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4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 15 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Amy Davidson Sorkin on the new COVID-19 spikes; the fireworks conundrum; Bill Nighy’s threads; problematic wallpaper; prepper real estate; summer evening.

AMERICAN CHRONICLES Alec MacGillis 20 The Dollar-Store Deaths A business model that harms vulnerable communities.

SHOUTS & MURMURS Craig Thomas 27 Studio Notes on Your Rom-Com Screenplay

ANNALS OF SCIENCE Susan Orlean 28 Rabbit Fever A deadly animal virus spreads in the U.S.

A REPORTER AT LARGE Larissa MacFarquhar 34 An Ocean Apart How the outside world came to the Falkland Islands.

THE POLITICAL SCENE Jeffrey Toobin 46 The Surrender Why the Mueller investigation was a failure.

FICTION Hari Kunzru 56 “A Transparent Woman”

THE CRITICS ON TELEVISION Doreen St. Félix 66 “I May Destroy You.”

A CRITIC AT LARGE Leo Robson 69 Joyce Carol Oates’s “Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.”

BOOKS 73 Briefly Noted Jonathan Dee 75 David Mitchell’s “Utopia Avenue.”

MUSICAL EVENTS Alex Ross 78 Musicians react to the pandemic and the protests.

THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 80 “Irresistible,” “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.”

POEMS Rita Dove 50 “Pedestrian Crossing, Charlottesville” Megan Fernandes 62 “Shanghai”

COVER Kadir Nelson “Distant Summer”

DRAWINGS Elisabeth McNair, Sam Gross, Ellis Rosen, Emily Flake, Patrick McKelvie, Benjamin Schwartz, Bishakh Som, Lars Kenseth, Paul Karasik, Harry Bliss and Steve Martin, Liana Finck, Seth Fleishman, Brendan Loper, Amy Hwang, Roz Chast, Pia Guerra and Ian Boothby, Sofia Warren, Matilda Borgström SPOTS Christoph Abbrederis Created by the editors of ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST, CONTRIBUTORS AD PRO is the members-only resource for design industry professionals Larissa MacFarquhar (“An Ocean Apart,” Jeffrey Toobin (“The Surrender,” p. 46) p. 34), a staff writer, is the author of is a staff writer. His latest book, “True “Strangers Drowning: Impossible Ide- Crimes and Misdemeanors: The In- alism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge vestigation of Donald Trump,” will be to Help.” published in August.

Alec MacGillis (“The Dollar-Store Susan Orlean (“Rabbit Fever,” p. 28), Deaths,” p. 20), a reporter for ProPublica, a staff writer, is the author of, most wrote “The Cynic: The Political Ed- recently, “The Library Book.” ucation of Mitch McConnell.” This article is a collaboration between The Rumaan Alam (The Talk of the Town, New Yorker and ProPublica. p. 17) has published three novels, in- cluding the forthcoming “Leave the Megan Fernandes (Poem, p. 62) is the World Behind.” author of the poetry collection “Good Boys.” Rita Dove (Poem, p. 50), a Pulitzer Prize winner and a former U.S. Poet Laure- Kadir Nelson (Cover) won a Caldecott ate, received a W. E. B. Du Bois Medal Medal for his illustrations for Kwame from Harvard University in 2019. She Alexander’s book-length poem, “The teaches at the University of Virginia. Undefeated.” Hari Kunzru (Fiction, p. 56) has writ- Anna Boots (The Talk of the Town, ten six novels, including “Gods With- p. 16) is a member of the magazine’s out Men,” “White Tears,” and “Red editorial staff. Pill,” which comes out in September.

PHOTO BY PAUL RAESIDE PAUL BY PHOTO Leo Robson (A Critic at Large, p. 69) Craig Thomas (Shouts & Murmurs, MEMBERSHIP INCLUDES is a contributing writer for The New p. 27), a television and film writer, is a Statesman. co-creator of “How I Met Your Mother.” .Exclusive, must-read industry and market news

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LETTER FROM SILICON VALLEY N EWS DESK Anna Wiener on the rise of ghost How can communities defund the kitchens and the future of their police? Alexis Okeowo on the groups once-marginal business model. that are reimagining safety. Join now and save 20% off your annual membership ARCHDIGEST.COM / JOINNOW Download the New Yorker app for the latest news, commentary, criticism, and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008. YORKER THE NEW IKE EDEANI FOR CLAPHAM; RIGHT: JAMES LEFT: THE MAIL

ICELAND’S VIRUS STRATEGY as millions were in 1942, to win the war. “Cape Cod Morning” is similarly I found Elizabeth Kolbert’s report on fixated on a woman, who is not in the Iceland’s response to the COVID-19 pan- kitchen but in a window, looking out demic thought-provoking (“Indepen- at the world. These sorts of individu- dent People,” June 8th & 15th). It is alistic women appear throughout Hop- difficult not to compare that country’s per’s œuvre. In “The Office at Night,” actions with those of the United States, we see a woman testing the boundaries but we must recall the social factors of traditional morality; in “Hotel Room,” that played a role in Iceland’s outcomes. a woman reading alone in her rented Kolbert states that by mid-May Ice- room; in “Tables for Ladies,” a scene land had tested 15.5 per cent of its pop- in which women can have lunch by ulation for the virus, which amounts themselves, without needing a man to to sixty thousand people. Meanwhile, legitimatize the outing; and, in “Morn- the U.S. had tested only 3.4 per cent of ing in a City,” a nude woman stand- its population—eleven million people. ing before a window, defying conven- That difference in scale is important tion. Hopper was perhaps illiberal in to keep in mind. In addition, Iceland, his politics, but, as these works testify, as Kolbert mentions, possesses one of his art was frequently about the after- the most genetically homogeneous math of social revolution. populations in the world—a fact that James R. Brett must have made virus sequencing 1Temecula, Calif. more straightforward. This genetic sim- ilarity also has cultural implications. REMEMBERING WARHOL As one interviewee said, “Everybody knows everyone in Iceland.” A sense As Joan Acocella attests, Blake Gop- of solidarity may explain why Iceland- nik’s biography of Andy Warhol is prob- ers so willingly follow protocols. Fi- ably the most complete chronicle to date nally, Iceland’s geographic isolation and about my uncle (Books, June 8th & 15th). small size have enabled it to contain However, Gopnik furthers a miscon- the virus more easily than a large, cos- ception about Warhol’s death, in 1987, mopolitan country, such as the U.S., which also goes unexamined by Aco- can. Although the U.S. can learn much cella. Gopnik implies that Warhol died from Iceland, we must first disentan- because he waited so long to have his gle circumstantial variables from the gallbladder removed. While that is par- Icelanders’ proactive management of tially true, my family and I believe that this public-health crisis. New York Hospital made some mis- Bernard J. Clark III takes that contributed to my uncle’s 1Lewes, Del. death from heart failure. My family and the Warhol estate brought a wrong- HOPPER’S WOMEN ful-death suit against the hospital, which, in 1991, was settled. Today, we marvel Peter Schjeldahl, in his piece about at the incredible influence that Warhol Edward Hopper, draws attention to continues to have on the world, decades the artist’s brand of “wary individual- after he passed away. ism” (The Art World, June 8th & 15th). James Warhola I was thus surprised that he did not Long Island City, N.Y. mention Hopper’s preoccupation with women’s growing independence during • the twentieth century. What was Hop- Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, per trying to tell us about the woman address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited seated at the diner in Greenwich Vil- for length and clarity, and may be published in lage in “Nighthawks”? Maybe simply any medium. We regret that owing to the volume that she is emancipated and working, of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter. In an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, New York City museums, galleries, theatres, music venues, and cinemas have closed. Here’s a selection of culture to be found online and streaming.

JULY 1 – 14, 2020

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

On July 2, Caramoor, a summertime classical-music destination housed on a verdant estate near Katonah, New York, inaugurates a boldly reconceived festival, featuring both online concerts and outdoor events that allow for social distancing. To kick things off, the superb pianist Inon Barnatan (pictured above) live-streams a recital of Schubert’s ebullient Sonata in A Major (D. 959) and his own transcription of Rachmaninoff ’s enigmatic “Symphonic Dances” from the stage of Caramoor’s newly renovated Music Room.

PHOTOGRAPH BY VICTOR LLORENTE 1 can-American designer, a defining figure of disco and, particularly, the subgenre of quiet A RT the nineteen-eighties fashion scene. Its trove storm, as exemplified in Teddy Pendergrass’s of images and anecdotes illuminates Smith’s torrid “Close the Door.”—Michaelangelo Matos expansive, democratic vision and the inno- Edward Hopper vations and influence of his label WilliWear, I haven’t seen this large show at the Beyeler while charting his tragically short career. The Phoebe Bridgers: “Punisher” Foundation, Switzerland’s premier museum designer died in 1987, when he was only thir- INDIE ROCK On Phoebe Bridgers’s stunning of modern art. I take its fine catalogue, “Ed- ty-nine, of AIDS-related causes. Smith had new album, “Punisher,” the singer-songwriter ward Hopper: A Fresh Look at Landscape,” strong ties to the art world: his oversized, unspools quiet, wry observations about the edited by the exhibition’s curator, Ulf Küster, often gender-fluid silhouettes and tweaked uncertainties of millennial life over bucolic as occasion enough for reflecting anew on the utilitarianism were featured in dances by the guitars and ghostly synths. Her understated artist’s stubborn force. (A selection of Hop- choreographers Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and songs float from constant, quivering anxiety per’s paintings is also on view on the museum’s Dianne McIntyre. Smith and his business to a glowing sense of serenity. On “I Know Web site.) The visual bard of American soli- partner Laurie Mallet also launched a line the End,” her lithe vocals build out a haunt- tude—not loneliness, a maudlin projection— of T-shirts printed with images by a diverse ing, apocalyptic scene: “I’m not afraid to speaks to our isolated states these days with range of artists—from Jenny Holzer to Fu- disappear / The billboard said ‘The End Is fortuitous poignance. But Hopper is always tura 2000—long before such collaborations Near’ / I turned around, there was nothing doing that, pandemic or no pandemic. Alone- became run of the mill. But the designer’s there / Yeah, I guess the end is here.” Mean- ness is his great theme, symbolizing America: broad appeal is perhaps best evinced by the while, the instrumentation blossoms into an insecure selfhoods in a country that is only archive’s charming paeans from his fans, such arrangement that’s euphoric yet foreboding. abstractly a nation. (“E pluribus unum,” a as an entry from Patrick Patterson, who, as a The effect is akin to standing blissfully on magnificent ideal, thuds on “unum” every teen-ager in Corinth, Mississippi, sewed a a cliff’s edge, unable to see the dark depths day throughout the land.) The emotional tug jacket from a WilliWear McCall’s pattern. He below.—Julyssa Lopez of all of Hopper’s characters requires their is seen posing in it for a snapshot, standing unawareness of being looked at. To see them in what looks like a school library—a paragon is to take on a peculiar responsibility. Can you of understated chic.—J.F. (cooperhewitt.org) Sammy Brue: “Crash Test Kid” pledge patriotic allegiance to a void? Hopper 1 ROCK At nineteen, the Utah-based singer and shows how, exploring a condition in which, by songwriter Sammy Brue is already something being separate, we belong together. You don’t of an old hand, having made the rounds as a have to like the idea, but, once you’ve truly MUSIC busker at the age of ten. As the decades tick experienced this painter’s art, it is as impos- on, youthful allegiance to a medium as creaky sible to ignore as a stone in your shoe.—Peter as rock and roll seems an increasingly eccen- Schjeldahl (fondationbeyeler.ch) Thom Bell: “Ready or Not” tric endeavor; Brue’s loyalty to the genre is R. & B. The story of Philadelphia soul music is roughly akin to an adolescent Little Richard typically told through the lens of the writer- devoting himself to Tin Pan Alley and tooting Salman Toor producers Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, around on a penny-farthing bicycle. Yet on This New York-based painter’s first solo but Thom Bell was an equally vital figure. He “Crash Test Kid,” Brue’s second LP, the music museum show, titled “How Will I Know,” was Gamble and Huff’s primary arranger— remains a channel for ardor and catharsis. The was originally slated to open in March, the O’Jays’ “Back Stabbers” is unimaginable album was produced by Iain Archer, a tenured at the Whitney. Until it does, an astute, without Bell’s strings—as well as the producer Irish musician, who joins Brue as a co-writer amply illustrated essay by Ambika Trasi, of classics by the Stylistics, the Delfonics, and on all but two songs. It’s a wise pairing—even a curatorial assistant at the museum, tides the Spinners. “Ready or Not: Thom Bell’s talented teens may not grasp the novelty and us over online. Centuries blur in Toor’s su- Philly Soul Arrangements & Productions 1965- the power of their own freshness, which here perb, art-historically minded tableaux. “Bar 1978” proffers his wedding-cake-ornate orches- gets harnessed on ballads and scorchers alike. Boy,” from 2019, shows an isolated figure in trations as a critical through line from soul to “I’m waiting, waiting,” Brue sings, moments a busy absinthe-hued barroom—it might be nineteenth-century Paris, if the young man weren’t staring down at his phone. But there’s another key difference at play be- MONUMENTS tween Toor and his European forebears. The artist, who was born in Lahore, Pa- In late June, the American Museum of kistan, usually depicts queer South Asian men; he disrupts Impressionism’s Oriental- Natural History made a clear-eyed de- ist tradition while borrowing its painterly cision to remove a statue of three men and compositional tricks. “Bedroom Boy,” from its front steps. Only one has a name also from last year, reimagines the trope of the reclining nude as a slender, hirsute (or a shirt, for that matter): Theodore young man snapping a come-hither selfie. Roosevelt, on horseback, looms over an Other vignettes depict the decidedly un- indigenous and a black figure. New York erotic anxieties of immigration, and the scrutiny that Toor and others who look like City has more work to do if it’s to rec- him are subjected to when they travel. In tify racism in public art, not to mention her essay, Trasi sees the artist’s stylized the city’s shortage of tributes to women. treatment of personal experience as a visual corollary to contemporary autofiction. The Happily, several new projects are under literary parallel is apt: evocative stories and way, including a soaring silhouette of the sympathetic characters emerge from Toor’s U.S. congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, exacting scenes, which seem painted from a watchful, passionate first-person perspec- by Amanda Williams and Olalekan tive.—Johanna Fateman (whitney.org) Jeyifous, arriving in Prospect Park next year. Right now, Simone Leigh’s sixteen- Willi Smith Community Archive foot-tall monument to black woman- This engrossing, chatty resource is an on- hood, “Brick House” (pictured)—the line, crowdsourced companion to the Coo- inaugural commission of the High Line per Hewitt’s (temporarily closed) exhibition “Willi Smith: Street Couture,” which is de- Plinth—keeps vigil above Tenth Avenue —Andrea K. Scott ILLUSTRATION BY DIVYAKSHI KEDIA DIVYAKSHI BY ILLUSTRATION voted to the career of the pathbreaking Afri- at Thirtieth Street.

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 5 microtonal keyboards and driven by beatbox R. & B. rhythms, evoke a complex web of social and environmental concerns. The vertiginous flights and tightly choreographed maneuvers under- taken by his five superb singers produce a vis- ceral thrill that’s wholly seductive.—Steve Smith

Micah Thomas: “Tide” JAZZ Début albums are ambitious by design, but “Tide” introduces a twenty-two-year-old jazz pianist whose gifts, bolstered by consid- erable idiomatic breadth, are prodigious in the extreme. In a time marked by big existential questions for working musicians (Will the fu- ture of everything be live-streamed?), Micah Thomas, a Juilliard Jazz alum from Columbus, Ohio, makes a persuasive argument for the act of performing in a roomful of attentive listeners. In March, 2019, he brought a raft of canny original compositions to his trio gig at Kitano, a hotel bar in Manhattan’s Murray Hill neighborhood. Thomas’s rhythm section adds precise dynamics to his extraordinary sense of pacing, most no- tably on the extended improvisations in “The Game” and on the album’s title track. Other pieces (“Grounds,” “Tornado”) mix invention with an air of familiarity, as if auditioning for Teyana Taylor’s third studio record, titled simply “The Album,” was a place in the jazz canon.—K. Leander Williams supposed to come out this past December, but, in a welcome turn of 1 fate, she embraced the idea of releasing it on June 19. “It falls perfectly on Juneteenth, yes, it’s a celebration,” she wrote in a recent op-ed for DANCE Billboard. The music—a glossy, glorious display of slick R. & B. with touches of throwback nineties production—is itself an act of rejoicing, Ballet Hispánico as Taylor explores motherhood, sex, love, desire, and feminine strength Edwaard Liang, a former New York City Ballet with searing intimacy. The opener features a frantic 911 call that her dancer who is now a choreographer and the director of BalletMet, created “El Viaje” for husband made when she unexpectedly began giving birth in their Ballet Hispánico in 2019. As a choreographer, home; he and her daughter make cameos on later songs, joining a Liang favors a generalized emotionalism that lengthy list of collaborators that includes Erykah Badu, Missy Elliott, manifests in sinuous, curvaceous forms. The piece, set to “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas and Ms. Lauryn Hill. Their presence reinforces the album’s sense of Tallis,” by Ralph Vaughan Williams, is ostensi- community and triumph.—Julyssa Lopez bly about emigration and the search for a new life, but, rather than a literal illustration of this theme, Liang offers hints of the longings and losses of individuals within a group. The before his band bursts to attention, “for teen- ies such as the influential guitarist John Scofield piece will be broadcast, on July 8, on the com- age mayhem yet to come.”—Jay Ruttenberg and the adroit drummer Bill Stewart, who join pany’s Web site and its Facebook and YouTube him on the album “Swallow Tales.” The attention pages.—Marina Harss (ballethispanico.org) is on the elder statesman’s work, including “Fall- “Pssst . . .” ing Grace,” “Eiderdown,” and “Hullo Bolinas,” CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL Prohibition, which each as alluring as when they were essayed, DTH on Demand was enacted a century ago, is an equivocal long ago, by the titans Gary Burton and Bill Dance Theatre of Harlem’s streaming schedule milestone to commemorate with a music se- Evans. Utilizing this exemplary material, the continues, on July 11, with video of a 2019 perfor- ries today, but, then again, it was a ban that experienced trio sounds primed for a few more mance in the rotunda of the Guggenheim Mu- forced people to get creative about the way decades of spirited interaction.—Steve Futterman seum. The program is past meets present. Rep- they gathered in the evenings for a little fun. resenting the company’s early days is “Tones II,” With “Pssst . . .,” Beth Morrison Projects opens a recent revision of a 1971 neoclassical piece by its own virtual night club—or speakeasy, if you Cory Smythe: the troupe’s founder, Arthur Mitchell. It’s a dis- will—that features a string of performances ciple’s faithful copy of Balanchine’s mid-century by Lauren Worsham, Isaiah Robinson, Joseph “Accelerate Every Voice” modernism. Representing the now is “Nyman Keckler, and Sol Ruiz, among others, tied to- CHORAL In 1969, Andrew Hill, an idiosyncratic String Quartet #2,” made last year by the com- gether in a loose narrative by the director Ash- jazz master who’d gigged with Charlie Parker pany’s excellent resident choreographer, Robert ley Tata. Audience members buy a ticket for a and studied with Paul Hindemith, paired a vocal Garland. It looks back at Balanchine, too, but Zoom link, and attendance, naturally, is strictly chorus with a hard-swinging quintet to record also at Mitchell, with doses of black vernacular limited.—Oussama Zahr (July 9-10 at 8 and 10.) “Lift Every Voice,” a buoyant set of upbeat in- fun and an inspirational vibe.—Brian Seibert cantations. Now, just over fifty years later, Cory (dancetheatreofharlem.org/dthondemand) Smythe—like Hill, an improvisatory pianist Scofield, Stewart & Swallow: and composer whose work bridges disparate practices—takes Hill’s album as the starting Jacob’s Pillow “Swallow Tales” point for “Accelerate Every Voice,” an odyssey It won’t be the same as taking a trip to the Berk- JAZZ Despite a distinguished six-decade career, that also references the songwriter and activist shires to visit the country’s foremost summer Steve Swallow is still something of a musician’s James Weldon Johnson, historic and modern-day dance festival, a bucolic mecca of the art, but musician. An inventive electric bassist and an in- a-cappella groups, and Annea Lockwood’s cli- Jacob’s Pillow is offering a virtual substitute spired composer who’s been hiding in plain sight, mate-conscious piano experiments. Smythe’s this year, with eight weeks of talks, classes, and

Swallow is treasured by discerning jazz luminar- intricate vocal lattices, eerily harmonized with performance footage. For depth and variety, WILLIAMS MATT BY ILLUSTRATION

