-six-year-old, he was ripped. a stack of posters bearing his silhouette ing varmints mystified since 1943”). A He said that he’d worked out that morn- and the N.R.A. logo. An assistant would long line snaked around the booth of a ing, to pump up his “flexing muscles.” relay the name of an approaching fan. firearms company called Brownells. At He now lives in Santa Monica, but he Ferrigno would say, “How are ya?,” then about 9 A.M., a stafer looked at his watch. grew up in New York, the son of a Brook- sign and pose. He’d throw an arm around “He usually gets a pretty good line,” he lyn cop who taught him about guns. women. He’d clap the men on the shoul- said, referring to Lou Ferrigno, the for- “When I was twelve, I remember der and flex his right arm. Some men mer Mr. Universe and star of “The In- watching my dad shoot at the range,” he copied him. Alan Lau, a thirty-nine- credible Hulk” TV series (which aired said. He described seeing holes in the year-old engineer from Boston, was one on CBS from 1978 to 1982), who would head of the target. “My dad said to me, of them. “I used to do bodybuilding soon arrive to sign autographs. Nearby, ‘You ever misbehave, the same will hap- back in my high-school days,” Lau said. at another table, attendees filled out paper pen to you.’ That was kind of a joke.” He “I was really fat. Lou Ferrigno, Arnold— slips for the “Gun-A-Day Giveaway.” went on, “He always left his gun and his they were an inspiration.” James and Natalie Cannariato were badge on the refrigerator. Today, it’s a “He’s the only real Hulk,” a mid- waiting for Ferrigno. A chemical engi- diferent story; you can’t leave guns in dle-aged man who’d travelled from Illi- neer in his mid-twenties, James wore a plain sight.” A few hundred firearms could nois with his wife and their two children, hat that said “Fuck Y’all I’m From be seen on the surrounding convention who stood quietly beside him, said. “The Texas.” He described another event floor. The air was full of clicking. new Hulk is all C.G.I.” Gesturing toward

34 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 Ferrigno, he continued. “I just learned he’s a Second Amendment supporter!” Another man standing to the side of the line, Billy Pennington, from Arkan- sas, wanted to pitch Mean Green Pep- per Spray, a self-defense product that he hoped Ferrigno would endorse. “It’s a pepper spray with a green dye that marks your attacker,” Pennington said. “He’d be perfect, the green man.” Ferrig- no told him that he’d talk to him about the spray later. Up walked Robin Tonef, from Indi- ana, holding two mint-condition “Hulk” comic books. “That’s great—true fan of the Hulk,” Ferrigno muttered. Eventually, Ferrigno’s flexing arm began to tire and he took a break. When “Their rut looks like a lot more fun than our rut.” he returned, Major John L. Plaster, the proprietor of ultimatesniper.com, tripped •• and fell into his arms. “Thank God, a strong man to hold me up,” Plaster said. one half of the filmmaking Duplass Chair,” “Baghead,” “Safety Not Guar- He enthused over Ferrigno’s marksman- brothers, stood by a trailhead in Alta- anteed”), which eventually led to big- ship: “He’s a genuine shooter. He shoots dena, stretching his hamstrings and league success (Netflix deals, HBO se- long range with great precision. He describing how he’d been hiking the ries, acting careers). knows not to muscle the gun.” Pacific Crest Trail (of “Wild” fame) in “But pretty recently we came to this After the autograph session, Ferrig- sections. feeling that maybe we should actively no ofered a brief defense of firearms. “People do it all in one hike—it takes put our energy into being brothers,” “You’ve got to remember, before the Con- them six months—but they’re all, like, Jay said. stitution was written this country was twenty-two,” Jay, who is forty-five, ex- “The nature of our engine is still rev- being run by a bunch of English rebels,” plained. Mark, who is four years his ju- ving from our teens and our early twen- he said. “So John Adams and those peo- nior, strolled up. ties, like, driving up the fucking hill no ple came and wrote the Constitution “Hey, Dupiss,” Mark said, handing matter what!” Mark said, as the trail and included the Second Amendment.” over his car keys. “Jay always has the wove past Jet Propulsion Lab. “It took He went on, “My opinion is that guns zippy pockets—he’s the leader of these putting a knife into the engine to slow don’t walk around killing people.” expeditions.” us down.” According to a large sign, the next In their new book, “Like Brothers,” Jay said, “A huge part of what we’re personality who would be ofering au- which is a grab bag of D.I.Y. filmmak- going through is, like, although we’re tographs was “Benghazi Hero John ‘Tig’ ing tips, musings on “The Karate Kid,” not immigrants, we kind of come from Tiegen.” A line had begun to form. and confessional e-mail exchanges about this immigrant mentality of you just put —Charles Bethea their relationship, they write, “Hikes are your head down and do it. Almost all 1 a great way to hammer out our big is- immigrants work with family, live with CANYON POSTCARD sues . . . we must look down at the ter- family, and, when you come at it as broth- THE ROYAL WE rain and thus we don’t have to look at ers, it’s like a team, where you sublimate each other while we are airing our griev- your personal needs for—” ances.” The book’s working title was “There is no ‘I’ in T-E-A-M!” Mark “The Royal We.” yelled, sending a lizard skittering. “We They set out up a gently sloping path. keep coming up with this word ‘indi- A ZZ Top look-alike powered past, and viduate’—like, we’ve got no room to in- good mornings were exchanged. dividuate. Which is a fancy way of say- hen much of your professional “There’s something about the energy ing, ‘I might need some space.’ ” A Wlife has been spent as half of a of the people on this trail that’s very woman walked by, leading an unsad- duo, a creative uncoupling can take on Austin, circa the mid-nineties, when we dled horse. the tenor of a breakup. It’s not hard to lived there,” Mark whispered. “It’s a bit “I have a confession,” Mark went on. imagine Garfunkel having a good cry of an outliers’ path.” The brothers, who “I watched ‘Ordinary People’ on a flight while cutting Simon out of snapshots. were reared in a suburb of New Orleans, about three months ago. I just wanted How, then, to broach going solo when came up in Austin, working side by side to go there. Do you ever feel that you your erstwhile partner is your sibling? to make scrappy, funny movies with a just want to purge?” One recent morning, Jay Duplass, lot of heart and little budget (“The Pufy “Oh, yeah,” Jay said. (There’s no

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 35 EXPLORETHE Arts District

MARKINGTHEINFINITE CONTEMPORARY WOMENARTISTSFROM ABORIGINALAUSTRALIA The Phillips Collection June 2 – Sept. 9 Encounter works from nine Aboriginal Australian female artists whose creations asks us to examine the natural world.

DC Jazz Festival Step Afrika! DCJAZZFESTIVAL Citywide | June 8-17 Dozens of the world’s best jazz AMERICA’SPRESIDENTS musicians come to DC to perform THEMIGRATIONREFLECTIONS free and ticketed concerts all over the National Portrait Gallery ONJACOBLAWRENCEIN city. Don’t miss Leslie Odom Jr. at The Ongoing WASHINGTONDC Anthem on June 16, the headlining Celebrate the recently renovated Catholic University’s Hartke performance of DC JazzFest at The exhibition of presidential portraits, Theater | June 8-17 Wharf presented by Events DC. including the highly publicized large- Step Afrika! returns to the District to scale painting of President Barack close out its incredible season with Obama. nine performances of their sold-out, Oﬀ -Broadway hit. BOTTICELLIINTHEFIRE The Woolly Mammoth Theatre HAMILTON Company The John F. Kennedy Center for May 28 – June 24 the Performing Arts A humorous play about an artist and June 12 – Sept. 16 mentor of Da Vinci set in modern Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical times, Bo icelli details how its sensation about a Founding Father namesake character navigates a comes to the Kennedy Center for a populist revolution. HAMILTON Chicago Company 14-week run while the city celebrates Photo by Joan Marcus 2016 with special exhibits.

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BYTHEPEOPLEFESTIVAL Watch the documentary-style video series that brings Citywide | June 21-24 the District’s thriving arts community to life through The inaugural free arts festival will the perspective of local creators in the ﬁ elds of music, feature installations, performances, dance, museums, theater and mural arts. speakers, an augmented reality art hunt and late-night museum LeLett’’ss Go-Go washington.org/the-arts-district openings.

FUNHOUSE National Building Museum July 4 – Sept. 3 Stimulate the senses at Fun House, a collection of rooms outﬁ ed NOSPECTATORSTHEARTOF with varied installations conceived BURNINGMAN by noted New York design ﬁ rm The Renwick Gallery Snarkitecture. Open through Jan. 21, 2019 One of the year’s most anticipated exhibitions, No Spectators brings hand-cra ed artifacts from the Shrumen Lumen 2016 desert gathering to the Renwick Photo by Rene Smith and the nearby neighborhood.

AMERICANS FREEMUSICVIBES National Museum of the Citywide | Ongoing American Indian DC oﬀ ers up a range of free music Open through 2022 experiences in the summertime, Observe how American Indians from monthly local band showcases Americans exhibit have been essential to our nation’s at Luce Unplugged at the Photo by AP Paul Morigi identity through powerful images, Smithsonian American Art Museum stories and names that continue to to scenic Friday night concerts at resonate throughout contemporary Yards Park in the Capitol Riverfront American life. (May 25 – Aug. 24).

SPECIALADVERTISINGSECTION| shortage of cathartic weeping in the not going to run,” he said, finally. “I am, scene and also earned him a hit, “Sky book, often with the brothers cuddled unfortunately, just buried in shit.” And and Sand.” For a time, he veered toward up in a twin bed.) of they went, on their separate ways. Moby-ish major-label electronic pop. Mark continued, “I was all geared up —Emma Allen For his 2015 release, “7,” Sony let him for the brother stuf to set me of, and 1 loose in its vault so that he could bor- then I immediately became Donald NIGHTLIFE DEPT. row vocal parts from the likes of Luther Sutherland, because I have kids now.” KUSH Vandross, D Train, and Grace Slick. Now Jay described his tearjerker of choice, he has veered rootsward again, first with a cancelled reality show called “The Lo- the 2016 mixtape series “Back to the Fu- cator”: “This weird guy flies in his own ture,” a tribute to the early days of the private Learjet, with heavy-metal music Berlin underground scene, and now with playing, and he goes and he helps peo- the release, this month, of an album called ple reconnect with their families. Three “Parts of Life.” hard, ugly cries guaranteed, per episode.” he Germans had meetings in Man- The Germans got into an S.U.V. to At the end of the hike, Jay returned Thattan. The last one was at the Hof- head out to Brooklyn, to set up for the Mark’s keys and they resumed stretch- bräu Bierhaus, a very intentional beer gig, which was scheduled to begin at ing. Mark said, “I don’t watch televi- hall in midtown. It hadn’t been their 2 a.m. sion anymore—or movies, really. I finally idea, but there they were, sitting at a pic- “Two to 4 a.m. is something that got my books back, because my kids are nic table in the middle of the afternoon happened in Paul’s life a lot ten years old enough that I can sit and read.” facing down meaty steins of lager, talking ago,” Ruschmeyer said. Currently: “Why Buddhism Is True,” about techno with Austin Kramer, Spot- “Two a.m. is hard now: no more Tom Hanks’s short stories, and “Nau- ify’s global head of dance-music cura- marching powder,” Kalkbrenner said, sea,” by Sartre (“Like, the original found- tion. “He’s doing all the large playlists,” his accent bringing to mind Werner footage novel”). one of them said. “He’s the kingmaker.” Herzog discussing the stupidity of “I’m not reading anything,” Jay said. The principal German was Paul chickens. He and his wife, Simina Gri- “I’m watching trail-running videos. The Kalkbrenner, the techno artist from Ber- goriu, a Romanian-Canadian techno one I was watching this morning when lin, who was in town to perform for two d.j. and producer, have a three-year-old I was brushing my teeth is a guy who nights in Brooklyn. The others were his daughter. “I like to play daytime into ran a race in Moab that was two hun- manager, Marcus Ruschmeyer, and his nighttime, but not nighttime into day- dred and forty miles long, and he’s film- friend Olaf Heine, a photographer. time. The light comes in and you see ing it on his phone.” Kalkbrenner, his head shaved but all the ravers.” He contorted his face Mark: “Like Norwegian slow TV!” stubbled, had on black drop-crotch into the expression of a fiend shrink- Jay: “It’s very un-curated. It’s, like, sweatpants, flower-patterned hightops, ing from the sun. “When you are leav- ‘It’s sunrise. I just had breakfast. I just a black hoodie, and an olive-green ing a club and see the people out with threw up that sausage; I shouldn’t have bomber jacket. Sehr Kreuzkölln. He their kids, you feel worse.” He had a had that sausage.’ ” sipped his beer carefully. It was his first theory about festivals. “It is better to be Mark: “That’s a pretty good amount drink in a month. “I hate alcohol,” he second last,” he said. “Yes, to be last of action.” said. But he loves marijuana. He had a means you are the big one, but it is bet- The brothers stood a moment. “Do little white clutch that held cannisters ter to be second last, so that when you you want to go on a run?” Jay asked. of varietals. “I smoke all day, but I don’t are done you don’t have to watch ev- Mark contemplated the ofer. “I am get stoned. I was smoking the Grand- eryone cleaning up and putting the daddy Purple since five this morning. chairs upside down.” Now I’m looking for some nice Kush.” The S.U.V. inched forward on the Kalkbrenner, who is forty, has been F.D.R. Drive. Kalkbrenner, slouched in producing electronic music in dance clubs the back seat, said that he first came to since the early days of German reunifi- New York in 1999. He and a friend stayed cation. Reared in East Berlin, he was at a hotel by Newark Airport. “We walked twelve when the Wall came down, and around. Looked at shit. Hoped no one passed his adolescence dancing in the in the shops would talk to me. ‘Only city’s new techno clubs, such as Tresor looking.’ That was the only English I and E-Werk, while learning to cut and knew.” He came back in 2006 to perform. perform tracks himself. He is careful to “Nobody came. It was very depressing.” insist that he is not a d.j. He doesn’t stitch He lives in Mitte and still prizes Berlin’s together the music of others. He makes laid-back vibe. “In New York, you have his own, mixing it live, on an analog to pay much, much more for your much, Midas Venice 240 console. His turn as much smaller apartments, and so you Ickarus, the addled d.j. protagonist of have to work much, much more.” the 2008 cult film “Berlin Calling,” made New York is also vast. As the S.U.V. Jay and Mark Duplass him an icon of the city’s chimeric club nosed through Brooklyn, Kalkbrenner’s

38 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 energy began to flag. Jet lag, beer. The learn about rotary phones, while Burnett “You’re right!” Burnett said. A girl plan was to set up, run through a few picks up Instagram and some hip new with a ponytail asked, “How did you songs, then return to the hotel for a slang. “I learned ‘stay woke,’ ” she said. “I learn to be so funny?” disco nap. The club, called Elsewhere, used it in front of the same kids a few “The first time I got a laugh I was was in a rugged corner of East Wil- weeks later, and they said it was passé.” actually an old person—I was eighteen,” liamsburg, with a fleet of cement trucks Burnett was sitting in the principal’s Burnett said. “I was a freshman in col- parked out front. They arrived to find oice at P.S. 212, in Hell’s Kitchen, wait- lege, and I took an acting course.” She their crew—more Germans—milling ing to meet a group of first graders. She leaned in. “Are you funny? Make a funny around a stage, assembling lights, cam- wore a white blazer, dark slacks, and face.” The children obliged. eras, and mixing machines. Kalkbren- tinted glasses, and was accompanied by A girl wearing a headband asked, ner retreated to a backstage room and her longtime manager, Steve Sauer, who “How do you change your voice to be got to work rolling a joint of Grand- wore a suit and tie. “Evidently, I swore so many diferent characters?” daddy Purple and mentholated tobacco. as a kid,” she said. “I don’t remember Ruschmeyer popped in. “I have some who I learned it from, but I could cuss.” very interesting news for you that will Her three daughters also used to say the make you very happy,” he said. “The darnedest things, she said, recalling a man with the briefcase is coming.” time when she had to chide her young- “Kush,” Kalkbrenner said, smiling. est, Erin, for refusing to eat her dinner: Not long afterward, he went out onto “Toward the end of the meal, she looked the stage and began to play. Exuding at her father and said, ‘I love you.’ And rejuvenation, he manipulated knobs and he said, ‘I love you, too.’ And she said, dials, tapped buttons and screens, and ‘I also love your wife.’ I laughed so hard bobbed to the sounds produced by these I let her have dessert.” Burnett now has exertions. Three times he ran through two grandsons, with whom she texts. the track called “Part Ten.” Techno. She pulled out a photograph of Dylan, Beams of light swirled around the nearly eleven, who had bleached hair and wore empty club. In the back, by the bar, there a Tupac Shakur T-shirt. “Last year, he was a man with a briefcase, sipping on had his hair green,” she said, giving the a can of Red Bull. last word a comic warble. —Nick Paumgarten She was led down to the classroom, 1 past two kids who were building the Carol Burnett KIDS TODAY Great Wall of China out of cardboard, DARNEDEST and sat in a director’s chair. A teacher, Burnett pondered. “Do you know who Bryan Andes, said that the children had Tarzan is?” They were familiar with Tar- prepared by watching clips from “The zan. “When I was a little girl, we’d go to Carol Burnett Show” and “Once Upon the movies and then play-act the mov- a Mattress,” the 1959 musical that gave ies that we liked. So, when we saw ‘Tar- Burnett her breakout role. Fifty-five first zan,’ I became Tarzan, and I taught my- graders swarmed in and sang “Hello, self the yell. You want to hear it?” She few years ago, Carol Burnett was Dolly,” rewritten as “Hello, Carol.” cleared her throat and bellowed, to A doing a live Q. & A. in Texas, and “We’ve been studying Jerry Herman,” screams of laughter. “I could do Charo, a nine-year-old boy in the audience raised a blond boy explained. too.” They were unfamiliar with Charo. his hand. “You know who I am?” Burnett Burnett read a storybook version of A girl in a Hello Kitty shirt asked, asked, incredulous. He answered, “Sur- “The Princess and the Pea,” then sub- “Why do you tug your ear?” prisingly, yes!” “The audience went crazy,” mitted to questions. A girl with a blue “I was raised by my grandmother,” Burnett, who is eighty-five, said the other bow in her hair asked, “How did you get Burnett explained. “When I got my first day. “I wanted to take him on the road. your role in ‘Once Upon a Mattress’?” job on television, she said, ‘Well, you’ve He didn’t censor himself.” Now that the “Well, I was just starting out trying got to say hello to me!’ And I said, ‘Gosh, kids who grew up on “The Carol Bur- to be an actress in New York, and I got Nanny, I don’t think the television peo- nett Show” are well into middle age, Bur- a phone call to come down to the Phoe- ple are going to let me say hi to my nett has been courting a new generation nix Theatre, downtown on Twelfth Nanny.’ So we picked this secret signal: of fans. Her new Netflix series, “A Lit- Street,” Burnett recalled. “I read the I would pull my ear, and that was for tle Help with Carol Burnett,” convenes scene, and I was so excited, because the her. This earlobe is actually a little bit a panel of brutally honest children, ages director was a man named George Ab- longer.” When time was up, the chil- five to nine, to solve grown-up dilem- bott.” The kids seemed unfamiliar with dren sang the farewell song from “The mas for celebrity guests. (When Lisa George Abbott. “I was in the show for Carol Burnett Show,” “I’m So Glad We Kudrow asks about double-booking a year, and we did eight shows a week.” Had This Time Together,” and they all friends for lunch, one boy advises, “Don’t “There are not even eight days in a tugged their ears goodbye. have a friend.”) Along the way, the kids week,” a boy said, skeptically. —Michael Schulman

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 39 and tantalizing. One wants to go again. ANNALS OF GAMING The urge is strong. But it was time for my son to do his homework.

WEAPONIZED spent more time as a kid than I care I to remember watching other kids play How Fortnite has created a mass social gathering. video games. Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong. Usually, my BY NICK PAUMGARTEN friends, over my objections, preferred this to playing ball—or to other popular, if less edifying, neighborhood pursuits, such as tearing hood ornaments of parked cars. Every so often, I played, too, but I was a spaz. Insert quarter, game over. Once gaming moved into dorms and apartments—Nintendo, Sega—I learned that I could just leave. But sometimes I didn’t. I admired the feat of divided attention, the knack that some guys (and it was always guys) seemed to have for staying alive, both in the game and in the battle of wits on the couch, as though they were both playing a sport and doing “SportsCenter” at the same time. I thought of this the other day when a friend described watching a group of eighth-grade boys and girls (among them his son) hanging around his apartment playing, but mostly watching others play, Fortnite. One boy was playing on a large TV screen, with a PlayStation 4 console. The other boys were on their phones, either playing or watching a professional gamer’s live stream. And the girls were playing or watching on their own phones, or looking over the shoulders of the boys. One of the girls told my friend, “It’s fun The craze has elements of Beatlemania, the opioid crisis, and eating Tide Pods. to see the boys get mad when they lose.” No one said much. What patter there t was getting late in Tomato Town. “This is actually a really good bush. I was—l’esprit du divan—came from the IThe storm was closing in, and me- could bush-camp. But naw, that’s what kids’ little screens, in the form of the pro teors pelted the ground. Gizzard Liz- noobs do.” gamer’s mordant narration as he van- ard had made his way there after plun- Two men enter, one man leaves: the quished his opponents. dering the sparsely populated barns fighters closed in on each other. In the Fortnite, for anyone not a teen-ager and domiciles of Anarchy Acres, then video game Fortnite Battle Royale, the or a parent or educator of teens, is the by avoiding the Wailing Woods and late-game phase is typically the most third-person shooter game that has keeping the storm just of to his left. frenetic and exciting. Suddenly, the taken over the hearts and minds—and He spied an enemy combatant on sniper launched himself into a nearby the time, both discretionary and oth- high ground, who appeared to have a field and began attacking. Gizzard Liz- erwise—of adolescent and collegiate sniper’s rifle. In a hollow below the ard hastily threw up another port-a- America. Released last September, it is sniper’s perch was an abandoned piz- fort, amid a hail of enemy fire. The goal right now by many measures the most zeria, with a giant rotating sign in the is always to get, or make, the high popular video game in the world. At shape of a tomato. Gizzard Lizard, ground. times, there have been more than three who had quickly built himself a re- A moment later, Gizzard Lizard million people playing it at once. It has doubt of salvaged beams, said, “I think was dead—killed by a grenade. After- been downloaded an estimated sixty I’m going to attack. That’s one of ward, he replayed the ending, from var- million times. (The game, available on my main issues: I need to start being ious vantages, to analyze what had gone PC, Mac, Xbox, PS4, and mobile de- more aggressive.” He ran out into the wrong. To be so close to winning and vices, is—crucially—free, but many play- open, pausing before a thick shrub. yet come up short—it was frustrating ers pay for additional, cosmetic features,

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Manhattan’s one and only CyberKnife® Center. 150 Amsterdam (at 66th St.) • 1.866.WINTHROP • nyuwinthrop.org/NYCyberKnife including costumes known as “skins.”) barns. Now it’s Juul-sneaking little home- least relative to, say, Halo or Grand In terms of fervor, compulsive behav- bodies demolishing virtual walls and Theft Auto. Such are the consolations. ior, and parental noncomprehension, houses with imaginary pickaxes. Young The island itself has an air of deser- the Fortnite craze has elements of Beat- people everywhere are swinging away at tion but not of extreme despair. This lemania, the opioid crisis, and the in- their world, tearing it down to survive— apocalypse is rated PG. The abandon- gestion of Tide Pods. Parents speak of creative destruction, of a kind. ment, precipitated by the storm, which it as an addiction and swap tales of has either killed or scattered most of the plunging grades and brazen screen-time hall I explain the game? I have to, world’s population, seems to have been abuse: under the desk at school, at a SI’m afraid, even though describing recent and relatively speedy. The grass is memorial service, in the bathroom at video games is a little like recounting lush, the canopy full. The hydrangeas are 4 a.m. They beg one another for solu- dreams. A hundred players are dropped abloom in Snobby Shores. Buildings are tions. A friend sent me a video he’d onto an island—from a flying school unencumbered by kudzu or graiti and taken one afternoon while trying to bus—and fight one another to the death. have tidy, sparsely furnished rooms, as stop his son from playing; there was a The winner is the last one standing. though the inhabitants had only just fled time when repeatedly calling one’s fa- (You can pair up or form a squad, too.) (or been vaporized). Apparently, every- ther a fucking asshole would have led This is what is meant by Battle Royale. one on the island, in those prosperous to big trouble in Tomato Town. In our (The original version of Fortnite, intro- pre-storm times, shopped in the same household, the big threat is gamer rehab duced last July, for forty dollars, wasn’t aisle at Target. Each time I watch a player in South Korea. fight to the death; it is the new itera- enter a bedroom, be it in Junk Junction Game fads come and go: Rubik’s tion that has caught fire.) A storm en- or Loot Lake, I note the multicolored Cube, Dungeons & Dragons, Angry croaches, gradually forcing combatants blanket folded across the bed. Those Birds, Minecraft, Clash of Clans, into an ever-shrinking area, where they cobalt-blue table lamps: are they for sale? Pokémon Go. What people seem to must kill or be killed. Along the way, Maybe one day they will be. agree on, whether they’re seasoned you seek out caches of weapons, armor, Players, young ones anyway, don’t seem gamers or dorky dads, is that there’s and healables, while also collecting build- to notice such things. They’re after as- something new emerging around Fort- ing materials by breaking down exist- sault rifles (preferably the Legendary nite, a kind of mass social gathering, ing structures. Hasty fabrication (of SCAR), pump shotguns, bolt-action sniper open to a much wider array of people ramps, forts, and towers) is an essential rifles (the scope is a boon), chug jugs, than the games that came before. Its rel- aspect of the game, and this is why it is slurp juices, bandages, medkits, and shield ative lack of wickedness—it seems to be commonly described as a cross between potions. They see, and covet, skins that mostly free of the misogyny and racism Minecraft and the Hunger Games— look cool but have no bearing on game that alict many other games and gam- and why aggrieved parents are able to play; for twenty bucks, you can don the ing communities—makes it more pal- tell themselves that it is constructive. Leviathan or the Raven. Or they fixate atable to a broader audience, and this Before a game begins, you wander on dance moves, the so-called victory appeal both ameliorates and augments around in a kind of purgatorial bus emotes you can have your avatar per- its addictive power. (The game, in its depot-cum-airfield waiting until the form, in the heat of battle or after a kill. basic mode, randomly assigns players’ next hundred have assembled for an The Floss, the Fresh, the Squat Kick, the skins, which can be of any gender or airdrop. This is a strange place. Players Wiggle—these have spilled out into the race.) Widespread anecdotal evidence shoot inconsequentially at one another world. You may notice people around suggests that girls are playing in vast and pull dance moves, like actors walk- you, or professional athletes on TV, break- numbers, both with and without boys. ing aimlessly around backstage practicing into strange dances. The one known There are, and probably ever shall be, ing their lines. Then come the airlift as Take the L is big these days in the some gamer geeks who gripe at such and the drifting descent, via glider, to Bundesliga and at Minute Maid Park. newcomers, just as they gripe when there the battleground, with a gentle whoosh- are no newcomers at all. ing sound that is to the Fortnite addict lenty of accomplished gamers look A friend whose thirteen-year-old son what the flick of a Bic is to a smoker. Pdown their noses at Fortnite, the is deep down the rabbit hole likened the You can land in one of twenty-one areas way, perhaps, that some jazz and blues Fortnite phenomenon to the Pump on the island, each with a cutesy allit- diehards, in 1964, dismissed the Beat- House Gang, the crew of ne’er-do-well erative name, some suggestive of mid- les. The dances, the alliterative place- teen surfers in La Jolla whom Tom Wolfe century gay bars: Shifty Shafts, Moisty names, the dearth of true postapocalyp- happened upon in the early nineteen- Mire, Lonely Lodge, Greasy Grove. In tic menace: these can indicate a lack of sixties. Instead of a clubhouse on the patois and in mood, the game manages seriousness that to some seems spell- beach, there’s a virtual global juvenile to be both dystopian and comic, dark breaking. A classmate of Gizzard Liz- hall, where kids gather, invent an argot, and light. It can be alarming, if you’re ard’s, ZenoMachine, a gamer for lon- adopt alter egos, and shoot one another not accustomed to such things or are ger than seems plausible (he began down. Wolfe’s Pump House kids went attuned to the news, to hear your dar- playing Team Fortress 2 in kindergar- on beer-soaked outings they called “de- lings shouting so merrily about head ten and now develops his own games), structos,” in which they would, at local shots and snipes. But there’s no blood is the eighth grade’s resident Fortnite farmers’ behest, demolish abandoned or gore. The violence is cartoonish, at Scrooge. “First of all, I’m not a fan of

42 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 the polygons,” ZenoMachine told me. Unreal Engine, a basic platform that nas, and siphons a generation away from We were on a park bench, after school— supports all manner of games, be they actual sports, Fortnite has become the a rare hit of sunlight. “It has a hi-res shooters, brawlers, platformers, or sand- most viewed game on YouTube—by texture but low-res polygons.” Gizzard box R.P.G.s. It’s basically a suite of tools March, there had been almost three bil- Lizard had warned me that I wouldn’t that developers can use to design and lion views of the millions of sessions understand ZenoMachine, but I gath- build games and other simulations. that players had uploaded—and the top ered that he was critiquing the game’s Rather than starting from scratch in, say, game on Twitch, the streaming plat- aesthetics. He liked a realer look. He C++, the popular graphic-coding lan- form. Watching isn’t just for spazzes objected to certain inconsistencies. The guage, independent developers and other anymore. “It’s created a kind of global pickaxe, for example, which players use companies use the Unreal Engine to arcade,” Warren said. “Instead of a few to demolish walls and buildings, causes make their own games. (The licensing kids looking over the shoulder of the almost no damage to other players as a of the engine, in turn, gives Epic the hot-shot older brother or whatever, down weapon. “How can that be?” he said. “I cash flow to commit time and resources at the mall, you have millions of people see why a lot of people like Fortnite. It to the development of hit games like watching, and the person playing the targets players who aren’t experienced. Fortnite.) Each year, Epic uses existing game is a millionaire.” But it violates the laws of consistency.” games, some of them all but forgotten, The medium’s breakout star is known He said that the first time he played he to soup up the Unreal Engine, so that as Ninja. He is a former professional won—by hiding out until everyone else it can handle an ever more sophisticated Halo player named Tyler Blevins, who had pretty much been killed of. This array of demands. Fortnite was the first has said that he makes more than half a is known as camping, and is frowned Unreal Engine 4 release. Among other million dollars a month by streaming his upon by regular players. “If something things, Epic had to adapt the engine to Fortnite sessions, and his free-associa- as simple as player choice afects the help its servers accommodate the huge tive commentary, on Twitch (which is other players’ experience, you’ve got a amount of data that has to be processed owned by Amazon). His YouTube chan- design flaw,” ZenoMachine said. instantaneously when a hundred play- nel has more than ten million subscrib- ZenoMachine develops his own ers are competing in a single Battle ers. Last month, he hosted a Fortnite games using a platform called the Un- Royale round. The question of which tournament in Las Vegas, in an e-sports real Engine. Fortnite, as it happens, is actions afect others, and from what dis- arena, and almost seven hundred thou- built on the Unreal Engine, too. The tance, on this vast storm-sieged island— sand people tuned in to his Twitch stream. game is the creation of a company called the old if-then problem—is much more I’ve heard many teens refer to him as Epic Games, based outside Raleigh, complicated than it would seem. America’s biggest entertainer—which is North Carolina. In 1998, Epic released not as hyperbolic as it sounds. In April, a first-person shooter called Unreal, “ hink of Fortnite as a visual form Ninja ranked higher than any athlete in which enjoyed only moderate success Tof media,” Jamin Warren, the ed- the world in “social interactions,” a mea- but which, almost by accident, had an itor of the culture-and-gaming journal sure of social-media likes, comments, enduring influence on the evolution of Kill Screen, told me. Whatever Fortnite’s shares, and views. Cristiano Ronaldo was video games. Epic used Unreal’s under- allure as a game to play, it is also appar- No. 2. In March, Ninja consented to a lying architecture, and some of its parts, ently the most beguiling one to watch. Fortnite session with Drake. to make what came to be known as the As video-game spectatorship fills are- Blevins, who is twenty-six, comes from outside Detroit and lives near half of the hundreds of games he plays up and hit Lucky Landing. Gizzard Liz- Chicago (he won’t say where) with his every week, against all comers. He’s a ard wore an earbud under a set of ear- wife, who handles his business afairs. crack shot and has a nose for the high phones, so that he could talk with ism64 He streams ten to fourteen hours a day, ground. As often as not, it seems he’s while listening for the sound of ap- typically from about 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. hardly paying attention. He’s reading proaching enemies. From a distance, it and then from 6 p.m. until whenever. fans’ messages out loud, like a talk-radio appeared that he was talking to himself: All told, he logs about three hundred host, or jabbering with another Fort- “Let’s just build. Watch out, you’re gonna hours a month. What one sees is his nite star, such as Dr. Lupo or KingRi- be trapped under my ramp. I’m hitting game screen, with his avatar in what- chard, if they’ve teamed up for a game this John Wick. Oh my God, he just ever skin he has chosen, and, in an inset, or two: “The recoil on this thing is stu- pumped me. Come revive me. Build a perpetual shot of Blevins himself. A pid”; “You said you had a full shield, around me and come revive me. Wait, ninja headband girds a Bieber-ish shock ass”; “So hold my dick”; “That guy was can I have that chug jug? Thank you.” of hair that he dyes diferent colors: em- trying to drink a chug jug. What a noob.” I’d been struck, watching Gizzard erald green, platinum, yellow. He’s a All accompanied by occasional bursts Lizard’s games for a few days, by how lean, boyish guy who seems to make an of gunfire. “To anyone watching the the spirit of collaboration, amid the ur- efort to maintain some semblance of a stream, I hope you guys are enjoying gency of mission and threat, seemed to smile at all times. His spiel is goofy, the content, man.” bring out something approaching gen- cafeinated, and moderately cocky. He tleness. He and his friends did favors does impressions. In March, he was izzard Lizard’s shoot-out in To- for one another, watched one another’s mumbling some rap lyrics as he played, Gmato Town took place on the last backs, ofered encouragement. This was and somehow the word “indica” came night of April, which was the last night something that I hadn’t seen much of, out as the N-word. Amid the backlash, of Season 3. Anticipation was running say, down at the rink. One could argue he apologized, sort of, and, when it came high. One of the ingenious innovations that the old arcade, with the ever-pres- time for me to talk to him last week, of Fortnite is to introduce seasons of ent threat of bullying and harassment his manager’s one condition was that I about two months, as on a cable-televi- and the challenge of claiming dibs, ex- not ask him about it, as he’d already said sion series, and to integrate new plot and posed a kid to the world—it’s charac- what there was to say, which was, in game elements. (Last week, in a cross- ter-building!—but there was something part, “I promise that there was no mal over masterstroke, Thanos, the indestruc- to be said for such a refuge, even if it intent (I wasn’t even trying to say the tible villain of the new Avengers movie, did involve assault rifles and grenades. word—I fumbled lyrics and got tongue- dropped in on the game—that is, play- And then the John Wick was upon tied in the worst possible way).” A scru- ers could adopt a Thanos skin—and so, him. “Oh God! Oh God!” Foiled again. pulous journalist might have called of for a while, the Fortnite set gleefully A John Wick was an accomplished the interview, but the teens I’d been schooled various Thanoses in a way that player who had earned a skin that bears talking to about the game were so im- the Avengers could not.) On April 30th, a resemblance to the character played pressed that I might talk to Ninja that a comet that had been hovering over the by Keanu Reeves in the “John Wick” I caved. At the last moment, though, island was supposed to strike after mid- movies. (Oicially, the skin is called Ninja bailed, claiming illness. Burn! night. For days, meteors had been show- the Reaper, presumably to avoid licens- (“I’m pretty sure that was BS,” one of ering the game. Teasers—the latest being ing fees, but players call it John Wick.) those teens texted me. “I think he was “brace for impact”—had inspired a raft It was available to anyone who had at- streaming today.”) At any rate, Ninja’s of speculation and conspiracy theories. tained all hundred tiers of the game in sensitivity is a sign that gamers like him At first, people expected the comet to Season 3—a combination of achieve- are entering the mainstream. They have hit the crowded urban setting known as ment and experience which would have to watch what they say. Tilted Towers, but some clues led oth- required playing for between seventy- Onscreen, the millionaire maintains ers to predict, correctly, that the comet five and a hundred and fifty hours. the environs of the gamer boy. The cam- would wipe out Dusty Depot, which was As the last hours of Season 3 expired, era takes in an acoustic-tile ceiling, wall- thereafter to be known as Dusty Divot. players scrambled to reach Tier 100, and to-wall carpeting, bare drywall, and a It was hard to do homework on a get their John Wick skins. Gizzard Liz- fourposter bed. There’s a framed De- night like this; Gizzard Lizard returned ard was nowhere close. He’d started the troit Lions poster propped against a to the game. He played on a PC he’d season as a noob. Come the next morn- wall, alongside a mini-fridge stocked built at school. It didn’t have a graphics ing, Day One of Season 4, he had a plan with Red Bull. Ninja is a lifelong gamer, card. He’d never been a big gamer—his to put in the hours to get to Tier 100. It but he makes a point to remind his fans, parents were fairly strict about screens would take serious commitment. For the lest they get the drop-everything bug, and had never consented to an Xbox or first time, he purchased a thousand Fort- that he did well in school, played soc- even a Wii—though he’d played Mine- nite V-bucks, for $9.99, with which to cer and other sports, finished college craft for a while. This level of obsession buy skins. He went with the Carbide, a while holding down a job at Noodles & was something new. He saw on his find- sleek one that brought to mind a wet- Company, and even appeared, with his your-friends bar that a bunch of school- suit. This was the first time he—or, more family, on “Family Feud.” The game mates were playing, so he FaceTimed to the point, his parents—had ever spent skill is legit. He wins something like one who goes by ism64. They teamed anything but quarters on a game. 

44 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018

awesome, but the tres leches cake is SHOUTS & MURMURS ridic. Get it to go, though. Consum- ing that much dairy in the sun will make you pass out. If that’s not your speed, check out Greenliness. The food is all vegan, but it’s so good you’ll swear it’s vegetar- ian. They grow the ingredients right in the restaurant, so it’s fully table-to- table. Plus, it’s right around the corner from this great used-book store that’s never open. For dinner, there’s a super-authen- tic pho place, but you can only get in with a Vietnamese passport. They’re tough to track down, but it’s totally worth it. Let me know if you want me to introduce you to my guy. If you can’t get the paperwork in order, no problem. Make a reservation at Le Coquette. It’s the new French place by that lady who got kicked of “Top Chef” after her blowﬁsh sushi killed one of the judges. It’s a little pricey, but every course will change your life, some of them in ways you might not like. The duck pâté made me realize that I’m not really afraid of failure; I’m afraid of success. I mean, wow, right? Plus, the signature cock- tails all have trule oil in them, which RECOMMENDATIONS is the most amazing thing you’ll ever pretend you can taste. BY JOSH GONDELMAN Otherwise, Bub’s Tavern is a fun little neighborhood hole-in-the-wall. Heads up: the service is kind of slow. ey, buddy, you buy one, and they sell them until The original waitstaf from the sixties HSo great to hear from you. It’s a they run out, usually around 8:06 A.M. is mostly still there, and when a server bummer that we’ll miss you while you’re They don’t have any maple syrup, but dies they don’t replace him, so the in town. We’re sneaking away for a lit- this French toast doesn’t need maple kitchen can get pretty backlogged. If tle babymoon before Keithlyn arrives. syrup. It’s that good. They do ofer a you want the full Bub’s experience, It sounds corny, but we seriously need house-made sriracha, which sounds order the burger. They put sawdust in it. (What do you think of Keithlyn as like a gross combination but is actu- it, which Bub insists is some kind of a unisex baby name, by the way?) I ally amazing. Old Country tradition. It tastes hor- guess we’re going to be ships in the My favorite lunch spot is Mama rible. The worst you’ll ever have. It’s night this time. Like, actual ships— Rosa’s. Not the original Mama Rosa’s. great. Just try not to mention that you’re my wife and I are going to be on a pre- The Finnish mob burned down that Jewish. Mrs. Bub has some opinions. natal-yoga harbor cruise. We’re super building when Little Helsinki started You’re going to want to save room stoked for it. to spill over into Little Havana. It’s for dessert, too. There’s this new spot Anyway, I know you’re around for still the best Cuban food in the city, right by your hotel called Umamicake. just a couple of days, but here are the though. I go there, like, three times a They have an incredible bufet of restaurants you should deﬁnitely check week. O.K., technically, it’s not in the savory toppings. Gravy, paprika, bal- out while you’re here: city; it’s in the main concourse of a samic vinegar, you name it. It’s that For breakfast, you’ve got to try Frnch minor-league baseball stadium in the whole salty-sweet craze. Just F.Y.I., it’s Tst. They open at eight, but if you’re burbs, about an hour and a half away. B.Y.O.C. (bring your own cake). If not in line by quarter to six—forget it. You’re going to need to take a com- you like it, maybe we can go together There’s only one item on the menu: a muter train and buy a ticket to the next time you’re in town! single slice of French toast, served in game, but that absolutely shouldn’t Let me know what you end up doing.

a waxed-paper sleeve. They only let deter you. Everything on the menu is And have fun!  GUTIÉRREZ LUCI

46 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 Thinking about Religion and Violence Taught by Professor Jason C. Bivins NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIERSITY TIME ED OF T F LECTURE TITLES I E IM R L 1. Religion and Violence: A Strange Nexus 70% 2. Deﬁ ning Religion and Violence off 3. Violence in Sacred Texts 1 O 3 4. Martyrdom, Sacriﬁ ce, and Self-Harm R D AY ER BY M 5. Scapegoating and Demonology 6. Understanding Witch Trials 7. The Apocalyptic Outlook 8. Racial Violence and Religion 9. Religion and Violence against Women 10. Sexuality, Morality, and Punishment 11. Heresies and Their Suppression 12. Religion and Just War Theory 13. Peace as a Religious Ideal 14. War Gods and Holy War 15. Religious Violence in Israel 16. Religious Violence in India 17. Religion’s Relationship with Slavery 18. Native Americans and Religious Violence 19. Violence and “Cults” 20. Anti-Catholicism in Europe and America 21. The Persistence of Anti-Semitism 22. Islam, Violence, and Islamophobia 23. Religion and Terrorism 24. What We Can Do about Religious Violence

Unearth the Roots of Thinking about Religion and Violence Religious Violence Course no. 4105 | 24 lectures (30 minutes/lecture) Ours is a world where religious violence suddenly seems more prevalent than ever. But the truth is that religion and violence have been intertwined since the dawn of the world’s great faiths. Why? In Thinking about Religion and Violence, award-winning Professor Jason C. Bivins of North Carolina State University takes you on a global, multidisciplinary investigation of the roots of this phenomenon. You’ll consider how the major faiths view concepts like human sacrifice, martyrdom, and penitence, as well as concepts like heresy and demonology. Blending history, theology, psychology, sociology, and more, and examining many specific periods, instances, and sponsors of religious violence—from the ancient world to the 21st century—these 24 lectures get to the heart of an issue that’s broader For over 25 years, The Great Courses has brought and deeper than you may have thought. the world’s foremost educators to millions who want to go deeper into the subjects that matter most. No Of er expires 05/31/18 exams. No homework. Just a world of knowledge available anytime, anywhere. Download or stream THEGREATCOURSES.COM/8NYR to your laptop or PC, or use our free apps for iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire, or Roku. Over 600 1-800-832-2412 courses available at www.TheGreatCourses.com. ment at the Social Security oice. They AMERICAN CHRONICLES were all killed. Months later, after a funeral with a closed casket, Treanor got a phone call from the medical exam- SIRENS IN THE NIGHT iner’s oice. “We have recovered a portion of Ash- How the victims’-rights revolution has remade American justice. ley’s hand,” the voice at the other end of the line said. “And we wanted to know BY JILL LEPORE if you wanted that buried in the mass grave, or if you would like to have it to do with what you need to do.” “Of course I want it,” Treanor said. “It’s part of her and I need to have it where I know it is.” The Oklahoma City bombing produced an unprecedented number of victims: thousands. Under terms established by the victims’-rights movement, that number included not only the dead and wounded but also grieving family members and devastated rescue workers. They had lost; they had sufered; they were haunted. The victims’-rights movement, which began decades ago, has lately reached new heights. In November, voters in five states will decide on ballot-initiated victims’-rights amendments; activists hope, one day soon, to amend the U.S. Con- stitution. McVeigh’s trial marked the movement’s turning point. Many of the victims wanted to speak at the trial. The government fully expected a conviction, and decided to seek the death penalty, but hoped to avoid a trial like O. J. Simpson’s, with its bloody footprints, its leather gloves, its preening attorneys—a media circus, a legal travesty. Matsch, sixty-six, wore cowboy boots beneath his robes. He kept a portrait of George “ his is not theatre,” Judge Richard pinned beneath concrete slabs, impaled Patton in his oice. He had a Burt Reyn- TMatsch announced on the first with steel girders, sufocating from dust. olds mustache. He was known to be day of the trial of twenty-nine-year-old Jerry Flowers, an Oklahoma policeman, stern, eicient, and decisive. “Lance Ito Timothy McVeigh in the dafodil spring dug through rubble at what became he’s not,” the Washington Post reported. of 1997. “This is a trial.” known as the pit, near where, earlier The Simpson trial had blundered McVeigh, charged with bombing the that morning, there had been a day-care along for eight months; McVeigh’s, once Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, in center. Someone handed him a small it started, was over in six weeks. Matsch, Oklahoma City, two years earlier, stood body, wrapped in a blanket. Flowers un- spurning theatre, attempted to limit the accused of taking the lives of a hundred wrapped the blanket. “He was a little victims’ role in the proceedings. He made and sixty-eight people and injuring some boy, about five, six years old, and he had it diicult for them to attend or watch seven hundred more in the worst act of a Teddy bear on his shirt,” Flowers later the trial; he declared some of their ev- domestic terrorism in American history. said. “His face was gone.” idence inadmissible and cautioned the The blast demolished nearly half of the Many bodies were recovered in pieces. jury about what are known as victim- nine-story building, shattering its glass Kathleen Treanor’s elderly in-laws were impact statements, deeming them too front and shearing of its north face. taking care of her four-year-old daugh- emotional. He prohibited anyone in- Rescue workers who raced to the scene ter, Ashley, that day, and they’d stopped volved in the trial from speaking to the could hear people moaning and crying, at the Murrah building for an appoint- press. At one point, when a prosecutor told the jury there would be included, Victims’ rights grew out of an unlikely marriage of conservatism and feminism. in his evidence, several of the victims’

48 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY JUSTIN RENTERIA wedding photographs, Matsch cut him ment with an unparalleled opportunity. what’s known as the due-process revo- of: “No, there won’t.” “When you have the Oklahoma bomb- lution. Between 1961 and 1966, the War- Few of the limits that Matsch im- ing victims as your illustration, you have ren Court issued a series of decisions posed two decades ago would be im- access to Congress,” the University of that protected the rights of defendants, posed today, or could be, given changes Utah law professor Paul Cassell told producing the Exclusionary Rule, which in state and federal law. This winter, in me. Cassell led a legal team advocating deems evidence obtained without a search a camera-cluttered courtroom in Mich- for the victims. At their urging, Con- warrant inadmissible; the requirement igan, during the sentencing of the for- gress, which was then considering an that police notify suspects of their rights; mer Olympics gymnastics doctor Larry Anti-Terrorism and Efective Death and the provision of court-appointed Nassar, convicted of sexual assault, Judge Penalty Act, added a provision requir- attorneys for defendants who can’t aford Rosemarie Aquilina allowed a hundred ing that if a trial is moved more than them. Carrington and other law-and- and fifty-six women to make victim- three hundred and fifty miles from the order conservatives, led by the Califor- impact statements. In her court, Nas- scene of a crime the federal courts (from nia governor Ronald Reagan, argued sar, fifty-four, had been convicted of which cameras are banned) have to make that liberals on the Supreme Court, on sexually assaulting only seven women. closed-circuit broadcast available to the judges’ benches, and in the legal acad- He had also already been sentenced to victims. Matsch entertained arguments emy were soft on crime. “For Law and sixty years in prison on child-pornog- concerning the constitutionality of the Order” became a slogan of Richard Nix- raphy charges. Nevertheless, nearly a provision. In the age of “Oprah,” which on’s 1968 Presidential campaign. “As we hundred and fifty women spoke of the placed trauma at the center of Ameri- look at America, we see cities enveloped harm Nassar had done to them in com- can popular culture, both sides rested in smoke and flame,” Nixon said, ac- mitting crimes for which he had never their arguments less on legal claims cepting the Republican nomination. been charged, delivering heartrending than on psychological ones. The pros- “We hear sirens in the night.” statements, broadcast live, over seven ecution insisted that the victims needed Against the noisiness of a (criminal) days. “I can’t imagine a punishment great to attend the trial for purposes of ther- minority, Nixon posited the silent, vic- enough for you,” the former gymnast apy: “Part of their recovery depends on timized majority, a note his Admin- Kamerin Moore told Nassar. Anna their seeing—first hand, if possible— istration sounded over and over. The Ludes, a former Michigan State rower, our system of justice at work.” The de- minority had more rights than the ma- said, “Because of Nassar, I have to spend fense suggested that the presence of the jority; a balance had been lost. This led the rest of my life trying to heal, and I victims, or even of cameras, would un- to talk of victims, whose voices needed want nothing more for him than to settle jurors, subjecting them to “enor- to be heard. In 1970, Spiro Agnew com- spend the rest of his life behind bars.” mous psychological pressure” by re- plained that “the rights of the accused The women cried, and the Judge cried. minding them that “a large, faceless have become more important than the “I know that the world is watching,” group of grievously injured persons are rights of victims in our courtrooms.” In Aquilina said, the day she sentenced depending on the jury to return the 1971, Lewis Powell, whom Nixon had Nassar to up to a hundred and seventy- only verdict (guilty) and sentence (death) nominated to the Supreme Court, wrote five years in prison. She said she’d been this group will find acceptable.” that “the victims of crime have become gratified by the reaction to the tele- Matsch grudgingly allowed the in- the forgotten men of our society.” By vised and live-streamed proceedings on stallation of a single camera, mounted 1972, when the Warren Court ruled the Twitter and Facebook. She congratu- at the back of the Denver courtroom, death penalty to be essentially uncon- lated the press. “I respect all of the media which captured a fixed-focus shot stitutional, Carrington had coined the outlets, you have just done a fabulous of the bench, the witness box, and the term “victims’ rights.” His book “The job here.” She congratulated herself. “I tables at which the defense and the Victims” amounted to a manifesto against give everybody a voice,” she said. “I give prosecution sat. Twelve hundred peo- the Warren Court. William F. Buckley’s defendants a voice, their families when ple requested credentials to watch; eight brother James, a U.S. senator, supplied they’re here, I give victims a voice.” hundred and thirty-two were allowed, a foreword, which called for the resto- Matsch spurned theatre; Aquilina taking turns occupying a three-hundred- ration of the death penalty and com- turned her courtroom into a stage. Amer- and-twenty-seat auditorium in Okla- plained about “a severe imbalance in ican justice has been remade. Some of homa City. favor of the rights of those accused of what happened in the Nassar trial is Those seats were provided by the crime over the rights of those victim- as new as #MeToo. Much of it is as old victims’-rights movement, the child of ized by crime and of the public at large.” as stoning. an unlikely marriage of conservatism This historical, restore-the-balance and feminism. The movement usually argument—the central tenet of the vic- n February 20, 1996, Matsch had dates its origins to 1975, when, with the tims’-rights movement—is both superfi- Oruled that McVeigh’s trial would aid of the Heritage Foundation, a law- cially right and profoundly wrong. For be moved from Oklahoma City to yer named Frank G. Carrington pub- centuries, criminal trials were, like civil Denver, to insure an impartial jury. lished a book called “The Victims.” But ones, contests between individual par- That made attending impossible for the movement really began in 1966, when ties: Victim v. Defendant. By the early many victims, but Matsch’s ruling also Carrington founded Americans for modern era, the state had become the presented the victims’-rights move- Efective Law Enforcement, to protest prosecuting party in criminal trials, which

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 49 then took the form of Crown v. Defen- by what seems as a very hard-hearted with those of many feminists. For all dant (and, in the United States, of State v. rule.” Matsch stuck with his decision. the stability of the State v. Defendant Defendant). As John Locke pointed “Nobody has said a good word about regime, the courts had for centuries out, this change was foundational to that ruling,” Cassell told me. “And it slighted crimes against women, whose civil society, in which, “all private judg- appeared to be in contravention of fed- powerlessness before the state—in the ment of every particular member being eral law.” Cassell helped the victims file form of an all-male bench and bar— excluded, the community comes to be an appeal with the Tenth Circuit, ar- really did rival that of criminal defen- umpire, by settled standing rules, in- guing that “the law should not be con- dants. At the time, most prosecutors diferent, and the same to all parties.” strued to thrust this terrible choice on and judges appear to have believed that Wherever people yield to public au- victims, who have already sufered far marital rape was not rape, domestic vi- thority the judgment and punishment too much.” While they waited for the olence was a family afair, and sexual of crime, Locke wrote, “there and there appeals court’s final decision, the vic- harassment was part of life. Rape con- only is a political, or civil society.” tims went, once again, to Washington. victions were extremely diicult to ob- During the centuries when victims tain. Both law-and-order conservatives were gradually excluded from criminal emoving victims from criminal pros- and women’s-rights activists sought more proceedings, defendants didn’t have Recutions had been the work of cen- aggressive prosecutions of and stricter much of a role, either. Generally, defen- turies; putting them back in has been sentences for rape and sexual assault, dants were not allowed counsel before the work of decades. In 1981, Reagan’s along with broad protections for vic- the eighteenth century and could not Justice Department appointed Carring- tims, by deploying the language of vic- ofer sworn testimony before the end of ton to a Task Force on Violent Crime tims’ rights. In New York, for instance, the nineteenth century; most trials, in and, in 1982, to the President’s Task the campaign for victims’ rights was any case, lasted only about twenty min- Force on the Victims of Crime. Dis- led by the longtime civil-rights activist utes. Against the fearsome power of the avowing legal reasoning—“You cannot Elizabeth Holtzman. As a member of state, defendants are nearly powerless, appreciate the victim problem if you Congress, Holtzman introduced a bill which is why most rules of evidence are approach it solely with your intellect” — in 1976 to protect rape victims from designed to protect them, a principle the Task Force on the Victims of Crime cross- examination about their sexual central to the founding of the United recommended introducing victim-im- history, and a Victims of Crime Act in States and embodied in the Fourth, pact statements into sentencing and pa- 1979. Later, as a district attorney, she es- Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments role hearings. That year, a subcommit- tablished a crime-victims counselling and, later, in the Fourteenth. The rights tee of the Senate Judiciary Committee unit and introduced victim-impact state- of defendants are protections against prepared a report called “The Right to ments at sentencing hearings. “For too the state, not harms done to victims. Keep and Bear Arms,” establishing an- long, the criminal-justice system ignored At a pretrial hearing in October, 1996, other means by which potential victims or mistreated victims,” Holtzman said Matsch attempted to explain this prin- of crime could assert their rights: the in a speech before the New York City ciple. Many victims who wanted to watch subcommittee claimed to have discov- Task Force on Sexual Assault in 1987. the trial also hoped to speak at the sen- ered “clear—and long-lost—proof that Because victims’ rights is a marriage tencing; Matsch was inclined to rule the Second Amendment to our Con- of feminism and conservatism, the logic that they could not do both, and would stitution was intended as an individual behind its signal victory, the victim- have to make a choice, because watch- impact statement, rests on both the ther- ing the trial would have an efect on apeutic, speak-your-truth commitment them, tainting their testimony. “I don’t of a trauma-centered feminism and the see any way in which you can cabin that punitive, lock-them-up imperative of kind of emotion,” Matsch said. This law-and-order conservatism. Arguably, struck a lot of victims as both heartless this has been a bad marriage. and senseless. “I have a hole in my head The rise of victim-impact evidence that’s covered with titanium,” a man can’t be understood apart from Reagan’s who lost an eye in the blast said. “I think eforts to establish federal sentencing about it every minute of the day.” But guidelines, and, more broadly, to refash- when the prosecution complained that right of the American citizen to keep ion the federal judiciary. In the nineteen- Matsch was favoring the rights of the and carry arms in a peaceful manner, eighties, when liberals dominated both defendant over the rights of the victims, for protection of himself, his family, and the federal bench and the Supreme Matsch objected to this formulation. his freedoms.” Court, Reagan’s attorney general, Edwin “We’re not talking about defendants’ While gun-rights arguments met Meese, was determined to rid the courts rights as such,” he answered. “We’re with objections, victims’-rights argu- of liberal justices and liberal jurispru- talking about the integrity of the pro- ments generally did not. Many of the dence. In the long term, that meant ap- cess by which defendants are judged movement’s reforms—like requiring pointing new judges, but, in the short and the evidence is judged. And that’s that courts notify victims of trial dates term, it meant constraining the power the responsibility of a judge, and that’s and allow them to attend—seemed sen- of old judges. In the first two years of the responsibility I’m attempting to meet sible. Also, Carrington’s interests aligned Reagan’s first term, Congress considered

50 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 PROMOTION KRISTEN STURDIVANT

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Indagare Journeys are carefully scouted immersive tours, where every detail is personally vetted by our well-traveled team of experts and insiders from around the world. For the full itinerary, visit indagare.com/AD or call 212-988-2611. more than two dozen bills limiting the rights provisions to their state consti- they can stand in the last two years.” authority of federal judges. In 1982, the tutions. With Reno’s support, Bill The state brought victims to address Task Force on the Victims of Crime had Clinton, standing in the Rose Garden, the jury at McVeigh’s sentencing and recommended legislation “to abolish pa- endorsed a victims’-rights amendment to support its request for the death pen- role and limit judicial discretion in sen- to the Constitution, jointly proposed alty, which, though all but abolished in tencing.” Two years later, Congress es- by the California senator Dianne Fein- 1972, had been reinstated by the Supreme tablished a federal Sentencing Commis- stein and the Arizona senator Jon Kyl. Court four years later, in Gregg v. Geor- sion, which was supposed to figure out “When a judge balances the rights of gia. Still, recognizing that “death is difer- appropriate minimum and maximum the accused and the rights of the vic- ent,” Gregg required that the sentenc- sentences for certain crimes, but, even tim,” Clinton said, “we want the rights ing phase of a capital trial be separated before receiving the commission’s rec- of the victim to get equal weight.” He from the determination of guilt or in- ommendations, Congress went on a might have been Spiro Agnew. nocence. Once a jury reaches a verdict, criminal-penalty binge, passing stricter the rules of evidence change, in the sense and stricter sentencing laws: mandatory n March 11, 1997, the Tenth Cir- that most of them no longer apply. There minimums. At least one federal judge Ocuit upheld Matsch’s ruling that is no cross-examination, for instance, resigned rather than comply. Bill Clin- victims who wanted to watch the trial and there are no prohibitions on evi- ton, though, did not contest the sen- could not also speak at the sentencing. dence about character or past miscon- tencing guidelines. Instead, he joined Eight days later, Congress essentially duct. Also, the standard of evidence the war on crime by signing an omni- overruled the circuit court by passing drops from “beyond a reasonable doubt” bus Crime Bill, which both expanded the Victim Rights Clarification Act, to a “preponderance of evidence.” Post- the number of crimes punishable by decreeing that no district court could Gregg, the courts require what is some- death and provided federal funding to order victims to make such a choice. times called “super due process” in death- fight violence against women. Clinton signed the bill on March 20th. penalty cases, given the gravity of the The 1994 Crime Bill also included Matsch largely ignored it, not least punishment. a ban on assault weapons. Timothy because it was by no means clear that For a long time, as the Court tried McVeigh, enthralled by the new inter- Congress had the power to tell him to hammer all this out, victim-impact pretation of the Second Amendment, how to run a trial. evidence was inadmissible in death- used the language of both the gun-rights Jury selection began on March 31, penalty cases, an exclusion that the Court and the victims’-rights movement to 1997. On June 2nd, after deliberating for had twice upheld. In 1987, in Booth v. justify his crime. He blew up the Mur- nearly twenty-four hours, the jury found Maryland, the Court ruled victim- rah building on the second anniversary McVeigh guilty. Many of the victims impact evidence in a capital trial to of the A.T.F.’s assault on the Branch shed tears of relief. Robbin Huf was be unconstitutional, a violation of the Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in almost eight months pregnant with her Eighth Amendment. After John Booth which seventy-six people were killed. first child when she was murdered by was convicted of murdering an elderly Convinced that the American govern- McVeigh. “It would have taken mem- couple, the couple’s son, daughter, son- ment was trying to disarm the Ameri- bers of many victims’ families 10 sec- in-law, and granddaughter talked about can people, he also believed rumors of onds to reach the verdict,” Huf’s uncle their grief. Booth’s attorney tried to have “Waco-style raids scheduled for the wrote, “which is why we would have the evidence suppressed, calling it “both spring of 1995 to confiscate firearms.” made terrible jurors.” irrelevant and unduly inflammatory.” In He said that he bombed the Murrah On June 4th, the first day of the tri- a 5–4 ruling, the Court agreed, and sug- building because the government, in deal’s sentencing phase, the victims began gested that its introduction could turn clining to prosecute federal and state to speak. Other victims had spoken the sentencing phase of a capital trial agents involved in Waco, had “failed the during the guilt phase of the trial, as into “a ‘mini-trial’ on the victim’s char- victims who died during that siege.” eyewitnesses. These victims, though, acter.” Antonin Scalia, a Reagan appoin- After the reeling, gut-punch horror spoke about harm, in statements the tee who had only just joined the Court of Oklahoma City, no one in Clinton’s jury would consider to be aggravating (Cassell had clerked for him from 1984 Administration had a word to say against evidence, as against the mitigating to 1985, when Scalia was a judge for the the victims’-rights movement. Feeling evidence presented by the defense. D.C. Circuit), wrote a blistering dissent: other people’s pain, after all, was Clin- (McVeigh’s family pleaded for his life Many citizens have found one-sided and ton’s trademark. “You are my heroes and to be spared, and his attorneys intro- hence unjust the criminal trial in which a pa- heroines,” Attorney General Janet Reno duced family snapshots.) The lead at- rade of witnesses comes forth to testify to the said at a victims’-rights conference in torney for the prosecution, Patrick pressures beyond normal human experience August, 1996. “You are but little lower Ryan, gathered the victims at the back that drove the defendant to commit his crime, than angels.” That fall, the more Matsch of the courtroom, where they all held with no one to lay before the sentencing authority the full reality of human sufering the limited the role played by victims in the hands. Then he turned to the jury. “We defendant has produced. McVeigh trial, the more traction the present this information on behalf of movement gained with the public. Eight the United States not to evoke your Two years later, the Court upheld this states joined nineteen others on Elec- sympathy,” he said. “The victims of this decision, 5–4. Then, in 1991, in Payne v. tion Day in 1996 in adding victims’- crime have had all of the sympathy Tennessee, the Court reversed itself.