6 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 the festival’s performance archive is hard to enigmatic ballet that was created by Alexei is Mira Nadon’s generous, assured turn beat, and each Thursday a new sample will be Ratmansky, for Miami City Ballet, in 2012. as the female lead in George Balanchine’s streamed, starting, on July 8, with classics by It belongs to the same period as his “Con- “Scotch Symphony,” in 2017. (Nadon, now at José Limón, including “The Moor’s Pavane” and certo DSCH” and “Shostakovich Trilogy,” N.Y.C.B., is still one to watch.) The students “Chaconne,” filmed at the Pillow in 2018.—B.S. with which it shares an air of heroism and also dance “In Creases,” Justin Peck’s first (jacobspillow.org) strife that emerges from the struggle be- ballet for N.Y.C.B., in a performance from tween the individual and the collective. As 2018.—M.H. (sab.org) Ratmansky has said, its three movements JoyceStream: Olivier Tarpaga encompass “everything from war to love and In Olivier Tarpaga’s subtle “Declassified Mem- death.” Running through the ballet, too, is Tap City ory Fragment,” from 2015, which the Joyce an interesting theme of doubling and alter The New York City Tap Festival celebrates Theatre is streaming July 2-31, the chore- egos. Miami City Ballet dances it with all its twentieth year by moving the festivities ographer draws upon memories of military the fire it requires; a performance will be online. The events, all free, begin on July 6, coups in his homeland, Burkina Faso. This streaming on the company’s Facebook page with a virtual version of the annual Copasetic declassifying is an act of candor, a scathing on July 10.—M.H. Boat Ride, a gathering and tap jam hosted, this look at political corruption and power. But time around, by the affable DeWitt Fleming, the tone of Tarpaga’s truthtelling is often Jr. On July 10, the festival goes retrospective, gently humorous, with a dark undertow. At School of American Ballet presenting a collection of works from the one point, two men, fighting for dominance, Each June, this élite ballet school—the past five years of “Rhythm in Motion,” its wrestle to wear the same jacket of authority—a feeder for New York City Ballet—offers vital incubator for tap choreography. And, silly scene with lethal implications. Such vi- a performance at which it showcases its on July 11, “Tap It Out,” its mass-ensemble gnettes of loose-limbed dancing are in free promising young dancers, many of whom project, usually performed outside, amasses conversation with the now lilting, now rollick- are likely to continue on to a professional life in cyberspace.—B.S. (atdf.org/events) ing music, composed by Tarpaga and played at the theatre across the square. Here, bal- 1 by the Dafra Kura Band.—B.S. (joyce.org/ letomanes can catch a first glimpse of a sin- engage/joycestream) gular talent before watching it blossom, or not, in the years that follow. The Workshop TELEVISION performance was cancelled this year; instead, Miami City Ballet the school will broadcast an online program, “Symphonic Dances,” set to Rachmani- on July 9, that revisits memorable moments Taste the Nation noff’s eponymous suite, is a dramatic and from previous seasons. Especially notable Padma Lakshmi, the star of this new series (on Hulu), refers to the United States as a “melting pot of cuisines,” but the show makes a case, inherently, for the pluralistic salad ON TELEVISION bowl as a better metaphor. Its ten episodes amount to a cross-country foodways crawl. In South Carolina’s Low Country, talk of the culture of crab fishing leads to a look at the precarious future of the Gullah people. In San Francisco, Lakshmi enlists the come- dian Ali Wong to pursue the question “What is chop suey, anyway?”—an interrogation of how restaurateurs reworked a Chinese tradition to cater to Western taste buds. Chauffeured through Milwaukee in Oscar Mayer’s Wienermobile, Lakshmi cruises into a brief on German-American history and learns how the sausage of identity is made. A gracious guest at a groaning smorgasbord, Lakshmi mmms and ahs while paying homage to famous chefs and anonymous fonts of nourishment alike. She takes a spoonful of Gullah red rice and apologizes to the viewer, saying, “I’m really sorry you can’t eat this,” but the succulence of the cinematography is 1sustenance enough.—Troy Patterson The bohemian Clancy is an earnest inquirer of the human condition. He MOVIES is also pink, and the owner of an illegal simulator, shaped rather like a giant vagina, that facilitates his investigation of a psychedelic multiverse. The Long Gray Line “The Midnight Gospel” (on Netflix) is a truly original and truly bizarre Set almost entirely on the grounds of West collaboration between Pendleton Ward, the animation virtuoso behind Point, John Ford’s 1955 bio-pic about the long- “Adventure Time,” and Duncan Trussell, the host of the “Duncan Trus- time officer Marty Maher is one of his grand- sell Family Hour” podcast and the voice of Clancy. In each episode, the est and heartiest films. Tyrone Power stars as Maher, a pugnacious immigrant from Ireland philosopher-vagabond Clancy conducts a conversation with guests for who proves ludicrously incompetent as a waiter. his “spacecast” as they navigate mazes of trippy peril. In one episode, a Maher enlists in the Army and is laughably inept tiny President, voiced by Dr. Drew Pinsky, protects Clancy from a zombie as a West Point boxing instructor, too. But, with a heart of gold and a vast reserve of wisdom, he invasion as they discuss the moralization of drug-taking. In another, a wise serves as a sort of secular priest to generations bird in a Dantean jail teaches Clancy about Tibetan Buddhism, and about of cadets throughout his fifty-year tenure, which death as “the relinquishing of the self.” The contrast between substance spans both the First and the Second World War and involves the duties and the devastations of and image bombards the viewer delightfully; watching the show is like combat. Ford presents the academy, with its rich —Doreen St. Félix skimming Schopenhauer with a tab on your tongue. and rigid traditions, as a military monastery NETFLIX COURTESY

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Member FDIC. © 2020 Northern Trust Corporation. Brown), who calls himself Flik, an Atlanta WHAT TO STREAM teen-ager who comes to Brooklyn to spend the summer with his grandfather (Clarke Peters), the minister of a small Red Hook church, whose traditional ways Flik rejects. Flik’s fast friendship with Chazz (Toni Lysaith), the daughter of a parishioner, offers a sweet, yet strong, depiction of adolescent tenderness amid the film’s turbulent family stories. The drama of Flik’s cynicism yielding to discov- ery parallels another one, of faith yielding to reason, when a former congregant revisits the church and offers a startling revelation. Lee fills the movie with fervent musical in- terludes, lyrical asides, and bitter conflicts; he brings long-standing frustrations to light and plants the characters firmly within the turbulent course of history—while also dra- matizing, through Flik’s hobby of videography, the infusion of image-making with a higher purpose.—R.B. (Streaming on Amazon Prime, iTunes, and other services.)

The Truth The Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, working for the first time in France, tells the tale of Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve), a celebrated actress who has stopped at noth- The Portuguese director Miguel Gomes, who has daringly fused doc- ing in the pursuit of her art. If her family umentary and fiction in his features “Our Beloved Month of August” has been damaged along the way, she has and “Arabian Nights,” developed a template for this blend in four yet to be stricken with remorse. Residing in her stately house in Paris, she is visited boldly imaginative short films from the early two-thousands. (They’re by her daughter, Lumir (Juliette Binoche), streaming on Lincoln Center’s Virtual Cinema.) “A Christmas Inven- who brings along her American husband, tory” observes a multigenerational family’s jovial holiday feast while Hank (Ethan Hawke). They have a young daughter, Charlotte (Clémentine Grenier), using macrophotography to evoke earnest consumerist joys—gaudy who, understandably, ascribes witchlike gift wrapping seemingly made to dance, a mechanical Spider-Man powers to her grandmother. By Kore-eda’s doll brought wondrously to life—alongside the playful piety of a tiny high standard, the narrative feels a little too neatly wrapped; Fabienne, for instance, is Nativity diorama. In “Canticle of All Creatures,” Gomes sketches the currently starring in a science-fiction film life and the teachings of St. Francis in three brief, bold segments. A about mothers and daughters. But the mood mischievous nonfiction scene of an itinerant singer’s wanderings through of the movie is graceful and gilded with wit, and Deneuve, glancing at her own career, is the tourist center of Assisi is followed by a highly stylized dramatization at her most magisterial. In French and En- of the friar’s mystical discussions with St. Clare. A concluding, ecstatic glish.—Anthony Lane (Streaming on Amazon, sequence examines, with scientific intimacy, some of the small animals iTunes, and other services.) that Francis loved, and, in a voice-over featuring children’s recitations, envisions this innocent passion as a revolutionary plot.—Richard Brody You Are Not I This featurette by Sara Driver, from 1981— an adaptation of a story by Paul Bowles—is a frank and piercingly intimate reckoning where rituals and pageantry foster love along slavery and white supremacy. Burnett drama- with mental illness. Suzanne Fletcher plays with discipline. The film’s soul-stirring com- tizes scenes from the scant historical record Ethel, a young woman who, while wandering edy is centered on family—Maher’s courtship of Turner, while also exploring it in inter- beyond the gates of the hospital in which of the quick-witted Mary O’Donnell (Mau- views with scholars and artists (including she’s being treated, happens upon a deadly car reen O’Hara), another Irish immigrant, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Mary Kemp Davis, accident. Mistaken for one of its survivors, the arrival of his father (Donald Crisp), whose and Ossie Davis). He also considers and dra- she’s taken to the home of her sister (Melody folklore embodies the stern principles and in- matizes various versions of Turner’s life, by Schneider), whose fear of Ethel’s delusional dependent spirit that also underlie Maher’s both black creators, including William Wells and dissociated behavior is the spark of the force of character.—Richard Brody (Streaming on Brown and Randolph Edmonds, and white drama. The taut stillness of Driver’s images Amazon, Google Play, and other services.) ones (such as Thomas R. Gray’s “Confessions (the cinematography is by Jim Jarmusch) of Nat Turner,” based on his interview with captures Ethel’s states of mind from both the jailed leader, and William Styron’s 1967 the inside and the outside, emphasizing the Nat Turner: novel of the same title). Burnett is shown masklike chill of Fletcher’s performance and directing these scenes; speaking on camera the quiet alienations of a world that appears, A Troublesome Property about his effort to channel their views of to Ethel, out of whack. With a voice-over that Charles Burnett combines nonfiction, fiction, Turner, he probes the troubling depths of the details Ethel’s overdone logic and a quietly and metafiction in this ardently analytical politics of art.—R.B. (Streaming on Amazon nerve-jangling score by Phil Kline, Driver examination, from 2003, of the life and legacy Prime and Kanopy.) conjures vast spans of harrowing experience of Nat Turner, who led a rebellion of enslaved in infinitesimal gestures.—R.B. (Streaming on people in Virginia in 1831 and was captured the Criterion Channel.) and executed that year. The premise of the Red Hook Summer 1 movie—as declared in voice-over narration Spike Lee’s low-budget return to Brooklyn, spoken by Alfre Woodard—is the failure of from 2012, is among his most visionary works. For more reviews, visit

the United States to confront the history of It’s the story of thirteen-year-old Silas (Jules newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town KINOSCOPE COURTESY

10 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 For certain adults with newly diagnosed non-small cell lung cancer that has spread

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Indication & Important Safety Information for • Eye problems. Symptoms may include: blurry vision, double vision, or other vision OPDIVO® (nivolumab) + YERVOY® (ipilimumab) problems; and eye pain or redness. What is OPDIVO + YERVOY? Get medical help immediately if you develop any of these symptoms or they get OPDIVO® is a prescription medicine used in combination with YERVOY® (ipilimumab) worse. It may keep these problems from becoming more serious. Your healthcare as a first treatment for adults with a type of advanced stage lung cancer (called non- team will check you for side effects during treatment and may treat you with small cell lung cancer) when your lung cancer has spread to other parts of your body corticosteroid or hormone replacement medicines. If you have a serious side effect, (metastatic) and your tumors are positive for PD-L1, but do not have an abnormal your healthcare team may also need to delay or completely stop your treatment. EGFR or ALK gene. OPDIVO and OPDIVO + YERVOY can cause serious side effects, including: It is not known if OPDIVO is safe and effective in children younger than 18 years of age. • Severe infusion-related reactions. Tell your doctor or nurse right away if you get Important Safety Information for OPDIVO + YERVOY these symptoms during an infusion: chills or shaking; itching or rash; flushing; difficulty breathing; dizziness; fever; and feeling like passing out. OPDIVO is a medicine that may treat certain cancers by working with your immune system. OPDIVO can cause your immune system to attack normal organs and tissues Pregnancy and Nursing: in any area of your body and can affect the way they work. These problems can • Tell your healthcare provider if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. OPDIVO sometimes become serious or life-threatening and can lead to death. These problems and YERVOY can harm your unborn baby. If you are a female who is able to become may happen anytime during treatment or even after your treatment has ended. Some pregnant, your healthcare provider should do a pregnancy test before you start of these problems may happen more often when OPDIVO is used in combination receiving OPDIVO. Females who are able to become pregnant should use an effective with YERVOY. method of birth control during and for at least 5 months after the last dose. Talk to YERVOY can cause serious side effects in many parts of your body which can lead to your healthcare provider about birth control methods that you can use during this death. These problems may happen anytime during treatment with YERVOY or after time. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you become pregnant or think you are you have completed treatment. pregnant during treatment. You or your healthcare provider should contact Bristol Myers Squibb at 1-800-721-5072 as soon as you become aware of the pregnancy. Serious side effects may include: • Pregnancy Safety Surveillance Study: Females who become pregnant during • Lung problems (pneumonitis). Symptoms of pneumonitis may include: new or treatment with YERVOY are encouraged to enroll in a Pregnancy Safety Surveillance worsening cough; chest pain; and shortness of breath. Study. The purpose of this study is to collect information about the health of you • Intestinal problems (colitis) that can lead to tears or holes in your intestine. and your baby. You or your healthcare provider can enroll in the Pregnancy Safety Signs and symptoms of colitis may include: diarrhea (loose stools) or more bowel Surveillance Study by calling 1-844-593-7869. movements than usual; blood in your stools or dark, tarry, sticky stools; and severe • Before receiving treatment, tell your healthcare provider if you are breastfeeding or stomach area (abdomen) pain or tenderness. plan to breastfeed. It is not known if either treatment passes into your breast milk. • Liver problems (hepatitis). Signs and symptoms of hepatitis may include: yellowing Do not breastfeed during treatment and for 5 months after the last dose. of your skin or the whites of your eyes; severe nausea or vomiting; pain on the right Tell your healthcare provider about: side of your stomach area (abdomen); drowsiness; dark urine (tea colored); bleeding or bruising more easily than normal; feeling less hungry than usual; and decreased • Your health problems or concerns if you: have immune system problems such as energy. autoimmune disease, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, lupus, or sarcoidosis; have had an organ transplant; have lung or breathing problems; have liver problems; or • Hormone gland problems (especially the thyroid, pituitary, adrenal glands, and have any other medical conditions. pancreas). Signs and symptoms that your hormone glands are not working properly may include: headaches that will not go away or unusual headaches; extreme • All the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, tiredness; weight gain or weight loss; dizziness or fainting; changes in mood or vitamins, and herbal supplements. behavior, such as decreased sex drive, irritability, or forgetfulness; hair loss; feeling The most common side effects of OPDIVO, when used in combination with YERVOY, cold; constipation; voice gets deeper; and excessive thirst or lots of urine. include: feeling tired; diarrhea; rash; itching; nausea; pain in muscles, bones, and joints, • Kidney problems, including nephritis and kidney failure. Signs of kidney problems fever; cough; decreased appetite; vomiting; stomach-area (abdominal) pain; shortness may include: decrease in the amount of urine; blood in your urine; swelling in your of breath; upper respiratory tract infection; headache; low thyroid hormone levels ankles; and loss of appetite. (hypothyroidism); decreased weight; and dizziness. • Skin problems. Signs of these problems may include: rash; itching; skin blistering; These are not all the possible side effects. For more information, ask your healthcare and ulcers in the mouth or other mucous membranes. provider or pharmacist. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit • Inflammation of the brain (encephalitis). Signs and symptoms of encephalitis www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088. may include: headache; fever; tiredness or weakness; confusion; memory problems; sleepiness; seeing or hearing things that are not really there (hallucinations); Please see Important Facts for OPDIVO and YERVOY, including Boxed WARNING for seizures; and stiff neck. YERVOY regarding immune-mediated side effects, on the following page. • Problems in other organs. Signs of these problems may include: changes in eyesight; severe or persistent muscle or joint pains; severe muscle weakness; and chest pain. Additional serious side effects observed during a separate study of YERVOY alone include: • Nerve problems that can lead to paralysis. Symptoms of nerve problems may include: unusual weakness of legs, arms, or face; and numbness or tingling in hands or feet.

©2020 Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. All rights reserved. OPDIVO®, YERVOY®, and the related logos are trademarks of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. 7356US1904019-02-01 05/20 IMPORTANT The information below does not take the place of talking with your healthcare professional. Only your healthcare professional knows the specifics of your condition and how OPDIVO® (nivolumab) in combination with FACTS YERVOY® (ipilimumab) may fit into your overall therapy. Talk to your healthcare professional if you have any questions about OPDIVO (pronounced op-DEE-voh) and YERVOY (pronounced yur-voi).

What is the most important information I should know Inflammation of the brain (encephalitis). Signs and ◦ Tell your healthcare provider right away if you about OPDIVO (nivolumab) and YERVOY (ipilimumab)? symptoms of encephalitis may include: become pregnant or think you are pregnant during OPDIVO and YERVOY are medicines that may treat certain • headache • seizures treatment. You or your healthcare provider should cancers by working with your immune system. OPDIVO and • fever • stiff neck contact Bristol Myers Squibb at 1-800-721-5072 as YERVOY can cause your immune system to attack normal • tiredness or weakness soon as you become aware of the pregnancy. organs and tissues in any area of your body and can affect ◦ Pregnancy Safety Surveillance Study: Females the way they work. These problems can sometimes become • confusion • memory problems who become pregnant during treatment with serious or life-threatening and can lead to death and YERVOY (ipilimumab) are encouraged to enroll in a may happen anytime during treatment or even after your • sleepiness Pregnancy Safety Surveillance Study. The purpose of treatment has ended. Some of these problems may happen • seeing or hearing things more often when OPDIVO is used in combination with YERVOY. this study is to collect information about the health that are not really there of you and your baby. You or your healthcare provider YERVOY can cause serious side effects in many parts of your (hallucinations) body which can lead to death. These problems may happen can enroll in the Pregnancy Safety Surveillance Study Problems in other organs. Signs of these problems may by calling 1-844-593-7869. anytime during treatment with YERVOY or after you have include: completed treatment. • are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. It is not • changes in eyesight Call or see your healthcare provider right away if you known if OPDIVO (nivolumab) or YERVOY passes into your develop any symptoms of the following problems or • severe or persistent muscle or joint pains breast milk. Do not breastfeed during treatment and for these symptoms get worse. Do not try to treat symptoms • severe muscle weakness 5 months after the last dose. yourself. • chest pain Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines Lung problems (pneumonitis). Symptoms of pneumonitis Additional serious side effects observed during a separate you take, including prescription and over-the-counter may include: study of YERVOY (ipilimumab) alone include: medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. • new or worsening cough Nerve problems that can lead to paralysis. Symptoms of Know the medicines you take. Keep a list of them to show • chest pain nerve problems may include: your healthcare providers and pharmacist when you get a • shortness of breath • unusual weakness of legs, arms, or face new medicine. Intestinal problems (colitis) that can lead to tears or holes • numbness or tingling in hands or feet Eye problems. Symptoms may include: in your intestine. Signs and symptoms of colitis may include: What are the possible side effects of OPDIVO and YERVOY? • diarrhea (loose stools) or more bowel movements • blurry vision, double vision, or other vision problems OPDIVO and YERVOY can cause serious side effects, than usual • eye pain or redness including: • mucus or blood in your stools or dark, tarry, sticky stools Get medical help immediately if you develop any of these • See “What is the most important information I should • stomach-area (abdomen) pain or tenderness symptoms or they get worse. It may keep these problems know about OPDIVO and YERVOY?” • you may or may not have fever from becoming more serious. Your healthcare team will • Severe infusion reactions. Tell your doctor or nurse right Liver problems (hepatitis) that can lead to liver failure. check you for side effects during treatment and may treat Signs and symptoms of hepatitis may include: you with corticosteroid or hormone replacement medicines. away if you get these symptoms during an infusion of If you have a serious side effect, your healthcare team may OPDIVO or YERVOY: • yellowing of your skin or the whites of your eyes also need to delay or completely stop your treatment with • nausea or vomiting OPDIVO (nivolumab) and YERVOY. ◦ chills or shaking ◦ dizziness • pain on the right side of your stomach area (abdomen) ◦ itching or rash ◦ fever • drowsiness What are OPDIVO and YERVOY? ◦ flushing ◦ feeling like passing • dark urine (tea colored) OPDIVO and YERVOY are prescription medicines used to treat ◦ difficulty breathing out • bleeding or bruising more easily than normal adults with a type of advanced stage lung cancer called • feeling less hungry than usual non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). OPDIVO may be used in The most common side effects of OPDIVO when used • decreased energy combination with YERVOY as your first treatment for NSCLC: in combination with YERVOY include: Hormone gland problems (especially the thyroid, pituitary, • when your lung cancer has spread to other parts of your • feeling tired • vomiting and adrenal glands; and pancreas). Signs and symptoms body (metastatic), and • diarrhea • stomach-area that your hormone glands are not working properly may • your tumors are positive for PD-L1, but do not have an (abdominal) pain include: • rash abnormal EGFR or ALK gene. • shortness of breath • headaches that will not go away or unusual headaches • itching It is not known if OPDIVO and YERVOY are safe and effective • upper respiratory tract • extreme tiredness or unusual sluggishness when used in children younger than 18 years of age. • nausea infection • weight gain or weight loss • pain in muscles, bones, • headache • dizziness or fainting What should I tell my healthcare provider before receiving and joints • low thyroid hormone • changes in mood or behavior, such as decreased sex OPDIVO and YERVOY? • fever levels (hypothyroidism) drive, irritability, or forgetfulness Before you receive OPDIVO and YERVOY, tell your healthcare • cough • decreased weight • hair loss provider if you: • decreased appetite • dizziness • feeling cold • have immune system problems (autoimmune disease) These are not all the possible side effects of OPDIVO and • constipation such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, lupus, or YERVOY. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. sarcoidosis • voice gets deeper You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088. • excessive thirst or lots of urine • have had an organ transplant • have lung or breathing problems Kidney problems, including nephritis and kidney failure. This is a brief summary of the most important information Signs of kidney problems may include: • have liver problems about OPDIVO and YERVOY. For more information, talk with • decrease in the amount of urine • have any other medical conditions your healthcare provider, call 1-855-673-4861, or go to • blood in your urine • are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. OPDIVO and www.OPDIVO.com. • swelling in your ankles YERVOY can harm your unborn baby. Females who are • loss of appetite able to become pregnant: Skin Problems. Signs of these problems may include: Your healthcare provider should do a pregnancy test before you start receiving OPDIVO and YERVOY. Manufactured by: • skin rash with or without itching ◦ You should use an effective method of birth control Bristol-Myers Squibb Company • itching during and for at least 5 months after the last dose. Princeton, New Jersey 08543 USA • skin blistering or peeling Talk to your healthcare provider about birth control • sores or ulcers in mouth or other mucous membranes methods that you can use during this time.