52 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 Pervis Tyrone Payne murdered Cha- from theirs). Jurors also report being tablished about the form, quantity, or risse Christopher and her two-year-old less compelled by victim-impact state- use of victim-impact evidence. Some of daughter, Lacie. During sentencing, ments made by black victims than by the things admitted as victim-impact Charisse’s mother delivered a heart- those made by white victims. And evidence, including testimony that the breaking victim-impact statement, and victim-impact evidence appears to am- victim was an excellent piano player, was the jury sentenced Payne to death. In a plify the commonly held prejudice that “good honest hardworking God fearing 6–3 opinion, written by Chief Justice people with darker skin are more people,” was a “smart person with higher Rehnquist, the Court deemed victim- “deathworthy.” Finally, Bandes explains, IQ than others in her family” or had “a impact evidence “simply another form the statements leave judges wondering 3.8 grade point average,” would appear or method of informing the sentencing whether, for example, they are supposed to advance the fundamentally anti- authority about the specific harm caused to mete out a more severe punishment democratic notion that the lives of the by the crime in question.” A victim on behalf of the rape victim who gives eloquent, the intelligent, the beautiful, should not be a “faceless stranger,” Rehn- a more compelling statement. the cherished are more worthy of the quist insisted. To right the balance in Plainly, Matsch was worried. “We full protection of the law than others. the sentencing phase of a capital crim- have to guard this hearing to ensure How much evidence is enough, or inal trial, courts should admit a “quick that the ultimate result and the jury’s too much? Challenges in some states glimpse of the life the defendant chose decision is truly a moral response to ap- have sought to limit admissible victim- to extinguish” and let prosecutors con- propriate information rather than an impact witnesses to numbers that range vey “the loss to the victim’s family and emotional response,” he warned. He from three to eleven, but, efectively, the to society which has resulted from the wanted a verdict and a sentence that number is limitless. What kind of evi- defendant’s homicide.” would stick. He attempted to follow dence is allowed? Courts have admit- It was Thurgood Marshall’s turn to the test established in Payne: victim- ted poems, “handcrafted items made by dissent. The Court, he noted, did not impact evidence can be admitted in a the victim,” “letters children wrote to ordinarily reverse course so quickly. capital case unless it is so “unduly prej- their murdered mother,” and “photo- What changed was “neither the law nor udicial that it renders the trial funda- graphs of the stillborn child victim the facts” but “only the personnel of this mentally unfair.” But, as Bandes and dressed in clothes that the victim-mother Court.” In his view, victim-impact evi- Jessica Salerno, a psychologist at Ari- had intended him to wear home from dence draws “the jury’s attention away zona State, have argued, it’s hard to say the hospital.” Judges often report that from the character of the defendant and what lies between probative value and they themselves find it diicult to re- the circumstances of the crime to such prejudicial force: “If the probative pur- cover their emotional equilibrium after illicit considerations as the eloquence pose of the evidence is to evoke the life hearing victim-impact statements. Sor- with which family members express lost with vividness and particularity, row knows no bottom. their grief and the status of the victim what is the measure of undue preju- Matsch struggled to draw a line. He in the community.” Legal scholars tended dice?” Isn’t the whole point of this kind questioned people who had attended the to agree. A leading critic, the DePaul of evidence to stir the emotions? trial, one by one, before allowing them law professor Susan Bandes, wrote that Nor have clear guidelines been es- to give victim-impact evidence. “A victim-impact statements “appeal to ha- tred, the desire for undiferentiated ven- geance, and even bigotry,” and “may block the sentencer’s ability to perceive the essential humanity of the defendant.” Moreover, she argued, “in their insistence on evaluating the worth of the victims,” victim-impact statements “ofend the dignity of the victim as well.” In both capital and non-capital cases, victim-impact evidence has been shown to afect sentencing: that’s why prosecutors introduce it. Research also suggests that, though victims of violent crime are disproportionately poor and nonwhite, white victims are twice as likely as black victims to make victim- impact statements. Where jurors identify victims as “respectable,” they tend to identify with them (finding their lives to be similar to their own), while they rarely identify with defendants (whose lives tend to be very diferent “You ever pick up a rock and then forget why?” penalty-phase hearing cannot be turned added nothing relevant to the jury’s de- Still, judges struggle with the problem into some kind of a lynching,” he an- liberations and invited a verdict based of how to prepare jurors for what they’re nounced, explaining that he would ex- on sentiment, rather than reasoned judg- about to see and hear. In 2003, after Gary clude testimony that would inflame “the ment,” Stevens wrote. Sampson was convicted of three pre- passions of the jury with respect to ven- The use of such videos has led not meditated murders in Massachusetts, geance or the passions of the jury with only to the “mini-trial” on the victim’s the judge warned jurors, as the sentenc- respect to empathy for grief.” He agreed character that the Court had warned ing phase began, not to “permit the vic- to let a ten-year-old boy testify about about but also to a mini film festival. tims’ families’ testimony to overwhelm the loss of his mother, but only after Ofenders make videos, too. Sentenc- your ability to follow the law,” even as being assured that the boy would not ing-mitigation videos are the product of he instructed a clerk to hand out Kleenex. cry. He ruled as inadmissible poems, a for-profit industry. For about twenty In 1997, at McVeigh’s sentencing, wedding photographs, and memorial thousand dollars, a filmmaker will pull Matsch addressed the jurors. “We’re videos, and “a photograph of a mother together family photographs, home vid- not here to seek revenge on Timothy releasing a dove, in lieu of a funeral, be- eos, narration, and music, in an attempt McVeigh,” he told them. “We’re here cause her child’s body was not yet to paint the ofender in a sympathetic to consider these lives, what’s happened found.” He did allow a video of a day light. “Our job is to make judges sufer,” to these people.” Thirty-eight victims in the life of Brandon Denny, who was one filmmaker says. In one recent sen- made their statements. They had lost; three when the bomb went of. A ceil- tencing-mitigation video, a friend of a they had sufered; they were haunted. ing tile had pierced the child’s skull and, convicted kidnapper says, “Joseph as a at the time of the trial, he had under- person, exempting this one situation, is “ feel like my heart looks like that gone seven brain surgeries. an outstanding person, and outstanding I building,” Diane Leonard said, Memorial videos, initially a product friend, son, and outstanding pillar for about the death of her husband, Don- of the funeral industry, have proved par- his family. When you think about that ald R. Leonard, a Secret Service agent. ticularly controversial. In Hicks v. State word, ‘kidnapping,’ and you think about Kathleen Treanor told the story about (1997), the prosecution introduced a what it entailed, it doesn’t fit Joseph at Ashley, and the phone call, and the fourteen-minute montage of a hundred all.” Videos from opposing sides can look tiny hand; Jerry Flowers remembered and sixty photographs spanning the vic- uncannily alike. In State v. Leon (2006), unwrapping a blanket to find a child tims’ life from infancy. The Arkansas the prosecution introduced a four-and- without a face. David Klaus talked Supreme Court upheld its admission. a-half-minute video of Angie Leon, who about the loss of his daughter, Kim- In Salazar v. State (2002), the prosecu- was murdered by her husband, Abel berly Burgess, twenty-nine, who worked tion, in a Texas case, introduced a sev- Leon. Most of the images and footage in the credit union on the third floor enteen-minute video of a hundred and showed Angie and her three young chil- of the Murrah building. “There is just forty photographs (almost half of which dren, often with their father. The video this huge hole in my heart that is never depicted the victim in infancy or early was meant to chronicle the children’s going to get filled up,” he said. “I think childhood, including with a puppy), set loss of their mother, and the Idaho Court about her first thing in the morning, to music, including Céline Dion’s “My of Appeals allowed it on these grounds. and the last thing I think about at night Heart Will Go On.” Both the trial and But, if their father was sentenced to is Kim and the fact I’m never going to the appeals courts deemed it admissi- death, they would lose him, too. As the see her again.” Mathilda Westberry, ble; a higher-level state appeals court University of Pennsylvania law profes- whose husband, F.B.I. Special Agent did not. In Kelly v. California (2008), sor Regina Austin has pointed out, ei- Robert Glenn Westberry, fifty-seven, the prosecution introduced a twenty- ther side could have used the film to had been killed, talked about her four- two-minute video about the life of Sara equal efect. There are concerns, too, year-old grandson, David, who could Nokomis Weir, who, at age nineteen, about new forms of digital evidence— not understand what happened to Papa. was murdered by a personal trainer who PowerPoint slides, a Facebook time line, Laura Sue Kennedy had lost her only worked at the gym she frequented. The a digitally enhanced reconstruction of son; he was eighteen months old. “Blake montage of stills and video footage is the crime, an augmented-reality pro- was my life,” she said. Alan Prokop, an mostly narrated by Weir’s mother; the gram in which jurors endure the sufer- Oklahoma City police oicer, described soundtrack includes recordings of Enya. ing of the victim of a violent crime, and holding the hand of a woman who The trial court admitted the video, and more. The lack of rules leads to a tech- died pinned beneath a slab of concrete. the California Supreme Court upheld nologically enhanced battle for the court’s It was Prokop who had found little the decision, noting that the video il- sympathy. Cassell finds this objection Brandon Denny. “He had a brick stick- lustrated the victim’s pleasing “de- specious. He asks, “If the defendant gets ing out of his forehead,” Prokop said, meanor”: “Sara appears at all times to to use augmented reality, why can’t I? and “was holding a little green block.” be reserved, modest, and shy—some- The point from the victims’ perspective The witnesses cried, the jury cried, times shunning the camera.” Although is an equality point. If this is too emo- the Judge cried. “We have to be careful the U.S. Supreme Court refused to re- tional and too overpowering and too and not let ourselves be overly stimu- view this and another case, Justices John glossy and slick to go into our court sys- lated by some of the testimony that Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer both tem, then make that point, but don’t we’ve heard here,” Matsch told the jury. disagreed with the decision. “The videos make it only about victim evidence.” Before calling the first witness, Ryan,

54 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 the prosecutor, told them, “It would be easy for you as a jury to think of this as one mass murder. Don’t. There are a hundred and sixty-eight people, all unique, all individuals, all had families, all had friends, and they’re diferent. They went to church, they coached Lit- tle League, they designed highways, they liked to watch their children dance, they tried to prevent disease, they played on their beds with their kids.” On June 13, 1997, the jury sentenced Timothy McVeigh to death. Outside the Murrah building, where victims and family members had gathered by a chain-link fence next to the rubble, they sang “God Bless America.” “My greatest weakness? Being beached. No, wait—working too hard.” n a national conversation about crim- •• Iinal-justice reform, the Reagan-to- Clinton-era guidelines for federal sentencing have been questioned, but the question is should the justice system notion of a public good. It’s as if it came gains of the victims’-rights movement allow that? Or is it a throwback to pub- down to this: Don’t trust the mainstream are generally taken for granted. Thirty- lic hanging?” Scott Sundby, a former media, don’t trust intellectuals, don’t two states have passed victims’-rights prosecutor who studies capital juries, trust judges: protect yourself and your amendments; five more ballot initiatives told me that the Nassar sentencing re- family and your freedoms; buy a gun; may pass in November. Once enough minded him of Biblical punishments. speak your truth. states have acted, activists will again “Hey, we all get to pick up a rock and Not everyone finds relief in a court- press for a federal amendment. The last throw it at this person!” room, but many people who have en- time the measure reached Congress, one Sundby says that victim-impact ev- dured a violent crime or lost someone of the prosecutors in the Oklahoma City idence has changed how juries think they loved report feeling tremendous bombing case argued against it (victims about the death penalty. In jury rooms, catharsis after having the chance to de- had tried to prevent one of McVeigh’s they ask, “How can we go out and look scribe their sufering in court. Those associates from signing a plea agree- the mother in the eye unless we give a who worry about the practice say that ment in exchange for his testimony death penalty?” Among the achieve- there should at least be better, fairer, against McVeigh, which proved crucial ments of the victims’-rights movement and more clearly enforced rules about in the trial). Cassell believes that there is the fact that victim-impact evidence doing it. “If we really do think it’s im- is much more work to be done. The is no longer much questioned. Sundby portant for victims in a courtroom to movement’s latest campaigns would ex- thinks that’s because people gave up be able to do this,” Bandes says, “let’s pand the range of victim-impact evi- trying to argue that the courts are take it seriously, and figure out how to dence allowed in both capital and non- wholly rational. He says, “The legal get courts to do it right.” capital cases, and more strictly enforce system has cried ‘Uncle.’” Something was buried beneath the victims’ rights that are already on the Such critics are careful to note the rubble in Oklahoma City, and it has books. In the age of #MeToo, victims’ important reforms ushered in by the never been found. Parkland is the next rights are making remarkable political victims’-rights movement (which gen- population of victims poised to mount headway, for many of the same reasons erally fall under the heading of victims’ the witness stand, in another unprece- they did after the Oklahoma City bomb- services). “When this movement was dented slaughter. So far, they’ve been ing. Tragedy is a fierce tailwind. And, first starting, I was a prosecutor,” Sundby mounting other sorts of podiums. The as Susan Bandes puts it, “Nobody re- told me, “and all of a sudden it made students from Marjory Stoneman Doug- ally wants to have to tell victims, or sur- me much more cognizant that there are las High School hardly ever talk about vivors of violent crime, that they can- people who have a stake in this case and the shooter, at least in public. They don’t not be heard.” justice needs to be done.” seem particularly eager to attend his Critics remain. Nancy Gertner, a for- Raphael Ginsberg, who runs a pris- trial, if there is a trial. Maybe they’ll mer district-court judge from Massa- on-education program through the leave it to the state to conduct a prose- chusetts, is among those who have ques- University of North Carolina and has cution. Meanwhile, they’re having their tioned Judge Aquilina’s conduct at Larry written a history of the victims’-rights say, in their own way. They are asking Nassar’s sentencing. Gertner told me, movement, takes a darker view. He sees for an end to a set of arrangements under “The question is whether the victims the movement as part of a larger con- which what was once civil society has needed that, as bloodletting, and the servative attack on expertise and on the become a state of war. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 55 THE POLITICAL SCENE ONLY THE BEST PEOPLE Donald Trump’s war on the “deep state.”

BY EVAN OSNOS

wo months after Donald Trump’s to follow policymakers’ goals. She could and upon my understanding cried when Inauguration, the White House speak Persian. She could understand the President won.” Nowrouzzadeh was T took a sudden interest in a civil culture. She is one of the most patriotic unaware of these discussions. All she servant named Sahar Nowrouzzadeh. people I know.” In 2016, Nowrouzza- knew was that her experience at work At thirty-four, she was largely unknown deh joined the policy-planning staf of started to change. outside a small community of national- the State Department, a team of experts security specialists. Nowrouzzadeh, born who advised Secretary of State John Kerry. very new President disturbs the dis- in Trumbull, Connecticut, grew up with At times, she advocated a harsher ap- Eposition of power in Washington. no connection to Washington. Her par- proach to Iran than Kerry was pursu- Stars fade. Political appointees arrive, ents had emigrated from Iran, so that ing, but he cherished Nowrouzzadeh’s assuming control of a bureaucracy that her father could finish his training “unvarnished judgment,” he told me. “I encompasses 2.8 million civilian em- in obstetrics, and they hoped that liked someone who relied on facts and ployees, across two hundred and fifty she would become a doctor or, failing could tell me when she disagreed with agencies—from Forest Service smoke that, an engineer or a lawyer. But on my interpretation. Give me that any day jumpers in Alaska to C.I.A. code-break- September 11, 2001, Nowrouzzadeh over a bunch of yes-men.” ers in Virginia. “It’s like taking over two was a freshman at George Washing- On March 14, 2017, Conservative Re- hundred and fifty private corporations ton University, which is close enough view, a Web site that opposed the Iran at one time,” David Lewis, the chair of to the Pentagon that students could deal, published an article portraying the political-science department at Van- see plumes of smoke climb into the Nowrouzzadeh as a traitorous stooge. derbilt University, told me. sky. She became interested in global The story, titled “Iran Deal Architect Is Typically, an incoming President afairs and did internships at the State Running Tehran Policy at the State seeks to charm, co-opt, and, when nec- Department and the National Iranian Dept.,” derided her as a “trusted Obama essary, coerce the federal workforce into American Council, a Washington non- aide,” whose work “resulted in an agree- executing his vision. But Trump got to profit. George W. Bush’s Administra- ment that has done enormous damage Washington by promising to unmake tion appealed for help from Ameri- to the security interests of the United the political ecosystem, eradicating the cans familiar with the culture of the States.” David Wurmser, who had existing species and populating it anew. Middle East, and, after graduation, been an adviser to Vice-President Dick This project has gone by various names: Nowrouzzadeh became an analyst in Cheney, e-mailed the article to Newt Stephen Bannon, the campaign chief, the Department of Defense, using her Gingrich, the former Speaker of the called it the “deconstruction of the ad- command of Arabic, Persian, and Dari. House. “I think a cleaning is in order ministrative state”—the undoing of reg- (Her brother, a Navy doctor, served in here,” Wurmser wrote. Gingrich for- ulations, pacts, and taxes that he be- Iraq.) For nearly a decade, Nowrouz- warded the message to an aide to Sec- lieved constrain American power. In zadeh worked mostly on secret pro- retary of State Rex Tillerson, with the Presidential tweets and on Fox News, grams, winning awards from the De- subject line “i thought you should be the mission is described as a war on the partments of Defense and State, the aware of this.” “deep state,” the permanent power élite. Oice of the Director of National In- As the article circulated inside the Nancy McEldowney, who retired last telligence, and the F.B.I. Administration, Sean Doocey, a White July after thirty years in the Foreign Ser- In 2014, she was detailed to the Na- House aide overseeing personnel, vice, told me, “In the anatomy of a hos- tional Security Council, as an Iran spe- e-mailed colleagues to ask for details of tile takeover and occupation, there are cialist, and helped to broker the nuclear Nowrouzzadeh’s “appointment author- textbook elements—you decapitate the deal. One of the most intensely debated ity”—the rules by which a federal worker leadership, you compartmentalize the questions among American negotiators can be hired, moved, or fired. He re- power centers, you engender fear and was how far they could push Iran for ceived a reply from Julia Haller, a for- suspicion. They did all those things.” concessions, and Nowrouzzadeh proved mer Trump campaign worker, newly ap- This idea, more than any other, has unusually able to identify, and exploit, pointed to the State Department. Haller defined the Administration, which has subtle divides in Tehran. “She was ag- wrote that it would be “easy” to remove greeted the federal government not as gressive,” Norman Roule, the C.I.A.’s Nowrouzzadeh from the policy-plan- a machine that could implement its vi- highest-ranking Iran specialist at the ning staf. She had “worked on the Iran sion but as a vanquished foe. To control time, told me. “She worked very hard Deal,” Haller noted, “was born in Iran, it, Trump would need the right help. “I’m

56 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 REFERENCE: ZACH GIBSON/BLOOMBERG/GETTY (HEAD); MILATAS/GETTY (BODY) MILATAS/GETTY (HEAD); GIBSON/BLOOMBERG/GETTY ZACH REFERENCE: Amid purges, inighting, and loyalty tests, civil servants liken the Administration’s tactics to a “hostile takeover and occupation.”

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTIAN NORTHEAST THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 57 ally alongside visiting heads of state. He has now gone more than four hundred days without a solo press conference. (Obama held eleven in his first year.) A culture of fealty compounds itself; conformists thrive, and dissenters depart or refuse to join. By May, the Pres- ident was surrounded by advisers in name only, who competed to be the most ex- plicitly quiescent. Peter Navarro, the head of the White House National Trade Council, told an interviewer, “My function, really, as an economist is to try to provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition. And his intuition is always right in these matters.” Jef Ses- sions, the Attorney General, remained in oice despite the President’s descriptions of him as “weak,” “disgraceful,” and an “idiot.” Sessions has been forgiv- ing, telling a radio show in his home state of Alabama, “That’s just his style. He says what’s on his mind at the time.” Trump has turned, more than ever, to “You don’t see many season tickets to the opera just handed out like that.” those he knows, often to their detriment. On a whim, he nominated his White House physician, Ronny Jackson, to head •• the Department of Veterans Afairs. The White House reportedly had not both- going to surround myself only with the on the toilet. Nine days after that, the ered to vet Jackson, leaving it to Con- best and most serious people,” he said, national-security adviser, H. R. McMas- gress to discover allegations that he drank during the campaign. “We want top-of- ter, who had pressed the President to on the job and dispensed medication so the-line professionals.” maintain the nuclear deal with Iran, was freely that he had acquired the nickname Every President expects devotion. asked to go, followed quickly by David Candyman. Jackson, who denied these Lyndon Johnson wished for an aide who Shulkin, the head of Veterans Afairs. allegations, withdrew his nomination, would “kiss my ass in Macy’s window at John Kelly, the once assertive chief of his reputation wrecked. high noon and tell me it smells like roses. staf, has lost control of access to the After sixteen months, Trump is on I want his pecker in my pocket.” But Oval Oice and of the President’s phone his third national-security adviser and Trump has elevated loyalty to the pri- calls; Trump has resumed using his per- his sixth communications director. Across mary consideration. Since he has no fixed sonal cell phone for late-night calls to the government, more than half of the ideology, the White House cannot screen such confidants as Sean Hannity, of Fox six hundred and fifty-six most critical for ideas, so it seeks a more personal News, who is known in the capital as positions are still unfilled. “We’ve never form of devotion. Kellyanne Conway, his “unoicial chief of staf.” seen vacancies at this scale,” Max Stier, one of his most dedicated attendants, In Washington, where only four per the president and C.E.O. of the Part- refers reverently to the “October 8th co- cent of residents voted for Trump, nership for Public Service, a nonpar- alition,” the campaign stalwarts who re- the President hews to a narrow patch tisan group that works to make the mained at Trump’s side while the world of trusted terrain: he rarely ventures be- government more efective, said. “Not listened to a recording of him boasting yond his home, his hotel, his golf course, anything close.” about grabbing women by the genitals. and his plane, taking Air Force One to Some of the vacancies are deliberate. Over time, Trump has rid himself of Mar-a-Lago and to occasional appear- As a candidate, Trump promised to “cut questioners. He dismissed James Comey, ances before devoted supporters. He has so much your head will spin.” Amid a the head of the F.B.I., and then Andrew yet to attend a performance at the Ken- strong economy, large numbers of em- McCabe, his acting replacement. Gary nedy Center or dine in a restaurant that ployees are opting to leave the govern- Cohn, the head of the National Eco- is not on his own property. As a candi- ment rather than serve it. In Trump’s nomic Council, resigned early this March, date, Trump rarely went a week with- first nine months, more than seventy- after months of private resistance to out calling a news conference. But in nine thousand full-time workers quit or Trump’s plan for sweeping trade tarifs. oice, as he contends with increasingly retired—a forty-two-per-cent increase A week later, Tillerson was fired by tweet, intense investigations, he has taken to over that period in Obama’s Presidency. receiving notice by phone while he was answering only scattered questions, usu- To Trump and his allies, the departures

58 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 have been liberating, a purge of obstruc- arguing that “more is lost by the long expanded the ranks of specialists. Ac- tionists. “The President now has peo- continuance of men in oice than is gen- cording to the historian Landon R. Y. ple around him who aren’t trying to sub- erally to be gained by their experience.” Storrs, of the University of Iowa, that vert him,” Michael Caputo, a senior A Jackson ally in the Senate, William efort shifted power from lawmakers to campaign adviser, told me. “The more Learned Marcy, said, famously, “To the career civil servants, who were often real Trump supporters who pop up in victor belong the spoils of the enemy.” more educated and skillful. Advocates the White House phone book, the bet- Thus began the “spoils system,” in which of limited government, Storrs notes, have ter of our nation will be.” a winning candidate dispensed most gov- long regarded the civil service as a “snivel Americans are inured to the person- ernment jobs as gifts. It lasted until 1881, service” of Ivy Leaguers, “a bureaucracy nel drama in the White House—the when President James Garfield was shot of short-haired women and long-haired factions and flameouts and new blood by a man who believed that he was due men, bent on replacing the traditional and walking wounded. But the larger a diplomatic post as a reward for sup- American family.” In 1951, “Washington drama, Stier said, is unfolding “below porting Garfield’s campaign. In response, Confidential,” a best-seller by two jour- the waterline,” far from the cameras and Congress created a civil service in which nalists working for the conservative press the West Wing, among little-known hiring was based on merit, in the belief mogul William Randolph Hearst, pre- deputies and oicers in the working that only a workforce free from politi- sented the civil service as a domain of ranks of government. A senior Admin- cal interference could earn public trust. “mediocrity and virtual anonymity,” in istration oicial called them the “next- To admirers, America’s civil service a city of “economic parasites.” level-down guys.” These are the foot became the ballast in the ship of state, When George W. Bush appointed soldiers in the war over the “deep state.” exemplified by the National Laborato- Lynn Scarlett as an Assistant Secretary “They’re not talked about,” he said. “But ries, Neil Armstrong, and generations of the Interior, in 2001, she concluded they’re huge.” of humble bureaucrats who banned un- that this view was a caricature. “If there safe medications, recalled defective are seventy thousand employees and they hen Nowrouzzadeh saw the ar- motor vehicles, and monitored condi- average, let’s say, ten years of experience, Wticle about her in Conservative tions at nursing homes. According to that means they have seven hundred Review, she e-mailed her boss, a Trump the Partnership for Public Service, the thousand years of experience,” she said. appointee named Brian Hook. “I am very federal workforce has included at least “I had zero. Now, I wasn’t naïve. There concerned as it is filled with misin- sixty-nine winners of the Nobel Prize, were some people who were not as vig- formation,” she wrote. She pointed out most of them scientists with little pub- orous as others. There were some who that she had entered government under lic profile. All U.S. public servants are had their own agenda. But, for the most George W. Bush, and added, “I’ve adapted bound by an oicial code of ethics that part, I really found people kept their pol- my work to the policy priorities of every demands “loyalty to . . . country above itics at home. And, if you asked, they administration I have worked for.” Hook loyalty to persons, party or government would come and say, ‘Well, here’s how I didn’t reply. Instead, he forwarded her department.” Ryan Crocker, a diplomat see this tough problem.’ Or ‘Here’s how message to his deputy, Edward Lacey, who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Paki- it was done before.’” who dismissed her complaint, writing stan, and Syria, told me, “I was an Am- The modern conservative movement that she was among the “Obama/Clin- bassador six times—three times for Re- has spent decades calling for the reduc- ton loyalists not at all supportive of Pres- tion of the federal workforce, in the be- ident Trump’s foreign policy agenda.” lief that it is feckless, bloated, and out of In the 2013 novel “A Delicate Truth,” touch. Richard Nixon’s aides produced John le Carré presents the “deep state” an eighty-page manual on the removal as a moneyed, cultured élite—the “non- of “undesirable” careerists, which profered governmental insiders from banking, a system for grading civil servants on po- industry, and commerce” whose access litical “dependability,” ranging from “L” to information allows them to rule in (for “Let’s watch this fellow”) to “O” (for secret. Trump’s conception is quite difer- “Out”). To marginalize the troublesome ent. A real-estate baron, with the wealth- ones, it suggested a “New Activity Tech- iest Cabinet in U.S. history, Trump is at publican Administrations, three times nique”: create an “apparently meaning- peace with the plutocracy but at war for Democratic Administrations. No ful, but essentially meaningless, new ac- with the clerks—the apparatchiks who, one elects us. We will, obviously, give tivity to which they are all transferred.” he claims, are seeking to nullify the elec- policy advice, but when policy is de- Such an activity, Nixon’s aides wrote, tion by denying the prerogatives of his cided we do everything we can to carry could serve as “a single barrel into which Administration. it out. I didn’t think the 2003 invasion you can dump a large number of widely From the beginning, Americans have of Iraq was a spectacularly good idea, located bad apples.” After the manual disagreed about how to balance partisan but once our troops crossed the line of became public, during the Watergate loyalty and nonpartisan expertise. When departure that argument was over.” hearings, Congress passed a law to pro- the populist Andrew Jackson reached But the old tension between loyalty hibit discrimination against federal work- the White House, in 1829, he packed the and expertise never subsided. Since the ers for “political ailiation, race, color, government with friends and loyalists, Great Depression, the government has religion, national origin, sex, marital

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 59 status, age, or handicapping condition.” hopes to return to State, saying, “My retired Ambassador, said, “I believe to But Presidents have retained broad heart is still in public service.” the depth of my being that by under- latitude to reshule civil servants with- Her case might have ended there, but mining our diplomatic capability we are out breaking the law in obvious ways. a whistle-blower gave Democratic mem- putting our country at risk. Something That would prove indispensable for the bers of Congress copies of the White awful is inevitably going to happen, and Trump Administration as it set out to House’s e-mails about Nowrouzzadeh’s people will ask, ‘Where are the diplo- “deconstruct the administrative state.” background, her work under the Obama mats?’ And the tragic answer will have Trump, who hung a portrait of Andrew Administration, and the need for a “clean- to be ‘We got rid of them in a fire sale.’” Jackson in the Oval Oice, left no doubt ing.” This March, Representatives Eliot Nowrouzzadeh’s case is not unique; about where he stood on the matter of Engel, of New York, and Elijah Cum- in a kind of revival of Nixon’s New As- loyalty versus expertise. “Oh, we need mings, of Maryland, called for an inves- signment Technique, hundreds of State an expert. The experts are terrible!” he tigation. In a letter to the White House Department employees have been ban- said, at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, and the State Department, they argued ished to a bizarre form of bureaucratic in April, 2016. “They say, ‘Donald Trump that the messages revealed an “extremely purgatory. Last October, Tillerson’s oice needs a foreign-policy adviser.’ Suppos- disturbing” efort to purge career civil announced the launch of a “FOIA Surge,” ing I didn’t have one?” servants for being “insuiciently ‘sup- a campaign to process a backlog of portive.’” The department’s Inspector Freedom of Information Act requests, n the weeks after the Conservative General launched an investigation. As a which would require three hundred and IReview article about Nowrouzzadeh current employee, Nowrouzzadeh de- fifty State Department stafers. The work appeared, it generated a barrage of clined to comment for this article. But, was rudimentary (“You could do it with threats. On Facebook, the accusations in an e-mail to colleagues about her leave, smart interns,” one participant said), but circulated beneath the headline “Trump she referred to an address given by Pres- the list of those assigned to it included Caught Obama’s Iranian Spy at WH, ident Truman in 1951, during Senator prominent Ambassadors and specialized Patriots Love What He Did Next.” In Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on govern- civil servants. They quickly discovered comments, people wrote, “Shoot the ment workers. “When even one Amer- something in common: many had worked bitch,” and “Hang [her] on the White ican—who has done nothing wrong— on issues of priority to the Obama Ad- House lawn.” Nowrouzzadeh asked the is forced by fear to shut his mind and ministration. Lawrence Bartlett had been State Department to publicly rebut the close his mouth, then all Americans are one of the department’s top advocates accusations, but it ofered little help. On in peril,” Truman said. for refugees. Ian Moss had worked to April 6, 2017, she was told to clean out Since taking oice, Trump has at- close the prison at Guantánamo Bay. her desk and move downstairs to an un- tacked the integrity of multiple parts of (Bartlett and Moss declined to com- specified position at the Oice of Ira- his government, including the F.B.I. ment.) “It seemed designed to demor- nian Afairs. With her credentials, it was (“reputation is in tatters”) and the De- alize,” one participant said. the bureaucratic equivalent of Siberia. partment of Justice (“embarrassment to In Washington, the tactic of ma- Nowrouzzadeh filed a complaint with our country”). His relationship with the rooning civil servants in obscure assign- the department’s Oice of Civil Rights, State Department is especially vexed. ments is known as sending them to the alleging unlawful discrimination. Among In January, 2017, when he issued an ex- “turkey farm.” The turkey farms are civil servants, the case attracted atten- ecutive order barring travellers from reminiscent of the “rubber rooms” of tion as a rare window onto the Admin- seven Muslim countries, more than a New York City. Until the practice was istration’s strategy for confronting the thousand U.S. diplomats criticized it in banned, in 2010, the city’s Department “deep state.” Crocker said, “They weren’t an oicial dissent cable. In response, of Education exiled hundreds of trou- saying that she doesn’t have the exper- Sean Spicer, the press secretary at the blesome teachers to reassignment cen- tise or the qualifications. They were say- time, said that public servants should ters, where they idled, sometimes for ing that she had served the Adminis- “either get with the program or they can years, reading newspapers and dozing. tration for which she was working. It go.” In the months that followed, Til- An Asia specialist assigned to the tur- could have some extremely harmful con- lerson dismantled large parts of the de- key farm likened the experience to a sequences, both for the individuals and partment: as the White House proposed Japanese tradition in which unwanted for the country, if the best and the bright- a thirty-one-per-cent budget reduction, workers are relegated to a “banishment est are blackballed.” (In response to ques- the department accepted the lowest room,” to encourage them to resign out tions about Nowrouzzadeh, a spokes- number of new Foreign Service oicers of boredom and shame. Another tur- person said that the State Department in years. Sixty per cent of the high- key-farm inhabitant, who has held se- does not discuss individual cases, add- est-ranked diplomats have departed. nior intelligence and national-security ing, “The department is committed to Veteran U.S. diplomats say that the posts, told me that he joined the gov- principles of diversity and inclusion.”) State Department is in its most dimin- ernment during the Reagan Adminis- Nowrouzzadeh and the department ished condition since the nineteen-fifties, tration and never conceived of himself reached a settlement in August, and she when McCarthy called it a hotbed of as an opponent of Trump. “I’m a Rea- has stayed in government. She took a “Communists and queers” and vowed gan holdover,” he said, shaking his head leave of absence for a research fellow- to root out the “prancing mimics of the in bewilderment. “I sometimes don’t go ship at Harvard, but told friends that she Moscow party line.” McEldowney, the in before ten, and then leave before five.

60 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 You just float.” (Asked about the com- error, but oicials at the White House Trump team cut the number of ques- plaints, the spokesperson said that the confirmed that there had not, ofering tions to twenty-five, by dropping the re- State Department is “continuing to no further explanation. “It is mind-bog- quests for professional references and tax highly value career employees.”) gling that everything I’ve been doing for returns and removing items concerning “It seems to be happening through- a year and a half will be wiped of the loans, personal income, and real-estate out the civil service,” Representative map,” he told me. holdings. The questionnaire was speck- Adam Smith, of Washington, the top A few days after my visit, the White led with typos, and seemed carelessly put Democrat on the House Armed Ser- House finally appointed a second new together. Robert Rizzi, a prominent law- vices Committee, told me. “They’re tak- member. If the nominee is confirmed, yer who has helped with every transition ing out people, and I think that is un- the board can resume operations, but it since Bill Clinton took oice, told me, dermining the over-all competency and will take an estimated two years to get “They would call it ‘the paperwork.’ We’d capability of the government, irrespec- through the backlog. Jef Ruch, the ex- say, ‘Well, it takes months.’ They’d say, tive of ideology.” In some cases, side- ecutive director of Public Employees ‘Just to do paperwork?’ I’d say, ‘It has lined experts have found new posts at for Environmental Responsibility, an huge consequences if you do it wrong.’” the Pentagon, where Secretary of De- advocacy group, told me, “This seems The vetting was led by Donald F. Mc- fense James Mattis has deflected White to be either monkey-wrenching or just Gahn II, the White House counsel, who House attacks on public servants. “Mat- incredible incompetence. You have a struck observers as keen to abbreviate the tis has done a remarkable job of being civil-service system without the means process. According to one lawyer, the the exception to this rule,” Smith said. to adjudicate disputes. The Trump phi- transition sought “work-arounds”—ways Civil servants who think that they losophy is they just don’t want the agency that incoming oicials could retain in- have been mistreated can appeal to a to function at all.” vestments without breaking the laws semi-judicial agency called the Merit against conflicts of interest. “If you look Systems Protection Board. By law, hile the Administration wrestled at them as technical rules that lawyers though, the board needs two members Wthe civil service into submission, should be able to ‘get around,’ that gives to function, and one left just before it began introducing Washington to you a whole diferent approach,” the law- Trump’s Inauguration, so for sixteen Trump’s “best and most serious people.” yer told me. “It’s like tweeting after a cou- months it has issued no judgments. For He had four thousand jobs to fill, and ple of beers. It’s not going to end well.” a while, the staf continued to work— the White House was determined to Republican think tanks and donors reading complaints, marking them with subvert the traditional ways of doing so. succeeded in installing preferred nomi- notes—assuming that a new hire would To vet candidates, the Obama cam- nees. The earliest wave arrived from the arrive soon. (Since 1979, the board had paign had used a questionnaire with sixty- Heritage Foundation; subsequent ones never been without a quorum for lon- three queries about employment, finances, came from Charles and David Koch’s ger than a few weeks.) But, as com- writings, and social-media posts. The network of conservative advocacy groups plaints kept coming in, the staf was forced to store them, unresolved, in vacant rooms of the oice, which occupies part of a commercial building in downtown Washington. When I dropped by, Mark A. Rob- bins, the remaining board member, flipped on the lights in a storeroom. Cardboard cartons towered in sagging, listing piles. “As of last Friday, the backlog is eight hundred and ninety-six,” Robbins said. “We’re running out of space.” Robbins is a lawyer with small round glasses, a shaved head, and an air of earnest perseverance. Despite his predicament, he has continued to read cases and recommend judgments, so that things will move faster when operations resume. In March, he got what appeared to be good news: the White House had nominated a new member. Then he discovered that the appointment was not to the empty post but to his post. As a result, all the work he has conducted since January, 2017, will be legally void. At first, he wondered if there had been a clerical and from the American Enterprise In- stitute. But the White House maintained a virtual blockade against Republicans MARINA who had signed letters opposing Trump’s candidacy. “I’ve been asked, ‘Can you The sky’s grey mantle over me recommend somebody for this or that sewn with lapis lazuli— position?’” Elliott Abrams, a foreign- the terrible sky, where you walk afairs oicial under Ronald Reagan and in our city not thinking of me— George W. Bush, told me. “I’ve come up with the perfect person, and the people Your indiference bedecks me— I’m talking to at State or Defense say, the locomotive ‘Oh, my God, she’s great. But she didn’t of my heart rattles past the crape myrtle, sign one of the letters, did she?’ ‘Yeah, the leaves startled, buds like jewels. she did.’ ‘O.K., we’re done here.’” The White House brought in an array The sun has no business in the sky of outsiders, who, at times, ran into trou- nor does the moon, nor the myrtle ble. As an assistant to the Secretary of or its spattered blooms, nor your gaze Energy, the Administration installed Sid Bowdidge, whose recent employment now that you have turned from me. had included managing a Meineke Car I am gauze printed by twilight, barely a body— Care branch in Seabrook, New Hamp- shire. Bowdidge departed after it emerged —Cynthia Zarin that he had called Muslims “maggots.” In December, Matthew Spencer Pe- tersen, a nominee to the federal bench, served as deputy chief of staf in the such interviews,” Marcos Daniel Jiménez, became a brief online sensation when Oice of National Drug Control Pol- a former U.S. Attorney appointed by Senator John Kennedy, a Republican icy until January, when the Washington George W. Bush, told me. William Cum- from Louisiana, asked him a series of Post discovered that his résumé listed a mings, a U.S. Attorney appointed by basic law-school questions, which re- job at a law firm from which he had Gerald Ford, said, “In the situation where vealed that Petersen had never argued a been discharged for not showing up and the sitting President has publicly been motion, tried a case, or taken a deposi- a master’s degree he did not possess. The noted to be the subject of an investigation by himself. Embarrassing details Post also noted that the White House tion by the F.B.I. or special counsel, I came out about other judicial nominees: Oice of Presidential Personnel, which think it is unseemly.” Brett Talley, who had never tried a case hired Weyeneth for the job, was itself a By April, at least six of Trump’s Cab- in federal court, wandered cemeteries youthful operation: a “social hub” where inet secretaries were being investigated hunting for ghosts; Jef Mateer had called young Trump aides “hang out on couches for their expenses. Scott Pruitt, the ad- transgender children part of “Satan’s plan.” and smoke electronic cigarettes.” At a ministrator of the Environmental Pro- All three nominations were withdrawn. happy-hour party in January, the oice tection Agency, was the most embattled: Despite the attention that these cases celebrated one aide’s thirtieth birthday he was facing eleven federal investiga- attracted, the vast majority of appointees, with a drinking game that involved “hid- tions, many of them related to his se- other than those who are named in Sen- ing a bottle of Smirnof Ice, a flavored curity arrangements. Pruitt had acquired ate hearings or serve in the President’s malt liquor, and demanding that the a custom S.U.V., biometric locks on his executive oice, are not reported to the person who discovers it, in this case the oice door, a forty-three-thousand- public. “The idea that the American peo- deputy director, guzzle it.” When I asked dollar soundproof phone booth, and a ple do not know the names of those run- the senior Administration oicial about retinue of round-the-clock guards. He ning the government is nutty,” Stier, of the story, he said, “That was pretty com- insisted on flying first class, because, he the Partnership for Public Service, said. mon knowledge. That was their style.” said, of threats in coach. When Ben “Many appointees get parachuted in Trump sometimes tested ethical stan- Carson, the Secretary of Housing and below the radar, and no one knows they’re dards in the hiring process. In January, Urban Development, was found to have there until they hit a trip wire.” shortly before the Justice Department outfitted his oice with a bespoke din- Some of those who have hit the trip named Geofrey Berman to be the in- ing set ($31,561), defenders said that he wire are recent college graduates, in- terim U.S. Attorney in the Southern Dis- was not to blame. The Republican con- stalled in jobs usually reserved for oi- trict of New York—a position with ju- gresswoman Claudia Tenney, of New cials with decades of experience. Taylor risdiction over the headquarters of York, told an interviewer that the fault Weyeneth, a twenty-three-year-old Trump’s business empire—Trump per- for the furniture lay with “somebody in whose only previous employment was sonally interviewed Berman for the job. the deep state. It was not one of his peo- with the Trump campaign, became one Criminal-justice experts were alarmed. ple, apparently.” of the White House’s top-ranking oi- “I am not aware of any President in re- Trump’s struggle to attract compe- cials addressing the opioid epidemic. He cent history that personally conducted tent people reflects a broader problem.

62 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 For decades, Presidents and Congress the oice with a grizzly bear, mounted to an advisory board dominated by oil have created a steadily increasing num- on its hind legs, and a collection of knives. and gas executives. He likened his lead- ber of political appointees. Kennedy sub- Zinke has no professional experience in ership of the department to capturing a mitted two hundred and eighty-six ap- geology, but he routinely describes him- ship at sea, and vowed to prevail over pointments for Senate approval; Trump self as a “geologist,” because he majored resistant employees. Zinke’s comment is allotted more than twelve hundred. in geology in college. (In a 2016 mem- drew a rebuke from fifteen former In- Stier said, “The system we have now is oir, “American Commander,” Zinke wrote terior appointees, in Republican and crazy. It’s unique among democracies. that he chose it by “randomly pointing Democratic Administrations, who ap- There is an entourage of these special to a major from the academic catalog.”) pealed to him to let public servants “do assistants, special counsels, confidential “He doesn’t read briefing materials,” their jobs without fear of retaliation on assistants, and others. To insure that the Clement told me. “He comes over and political grounds.” In a private mutiny, President’s policy is carried out, the num- sits down, and he says, ‘O.K., what are some of his staf printed T-shirts that ber of appointees could be in the doz- we here for?’” To keep Zinke’s attention, read “30% DISLOYAL” and took to call- ens or the hundreds.” He added, “We staf hewed to subjects related to his per- ing themselves “the disloyals.” have a resurgent spoils system. It is the sonal experience. “I briefed him on in- One of the department’s largest divi- breaking of an organization that was al- vasive species,” Clement said. “It was one sions, the Bureau of Land Management, ready under stress. It is unmanageable issue where it looked like we might ac- has distributed plastic badges, called “vi- and dangerous in a world when crises tually get a little traction, because in Mon- sion cards,” for employees to wear, bear- are happening in the blink of an eye.” tana they had just discovered mussels ing an image of an oil rig on one side that could really screw up the agricul- and cattle ranchers on the other. The bureau uring the winter and spring, I spoke tural economy.” The strategy failed. “He said they are not mandatory, but an em- Dto dozens of men and women didn’t understand what we were talking ployee told me, “If you’re not wearing throughout the federal government about about. He started talking about other them, I think management in some places Trump’s war on Washington. None of species—ravens and coyotes. He was looks at you like maybe you’re not loyal them described a more abrupt change filling the intellectual vacuum with non- to the flag.” Under Zinke, the employee than the civil servants at the Depart- sense. It’s amazing that he has such confi- said, policy debate has dried up: “We’re ment of the Interior—a behemoth that dence, given his level of ignorance.” supposed to provide back-and-forth per- oversees all of America’s federal public A couple of months later, Zinke or- spective, so that you make the best deci- lands, which constitute an area larger dered the involuntary reassignment of sion based on science and based on the than Western Europe. dozens of the department’s most senior law. But that’s a pretty big struggle right One of Trump’s most ardent lieuten- civil servants. Clement, who had been now.” The employee went on, “I hunt ants is Ryan Zinke. Six feet two, with his agency’s public face on issues related and fish—I’m actually kind of a redneck. broad shoulders and a cleft chin, Zinke to climate change, was assigned to the But I believe in the public good and pub- is a fifth-generation Montanan who was accounting oice that handles royalty lic land. When Trump talks his b.s. about recruited as a linebacker at the Univer- checks for oil and gas and coal extraction. the ‘deep state,’ that’s who he’s referring sity of Oregon and spent twenty-three His new job had no duties and appeared to. I totally reject that kind of character- years in the Navy SEALs. In 2008, he en- on no organizational chart. Clement filed ization. That’s how these guys see it: if tered politics, in the Montana State Sen- a whistle-blower complaint; he believed you’re not a tool of the most high-powered ate. After one term in Congress, he was that his post was retaliation lobbyists in Washington or appointed Secretary of the Interior, and for speaking about the dan- following orders, then they arrived for his first day of work on horse- gers that climate change really don’t want you around.” back, riding down C Street in a ten-gallon poses to Alaska Native com- Zinke has also adopted hat and jeans. Since then, Zinke has at- munities. In October, he quit. the White House’s preoccu- tracted attention mostly for his zealous “I really didn’t feel like I had pation with quashing un- embrace of Trump’s energy agenda. He a choice,” he told me. “I flattering information. In has opened up America’s coasts to ofshore wanted to keep my voice April, 2017, he came under oil and gas drilling; overturned a mora- more than I wanted to keep criticism after internal memos torium on new leases for coal mines on the job.” In a resignation let- were leaked, revealing his public land; and recommended shrink- ter, Clement accused Zinke intention to roll back pro- ing national monuments in Utah by two and Trump of having “waged tections on public land. To million acres, the largest reduction of pro- an all-out assault on the civil service by prevent that from happening again, Mat- tected lands in American history. muzzling scientists and policy experts.” thew Allen, the B.L.M.’s communica- Within the department, Zinke has (A department spokesperson declined to tions director, was ordered to stop the adopted the President’s approach to ex- comment for this article, citing “loaded leaks. Allen pointed out that very little pertise, loyalty, and dissent. In April, 2017, and flat-out false information.”) of Interior’s work is classified. “I can’t a scientist named Joel Clement, the di- Like his Commander-in-Chief, stop these leaks, because I don’t have the rector of the department’s Oice of Pol- Zinke makes no secret of his distrust. “I resources or the authority,” he said. “I icy Analysis, visited Zinke for a briefing. got thirty per cent of the crew that’s not don’t think it’s legal.” He noticed that Zinke had redecorated loyal to the flag,” he said, in September, Last fall, Trump appointees in the

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 63 department became frustrated by bad requested by the House Oversight Com- At the ICE oice in San Francisco, press over eforts to expand mining and mittee because there has been a con- Schwab knew that the numbers were drilling, and by Freedom of Information certed efort to stop email traic regard- nonsense. Internally, the agency had pro- Act requests that sought details of their ing these matters.” At the Department jected that, out of a thousand and twenty contacts with powerful industries. Allen of the Interior, the Inspector General’s targets in the area, it would be lucky to received another order: send FOIA re- oice investigated Zinke’s travel ex- find two hundred. (In the event, it ar- quests about political appointees to the penses but was stymied by “absent or rested two hundred and thirty-two.) subjects themselves before releasing the incomplete documentation” that would Schwab has been a government spokes- results to the public. He was taken aback. “distinguish between personal, political, man for more than a decade, first in the “It was just a blatant conflict of interest,” and oicial travel.” According to Ruch, Army, where he served at the North Ko- he said. “The person who may be under of Public Employees for Environmen- rean border, and then at NASA. “I con- suspicion, that they’re requesting records tal Responsibility, when environmen- tacted the headquarters and said, ‘How on, is going to be an approval authority talists filed suit to discover if industry are we going to respond to this when in the chain. That just doesn’t seem O.K.” lobbyists had influenced a report on Su- we know this is inaccurate?’” he recalled. After another leak, Allen was turkey- perfund sites, they were told, “There are Schwab was told not to elaborate or cor- farmed—reassigned to the Bureau of no minutes, no work product, no ma- rect the error; instead, he should refer Safety and Environmental Enforcement, terials.” Ruch added, “The task-force reporters to existing statements. “That in a newly created position with no staf report was a product of immaculate con- just shook me,” he told me. and no responsibilities. Allen filed a ception.” He believes that the Admin- Rather than aiding in the deception, complaint with the Oice of Special istration is “deliberately avoiding creat- Schwab resigned. “A lot of people in Counsel. “I did not swear an oath to ing records.” the federal government are holding on Ryan Zinke, Donald Trump, or any other For many in government, Trump’s an- tight, trying to keep everything going person,” he told me. “My oath is to the tagonistic relationship to facts is no lon- properly,” he told me. “And people are Constitution. I work for the American ger just a matter of politics. It now afects fearful to say anything. I was fortunate people. I still feel like I am helping to day-to-day governance. One afternoon enough to be able to quit my job and uphold the Constitution, even if it’s by in February, James Schwab, the spokes- say something, but most people aren’t insuring the First Amendment by hav- man for the San Francisco oice of Im- able to do that.” The White House has ing this conversation.” migration and Customs Enforcement, politicized work that was once insulated confronted a dilemma. The mayor of from interference, Schwab said. “We n one agency after another, I encoun- Oakland, Libby Schaaf, had infuriated see that in the F.B.I. very publicly, and Itered a pattern: on controversial is- the White House by warning undocu- then I saw that at ICE from the high- sues, the Administration is often not mented residents of a forthcoming sweep. est levels of the White House. Who writing down potentially damaging in- Jef Sessions accused her of sabotage, knows where else it’s happening in the formation. After members of Congress saying, “ICE failed to make eight hun- rest of the government.” requested details on Carson’s decorat- dred arrests that they would have made A White House that is intent on ing expenses, Marcus Smallwood, the if the mayor had not acted as she did.” politicizing and falsifying information departmental-records oicer at HUD, That figure became an instant talking can achieve its objectives before other wrote an open letter to Carson, saying, point on cable news. And, in comments branches of government know enough “I do not have confidence that HUD can the next day, Trump elevated the eight to stop it. From 2002 to 2005, Colonel truthfully provide the evidence being hundred to “close to a thousand people.” Lawrence Wilkerson was Colin Pow- ell’s chief of staf. He helped prepare the fateful speech to the U.N. Security Council in which Powell argued for the invasion of Iraq, saying, “Unless we act, we are confronting an even more frightening future.” Wilkerson is concerned that the Trump Administration is using “much the same playbook” to heighten a sense of menace around threats posed by Iran. “The talk has been building,” he told me. In December, Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Na- tions, claimed that there is “undeniable” evidence that Iran has supplied weapons to insurgents in Yemen. The claim was met with skepticism at the U.N., where other member states worry that the U.S. will use that charge to build a “Oh! Sad! Sad man! Man who is sad! Sad man who is sad inside!” case for attacking Iran. “It just brought back the image of Powell holding that ute, I don’t do casualties and things like to insure lockstep political orientation,” alleged anthrax bottle up at the U.N. that. That’s your bailiwick,’” Wilkerson Wilkerson recalled. “And what we got Security Council,” Wilkerson told told me. “The man has no comprehen- out of that was a lockstep-stupid polit- me. “It’s some of the same characters sion of the young men and women that ical orientation.” as in 2002 and 2003. History repeats it- have to carry out his goddam wars.” He In the outside world, the mistakes self, first as tragedy and then as farce.” continued, “He thinks it’s right to shape were well documented. But inside the On May 8th, Trump withdrew from a narrative that’s false, so long as that Green Zone the lights and air-condi- the Iran nuclear deal, saying that it was narrative is leading to a ‘better’ purpose.” tioning were always on, there was no “defective at its core.” Observers of the unemployment, and no one debated region warned of a potential crisis, but uring Trump’s march to Washing- America’s role in Iraq. It was rhetoric Trump expressed confidence in his in- Dton, he framed his mission as noth- over reality (“Mission Accomplished!”), tuition; he had opposed the accord since ing less than regime change: America’s and appearances mattered most: the the campaign, and, he said, “I’ve been capital was a defeated empire in need press oice distributed rosy, misleading one hundred per cent right.” Nowrouzza- of occupation. In the months after the statistics and obscured the dismal prog- deh issued a brief statement, lamenting Inauguration, as I watched that rheto- ress in restoring electricity and recruit- the withdrawal: “Our ability to influence ric turn to action, the tactics and personae ing new police. The philosophy of gov- or incentivize Iran’s nuclear decision- started to remind me of another expe- ernance—defined by loyalty, hostile to making in a manner favorable to U.S. rience with regime change. As a reporter expertise, and comfortable with lies— interests will be severely undermined.” embedded with the Marines, I arrived created a disaster, even as its adherents But State Department regulations in Baghdad in April, 2003, on the day extolled American values. Those who prevented her from saying more, and that Saddam’s statue fell. I covered Iraq recognized the self-delusion and incom- most of her colleagues in negotiating of and on for two years, a period in petence began referring to the Green the deal had left. The Trump advisers which the U.S. occupation was led from Zone as the Emerald City. who favored preserving it had been the Green Zone, a fortified enclave in The early mistakes in Iraq were like efectively silenced; McMaster and Til- the country’s capital, where Americans land mines sown in the soil. They con- lerson were gone, and Mattis had given lived and worked in a sanctum of swim- tinued erupting for years, in the form of up making the case. ming pools and black-market Scotch. division and decay. Similarly, the mis- In their place was John Bolton, a for- The Green Zone—oicially, the home takes that the Trump Administration mer State Department oicial who was of the Coalition Provisional Author- has made are likely to multiply: the dis- recently appointed the national-security ity—functioned as an extension of the mantling of the State Department; the adviser after a long term as a Fox News White House, led by political appoin- denigration of the civil service; the ex- backbencher. Bolton, known in Wash- tees, stafed by civil servants, and at- clusion of experts on Iran and climate ington as a maximalist hawk, is arguably tended by waiters in bow ties and paper change; the fictional statistics about un- the most volatile addition to the Admin- hats. It was Iraq as the war planners had documented immigrants; and the efort istration since its inception—an unre- imagined it would be: orderly, on-message, to squelch dissent across the govern- pentant advocate of the Iraq War who and driven by the desire to remake the ment. Absent a radical change, the Ad- has also argued for regime change in Iran country in the name of capitalism and ministration has no mechanism for and in North Korea. “He lied repeatedly democracy. self-correction. It will not get normal; it during his time at State,” Wilkerson told After a year, the Green Zone had ac- will get worse. me. In 2002, when Bolton was the de- quired another connotation, as a byword Trump is less impeded than ever, a partment’s top arms-control oicial, he for disastrous flaws in the invasion: the fact that impresses even those he has planned to accuse Cuba of developing failure to stop looters or to restore Iraq’s mocked and spurned. Stephen Bannon a secret biological-weapons program. electricity; the decision to disband the (who Trump said had “lost his mind”) When a lower-ranking intelligence oi- Iraqi Army; the blindness to a growing recently told me, “He is unchained. This cial, Christian Westermann, spoke up to resistance to the occupation. As the prob- is primal Trump—back to the leader he say that the accusation was unsupport- lems accumulated, so did the vacant was during the campaign, the same one able, Bolton tried to have him fired, tell- oices in the Green Zone, because peo- the American people voted into oice. ing his boss that he wouldn’t take orders ple in Washington were unwilling to There are no more McMasters in the from a “mid-level munchkin.” join. The Administration turned, more apparatus. He’s got shit he’s got to get To Wilkerson, Bolton’s arrival at the than ever, to loyalists. Oicials screen- done, and he’s just going to get it done.” center of American national security is ing new American prospects sometimes Midway through its second year, alarming. He recalled an encounter in asked whether they had voted for Bush Trump’s White House is at war within 2002, when Bolton was publicly calling and how they saw Roe v. Wade. A co- and without, racing to banish the “dis- for Bush to confront North Korea. At hort of recent college grads, recruited loyals” and to beat back threatening in- the time, Wilkerson, who had served because they had applied for jobs at the formation. Bit by bit, the White House thirty-one years in the Army, cautioned Heritage Foundation, were put in charge is becoming Trump’s Emerald City: iso- Bolton that an attack on Seoul would of Iraq’s national budget. The rebuild- lated, fortified against nonbelievers, en- result in enormous casualties. “John stops ing of the stock market was entrusted tranced by its mythmaker, and constantly me mid-sentence and says, ‘Wait a min- to a twenty-four-year-old. “They wanted vulnerable to the risks of revelation. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 65 LETTER FROM CALIFORNIA BOTTLED DREAMS Randall Grahm’s quest for a truly American wine.

BY ADAM GOPNIK

any students have been driven stintingly admires. He ofers a simple rea- the intermingling of a thousand grapes to drink by the efort of un- son for the connection between philos- that becomes the great grape.” M derstanding Martin Heideg- ophers and wine: “Wine is a mystery that The Don Quixote comparison is self- ger’s “Being and Time.” Only one, per- holds the promise of an explanation.” imposed—Grahm once wrote a ten- haps, has been driven to wine, exclusively His improbable quest has led him to thousand-word poem with himself in the and for life, and that is the inimitable become a pioneer of Rhône Valley vari- role of a character called Don Quijones— California vintner, punster, screw-top etals in Northern California; an apostle and so, given the scale of this year’s wind- evangelist, and all-around Don Quixote of the screw cap as the one right “closer” mills, any small sign of reassurance raises of the vineyards, Randall Grahm. In the for good wine; and, for a while, a very his spirits. “I had a geomancer out to nineteen-seventies, when he was a phi- successful beverage businessman (at one Popelouchum,” he recalled not long ago, losophy major at the University of Cal- point, largely on the strength of his pop- from the driver’s seat of his 1972 Citroën, ifornia at Santa Cruz, and struggling ular wine Big House, he was selling four “and he said that we must orient the en- with an honors thesis on the concept of hundred and fifty thousand cases a year). trance of the site in only one direction.” Dasein, the most obscure idea in Heideg- Next came a semi-orderly downsizing Geomancy is an ancient means of divi- ger’s obscure classic, he happened to wan- of his wine label, Bonny Doon, prompted nation involving throwing soil and rocks der into a wine store in Beverly Hills by fears of its being corrupted by too and interpreting their omens; Grahm, in called the Wine Merchant. It was a time much commercialism. Most recently, he the Northern California way, is an agree- when the great crus of France were rel- has decided to take possession of four able mixture of tough-minded agricul- atively cheap, and the owner, Dennis hundred acres of land near the little mis- tural science and what he calls “Santa Overstreet, soon to be his employer, was sion town of San Juan Bautista—it’s the Cruz woo-woo.” He went on, “So, the generous. “There was a kind of Bordeaux place where Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” reaches geomancer goes like this, definitively: scandal at the time, and he had taken its climax, though the tower from which ‘Northwest! That’s the way in which pros- some really crappy stuf of the export- Kim Novak falls was added to the mis- perity lies!’ I’m sure that he had no idea ers’ hands in exchange for several cases sion by the film’s art-department team. that he was pointing directly at Cuper- of Musigny,” Grahm explains. As he Thirty or so miles from Santa Cruz, on tino!” Cupertino is the site of Apple’s and Overstreet shared a bottle of the 1971 a hillside where nothing but grass and headquarters, just around the bend. Comte Georges de Vogüé Musigny, weeds has ever grown, Grahm is going “And then we had the Bourguignons Vieilles Vignes, the mystery of Dasein to try to make an American wine that out to the vineyard!” Claude and Lydia was replaced by the mystery of Musi- is an entirely original expression of its Bourguignon are a legendary and aptly gny: how, Grahm wondered, had some- terroir, of the land on which it’s raised named French surveying couple who thing so haunting and complicated been and the place from which it came. evaluate sites for wine growing. “They produced by growing grapes, juicing The efort at the new vineyard, called identified five distinct terroirs within the them, and then letting them grow old Popelouchum, involves a three-pronged property,” Grahm said. “And the really in bottles? assault. First, Grahm intends to plant exciting thing is the extravagance of Within a short time, Grahm had en- and test a series of uncelebrated grapes limestone—there’s limestone every- rolled at the University of California at that have languished in the shadows of where.” Limestone, he explained, is typ- Davis, the M.I.T. of American fermen- European viticulture. Next, he will “auto- ical of the greatest vineyards, which tend tation, where winemaking had become tune” some familiar European grapes by to be stony rather than loamy, stress mak- an object of academic research. There, he breeding them incestuously and then ing finer grapes. “Rocks are always good, began an obsession with creating an testing for slight improvements in each but I think it’s the porousness of lime- American wine that has some of the qual- successive generation. Finally, he hopes stone that explains its power,” he added. ities of great red Burgundy—or even those to produce an entirely new American “It breathes. Of course, on the other side, of the great wines of France’s Rhône Val- varietal by growing and crossing un- there are so many forbidding negatives! ley. As he points out, several figures in likely pairs of grapes from seed—which There’s the fault line—we’re right on the the making of California wine culture is a bit like an ambitious Yankees gen- San Andreas fault line. No one knows were also renegade philosophy students, eral manager trying to raise starting just how that will change things. And including Paul Draper, the recently re- shortstops from embryos. “There may there’s the rats! We have these giant tired head winemaker of Ridge Vineyards not be one great American grape,” mutant vineyard rats that basically ate and one of the few whom Grahm un- Grahm says, philosophically. “It may be the entire first crop. We can’t poison

66 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 Grahm aims to produce an entirely new, climate-adapted American varietal by crossing unlikely pairs of European grapes.