© 2020 Bristol-Myers Squibb Company May 2020 OPDIVO and YERVOY are trademarks of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. 7356US2001322-01-01 05/20 plants can look nearly identical to per- by Fjolla Sheholli and Junayd Juman. fectly poisonous ones. In some cases, a Before the pandemic, the couple served berry that grows on a tree may be as pal- an elaborate tasting menu. Now they atable as its flower is lethal. Still, eating offer a version to go, plus meal kits, my way through a Wild Box gave me pantry items, and a “curated market 1 hope for my chances of surviving should basket,” all with an emphasis on for- even the canned tuna run out. Learn the aged items; Sheholli, who spent much of TABLES FOR TWO rules—many inherited from indigenous her childhood learning the land around peoples—and unlock access to treasures her grandmother’s farm, in Kosovo, is a Foraged Foods hiding in plain sight in thickets, on river- skilled forager who gathers ingredients banks, and by the shore. A hefty wedge of outside the city on a weekly basis. The “A lot of the talk about quarantine chicken-of-the-woods mushroom pried eggs had been laid on an oxymoroni- cooking, in the beginning, was, like, from a tree trunk performed exactly as its cally named wild-game farm upstate, ‘Here’s twenty ways to use a can of name would suggest, its edges pan-fry- but my market basket also included an tuna,’” James O’Donnell recounted the ing to a crisp golden brown that rivalled assortment of uncultivated flora that other day. “It was very much survivalist.” a buttermilk crust, its creamy interior Sheholli had hand-collected: a small O’Donnell and his partner, Amanda shredding almost like meat. bouquet of red clover, which I brewed Kingsley, own Allora Farm & Flowers, A vial of sassafras syrup, made by into a subtle tea; a few sprigs of wild in Pine Plains, New York, where they steeping bark and small roots removed bay leaf; a generous bunch of common grow what they need for their floral-de- responsibly from a sassafras tree, was vetch, or wild peas, which bore wispy sign studio, plus vegetables. It struck transformed into an aromatically fizzy tendrils and tiny pods. him that “a lot of people at home could glass of root beer when mixed with soda Though there is much that is tech- probably use feeling connected to the water. The detailed ingredient key that nically edible growing in the parks, me- natural world right now, a little bit of came in the box suggested treating ten- dians, and other patches of greenery in excitement and wonder.” Before the der, sweet, snappy sea beans—a succu- the five boroughs, Sheholli does not pandemic, a substantial part of O’Don- lent, also known as samphire, that grows recommend foraging from them; there nell and Kingsley’s business was sup- on beaches and in coastal marshes—like could be lead, or worse, in the soil. But plying restaurants with ingredients that salad greens, but to leave the salt out of she and Juman, who have long sup- they foraged sustainably from the acres your vinaigrette until you had tasted the ported the local community—during that they lease, as well as from friends’ dressed beans. Sure enough, they were the pandemic, by delivering food to properties and from public lands in the so infused with a natural brine that they elders—have no intention of slowing Hudson Valley and on Long Island. didn’t need a single grain. down in their mission to, as she puts it, With the restaurant market shrinking, As instructed, I chopped a few stems “shorten the supply chain.” Every week, they decided to experiment with a di- of henbit—a wild herb in the mint fam- she will forage, and, as soon as they rect-to-consumer weekly-ish Wild Box, ily, identifiable by its square stalk and can, the couple will serve their food on available for delivery in the Bronx, tiny purple flowers—and mixed it into Brooklyn’s most natural landscape: the Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. beaten pheasant eggs for an omelette. sidewalk. (Allora Wild Box $45; Honey To forage safely requires a good The eggs were from a tiny Brooklyn Badger market basket from $65.)

PHOTOGRAPH BY COURTNEY SOFIAH YATES FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW FOR YATES SOFIAH COURTNEY BY PHOTOGRAPH amount of training. Perfectly edible restaurant called Honey Badger, run —Hannah Goldfield

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 13

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT other round of widespread closures of the pandemic’s early course seems to THE SHIFTING PANDEMIC businesses and schools. The shifting of have lured some Republican politicians the epicenter of the pandemic from into complacency, as if a MAGA cap could ince the coronavirus first took hold Northeastern, Midwestern, and urban be a protective talisman, or as if, when Sin this country, Donald Trump has areas that are largely governed by Dem- it comes to COVID-19, bad things could heedlessly promoted the idea that it can ocrats to states in the South and the happen only to subway-riding city dwell- be treated solely as a political, or even a West, many of them red or purple, along ers. Some even acted as if the virus’s dep- cultural, problem. Part of the tragedy of with blue California, is a reminder of a redations could be tolerated as long as the pandemic is that, until now, many point that Dr. Ashish Jha, a Harvard they fell most heavily on low-income, people in less affected areas of the United public-health expert, has been making elderly, or marginalized people. Those States believed him. In a speech last week since March: the coronavirus doesn’t care tendencies have served their states badly, to thousands of mostly maskless young whether you’re a Republican or a Dem- and the country, too. Senator Mitch Mc- supporters in a megachurch in Phoenix, ocrat. Nationally, the number of deaths Connell’s statement, in April, putting Trump claimed that Democrats are “try- has fallen, thanks in part to new insights coronavirus-relief packages in the cate- ing to do their best to keep the country about treatments. But the rising numbers gory of “blue-state bailouts” provided shut down”—not to fight COVID-19 but of cases, coupled with the listlessness of one milestone in the G.O.P. response; to sabotage the economy, and thus his the Administration, suggest that the re- the recent effort of Florida’s governor, electoral prospects. They’re also trying spite may be brief, and that we are squan- Ron DeSantis, to downplay his state’s to “rig” the election by means of “the dering whatever advantage was gained staggering number of new cases—nearly China virus.” He called the disease other by the ebb in the states first affected. nine thousand on a single day last week— names, including the more blatantly rac- The political leaders in New York, by pointing to infections among “over- ist Kung Flu (it’s not a flu), and pro- the worst-hit state, unquestionably made whelmingly Hispanic workers and day fessed to find its real name “odd”: “I said, mistakes. But the political geography of laborers” was another. ‘What’s the nineteen?’” (The virus was Community leaders in Florida reacted identified in 2019, but the notion that to DeSantis’s remarks with anger, par- there were eighteen previous Covids ticularly since the Governor had not an- figures in certain conspiracy theories.) swered calls for protections for agricul- Most fantastically, Trump spoke of the tural workers. His rationales for pushing pandemic as if it were a thing of the past, ahead with the state’s reopening, which even as the number of new cases rose, had already been rushed, have been grow- last week, to horrific levels, particularly ing frantic. DeSantis had until recently in Texas, Florida, California, and Ari- persisted in arguing that the high num- zona. Last Friday alone, the U.S. saw bers are a statistical illusion produced by more than forty thousand new cases. more testing. Trump is still making that At a congressional hearing on Tues- claim. At his now infamous rally in Tulsa, day, Dr. Anthony Fauci, of the National he said that he’d told his team to cut Institutes of Health, said that trends this back on testing; he and a spokesperson summer will produce a “baseline” for de- disagree about whether that was a joke. termining how severe a second wave may In truth, while there has been an expan- be in the fall and winter, and whether sion in testing, it is not nearly enough the country can rely on containment to account for the recent spikes. People

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA JOÃO BY ILLUSTRATIONS measures or will have to resort to an- in Arizona, Florida, and Texas have been

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 15 waiting for hours at testing stations that peak eight hundred deaths were attributed stituents. Trump himself won’t change; cannot keep up with the demand; mean- to covid in a single day; one of the lessons he used his trip to Phoenix as an occa- while, the Administration has announced that emerged from that crucible is that sion to inspect a new piece of border that it will end federal funding for thir- people who might be saved die when wall, and, at the rally, he talked about its teen such sites across five states. hospitals are too crowded. (Another les- beauty and claimed that California was There are now more than five thou- son: wearing masks in public works.) secretly begging him to build more of sand new covid cases a day in Texas, There are similar indications that I.C.U.s it as, somehow, a way to stop the virus. and last week Governor Greg Abbott are at risk of reaching capacity in Arizona As he spoke, you could hear him trying announced a pause in that state’s rapid and Alabama, and soon may be in Flor- to jam the pandemic into the nativist, reopening in an attempt to “corral” the ida and the Carolinas, too. Roy Cooper, xenophobic rhetorical framework that virus, and ordered bars and restaurants the Democratic governor of North Car- helped him get elected in 2016. to limit service. But that effort is being olina, rejected Trump’s demand that the But politics means accountability, hampered by an executive order that he Republican National Convention, sched- too. Between now and November, pol- issued in April, preventing local authorities uled to take place in Charlotte, be held iticians in many states will need to de- from enforcing a mandate for individuals without social distancing; at DeSantis’s cide where their responsibility lies: in to use masks. Some hospitals in the state, invitation, Trump will now accept the heeding Trump, or in listening to the meanwhile, are nearing I.C.U. capacity. nomination in Jacksonville, Florida. desperate doctors who tell them that Adults are being admitted to Texas Chil- There is something frighteningly sad they are running out of hospital beds. dren’s Hospital, in Houston, to provide about the fact that many Republican More than a hundred and twenty thou- space for Covid patients in other facilities. leaders may stop seeing the pandemic sand people in America have died al- That is an ominous echo of the early through the lens of Trumpism only when ready, and the reckoning is far from over. situation in New York City, where at the the virus starts hitting more of their con- —Amy Davidson Sorkin

DEPT. OF PYROTECHNICS street to light streams of Roman candles, man in the Bulls cap said. This year, he THE BOOM which they topped off with five-hundred- sold in two days what would have nor- gram “cakes”: the largest firework that mally taken him two weeks. can be legally used without a federal ex- His fireworks aren’t cheap; the fanciest plosives permit. People watched from ones in his trunk go for two hundred their apartment buildings. One neighbor bucks. So most of his customers are leaned out his window and begged the adults—“people with money,” he said— group to stop; the fireworks were scaring rather than teen-agers. Nearly all of them ast week, in Crown Heights, Brook- his dog. “Fuck your dog!” one of the men are men. They tend to be in their late twen- Llyn, a thin man in a white T-shirt yelled back at him. “We will shoot these ties or thirties, and sometimes, if they’re and a wide-brimmed Chicago Bulls cap shits at your house!” Moments later, a cop buying fireworks before the sun has set, proudly popped the trunk of his Chevy car rolled up, and the group retreated. they bring their kids with them. That Malibu. Inside, there were Golden Wil- For the past two weeks in Brooklyn, night, the man gestured around at the lows, Chain Reactions, Parachute Battal- the sight—and deafening sound—of fire- neighborhood, which was coming off a ions, and Mini Artillery Shells—dozens works exploding has become as much a four-month lockdown. “They’re celebrat- of colorful boxes, one of them labelled fact of daily life as the Black Lives Mat- ing,” he said of the people setting off the “For Daytime Use!” This was what re- ter protests and the 7 P.M. cheer for es- fireworks. “It’s definitely about freedom.” mained of the twelve hundred dollars’ sential workers. Big fireworks sellers such There have been several injuries: a worth of fireworks that the man, who as Keystone are seeing increased demand; man was hospitalized after lighting a fire- asked not to be named, had purchased Kevin Shaub, the chain’s co-owner, said work that shot out the wrong end, and during a visit to Keystone Fireworks, in that when his stores, which had been last week, a three-year-old was burned Pennsylvania, and then sold, for more closed since mid-March, finally reopened, by one that came through his bedroom than double the price, around Brooklyn. a few weeks ago, customers came flood- window. Mayor Bill de Blasio has an- (Fireworks are illegal in New York State.) ing in. “People haven’t had any enter- nounced a “huge sting operation to go He takes calls for deliveries from regular tainment for a long time,” Shaub said. and get these illegal fireworks at the base.” customers, or parks on a busy street and “They’ve had to delay weddings, gradu- In response to recent calls about illegal does business, out of his car, with whoever ations, and birthdays.” A lot of these fire- fireworks in Flatbush, dozens of N.Y.P.D. stops by. “People have always done fire- works have ended up in New York City. officers showed up in riot gear. works,” he said, “but they’re going harder People bought troves from street vend- But, hours after the Mayor’s announce- than ever this year. They can’t wait to ers in early June, and then, instead of sav- ment, the man was back in Crown come outside.” ing them for the Fourth of July—as they Heights, selling his supply. Later, he A few blocks over, a group of young normally would—set them all off on stopped by to see his cousin, a middle- men, probably in their twenties, launched weekends, or on Juneteenth, or on a ran- aged woman who lives in the area. She a several-minutes-long blitz. They took dom Tuesday. And then they came back has been setting off fireworks, too, and she turns darting from the sidewalk into the to buy more. “The money’s good,” the had a different theory about why there

16 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 have been so many lately. “I think it’s knitwear that I wouldn’t normally have about the killing,” she said, referring to the courage to wear in real life,” he said. the recent death of George Floyd at the “And when I met Carl Hunter and Roy hands of Minneapolis cops. She considers Boulter”—the director and a produc- the fireworks to be another form of pro- er—“I liked the look of them, not least test against the police. “People are angry.” because they were both wearing very dis- On social media, theories of a psyop creet modernist brands.” He also liked have circulated: the police are setting off the script, by Frank Cottrell Boyce. “It and distributing fireworks, people argue, involved a certain sort of ironic delivery, in order to deprive protesters of sleep, or which is something I’m drawn to.” As to stoke tension and make law enforce- the film begins, his character, Alan, re- ment seem indispensable. A video has unites with his son, Peter (Sam Riley), gone viral of firefighters appearing to set from whom he became estranged after off fireworks in Crown Heights. (The the disappearance of his other son, Mi- F.D.N.Y. is investigating.) The man was chael, who ran away years before, mid- vaguely aware of these theories, but they Scrabble game. They’re looking for an- didn’t seem to carry a lot of weight with swers. As the plot unfolds, grudging him. “I hope not” was all he had to say British bonding occurs, and Alan seduces when asked if he thought police were a married retiree, Scrabble-hustles an Bill Nighy shooting off fireworks. “We don’t need opponent with words like “MUZJIKS,” any more drama around here.” and teaches his grandson to wear a suit. At fifty-three, Nighy became a house- 1—Anna Boots The film itself has a certain ironic deliv- hold name for his role in “Love Actually.” ery—a stylized, whimsical aesthetic, with He played Billy Mack, a joyfully disso- WELL-TURNED-OUT DEPT. a mood of comic melancholy. lute pop icon in an open-collared getup. HOUSEHOLD NAME In creating dialogue, Nighy said, Boyce Then he appeared in two “Pirates of the would sometimes “YouTube me, find out Caribbean” movies, as the dastardly Davy stuff I’d said in real life, and put it in the Jones, who has a cephalopod for a face. script”: a pro-Marmite riff from a red- “People say, ‘You’re that bloke—you’re the carpet interview; a definitive pronounce- squid man!’” he said. (He once visited his ment on suit-jacket buttoning. When friend Lauren Bacall for breakfast and buttoning a three-button jacket, Nighy inadvertently terrified her grandsons. n a recent Friday, the British actor explained, it’s sometimes for the top one, “Their mum went to the bedroom and OBill Nighy, answering a FaceTime always for the middle, and never for the said, ‘Boys, come out—Davy Jones is in the call in his “kitchen-cum-front-room, at bottom.“If you meet a man with the bot- kitchen!’ So they locked the door. Like, home, in England,” stood up to pause the tom button done up, call a cab. He’s not ‘Are you insane?’”) Yet widespread recogni- music he was listening to: a song by the currently functioning—you shouldn’t be tion has its limits. Last year, after present- twenty-one-year-old singer-songwriter breathing the same air.” ing an award at the BAFTAs, Nighy said, Rachel Chinouriri. “I found her in a Sha- “Sometimes Always Never” is set in “I walked in the darkness of the backstage, zam, in a shop,” he said. He’d added her Liverpool—the site of Nighy’s first pro- and there was Mary J. Blige. I went up to a playlist he’d made, which included fessional acting gig. He grew up in Surrey; to her and said, ‘You’re an inspiration to Alicia Keys, D’Angelo, and Mary J. Blige. as a struggling actor, he sold women’s me. I listen to your music every day. Thank “There aren’t that many people who make clothing at a stall in an old-time market. you.’ She just looked at me—no idea.” your heart go boom,” he said. “Mary J. (“I was opposite the egg man. It was the Why didn’t he mention “Pirates”? He Blige is one of them.” Nighy, who is sev- summer where all the girls wore cheese- laughed. “‘I’m the squid man, come on!’” enty, wore eyeglasses, a navy V-neck cloth, the long wraparound skirts. I put 1—Sarah Larson sweater—“I used to be a bit squeamish the skirts on in order to advertise, and about V-neck jumpers, but I’m much the egg man treated me with disdain. I DEPT. OF REN OVATI O NS more relaxed now; they have to be very used to sell a lot of cheesecloth.”) Then NEW VIEWS small and they have to be neat and they he was hired by the Everyman Theatre have to be navy blue”—and a white but- Company, in Liverpool, where he acted ton-down shirt. “I had nothing but blue alongside Julie Walters and Pete Pos- shirts, so I made a conscious decision to tlethwaite. “I went to Liverpool in nine- get out of that trap,” he said. “The look teen whatever the fuck”—1974—“and is—I suppose we’re going for a well- walked into what was, forty years later, turned-out librarian. Librarian chic.” described to me by an interviewer as ‘the hen Jacqueline Kennedy arrived Nighy plays a music-loving Mersey- forefront of British political theatre.’ I Wat the White House, in 1961, she side tailor in the movie “Sometimes Al- said, ‘Really? I thought it was us just bun- hired a French decorator, who helped ways Never,” just released in the U.S. “I dled into the back of a van, playing pris- her fill the place with European antiques got to work in progressive modernist ons and bookstores and pubs.’” and fine art. Many Americans were

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 17 perturbed. (Clement Conger, the famous spencespeaks account has made this they assumed that the idea would be a White House curator, reportedly thought conversation public. (It has also publi- non-starter. (A 2019 alumna who served that it looked “too Frenchified.”) There cized other racist incidents at the school, on the earlier committee recalled that was one addition that seemed patriotic; such as black and brown students being the discussion was always “framed in a Kennedy installed, in the Diplomatic mistaken for one another, and their par- way where the wallpaper wasn’t going to Reception Room, a nineteenth-century ents being mistaken for nannies.) In an be taken down, so we had to find a differ- panoramic wallpaper that depicted scenes early post, a current student recalled a ent way to solve the issue.”) Instead, they from American history: ships unloading heated classroom debate over the wall- asked that the school install another art at Boston Harbor, a stagecoach driving paper. “The only other black girl in the exhibition over the paper. under the Natural Bridge, military ca- class and myself had to single handedly Last week, they got a response. Spence dets forming a procession at West Point. fend off everyone telling us how to feel,” announced that the wallpaper would be But even the wallpaper was French—it she wrote, adding, “The abuse of my removed entirely. “Infused by the many was called “Les Vues d’Amérique du people is nothing I would ever want to stories of how this wallpaper continues Nord” and was designed for Zuber et see on the walls of my school.” In an- to isolate, separate and deny belonging Cie, by an artist named Jean-Julien Deltil, other post, a former school employee at Spence for our Black and Brown com- who had likely never visited America. referred to the wallpaper as “the Con- munity members, The Board of Trust- “Vues” still hangs in the White House, federate statue of Spence.” ees has decided to remove the wallpaper although it now shares a room with a Robert Emlen, a former curator for permanently,” the school wrote in a state- rug, designed by the current First Lady, Brown University, which has a version of ment. The alumna who served on the Melania Trump, that displays the offi- “Vues” hanging in a building on its own earlier committee was shocked. “The cial flower of each state. It can also be campus, described the wallpaper’s depic- pressure finally got to them,” she said. found at upscale places such as the Acorn tions of black wealth and interracial min- Another alumna, who graduated in Club, in Philadelphia, and the Green- gling as a “rose-colored view of life in 2016, said, “We have other things we brier resort, in West Virginia. Jacksonian America,” and a product of a want. This is motivating me to push for Since 1929, “Vues” has also covered time when the French tended to roman- those things. Because it’s attainable. All some of the walls on the seventh floor of ticize the country. (It was the era of Alexis things can happen with time.” the Spence School, an all-girls K-12 in- de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.”) 1—Rumaan Alam stitution on the Upper East Side. Many According to Emlen, Deltil’s portrayal students (including Gwyneth Paltrow, of African-Americans might be wrong, GOLDENDALE POSTCARD Kerry Washington, and Jackie Kennedy’s but “gives no suggestion of malice.” How- PROPER AIR cousin Edith Beale) and faculty (includ- ever, a young black woman who graduated ing Soon-Yi Previn, who was once a from Spence in 2019 said that the work student teacher there) have passed the is a dangerous revision of history—one painted scenes on their way to class. that reinforces the bad habits of her white Spence takes great pride in “Vues,” which peers. “Having that false history portrayed is printed with centuries-old hand-carved perpetuates what they want to believe,” blocks that have been declared monu- she said the other day. “They want to be- aneece Smith is an agent at Klickitat ments historiques in France. “When stu- lieve that, because we’re here with them, JValley Realty, in Goldendale, Wash- dents would give tours to prospective par- racism has disappeared, and that we don’t ington, about three hours southeast of ents, they were always told to highlight struggle as much. But we do.” the six-block strip, in Seattle, that pro- the fact that we had this wallpaper,” a re- Students at Brown recently called for testers have called the Capitol Hill Au- cent alumna recalled. But, about two the removal of “Vues” from their cam- tonomous Zone. According to Smith’s weeks ago, an Instagram account called pus, and some faculty responded by in- Web site, she sells “property to retreat to @blackspencespeaks highlighted the wall- stalling plastic screens over the panels from the metropolitan cities like Port- paper in a different way, citing it as an depicting black and brown figures; pass- land, Vancouver, Seattle, Tri-cities and example of systemic racism at the school. ersby are invited to leave notes comment- other areas in Washington and Oregon.” The wallpaper’s Boston Harbor scene ing on the images. When Spence con- She refers to this as “doomsday-prepper includes a multiracial crowd hanging out vened a committee, in 2018, to discuss land.” Business is always good for Smith on the docks; its depiction of the Natural what to do with its “Vues,” it landed on in times of calamity. When the pandemic Bridge shows indigenous people danc- a similar solution, and, for a period, the arrived (the first confirmed case of COVID ing for an audience of black and white wallpaper was covered by faculty- and in the U.S. was in Washington State, in men and women who are dressed in finery. staff-made art projects. Several months January), she was getting several inqui- The paper is historic, but not historically later, those projects were taken down. ries a day. Then “police lost control of accurate. The alumnae who run the On June 13th, the @blackspence- the cities,” she said, referring to the pro- @blackspencespeaks account believe that speaks account published a list of de- tests in response to the killings of un- it also “glorifies the trans-Atlantic slave mands for the school’s leadership, in armed black people, and now “interest trade and abuse of Indigenous peoples.” order to address racism at the institu- is off the charts.” Nearly all her custom- “Vues” has long been a subject of in- tion. The group members did not ask ers mention the coronavirus and civil un- ternal discussion at Spence. The @black- for the removal of the wallpaper, because rest. She recently finalized a deal: twenty

18 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 SKETCHPAD BY JASON ADAM KATZENSTEIN PHASE II

acres for fifty-seven thousand dollars. “It fensive homestead.” He wanted neigh- She drove down Highway 142, past doesn’t matter who you talk to,” she said, bors to be “at least a mile away.” Also, if hills peppered with volcanic rock, and noting that lawyers, doctors, a former possible, owner financing. ranches where roping steers roamed. White House official, and a Google em- Smith continued to rifle through her (“No balls, and short horns,” Smith said, ployee had all contacted her. “Even peo- supplies. “A bunch of chains,” she said. waving at them.) She turned onto a dead- ple who won’t wear a mask, who think “Oils, tow straps for anchoring loads, a end road, passing a rival agent’s sign. the government is trying to take your case of water.” She opened up her truck’s “That guy is eightysomething,” she said, rights away.” In the end, she said, “they’ll center console. “Neosporin. A few Old “and I guarantee he’d hump a hill faster go”—to a secluded cabin, a bunker, or Timers, for gutting,” she said, remov- than you.” She reached a few dozen acres another hideout of their choice. ing a knife that had “a little remnant on of land surrounded by evergreens, with The other day, Smith was preparing it from something.” There was also jerky, the hulking white mass of Mt. Adams to show a visitor some land that was toothpaste, C.B.D. oil, binoculars, dip, in the distance. “People have been buy- available for purchase. “Normally, there’s a solar-powered charger, and ammo for ing here recently. They have ‘well witch- a chainsaw back here,” she said, leaning her sidearm. “Smith & Wesson .380 with ers’ with welding rods come and find over the bed of her Ford F-150. She was the laser sight,” she said, unholstering water underground. They get power with taking inventory of her truck before head- it. “I’ve heard that ninety-two per cent wind or sun or both.” She pointed to a ing to the property, which was fifteen of assailants walk away when you put small, prefab off-grid home: “This is the miles away from her already remote realty the laser on them.” Equally important average prepper. Most aren’t in cabins or office. Smith, who is forty-three and has was her Garmin Rino 650 radio. “It has bunkers. They’ve got full pantries, though, hair down to her waist, wore an ivory a chip in it that shows you the land like you wouldn’t believe—buckets of choker and a camo-print shirt. Before parcels and who owns them,” she said. powdered milk and rice, deer they’ve had she became a real-estate agent, in 2006, “Walkie-talkie capabilities, too. If you’re canned up for years. They’ve got their she was a horse dealer. (“I moved to Gol- a prepper, you get one.” (She has her cows going, their chickens, their jerky, dendale because I’d had enough of the own bug-out spot: a pine cabin, an hour their go bags.” Back to the truck. She crooked horse industry.”) What kinds northeast, that sits on sixty acres.) Her wanted to get home before dark. When of things do her customers want? She visitor pointed out one item that seemed she cranked the engine, she noticed that opened an e-mail from a new client, who to be missing. “I don’t do the face mask,” her gas tank was nearly empty. was planning a “community-building de- Smith replied. “You need proper air.” —Charles Bethea

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 19 borhood can buy detergent and toys AMERICAN CHRONICLES and pet food and underwear and motor oil and flashlights and strollers and mops and drain cleaner and glassware and THE DOLLAR-STORE DEATHS wind chimes and rakes and shoes and balloons and bath towels and condoms Discount chains are thriving. But what do they do to poor communities? and winter coats. The stores have some nonperish- BY ALEC MacGILLIS able and frozen foods, too, for people who can’t travel to the few discount grocery stores left in the area. Rudi- mentary provisions like these allowed the stores to remain open as “essential” businesses during the coronavirus shut- downs. “These stores are our little Wal- marts, our little Targets,” Darryl Gray, a local minister and civil-rights activ- ist, told me. “It’s the stuff you won’t get at a grocery store, that you get at a Walmart—but we don’t have one.” Three years ago, Jolanda Woods’s hus- band, Robert Woods, who was forty-two, began working at a Dollar General on Grand Boulevard, across from an aban- doned grocery store. He and Jolanda had separated, but they stayed in touch over the years as Robert overcame a crack- cocaine addiction, got a job at the Sal- vation Army, was ordained as a minis- ter, and became an informal counsellor to other men battling addiction. Dollar General paid a bit more than the Salva- tion Army, but he expressed anxiety about security problems at the store. Shoplift- ing was common, and occasionally there were even armed robberies. The store lacked a security guard, and it typically Since 2012, nearly fifty people have been killed at the two biggest chains. had only a couple of clerks on hand. On November 1, 2018, Woods went hen Jolanda Woods was grow- dropped from eight hundred and fifty to work on his day off, to fill in for an Wing up in North St. Louis, in the thousand, in the nineteen-fifties, to a absent co-worker. Footage from a se- nineteen-seventies and early eighties, little more than three hundred thou- curity camera shows a man entering she and her friends would take the bus sand, owing to suburban flight and dein- the store just after 1 p.m., wearing a blue to the stores downtown, on Fourteenth dustrialization, its downtown has with- sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over Street, or on Cherokee Street, on the ered. The River Roads Mall closed in a red cap, and holding a silver gun. south side, or out to the River Roads 1995. North St. Louis is a devastated He fired down the center aisle, hitting Mall, in the inner suburb of Jennings. expanse of vacant lots and crumbling Woods in the back of the head. Then “This was a very merchant city,” Woods, late-nineteenth-century brick buildings, he pointed the gun at the cash register, who is fifty-four, told me. There were their disrepair all the more dramatic before seeming to panic. He ran out plenty of places to shop in her neigh- for the opulence of their design. “This of the store empty-handed. An ambu- borhood, too, even as North St. Louis, neighborhood has gone down,” Woods lance arrived, but Woods was no lon- a mostly black and working-class part said. “Oh, my God, these houses.” ger breathing. After his body was re- of town, fell into economic decline. A new form of retail has moved into moved, Dollar General remained open There was Perlmutter’s department the void. The discount chains Family for several hours, before closing amid store, where women bought pantyhose Dollar and Dollar General now have protests from local residents. in bulk, Payless shoes, True Value hard- nearly forty stores in St. Louis and its Woods’s murder was one of three ho- ware, and Schnucks grocery store. immediate suburbs, about fifteen of micides in six months at the two dis- Almost all these stores have disap- them in North St. Louis. This is where count chains in the St. Louis area. On peared. As St. Louis’s population has the people who remain in the neigh- June 13th, a man and a woman started

20 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDRES GONZALEZ arguing in a car in the parking lot of a stores, which tend to be thinly staffed merchandise that he had trouble find­ Family Dollar on West Florissant Av­ and exist in a state of physical disarray. ing stores to take it, so he and his father enue, just outside the city line; he shot In the nineteen­seventies, criminologists started a chain of stores in partnership her once in the head, killing her. Less such as Lawrence Cohen and Marcus with local managers. At first, Cal, Sr., than a month after Woods’s death, a Felson argued that rising crime could later said, the plan was “selling the good sixty­ five­year­old woman was shop­ be partly explained by changes in the stuff to the rich folks, but we were late ping at the Family Dollar on St. Charles social environment which lowered the getting into retailing.” He concluded, Rock Road when a seemingly mentally risk of getting caught. That theory gained “We had to sell the cheap stuff to the ill thirty­ four­year­old woman grabbed increasing acceptance in the decades that poor folks.” Cal, Sr., had high standards: steak knives from a shelf in the store and followed. “The likelihood of a crime oc­ he called all his store managers on Sat­ stabbed her to death. curring depends on three elements: a urday nights, and made frequent rounds The Gun Violence Archive, a Web motivated offender, a vulnerable victim, in person. “He wanted a store to be clean site that uses local news reports and and the absence of a capable guardian,” and well displayed,” Cal, Jr., wrote. He law­enforcement sources to tally crimes the sociologist Patrick Sharkey wrote, started working for the company when involving firearms, lists more than two in “Uneasy Peace,” from 2018. he was about thirteen, sweeping the hundred violent incidents involving guns Another way of putting this is that warehouse for twenty­five cents an hour. at Family Dollar or Dollar General stores crime is not inevitable. Robberies and By 1955, the Turners had three dozen since the start of 2017, nearly fifty of which killings that have taken place at dollar­ stores across Kentucky and Tennessee. resulted in deaths. The incidents include store chains would not have neces­ Cal, Sr., noticed that crowds of shop­ carjackings in the parking lot, drug deals sarily happened elsewhere. “The idea pers came to department stores in larger gone bad, and altercations inside stores. that crime is sort of a Whack­a­Mole cities when they held “dollar days,” sell­ But a large number involve armed rob­ game, that if you just press here it’ll ing off excess merchandise cheaply. On beries in which workers or customers move over here” is wrong, Richard Ros­ June 1st of that year, the company con­ have been shot. Since the beginning of enfeld, a criminologist at the University verted a store in Springfield, Kentucky, 2017, employees have been wounded in of Missouri­St. Louis, told me. Mak­ into one called Dollar General. The store shootings or pistol­whippings in at least ing it harder to commit a crime doesn’t was a sensation, as was a second one, in thirty­one robberies; in at least seven just push crime elsewhere; it reduces it. Memphis, which in ten months did more other incidents, employees have been “Crime is opportunistic,” he said. “If than a million dollars in sales. Soon, all killed. The violence has not let up in re­ there’s no opportunity, there’s no crime.” J. L. Turner and Son stores were renamed cent months, when requirements for cus­ Dollar General, with a new slogan above tomers to wear masks have made it harder ames Luther Turner left school in the window: “Every Day Is Dollar Day.” for clerks to detect shoppers who are J1902, when he was eleven. His father Signs outside read “Nothing Over $1.” bent on robbery. In early May, a worker had died in a wrestling accident, and At first, the Turners didn’t have to at a Family Dollar in Flint, Michigan, Turner had to run his family’s farm, in radically change their business model. was fatally shot after refusing entry to a Macon County, Tennessee. He was suc­ They bought inventory, including ir­ customer without a mask. cessful and entrepreneurial, and when regular items and closeouts, very cheap, The number of incidents can be ex­ he was twenty­four other farmers asked and sold it for a little more. When a plained in part by the stores’ ubiquity: him to manage the local co­op; he started friend’s textile company had an excess there are now more than sixteen thou­ a bridle shop behind the store. Eventu­ of pink corduroy, Cal, Sr., had the friend sand Dollar Generals and nearly eight ally, he took a job working for a Nash­ make men’s pants, which he sold for thousand Family Dollars in the United ville drygoods wholesaler, hawking sam­ a dollar a pair. He bought a truckload States, a fifty­per­cent increase in the ples across southern Kentucky and of wet socks in Nashville and had work­ past decade. (By comparison, Walmart middle Tennessee. In 1929, at the onset ers sort and hang them around the has about forty­seven hundred stores of the Depression, he opened a store in Scottsville warehouse. When bell­ in the U.S.) The stores are often in high­ Scottsville, a small town in Kentucky. bottoms went out of fashion, he turned crime neighborhoods, where there sim­ He bought up failed retailers’ stock, which them into cutoff shorts. Once, at the ply aren’t many other businesses for he either liquidated, sold to other store end of the Christmas season, he bought criminals to target. Routine gun vio­ owners, or took back to his own shop, thirty­five thousand fruitcakes; he sold lence has fallen sharply in prosperous Turner’s Bargain Store. “He also knew them all a year later. cities around the country, but it has re­ that where there was failure, there was Cal, Sr., sought out cheap real estate. mained stubbornly high in many of the opportunity,” his grandson Cal Turner, “We don’t have to have great locations,” cities and towns where these stores pre­ Jr., wrote in a memoir, called “My Fa­ he said. “With our merchandise and our dominate. The glowing signs of the dis­ ther’s Business,” published in 2018. prices, we just need some kind of build­ count chains have become indicators of In 1939, James Luther Turner’s only ing around us.” And he paid poorly: neglect, markers of a geography of the child, Hurley Calister Turner, known as wages were to be kept at a maximum places that the country has written off. Cal, Sr., bought a building in Scottsville of five per cent of a store’s gross sales, But these factors are not sufficient to to serve as the warehouse for a new which, Cal, Jr., acknowledged, “placed explain the trend. The chains’ owners wholesale business, J. L. Turner and Son. us at the bottom of a low­paying in­ have done little to maintain order in the Soon, he was buying so much discount dustry.” A store typically had only two

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 21 employees—and, if business was slow, the C.E.O. of Dollar General, told the me. For robbers, he added, “it’s the only it got by with just one at a time. When Wall Street Journal in 2017, “The econ- place to get cash.” Donald did much of a bookkeeper invited two colleagues to omy is continuing to create more of our his shopping at the stores, and each week lunch with a union organizer, Cal, Sr., core customer.” he drove his mother to them to do her had her fired. After the Teamsters tried shopping as well. One day in Dayton, to organize the company’s truck drivers, ecause dollar stores are heavily con- needing a winter hat, I stopped by a Dol- the company outsourced its transpor- Bcentrated in poor towns and neigh- lar General at West Third Street and tation to a contractor and hired a slew borhoods, many middle- and upper- James H. McGee Boulevard, where Don- of armed guards to escort the new driv- middle-class consumers are unaware of ald and his mother were making their ers past picketers. their ubiquity—or of the frequency of way down an aisle. Goods spilled off the Sales nearly doubled between 1963 armed robberies and shootings. In 2017, shelves, and carts were piled high with and 1968, and the Turners took the chain the manager of a Dollar General in Bal- boxes waiting to be opened and stacked, public. By 1972, they had five hundred timore, where I live, was shot and killed giving the store an air of neglect. stores, and, a few years later, around the as he was closing up. But I discovered Shortly before Donald and I first time that Cal, Sr., passed the reins to the pervasiveness of the problem while met, he had been the victim of an armed Cal, Jr., they started buying up other reporting elsewhere. In Dayton, Ohio, I robbery at another west-side Dollar chains, also in small towns, extending got to know Jimmy Donald, who was General. It was homecoming weekend the company far from its upland-South working for a heating and air-condition- at Central State University, the histor- base. A competing chain, Family Dol- ing contractor while trying to start an ically black college near Dayton, and lar, started by Leon Levine in Charlotte organization to help ex-felons and oth- his mother needed some barbecue sauce. in 1959, focussed mostly on low-income ers with troubled backgrounds, a cate- Donald was standing in line to pay when urban areas. By 1974, Levine had two gory that included himself. Donald, who two young men, probably in their late hundred stores; he took his company is thirty-eight, served in the Marines in teens, came in and pointed a gun at the public five years later. Iraq. He then spent four years in prison, cashier. Donald concluded that they As the two chains have grown, ex- after being involved in the beating death were amateurs—they weren’t wearing panding to offer many goods for more of a man outside a Michigan bar, in 2004. masks, and when the one with the gun than a dollar, the urban-rural distinc- He lived on the west side of Dayton, pulled the slide back, not realizing that tion between them has diminished. which is predominantly black; as the area a round was already chambered, the bul- Today, it is not uncommon to find both has lost several grocery stores, the dollar- let popped out. They ordered Donald stores on the same small-town main store chains have proliferated. and two women in line to get on the street, or a few blocks apart in a dis- This correlation is not a coincidence, floor, then took the money that he had tressed urban neighborhood. (Dollar according to a 2018 research brief by just cashed from his paycheck: seven Tree, which bought Family Dollar in the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, hundred dollars. 2015 and has maintained both brands, which advocates for small businesses. Donald described this event in an keeps prices closer to a dollar with a The stores undercut traditional grocery undramatic and routine manner. And more limited selection—wrapping paper, stores by having few employees, often for good reason: armed robberies are a party supplies—sold to a more middle- only three per store, and paying them regular occurrence at the Dayton stores. class clientele. Unlike Dollar General In 2017, the year he was held up, there and Family Dollar, Dollar Tree’s stores were thirty-two armed robberies at eigh- tend to be in suburban locations.) As teen Dollar Generals and Family Dol- Amazon and its e-commerce rivals have lars in Dayton. (This count didn’t in- devastated brick-and-mortar shopping, clude the store where he was robbed, the two chains represent just about the which sits just beyond the city line.) only branch of physical retail that is still Last year, there were two dozen. The growing in America. Even Walmart, violence has included more than rob- often viewed as the bane of small-town beries, too. Last July, a man and a woman retailers, has been consolidating. Last were killed outside a west-side Family year, it closed about twenty stores, leav- little. “While dollar stores sometimes Dollar in a murder-suicide; in Septem- ing some communities even more de- fill a need in cash-strapped communi- ber, a man was shot during a drug deal pendent on the two chains. In 2019, ties, growing evidence suggests these outside the Dollar General where I had discount chains accounted for about stores are not merely a byproduct of run into Donald and his mother. half of all new retail-store openings. economic distress,” the brief reported. All told, the Dayton police receive Dollar General alone opened nearly a “They’re a cause of it.” an average of nearly a thousand calls thousand stores. There are now more than a dozen for service to the stores each year. There The chains’ executives are candid Family Dollars and Dollar Generals on have been more calls to just nine of the about what is driving their growth: wid- Dayton’s west side. “In a lot of these areas, city’s Family Dollars than there have ening income inequality and the de- they’re the only stores around,” B. J. been to one of Dayton’s two major hos- cline of many city neighborhoods and Bethel, who has reported on the chains pitals, Grandview Medical Center, where entire swaths of the country. Todd Vasos, for WDTN, the local NBC affiliate, told police are often summoned for inter-

22 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 views with victims of violent crimes, drug overdoses, and other problems. The Dayton Police Department prides itself on being a modern, data- driven force, embracing such initiatives as “harm reduction” measures to com- bat the opioid epidemic. Several years ago, noticing the rise in calls to the dol- lar stores, the department provided train- ing sessions for Family Dollar manag- ers in how to practice what police call “crime prevention through environmen- tal design.” Officers showed them how less trash outside and less clutter inside and fewer big ads in the windows, which block the view of responding police officers, would make their stores safer. The store managers were told to in- struct cashiers to make frequent trans- fers of cash from the register to the safe. (Until 2004, Dollar General did not ac- cept credit cards, and the stores still deal heavily in cash.) But Jason Hall, the commander of the city’s Violent Crime Bureau, told me that the effect of the training had dissi- pated, partly because the stores, which pay a starting wage of about nine or ten “I thought we agreed—no dressing up for video chats.” dollars an hour in states without higher minimum-wage thresholds, have such high turnover. “It was supposed to be •• passed down to the rest of the employ- ees, but it didn’t trickle down,” he said. of its Dayton-area stores. In 2017, the were the ones I was most concerned “The rank and file did not reap the benefit city’s law department began seeking to about,” Gehres said. of that training.” Store managers have block requests by Family Dollar to ob- When I met with Gehres and Hall, resisted pleas to reduce trash or loiter- tain licenses for seven of its stores, in- they told me they were aware that the ing outside their stores, saying that their cluding three on the west side. The city stores filled a retail void for many res- responsibility is limited to the stores had an easier time enlisting community idents of Dayton, which has lost nearly themselves. And they are often slow about testimony against alcohol-license ap- half its residents since 1960. But they getting police the feed from store cam- plications for stores on the north and also cited research suggesting that, in eras after robberies, Hall said. The cam- east sides of town, which are less heav- some places, the dollar stores have ex- eras are typically of such low quality and ily African-American. City officials at- acerbated the problem. “They are filling so poorly placed that their records are of tributed this imbalance in part to a gen- a food desert,” Gehres said. “And they limited use anyway. Nan Whaley, the eral sense of resignation and powerless- are helping cause a food desert.” mayor of Dayton, told me that manag- ness on the west side. ers sometimes discourage employees from When the state’s Division of Liquor ven the most image-conscious pub- testifying in court against robbers, be- Control approved all but one Family Elic corporations tend to acknowl- cause they’re needed to staff the stores. Dollar request, Martin Gehres, the as- edge, in their required disclosures to in- (A spokesperson for Dollar General said sistant city attorney, drove a fifteen-pas- vestors and in their quarterly calls with that she was unaware of this practice.) senger van full of north- and east-side market analysts, the challenges facing “What is that? They’re not even respect- residents to appeals hearings in Colum- them. So it was startling to find no men- ing the justice system,” Whaley said. bus. The residents, who included the tion of the prevalence of crime and vi- “They don’t even care if they’re being owner of a bakery across from a Fam- olence in recent filings for either Dol- held up at gunpoint.” ily Dollar and the manager of an adja- lar General or Family Dollar and Dollar Recently, Dayton has cited the crime cent library branch, won reversals of the Tree. Company executives make occa- and violence that the stores attract as a approval for that store and for another sional reference to “shrink,” the indus- reason to challenge their requests to sell on the north side. But the alcohol sales try euphemism for stock lost mainly to alcohol. Several years ago, Dollar Gen- went ahead on the west side, where crime shoplifting or employee theft. But the eral obtained alcohol licenses for many is worse. “The stores they got them at steady stream of violence at the stores,