ILLUSTRATION BY PETRA ERIKSSON THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 67 them, of course.” The new vineyard is session. He made very expensive wines that the previous vintage was better. Ar- meant to be not only organic, without that alternated between profoundly great guments about vintages and varietals are pesticides of any sort, but also “dry and undrinkable. He was sort of the as old as wine. farmed,” without irrigation. “So I’m rent- Hunter S. Thompson of the Santa Cruz “Wine has always been a ritual as much ing some Jack Russell terriers who are Mountains. And then Dan Wheeler. I as a recreational object,” Paul Draper, the demon ratters.” got the idea from him to age wine en Nestor of California wine, said recently. Grahm was driving on the Pacific bonbonne”—in big glass flasks instead “Something that you talk about and write Coast Highway, with his fourteen-year- of oak barrels. “Angry, irascible individ- poems about. I feel the same way Ran- old daughter in the back seat. He has uals. Not company men.” dall does about the mystery of wine. I the long face, ponytail, and ironic, shrug- It is Randall Grahm’s view, and not would even extend it to my interest in ging manner of a surviving comedian of his alone, that California winemaking myth.” After his retirement from Ridge the nineteen-seventies, a sort of George has become altogether too corporate. Vineyards, Draper and his wife went on Carlin fed on red wine rather than on “We’re sort of at the last-of-the-gun- a Jungian retreat in Ireland. “I’m always coke and whiskey. He has many manners slingers stage,” he said, referring to the carried back to why wine was seen as of melancholy. He can look distressed recent sale of Josh Jensen’s Calera Vine- magic or divine from the beginning. I even when he is drinking wine—espe- yard to a conglomerate. The revolution suspect it’s because it is the most famil- cially when he is drinking wine, includ- begun by the winemakers and the vine- iar act of transformation. And it is one ing his own. There is an ever-hopeful yard scientists of Davis back in the nine- of the very few remaining rituals that first swirl and snif, and a half glimpse teen-sixties and seventies has in some many of us have. It makes the meal into of pleasure as he begins to drink; then ways paid of beyond anyone’s ambi- a ritual that it otherwise would not be.” he becomes pained, and eventually his tions. More than a billion and a half dol- Winemaking in California, unsurpris- expression conveys something close to lars’ worth of American wine, almost all ingly, began in a religious context. “Mis- the resigned despair of a Shakespeare of it Californian, is now exported, most sion” grapes, grown by Spanish monks, hero in the fifth act of his tragedy. As he of it to the European Union, which had were the first kind made into wine. (“They once explained to someone puzzled by once seemed to have plenty of wine of make horrible wine, unfortunately,” Grahm his seeming distress at drinking a per- its own. But the dream of making a great says.) The Zinfandel grape, which came fectly nice wine, “I don’t want another wine culture, as opposed to a thriving to California as a variant of the Primi- nice wine. I want a wine that’s like the beverage industry, seems to recede more tivo grape of southern Italy—though the old Saint-Émilion Cheval Blanc, a wine with each year. Most of the wine that’s shared precursor seems to have originated that when you drink it you just want to sold is monotone, and the wine that in Croatia—has been cultivated here for inject it directly into your veins!” claims not to be monotone is, Grahm more than a century, and has a right He is a passionate Francophile—his believes, pretty monotone, too, made in to be taken as California’s native grape. daughter is named Amelie—and the ’72 the style of the one-dimensional “fruit But, in Grahm’s view, “it’s a holiday wine. Citroën, perhaps the most curvaceously bomb” wines that he associates with Cranberry-sauce wine. It makes a rich beautiful family car ever the reign of the wine critic wine, but never a complicated one.” made, needed an undue Robert Parker. Grahm sometimes talks about the mis- amount of fidgeting and Driving through the sion of “American” wine, but California tending. “The car is part of mountains, he occasionally is his true terroir. He has lived his entire my shtick,” Grahm said with jerked his head toward a life there, growing up in Los Angeles, al- a laugh. He is one of those vineyard, or referred to one though he showed few signs of succumb- people—more often found elsewhere, and said, “They ing to the madness of wine before his in the upper reaches of show grow chocolate and vanilla fateful trip to the Beverly Hills wine store. business—who are sincerely there.” By “chocolate” he “We had Manischewitz, and that was shrewd, or, better, shrewdly means Cabernet Sauvignon, about it,” his mother, Ruth, recalls. “My sincere. His passion and er- and by “vanilla” he means childhood was very Glass family,” Grahm udition are real, but he is Chardonnay. These are by says, using the term, correctly, to mean aware that being passionate and erudite far the most common varietals in Cali- not a coven of intellectuals but a show- is, in the wine world, a good look, a use- fornia viticulture; the words suggest his biz family that encouraged spiritual ec- ful kind of product diferentiation. opinion of the flavor of most of the wines. centricity. Ruth Grahm spent most of her “I’m Santa Cruz crazy,” he explained. life as a lyricist. Working with her com- “The thing is, I’m normative here. It’s ccording to the archeological evi- poser father, Lou Herscher, she wrote, been a retreat for crazy winemakers as Adence—flasks and stoppers and seal- among other songs, “Mama Never Said long as there’s been wine. It’s our tradi- ants—the earliest wine production oc- a Word About Love,” “Fifty Games of tion. It’s a less stressful place than most curred in what is now Armenia, with the Solitaire,” “Elmer the Knock-Kneed Cow- of the rest of the winemaking areas. It’s first vintage sometime around 4000 B.C. boy,” and “Baby, I’m the Greatest.” “When not Napa.” He began to enumerate Santa One of the few things that can be said he came home and told us that he wanted Cruz eccentrics: “There was Martin Ray, with any confidence about it is that some to become a winemaker—well, as far as the first California winemaker to catch ancient Armenian pronounced, shortly I was concerned he could do anything he the Burgundian bug to the point of ob- after the second vintage was produced, wanted, but my husband was livid,” Ruth

68 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 says. “He wanted him to be a doctor, and he would have taken a professor.” After getting his degree, and with the eventual help of his wary father, Grahm bought some land in the town of Bonny Doon, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The land still gives his wine its name, though he long ago surrendered the original vineyard after a series of insect in- festations destroyed all the grapes. (“We got wiped out by the blue-green sharpshooter and we were recovering, and then, two years later, they discovered another variant of sharpshooter called the glassy- winged sharpshooter, and the glassy- winged fed even more voraciously and flew ten times further, and I’m thinking to myself, We got wiped out by the wimpy vector? And now there’s a super vector. We’re so screwed.”) Wine grapes are as sensitive to assaults as authors: in addition to sharpshooters, the tiny phylloxera louse, whose unintentional import from the New World nearly ended wine production in France a century and a half ago, is still rampant in California. (Most wine grapes in France now are grafted onto foreign rootstock, from native Amer- ican plants that can resist phylloxera.) “Get those things away from me—I can’t stop eating them.” “I was young and looking for property, and because the temperatures were cool, I thought it would work,” he said. •• He planted several hectares of Pinot Noir, the great red grape of Burgundy, and So the book, when it’s done, it’s much the vineyard), and the Bonny Doon sig- waited for the results. He lived, mostly more efortful—and much less good.” nature graphic, of an oblong-headed alien alone, with his two cats, Franny and Zooey. Having been devastated by his first with huge, sinister teardrop eyes, which The results were crushingly disappoint- attempt to make a California Burgundy, is still on the cap of every Cigare-related ing. “What we were making was nothing Grahm essentially dug up the lawn and wine that Bonny Doon bottles. like Burgundy. It was palatable at best replanted instead the dark and meaty Even Grahm skeptics, who are many, and insipid at worst and had no sense of grapes of the Rhône Valley. He was not agree that the Cigare Volant was a break- complexity or mystery or authenticity.” the first winemaker to plant Syrah, Gre- through in California wine: complicated, An article of faith for Grahm is that nache, Roussette, and Cinsault, but he many-sided, it changed its mood and Pinot Noir just can’t be grown in Cali- was, perhaps, the first to do it with a fully character markedly from year to year, fornia. This opinion is, to put it mildly, self-conscious intention of making a like a great European wine. (Food & Wine far from universal. California Pinot in- blend that would imitate the great wines once listed it as among the “40 Wines cludes a few cult wines that sell for signifi- of the Rhône: in particular, Châteauneuf- That Changed the Way We Drink.”) cant sums to collectors who otherwise du-Pape, from the South. In 1984, he Grahm admits that it’s a good wine, focus on high-end French wines. When began to bottle a Rhône blend that re- though, he complains, “it always has per- such successes are mentioned, Grahm mains his signature wine, the Cigare Vo- sonality, but it doesn’t yet have identity.” makes the long-sufering polite face of lant, or flying cigar, which is what the It was with Cigare Volant, too, that Grahm a Heideggerian being told that there’s a French call a flying saucer. The conceit began his practice of making labels de- really good philosophy of life in “Tues- derived from a joke bylaw that actually signed by well-known illustrators, bear- days with Morrie.” “You can make a vin got passed in southern France, at the ing names and legends that involve elab- d’eort,” he explains. “You can, with huge time of the U.F.O. scares of the fifties, orate literary puns. “I loved the look of efort, make a Pinot Noir that has some forbidding any alien to land in a vine- old wine labels, all the heterogeneous ty- of the characteristics of a Burgundy. But yard. This produced the name, the label pography, diferent fonts crowded to- it’s, like—well, you know the Borges story (a photo collage using a nineteenth-cen- gether, and wanted to play with them,” about the second author who comes along tury print and an image of a tractor beam he says. One of his favorites is the label and copies ‘Don Quixote’ word for word? emanating from a flying saucer above for his Grenache blend, Clos de Gilroy

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 69 (the name is a play on the French word and labels to straight Syrahs, sweet wines, gobs of fruit as well as gobs of poor Rob- “clos,” meaning “enclosed vineyard,” with rosés (his Vin Gris de Cigare is proba- ert just about everywhere,” one onlooker the vineyard in question being close to bly his single most successful bottling), is supposed to have reported of the ex- Gilroy, a town outside Santa Cruz), which various sparkling ciders, champagne-style plosion—“gobs of fruit” being another features a portrait of Proust. The label blends, and even a good Merlot called, Parker unit of praise. has a bilingual punning motto, “Le gil des in honor of the famous rant in the movie Mock a man’s appearance and he can rois, le roi des gils,” a parody of the motto “Sideways,” “I Am Not Drinking Any forgive you; mock his adjectives and he on Châteauneuf labels (“Le vin des rois, $%&*#! Merlot.” is an enemy for life. Grahm’s relation- le roi des vins”—“The wine of kings, the The eighties were also when Grahm ship with Parker never really recovered. king of wines”). Perhaps one in a hun- had his first encounter with the neme- One Parker guide said, glacially, that dred wine drinkers got all sis of his story, the formida- Bonny Doon’s first Cigare Volant, in this, but the other ninety- ble wine taster and critic Rob- 1984, remained its best. Although Grahm nine noticed the label in ert Parker. At first, Parker, who doesn’t entirely disagree—“I had no idea the wine store. had become a critical dicta- what I was doing then, so I didn’t do it The nineteen-eighties tor along the lines of Clem- all wrong”—it was still wounding. were a time of extravagant ent Greenberg in the mid-cen- Having broken with Parker, Grahm acceptance and sudden tury New York art world, was felt free to be more openly critical of his growth. Grahm appeared very much pro-Grahm. They wine standards, which involve numer- on the cover of Wine Spec- shared an afection for the ical grades and favor “fruit bombs”— tator, standing beside a Rhône Valley, which had be- big, jammy, rich wines—over the more white horse, with the leg- come Parker’s promised land complicated and, on first taste, astrin- end “The Rhône Ranger.” of winemaking, and Grahm’s gent wines that Grahm considers the It was also the period when he began to efort to make a California kind of Rhône main line of vinous greatness. “The one think of replacing traditional corks with wine brought them into concert. thing I won’t forgive Parker for is being a more plebeian screw caps, on the ground Later, in the nineties, Parker, like moral scold for perceived concentration,” that, however much fun the cork ritual Clement Greenberg turning on the older he says. “If your wines are not concen- might be, about five to ten per cent of Jackson Pollock, decided that Grahm’s trated enough, you’re morally deficient. all wine bottles would always become wine, what with all the punning labels This drives me shit-fucking mental. It’s “corked”—spoiled by “cork taint”—and and that new line of popular wine, Big ridiculous. It’s like evaluating music rendered undrinkable. Screw caps pre- House, had succumbed to the gods of based on how loud it’s played.” sent a smaller problem of “reduction” of commerce and advertising. He wrote a the wine in the bottle, which Grahm series of put-downs in his annual wine ne recent morning, Grahm got in thinks is easily resolved simply by decant- buyer’s guide. This was bad for the Bonny Ohis Citroën and drove out to look ing. In typical fashion, he publicized this Doon business, and was also extremely at the Popelouchum property. Northern cause, in 2002, with a mock funeral for ofensive to Grahm, who thought of Californians are so habituated to the the cork at Grand Central Terminal, in himself as the true obsessive, surrounded beauty of their environment that they New York, climaxing with a dinner of all- by businessmen, and saw his quirky (and can miss what they have, seeing only the black dishes inspired by the decadent expensive to produce) labels as a tribute crowded roads and the rising real-estate French fantasist J. K. Huysmans. to art rather than as a bid for Mammon. prices and the forest fires, in the same Even though the sharpshooters had Grahm brooded on the insult for way that New Yorkers get so consumed wiped out the original vineyard, Grahm years. Eventually, in 2003, he responded with delays on the No. 6 line that they used his new fame to begin making wine with what he now agrees was “the sin- stop looking at the spire of the Chrys- of fantastically varied kinds, almost all gle biggest mistake of a life that has ler Building. But an outsider’s breath is from purchased grapes. The wine-world known many fine vintages of big mis- taken away by the beauty of the land- term “purchased grapes” is somewhat takes.” He wrote and published a leaflet scape unspooling around San Juan Bau- misleading. “Commissioned grapes” called The National Vinquirer, mimick- tista. It has all the elements that most comes much closer to defining the prac- ing the typeface and voice of the Na- people are said instinctively to associate tice, which involves often torturous ne- tional Enquirer. There, among puns and with an idea of Eden: gently rolling hills gotiations between the winemaker and jokes (“Bruce & Demi-sec marriage stepping away toward a distant, shim- the farmer about what to grow, how to on the ropes”), was a parody article mering ridge of blue-gray mountains; in grow it, and when to pick it. “You plead headlined “Noted Wine Critic Ex- the near distance, a valley of cultivated that they keep the yields under control, plodes,” detailing the supposed death plains overhung with a flotation of white you plead with them not to overirrigate,” of Parker while overeating at a bistro in cumulus clouds, each distinct and ice- Grahm says. “It’s never perfect, like any the Rhône Valley. The accompanying cream shapely, and all together creating relationship. This guy’s got a great atti- obituary mocked Parker’s overuse of the a soft-edged patchwork of beaming light tude and he’s got a crappy vineyard; great words “hedonistic” and “sexy” to describe and peaceful shadow below. In the hills, vineyard, crappy attitude. Invariably.” In the big, fruity wines that he had helped wildflowers grow in abundance. addition to the Rhône-type blends, he promote. “However, it would be accu- “Furmint, Rossese, Ruché, all of these began to make and give punning names rate to report that there were literally obscure grapes, we have them all planted

70 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 already,” Grahm said, showing of the variation and diversity—for making wines breeding program within a decade. “Look, fields, where the only signs of planting of place, as Randall says, but, above all, we have two barrels already,” Grahm said. were the crossed wooden sticks on which for climate change. A hot-weather Pinot “There are Burgundy producers who the vines would grow. “Furmint is the Noir clone—that’s not going to happen. don’t produce more than that. They’re great sweet wine grape of Hungary, and But we could find two varieties and cross- not very wealthy Burgundy producers. . . .” we think that we have a spot where the breed for heat.” For the moment, all that was visible of geology looks perfect for it. We’re grow- A practical concern with climate this utopian program was the crossed ing these grapes in a slightly old-fashioned change helps drive the Popelouchum sticks and props intended for the vines way. We’re dry-farming them—we’re project. “We harvest now throughout as they mature over the summer. spacing them farther apart, interplanted Northern California three to four weeks Grahm looked out over the vineyard, with fruit trees and flowering shrubs— earlier than we ever used to,” Grahm said and pointed out a cross on the highest and the economics are challenging. But grimly. “It’s everywhere. Burgundy may nearby hilltop. “Yeah, this has always I think not impossible.” be fucked. The northern Rhône Valley is been a holy site,” he said, more quietly. As for his second project, “varietal partly fucked, though many of the great “First to the local indigenous people, auto-tuning,” he explained, “We started vineyards face away from the sun. The and then to the Spaniards, who attempted doing this with Grenache, and a num- southern Rhône is completely fucked.” mass conversion. They put the cross up.” ber of professional colleagues told me it New varietals that can still produce He paused, and added, “You know, I was a really bad idea, and about a year warm-climate wines that are complex haven’t brought my mother up here yet, later, they’re saying, ‘You know, I’ve and not too alcoholic may happen only because of that.” changed my mind. It’s maybe a good with new kinds of grapes. Grahm, climb- idea.’ It turns out that grapes are het- ing the highest hill in his new vineyard, here are people who think that Grahm erozygous. The seeds’ genetic informa- one still covered with yellow wildflow- Tis crazy and people who think he’s a tion recombines, so that even if it’s Gre- ers, with a surprisingly cool mountain- genius, and the people who think he’s a nache crossed with itself it’s not the same top breeze blowing across the rough sur- genius are also the ones most inclined to Grenache anymore. Some of the ofspring face of raw grass and weeds, put the dream think he’ll fail. Eric Asimov, the Times are inferior, or they’re sterile, but a small of the new variety succinctly: “We’re going wine writer, is a typically bemused fan. percentage actually have more interest- to pair a Zorba the Greek grape with a “It would be completely predictable that ing character than the parents. So we French bohemian grape, and see how he would come up with something like were doing that with Grenache—until well their kids like living in California.” this,” he says. “It’s fascinating, creative, the rats just decimated us.” The hope is to have wine on the mar- iconoclastic, and makes for great talk. But the most ambitious, and quixotic, ket from Popelouchum within two years, Why it may not be feasible is the timeline of his projects is breeding, the attempt and to begin to show results from the he’s put on it. Achieving something within to create new varieties by crossing existing ones and planting the seeds that result. Most wine grapes are grown from “clonal types”—exact genetic copies of successful vines, with cuttings taken from the precisely tuned familiar varietals. “Cross with seeds, though, and you often get far more diversity, which is how the original good varieties occurred,” Andy Walker, the resident genius of wine ge- netics at Davis, and Grahm’s adviser at Popelouchum, explains. “Pinot Noir, for instance, is a very jumpy grape. To this day, if you plant it in a vineyard you’ll get some Pinot Gris and some Pinot Blanc as well. The reason Pinot Noir is so variable in the bottle is that it’s a variable grape! We’re unfortunately stuck in the idea that the ancient great varieties are sacrosanct. But it turns out that all the ancient ones aren’t ancient. Caber- net Sauvignon is a relatively recent cross of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. Chardonnay is Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc. The monks may have started doing that a thousand years ago. We’re going to do it again, because now we need more “polyphonically, not cacophonously,” in the Great American Wine—his short- term vision, whose realization is already under way, is to use obscure European varietals that, when adapted to New World conditions, might make wines that have the complexity and the mystery of an Old World wine. “My ambition is always the same— to make a wine in California that’s com- parable to a great Burgundy,” he says. “But the means change.” Where once the grapes were the foreground and the place the background, now the place is the subject, and the grapes merely a means of transmission. When Grahm is on a tasting jag, he likes to lay out ten or twelve diferent bottles of wine based on a grape he’s ex- ploring, and ask a friend to taste with him, usually a friend whose tastes are practical and analytic, as Grahm’s are “And do you both promise to believe you can be better than all searching and romantic. His favorite the other married couples you’ve ever seen?” tasting companion—in a symmetry that not even Heidegger could have imagined—is a fellow Santa Cruz wine pro, •• John Locke, who shares with the great English empiricist of the same name ten years? The monks took centuries in vignon as very much a vin de terroir, pro- many a hard-edged, skeptical attitude. Burgundy. Maybe tech can speed that up duced in one small vineyard year after Locke worked at Bonny Doon for many a little bit, but it’s hard to expect that year. Grahm’s real complaint is that am- years, the Sancho to Grahm’s Don, and within a decade there will be some kind bitious California wines have been ver- now runs his own winery, Birichino, in of new, magic grapevines that express sions of French ones, hyped up on ste- another part of Santa Cruz. He is the the soul of this place that’s never before roids, and that these wines lead the French reality principle to Randall’s dreamy in- grown grapes or anything except grass to make hyped-up versions of their own. vocations of mystery. Grahm reaches and weeds.” The Great California Wine, he feels, for the empyrean, and Locke brings him Paul Draper, the Ridge winemaker, should be a thing in itself. A Barolo doesn’t back to earth, a table full of wine bot- has another take, which is that for all aspire to be a Burgundy, and a Califor- tles between them. Grahm’s talk of passion for a vin de ter- nia wine should be an American thing “One of the grapes I have the high- roir, his real gift is for blending and mix- that just wants to be an American thing. est hopes for is Rossese,” Grahm said. ing wines, more often with shrewdly In a way, Grahm has already made “It’s one of those genius grapes, hiding purchased grapes than with homegrown that American thing, as have many other in plain sight. Rossese! When I first ones. He’s a winemaker, more than a American winemakers. His existing wines tasted it, it was too subtle for my taste wine grower. “I’ve always felt that one express six diferent places at once, which at the time. It was very . . . light. But of his greatest joys is his amazing cre- is, after all, a very American idea of place. now I feel that Rossese is the missing ativity in putting together wines that If the great California grape is many link between Italy and France. It has the represent his ideal, almost a Platonic grapes, perhaps the great American ter- warmth of Grenache but the nerviness form,” Draper says. “I can’t actually imag- roir already exists in the very act of widely of a Dolcetto and, literally, it is the cross- ine Randall in Burgundy tied to one sourced and “manipulated” winemaking, ing point between France and Italy. Most plot of grapes, trying to reproduce the while purity of place remains the illu- Rossese is virused up the wazoo.” same wine year after year. Randall would sion. “Life on the Mississippi,” is, after The wine, poured in a back oice at be bored to tears doing that. What he all, a greater American book than “Lit- Bonny Doon, was light but complex, did by creating these wines of such qual- tle House on the Prairie.” with an appealingly spicy and smoky ity was to really free himself from what nose. “If you can clean up the virus, there’s terroir would have tied him down to.” f Grahm’s long-term ambition at a treasure hiding underneath,” Locke Many people would insist that Amer- IPopelouchum is to breed entirely new commented, as he snifed and swirled ican wines of place already exist. Though varieties of grape—or perhaps an entire the wine in his glass. He is blond, round, Paul Draper is too modest to say it, he vineyard of ever so slightly diferent politely terse, and has a smiling, slightly thinks of his Monte Bello Cabernet Sau- grapes, chiming together, as he says, taunting manner. Grapevines, like the

72 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 heroines in D. W. Griith movies, are “It’s good!” Grahm said. “It’s light, but in the Santa Cruz Mountains, deep in subject to every kind of trial: in addition delicious.” Then he sighed. “This watery a redwood forest, to see the old place. to the pests that wipe out whole vine- is a hard sell in a Parkerized world.” Where the hillside of Popelouchum yards, more than sixty specific viruses “It depends on how much you have feels vast and soft and visionary, a look- unique to grapevines have been iden- to sell,” Locke said, and shrugged. “A out with prosperity unrolling all tified. Most are noxious, but some can hundred cases in Brooklyn or Oak- around, the older vineyard, set back be peripherally beneficial, or at least have land? We can do it. In Dallas or Los from the road, seems shaded and se- consequences that are interesting to taste. Angeles? You’d have to do data min- cret and a little small, a young man’s “No, John,” Grahm objected. “Some- ing on men who spend a lot on beer green laboratory. The giant redwood times the opposite happens. The virus is and facial-grooming products.” Oak- trees cast shade—the coolness they the treasure. In working on auto-tuning, land is the Brooklyn of San Francisco, help create was one of the reasons he you’ll see that recessive genes get ex- and assumed to be a hot spot for re- thought the land would work for Pinot pressed. Most are inferior, but a small cherché wine. Noir—and make the place feel more percentage are better suited. And in the “It does have surprising minerality,” like a retreat than a launching pad. propagation the virus falls out. So you’re Grahm asserted. Perhaps most places where a creative losing something, but something purer “Twenty years ago, you want to sell life begins have some of that quality: might emerge.” He snifed. “There’s roses wine to a geeky buyer, you said ‘hang we pick out starting points that are a and cherries and acid. This is probably time’”—meaning how long the wine bit hidden, so that others won’t see us how this wine has been made for two remained on the palate—“and ten practicing our leaps. hundred years. These are rustic wines. It years ago you said ‘terroir,’ and now The fields having long ago been sold really is Burgundian in spirit.” it’s ‘minerality.’ ” and replanted, nothing of his failed “Ah, Randall,” Locke said. “‘Burgun- “O.K., call it a kinetic quality on the Pinot Noir—or the Grenache and the dian in spirit’?” Locke deplores the ad- palate. Minerality is a thing.” Syrah that replaced it—remains. His jective “Burgundian,” which he thinks is “Chablis, champagne, Sancerre— original tasting room, down the road basically meaningless. “There is a little minerality is chalk.” Locke tasted, and from the vineyard, is still used by the place in northern France, and that is called then said, “That’s my second most hated current grower, who produces his own Burgundy. And you know what? That’s word in the wine world right now, ‘min- Pinot Noir, which Grahm tries to treat where you’ll find the Burgundian spirit.” erality.’” He paused, and waited. “My politely. Driving slowly around the old “Yes, but there is some quality that most hated is ‘Burgundian.’ ‘Minerality’ place, another dream plot up in the unifies all those diferent, disparate styles,” means something. Maybe. ‘Burgundian’ Santa Cruz Mountains, he seemed un- Grahm insisted. “It’s ethereal, it’s elo- means: something to sell.” usually quiet. For many imaginative quent—it’s earthiness and elegance. You Grahm stared at his friend. “You’re people, artists or winemakers, life al- can’t always drink Burgundy, but there denying minerality?” he said at last, like ways feels like a failure seen from in- are other wines. Like high-altitude Gre- a theologian in the presence of an ex- side; where the rest of us can see only nache. Ones with unequivocally non- priest denying the Holy Spirit. But the accomplishments, they see the un- Burgundian Burgundian qualities.” then he sighed again. “We have all these realized scale of the ambitions that Locke swirled and swallowed. “Let’s explanations for everything, and still preceded the accomplishments. break it down into triads,” he said. “With things make no sense,” he added. “I know perfectly well that there are every interesting flavor, there usually elements in my character that have iso- turn out to be three specific, nameable lated me from people,” he said. “That elements that create the mystery, and the intensity of my obsessions often all the rest of that. One food, one spice, crowds out the expression of my afec- one flower. Like Côte-Rôtie: bacon and tions. There’s no one in the world I pepper and—what?—wild thyme? The love more than my daughter, but I word you want is ‘triads.’ The adjective struggle to explain the importance of that maybe you’re looking for to de- all this to her.” He paused. “You know, scribe this mystery is more floral than most of the greatest wines are not fruit. It’s simply ‘Alpine.’ ” drinkable when they’re young at all. “You mean ‘mentholated’?” Grahm “You don’t want it to be solved,” Locke They’re like Henry Miller or Picasso. cried out, almost in pain. urged. “What would that feel like? ‘The You have to wait seventy years before “ ‘Alpine.’ That’s really what the so- great wine mystery solved! Let’s move they’re civilized.” In the presence of called ‘Burgundian aspect,’ with scare on to Cheddar cheese.’” He swirled and, his first ambitions, long plowed under, quotes, really is. Floral top note, high- this time, downed his glass. his determination to put his working altitude, but at the same time there’s life on the line on a single hilltop, the basso-continuo note of the forest ot long after the tasting, Grahm untested but still his own, suddenly floor. Alpine.” Nreturned, for the first time in a seemed logical. As we age, the search A lighter Rossese was opened and quarter century, to his original vine- changes: the inebriating mysteries mat- poured. It came out pinkish orange in yard in the actual town of Bonny Doon. ter less, and the small sustaining ex- the glass. He drove up a steep and winding road planations matter more. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 73 FICTION

74 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS MARTIN BROTHERS Brother Matthews, Brother Lavelle, etc. him in if they knew what a shit he was. And then, lapsing from charity, he added, But maybe this was a feeling he inn said an awkward goodbye to “You are now my brother, Brother Finn, should just ignore. By an act of will. his parents and watched them and I don’t like it any more than you F drive of in the new Buick they do.” Nervous laughter, a fit of coughing • had bought in case he changed his mind. from Brother Lavelle, and then silence. “Brother Reilly must be a holy man,” They were pleased, of course, at Finn’s Finn blushed and muttered to him- Brother Quirk said to Finn. decision to study for the priesthood, but self, “Ah have always depended on the “What makes you think that?” they were wary, too. It was 1954, and kindness of strangers.” “Well, they chose him as manuduc- priests were still thought to be holy, and That night, Brother Reilly made a tor, and he never violates silence.” Finn . . . well . . . Finn knew that he note in his manuductor diary about “Maybe he just has nothing to say.” wasn’t holy, but during a retreat in col- Brother Finn’s “singularity”—Jesuit Finn thought for a moment and added, lege he had succumbed to a fit of piety speak for self-importance—and he “That was uncharitable of me. I’m sorry.” and, dizzied by the idea of sacrifice, ap- added, “I wonder how long Brother Brother Lavelle cleared his throat plied to join the Jesuits. They had put Finn will be among us.” Then, during and spat. him through a series of interviews, and examination of conscience, Brother Brother Quirk and Brother Lavelle let him know that he seemed altogether Reilly went to confession and accused and Finn had been assigned weeding too caught up in theatre, but in the end himself of disedifying conduct, sins duty during recreation—weeding the they had accepted him. So now here he against charity, and anger against one tomato patch, where there were in fact was, almost a Jesuit, and this annoying of his new brothers. Anger was a ha- no weeds—and, since they were out- Brother Reilly kept calling him Brother. bitual failing, he admitted. He would side the house, talking was allowed. In- Brother Reilly had given him a short try harder. side the house, talking was forbidden tour of the public areas—the chapel, Brother Reilly had been appointed except in emergencies, and then you the guest parlor, the dining hall—and manuductor—“he who leads by the had to speak in Latin. If your Latin then escorted him to the front veranda, hand”—because even now, as a sec- wasn’t good, you were expected to learn where the other postulants had gath- ond-year novice, he was brusque and it or shut up. ered to admire the grounds. A green withdrawn, inclined to hang back from “Also, he was in Korea,” Brother lawn cascaded down the hill to a small group activities. He had served as a ma- Quirk said. wilderness of trees, with a lake beyond. rine in Korea, and he remained gaunt “God help the Koreans,” Finn said. Everyone agreed that it was beautiful. and hungry-looking, with an intensity Then, to change the subject, he added, They stood in little groups, sweating in that seemed to border on the danger- “These tomatoes are on their last legs. their jackets and ties, while the nov- ous. His superiors had judged that he What do you think, Lavelle?” ices—the real Jesuits—made awkward was ill-suited to the role of manuduc- Brother Lavelle never talked, but now attempts at conversation. Finn intro- tor, and that therefore it would be a use- he sat back on his heels and said, slowly, duced himself to the group around ful trial for him and an instructive one deliberately, “I think this whole fucking Brother Reilly, and, after the expected for the novices. thing is a mistake.” He stood up and hand-shaking, silence descended. Finn looked around. “Christ,” he said, and was not good with silence, so he cleared • without asking anyone’s permission he his throat and wondered aloud if they “Feelings,” Father Superior explained, walked back to the house. all felt as strange as he did in his jacket “are always to be distrusted. Jesuits are Finn, for once, remained silent, but and tie. There was eager agreement and men of the will. The good Jesuit may later he noticed that Brother Lavelle a little self-conscious laughter that en- feel excited or depressed, but—remem- was absent from dinner and evening couraged him to wonder further when ber—he never shows it. He is never prayers. they would get to wear a cassock, “if it’s singular. He disappears into the long “One down,” Finn said, as they left O.K. to ask,” he said. black line.” chapel that night. Brother Reilly heard “A habit, Brother Finn, not a cas- This was a talk that Father enjoyed him and gave him a hard, knowing look. sock,” Brother Reilly said quietly, a gen- giving. It was essential that novices tle rebuke. learn self-denial. And denial of feel- • “Sorry. A habit,” Finn said. “But ings came first. In conference, Father Superior ex- when?” “Agere contra—‘to act against’—here plained the use of what were face- “In good time, Brother Finn.” is your safeguard against the dangers tiously called “scroop beads.” A tiny Finn realized that he should shut up, of feeling. If you feel sad, smile. If you string of beads attached to a safety pin but he couldn’t help himself and, at- feel elated, exercise self-restraint. If you and worn inside the habit allowed you, tempting friendliness, he said, “Just call dislike someone, pray for him, take note unobtrusively, to pull down a single me Finn. Brother Finn creeps me out.” of his virtues, imagine that he has vir- bead each time you broke silence or Brother Reilly, with a show of pa- tues even if he has none. Agere contra. sinned against charity or had an un- tience, explained that in the Jesuit order Be a man of the will.” kind thought. The beads kept you scru- all novices were called Brother. He Finn listened, eager and anxious, pulously aware—hence, “scroop”—of pointed them out—Brother Quirk, certain that they would never have let your failings and came in handy at the

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 75 twice-daily examination of conscience. Sexy Gillian. He thought of his last night not enough. The best thing he could do Wearing them was, of course, optional. with her. He found that he was getting with his life was sacrifice it, and what Finn waited for Father Superior to aroused and forced himself to think of better way to sacrifice it than as a Jesuit. say “Just joking,” but Father Superior Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. Suddenly, from the bed nearest the was not given to jokes. The problem was that Finn had al- door, there came a terrible shout. It was ways wanted to be an actor. He had spent more than a shout; it was a wail of pure • the summer after high school studying terror and it seemed to go on and on, The new men, still wearing jackets and at the New Theatre Academy in New before trailing away into silence. ties, finally began their eight-day retreat. York, and after his first year of college he Someone turned on the light. Some- The silence was absolute, and time had acted in summer stock in Vermont. one else said, “It’s Brother Reilly. It’s the stretched out endlessly before them. Their Acting was fun. Acting was thrilling. In manuductor.” world contracted to an intense focus on his sophomore year, he’d acted in every Brother Reilly, the manuductor, still Father Superior’s conferences, three a play the drama department had put on. fighting his way out of his dream, pulled day, followed by an hour of private med- At the same time, he’d had this secret life himself together and said in a shaking itation, as they tried to engage each of in which he gave himself over to prayer. voice, “Everything’s fine. There’s noth- their five senses in the day’s topic: sin, One night on his way back from the li- ing the matter.” He turned of the light, Heaven and Hell, the life and teachings brary he’d decided to make a quick stop saying, “Sleep, everybody,” and he left the of Christ, the Gospel mysteries, the won- at the college chapel. The place was dark, room. Incredibly, they all slept, even Finn. ders of living the Christian life. with only the red sanctuary light blink- The next morning, their trial period Finn thought of Brother Lavelle. ing next to the altar. It was sort of spooky, behind them, the new novices were ac- Maybe this was all a fucking mistake. and Finn was glad that nobody could see cepted into the common life of the Je- But as the eight days passed he found him. He knelt in the back pew and closed suit community. It was a free day, with himself surrendering to the power of si- his eyes. After a while, he felt foolish, as a sung Mass in the morning and a spe- lence and meditation. if he were faking some kind of piety, and cial feast in the evening and Benedic- Most nights, he lay awake while the he decided to leave. But when he opened tion before bed. others slept. On the last of the eight his eyes he was startled to see the flick- Finn was at last a member of the long nights, his mind wandered from Christ’s ering red altar light move toward him. black line. Resurrection and the empty tomb to the He blinked and it moved again. The dark, summer theatre in Vermont. Gillian and the single red light moving toward ONCE IN A DARK WOOD Cantrell had been his girlfriend that sum- him in that dark: it had to be an optical mer, a sophomore at Brown. She was a illusion. But for a moment his heart stum- rother Reilly had had a fit. The word good actress, full of life and wit, and she bled and, looking back, he knew that that Bwent around during laborandum, was very sexy—too sexy for him. Gillian. was when he’d seen it clearly: acting was the afternoon work period. “It happened once before,” Brother Quirk said, “when he was in his first year.” “It was worse,” Brother Matthews said. “He woke us all up howling. He dreams he’s back in Korea.” “My brother was in Korea and my father was in the last war—in Germany— but they never wake up howling.” “I wonder why he does it. Why it happens, I mean.” “It’s a cross to bear.” Brother Quirk paused, then added, grimly, “The real cross is that he may have to postpone vows. For a year.” “For howling?” “It’s canon law. His mental state . . . his fits may be an impediment to ordina- tion. Like epilepsy or schizophrenia or even facial disfigurement.” “You mean if you’re too ugly you can’t be ordained?” Finn doubted this. “That would mean a lot of priests got through by accident.” “Father Taylor, for instance.” “How much limbering up do you need?” “Or Father Hanson.” “You’ll be a close call yourself, Quirk.” the day was divided into blocks of time a huge box of chocolates—and Finn “Very funny, Brother Finn. We for conference, rosary, class, examina- thanked them lavishly. But he was proud should pray for Brother Reilly, and we tion of conscience, lunch, two hours of his new poverty and couldn’t resist shouldn’t be talking about it anyway. of assigned work, study, more medita- telling them that gifts of any kind be- It’s not charitable.” tion, dinner, chores, spiritual reading, came common stock. a second examination of conscience, “We don’t own anything. Isn’t that • and, finally, at nine-thirty, following a wonderful? If somebody needs a Brother Reilly, meanwhile, was resting last visit to chapel, bedtime. sweater, he just asks, and they’ll give in the infirmary. It was called rest, but “At least they give you time to hit him this one.” he knew that, in fact, he was under ob- the toilet,” Finn said to anybody lis- “Oh, but we got it for you.” servation. Superiors wanted to know if tening, and, as God would have it, that “There isn’t any me anymore, Mother. his fits were incapacitating or if, as the happened to be Brother Reilly, who Not like that.” neurologist had assured them, he was looked at him as if he were an insect. Her eyes filled and she said, “Don’t.” merely having flashbacks to the war. They “He’s just being dramatic, Claire,” his should just wait and see, the doctor said. • father said. “Let it go.” Brother Reilly knew all about wait- Finn’s rabbit imitation had come to him Finn bristled at “dramatic,” but he ing. When he first applied to the Jesu- during a visit to chapel. He was won- knew that his father was right and found its, he interviewed with the psychiatrist dering what made Brother Quirk so an- himself blushing. whose job it was to vet all incoming noying and, with no shame at all, he “I love the sweater,” he said. “Maybe novices, and it emerged that, as a Ma- stared at him. He looked like Bugs they’ll let me keep it.” rine lance corporal in Korea, Reilly Bunny. His front teeth stuck out a lit- “You don’t want to ask for excep- had spent a good deal of his downtime tle and he had a nervous tic that some- tions,” his father said. “A rule is a rule.” with local prostitutes. The psychiatrist times made his lips twitch, just like a It was the old family dynamic: his thought it would be wise for Reilly to rabbit’s. A pious rabbit. With a pro- mother hurt and his father stepping in see if he could get by without sex for a nounced Dorchester accent. to lighten her disappointment and shift year, and so he recommended postpon- Finn pushed his upper lip forward the blame to Finn. This was how it ing entrance. Reilly endured his year of and exposed his front teeth, and for an would go. She would be depressed to- chastity and applied again. This time, awful moment he became Brother night and need her tranquillizers. And he was approved by the psychiatrist. He Quirk. It was unkind. He wouldn’t do his father would lie awake beside her, was a dutiful novice, if quiet and with- it again. But later, alone in a toilet stall, talking until she could finally get to drawn, but then one night he woke up he tried it one more time. Just for sleep. And the unspoken blame would screaming. It was his first fit, which he practice. be laid on Guess Who. passed of as a bad dream. Finn leaned over and kissed her on But now it had happened again. • the cheek. “My sweet old Mutti,” he Finn was tempted to make a smart- “Grace is God’s free gift. We can’t earn said. “She’s the best.” She raised a hand ass remark about Reilly, but for once he it. We can’t deserve it. God gives it to to protect herself, but Finn was deter- held his tongue. He was briefly proud of whom he wills.” mined to salvage their day. “Come on, himself. Then ashamed of his pride. Men- Finn knew this well and he found it Momoo,” he said, and, pretending to tally, he pulled down a scroop bead. depressing. twist her ears, he made motor sounds— “We can open ourselves to grace by “Start your engine! Come on! Lift • constant prayer, but we can’t merit it. of!”—until she pushed him away, say- Brother Quirk was appointed manu- It’s given gratuitously.” ing, “People will see!” But she laughed ductor. Suddenly he was everywhere, Finn’s mind wandered. Was novi- and his father laughed, and so the visit making announcements, reminding his tiate life making him infantile? Other was saved. brothers about changes to the schedule, men his age were fighting in Korea, The afternoon was made easier by posting a new De More notice. It was and here he was on his knees, confess- brief visits from the young priest, Fa- the same old schedule, but elaborately ing to uncharitable thoughts. What ther Lomax, who taught the novices printed to resemble an illuminated man- ever happened to making his life a Latin, and by Father Spalding, the old uscript and translated, unnecessarily, as sacrifice? priest who taught them Greek. They “Regular Order.” said hello and welcome and goodbye, Finn stood before the notice board • smiling and nodding as they moved on doing his rabbit imitation. It was visiting day. On the great south to the next group. 5:30 Rise lawn, guests gathered in groups, anx- “They’re all so nice,” Finn’s mother 6:00 Visit chapel ious to greet the new Jesuit in the fam- said. “What about that young man, the 6:15-7:00 Meditation ily, with his new black habit and his one who showed us around last time? 7:00-7:45 Mass new air of holiness. He was very nice.” 7:45-8:00 Breakfast Finn’s group included just his par- “Brother Reilly has fits.” 8:00-8:30 Free time ents and himself. They had brought him “Oh, no.” He drew a deep breath. The rest of presents—a black sweater, winter gloves, Finn thought, Here’s a good story,

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 77 but he knew it was a story that he had The novices, observing custody of up. “I guess this isn’t much like the Ma- no right to tell. the eyes, pretended not to see him. rines,” he said. “He has screaming fits in the night,” They stood for the prayers before meals “It is, as a matter of fact. Mindless he said. and, when they sat down, Father Su- tasks and no women.” “That’s awful.” perior declared, “Deo gratias,” which Finn pondered this, shocked. How “He had one a few weeks ago. He meant that they were free to talk. Finn, about that! “I notice you walk with Fa- started screaming, and I mean major who was waiting on the faculty table, ther Larsen. What is it like?” full-on screaming. It was the middle noted that although the priests spoke “It was an order from Father Supe- of the night, and we all woke up—we quietly among themselves, Father rior. For my mental health.” were terrified, you can imagine. Reilly, Larsen hardly spoke at all. “Oh.” And then, “What do you talk of all people! Then he stopped and ev- Later, as Brother Quirk gave out about? I mean, what does he talk about?” erything went quiet and he said—calm laborandum assignments, he explained “Baseball. Sports.” as could be—he said, ‘Everything’s fine. that Father Larsen was ill. He was “Sports? But he must talk some- There’s nothing the matter. Just go back completely of limits. No confessions times about ...well...about being a to sleep.’ And he left the dorm and and no spiritual advice. These were or- prisoner.” went down to the infirmary and he was ders from Father Superior. Father Brother Reilly punched a hole in there for days. It was incredible.” Finn Larsen had been a prisoner on the the dirt and said nothing. He was pale paused. This was all wrong. He added, Bataan death march. He had survived with anger. lamely, “He had a fit.” torture and starvation, but he had never “Or about the death march.” “Poor man. Isn’t there anything they really recovered. So he was here to rest. “Cut it out! Would you just cut it can do for him?” Period. The novices had many ques- out! All this shit! Honest to God.” “It’s shell shock or something.” tions about the death march and about Finn fell silent, and at the end of They were quiet for a while, thinking. the torture—what had happened to laborandum, when Brother Reilly said, Finn broke the silence. “I probably his face?—but it was work time and “I apologize, Brother Finn,” Finn re- shouldn’t have told you that.” Brother Quirk sent them on their way. sisted the urge to tell him to shove it “It’s sad. It’s a sad story.” So Finn felt deeply betrayed the next and merely said, “I shouldn’t have pried. “I shouldn’t have told it,” he said again. day, when, coming out of chapel, he saw My fault.” Toward the end of the afternoon, Brother Reilly leave the line of novices Later that day, he learned that Brother when they all seemed talked out, his and join Father Larsen, who was wait- Reilly had been told he would have to father said—and it was obvious that ing for him on the veranda. They ex- wait another year before taking vows. they had planned this—that if ever changed a few words and then, like old Poor Brother Reilly. Finn went to chapel Finn wanted to leave they would com- chums, took the path down to the lake. to pray for him. He didn’t feel well. He pletely understand, that what they cared Finn went of to laborandum to dig up had a pain in his chest and his breath- about was his happiness, that’s all. They more goddam potatoes and wrestle with ing was strained. He was coming down wanted him to be happy. Finn assured his jealousy of that fucking Reilly. with a cold. Never mind. It was another them that he was happy. thing he could ofer up. Finally, it was over. • Visiting day had been a great suc- Winter was long and cold, but at last SEMPER FIDELIS cess. Finn, however, felt sick. He had the snow melted and Lent began and squandered what little progress he had Finn was a changed man. He no lon- rother Infirmarian was old and he made in the spiritual life. He had triv- ger imitated Brother Quirk or broke Bwas tired. Over the years, he had ialized it. He had talked it away. the rule of silence or said witty things given pills to countless novices who had at the expense of his brothers. More- dealt with doubts about their vocation • over, he was content. He felt no need by working themselves up into a fever. De more for months now. Mass and to perform. He listened while Brother Finn’s temperature was a hundred and meditation, spiritual conference, and Haberman told his stories about life one, nothing surprising. So Brother gave on and on, until litanies in chapel, and in Dorchester, and he dutifully learned him the strongest cold pills he had— so to bed. the names of Irish parishes in Southie, the yellow-and-black ones—and told Then Father Larsen arrived. He and, when he and Brother Reilly were him to take a lie-down instead of lab- appeared one day at noon, silent, for- assigned to the same work crew, Finn orandum for the next few days. A day bidding, entering the refectory behind did his best to draw him out. They were passed and then another, and though everyone else. He looked ancient. His planting those everlasting potatoes. Finn took the yellow-and-black pills, back was crooked, and he walked The day was cool, but Finn felt un- he was racked by a constant cough and slowly, bent over. His habit hung on comfortably hot, except for his hands, dizzy with fever. His coughing distracted him like a shroud. But it was his face which were freezing. He was tempted everybody during meditation, so he was that was shocking. A thick scar ran to complain, but he concentrated on sent back to the infirmarian. His fever from his left eyebrow down to his chin, Brother Reilly instead. was now a hundred and three, and he pulling his mouth a little to the side Finn scooped out a hole and bur- was badly dehydrated, so Brother so that he appeared to be sneering. ied a chunk of potato, the eye facing Infirmarian, against his instincts and

78 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 and showed signs of returning to himself. Around noon, he growled some- BEAR thing unpleasant to the infirmarian and toward evening, with a grunt and a moan, Twenty, on a Paris backstreet I took in a bear he acknowledged the presence of Finn. brought out to entertain our gathering crowd. At ten o’clock, lights out for the Great Silence, Brother Reilly had recovered I shit you not, I say in my language of that time, suiciently to attempt a chat. He was this really, really, happened. Snouted, groggy but plainspoken. “I disliked you from the day you declawed, castrated probably, he danced arrived,” he said. on hind feet to the musics of a short whip. “I know you did. I disliked you, too. But I prayed about it.” Twenty, a student whose bad French was his worst pain “Did it work?” since he had a childhood he couldn’t remember “Not really. I’m sorry about your vows.” and he told everyone that he was happy. “Fuck the vows.” That was before three friends overdosed, This was too much for Finn. “We’re not supposed to be talking during the four more were suicides, before Great Silence. I’m not going to talk.” we lost a child and in twelve months “Fuck the Great Silence.” Brother Reilly fell asleep then, and I lost my mother, father, sister, when he woke in the middle of the night before analysis brought my childhood back— he was shaking with fever and his teeth were chattering. He called out to Finn. abused by my sister until I had that pain “I’m sorry for what I said, Finn. liquidated, in the words of the kind witch doctor. Finn?” “Thank you for calling me Finn.” “I had to puke,” I said to the girl I was with that night, “I’m having a fit. How are you?” a bid for the quick sex of her understanding. “We’re not supposed to talk during the Great Silence.” “He kept on dancing, dancing, bleeding, dancing.” “We could say the Rosary together.” “Poor baby,” she said. She was nineteen. Finn got out of bed and padded, barefoot, across the dark room to kneel Where is she now? Years back, I heard: L.A., down beside Brother Reilly’s bed. They married, three kids, like me. I have these nights said the Glorious Mysteries, with Finn starting the prayers and Brother Reilly like tonight, again, the bear comes back responding. Finn was eager to finish to make me wonder: does she read my poetry? and prayed fast. “Amen,” Finn said finally, and Brother Reilly said, “Amen.” Probably not. Does she remember me, Finn knelt in silence, in the dark, she was nineteen, probably not, poor baby. unsure what to do now. Brother Reilly made a choking —Peter Cooley sound, as if he were trying not to sob. “Are you all right?” Finn couldn’t bear the silence. principles, admitted him as a patient a compulsion to talk. He was brought “I wanted to be a Jesuit to make deserving of antibiotics and his devoted straight to the infirmary. up for my life.” attention. Finn began to feel better at Far from being company for Finn, “To sacrifice it.” once, and after his second day he hoped Brother Reilly continued his fit, mum- “No. To make up for it. To atone for visitors. Maybe someone interesting bling angrily about whores and gooks for all I’ve done.” would get ill, Finn thought—just slightly and dead marines. This called for Sec- “I wanted to make my life a sacrifice. ill—and he’d have a roommate to talk onal, Brother Infirmarian decided, along Self-obliteration. For God.” with. He should have guessed it would with his own private concoction of honey “You gotta be careful what you ask be Brother Reilly. and water and a little whiskey, for the for. Sometimes you get it.” Brother Reilly had had another fit, love of God. Brother Reilly slept through Another long silence. even worse than the previous ones. the entire day and then through the “It’s late,” Finn said. He woke, raging in the night, loud night, muttering the whole time. By the “Do you want to get in bed with me?” and obscene, with a soaring fever and following morning, he had quieted down “Yes.” Finn astonished himself,

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 79 But, when the time came, Finn couldn’t bear to tell all this to Father Superior, so he went to old Father Spal- ding, the Greek teacher, who had taught at several diferent Jesuit colleges and had heard everything. Besides, he was a little deaf. Finn confessed that in the infirmary one of his brother novices had asked him to get into bed with him. “He just wanted to be held, but I knew it was clearly an occasion of sin,” Finn said, “and I knew it was my own fault.” Fa- ther Spalding belched softly. “That’s all, Father.” Father Spalding sighed and said, “I know.” He gave Finn a long talk about loneliness in religious life and the importance of chastity and the danger of friendships that became emotional. He paused and, as if he were merely distracted, he said, “Religious life is not for everyone. But be of good cheer and pray for a peaceful heart.” • Vow day came and went while Brother “When you enthusiastically declare Pam’s layered jello Reilly remained in the local hospital. salad is ‘better than sex,’ I fear some may see it as a commentary After two weeks, he was transferred to on me, and not the layered jello salad.” Shrewsbury Mental and then was released to his family. On his first day at home, he shot •• and killed himself with his Marine service pistol, but not before writing a let- because that was indeed what he wanted. Infirmarian and Father Superior were ter to Finn, saying, “My death hap- “But I don’t think it’s a good idea.” wheeling Brother Reilly out to the cor- pened years ago and has nothing to do “It wouldn’t be anything sexual. We’d ridor, where an ambulance was wait- with you. Have a happy, holy life.” It just hold each other.” ing to take him to the hospital. Finn was signed, “Love, Brother Reilly.” Finn felt himself getting hard. turned his face to the wall, guilty. What Father Superior opened the letter, “I just want to hold you,” Brother had he done? But he had no time to as he opened all novice mail, and after Reilly said. consider what he had done or, more he had considered the matter at prayer “I don’t think I can do it.” important, what he had not done, be- he called in Brother Finn and told him “The truth is,” Brother Reilly paused, cause Brother Infirmarian had decided of Brother Reilly’s death. Finn went his voice shaking, “the truth is I need that it was time for Finn to go. He white and slumped in the chair but said to be held.” wanted his infirmary back the way it nothing. He put the letter in his inside Finn thought about this and shook should be: empty. pocket, next to his scroop beads, and his head. “I can’t,” he said, and then, In no time at all, Finn was stand- went downstairs to chapel. He sat in determined, “I won’t.” ing at the De More bulletin board, the back pew and tried to think. But He went back to his bed and tried where a notice from Father Superior he didn’t know how to think anymore, to sleep. He could hear Brother Reilly suggested that, to prepare for the feast and old words kept circulating in his moaning, perhaps crying. Finn blocked of St. Ignatius, they should all medi- brain. Finally, it came to him that he his ears and turned from side to side. tate on the vows. was to blame. For everything. Finally, he got up and took one of Finn was distracted in his medita- the two Seconals from Brother Reilly’s tion by thoughts of Brother Reilly. Do • nightstand and in minutes he fell you want to get in bed with me? He had Finn knocked at Father Larsen’s door soundly asleep. wanted to and he had nearly done it. and waited. He knocked again and Finn woke the next morning, groggy He felt his face burn. He would go to heard a kind of grunt, so he pushed and numb, barely aware that something confession during this evening’s exam- the door open and entered. The room was happening around him. Brother ination of conscience. was thick with smoke and smelled of

80 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 whiskey. Father Larsen was at his desk. “Do you mean I should have? Is that said in a hard voice, “Don’t despair, He looked annoyed. He pushed his what you’re saying?” kiddo. There are plenty of other ways drink aside. Father Larsen hesitated and then to sacrifice your life.” “I don’t hear confessions.” said, “I would have, poor shit that I am. “I know, Father.” Sometimes we have to risk our soul to • “Or give spiritual advice. Or listen save somebody else.” Two days went by. Finn found that he to novices’ sob stories.” “But it would have been a mortal could not pray. He went through the “No.” sin.” Finn blushed. “Because I wanted motions of meditation, Mass, and Father Larsen turned his scarred it.” He paused. “I wanted to get in bed thanksgiving, but he was not conscious face toward Finn, so that he seemed with him. I was aroused. I had an erec- of praying. He was merely existing, a to be sneering. “Well, what then? I’m tion. So I walked away and left him testament to shame and disgrace. And not able to help you, whatever it is.” there.” He paused again. “I stole one of then, on the third day, he woke at five- “It’s about Brother Reilly.” his pills and went to bed. The next thirty, de more, yawned, and before going Father Larsen pushed aside the book morning they took him to the hospi- back to sleep—at that precise moment he’d been reading, the New Testament tal. I’m to blame. I blame myself.” and with a joyful heart—he decided to in Latin and Greek. He lit a cigarette “A man kills himself. A sick man. leave the Jesuits, admit his failure, and and told Finn to sit down. And you—in a monstrous act of pro- let sacrifice find him when he was ready “What’s this about Reilly?” prietary guilt—you blame yourself.” for it. He slept until nearly eight and “It’s about his death.” Father Larsen lowered his voice, to a got up just in time for breakfast. “Who told you he’s dead?” whisper. “You. You. You. It’s all about It was Friday, which meant pan- “He wrote me a letter before he you. I really think you should go. I cakes, and he had three of them, with did it.” think you should leave now before it’s extra syrup. He looked frankly around “Reilly was a good man. A good too late.” the refectory at his brother Jesuits. He marine.” Finn made a choking sound. admired them this morning, men who An awkward silence, and then Finn “Leave. Before you turn totally in- had made a free choice and, at great blurted out, “It was all my fault.” He ward . . . and rot.” cost, were trying to disappear into the began to sob, softly at first, then louder. “Leave,” Finn echoed. long black line. Finn did not want to He choked finally and blew his nose. “Everything you’ve told me is about disappear. He said, “I’m a mess. I’m sorry.” you. Your guilt. Your blame. Your piti- “I’m free,” he said aloud. The other Father Larsen pulled deeply on his ful erection.” novices continued eating. Everyone knew cigarette and waited. “But I was following the Jesuit rule. that Brother Finn was impossible. Finn told him of their instant mu- Or trying to.” Finn left that afternoon. He had tual dislike. “Mostly my fault,” Finn “You’ve turned it inside out. You’re Father Superior’s blessing, and he made said. He searched for the least ofen- supposed to be growing in Christ, and a last visit to chapel with no sense of sive words and told him about the en- instead you’ve been growing in self- regret. He felt comfortable in his jacket counter in the infirmary and his refusal satisfaction.” and tie. to get into bed with Reilly. “He wanted The clock ticked on Father Lar- As he stood alone at the train sta- to be held,” Finn said, “and I refused.” sen’s desk, and from the chapel came tion, he was visited suddenly by feelings He looked at Father Larsen and his the sound of the bell for of remorse. He wouldn’t scar and said, “It’s all my fault.” litanies. Then there was si- have it. “I’m free,” he said “Is it?” Father Larsen said. “Or would lence in the room and it aloud again, just to hear it. that make you more important than was terrifying. And then he shouted it— you are?” This caught Finn’s attention. “Is this because of the platform was empty— Father Larsen tapped the ash from Reilly?” Finn asked. and it felt right and true. his cigarette and looked at him. As “Reilly has nothing to But with a year’s grace be- if that were an invitation to tell him do with it.” hind him—unearned, un- everything, Finn began with wanting Father Larsen made as deserved—he recognized to be an actor and exchanging that if to wash his hands. “You that this freedom was only for scroop beads and his struggle with should go. You should leave temporary, and that the the rules and on and on, until he reached the Jesuits. That’s the only words he shouted to the that desperate scene with Brother Reilly. help I can ofer. That’s it. Finis. The end.” empty air would in time come back to “He wanted to be held. What he He sat back again. He was done with him, and back, in a pale echo: Brother said was he needed to be held. And I Finn. He had said the painful, necessary Reilly, Father Larsen. But for now life refused.” thing, and now they both had to live was good and Finn chose it. Father Larsen sat back in his chair. with it. He lit another cigarette. He was The train arrived and Finn got on He said to Finn, “Would it have exhausted. He said, “This is why they and left. ♦ been so bad to get into bed with Reilly? don’t want me dealing with novices.” Would there have been terrible harm Finn thought, So this is despair. NEWYORKER.COM to anyone?” Reading his mind, Father Larsen John L’Heureux on his time as a Jesuit novice.

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 81 THE CRITICS

BOOKS ROYAL PAINS Marrying into the monarchy is no fairy tale.

BY LAUREN COLLINS

he thing about royal weddings is by random gun violence, that most typ- husband, Prince Maximilian. It is pos- Tthat there aren’t that many of them. ical of American freak occurrences. sible that some of the Windsors, whose Practically anyone who marries into Markle is certainly the only Sandring- high-colonial racism appears as regu- the House of Windsor represents a first ham guest to have once worked at a larly as the Queen’s midday gin-and- in one sense or another. Philip Mount- fro-yo shop called Humphrey Yogart. Dubonnet, are privately aghast at the batten was the first Greek prince (and Until now, the most glamorous wed- prospect of a woman of color joining the bride’s third cousin). Diana Spen- ding with which Markle had been as- their ranks. But Markle’s arrival has cer was the first to drop the word “obey” sociated was that of Robin Thicke and not created the sort of crisis that arose from her vows. Sarah Ferguson was a Paula Patton, for which she did the in 1936, after Edward VIII fell in love redhead. Sophie Rhys-Jones was a com- calligraphy, in 2005. At the time, she with the twice-divorced Wallis Simp- moner with a serious career. Kate Mid- was also working as a restaurant host- son—“a pretty kettle of fish,” the Queen dleton was a commoner without one. ess and teaching gift wrapping at a Mother said—or, in 1953, when Prin- Camilla Parker Bowles, now a grand- stationery store. She appeared in the cess Margaret wished to wed the di- mother, was without precedent in hav- Tori Amos video “1000 Oceans,” and vorced R.A.F. group captain Peter ing referred to herself, in a love letter, unlatched briefcases on “Deal or No Townsend. (The taboo against divorce as “your devoted old bag.” It’s not so Deal.” Her acting career developed was finally retired when Prince Charles surprising, then, that Prince Harry is slowly: passenger on a plane, FedEx married Camilla.) marrying Meghan Markle—a divorced girl. There was yoga, blogging, wine, In certain respects, Markle is already biracial American actress, as she is for- car trouble, a starter marriage. In 2011, a member of the global élite. Her self- ever being referred to in articles and she finally landed a leading role, on made trajectory has taken her every- books, written, for the most part, by the legal drama “Suits.” Around the where from the United Nations, where married white British journalists. same time, she launched a life-style she delivered a speech about gender Reading these accounts, it becomes site called the Tig. (It’s a shame that equality, to the royal box at Wimble- clear that Markle stands out in plenty she recently had to shut it down, be- don, to which she was first invited not of other ways. She could also be de- cause she’s a good writer.) By last No- as a royal consort but as a guest of the scribed as “daughter of a lighting di- vember, when she wrapped her final fashion brand Ralph Lauren. In March rector who reportedly won seven hun- episode of “Suits,” she had been sup- of 2017, Markle and Harry attended a dred and fifty thousand dollars in the porting herself for the better part of friend’s wedding in Jamaica. “While lottery and later went bankrupt,” or two decades, amassing an estimated Harry flew to the island in premium “among the youngest members of the five million dollars. Her hustle distin- economy, his girlfriend borrowed a National Organization for Women, guishes her from Princess Margaret, pal’s private jet,” a British tabloid re- which she joined after seeing a sexist who used to pass the time cleaning ported. Wealth has replaced race, class, commercial for dish soap at the age of her seashell collection, or Camilla, or marital status as the metric of suit- eleven.” Maybe it’s because she grew whom one relative apparently called ability for a royal partner. The excep- up in Hollywood, but her life, even be- “the laziest woman to have been born tionable thing, it seems, would be to fore she met Harry, had a dramatic in England in the 20th century.” be poor. quality. The father of one of her best Markle will be the first gig-economy Markle attended Catholic school friends was shot, while working at his aristocrat. and graduated from Northwestern auto-body shop, by a Vietnam veteran There are already nonwhite Euro- University. She has drunk rosé on a who had just murdered his own fam- pean royals, including Princess Angela bachelorette weekend in Greece, toured ily. There cannot be many future duch- of Liechtenstein, who worked in fash- New Zealand by camper van, and vis- esses who have been touched so closely ion in New York before meeting her ited Afghanistan with the U.S.O. While

82 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 PHOTOGRAPH: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/GETTY; OPPOSITE: CLO’E FLOIRAT CLO’E OPPOSITE: LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/GETTY; DANIEL PHOTOGRAPH: In Meghan Markle, the Royal Family has found someone who can refresh their corporate culture.