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 23 ensure the integrity of our security sys- tems and procedures, we do not pub- licly share specific details.” None of the ten dollar stores that I visited in Day- ton had a security guard present. In li- quor-board testimony, the Family Dol- lar manager for the region stretching across Interstate 90 from Dayton to St. Louis said that the company deployed security guards at only a couple of stores in his region, in St. Louis and Cincinnati. Guiler said that the stores coöperated fully with local police departments, and had in some places opened tip lines with rewards for information leading to ar- rests. He told me that the company re- cently hired the security firm ADT to upgrade the stores’ camera systems. Asked about the stores’ low staffing levels, Guiler said, “We are a small-box retailer. Staffing levels can, and do, vary by day, by hour and based on store sales volumes.” A spokesperson for Dollar General said, “In keeping with our mission of Serving Others, we are proud to pro- vide a convenient, affordable retail op- tion to customers and communities that other retailers choose not to serve.”

hen Jolanda Woods heard about “Did you shake it first to see if it’s any good?” WRobert’s murder, she returned to St. Louis from Philadelphia, where she had been working at a nonprofit, to or- •• ganize his funeral. In an interview with KMOV, the local CBS affiliate, she much of it directed against employees, growth and increase value for our share- faulted Dollar General for leaving stores was omitted. holders,” Gary Philbin, the company’s understaffed and for allowing stock to Dollar General emphasized its efforts C.E.O., said. pile up near the door, making it harder to keep costs down. In its disclosures In the past five years, the share price for workers and customers to escape for the third quarter of 2019, Dollar of Dollar General has nearly tripled, robberies. “That’s not enough staff to General lamented the rise in nation- outpacing the broader stock market by secure your store with no security,” she wide hourly wages, and said that it was some eighty per cent and vastly outper- said. “You can’t expect them to watch aiming to shift to self-checkout in many forming traditional grocery stores and the aisles, work the cash registers, watch stores. The company hopes not to have retailers such as Kroger and Macy’s. In the thieves and stop the thieves.” to increase security at stores, since its 2018, Vasos, Dollar General’s C.E.O., In February, I went to St. Louis and “financial condition could be affected received more than ten million dollars visited the Dollar General where Rob- adversely” by doing so. “Our ability to in total compensation, nearly eight hun- ert was killed. Inside the entrance was pass along labor costs to our customers dred times the median pay for workers just the sort of barrier that Jolanda had is constrained by our everyday low price at the company. Philbin, at Dollar Tree, described: a double-wide column of sev- model,” Dollar General concluded, “and was paid about the same amount. eral dozen “totes,” or large plastic crates, we may not be able to offset such in- Asked about the hundreds of inci- holding a jumble of goods on clearance. creased costs elsewhere in our business.” dents of violent crime at their stores, There were cable protectors and scented Similarly, Dollar Tree executives told the companies said that they took se- oils and chicken-jerky curls and baby analysts in a quarterly call in March curity concerns seriously, but they did pacifiers and “Frozen”-themed Ziploc that they were pushing “productivity not elaborate on preventive measures at bags and party napkins and elastic wrist initiatives” in stores, which would help the stores. Both companies declined to supports and charcoal foot scrub and get more from fewer workers. “We are say how many had armed security. Randy romance novels. In the shampoo aisle, well positioned in the most attractive Guiler, a Family Dollar spokesman, said, a manager was telling an employee to sector of retail to deliver continued in written responses to questions, “To mark down certain goods with a price

24 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 gun. “I want to sell this because this is pose, but over time she saw how the believing that the stores’ concentration what creates totes in the back room, and chains’ stores in urban neighborhoods dissuaded traditional grocers from mov- I hate totes in the back room,” he said. contrasted with the ones in rural areas. ing in, were among the cities that passed “So get your gun.” Residents often sent her photos of dan- legislation requiring new chain dollar The next morning, I went to see gerously cluttered aisles, and she asked stores to be at least a mile apart, unless Jolanda at her new house, in an inner fire marshals to issue warnings. “The they held a minimum square footage of suburb just north of the city. She called more and more ubiquitous they’ve got- fresh food. Whaley and Gehres told me up her friend Winter and put her on ten, they’ve gotten less and less caring,” that Dayton had considered taking this speakerphone. Winter knew a lot about she said. “I came to see them as glo- step but decided that it would be of lit- crime that had occurred at that Dol- rified check-cashing and payday lend- tle more than symbolic value, since the lar General in the years when Jolanda ers, for the way they prey off the poor city’s immediate challenge was contend- had been living in Philadelphia. There but don’t really care about the poor.” ing with problems at the stores it al- was the time some men loaded up a In January, 2019, John Cranley, the ready had. large trash can with stolen goods at the mayor of Cincinnati, wrote a letter about store’s back door and then just hauled his city’s struggles with the stores to the ventually, I made it to the Dollar it out. There was the time a manager C.E.O. of Dollar Tree, which led to a EGeneral on North Gettysburg, she knew became so frustrated by the meeting at Cincinnati’s City Hall with where Jimmy Donald had seen Dave crime that he asked a friend from East Cranley, Whaley, the cities’ police chiefs, Dukes, the cashier with the gun on his St. Louis to serve as de-facto security. and some company executives. The ex- hip. But he was no longer there. After the friend got in an altercation ecutives started giving a PowerPoint On October 9, 2019, Roosevelt Rap- with a suspected thief, the company presentation about Dollar Tree, but the pley, a twenty-three-year-old man who reprimanded them, which led both to mayors cut them off, and threatened to police said had been involved in several quit. “When they quit, it was all on file lawsuits against the company. The dollar-store robberies, came into the again,” Winter said. executives promised to work on “good store carrying a gun. Dukes, who is The police say that Robert Woods’s neighbor” agreements with the cities twenty-eight, had been employed at the killing remains unsolved. Jolanda had instead, laying out terms for better co- store for a year and a half, after years of received a workers’-compensation pay- öperation. (Asked for an update this working in construction. He had been ment on Robert’s behalf, but she was spring, Gehres, Dayton’s assistant city promoted to assistant manager and, he contemplating organizing a class-ac- attorney, wrote in an e-mail, “Family said, had repeatedly asked his supervi- tion lawsuit on behalf of family mem- Dollar and the City are ironing out the sors for a security guard at the store, to bers of other victims of violence at Dol- terms. Some language concerns a litter no avail. He had a concealed-carry per- lar Generals. “You have a service and a abatement program and environmen- mit for the gun, and, in any case, Ohio product that’s needed in a community,” tal improvements to mitigate some of allowed open carry without a permit. she said. “Well, you have to be part of our concerns.”) The store manager knew about the gun the community to make that work. And Some cities have started to take more and had not prevented him from car- being part of it means ‘I’m going to se- dramatic measures. In 2018 and 2019, rying it. cure you while you’re here. I’m going to Tulsa, New Orleans, and Birmingham, When Rappley drew his gun and have somebody on my lot to make sure you get to your cars. I’m going to se- cure it.’ These stores are throughout our community, but they have no interest in the community. They’re not giving nothing back. They give nothing back.”

ast October, Jimmy Donald was in Lline with a friend at a Dollar Gen- eral on the west side of Dayton, at 2228 North Gettysburg, a short drive from the one where he took his mother to shop and the one where he had been robbed. He was startled to see that the cashier was carrying a pistol on his hip. The cashier, Dave Dukes, said that he had been held up recently and wanted to be ready in case it happened again. Frustration was rising at City Hall, too. When Mayor Whaley entered city government, in 2005, she viewed the dollar chains as serving a useful pur- “We have to record this, or no one’s going to believe us.” threatened him, Dukes shot him dead. three employees on shift, worried that ily Dollar, she rushed to the store. Even Dukes then called 911. “I just had some- the robber would come back for more from a distance, Ealy recognized him body try to attempt and rob me over here money. So Goldsmith got his own gun by his sneakers. Carolyn Noble got to at Dollar General on Gettysburg,” he from his car and slipped it under his the store moments later. “That’s not my said. “Came in with a firearm, threatened waistband. The police arrived, as did baby, is it?” she asked, before collapsing to take money out the drawer, pointed a the Dollar General district manager. to the pavement. gun at me and my staff members. . . . He When they played back the camera I went to see Noble and Ealy at Ealy’s pointed a gun at me. I had a firearm on footage to see the robbery, they also saw house, a small bungalow in University me. I pulled my firearm, and I shot him Goldsmith getting his gun. The follow- City, an inner suburb just west of St. in self-defense.” (Dukes was not charged.) ing day, the store manager told Gold- Louis. The blinds were drawn, a large The next day, Dollar General told smith that the company had told her TV was on, and children and teen-agers Dukes not to return to work, accord- to fire him for having violated the com- were coming and going from the house. ing to Dukes’s lawyer, Erik Blaine. “This pany handbook’s rule against bringing It had been four months since Pear- is a company that decided to place their a gun to work. Dollar General declined son’s murder—the police had not made stores in certain areas and absolutely to comment on the firing. any arrests—and Noble said that she fought requests for security, and then, Goldsmith had never seen the hand- had been too grief-stricken to go back when someone does defend themselves book. “It’s not right for me to lose my to work. “I’m just starting to come out,” and their co-workers, they’re thrown job all because I didn’t want to die in she said. out the next day,” Blaine told me. “For the store,” he told me the next day. She began by talking about the air- a company that puts profits so far over conditioners, and kept coming back to people to put their store employees at bout six months after Robert them in the hour that followed. Why risk of life and death, it’s just uncon- AWoods’s murder, Javon Pearson did the stores go to such lengths to lock scionable.” Dollar General declined to took a job at the Family Dollar on Dr. down the air-conditioning units that answer questions about the case. “When Martin Luther King Drive in St. Louis, cool their buildings but do so little to employee actions are part of police in- a mile and a half from the Dollar Gen- secure the workers and shoppers inside? vestigations, we thoroughly review mat- eral where Woods was killed. Pearson, The disregard had continued after ters and take appropriate action, as nec- who was thirty-one, had worked at Wen- her son’s death, she said. Save A Lot essary,” the company said. dy’s for seven years, but his prospects had sent food and sodas to the family, In November, just a few weeks after for promotion conflicted with his child- with condolences. Even Wendy’s, where Rappley’s death, someone robbed the care schedule; he had three children, he no longer worked, had offered to Dollar General on nearby Salem Avenue, ages ten, six, and three, whose custody help, and several area managers had where Jimmy Donald had been robbed he shared. So he switched to Family come to the funeral. But Family Dol- in 2017. The robber wore a surgical mask Dollar, while working a second job at lar management had not contacted her, and fired a gun before leaving. Save A Lot, one of the few grocery stores and had discouraged employees from Soon afterward, Edwin Goldsmith, left in North St. Louis. He worked mid- attending the funeral, she said. (Family who is thirty-two, took a job there. The night to 6 a.m. stocking shelves at Save Dollar declined to comment.) only security training he received was A Lot, then 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Family After the funeral, she said, several a twelve-minute video. Cashiers were Dollar, getting home in time to see his other family members had asked why instructed to give up the cash in the kids, often with some treats from Fam- her son had worked at the Family Dol- drawer if threatened, to include a dye ily Dollar in hand, and to rest for a few lar, given the level of crime there. This pack to make it easier to trace the money, hours before returning to Save A Lot. bothered Noble. The store was close to and to use a red phone behind the reg- “We don’t sleep,” his mother, Carolyn their home, which made it convenient, ister to call a security company that Noble, said. She cared for Pearson’s chil- considering all the rushing between jobs Dollar General uses. Goldsmith’s su- dren when she wasn’t working as a med- and child care. “Why can’t I work in my pervisors ignored his request for secu- ical assistant at a mental-health facility. neighborhood?” she said. “Why can’t rity guards. On St. Patrick’s Day, as Ohio “We work.” you work in your neighborhood?” started to shut down amid the corona- On October 3rd, Pearson was work- She used to shop at Family Dollar virus pandemic, a man walked into the ing at the Family Dollar when, accord- sometimes, to buy toiletries or house- store while pulling on a mask, and took ing to an account that co-workers later hold items or little gifts for her men- out a gun. There was only eighty dol- gave to his family, he had a dispute with tal-health clients—jogging suits or the lars in the register; the cashiers had just a man whose girlfriend he had caught occasional five-dollar perfume. She had transferred cash to the drop box. There shoplifting. He left the store at 3 p.m. stopped going since the murder, but one was no dye pack in the register to add with another employee, who was going day she had been driving past a Fam- to the money—it still hadn’t been re- to give him a ride home. As they were ily Dollar a little farther west, and had placed after the November robbery. crossing the parking lot, two young men gone in and asked the cashier how she Goldsmith had only recently removed approached and shot him. Pearson’s aunt, felt working there. “For real? It’s scary,” a part of the counter that the gunman Shari Ealy, had lost a seventeen-year-old the cashier said, and mentioned the fatal had damaged with a bullet. daughter to gun violence, in 2006. When shooting at the store down the road. Goldsmith, the most senior of the she heard about the shooting at Fam- Carolyn Noble said nothing. 

26 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 PAGE 54: We love that Rosie has a mis- SHOUTS & MURMURS chievous dog, Tugboat, who’s always making trouble for her love life! (Note: Maybe the entire film can in- stead be an animated family movie about Tugboat’s hilarious high jinks? Might be easier to physically produce at this point.)

PAGE 68: We love the plot complica- tion of Rosie’s big, successful archi- tecture firm taking over Shaun’s tiny, about-to-go-bankrupt firm, but in- stead can both firms be about to go bankrupt?

PAGE 75: The scene in which Rosie, who’s now Shaun’s boss, is supposed to fire Shaun but chickens out and gives him a raise instead—can you try another angle here? (This note isn’t COVID-related; we just thought this scene was almost unfor- givably hacky.) STUDIO NOTES ON YOUR ALSO, don’t forget to squeeze more TUGBOAT in here! Maybe Tugboat ROM-COM SCREENPLAY also has a love interest, a cute lady dog across the hall, and they have a Zoom BY CRAIG THOMAS date?! (Um, TRAILER-MOMENT ALERT!) hanks for turning in the new draft stead admires Rosie’s “million-dollar (Great news: Zoom has purchased our Tof your script. We’re thrilled! It upper-nose area and/or forehead”?) studio. And now we have a slogan— has blossomed into a charming rom- “Zoom: Keeping you securely connected com for the ages! Sorry for our delay PAGE 8: Shaun describes Rosie’s laugh- wherever you are!” Please have a charac- in giving you notes. (The timing was ter as “contagious.” Please change to ter say this verbatim, but in a way that tough, with the quarantine and all.) literally any other adjective. feels natural and unforced.) The good news: our whole develop- ment team feels that the script is one PAGE 10: We love the “opposites attract” PAGE 81: We love this fifteen-page set rewrite away from a green light! We angle (and the subversion of stereotype) piece at the World Series (and how do have only a few small notes: that she’s a slob and he’s a neat freak, but you not love a girl who loves the Mets instead can they both be neat freaks? this much, haha!), but since there’s no IN GENERAL: We want to make sure that baseball anymore, or public events of our leads, Shaun and Rosie, are still PAGE 16: Please change “Shaun and Ros- any kind, can this instead be an online coming across as likable and responsi- ie’s First Date” to “Shaun and Rosie’s heart-smart-recipe exchange? ble, given our new post-COVID-19/ First Zoom Date.” social-distancing reality. Finally, although we love that Shaun PAGE 24: Please change “Shaun and Ros- is a fancy-pants Upper East Sider with PAGE 5: You describe Shaun and Ros- ie’s Second Date” to “Shaun and Ros- family ties to British royalty, whereas ie’s first encounter as a “meet-cute,” but ie’s Second Zoom Date.” Rosie is a gritty neighborhood girl from this now feels glib. Please revise to a Queens, the movie’s title, “Rosie: The “meet-sombre” or a “meet-crying.” (Per- PAGE 35: Please change “The Bris of Queen of Corona”—yeah, that’s gotta haps one or both have a critically ill Shaun and Rosie’s Mutual Friend’s go. (But we have a new title idea!) loved one? And clarify that they re- Baby” to “The Zoom Bris of Shaun Again, all of us here at Zoom Stu- main six feet apart at all times.) and Rosie’s Mutual Friend’s Baby.” dios are psyched. We plan to fast-track (Great news: Zoom has boarded this this film in our next production slate, PAGE 7: Shaun notices Rosie’s “million- project as a producer!) once things return to normal. Assum- dollar smile”—but how would he be ing the rewrite goes well, we’ll green- able to see it under the face mask that PAGE 47: Shaun calls Rosie’s smile “in- light “Zoom Into My Heart” to start she should now be wearing through- fectious.” Please change to literally any shooting in the late summer/early fall

LUCI GUTIÉRREZ LUCI out the entire film? (Maybe Shaun in- other adjective. of 2025. Zoom! 

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 27 of the building immediately, but many ANNALS OF SCIENCE of the owners were away and unable to retrieve them on short notice. This group happened to include Dr. Alix RABBIT FEVER Wilson, the clinic’s medical director, who was on vacation and whose own A highly contagious, often lethal animal virus arrives in the United States. rabbits, Captain Larry and Dolly, were boarding there. In the meantime, the BY SUSAN ORLEAN staff threw out all the clinic’s rabbit food and bedding, in case something in them had poisoned the three rab- bits. Within several weeks, eight more rabbits that had been at the clinic in February succumbed. Captain Larry was thriving, but Dolly, a medium-sized Lop that Wilson had just adopted to keep Larry company, died.

ne of the lagoviruses of the fam- Oily Caliciviridae causes a highly contagious illness called rabbit hem- orrhagic disease. RHD is vexingly hard to diagnose. An infected rabbit might experience vague lethargy, or a high fever and difficulty breathing, or it might exhibit no symptoms at all. Re- gardless of the symptoms, though, the mortality rate for RHD can reach a gloomy hundred per cent. There is no treatment for it. The virus’s ability to survive and spread is uncanny. It can persist on dry cloth with no host for more than a hundred days; it can with- stand freezing and thawing; it can thrive in a dead rabbit for months, and on rabbit pelts, and in the wool made from Angora-rabbit fur, and in the rare rab- bit that gets infected but survives. It can travel on birds’ claws and flies’ feet and coyotes’ fur. Its spread has been so ost rabbits have, in their skill set, pired without warning was chalked up merciless and so devastating that some Mthe ability to pretend that they’re to the rabbit habit of feigning good pet owners have begun referring to it healthy even when they’re quite sick. health. Later that evening, another rab- as “rabbit Ebola.” It’s sort of the inverse of playing pos- bit at the clinic died. The coincidence According to the United States De- sum, but done for the same purpose, of the additional death was strange, es- partment of Agriculture, RHD is a namely, to deflect attention from pred- pecially because the first rabbit that “foreign animal disease”: one that is ators, who would consider a sick rab- died was elderly, and the second was “an important transmissible livestock bit easy pickings. As a result of this young. A third rabbit that died the or poultry disease believed to be ab- playacting, rabbits often die suddenly— same night was middle-aged; even sent from the United States and its or what appears to be suddenly—when, though she was known to have had an territories that has the potential to cre- in fact, they’ve been sick for a while. abdominal mass that compromised her ate a significant health or economic This past February, a pet rabbit being well-being, there had been no reason impact.” All foreign animal diseases boarded overnight at Manhattan’s Cen- to think she was about to perish. Two are “reportable.” This means that any ter for Avian and Exotic Medicine, the deaths might have been a fluke; three incidence needs to be logged with a busiest rabbit veterinary practice in seemed ominous. state animal-health official. In most New York City, died. The fact that the The clinic’s staff wanted to get the places, that’s the state veterinarian, who, rabbit had seemed fine and then ex- remaining fifteen or twenty rabbits out like a governor, oversees local policy. (Many animal issues are decided at the Rabbits are the only creatures we keep as pets and, just as regularly, eat or wear. state level.) It must also be reported to

28 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY JASON HOLLEY the U.S.D.A. and to the World Or- ucts—meat, fur, skins, and live rab- ments. They have been domesticated ganisation for Animal Health, which bits—imported to the United States for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. is headquartered in Paris and tracks came from countries where the disease There have even been noteworthy rab- the virus globally. had been widespread. The U.S.D.A. bit booms. During the Victorian era, Alix Wilson was familiar with RHD, still classified it as a foreign animal the most sought-after, bidded-up bun- and she wondered in passing whether disease, but a department report, writ- nies were a domestic breed, the Belgian it might have been responsible for the ten in 2002, warned that RHD “has Hare, which was developed to look like deaths at her clinic. “But then I thought, emerged as a growing concern for the a wild rabbit. Belgians had sleek, black- No, impossible,” she said recently. “Rab- rabbit industry following outbreaks in ticked chestnut fur, comically long ears, bit hemorrhagic disease isn’t in the 2000 and 2001.” and long bodies; they were the spitting city.” Her staff sent tissue from one of image, in fact, of Peter Rabbit, who the dead rabbits to a lab at Cornell n the universe of human-animal re- débuted in Beatrix Potter’s “The Tale University, which subsequently trans- Ilations, rabbits occupy a liminal space. of Peter Rabbit” in 1902, in the thick of ferred it to the federal foreign-animal- They are the only creatures we regu- Belgian Hare mania. disease lab, on Plum Island, in New larly keep as pets in our homes that we A shipment of six thousand Belgian York. When the diagnosis came back also, just as regularly, eat or wear. Fit- Hares that arrived in the United States as a variant of the virus, called RHDV2, ting into both the companion-animal from Europe in 1900 attracted inter- Wilson was astonished. The clinic im- category and the livestock category est from tycoons including the Rocke- mediately stopped taking in any rab- means that rabbits are not entirely fellers, the DuPonts, and J. P. Morgan, bits, and began a deep cleaning, which claimed by either. A number of animal who considered them an equity invest- included replacing ceiling tiles and dis- statutes—particularly, felony-cruelty ment. (A male sold for five thousand carding thousands of dollars’ worth of provisions—are specific to dogs and dollars—the equivalent of more than equipment that couldn’t be sterilized. cats, but not to rabbits. Laws protect- a hundred and fifty thousand today.) Todd Johnson, the U.S.D.A.’s emer- ing livestock, such as the Humane According to the Livestock Conser- gency coördinator for New York and Methods of Slaughter Act, don’t apply vancy, nearly every large American city New Jersey, helped oversee the cleanup, to rabbits, either, even rabbits being soon had a Belgian Hare club. Fans in and a veterinary epidemiologist and raised for meat, because the U.S.D.A. Los Angeles alone had sixty thousand an intern from the department con- does not officially recognize them as Belgians. Rabbits being rabbits, the tacted a hundred and fifty-five own- livestock. There is probably no other number of Belgian Hares grew expo- ers of rabbits that had been in the clinic animal that is viewed as diversely, and nentially, and the market for them even- during the previous few months, in an valued as differently, by its various par- tually buckled. People moved on to effort to identify Rabbit Zero. The be- tisans. Simply being a rabbit person other breeds, and superfluous Belgians wildering thing was that, as it turned doesn’t mean that you look at rabbits began to disappear. By the nineteen-for- out, rabbits had already been dying of the same way as another self-identified ties, there was a worry that they might RHDV2 in Washington State, and rabbit person. Any of the almost twenty become extinct. soon were dying in other states, in- thousand members of the American cluding Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Rabbit Breeders Association are just abbits have an unusual history with and Nevada. as likely to be raising a prized Jersey Rviruses. The first virus ever delib- The rabbit-hemorrhagic-disease Wooly that sleeps in their bed and is erately used to eradicate a wild-animal virus was originally identified in 1984, primped for rabbit shows as they are population was myxoma virus, which in Jiangsu Province, China. First, it to have hundreds of caged rabbits that causes myxomatosis, a disease fatal to killed Angora rabbits being raised will end up as stew. domestic rabbits. It was deployed in commercially for wool, and then it A few years ago, a lawyer named 1950, in Australia, where a dozen or so burned through pet rabbits and rab- Natalie Reeves, who volunteers at a domestic rabbits released on a hunting bits farmed for meat, all of which are rabbit shelter and has lectured on rab- estate in 1859 had outperformed all members of the same species, Orycto- bit law at the New York City Bar As- mathematical modelling and become lagus cuniculus, or what is commonly sociation, was having trouble untan- many hundreds of millions—the fast- known as the European, or domestic, gling the hair of her pet long-haired est-known spread of any mammal on rabbit. During the initial outbreak in rabbit, Mopsy McGillicuddy. She found earth. The rabbits wreaked ecological China, some hundred and forty mil- an Internet group for long-haired-rab- disaster as they ate their way across the lion rabbits were killed by the virus. bit owners, and posted about Mopsy’s country. Shooting them made only a The disease soon ravaged rabbit pop- hair troubles, expecting tips on condi- temporary dent in their numbers. Myx- ulations elsewhere in Asia, and then tioners and brushes. On the site, she oma virus was introduced in the hope in Europe, the United Kingdom, Aus- noticed that a common response to of controlling the population; it soon tralia, and the Middle East. similar problems was to kill the rabbit killed an estimated five hundred mil- There were only a handful of cases and start fresh with another. lion rabbits. (In parts of Australia, it of the original variant of RHD in this Rabbits are everywhere among us. is still illegal to have a pet rabbit.) country, and they were quickly con- They live on every continent except Two years later, a French doctor, tained. Still, the majority of rabbit prod- Antarctica, in a wide range of environ- annoyed by rabbits stealing from his

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 29 promoting beef as the patriotic main- stay of the American dinner table. In the same years, chicken also became more widely available. Soon, it became the white meat of choice, and rabbit was marginalized as an occasional dish. Eric Stewart, the executive director of the American Rabbit Breeders As- sociation, also lays the blame for the decline of rabbit meat on Bugs Bunny. Created in 1940, Bugs, a sassy, man- size gray-and-white cartoon rabbit, had a leading role in Warner Bros.’ “Mer- rie Melodies” and “Looney Tunes”; “The Bugs Bunny Show” began in 1960 and ran on network television for forty years. Stewart believes that the gener- ations that had grown up watching Bugs could not stomach eating rabbit. Then, in 1981, pet-rabbit ownership got a huge boost, with the publication of “Your French Lop: The King of the Fancy, the Clown of Rabbits, the Ideal Pet.” The author, a rabbit owner named Sandy Crook, argued that pet rabbits, which were then typically relegated to a hutch in the back yard, made perfect house pets, just like cats and dogs. Rab- bits could be kept inside, because they “He really misses the city.” could be trained to use a litter box. Many people consider the book the foundational text of the house-rabbit •• movement. Another best-selling man- ifesto, Marinell Harriman’s “House garden, caught two of them and in- a pet rabbit that was pregnant, and, ac- Rabbit Handbook: How to Live with jected them with myxoma. They bolted, cording to Pel-Freez’s corporate his- an Urban Rabbit,” was published four surviving long enough to carry the tory, turned “the dilemma into an op- years later. virus to other rabbits. The disease even- portunity.” Rabbit meat, which could The number of rabbits kept as house tually bloomed across Europe and the be cooked like chicken, was appeal- pets has grown ever since. We don’t United Kingdom, killing almost every ingly high in protein and low in fat. know exactly how many rabbits there rabbit in its path. Eventually, a myx- Back then, it was also much cheaper are in the United States, but they are omatosis vaccine was developed, and than beef. And raising rabbits is easy. the third most popular pet in the coun- the disease was more or less brought A rabbit can give birth every thirty try, behind dogs and cats, and the most under control. days; a young rabbit reaches what is popular small pet, beating out ham- Myxomatosis did travel to the United known as “fryer age” in just sixty days. sters, guinea pigs, and mice. The States, but for some reason it never But, even during their heyday as a mar- U.S.D.A. estimates that there are more got much of a foothold here. Had it ket product, rabbits weren’t treated like than 6.7 million pet rabbits, but the established itself, it would have been other livestock. Because the U.S.D.A. total number of domestic rabbits would disastrous, because at that time, in the doesn’t classify them as such, it has depend on whether you’re counting middle of the last century, rabbits were never required rabbit meat to be in- only pet rabbits or including rabbits a significant food source. Most people spected or graded. raised for slaughter. Further compli- associate rabbit meat with European After the Second World War, the cating matters is the category of rab- diets, but it was once a staple in this demand for rabbit meat began to de- bits raised as, say, a 4-H project, which, country. There were many huge com- cline. The number of cattle being raised once the project is done, might segue mercial rabbit farms in the United domestically nearly doubled, and beef, from pet to meat. States, and rabbit meat was readily avail- which had previously been something Rabbit-related activities are also on able in supermarkets. The biggest of a luxury, became affordable. The the bounce. There are about five thou- processor was (and still is) Pel-Freez, cattle industry, which brings in some sand A.R.B.A.-sanctioned rabbit shows founded in 1911 by a man who was given seventy billion dollars a year, began each year; the largest one features more

30 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 than twenty-five thousand rabbits. in the sense that more infected rab- breeder there went out of business, and There are rabbit fashion shows, which bits were surviving, and, because they released three thousand rabbits into the are especially popular in Japan. A show might not show symptoms, they weren’t wild. They multiplied and became a in Yokohama has featured rabbits dressed being isolated, and passed along the tourist attraction, and rabbit hunting like Sherlock Holmes, Amelia Earhart, disease. Vaccines guarding against on the island was so celebrated that, in and Santa Claus. In New York City, pet RHDV2 were developed. (In some the sixties, Sports Illustrated ran a story owners organize rabbit playdates in cases, they were produced in combi- about it, titled “Hippity Hop and Away Central Park. Across the country, there nation with the vaccine that prevents We Go.” By 1971, San Juan Island, which are rabbit speed dates, which are op- RHDV1.) By 2016, they were available covers just fifty-five square miles, was portunities for rabbits to meet and see across Europe, and vaccinating rabbits home to an estimated one million feral if they like one another, if an owner is became common. domestic rabbits. thinking of getting a second, or third, The new variant, like the original, Kerr’s department also received calls or fourth. The typical American owner at first seemed to stay away from the from a few nearby islands reporting has more than one rabbit, so speed dat- United States, except for a few iso- rabbit deaths. Soon, the lab confirmed ing is important, because rabbits, de- lated cases. But, in July, 2019, a pet that the Orcas Island rabbit had died spite their prodigious ability to multi- Norwegian Dwarf male on Orcas Is- of RHDV2. Kerr then got news that ply, don’t always get along. land, near Seattle, died with a bloody most of the hundred and forty-five rab- nose. A veterinarian who saw the rab- bits at a facility on the Olympic Pen- ithin five years of the emergence bit in a clinic was aware of RHD, and insula, across Puget Sound from the Wof the original form of rabbit knew that bloody noses are a symp- islands, had died in a three-week pe- hemorrhagic disease in China, a vac- tom, so she called the Washington riod. Their symptoms sounded like cine protecting against RHD had been State Department of Agriculture to RHDV2; the virus was travelling. As developed. A number of manufactur- report the death. Susan Kerr, an edu- a precaution, rabbits and rabbit prod- ers produce vaccines against this strain, cation and outreach specialist there, ucts were banned from the ferry sys- including Filavie, in France; HIPRA, in was alarmed, because she knew there tem that services Puget Sound. Spain; and Merck, which is headquar- was an RHDV2 outbreak in British A colleague of Kerr’s posted about tered in New Jersey but made the vac- Columbia, so the clinic sent the rab- the outbreak on an online animal-health cine for the European market. The vac- bit’s body to a lab for a necropsy. newsletter, and was inundated with re- cine was never offered in the United While waiting for those results, quests from owners who knew that a States. There were only a few RHDV1 Kerr’s co-workers got calls from a num- vaccine existed, asking how they could cases here, including one in Pennsyl- ber of people on San Juan Island, about get their rabbits inoculated. But the vania, which was theorized to have a dozen miles southwest of Orcas Is- vaccine for RHDV2, like the vaccine come from an Oktoberfest party, where land. San Juan is famous for its rabbits. for the original virus, was available only imported rabbit meat was served. If In the nineteen-thirties, a commercial overseas. No companies had a license the meat was infected, the virus could have spread to vegetables prepared in the same kitchen; the vegetable scraps were then fed to rabbits. Most countries affected by the virus began offering the vaccine, and within a few years the spread appeared to have been tamped down. But, in 2010, rab- bits in France began dying of what turned out to be a mutated version of the virus. The vaccine for the original virus was ineffective against the new strain; this was RHDV2. Soon, it was rampant throughout Europe and Aus- tralia. In England, the spread was so vigorous that parents were advised not to let their children bury their dead rabbits in the garden, because, “while comforting to children,” the practice “may help circulate rabbit virus.” The mortality rate of the new variant ap- peared to be slightly lower than that of the original, and at first this seemed like good news. But, in fact, RHDV2 “Welcome to Heaven. Would you like to buy was even more efficient at spreading, a souvenir photo from your life?” to distribute it in the United States. The ward rabbits, seeing them as disposable narian in the country to obtain the U.S.D.A. opposed importing it, except goods, easily replaced. Others thought vaccine, which she ordered from Fila­ for limited special circumstances. One that the department simply didn’t want vie. She, too, had heard about the problem is that attempts to produce to manage all the paperwork required RHDV2 outbreak in British Colum­ the vaccine on cell lines in a laboratory to bring a vaccine from overseas, or just bia, so she started researching how to have failed. Merck produces a vaccine didn’t want to acknowledge that the get the vaccine, and compiled a list of in cells, but it’s a live, genetically mod­ virus was present. several hundred clients who were re­ ified vaccine, which is not permitted The U.S.D.A. finally agreed to con­ questing it. “I knew the virus would in this country. The other companies sider requests for the emergency im­ get here,” she said recently. “Once it that currently manufacture the RHD portation of limited amounts of the was in British Columbia, it was just a vaccine produce it by infecting live rab­ vaccine, but only if veterinarians ap­ matter of time.” bits with RHD. When those rabbits plied first through their state veteri­ She applied to the Washington state die, vaccines are made from their liv­ narians. Leaving the question of the veterinarian; was shuttled for a month ers. According to a spokesperson for vaccine to the states, though, meant between the state agriculture depart­ Filavie, one rabbit yields several thou­ that there could be fifty different de­ ment and the U.S.D.A.; had to manage sand vaccine doses. cisions on it—a patchwork of guide­ language and time­zone barriers; then The U.S.D.A. also maintained that lines for a disease that would travel had to hire a customs broker to shep­ vaccinating some rabbits would make with no regard to borders. A number herd the vaccines across borders. Fi­ it difficult to distinguish between sick of veterinarians said that they were in­ nally, more than four months after she rabbits and those with antibodies pro­ terested in applying to import the vac­ applied, she received five hundred doses duced by the vaccine, although, since cine, but, once they discovered the of Filavac VHD K C+V, which pro­ most sick rabbits died, the distinction headaches involved, most of them gave tects against both RHDV1 and RHDV2. would actually be very clear. In the rab­ up. Alicia McLaughlin, one of the med­ By the time McLaughlin was finally bit community, the department’s mul­ ical directors of the Center for Bird able to administer the vaccine to her ishness was infuriating. Some people and Exotic Animal Medicine, in Both­ clients, in April, concerns over COVID­19 said that it reflected a bad attitude to­ ell, Washington, was the first veteri­ had meant that she could offer only curbside service, and had to struggle to find personal protective equipment, which she needed, because she was in­ teracting with patients and handling their animals.

round this same time, the Center Afor Avian and Exotic Medicine, in Manhattan, had been thoroughly sanitized after its RHDV2 outbreak. To be absolutely sure that it was un­ contaminated, Alix Wilson brought two rabbits to live at the clinic as sen­ tinels. Because the virus is so conta­ gious, the rabbits would almost cer­ tainly come down with RHDV2 if it was still in the facility. “No one wants to bring animals in to die,” she said. “But it’s one sure way in veterinary medicine to prove that a cleanup has worked.” The rabbits survived. Wil­ son then applied to import the vac­ cine, and received a letter from the U.S.D.A. saying that “without evi­ dence of widespread infection” the risk was low, especially since, as the de­ partment maintained, household rab­ bits have no contact with others. Some of the clinic’s clients were fu­ rious that there had been a few days’ delay between the first rabbit deaths “The humans sent these signals out in the seventies. You really and when the clinic put the word out think they’re going to buy ‘Sorry, just seeing this now!’?” about the diagnosis. According to Wil­ son, the clinic couldn’t have done it any bits. Some vaccines, such as the one for one or two rabbits might not shy away faster, since it had to wait to hear the rabies, can be distributed to wild ani- from an annual vaccination that could results of the necropsy. The fact is that mals by putting them out as food, but cost thirty dollars or so, but many rab- even the mention of RHD panics rab- the vaccine for the rabbit-hemorrhagic- bit owners have ten or twenty or two bit owners. Thousands have joined a disease virus has to be given by injec- hundred rabbits, so the cost becomes Facebook group to exchange knowl- tion and repeated every year. The con- prohibitive. edge, vent, and worry. Useful informa- cern is not only that many wild rabbits Cost and availability aren’t the only tion is interlaced with dread. A chief could be lost; what happens to them challenges. “I’m worried that there is concern is whether it’s safe to let a vet- reverberates in other animals, includ- the controversy that a bunny died to erinarian know if you think that your ing foxes and bobcats and wolves and make the vaccine,” Alicia McLaugh- rabbit might have RHD, since the vet- hawks, since rabbits are lin told me, sighing. “This erinarian is obliged to report it to the their chief protein source. vaccine is the only option state veterinarian. The fear—which, “Once they run out of rab- we have at the moment, so according to the New Mexico state vet- bits,” Zimmerman said, it’s frustrating.” The House erinarian, Ralph Zimmerman, is mostly “cats and poodles will be- Rabbit Society, a rabbit- justified—is that, if your rabbit does come their preferred food.” rescue and education orga- have the virus and you have other rab- Or, if there aren’t enough nization, posted a letter on bits, you will be required to “depopu- wayward cats and poodles its Web site noting that late”; that is, you will have to euthanize to go around, they’ll starve. rabbits die in the manu- them. There is also persistent chatter In the past three months, facturing process, and urg- that the vaccine actually caused the RHDV2 has shown up in ing members to consider disease, as part of a global plot to rid seven Western states. Now whether “the RHDV2 vac- the world of rabbits. Recently, a mem- that it has jumped to wild rabbits, most cines are right for you and your fam- ber of the Facebook group proposed veterinarians I’ve spoken to believe that ily.” Natalie Reeves had been eager to that rabbit owners sue Australia, per- it’s here to stay, and that the U.S.D.A. vaccinate her current rabbit, Radar, as haps conflating the past use of myx- should change its designation from a soon as possible. She has never skimped oma virus there with the outbreak of foreign animal disease to one that’s when it comes to her rabbits—she spent RHD. “No,” another member replied, endemic. There have been a few lucky thousands of dollars on veterinary care “we cannot sue Australia.” breaks. For instance, the big rabbit for Mopsy McGillicuddy, her rabbit As the clinic in New York was re- shows scheduled for the spring, which with the tangled fur, which suffered opening, thirty dead rabbits were found would have brought together tens from lymphoma. “I just learned infor- near Fort Bliss, Texas. An unusual num- of thousands of rabbits—a recipe for mation tonight that is very disturbing,” ber of dead rabbits were also found in contagion—were cancelled because of she wrote me in an e-mail, after read- Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. COVID-19. Nevertheless, RHDV2 is ad- ing the House Rabbit Society letter. “I Along with pet rabbits and a small vancing unabated. don’t know whether I could in good rabbit-meat industry, the Southwest The National Assembly of State conscience vaccinate my rabbit, know- has large populations of wild black- Animal Health Officials, which rep- ing that I would be contributing to the tailed jackrabbits and cottontails. Al- resents all state veterinarians, recently death of others.” though they resemble domestic rab- formed a working group to evaluate As RHDV2 is poised to become en- bits, these are different species entirely; the vaccine and make recommenda- demic in the United States, the vac- they can’t interbreed with domestic tions to the public. The group hasn’t cine, which is the one thing that might rabbits, nor are they susceptible to released its report yet, but recently I stop it, is now caught up in the con- all of the same diseases. Wild rabbits got an e-mail from Annette Jones, the tradictions of rabbits. When I first spoke seemed immune to RHDV1. But California state veterinarian, who is to Reeves, she had mentioned that rab- RHDV2 made a cross-species leap and, the vice-president of the assembly, say- bits are the most discriminated against in March, jackrabbits and cottontails ing, “Yes, we should have [the vaccine] of all domestic animals: ridiculed for throughout the Southwest began dying available . . . we are hoping a manu- their lustiness; viewed as expendable; in droves. “I’ve gotten reports that it’s facturer steps up and applies to USDA lumped in with oddball animals like in the thousands,” Zimmerman said for a license.” No American manufac- chinchillas and prairie dogs; always recently. “I’m sure next I’ll be hearing turer has applied so far, but at least subject to the question of whether that it’s in the tens of thousands.” He one has contacted the American Rab- they’re pets or meat. She rued that the has scraped together money from New bit Breeders Association to feel out vaccine was just one more example of Mexico’s state budget to import five interest. “It’s hard to get these com- the peculiarity of their place in the hundred doses of the vaccine, which panies interested in rabbit medicine,” world. Would dog owners be expected he will distribute to veterinarians a veterinarian told me. “All the money to use a medicine that was produced around the state. He assumes that those is in cats and dogs.” The fact that peo- by killing a dog? Once again, rabbits doses will go to “high-dollar breeding ple tend to own rabbits in multiples seem to be betwixt and between. As animals.” makes the economics of selling the Ralph Zimmerman put it, “Rabbits are But nothing can help the wild rab- vaccine complicated. Pet owners with just a real conundrum.” 