ILLUSTRATION BY JAVIER JAÉN THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 83 Brown, who is best known for his sa- tirical diary entries in the magazine Private Eye, dispenses with the con- ventions of royal biography to create a slightly Dada portrait of the Queen’s younger sister, in chapters that flit between interviews, lists, letters, headlines, journals, and made-up dreams and vignettes. Brown perfectly channels Margaret’s sour, campy voice. His deployment of her sullen quotations (“I have now great pleasure in declaring this hut open”) can make you laugh aloud. Margaret was also drawn toward cutting dialogue. Her husband-by- default, the photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, had a habit of leaving notes on her desk and in her glove box, including one entitled “Twenty Four Reasons Why I Hate You.” It’s the hideous put-downs from him (“You look like a Jewish manicurist”) and from her society entourage (describing Margaret’s complexion as “a dirty negligee pink satin”) that make the book so weirdly sad. “Born in an age of deference, the Princess was to die “I see that on Sunday, June 7, 2009, you Googled the answer to in an age of egalitarianism,” Brown 16 Across—a ive-letter word for the ancient capital of Assyria.” writes. “Attempting to straddle the two, wanting to be treated as both equal and superior, and vacillating, from one •• moment to the next, between the easy-going and the hoity-toity, her shooting “Suits,” she spent several years England. When other women realized behaviour often led to tears before living in Canada. She is more worldly what a royal life would entail, they took bedtime.” than some of her future in-laws, in- of; Markle took on a new country, a Margaret is a breeze compared with cluding the Duchess of Cambridge, new nationality, and a new religion. the pomp-obsessed, overreaching pro- who, upon her marriage, had never Her most distinctive attribute may be tagonist of Tom Bower’s “Rebel Prince: been to the United States. (George V, that she sees becoming Harry’s wife The Power, Passion and Defiance of when asked to make an oicial trip to as an opportunity. Prince Charles.” Bower, an investiga- Holland, replied, “Amsterdam, Rotter- tive journalist, has probed the weak- dam, and all the other Dams—damned oyal romances are not fairy tales. nesses of a number of mighty figures if I’ll do it!”) RAs several recent biographies show, in the British establishment. He says A royal marriage is an acquisition, they don’t always, or even very often, that he is writing as “a committed mon- not a merger. In Markle, the Royal have happy endings. They are less about archist” who, after speaking to more Family has found someone who can passion than about risk—low-libido, than a hundred and twenty royal inti- refresh their corporate culture even high-stakes transactions, in which the mates—many of whom seem to be for- while being subsumed by it. Marrying ratio of investment and return, give and mer employees—shares “their trepida- into a family whose identity demands take, has to achieve near-perfect bal- tion over whether Charles can become the efacement of your own is a tricky ance in order that the protagonists may a unifying monarch.” This may be the venture in the most straightforward of proceed much beyond the first kiss. harshest portrayal of Charles ever writ- circumstances. Several of Harry’s pre- After Princess Margaret gave up on ten. I was searching the book’s index vious girlfriends, in fact, were explic- marrying Townsend, she became the for something else when I came across itly uninterested in the prospect, how- proudest sybarite of the family, skew- “CHARLES, PRINCE OF WALES”: ever much they may have adored Harry. ering its values by living them to their character: refusal to accept blame, xii, 7, 11, Markle will immigrate to England and logical ends. She is the confounding 25, 43, 270, 335; self-doubt, xii, 11, 16, 90, become a British subject. She was re- antiheroine of Craig Brown’s “Ninety- 153-4; disloyalty, xiii-xiv, 4-5, 13, 14, 26-7, 51, cently baptized into the Church of nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret.” 96-7, 162, 210, 310, 335, 337; victims of, xiii-

84 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 Fine Antique Diamond xiv; 50-1, 93-4, 96-7, 210, 264, 310-11; dis- the Armed Forces and Defender of the like of criticism/dissenting views, xiv, 9, 11, Cluster Earrings Faith are currently filled, by his mother. (c.1890) 46, 52, 55, 74-5, 92; scapegoats, 7, 14, 18, 129, Presumably, he thinks he has been fea- 162; self-pity, 7-8, 12-14, 16, 36, 38, 41, 43, 67-8, 243, 257; intolerance/bad temper, 9, 11, tured on postage stamps on the basis Yellow gold and 13, 14, 29, 49, 52, 125, 335; sense of superi- of his skills. sapphire $8,500 ority, 11, 43, 57, 58, 76; grudges, 13, 14, 49, Theoretically apolitical, Charles has 335; selishness, 14, 27, 62, 177, 210, 230, 319, sought to influence governments in 322; resentment of Diana, 18-19, 62; deroga- ways that are both laughable and wor- tory comments about Diana, 24, 42, 61; on himself, 44-5, 67-8; discourteousness, 52, 88, risome. According to Bower, he once 126, 138, 314-15, 322 had a private secretary call Downing Platinum top, yellow Street to insure that Prime Minister gold back, Bower portrays Charles as a per- Tony Blair adhere to royal etiquette by and diamond (2D=3.25 cts.) snickety rank-puller, who, apparently, signing letters to him “Your obedient $27,500 once had his own bedroom furniture servant.” He is constantly haranguing Platinum top, yellow gold sent to a friend’s house in advance of ministers about urban planning, alter- back, and a weekend stay. (Of claims that he native medicine, climate change, the natural pearl $6,750 brings his own toilet seat, Charles has overfishing of the Patagonian toothfish. said, “Don’t believe all that crap.”) He (A cache of letters known as the “black seems to spend much of his time using spider” memos, because of Charles’s his royal position to get people to pay handwriting, became public through for things he doesn’t want to be seen the Freedom of Information Act, from Yellow gold indulging in, because of his royal po- which members of the Royal Family and sugarloaf emerald sition. He and Camilla hit people up are normally exempt.) (2 Colombian for plane rides and weeks on yachts, Over the years, he has managed to emeralds=6.72 cts.) SHOWN $55,000 ACTUAL SIZE birthday parties and bathroom tiles, divert significant public money to his despite the fact that Charles enjoys pet initiatives. Bower writes, for ex- FIRESTONE AND PARSON an annual personal income of around ample, that the Department of Health, 30 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02116 twenty million pounds. (Brown sug- under pressure from Charles, agreed (617) 266-1858 • www.firestoneandparson.com gests that Margaret, for her part, to give many millions of pounds to the embarrassed the aristocrat Colin Ten- Royal London Homeopathic Hospi- nant into giving her a villa on Mus- tal. In a speech to the Royal Institute tique, where she cultivated a dissolute of British Architects, he famously de- crowd, including an ex-con who had nounced a proposed addition to the New Yorker once “pleaded guilty to employing a National Gallery as “a monstrous car- Cartoon Prints section of pavement as an ofensive buncle on the face of a much-loved weapon.”) Bower reports that Charles and elegant friend.” He ended up Find your favorite tried to swap one of his watercolors getting the project killed; likewise, a cartoon on virtually any topic for a work by Lucian Freud. “I don’t three-billion-pound modernist plan to at newyorkerstore.com want one of your rotten paintings,” redevelop the Chelsea Barracks. (He Freud replied. attached his own preferred design to While the Queen treats her birth- a letter he sent to a Qatari sheikh whose Enter TNY20 for 20% off. right as an honor, her eldest son ap- family had agreed to fund the scheme.) pears to feel perpetually hard done by Charles is understandably passionate it. “Nobody knows what utter hell it is about his causes. Every time he makes to be Prince of Wales,” Bower quotes the case for “the ‘old fashioned’—I Charles as saying. It’s not that Charles would call them timeless—virtues of thinks himself unworthy of the job. squares, mansion blocks, and terraces,” “This is all to do with learning culture he is making the case for himself. in schools,” Charles wrote to an aide, Charles’s entitlement makes more after a woman on his staf inquired sense in light of the humiliating treat- about paths to promotion. He blamed ment he received from his parents. It “It’s like I’m actually walking.” “a child-centered system which admits must be a mindfuck to have been raised no failure and tells people they can all to believe you were destined to lead a Ellis Rosen, July 31, 2017 be pop stars, high court judges, bril- nation, and then to be fifty and have liant TV personalities or even infinitely your mom and dad skip your birthday more competent heads of state with- rather than be seen in the company of out ever putting in the efort or hav- your girlfriend. The Queen looks fairly ing natural abilities.” Charles must be petty, subjecting Camilla, as she at- relieved that the positions of Head of tempts to gain acceptance into the

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 85 family, to a series of ever more recon- dite snubs. Camilla, who doesn’t like BRIEFLY NOTED “hot countries,” according to Bower, also has her moments, but she is a win- The Overstory, by Richard Powers (Norton). The preservation ningly frowsy inamorata. Charles seems of primeval trees and dwindling forests unites nine charac- to feel that the injuries he has incurred ters in this capacious novel. Two protesters spend ten months while pursuing their relationship are living in the canopy of a redwood wider than a house. A psy- grave enough that the monarchy will chologist travels to study the activist group they belong to, always owe him one. wanting to understand their immunity to the bystander efect (the assumption that someone else will fix a problem). After n April, as anticipation of Harry a violent action against the logging industry, the characters Iand Meghan’s wedding ramped up, are forced to scatter. Powers edges their experiences toward a psychiatrist issued warnings in the the supernatural, while pressing an ethical imperative, voiced press that a fascination with the Royal by one character: “When you cut down a tree, what you make Family could lead to mental-health from it should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.” problems. For a lot of us, though, going deep into the weeds of seigneurial law Theory of Bastards, by Audrey Schulman (Europa). The pro- (technically, the Queen owns all por- tagonist of this genre-blurring novel—set in a vaguely dys- poises, whales, sturgeon, and dolphins topian near-future characterized by extreme weather and an that pass within three miles of Brit- overdependence on technology—is Frankie, an evolutionary ain’s shores); precedence (Kate must psychologist who studies mating habits but whose own sex curtsy to Beatrice and Eugenie if she life has been impaired by severe endometriosis. Following a encounters them alone, but they must hysterectomy, she throws herself into the observation of bono- curtsy to her if she’s with William); bos, primates known for their peaceable ways and their vig- and etiquette (little-boy royals wear orous orgies; she communes with her ape subjects and even shorts, not pants) is a highly relaxing experiences desire for a kind married colleague. Then a cat- leisure activity, whose value is in di- aclysm occurs, creating a world in which the “careful theater” rect correlation with its vapidity. It is of civilization has been stripped away and leaving Frankie, a form of what the Queen would be her colleague, and the bonobos dependent on one another. unlikely to call self-care. If the sentence “Quite frankly, I think he will A Lab of One’s Own, by Patricia Fara (Oxford). This timely be cream crackered and want a good history explores the contributions of British women to sci- night’s kip”—this was a private sec- ence, medicine, and industry during the First World War. retary, excusing Prince Harry from a Drawing on a wealth of previously neglected archival sources, night out—isn’t reading pleasure, then Fara shows how sufragettes, having laid the groundwork for I don’t know what is. What lover of change early in the century, helped usher women into posts language, or of people, would not want left vacant by men; by the war’s end, some three million to know that the favorite expression women were employed in industry, and female scientists had of Cressida Bonas, one of Harry’s old risen to the highest levels in universities, laboratories, and flames, is “cringe de la cringe”? hospitals. A few received proper recognition (the chemist The master of the lives-of-the- Martha Whiteley was awarded an O.B.E. for her work on royals genre is Andrew Morton, who tear gas), but the vast majority were pushed from the histor- in 1992 published “Diana: Her True ical record as swiftly as they were pushed from their jobs by Story,” an era-defining “biography” ba- returning men. sically dictated to him by its subject. (Diana had a friend smuggle tapes, de- A Mouth Is Always Muzzled, by Natalie Hopkinson (New Press). tailing her mistreatment at the hands Through the lens of Guyana’s 2015 national elections, this of her husband and his family, out of essay collection shows how the country’s political and cul- Kensington Palace on a bicycle.) tural life is still influenced by the twin legacies of British co- “Diana” is the kind of book you read lonialism and the sugar trade. In profiles of artists such as the lying down, preferably in a bathing writer Ruel Johnson, who posts Facebook essays about po- suit. I recently found two copies—one litical corruption, and the painter Bernadette Persaud, who paperback, one hardcover—in a vaca- mourns the decay of the national art collection, Hopkinson tion-rental house. Morton, who is now illustrates the ways that intellectuals chafe against a state that married to an American, spends part is unable to provide basic necessities, let alone a flourishing of the year in California, where he has cultural sector. “When do ideas become action?” she writes. pivoted to unauthorized lives of movie “When must the state protect society from subversive ideas? stars. Improbably, he has found him- When must society protect subversive ideas from the state?” self, in exile, perfectly positioned to

86 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 deliver another exhaustive contribu- chocolate pudding into a fresh diaper. It was Gardens in London when Harry, who tion to the royals literature. “To Car- his way of stopping the boys from smoking was hosting his own soiree in the VIP olyn and all our friends in Pasadena,” weed when Meghan was around. room, invited me to join him,” she re- reads the dedication of “Meghan: A calls. Over the years, she has turned Hollywood Princess.” As California gothic, this tops Joan out decorous chronicles of the mon- Morton was a tabloid journalist in Didion. It may also help explain why archy’s younger generation. Her books Britain, and “Meghan” is a labor of Tom Markle, Jr., recently published a tend to include revelations that are just shoe leather, or tire rubber, or what- handwritten letter in In Touch Weekly, interesting enough to qualify as scoops, ever one goes through a lot of when calling his half sister a “jaded, shallow, without jeopardizing her network of reporting the bejesus out of a book in conceited woman” and urging Prince well-placed sources. In order to reach and around the San Fernando Valley. Harry to back out of “the biggest mis- the part in “Harry” where Harry and It constitutes the fullest account there take in Royal Wedding History.” Meghan go on an early date at Soho is of Meghan’s pre-Harry years, and Tom, Jr.,’s childhood couldn’t have House, one must endure an awful lot even of her family’s pre-Meghan ones, been as grotesque as the one his fu- about his military career and charity which ofer an eerily emblematic cap- ture brother-in-law sufered. For Harry, work. “Harry’s search to find a wife sule course on American history, from the family drama began in utero. and a meaningful role in his life has the Georgia cotton plantation where Charles wanted a girl; Diana report- been long and at times arduous; a bat- her maternal ancestors were enslaved edly knew she was having a boy and tle on many fronts. Yet it is only when to the Self-Realization Fellowship didn’t tell him. William and Harry we understand this battle that we can Temple on Sunset Boulevard where, were both sent to boarding school at truly understand Prince Harry,” Nich- in 1979, her parents married, after the age of eight. When Charles and oll writes, in a passage that could also meeting on the set of “General Hos- Diana decided to separate, their mother characterize the experience of reading pital.” Meghan was born two years broke the news in their headmaster’s her book. later. Her mother, Doria Ragland, study; when she died in Paris in the According to Nicholl, Harry has worked as a makeup artist and later summer of 1997, they had not seen her grown “from a sometimes wayward became a social worker. Her father, in a month. Even after losing her, the royal into an impressive young man.” Tom Markle, had two teen-age chil- princes weren’t able to trust their close In the years leading up to his relation- dren from a previous marriage—a relatives. Several years later, Charles’s ship with Meghan, he lacked direc- daughter who was getting into witch- brother Edward showed up at St. An- tion, a problem that Nicholl attributes craft and a son with a water bed and drews, where William was a first-year to unresolved anger over his mother’s a go-kart. student, planning to pay the Prince’s death. Even when Nicholl is attempt- No anecdote is too minor to in- friends to appear in a documentary. ing to make Harry sound forlorn, he clude. We learn that Tom once went Harry sympathizers will appreciate comes of as slightly debauched. Nich- to a restaurant with an imaginary par- “Harry: Life, Loss, and Love,” by Katie oll writes, of an island vacation that rot on his shoulder (“It was hilarious,” Nicholl, who began her royal-journal- Harry took with the family of a girl- his first wife recalls), and that Meghan ism career, rather abruptly, in 2003. “I friend, “In the evening the family would was born at 4:46 A.M. We learn the was a young show business reporter get together for ‘jolling’—drinking names of both the bird and the obste- covering a party at the Kensington Roof games on the beach, when they would trician. Morton’s accretion-of-random- detail approach gives a vivid sense of how life chez Markle difered from a royal upbringing:

Not only did Tom spend every waking minute with his daughter, in his own quirky fashion he tried to impose a little discipline on the somewhat laissez-faire household in order to protect his little “Flower.” Though he had always said to his son that if he and his friends wanted to smoke weed they should do so only in the house, this instruction changed on the arrival of the baby. On one occasion Tom Ju- nior and his friends were smoking a splif in the sitting room while Meghan was in the nurs- ery crying. His father announced loudly that he was going upstairs to change her diaper. Shortly afterward he appeared in the sitting room carrying a full diaper. He joined the boys on the sofa, took a spoon out of his pocket and started eating the contents of the diaper. Grossed out, the boys led the house. Only later did he reveal that he had earlier spooned knock back ‘volcanoes’—vodka shots outspoken from a young age. “I watch lar sentiments, they appear sincerely with chili sauce. It was the sort of fam- in horror as both sides of a culture I apologetic. There is nothing tackier ily holiday Harry had never experi- define as my own become victims of than being a royal, and the younger enced, and he was happier than he had spin in the media, perpetuating ste- ones seem to know this. In the same been in a long time.” You feel for Harry, reotypes and reminding us that the video in which Harry mocked his “Paki a little, but you’re not sure whether he’s States has perhaps only placed ban- friend,” he made a pretend phone call craving love, or vodka. dages over the problems that have never to the Queen: “Granny, I’ve got to go, Harry is a magnet for trouble that healed at the root,” she wrote several send my love to the corgis and he never seems to have made, like the years ago. In the fall of 2016, not long Grandpa.” He is aware that his own time when, at the age of twenty, he after it became known that Markle identity leaves him open to derision, went to a birthday party dressed as a and Harry were seeing each other, which he tries to forestall with kitsch. member of Rommel’s German Afrika Harry issued a statement condemning “Is there any one of the royal family Korps. The theme of the party, “native the invasion of her privacy. “It was ex- who wants to be king or queen?” Harry and colonial,” was awful enough, even plosive, unprecedented, and highly said, in a 2017 interview. “I don’t think without the swastika, but Nicholl isn’t flammable,” Nicholl writes. (Howlers so, but we will carry out our duties at one to question the upper classes. She like this are another attraction of the the right time.” mostly blames Harry’s protection genre.) It was certainly unusual for the On the occasion of Charles and Di- oicers. In 2009, a video emerged in Royal Family, in its sensitivity to po- ana’s nuptials, the royal biographer which Harry could be seen calling one litical correctness. Acknowledging that Hugo Vickers wrote, in a diary entry, fellow-soldier a “raghead” and another Markle was his girlfriend, Harry ex- “The Royal Wedding is no more ro- “my little Paki friend.” Nicholl writes, coriated the press, criticizing, in par- mantic than a picnic amid the wasps.” “What should have been an exciting ticular, “the racial undertones of com- For centuries, royal weddings have new chapter in the prince’s career was ment pieces; and the outright sexism been exercises in assortative mating, overshadowed by a race row, and once and racism of social media trolls and in which young people are matched, again, Harry was in the middle of it.” web article comments.” for the good of the line, with partners Well, yes. Obviously, this entailed a certain who are much like themselves. In 1959, It is also the bodyguards’ fault when, amount of hypocrisy, given Harry’s because of a complicated procedural several years later, the tabloids print history and that of his family. For al- saga involving her maiden name, the photographs of Harry, naked except most a century, Prince Philip has been pregnant Queen was warned that for a leather necklace, playing strip making “gafes” that would not be out Prince Andrew, deprived of a patro- pool with a group of young women of place at a U.K.I.P. rally; Princess nymic, would be born bearing “the in a Las Vegas hotel suite. Nicholl is Michael of Kent recently showed up Badge of Bastardy.” She ended up also indulgent of Harry’s misbehavior for the Queen’s Christmas luncheon, lowing her descendants to be known that she seems not to recognize the which Markle also attended, wearing as Mountbatten-Windsor. It’s inter- implications of a “hilarious episode” a blackamoor brooch, supposedly by esting to think about how Markle recounted to her by the late Tara accident. (“A Cheetah’s Tale,” the Prin- would have been received had she fallen Palmer-Tomkinson, a Windsor fam- cess’s recently published memoir of for William instead of Harry, the heir ily friend: big cats in colonial Mozambique, in- instead of the second son. She is nearly cludes such reminisces as “Of course thirty-seven. Would the palace man- His friend Melissa Percy lives next door to me, and one night, I think it was after the royal it had been Rosemarie’s idea to bor- darins have made analyses of her fer- wedding, Harry was over and they were hav- row him from friends in exchange for tility? Would they have urged the use ing a party. Our roof terraces link and sud- one of her houseboys whom she wanted of certain reproductive technologies, denly I heard a crash. Harry had jumped over to learn English.”) Nicholl, for once, or forbidden others? Can a dynasty the lowerpots and was on my terrace knock- doesn’t take a particularly charitable perpetuate itself on love instead of ing on my patio door. Of course, I was a little surprised to see him and let him in. The next view of Harry’s maneuver, suggesting blood? thing I knew he was kissing me, a proper French that it made him look hotheaded. But Privilege is not a good look these kiss! He traced a star on my forehead with his you can see it as a sign of change, a days, even for an institution based upon inger and said, “Close your eyes, beautiful girl, productive channelling of Harry’s it. But the Windsors are evolving slowly. tickle, tickle, kiss, kiss,” and the next thing he rowdy energy. The party prince finally In March, Kensington Palace an- was gone. I was rather taken aback to say the least, but that was typical o Harry—he is a did something cool. nounced that, in an attempt to make lovable rotter. Harry and Meghan’s wedding more “ wanted to give her a chance to inclusive, more than a thousand mem- You wonder, if Palmer-Tomkinson I think about it—to think if it was bers of the British public—schoolchil- had lived to see the reckonings of 2018, all going to be too awful,” Charles told dren, charity workers—had been in- what she might have made of that kiss. reporters, of his decision to ask Diana vited to Windsor Castle. While the Markle, whose father is of Dutch to marry him just as she was leaving ceremony goes on in the castle’s chapel, and Irish descent and whose mother for a vacation. In 1981, this sounded they will stand around outside for more is African-American, describes herself like the stammerings of a self-satisfied than four hours. They have been told as biracial. She has been politically tof. Today, when his sons voice simi- to pack their own lunch. 

88 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 and the Louvre. This was the first time BOOKS they’d met—but, after more than a year of sighing letters, Locke had come to Paris flushed with amorous feeling. The BLACK ORPHEUS feeling was mismatched. Each man was trapped in the other’s fantasy: Hughes The philosopher-impresario of the Harlem Renaissance and his hidden hungers. appeared as the scrufy poet who had fled his studies at Columbia for the BY TOBI HASLETT pleasures of la vie bohème, while Locke was the “little, brown man” with status and degrees. Days passed in a state of dreamy ambiguity. “Locke’s here,” Hughes wrote to their mutual friend Countee Cullen. “We are having a glorious time. I like him a great deal.” The words are grinning— and sexless. Hughes had found a use for the gallant Locke: an entrée to the bold movement in black American writing then rumbling to life. Cullen was gain- ing renown; the novelist Jessie Fauset was the literary editor of The Crisis; and Jean Toomer’s “Cane”—a novel in jagged fragments—had trumpeted the arrival of a new black art, one chained to the fate of a roiling, bullied, “emanci- pated” people. “I think we have enough talent,” W. E. B. Du Bois had announced in 1920, “to start a renaissance.” Locke drove it forward and is remembered, dimly, as its “dean.” Whoever knows his name today likely links it to “The New Negro: An Interpretation,” a 1925 anthology that planted some of the bravest black writers of the nineteen- twenties—Hughes, Cullen, Toomer, Fauset, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hur- ston—squarely in the public eye. “The New Negro,” which appeared just a year after Locke’s summer visit with Hughes, lain Locke led a life of scrupulous A mild and gentle voice answered: “Alain launched the Negro Renaissance and Arefinement and slashing contra- Locke.” marked the birth of a new style: the diction. Photographs flatter him: there And sure enough, there was Dr. Alain Locke swank, gritty, fractious style of blackness of Washington, a little, brown man with spats he is, with his bright, taut prettiness, and a cultured accent, and a degree from Ox- streaking through the modern world. delicately clenching the muscles of his ford. The same Dr. Locke who had written me face. Philosophy and history, poetry about my poems, and who wanted to come to efrey C. Stewart’s new biography bears and art, loneliness and longing—the see me almost two years before on the leet of Jthe perhaps inevitable title “The New face holds all of these in a melancholy dead ships, anchored up the Hudson. He had Negro: The Life of Alain Locke.” But got my address from the Crisis in New York, to balance. The eyes glimmer and the lips whom I had sent some poems from Paris. Now the title makes a point: the New Negro, purse. in Europe on vacation, he had come to call. that lively protagonist stomping onto the It was this face that appeared, one proscenium of history, might also be summer morning in 1924, at the Paris During the next two weeks, the thought of, tenderly, as a figure for Locke flat of a destitute Langston Hughes, middle-aged Locke, then a philosophy himself. Stewart writes, who put the scene in his memoir “The professor at Howard University, snatched Big Sea.” “Qui est-il?” Hughes had asked the young Hughes from dingy Mont- Locke became a “mid-wife to a generation through the closed door. He was stunned martre and took him on an extravagant of young writers,” as he labeled himself, a cata- lyst for a revolution in thinking called the New by the reply: march through ballet, opera, gardens, Negro. The deeper truth was that he, Alain Locke, was also the New Negro, for he embod-

THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION THE GORDON PARKS Alain Locke was an aesthete in a climate that valued political engagement. ied all of its contradictions as well as its prom-

PHOTOGRAPH BY GORDON PARKS THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 89 ise. Rather than lamenting his situation, his mar- of the struggling Mary, Roy became a struggle and, crucially, to the gratifica- ginality, his quiet sufering, he would take what precocious aesthete. And he proceeded, tions of racial and political solidarity. his society and his culture had given him and with striking ambition, from Central He finished a thesis—ultimately rejected make something revolutionary out of it. High School to the Philadelphia School by Oxford—on value theory, while slak- Here was a man who enshrined his of Pedagogy to Harvard. ing his sexual thirst in pre-Great War passions in collections, producing an- Alain, as he was now called, fashioned Berlin. He returned to Harvard to earn thologies, exhibitions, and catalogues himself as a yearning man of letters. En- his Ph.D. in philosophy, for which he that refracted, according to Stewart, an raptured by his white professors, he dec- submitted a more elaborate version of abiding “need for love.” But even love orated his modest lodgings in punctili- his Oxford thesis, before joining the fac- could be captured and slotted into a se- ous imitation of their homes. Not quite ulty at Howard. Mary moved down to ries. Stewart tells us that five feet tall, he had bloomed Washington, where she was cared for among Locke’s posthumous into a dandy, strutting down by her doting son. efects was a shocking item the streets of Cambridge in Locke’s other devotions were ill- that was promptly destroyed: a genteel ensemble—gray fated. Much of his erotic life was a a collection of semen sam- suit, gray gloves, elegant series of adroit manipulations and di- ples from his lovers, stored overcoat—while displaying sastrous disappointments; Langston neatly in a box. a shuddering reluctance to Hughes was just one of the younger Meticulousness was a associate with the other men who fell within the blast radius of virtue among Philadelphia’s black students at Harvard. the older man’s sexual voracity as they black bourgeoisie, the anx- They weren’t “gentlemen,” chased his prestige. He fancied himself ious world into which Locke and, when a black classmate a suitor in the Grecian style, dispens- was born. On September 13, 1885, Mary introduced him to a group of them, he ing a sentimental education to his Locke, the wife of Pliny, delivered a fee- was appalled: charges, assistants, protégés, and stu- ble, sickly son at their home on South dents—but hungering for mutuality and Of course they were colored. He took me Nineteenth Street. Arthur LeRoy Locke, right up into the ilthy bedroom and there were lasting love. Locke had afairs with at as the boy was christened, spent his first 5 niggers, all Harvard men. Well, their pluck least a few of the writers included in year seized by the rheumatic fever that and their conceit are wonderful. Some are ugly “The New Negro.” His desultory sex- he had contracted at birth. The Lockes enough to frighten you but I guess they are ual romps with Cullen stretched over were Black Victorians, or, as Alain later bright.... They are not it for company even years—though Cullen himself would if they are energetic and plodding fellows. I’m put it, “fanatically middle class,” and their not used to that class and I don’t intend to get flee the gay life by marrying W. E. B. mores and strivings shaped his self-con- used to them. Du Bois’s daughter Yolanda, in a lavish ception and bestowed upon him an un- service with sixteen bridesmaids and usual entitlement to a black intellectual This is from a letter to his mother, thirteen hundred guests. Her father de- life. Pliny was well educated—he was a and the bile streams so freely that one scribed the spectacle in The Crisis as graduate of Howard Law School—but assumes that Mary indulged the young “the symbolic march of young black he sufered, as a black man, from a se- Locke’s contempt. But his arrogance fol- America,” possessed of a “dark and shim- ries of wrongful firings that scrambled lowed from the strangulating tension mering beauty” and announcing “a new the family’s finances. between who and what he was: black- race; a new thought; a new thing re- Roy (as Alain was known in child- ness was limiting, oppressive, banal, a joicing in a ceremony as old as the hood) was Pliny’s project. “I was indul- boorish hurdle in his brilliant path. “I world.” To Locke, it was a farce. gently but intelligently treated,” Locke am not a race problem,” he later wrote He found his own way to stay afloat later recalled. “No special indulgence as to Mary. “I am Alain LeRoy Locke.” in the world of the black élite. Pliny to sentiment; very little kissing, little or He’d arrived at Harvard when Wil- had wanted his son to be a race man, no fairy stories, no frightening talk or liam James and then John Dewey had and now Alain was lecturing widely games.” Instead, Pliny read aloud from electrified philosophy in America under and contributing articles to Du Bois’s Virgil and Homer, but only after Roy the banner of pragmatism, a movement Crisis, which was attached to the had finished his early-morning math ex- that repudiated idealism and tested con- N.A.A.C.P., and Charles Johnson’s Op- ercises. He was being cultivated to be a cepts against practice. Locke, who also portunity, the house organ of the Na- race leader: a metallic statue of polished became a devotee of the philosopher tional Urban League. But he stood aloof masculinity. But he was powerfully drawn and belletristic aesthete George San- from the strenuous heroism of Negro to his mother. Pliny opposed this, and tayana, went on to become the first black uplift, and what he thought of as its worked to shred the bond. Locke later Rhodes Scholar—though as soon as he flat-footed insistence on “political” art. recounted that his father’s death, when got to Oxford he was humiliated by Locke was a voluptuary: he worried he was six, “threw me into the closest white Americans, who shut him out of that Du Bois and the younger, fur- companionship with my mother, which their gatherings. The scorn was instruc- ther-left members of the movement— remained, except for the separation of tive: the foppish Locke joined the Cos- notably Hughes and McKay—had de- three years at college and four years mopolitan Club, a debate society com- based Negro expression, jamming it abroad, close until her death at 71, when posed of colonial élites, who exposed into the crate of politics. The titles of I was thirty six.” Under the watchful care him to the urgencies of anti-imperial Locke’s essays on aesthetics (“Beauty

90 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 Instead of Ashes,” “Art or Propaganda?,” ments by the race’s patriarchs, Du Bois at gunpoint, to build. Modernity had “Propaganda—or Poetry?”) made deflat- and James Weldon Johnson. The an- anointed a new hero, and invented, ing little incisions in his contemporar- thology was meant to signal a gutting Locke thought, a New Negro. ies’ political hopes. Black art, in Locke’s and remaking of the black collective But he hoped that this new figure view, was mutable and vast. spirit. Locke would feed and discipline would stride beyond politics. Radicals Not unlike blackness itself. In 1916, that spirit, playing the critic, publicist, irked him; he regarded them with a Locke delivered a series of lectures called taskmaster, and impresario to the move- kind of princely ennui. In his mind, the “Race Contacts and Interracial Rela- ment’s most luminous figures. He was New Negro was more than mere efect: tions,” in which he painstakingly dis- an exalted member of the squabbling history and demography alone couldn’t proved the narrowly “biological” under- clique that Hurston called “the nigge- possibly account for the wit, chic, or standing of race while insisting on the rati”—and which we know, simply, as thrilling force of “the younger genera- power of culture to distinguish, but not the Harlem Renaissance. tion” to whom he dedicated the vol- sunder, black from white. Armed with The term has a crispness that the ume. In the title essay, Locke presented his pragmatist training, he hacked a thing itself did not. It was a movement a race whose inner conversion had flown path to a new philosophical vista: “cul- spiked with rivalries and political hos- past the lumbering outside world. The tural pluralism.” tility—not least because it ran along- Negro leaped not just from country to The term had surfaced in private de- side the sociological dramas of Com- city but, crucially, “from medieval Amer- bates with Horace Kallen, a Jewish stu- munism, Garveyism, mob violence, and ica to modern.” Previously, “the Amer- dent who overlapped with Locke at both a staggering revolution in the shape ican Negroes have been a race more in Harvard and Oxford. Kallen declared and texture of black American life, as name than in fact,” he wrote, but now, that philosophy should, as his mentor millions fled the poverty and the lynch- “in Harlem, Negro life is seizing upon William James insisted, concern itself ings of the Jim Crow South. The cit- its first chances for group expression only with diferences that “make a difer- ies of the North awaited them—as did and self-determination. It is—or prom- ence”—which included, Kallen thought, higher wages and white police. With ises at least to be—a race capital.” the intractable facts of his Jewishness the Great Migration came a loud new Black people had snapped their moor- and Locke’s blackness. Locke demurred. world and a baling new life, a chance ings to servitude and arrived at the ad- Race, ethnicity, the very notion of a “peo- to lunge, finally, at the transformative vanced subjectivity lushly evinced by ple”: these weren’t expressions of some dream of the nation they’d been forced, their art: their poems and paintings, their frozen essence but were molded from that suppler stuf, tradition—to be elevated and transmuted by the force and ingenuity of human practice. He could value his people’s origins without bolt- ing them to their past. His own past had begun to break painfully away. Mary Locke died in 1922, leaving Alain crushed and adrift. But her death also released him, psychically, from the vanished world of the fin-de- siècle black élite, with its asphyxiating diktats. As he moved into modernism, he found that his life was freer and looser; his pomp flared into camp. At Mary’s wake, Locke didn’t present her lying in state; rather, he installed her, alarmingly, on the parlor couch—her corpse propped like a hostess before a room of horrified guests. “ he New Negro,” which appeared Tthree years later, stood as proof, Locke insisted, of a vital new sensibility: here was a briskly modern attitude hoisted up by the race’s youth. The collection, which expanded upon a special issue of the magazine Survey Graphic, revelled in its eclecticism, as literature, music, scholarship, and art “I’m late! I’m late! For a very important—we’re all jostled beside stately pronounce- not putting labels on it right now!” more scholarly contributions to the anthology was “Capital of the Black Mid- dle Class,” an ambivalent study of Durham, North Carolina, by E. Frank- lin Frazier, a young social scientist. More than thirty years later, Frazier savaged the pretensions and the perfidies of Negro professionals in his study “The Black Bourgeoisie.” A work of Marx- ist sociology and scalding polemic, it took a gratuitous swipe at the New Negro: the black upper class, Frazier said, had “either ignored the Negro Re- naissance or, when they exhibited any interest in it, they revealed their am- bivalence towards the Negro masses.” Aesthetics had been reduced to an or- nament for a feckless élite. “Nope. No, the top one. No, the other way.” he years after “The New Negro” Twere marked by an agitated per- •• plexity. Locke yearned for something solid: a home for black art, somewhere novels and spirituals. Aaron Douglas and then the gradual recovery from hy- to nourish, protect, refine, and control had made boldly stylized drawings and per-sensitiveness and ‘touchy’ nerves.” it. He’d been formed and polished by designs for the anthology, which rhymed So the book’s roar of modernist exuber- élite institutions, and he longed to see with the photographs of African sculp- ance came to seem, in a way, strained. them multiply. But the Great Depres- tures that dotted its pages: masks from But also lavish, stylish, jaunty, tart; sion shattered his eforts to extend the the Baoulé and the Bushongo; a grand bristling with whimsy and gleaming New Negro project, pressing him fur- Dahomey bronze. Negroes were a dis- with sex. “The New Negro” thrust forth ther into the byzantine patronage sys- tinct people, with distinct traditions and all the ironies of Locke’s ethos: his em- tem of Charlotte Mason, an older white values held in common. Their modern phatic propriety and angular vision, his widow gripped by an eccentric fasci- art would revive their “folk spirit,” dis- bourgeois composure and libertine nation with “primitive peoples.” Salva- playing a vigorous continuity with their tastes. “What jungle tree have you slept tion obsessed her. She believed that African patrimony and an embrace of under, / Dark brown girl of the sway- black culture could rescue American American verve. “So far as he is cultur- ing hips?” asks a Hughes poem, titled society by replenishing the spiritual ally articulate,” Locke wrote in the fore- “Nude Young Dancer.” Locke liked values that had been evaporated by mo- word to his anthology, “we shall let the it—but was scandalized by jazz. And dernity, but that pumped, still, through Negro speak for himself.” though he wrote an admiring essay in the Negro’s unspoiled heart. The sentence shines with triumph; the anthology on the passion of Negro Mason was rich, and Locke had it warms and breaks the heart. Behind spirituals, he also chose to include sought her backing for a proposed Har- Locke’s bombast was the inexorable “Spunk,” a short fable by Hurston about lem Museum of African Art. Although question of sufering: how it forged and cheating and murder. the project failed (as did his plans for brutalized the collective, forcing a des- Locke relished every titillating con- a Harlem Community Arts Center), perate solidarity on people not treated tradiction but shrank, still, from polit- Mason remained a meddling, confused as such. The task that confronted any ical extremes. Hoping to avoid the presence in his life until her death, in black modernist—after a bloody eman- charge of radicalism, he changed the 1946. During their association, he passed cipation, a failed Reconstruction, and title of McKay’s protest poem from through a gantlet of prickling degra- the carnage of the First World War— “White House” to “White Houses”— dations. Her vision of Negro culture was to decide the place, within this blaz- an act of censorship that severed the obviously didn’t align with his; she de- ing new power, of pain. Locke preached two men’s alliance. “No wonder Gar- manded to be called Godmother; and a kind of militant poise. His New Negro vey remains strong despite his glaring she was prone to angry suspicion, de- would face history without drowning in defects,” the afronted poet wrote to manding a fastidious accounting of how it; would grasp, but never cling to, the Locke. “When the Negro intellectuals her funds were spent. But those funds harrowing past. In the anthology, he like you take such a weak line!” were indispensable, finally, to the work cheered on “the lapse of sentimental ap- And such a blurred line. In a ges- of Hughes and, especially, Hurston. peal, then the development of a more ture of editorial agnosticism, Locke Locke, as the erstwhile “mid-wife” of positive self-respect and self-reliance; brought voices to “The New Negro” black modernism, was dispatched to the repudiation of social dependence, that challenged his own. Among the handle the writers—much to their dis-

92 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 may. He welcomed the authority, swell- Locke was still driven by a need for Locke out of obscurity and prop him ing into a supercilious manager (and, order, for meticulous systems: the proj- next to the reputations he launched. At to Hughes, a bullying admirer) who ect that towered over his final years was more than nine hundred pages, it’s a handed down edicts from Godmother “The Negro in American Culture,” a thudding, shapeless text, despotic in its while enforcing a few of his own. book he hoped would be his summum pedantry and exhausting in its zeal, The thirties also brought revelations opus. “The New Negro” anthology had marked by excruciating attention to the and violent political emergencies that been a delectably shambling sample of most minuscule irrelevances. This is plunged Locke into a rapprochement an era, confected from disparate styles touching—and strangely fitting. Stew- with the left. Locke the glossy belle- and stufed with conflicting positions. art’s research arrives at a kind of Lockean trist gave way to Locke the fellow- But “The Negro in American Cul- intensity. But even Stewart’s vigor fal- traveller, Locke the savvy champion of ture”—he’d signed a contract for it with ters as Locke’s own scholarly energies proletarian realism. There was a fitful Random House, in 1945—was to be the start to wane. “Locke’s involvement with attempt to write a biography of Fred- lordly consummation of a life spent in the race issue,” Stewart finally admits erick Douglass, and a dutiful visit to the service of black expression. The book about “The Negro in American Cul- the Soviet Union. But he was never a is a fixture of his later letters: either as ture,” “had been pragmatic, a means to proper Communist. After the Harlem an excuse for his absences (“It’s an awful advance himself—to gain recognition, riot of 1935, he wrote an essay titled bother,” he apologized to one friend, to be esteemed, and ultimately to be “Harlem: Dark Weather-Vane” for Sur- “but must turn out up to expectation in loved by the people.” vey Graphic, in which he pronounced the long run”) or as something to flaunt Love: the word is applied like glue, the failure of the state and its economic before a sexual prospect. Mason’s death keeping this vast book in one prepos- system, but congratulated Mayor had sapped some of his power, so this terous piece. Locke’s most lasting lover LaGuardia on his response to the riot, new mission refreshed his stature and was Maurice Russell, who was a teen- while also cautioning against both “cap- his righteous purpose. ager when he found himself looped into italistic exploitation on the one hand But he couldn’t finish the thing: his Locke’s afections. “You see youth is my and radical exploitation on the other.” health was failing, he was stretched be- hobby,” Locke wrote him at one point. Frazier thought this a mealymouthed tween too many obligations, and he “But the sad thing is the increasing pau- capitulation; taking Locke on a ride was consumed, as ever, by the torment city of serious minded and really refined around Washington in his Packard of unrequited love. His life was still re- youth.” Russell was there—along with coupe, Frazier screamed denunciations plete with younger men to whom he a few other ex-beaux—in 1954, at Ben- at his trapped, flustered passenger. was an aide and a guide—but not a ta’s Funeral Home, on 132nd Street in Locke was middling as an ideologue, sexual equal. “What I am trying to say, Harlem, after Locke’s death, from con- but remained a fiercely committed prag- Alain,” the young Robert E. Claybrooks gestive heart failure. W. E. B. Du Bois matist. The rise of Fascism saw his phil- wrote, “is that you excite me in every and his wife, Shirley; Mrs. Paul Robe- osophical work make crackling contact other area but a sexual one. It has noth- son; Arthur Fauset; and Charles John- with politics. “Cultural Relativism and ing to do with the diferences in ages. son all paid their respects to the small, Ideological Peace,” a lecture delivered Of that I’m certain. Perhaps physical noble figure lying in the coin, who per- in the early nineteen-forties, took aim contact was precipitated too soon—I haps would have smiled at a line in Du at the nation’s enemies and their “pas- Bois’s eulogy: “singular in a stupid land.” sion for arbitrary unity and conformity.” The New Negro was a hero, a fetish, He sometimes groped clumsily for the a polemical posture—and a blurry por- radical language of recrimination: inch- trait of a flinching soul. But Locke took ing further from his earlier aestheticism, his place, at last, in the history he wished he praised Richard Wright’s “Native to redeem. “We’re going to let our chil- Son” as a “Zolaesque J’accuse pointing dren know,” Martin Luther King, Jr., to the danger symptoms of a self-frus- declared in Mississippi in 1968, “that trating democracy.” And he remained the only philosophers that lived were riveted by the Negro’s internal flight. not Plato and Aristotle, but W. E. B. One of his most gratifying contribu- don’t know. But I do know, and this I Du Bois and Alain Locke came through tions was his advocacy of the painter have withheld until now, an intense the universe.” Locke’s class had cleaved Jacob Lawrence, and his sixty-panel feeling of nausea accompanied me after him from the “masses”—and his desires tribute to the Great Migration. (Inspect- the initial afair, and I know it would had estranged him from his class. From ing a layout of Lawrence’s series in the be repeated each time, if such were to this doubled alienation sprang a baled oices of Fortune, Locke exulted that happen again.” Solomon Rosenfeld, psyche: an aesthete traipsing nimbly “The New Masses couldn’t have done this Collins George, Hercules Armstrong: through an age of brutal rupture. Winc- thing better.”) Lawrence had expressed the names flit through the last chap- ing from humiliation and romantic re- what Locke, with his fidgeting dignity, ters of Locke’s life, delivering the lit- jection, he tried to ofer his heart to his couldn’t quite: the anger, the desolation, tle sting of sexual insult. By the end, race. “With all my sensuality and sen- and the bracing thrill of a people crash- he called himself “an old girl.” timentality,” he wrote to Hughes after ing into history. Yet Stewart’s biography aims to heave Paris, “I love sublimated things.” 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 93 torical accuracy; no one knows for cer- MUSICAL EVENTS tain how these pieces should go. Even so, Bach on a harpsichord sounds clearer, brighter, more incisive—curiously, more PLUCK modern. When Virgil Thomson heard the pioneering harpsichord revivalist Rival harpsichordists tackle Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Wanda Landowska play the Goldbergs in 1942, he spoke of “pungency and high BY ALEX ROSS relief.” The mechanism of the piano bops strings with felt-covered ham- mers. That of the harpsichord plucks the strings; notes pierce the ear more than they stroke it. Up close, the harpsichord can be a wild, prickly beast. A new generation of harpsichordists is coming to the fore, one that has given an almost hipsterish proﬁle to an instrument that is popularly stereotyped as archaic and twee. The Iranian-American harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani has started beefs with early-music eminences and adopted such provocative repertory as Steve Reich’s “Piano Phase.” The young French keyboardist Jean Ron- deau plays jazz on the side. These performers have room to mature, but their recent concerts and recordings—both with an emphasis on the Goldbergs— suggest that the venerable harpsichord, which Landowska called “the roi-soleil of instruments,” will have a long future.

very profession needs an enfant Eterrible. Esfahani, who was born in Tehran in 1984 and grew up in Rock- ville, Maryland, happily fills the role, casting himself as a fearless renegade in an insular field. Last year, in an interview with the online magazine VAN, he said, “I’ve heard leading figures in f you know Bach’s Goldberg Varia- mantic blur over Bach’s harmony and the harpsichord world give recitals that Itions only through the eternally best- counterpoint. To avoid muddying the were played as if someone had died.” selling recordings by Glenn Gould, you texture, pianists rely on a clean, de- He also said, “Having funky hair or have not really heard the work. Gould tached style, and as a result the music playing a little bit of jazz doesn’t make was a brilliant but idiosyncratic player too often sounds subdued, fastidious, you iconoclastic if your harpsichord whose approach to Bach might be com- even soporific. playing is perfectly orthodox”—an ap- pared to Laurence Olivier’s renditions This is not to say that presenting parent reference to Rondeau, who fa- of Shakespeare: the art can obscure the Bach on the piano is any sort of cate- vors unruly hairdos. The celebrated matter. Furthermore, the Goldbergs gorical mistake. The composer took an German keyboardist Andreas Staier drastically change character when they interest in new instruments, including reprimanded Esfahani, judging Ron- are transferred from the harpsichord, the fortepiano, and his music should deau “the more competent musician.” for which they were written, to the not be confined to the technologies of In the end, the debate was more en- piano. The equal-tempered tuning of his time. When a pianist on the order tertaining than edifying: no one came the modern piano is markedly difer- of Murray Perahia or András Schif across as particularly large-minded, ex- ent from tuning systems of the early undertakes the Goldbergs, it is hardly cept for Rondeau, who said nothing. eighteenth century, and the instru- an inauthentic experience. Nor does On May 1st, Esfahani appeared at ment’s opulent sonorities cast a Ro- the use of a harpsichord guarantee his- Weill Hall, with a program that included Bach’s French Overture and a Jean Rondeau and Mahan Esfahani give a hipsterish air to an old instrument. selection of pieces by Rameau, Fresco-

94 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY PIETER VAN EENOGE baldi, and Jiří Antonín Benda. Esfa- love with the harpsichord at the age hani spoke from the stage in his usual of five. His interest in jazz and impro- garrulous fashion, though this time visation is hardly a distraction from his he avoided passing judgment on col- main work: the sort of slavish atten- leagues. On the subject of Bach’s suite, tion to the score encouraged by mod- he said that its successive presentation ern classical tradition is inadequate to of various dance forms and instrumen- the demands of Renaissance or Ba- tal styles—gavotte, passepied, bourrée, roque music, in which players must gigue, and so on—might remind lis- embellish bare-bones notation with id- teners of a multinational pageant. Es- iomatic style. fahani’s playing is notable for its crisp Rondeau has made disks of Rameau articulation, headlong momentum, and and the Bach family for the Erato label. savvy theatrical efects. He knows how For the online archive All of Bach— to take a microscopic pause before a a gorgeous compendium of videos climactic chord, making it sound louder curated by the Netherlands Bach So- and more final. (Crescendos are famously ciety, eventually to encompass Bach’s impossible on a conventional harpsi- entire output—he has recorded the chord, because the strings are plucked the Goldbergs. In April, he played the same same way no matter how hard you strike work on a brief U.S. tour; I heard him the keys; good harpsichordists can shape at the First Church in Cambridge, Mas- phrases and textures to create the illu- sachusetts, in a concert presented by sion of increasing or decreasing vol- the Boston Early Music Festival, one ume.) Esfahani’s vitality is infectious: of the nation’s foremost early-music the crowd responded with whoops and organizations. with shouts for encores. Esfahani’s taunt notwithstanding, Esfahani seems less at ease in lyri- Rondeau’s approach to the Goldbergs cal or gently dancing episodes. He is highly unorthodox—even more so slightly rushed the Sarabande of the than Esfahani’s own. Rondeau’s record- Overture, as if he were impatient to get ings had prepared me for a pliable, un- back to the up-tempo bits. The slower predictable treatment of tempo, but in Rameau selections—“Les tendres Cambridge the Goldbergs repeatedly plaintes,” “Les soupirs”—lacked a mea- slowed to a near-crawl, and I often sure of languid grace. The same reser- longed for a steadier pulse. The Quod- vation applies to his generally fine 2016 libet, the culminating variation, typi- recording of the Goldbergs, for the cally unfolds as a rousing climax to the Deutsche Grammophon label. In the cycle, its interpolated folk-song airs twenty-fifth variation—the doleful adding a tone of merriment. Rondeau, G-minor episode that Landowska however, rendered it almost as a coun- named the Black Pearl—Esfahani terpart to the Black Pearl, meandering nudges the tempo ahead, dispatching and melancholy. In all, this was a fas- the piece in less than seven minutes; by cinating but at times frustrating expe- contrast, the American harpsichordist rience. The hazy acoustics of the First Jory Vinikour, in a superb 2000 record- Church probably diminished the over- ing for Delos, makes it into a ten- all efect. The All of Bach video deliv- minute-long Passion aria. In a certain ers a more intimate perspective, and way, Esfahani feels like the harpsichord’s there I found Rondeau’s approach to answer to the young Gould—exuber- be consistently more absorbing. ant, antisentimental, bracing. The Goldbergs end with a restate- ment of the Aria on which the varia- ondeau, a twenty-seven-year-old tion sequence is based. In most per- RParisian, belongs to a French-based formances, the return of that stately, harpsichord tradition that reaches back pensive music after the preceding bois- to the mighty Landowska. His pen- terousness has a jarring efect. Ron- chant for mountain-man outfits, and deau’s surprising choice to solemnize the breathlessness of the French clas- the Quodlibet eases the transition. sical-music marketplace, have conspired Bach’s intellectual tour de force be- to win him descriptions like “le bad boy comes a more inward, circular narra- de la musique baroque.” In fact, he is a tive—one that flows back inexorably deeply serious musician who fell in to the place where it began.  Dylan, Liz Phair, and Craig Finn, of POP MUSIC the Hold Steady—artists who find clever and efective ways to turn arcane impressions into narrative fodder, thus WRY WONDER revealing the strange poignancy in mi- nutiae. A keen but ordinary observa- Courtney Barnett assesses the inanities and the ecstasies of life on earth. tion can be powerful, especially when it addresses a vague sense of ennui. BY AMANDA PETRUSICH Heartbreak looks diferent for everyone. Boredom is universal. Barnett released her first full-length album, “Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit,” in 2015, on Milk! Records, her own label. (She was nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist the following year, though she lost, regrettably, to the retro-pop singer Meghan Trainor.) Barnett, who recently turned thirty, recorded “Tell Me How You Really Feel” at a studio that is a thirty-minute walk from her home, in Melbourne. She’s never been very interested in fussiness, and the new album has an easy garage-rock feel. Barnett’s lyrics recall the talky folksingers of the nineteen-sixties and seventies, but she has a punk-rock heart, and on occasion a loose melody gives way to squall. When I watched her and her band at a few concerts during an American tour, in late 2014, a couple of months before the release of “Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit,” their performances reminded me of Nirvana: scrappy, liberated, thrilling. Barnett’s narrative sensibility is wry, but, unlike so many of her indie-rock forebears, she isn’t out to antagonize her listeners. Her work lacks the cyn- he Australian musician Courtney minor hit. It’s a wordy and ambling jam icism of more sardonic writers, like TBarnett often sings about anxiety about navigating a domestic drama— Stephen Malkmus or Frank Black. In- and depression. One track on “Tell Me specifically, going into anaphylactic stead, she’s witty and confiding. It often How You Really Feel,” her new album, shock while weeding a flower bed—in feels as if she’s leaning over, conspira- is titled “Crippling Self-Doubt and a which Barnett drolly assesses the inan- torially, and whispering something just General Lack of Confidence.” But those ities and the ecstasies of life on earth. to you: “Dude, can you believe how conditions rarely manifest themselves Even as her throat swells shut, she re- ridiculous it is to be alive?” in predictable ways. Dread can yield mains hungry for detail: “I’m breath- “Tell Me How You Really Feel” is frantic, needling work: deranged gui- ing but I’m wheezing, feel like I’m em- less specific and quotidian than Bar- tar, a yelping vocal. Yet Barnett’s most physem-ing / My throat feels like a nett’s previous albums; this time, she’s defining characteristic is her noncha- funnel filled with Weet-Bix and ker- turned her observational jones inward, lance. She sounds gloriously, enviably osene,” she sings in a low, calm voice. attempting to make sense of her men- unbothered, even as the circumstances The song’s opening lines (“I sleep tal landscapes. It’s a kind of soul-search- around her openly deteriorate. in late /Another day/Oh what a won- ing that comes from spending many In 2013, Barnett released a twelve- der / Oh what a waste”) are a fairly neat hours gazing blankly out of plane or track compilation, “The Double EP: A summation of Barnett’s world view. bus windows. “City Looks Pretty” feels Sea of Split Peas.” “Avant Gardener,” She is preceded in her lyrical practice like a letter to herself: a single from the collection, became a by songwriters like Paul Simon, Bob Everyone’s waiting when you get back home They don’t know where you been, why you Barnett’s new album addresses both personal concerns and the broader Zeitgeist. gone so long

96 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 PHOTOGRAPH BY IRINA ROZOVSKY SPRING BEDROOM SALE Friends treat you like a stranger and trick—using your keys to make a kind MAY 4 – JUNE 3 Strangers treat you like their best friend, of wolverine paw of your hand—but oh well hearing it bellowed aloud, in a song Find great values, including our Acadia about the sufocations of patriarchy, Live Edge Bed, This kind of shift happens often to makes it clear just how insane a solu- shown in solid walnut. successful musicians. A regular life is tion it is. Barnett tends toward lines Made in supplanted by a rarefied one, in which that can be read in earnest or with Maine. the routines of daily existence are given ironic detachment—even the album’s over to things like appearing on late- title allows for some ambiguity of in- night talk shows, chatting with journal- tention—and I still can’t figure out chiltons.com 866-883-3366 ists, and playing enormous outdoor whether the bit about the keys is a joke festivals. When your life becomes un- (it seems unlikely that this technique recognizable, a funny distance seeps in. has ever actually saved anybody), some On “Depreston,” a song from “Some- sisterly advice, or both. The simplic- times I Sit and Think and Sometimes ity of her desire (“I wanna walk through I Just Sit” (it recounts a bout of house- the park in the dark”) becomes tren- hunting with her longtime partner, the chant when, immediately, she points musician Jen Cloher), Barnett sang about out its apparent impossibility. the spiritual and practical perils of being Barnett likes to defuse things—“I on the front lines of gentrification: don’t know, I don’t know anything,” she sings on “Crippling Self-Doubt and a We don’t have to be around all these coee General Lack of Confidence”—and, shops Now we’ve got that percolator in the animated video for “Nameless, Never made a latte greater Faceless,” she finds a way to make the I’m saving twenty-three dollars a week absurdity of the female predicament laughable. The director Lucy Dyson The verse works because it’s sharply gives ordinary bushes menacing eyes observed and acutely familiar. It evokes (they also quake with rage), and, even- all the preposterous mathematics—what tually, Barnett waves her arms around can I live with, and what can I live with- while hot dogs (no buns) drift limply out?—we engage in while trying to build across the screen, a winking stand-in comfortable lives. Barnett’s success has, for maleness. But on “I’m Not Your in some ways, cost her that vantage point. Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch,” Barnett Now she sings more frequently about sounds genuinely furious. Usually, when her own dissociation from a more an- she sings, she edges away from styliza- ’s chored existence. In a lesser writer’s tion—her phrasing and tone feel in- Basil Twist hands, this change would be disappoint- stinctive, conversational. Here you can ing, even alienating, but Barnett makes hear her carefully gathering herself, the exhaustion of life on the road feel harnessing her fury and directing it relatable. “I spend a lotta my time doin’ with purpose: “I try my best to be pa- Tickets at HERE.org a whole lotta nothing,” she ofers. tient, but I can only put up with so much shit,” she screams, dissolving into “ ell Me How You Really Feel” an angry rasp. The way she delivers the New Yorker Cartoon Prints Taddresses both personal concerns line reminds me of the riot-grrrl sing- Order online at newyorkerstore.com and the broader Zeitgeist. At the end ers of the early nineteen-nineties. of 2017, Barnett was one of several hun- “Tell Me How You Really Feel” dred musicians who signed a frank opens with “Hopefulessness,” which is open letter decrying sexism in the Aus- as good a word as I can think of to de- tralian music industry, and two new scribe the tumult of the past couple of songs directly address systemic misog- years and what it feels like to keep in- yny. “Nameless, Faceless” quotes Mar- sisting on optimism (or pretending to garet Atwood: “Men are scared that insist on optimism) even when you feel women will laugh at them; women are like getting back into bed and pulling scared that men will kill them.” At the the covers over your head. Right away, end of the chorus, Barnett’s voice rises Barnett delivers an important reminder: Benjamin Schwartz, November 2, 2015 just slightly, as she hollers, “I hold my “You know what they say / No one’s keys between my fingers!” Any woman born to hate.” She has somehow found Enter TNY20 for 20% off. who has ever had to speed walk down a way to cling to her empathy, even as a side street late at night knows this everything else changes. 

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 97 a new life to the planet, whose envi- THE CURRENT CINEMA ronmental demise he regards as immi- nent and catastrophic. “The bad times, they will begin,” he declares, sounding DISENCHANTMENTS like a prophet of apocalypse. Michael has already been imprisoned for his “First Reformed” and “The Seagull.” activist deeds, and now he is planning something worse: in the garage, Mary BY ANTHONY LANE discovers a suicide vest. She requests Toller’s help, but, far from allaying the he new film from Paul Schrader, names in this film.) At his father’s urg- situation, he is drawn into Michael’s T“First Reformed,” is about believ- ing, Joseph enlisted in the military and cause, backing it up with a line from ing in God, saving the world, and a preg- went to Iraq, where he was killed in Revelations, which foretells that the nant woman named Mary. Unlike “The action. Toller’s marriage broke under Almighty will “destroy the destroyers Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), how- the strain, and he has washed up in of the Earth.” Hence the strange sight ever, which Schrader wrote for Martin Snowbridge, alone and sick. Pastor of this man of God, wandering around Scorsese, the story is set not two thou- Jefers (Cedric Kyles), a genial fellow in the near-dark, beside a ruined sea- sand years ago but in the present, against who runs the local megachurch, which shore and the rusting hulls of boats. a backdrop of watery skies and leafless seats five thousand worshippers, is con- He says to himself, “I have found another form of prayer.” That is just one of his lugubrious voice-overs. Intoned throughout, they are actually excerpts from the journal that Toller has decided to keep, and that we observe him writing. Exactly the same holds true for the hero of Robert Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest” (1951), who, like Toller, sufers from a querulous gut. Both men are seen consuming bread and alcohol at their kitchen table, as if every meal were an act of Holy Communion. We should not be surprised by the tribute. Bresson was one of the directors whom Schrader honored in his exemplary book of criticism, “Transcendental Style in Film,” which is being reissued— ripe for arguing with—after more than In Paul Schrader’s ilm, a pastor is drawn to the cause of ecoterrorism. forty-five years, and he deftly stole from Bresson’s “Pickpocket” (1959) for the trees. Ethan Hawke plays Reverend cerned by Toller’s state. Even Jesus, finale of his pulsing 1980 thriller, “Amer- Toller, who tends to the souls of Snow- Jefers points out, didn’t spend all his ican Gigolo.” Countless movie-makers bridge, in Albany County, New York. time in the garden of Gethsemane, “but grapple with the presentation of vio- Not many souls, mind you; when he you—you’re always in the garden. For lence, but few can rival Schrader (who bids the congregation rise, a bare hand- you, every hour is the darkest hour.” was reared as a Calvinist, and who wrote ful stand in the pews. “They call it the Toller is a drinker, and his stomach “Taxi Driver”) in attending to the pun- souvenir shop,” he says of his graceful pains him; the two problems merge in ishment of the self. Such attention church, which was founded in 1767, and a single closeup, as he pours Pepto-Bis- reaches a new and incisive extreme in there’s a woebegone scene in which he mol into a tumbler of booze—a slow “First Reformed.” I will say only that gives three visitors a guided tour. One glug of lurid pink, billowing into scum. a coil of barbed wire is involved. Even of them buys a commemorative hat. This image, with its unlovely froth, Mel Gibson might look away. Another tells the Reverend a dirty joke is all the more potent because it hints The movie has other debts. The priest about the organ. “I hadn’t heard that at another crisis, infinitely larger than in Ingmar Bergman’s “Winter Light” one,” he says, his misery now complete. the trials of Toller. He is asked by a (1963), for instance, tries to counsel a As time goes by, we learn a little parishioner, Mary (Amanda Seyfried), Michael-like character who is led to the more about Toller. He springs from de- to advise her husband, Michael (Philip brink of despair by global anxiety; for vout stock; he used to be an Army chap- Ettinger). She is expecting their first him, it is nuclear war, rather than eco- lain; and he was married, with a son, child, but Michael, a pale-faced fret- logical collapse, but maybe every gener- Joseph. (Keep your ear tuned to the ter, can find no justification for adding ation prides itself on the uniqueness of

98 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY DADU SHIN its eschatological dread. Bergman’s story tain peaks, green gullies, surging seas, in the downward glance of whose eyes also features a female parishioner who oceans of gridlocked cars, landfill, and you can glimpse a vista of sadness, plays ofers care and afection to the priest, smoldering tires—from Heaven to Hell, the estate manager’s wife, while the al- without success, and she is mirrored, in or, in Toller’s mind, from God’s creation most impossible role of her daughter, “First Reformed,” by the sorrowful figure to the unforgivable mess we have made Masha, who wears black in mourning of Esther (Victoria Hill), who is so of it. Such, at any rate, is the import of for her own lost life, goes to Elisabeth brusquely rebufed by Toller that we this weird sequence, and I wish it didn’t Moss. She quafs vodka from a teacup, find ourselves flinching from him, and remind me so inescapably of the magic- and the quavering mirth in her voice doubting the purity of his mission. carpet ride from Disney’s “Aladdin.” Sit- is but a beat away from madness. (“Leave me alone,” he says to her, add- ting on a rug and belting out “A Whole “Much conversation about litera- ing, “I despise what you bring out in New World” to Princess Jasmine is not ture, little action, and five tons of love.” me.”) In short, Toller is fortified against the sort of leisure pursuit one associates That is how Chekhov described “The love, and the asperity in Ethan Hawke with Reverend Toller, but, hey, you never Seagull” in a letter to a friend, and it’s responds to that rigor. He’s always been know. It could be just what he needs. the littleness of the action that seems blue around the edges, as far back as to vex the film’s director, Michael Mayer, “Reality Bites” (1994), yet the blueness f your appetite for disenchantment and its screenwriter, Stephen Karam. was lightened with charm, whereas his Iis not sated by “First Reformed,” you They have pruned, or purged, the drama smile, in the latest film, is as bleak as a can turn to “The Seagull,” a new adap- until it runs just over an hour and a November afternoon, and the worry tation of Chekhov’s play. Most of the half, and, in so doing, mislaid its ner- groove in his forehead seems like a per- lives that we witness here, even the gilded vous languor. Bustle and haste are the manent rift. Until I saw Toller, I didn’t and the promising ones, face a down- visual order of the day, and our gaze is know the human soul could frown. ward slope, and it feels only right that often curtailed when it most needs to Nobody, not even a hard-core Schrader the movie should start with a salvo of linger; as Irina’s son, Konstantin (Billy fan, could claim that “First Reformed” applause and end, more or less, with the Howle), trades quotations from “Ham- makes for easy listening, or viewing. If crack of a gunshot. When the fêted ac- let” with her, proclaiming that “the anything, it outstrips its predecessors in tress Irina Arkadina (Annette Bening), heyday in the blood is tame”—mean- severity. There’s one composition in which on whose country estate the tale is set, ing that his mother, like Gertrude, has Toller is framed so gloomily against a admits, “I never think about the future,” grown too old for passion—we cut wall of gray, with his dog collar provid- is it blitheness that compels her, or fear? away from Bening’s face. Why not stay ing the sole touch of white, that you wait Sidney Lumet filmed the play in with Irina, and watch how she masks for him to bump into Whistler’s Mother. 1968, with James Mason and Vanessa her sense of hurt? Where the movie In Bresson’s movie, the camera keeps Redgrave. By tradition, strong casts are does score, however, echoing the tem- approaching the minister, as if moved lured toward Chekhov, and the new per of our times, is in alerting us to the by a compassionate curiosity about his version is no exception. Saoirse Ronan murmur of predation. That’s not some- plight, whereas most of “First Reformed” is the seraphic Nina, who yearns to go thing we usually listen for in Chekhov, is constructed from static shots; the cam- on the stage, while Corey Stoll plays but, as Trigorin suavely sizes up Nina, era scarcely stirs an inch. Only twice does Irina’s lover, Trigorin—the part that saying, “I’d love to be in your shoes, for it revolve around the characters—once was taken by Stanislavski, no less, in just an hour,” we want to warn her to in the closing scene, about which I have the legendary production of 1898. Brian get out while she can. He’s aiming for grave doubts, and once during a startling Dennehy is Irina’s ailing elder brother, more than her shoes.  excursion, in which Toller and Mary sud- Sorin, although Dennehy, at seventy- denly rise like spirits and take flight. In nine, still looks too bearishly robust to NEWYORKER.COM a fugue, or a dream, they float over moun- ail. The wonderful Mare Winningham, Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, MAY 21, 2018 99 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 John Klossner, must be received by Sunday, May 20th. The finalists in the May 7th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the June 4th & 11th issue. Anyone age thirteen or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

“ ” ......

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“Throw it back—we’re ishing for mid-century modern.” Michael Gosselin, Needham, Mass.

“First, I set the mood.” “If you want to see a girae, we’re going Darren Gersh, Chevy Chase, Md. to need a lot more information.” Brian Mazmanian, Belmont, Mass. “Looks like the wealth is starting to trickle downstream.” Jay Jasinski, Beverly Hills, Calif. TONY AWARD® NOMINATIONS! INCLUDING 10 BEST MUSICAL REVIVAL

“ENTHRALLING! A production like this—re-envisioned in subtle and overt ways—should be the baseline for big musical revivals. BARTLETT SHER’s glowing revival proves that a beloved musical from another era can keep on kicking, as long as it’s got its eyes wide open.” SARA HOLDREN,

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