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 33 t is a place to retreat to in a time of plague. Outside the town are miles I and miles of empty land, and few roads. Nothing anywhere but whitegrass, dark, scrubby bushes growing close to the ground, and rocks. Only low moun- tains and no trees, so there’s little to block the incessant wind that blows in from A REPORTER AT LARGE the sea. It’s very quiet, at least when the wind dies down, and some people find the silence and the emptiness hard to take. Before the war, in 1982, some of the AN OCEAN APART bigger farms employed dozens of men, and there were settlements with forty The Falkland Islands were a place out or fifty people living in them, but most of time, but then came change. of those people are gone now, either BY LARISSA MacFARQUHAR moved or emigrated. These days, there is one person for every twelve square miles. Some of the old houses are va- cant and derelict; others were hauled out of the settlements, leaving not so much as a gravel track behind, because the people who lived there rode horses. At the edges of the two big islands, East Falkland and West Falkland, are more than seven hundred smaller is- lands, some empty, others inhabited by only one or two families: a couple of houses, some generators, a landing strip. There is plumbing and Internet. With a big enough freezer, you could stay here without contact for months. Longer, if you know how to live as people did here until very recently: killing and butch- ering their own mutton, milking cows, collecting seabird eggs and diddle-dee berries, digging peat for fuel. During the war with Argentina, when people were fleeing the town and turning up at farmhouses, there was not much worry about feeding them, or the British sol- diers who took shelter in henhouses and shearing sheds. The farmers had vege- table gardens, and countless sheep, and flour and sugar in fifty-kilo sacks. For a hundred and fifty years, when the Falkland Islands were a distant out- post of the British Empire, many men came from the Scottish Highlands to work as shepherds, and the islands are oddly similar to the Shetlands or the Isle of Skye—the bleak, rocky landscape; the blustery rain; the nearness of the sea—as though a piece of Scotland had broken off into the Atlantic and drifted eight thousand miles south, past Ireland, then Portugal, past Morocco and Mau- ritania and Senegal, down past the coasts of Brazil and Uruguay, and come to rest Bleaker Island, in the Falklands, in March. In the past thirty years, the islands have

34 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 gone from being a poor territory of mostly British settlers to a rich one with a population from all over the world.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAROESJKA LAVIGNE THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 35 just a few hundred miles north of Ant- John Fowler arrived on the mail boat who had recently emerged from ten years arctica. But here, on days when the air in 1971. After several awful days at sea, in prison, in Kuwait, visited offices in is very sharp and clear, people know that he woke up at four or five in the morn- Stanley with a stack of business cards. a floating iceberg must be close. And ing to find that the ship was still. He went But the constant pressure of the Argen- here there are penguins at the water’s up on deck in his pajamas and saw that tine claim compels the islanders to make edge: three-foot king penguins with egg- they were moored on the jetty at Stan- the case to the world that they are some- yolk bibs; squat rockhopper penguins ley—the town just a few streets on the thing more than a haphazard group of with spiky black head feathers like gelled steep slope above the harbor, little white settlers, sharing nothing but the ground hair; whimsy-hatted gentoos. In March, houses with colored roofs, the air smell- they live on. as the plague was circling, the penguins ing of peat smoke—and saw what looked had nothing to do. They were molting, like three-quarters of the population as- ntil three hundred years ago, the so they couldn’t swim or eat. Molting, sembled onshore to greet the ship. To UFalklands were uninhabited, except people said, was tiring and uncomfort- him, just woken up, and disoriented by by wolves, seals, and island birds—pen- able. The penguins stood about in crowds appearing in public in his pajamas, it was guins, cormorants, skuas, dark-faced near the surf, backs to the wind, wait- a dreamlike sight, in 1971—like England ground tyrants. In 1690, a British cap- ing for their feathers to fall out. twenty-five years before, the men in ties tain, John Strong, made the first recorded Then again, when the plague does and mackintoshes, the ladies in the sort landing, but he didn’t stay long. A French come there may be no escape. Two com- of dresses he remembered his mother settlement was established in the sev- mercial flights leave the islands each week: wearing when he was a boy. enteen-sixties, and quickly handed to one to Punta Arenas, in southern Chile, At the time, the Falklands were poor the Spanish. For a few years in the same on Saturdays, and one on Wednesdays, and embattled, losing so many people to period, the British maintained an out- to São Paulo. Even in normal times these emigration that it seemed the society post on Saunders Island, near West Falk- flights are often cancelled owing to strong was in danger of becoming extinct, the land, but after clashes with the Spanish winds at the airport, and now both have islands abandoned. Nobody knew that they decided that it wasn’t worth the been halted. There are military flights to it was in fact on the verge of an aston- money and went home, leaving a lead Britain, but these rely on a stopover to ishing change: that, a generation later, it plaque asserting British sovereignty. The refuel, and so many countries have closed would be unrecognizable, its politics Spanish kept a garrison on East Falk- their borders that for several weeks there transformed, its population doubled and land for forty years at the end of the were no flights at all and the islands were commingled, its identity mutating. It is eighteenth century, and in the eigh- completely cut off. There used to be a the fruit fly of societies—a tiny social or- teen-twenties, under license from Bue- boat that brought fruit and dry goods ganism that has metamorphosed through nos Aires, a Huguenot cattle-ranching and mail once a month from Monte- centuries of history in twenty years. merchant from Hamburg hired gauchos video and made the rounds of the settle- Everything changed for the Falklands from the mainland and started a settle- ments, but that was a long time ago. Peo- because of a chain of events set in mo- ment that lasted for a few years until it ple who live on the more remote farms tion by the decision of General Leopoldo was destroyed by an American gunboat. have been warned that if they get sick Galtieri, then President of Argentina, to The British reclaimed the islands in 1833, no one will be able to come and get them, invade, in April, 1982. Argentina had long but it was not until the eighteen-forties so those most at risk are departing for claimed the islands, which lie three hun- that a town was established at Stanley. the only town—Stanley, on East Falk- dred miles off its coast, and although it After that, people came from all over land—if they can. was defeated in the war, it claims them on boats—sheep farmers from England, Until recently, the Falkland Islands still. It maintains that the Falklands are fishermen from Scandinavia, seal hunt- were a quasi-feudal colony, in which an an illegal colony, populated by implants ers from Connecticut, whalers, pirates. arcadian Britain of the past was preserved sent by London, and that the British For the better part of a century, Stanley’s in microcosm—a population of eighteen forces on the islands are there to prevent harbor was crowded with abandoned hundred, territory a little larger than Ja- islanders from escaping to Argentina. ships wrecked on the terrible journey maica. The islanders, almost all of whom In a referendum in 2013, all but three around Cape Horn—the route taken by claimed British ancestry, ate British food voters elected to remain a self-govern- European prospectors heading for the and planted British gardens, with crowded ing British territory, but the Falklands California gold rush. Many sailors de- flower beds and gnomes. They flew Union are no longer now as British as they were. serted—traumatized by their brush with Jacks from their cars and greenhouses. They have become a place where peo- death, or just from being horribly seasick They were given to displays of patrio- ple fetch up from all over the world, for on the rough passage from Montevideo. tism that were rare in the mother coun- all sorts of reasons—rootless wanderers, They hid out in Camp (an Anglicization try: they celebrated the Queen’s birth- transient workers, people fleeing poli- of campo, or “countryside”—in the Falk- day, and sang the national anthem every tics at home. In February, a small dele- lands it meant everywhere that wasn’t Sunday in the cathedral. When older is- gation arrived representing a group of town) until their ship had left. Later, peo- landers talked about Britain—even if Hong Kong Chinese who were nervous ple arrived on yachts—they sailed into they had never been there, and their fam- about Beijing. Several white South Af- Stanley Harbor on their way somewhere ilies had been in the Falklands for five ricans have turned up; in early March, else and decided to settle—a couple from generations—they called it “home.” a divorced contractor from Cape Town Australia, a family from France.

36 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 A man who lived on one of the outer islands for many years used to say that there were two kinds of people in the Falklands: those in Camp, who were mostly descended from farmers who had been kicked out of the Highlands during the clearances, and were hard- working and honest, and those in Stan- ley, who were descended from people thrown off ships for bad behavior, and were not to be trusted. But there were all sorts in Camp. When Lionel Blake— known as Tim—was the manager of Hill Cove Farm, on West Falkland, in the nineteen-sixties, there were juvenile delinquents working there, one of whom had come to the Falklands straight out of Borstal. It wasn’t easy to get people to move eight thousand miles for low- paid contract work, so you couldn’t be choosy. Tim advertised for shepherds in Farmers Weekly and got a steelworker, a gardener, and a cinema projectionist. That was how many people came: they answered an ad. The Falklands “Honey, I’m home!” weren’t a place that most people thought to go to, or had even heard of, so you had to catch their attention. In the early days, •• farm managers would place notices in newspapers all over Britain. Later, peo- through the evening everyone moved to arable land in the Falklands; it was all ple would post their résumés on hospi- the sides of the room so that the gover- rocks and peat bogs, so there was much tality job sites like Catererglobal, or type nor and his wife and invited dignitaries less to do—no working the fields, no “overseas jobs” into Google. You didn’t could process through the hall as the plowing and seeding, no harvest. The get people who were leaving a lot behind. band played “God Save the Queen.” farmworkers at Hill Cove were always Even Tim himself was there because he Tim’s plan was to work in Hill Cove telling him that it was no good getting was a third son and there was no room for four years and save enough money excited, you could do it tomorrow as for him on his father’s farm in Somerset. to buy land somewhere in England. But, well as today: you had a year to do a Tim was Falklands gentry: his grand- soon after he arrived, he met Sally Clem- year’s work, and there was nothing you father Robert Blake had bought a half- ent, the daughter of Wick Clement, an- could do to change the cycle. Eventu- share in Hill Cove in the eighteen-sev- other farm manager. Sally had grown up ally, he saw that this was true, and he enties; he lived on the farm for twenty on West Falkland but had been sent to grew to love the slowness of it, the med- years and had eight children. Shortly an English boarding school at twelve. By itative rhythm of the months going by: before the turn of the century, his body the time she finished there, she barely Tim: Riding behind a flock of sheep, or damaged by arthritis and riding acci- knew her parents and didn’t want to go walking behind a flock of sheep— dents, he returned to England, but his back. She wanted to study history at uni- Sally: You couldn’t hurry them. share of Hill Cove stayed in the family. versity, but she felt she couldn’t ask her Tim: You can’t hurry them. And you’ve got This was a common pattern: the early parents to pay for it, and what would she time to—for your mind to float where it will. It was an absolutely fabulous life. owners lived on the land, but by the have done with a history degree, any- twentieth century most farms were held way? Shortly after she came back to the When he was walking behind the by absentee landlords in Britain, or by Falklands, she met Tim at a Christmas sheep, he was always watching them, the Falkland Islands Company—the party. It was fortunate that they liked watching for the wrong sort of movement: Falklands equivalent of the East India each other, since there was almost no Company, combining trade with gover- one else on the island that either could Tim: You upset a sheep, it will switch off, and it ceases to be a thinking thing. But you nance. The government was run by ex- have married. leave a little gap like that in a fence, somebody patriates who didn’t mix with the locals: In Tim Blake’s first six months at will find a way out and the whole lot will go. Falkland Islanders were colonial sub- Hill Cove, he found the pace so much Sally: If you make a pig’s ear of it and get jects, and were treated accordingly. At slower than English farming that it them all scattered. the annual May Ball, people danced the nearly drove him mad. There were tens Tim: There will be troublemakers about. waltz and the foxtrot, and then halfway of thousands of sheep, but there was no When you’re gathering, you’ll always find the

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 37 the families were housed and given mut- ton to eat and cows to milk. For vari- ety, they ate penguin eggs, which were round, and big as tennis balls; they tasted of seaweed and their yolks were red. Ed- ucation on the islands was patchy. Some of the larger settlements, with ten or fifteen children, had a schoolhouse, but many children had a travelling teacher, who might live with them for two weeks every two or three months. Among the older generation of farm managers, some considered it imprudent to educate farm children too well. Single farmworkers lived in a bunk- house with a cook. With the exception of the maid in the big house, there might be no single women anywhere nearby: around the time of the 1973 census, on the whole of West Falkland there was one unmarried woman and fifty-one un- married men. Many women married Brit- ish soldiers—there was a small garrison of Royal Marines on East Falkland—and left the islands; even if a man found some- The Lady Elizabeth, a ship grounded at the east end of Stanley Harbor. one to marry, the divorce rate was excep- tionally high. So, if a man got hurt, it odd one that doesn’t want to come in, and you’ll fifteenth century. The farmworkers rarely would likely be the manager’s wife who need to watch that sheep. Because when you handled cash: they were paid in scrip, and took care of him. When Tony Smith root her out from one hiding place she won’t had a credit account at the farm store in crushed his hand under the drive belt of have given up. But to stop the spread of ked, the settlement. At the end of the year, a generator in Port Stephens and blood which was a skin parasite, you have to be ruth- the farm manager would tell them how was spurting out the tips of his fingers, less: if you leave a sheep behind today and it’s much money they had left after subtract- it was the farm manager’s wife who heated got ked on it, it’ll infect any sheep it comes ing their purchases; he would pay their a needle over a candle flame and pushed into contact with. We had a rule on the farm that I was taught the moment I got there: if a taxes for them and deposit what remained it through each one of his nails to release sheep stops, kill it. into a government savings account, or the pressure. help them invest it. The manager might If there weren’t enough married men You had to watch for other things, be the only local authority—he conducted to live in the outside houses, sometimes too. In the spring, gulls and turkey vul- marriages and assigned punishments; it a single man would live there by him- tures attacked the lambs, pecking the un- was said that not long before Tim Blake self, not seeing anyone for weeks at a derside of a lamb’s chin until they pecked came to Hill Cove a man there was fired time. There was an outside shepherd its tongue out. You’d see a ewe with blood for whistling. Because drinking could be living alone on a farm on West Falk- on her underside where the lamb had a problem, especially in winter, when land around the nineteen-fifties who tried to suck but had no tongue to do it. there wasn’t much to do, the farm store fell very ill and thought he was dying, In those days you didn’t butcher for meat, rationed sales of alcohol. When a man so he let out his dogs and fed his chick- other than the few animals you needed grew too old for farmwork, he had to re- ens, lay down on his bed, crossed his for your own mutton, because there was tire, which meant that he had to leave arms over his chest, and waited for death, no abattoir on the islands and no way to his house on the farm and move to Stan- figuring that sooner or later someone get the meat to market, so when a sheep ley. But there was little for retired men would find him. After a while he felt was too old to yield good wool you just to do in Stanley except go to the pub, better and got up again, and the story killed it and tossed its body on the beach. and they often died soon afterward. was still being told decades later. Ev- The farm manager and his family eryone thought it was hilarious. or the first twenty years that Tim lived in “the big house,” with a maid, a There was a compressed intimacy in FBlake was at Hill Cove, from the late cook, and a gardener. The married men the settlements, both stifling and enfold- fifties to the late seventies, the farm, like lived either in small houses in the main ing: there could be few secrets in places the other farms in the Falklands, was run settlement or in “outside houses,” iso- that small, and families depended on one on a system that had progressively been lated in distant parts of the farm, where another for help. If someone got sick, it outlawed in Britain by legislation, the they could tend to the flocks that were could be a couple of days before the doc- Truck Acts, which stretched back to the near them. As part of their contracts, tor reached him; deliveries came rarely,

38 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 so people had to borrow. Every year after the time that Tony Heathman learned ment, by the end of the nineteen-seven- shearing was over, one settlement on each how to shear sheep. Tony’s roots in the ties the price of wool had plummeted. of the main islands would host Sports islands went back as far as Tim Blake’s In 1975, the Foreign Office sent Lord Week, and the farmers’ families would did, but he came from farmworkers, not Shackleton—a former Labour Party get together to celebrate. During the day, gentry: he grew up mostly in Cape Dol- leader in the House of Lords and a son there was horse racing and shearing com- phin, on East Falkland; his father was of the Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest petitions and sheepdog trials, sometimes an outside shepherd. He left school at Shackleton—to the Falklands to assess fuelled by gin-and-tonics for breakfast, fifteen, in 1964, and worked on the farm their prospects. Shackleton recommended and in the evening there was drinking at Port San Carlos, then went to Stan- that the Falkland Islands government and dancing until four or five in the ley in the winter of 1968 and cut peat. buy the big farms back from their ab- morning. There was no place to stay other He had always wanted to learn how sentee landlords, divide them into lots than the houses, so there might be twenty to shear sheep in the modern New Zea- small enough to be managed by a single people sleeping in two or three rooms, land style, but there had been no one in family, and sell them to islanders. The crammed together on the floor. Port San Carlos to teach him. Then he absentee landlords were delighted to be Until the nineteen-eighties there were heard that in Goose Green there were rid of their failing properties, and Shack- no roads in Camp, so most people got two managers just over from New Zea- leton’s plan was gradually put into effect. around on horses. Some had Land Rov- land, so he got a job there and started to A few years after Tony Heathman ers, but the soil was so wet that they learn. The method was graceful, precise, joined the shearing gang, he got mar- were always getting stuck in bogs. There every movement choreographed for max- ried, to a woman named Ailsa, whom weren’t many landmarks to steer by, and imum speed and minimum effort: the he had known all his life—his sister was fog often obscured the few that there shearer standing bent over rather than married to her uncle. They were both were, so people learned to navigate by kneeling, the animal gripped between fifth-generation islanders, descended looking at the ground. No matter how his legs, the shearer taking up the sheep’s on their mothers’ side from the same you travelled, it took hours to get any- front right leg with his left hand, the first man, William Fell, who came to the is- where, so when you passed a house you blow of the machine shears down inside lands from Scotland around 1859. Ailsa would stop in for a meal or to sleep over. the flank, stretching the belly skin up, had grown up in the Rose Hotel, a pub Anyone living outside a settlement was covering the teats for two blows up the in Stanley that her parents and grand- expected always to be able to come up crotch to the center, then rolling the sheep mother ran, but she spent all her sum- with a meal and a bed for the night. over, two blows across the topknot and mers with relatives who worked at Green For a long time you rarely knew when above each eye, step through. Then the Patch, a farm on East Falkland. someone was coming, because there were brisket blows, the neck wool and straight As it happened, Green Patch was the no phones in Camp, and the mail came up the throat, round onto the side of the first of the big farms to be subdivided once a month. When the mail boat cheek, short one under the ear, the sheep’s after the Shackleton report. The Falk- brought letters for one of the outer is- head on the shearer’s knee; then down land Islands Company sold it to the gov- lands, someone on the mainland would the leg and the sock peeled off, the sheep ernment, and in 1980 the government light fires to let people know where the turned again for the long blow across the divided its seventy-two thousand acres letters were from: one fire for local, two back and down the leg—the longest blow into six holdings of around twelve thou- for England. Later, when mail for an in shearing—so that the fleece came off sand acres each. Tony and Ailsa jumped outer island arrived in Stanley, it was neatly in one piece, like a shed overcoat. at the chance to have their own farm. In sorted into sacks, which were then Tony spent a couple of years perfect- the years that Tony had been on the shear- dropped out the door of a plane onto the ing his skills at Goose Green, and then, ing gang, Ailsa had been working as a island. In 1950, the government set up a in the early seventies, he joined up with rousie, piling the wool in the sheds, and radio-telephone service linking forty two other men to form a shearing gang, in the off season they lived in a caravan farms; the drawback and the charm of the first in the Falklands. The idea was and drove around Goose Green repair- this system was that people could hear to go from farm to farm as freelance ing fences. They could make a hundred one another’s calls. Each morning at ten, shearers, charging eightpence a sheep, pounds a day between them if they were a doctor in Stanley would hold consul- which was better money than being a lucky, and they had saved most of it. tations over the radio-telephone, and ev- shepherd. The shearing gang worked They applied for one of the hold- eryone would stop what he or she was out better for the farms as well, because ings, Estancia, and were offered a lease doing and sit down around the radio with under the old system they had to em- for fifteen thousand pounds. But run- a cup of tea to listen to islanders describe ploy large numbers of workers for the ning their own farm was not what they’d their coughs and aches and gynecologi- shearing rush who then didn’t have much imagined. The first winter was hard, and cal problems and irritable bowels. to do for the rest of the year. they lost a lot of sheep. Because the land The gangs came just in time, because was so poor, it could support only three he enormous changes that pro- the farms were in trouble. Whereas in thousand sheep, but you needed a min- Tpelled the Falkland Islands through the previous few decades wool prices had imum of six thousand to make the farm two centuries of history in twenty years been high and the Falklands had brought viable. Wool prices kept going down. actually began shortly before the war, in more tax revenues to the British ex- Tony and Ailsa couldn’t have got rid of in the late nineteen-seventies, around chequer than they had cost in invest- the farm, because they couldn’t have sold

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 39 it for enough money to buy a place in early tomorrow morning. You will wish hostile territory at night across East Stanley, so they cut back everywhere to make your dispositions accordingly.” Falkland to Tony and Ailsa’s farmhouse, they could think of and held on. Hunt had evacuated from Saigon in where British troops needed vehicles to They weren’t alone: the mood every- 1975 and remembered how long it took transport weapons. Eric Goss, a man- where on the islands was grim. It had to shred documents, so he immediately ager at Goose Green, convinced Argen- become obvious to the islanders that ordered shredding to begin; then he tine soldiers that the lights of British Britain considered them a problem. For went on the radio and told the island- ships in Falkland Sound were moon- years, the Foreign Office had been push- ers to expect an invasion but not to be light reflecting off seaweed. ing them closer to Argentina, arranging inquisitive and go outside, since they’d The conflict lasted seventy-four days; for goods and services to come from only be in the way. Patrick Watts, the around six hundred and fifty Argen- there rather than from Brit- head of the radio station, tines and two hundred and fifty Brit- ain. Argentina, whose gov- announced that he would ons, as well as three Falkland Islanders, ernment had recently been keep broadcasting, inter- died. On the fourteenth of June, Ar- taken over by a military spersing music with news; gentina finally surrendered. The com- junta, had been growing in- people began phoning in to mander of the British land forces sent creasingly bellicose on the report what they were see- a message to London: “The Falkland issue of sovereignty, and the ing, and he broadcast the Islands are once more under the gov- last thing Britain wanted calls. The next day at dawn, ernment desired by their inhabitants. was an international dispute the Argentines landed and God save the Queen.” over some distant rocks no- marched into Stanley. After Afterward, Stanley was so wrecked body had heard of. It seemed a brief resistance, the gov- and filthy, rubbish and debris everywhere, clear to the islanders that ernor realized that fighting that it was hard to imagine it could ever Britain planned at some point to simply back with the islands’ tiny defense force be repaired. People returning to homes hand them over. At the end of 1980, a was futile, and surrendered. The Argen- where Argentine conscripts had camped minister from the Foreign Office visited tines declared that they had come to out found their things broken or stolen, Stanley and proposed to an apprehen- liberate the islands from colonialism, graffiti on the walls and drawers full of sive audience in the town hall that the and ordered schools to be taught in feces. Outside the town, farmers were Falklands be given to Argentina in a Spanish and everyone to drive on the afraid to move around, because the land long-term “leaseback” arrangement, sim- right-hand side of the road. was strewn with mines. People were angry ilar to the one that Britain and China For the first few hours, no one knew and depressed, traumatized by the vio- had for Hong Kong. Not long afterward, whether Britain would come to defend lence of the invasion and by how help- the House of Lords voted to refuse the them or not. That Argentina would in- less and vulnerable it had shown them islanders British citizenship. “In a place vade when Britain had been more or to be. Many felt guilty about the British where people have become well aware less asking to hand them over made the soldiers who had died: two hundred and that loyalty expressed over many gener- country’s regime seem even crazier; peo- fifty dead for eighteen hundred Falkland ations is swiftly forgotten,” the Penguin ple in Stanley began talking about where Islanders. Were they worth it? News wrote, in a bitter editorial, “they they could flee to if Britain capitulated. During the war, groups of islanders are not surprised that they have been Some began frantically packing to evac- had been crammed together, either forc- pushed a little further out into the cold.” uate to Camp, though the Argentines ibly, by Argentine soldiers, like the more If the farms were failing, and Brit- were in Camp, too, forcing people out than a hundred people held captive for ain was likely to betray them to the Ar- of their homes, herding them into build- nearly a month in the community hall gentines, what was there left to stay for? ings, demanding food and vehicles. Later at Goose Green, or because they took People began making plans to get out— that day, the islanders learned that Mar- refuge in the West Store in Stanley. The contract workers went back to Britain; garet Thatcher, the British Prime Min- people who spent the war like that grew people with enough savings emigrated ister, had decided to send the Navy, after very close; but in the dismal aftermath to New Zealand—but many islanders all, though it would take many days to they were overwhelmed by the task of didn’t have the money to start over in get there. purging the filth from their houses and a new country, and had been in the The islanders did what they could earning enough money to repair them, Falklands for so many generations that to undermine the enemy. Reg Silvey, and the feeling of togetherness mostly they no longer had any ties to Britain the Cape Pembroke lighthouse keeper dissipated. After the war, most people or anywhere else. Where were they sup- and a radio ham, rigged an aerial out of in Stanley had troops billeted with them, posed to go? a steel-core washing line and transmit- and everywhere you went there were ted troop information to the British. soldiers in uniform, so the town still felt n April 1, 1982, the governor of the Terry Peck, a policeman, concealed a like a place under military occupation. OFalkland Islands, Rex Masterman telephoto camera in a drainpipe and The British troops called the islanders Hunt, received a telegram from the For- walked around taking photographs of Bennys, for a village-idiot character in eign Office: “We have apparently reli- Argentine missile sites. A farmer named the long-running British soap opera able evidence that an Argentine task Trudi McPhee led a caravan of island- “Crossroads.” When they were ordered force will gather off Cape Pembroke ers in Land Rovers and tractors through to stop, they took to calling them Stills,

40 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 as in, “Still a Benny.” With so many sol- their nets—working by night, shining longer distances, or to the outer islands. diers coming through on three-month bright lights into the water to attract Proper phones, with numbers and pri- tours, a lot of marriages broke up, and the squid to the surface—without being vate lines, were installed. It was decided a lot of people turned up at the hospi- able to do a thing about it. Sales of fish- that any Falkland Island teen-agers who tal with S.T.D.s. ing licenses to foreign fleets multiplied passed their exams could attend sixth Trying to keep their heads above water the islands’ collective income threefold, form and university in Britain, all ex- in Estancia with too few sheep, Tony virtually overnight. penses paid, including trips home each and Ailsa looked for ways to diversify. Suddenly, all sorts of things that peo- year. A union negotiator went in to hag- They sold hay. They planted vast vege- ple had been longing for were actually gle with the government and emerged table gardens and sold produce to the possible. Since the late nineteenth cen- with salaries doubled, wondering if he mess kitchen on the base, though the tury, islanders had wanted a swimming was hallucinating. military’s specifications were so rigid that pool because the sea was too cold to Most people quickly got used to the selling to it was barely worth the trou- swim in, so nobody knew how, and, when new way of living, and found that they ble. (“Each root must be not less than boats capsized, people would drown. liked it. But, having grown up in the 20 mm in diameter and not less than 50g Now there would be a pool. A new sec- bad times, Falkland Islanders were ex- in weight. The difference in weight be- ondary school was built, and a hospital. tremely frugal, and each new project tween the smallest and largest root in The changes that had begun before the was strenuously resisted by those who any one package must not be more than war accelerated: the old farms were sub- said that it was unnecessary, or too ex- 30mm in diameter and 200g.”) Some divided, the government lent people pensive, or that it would never work. years, they grew six tons of carrots. For money to buy the new ones, and soon Members of the legislative assembly the most part, Ailsa and Tony pulled nearly all the land in the Falklands was were leery of wasting money on mis- them all themselves, though one week- owned by the islanders who farmed it. takes—and, early on, there were some end a woman came to help, and was so The government set about building very expensive mistakes—so before em- crippled afterward from all the bending roads all over the islands, so that peo- barking on big projects they hired ex- that she had to go to the hospital. ple could visit one another without its perts to draw up reports detailing differ- After the war, the wretched condi- taking eight or ten hours to get there. ent options, and the pros and cons of tion of the Falklands attracted interna- It subsidized a car ferry linking East each, and everything that could possi- tional attention, and Britain allotted the Falkland to West Falkland, twenty miles bly go wrong. The people who had pre- islands more aid money than it ever had across the Falkland Sound, and a few viously complained about the expensive before. It passed a nationality bill that nine-seater planes to transport people mistakes now complained about the granted Falkland Islanders full British citizenship, and it gave the islands in- dependence in all matters except for- eign policy and defense. The islands would be run not by the governor but by their legislative council; this would consist of eight elected members, though there would be no political parties— there was no need, since most people had known one another all their lives. There was already a local court, and since it was difficult to assemble a jury in which no one was related to the de- fendant, the bailiff was empowered to step outside and collar more potential jurors literally off the street. But the turning point that changed everything was Britain’s decision, in 1986, to permit the Falklands to claim fish- ing rights to the waters for a hundred and fifty miles offshore, which it had not allowed before for fear of antago- nizing Argentina. The waters surround- ing the islands lay on the yearly swim- ming routes of toothfish—Chilean sea bass—and two species of squid much valued in Asia and southern Europe. For decades, the islanders had watched Russian and Taiwanese fishing boats fill “Sorry, I’m the Amazing People Watcher. I’m doing all I can.” expensive experts, and the regulations venture. At that point, the news seemed be people standing outdoors smoking, and paperwork and best practices they so plausible that few people realized it women in tight dresses, and sometimes brought with them: was a joke. drunk people flailing about, punching Tony: The fisheries office in Stanley—they each other. But the woman in the visa spent nearly five hundred thousand pounds on erlita Ponsica was in her forties office had been right; it was safe. At home the foundation. You could launch a bloody Mand working as a receptionist at she’d been afraid to carry money, but also space shuttle off that foundation! the visa office in Cebu, a city in the Phil- afraid not to carry money, because if some- Ailsa: We’ve been building houses in the ippines a few hundred miles southeast one attacked her and she hadn’t got any Falklands for nearly two hundred years and nothing’s blown away that I ever heard of. of Manila, when a woman a little older she might be killed. In Stanley, she never than she was came in to apply for a visa worried about walking alone. Even with all the experts, things went to the Falkland Islands. The woman had At first, she was very homesick. There wrong. When the road from Stanley to been working overseas for years—in were other Filipinos in Stanley, but the the airport was built, it was built with Hong Kong and Macao and Singapore— ones who’d come before her could be deep ditches on either side. Rumor had and sending money home to her mother, snooty about new arrivals, so she mostly it that somebody who wasn’t a Falkland who lived in a rural area and was taking kept to herself. After a few months, she Islander had mistaken the annual rain- care of the woman’s three children. Then and the boyfriend broke up—she found fall figure for the monthly one, and de- the woman had met a man in an online out that he’d been seeing another Fili- signed it that way to accommodate chatroom, and he had suggested that pina on the side—but the money was flooding. Many years and countless ac- she join him in the Falklands. Now she good and she decided to stay. She worked, cidents later, the ditches—too expen- had a job in Stanley, working in the con- went home, cooked dinner, went to sleep. sive to fix—were still there, and people venience store of a gas station, and she She had left her three-year-old son back were still bitter about them. After the was living with the man. She had even in the Philippines, and she missed him airport road was tarmacked, some brought her children over. so much she wanted to die. Then she wanted to tarmac more roads, like the It was safe in the Falklands, the figured out how to get one of her sisters one out to the ferry port, while others woman said—maybe the safest place in a job in Stanley, as a waitress. Once her thought that, if you did that, next thing the world. The money was good—up sister arrived, she felt better. Her sister you knew people were going to want to ten times what you would earn in the worked late at the restaurant, so in the lines painted down the middle of the Philippines—and health and education evenings after the supermarket closed roads, and then barriers along the edge were free. It was better than Dubai, even, Merlita was alone. But at night, and on to prevent cars from falling into the because in Dubai it was almost impos- their days off, she and her sister sat in ditches, and by then you might as well sible to get residency, whereas you could their house and sang and drank together, give everyone their own limousine and get permanent residency in the Falk- and video-called home after midnight, throw in a year’s supply of tiaras while lands after five years. The woman ex- when the Internet was cheaper. you were at it. plained to Merlita how she had met Filipinos were relatively recent arriv- The Falkland Islands were now the man online, and soon Merlita, too, als. After the war, people had started ar- among the richest places on earth— had a boyfriend in the Falklands, about riving from St. Helena, another British with an income, per capita, comparable twenty-five years older than she was. island territory in the South Atlantic. to those of Norway and Qatar. Despite This man helped her find a job in Stan- In the nineties and early two-thousands, its spending, the government had also ley, working at the supermarket—you Chileans who had grown up under mil- put aside several years’ income for a couldn’t move to the Falklands without itary dictatorship had started moving rainy day: it had no debt at all. And, a job—and in 2017 she flew over. to the Falklands to work in the hotel— meanwhile, the possibility had arisen of It was cold in Stanley, and very quiet. for a long time there was only one hotel, exponentially more money in the near It was so tiny, after Cebu, and almost no- the Upland Goose—or in the shops, future. Since the nineteen-nineties, oil body about, only a few cars driving by, or or to drive a taxi. Later on, a group of companies had been exploring the wa- sometimes a couple of kids on bicycles. mine-clearance workers from Zimbabwe ters around the islands, and by the early From a distance the town looked pretty, spent a couple of years on the islands, twenty-tens it had become clear that the white houses with colored roofs, but ridding them of mines from the war, substantial oil deposits existed in the when you walked past the houses you and some liked it enough that they de- basins offshore. The islanders cautiously saw that many were cheaply made, with cided to stay and bring their families. reminded themselves that drilling was painted siding and corrugated metal. Some of the de-miners had already not a certainty—it depended on oil prices Some people had planted flower beds, lived all over the world—the Falklands and various technical issues—but it but many back yards were messy, strewn was just another posting. Shupi Chi- seemed increasingly likely that this with spare building materials and old punza had grown up in Harare and done would happen, and that the Falklands’ cars. Some people kept animals—dogs A-levels in history, Shona, and English annual revenues could soon quadruple. and chickens, even horses and sheep. literature intending to go to university, On April 1st, a broadcaster on Falkland Sometimes in the evening a lamb could but then he heard that de-mining paid Islands radio announced that the gov- be heard crying. On Saturday nights, if double what he could earn as a teacher. ernment had struck gold and everyone you walked past one of the pubs you could He left to take a series of de-mining should claim free shares in a mining hear loud music inside, and there would jobs, in Croatia, then Lebanon, then

42 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 Congo, then Cyprus, then Afghanistan, and, finally, the Falklands. By the time he got to Stanley, he had married Agnes, a girl who grew up on his street in Ha- rare, and they had three young children. He wanted to stop going away so much, so he got a job installing floors, and later worked as a firefighter at the airport. He brought Agnes over, and she started a house-cleaning business. Shupi was determined that he and Agnes would not fail to integrate into the Falklands community, and he had lived in so many places that he knew what it took to get the natives to accept you. He joined a soccer team, he participated in charity fund-raisers—there were a lot of char- ity fund-raisers. He explained to Agnes which foods the islanders ate with cut- lery and which with their hands, so that they wouldn’t embarrass themselves if they were invited to dinner. Whereas in the seventies in the Falk- lands there had been only sheep, now there were not only the fisheries but also tourism, which was growing every year, Ailsa Heathman, a fifth-generation islander, on her farm, Estancia. with all the cruise ships stopping by on their way to Antarctica. Tony and Ailsa, turned, but there still weren’t enough. temporarily, in South Africa or New York like many islanders, started a sideline in Shops and hotels started bringing in more or Kathmandu, and then, when she had tourism. They did battlefield tours and and more people from abroad, and by the saved enough money, she would search talked about their war experience, and time of the 2016 census only forty-three on Web sites—Workaway, MindMy- showed people the remains of two Ar- per cent of the population was native- House—for people who could give her gentine helicopters near their farm. They born. Of the remainder, about half were room and board in exchange for some drove people out to see the king pen- from Britain, but the rest came from kind of help. On a three-month coco- guins on the beach at Volunteer Point. nearly sixty countries. Of course, it being nut-harvesting Workaway in the Tua- On a big cruise-ship day there might be the Falklands, many of the sixty coun- motu Islands, in the South Pacific, she fifty vehicles at Volunteer Point, with tries were represented by one or two peo- decided that she liked remote islands, four passengers in each. During the sum- ple. (“The Russians came through fisher- and she liked the sound of the Falklands, mer, many people took time off work to ies science. There’s a Romanian in Port so she placed an advertisement in the pick up tourism gigs, but there still weren’t Howard—he’s a farmworker. The Lat- Penguin News. She was taken in by a cou- enough drivers for the days when four vian, I really don’t know how he got here.”) ple at Hill Cove who wanted help around thousand passengers came ashore, more In addition to those who came for the farm, and spent a few months cook- than doubling the islands’ population, so work, there were a lot of travellers in the ing for a shearing gang, cleaning barns, the tourists who hadn’t booked car trips Falklands—people who spent their time and castrating lambs. A neighbor spot- in advance would trudge around Stanley staring at maps, who had been all over ted her, and she ended up moving in. in matching promotional rain jackets and the world, who had no deep roots and Keith Biles started out in the nine- extreme-weather boots, taking photo- had fetched up in the South Atlantic for teen-sixties working in London for a firm graphs of the statue of Margaret Thatcher one reason or another. Pat Warburton of bullion dealers, but when he visited and the red post boxes and the red phone was a dental hygienist in her sixties from his brother-in-law, who was working in booths outside the post office. York Springs, Pennsylvania, who had Pretoria, he realized that many people It was impossible to fill all the jobs— been to Tibet and Mongolia in a Uni- were living better for less money over- many people in Stanley had two or three. mog truck that she and a boyfriend had seas, and he wanted to be a part of that. Young people switched careers easily if kitted up into a mobile home. She had He went to work for a bank that would they felt like it: from I.T. consultant to followed the Silk Road through Turk- send him abroad, and was posted to Ma- running an embroidery business; from menistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan nila, then Hong Kong, then New York, research biologist to airline pilot. People into northwestern China; she had been Sri Lanka, Oman, Dubai, Ghana, and who had emigrated in the seventies began all over Europe and South America and the Falklands. While he was living in moving back, and three-quarters of the Africa. She would stop to work for a few Stanley, he turned fifty-five and came up students who went away to study re- months in dental offices that took her on for retirement, and he and his wife had

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 43 to decide where to settle. He was drawn though, the way they once did; now they this place, I said, “I want hooks in the store- to Cyprus because the climate was nice had money, and it was easier to get into room for twelve mugs.” He said, “What the hell and life there was easy, but his wife Stanley on a plane, and products were do you want twelve mugs for?” Well, there was many a day they were all dirty and I’d be wash- couldn’t face it, thirty years of sitting in flown in from abroad all the time, so, if ing them before the next lot came in. But once the sun and going to bars and meeting they needed something, they might no the road went in people would just drive past. other expatriates for dinner. They con- longer have to borrow. sidered returning to England, but it had The new roads made getting around With the new phones, you could finally been so many years since they’d lived much quicker, which meant that if you talk to a doctor in private, and people there that they had no roots anywhere in wanted to visit someone you could, with- quickly got used to that. Years later, when particular. Their children were living in out taking two days to do it. But, be- the hospital was being refurbished, a tem- different parts of the country and plan- cause of that, you didn’t need to stop at porary waiting room was set up, with ning to emigrate themselves. So in the anyone’s house along the way, or spend windows that were visible from the road, end they decided to stay. They had friends the night. People got into the habit of and people complained that it was out- in Stanley, they were active in local or- calling before they came, to make sure rageous that passersby might see them ganizations, they had a nice house with that a visit was convenient. A lot of peo- there and know that they had an appoint- a picture window overlooking the sea. ple stopped staying over for Sports Week. ment. On the other hand, while there They might come out to see the races, was now more privacy, some things that rosperity changed nearly everything. drink a few Budweisers in the afternoon, had not been spoken of before, or had PWhen an islander bought one of the and then drive home that night. It was been hidden in isolated farmhouses, be- new farms, he needed to live on his own a bit of an imposition to stay over, and gan to come out. Stanley’s small jail grew land, so typically he moved into the out- who wanted to spend a night on the floor crowded with elderly sex offenders. The side shepherd’s house that was already when you could sleep in your own bed? hospital could now afford to invest in on it. Suddenly, the people he had lived Anyway, Sports Week was no longer as mental health; visiting therapists noticed with for years, maybe his whole life, were exciting as it had been when it was the in the islands’ population a surprising gone, and his family was alone. The work only time you’d see certain people all year. near-absence of schizophrenia and bi- on each farm could be managed by one With so many leaving early, Sports Week polar disorder, but a higher than usual couple, especially once people started became Sports a few days, and the all- incidence of alcohol abuse and depression. herding sheep with quad bikes rather night dances petered out: There were a few people who said than horses, so farmworkers who couldn’t Tony: There’s no social life left in the Camp. that they liked the Falklands better the afford to take on their own farms either Ailsa: I used to keep all the beds made way they used to be, though almost ev- moved to Stanley or left. Within a few up—people often stopped here overnight. We erybody mocked them for pining for the years, many of the settlements had emp- used to get about eight hundred visitors a year. good old days, when everyone was poor Tony: Twelve hundred, one year! tied out—a place that had had fifty peo- Ailsa: We all knew each other. Tony would and miserable and half the population ple living in it might now have four. be away nearly every weekend looking for some- was trying to leave. “I wish it had never People didn’t need neighbors anymore, body that was lost or bogged. When we first got happened,” Patrick Watts says. “I did love the old Falklands the way it was—the nice, relaxed, slow way of life we had— which some people couldn’t tolerate, so they upped and went. It was a small pop- ulation, and we were closer together. Pre- ’82, the Falklands was the place where I lived; now it’s the place where I work. That’s how I describe it.” It used to be that people who lived in Stanley knew everyone they saw on the street, and would say hello to them. Of course, you always had the odd for- eigner turning up. Patrick Watts had brought home his wife, Sima, a Dutch citizen of Indian extraction who had grown up in Suriname, having met her at an all-you-can-eat buffet dinner at Mr. Wu, a Chinese restaurant in Lon- don. But in the old days people came one at a time, so you recognized them. The older generation found the num- ber of strangers disturbing, although “Oh, my God! Look at us! I’ve become my mother they weren’t greeting people on the and you’ve become your great-grandfather!” street anymore, anyway, because now everyone had cars so nobody walked. ish second, but it was hard to say what yet clear what all this meant for the fisher­ Some islanders complained that, with that meant. Britishness was easy to pro­ ies, but their revenues made up nearly so many people from all over the world, claim—the Union Jacks, the red post two­thirds of the islands’ income, so any the Falklands were becoming unrecog­ boxes. Symbols were enough because ev­ reduction would have an enormous im­ nizable. Others found the new cosmo­ erybody knew what Britain was, and pact. Tourism was the second­largest politanism exciting, and thought that there was too much of it to capture, any­ business, and that consisted almost en­ those who complained were lacking in way. But what a Falkland Islander was, tirely of cruise­ship passengers. Who was vision and probably racist, harkening was harder to describe. Most people felt going to sign up for a cruise now? And back to the days before the war, when strongly that sheep farming was an im­ if the tourists stopped coming restaurants islanders used to cite the nearly hun­ portant part of their heri­ and hotels would close. You dred­per­cent whiteness of the popula­ tage, but not many people weren’t allowed to stay in tion as proof that they were truly Brit­ lived in Camp anymore. the Falklands without a job, ish. But, in addition to this familiar divide, The gift shops were full of so the people who worked there was a twist unique to the Falklands, penguins, but although ev­ there and didn’t yet have caused by the lingering spectre of the erybody liked penguins they permanent residency might war. Falkland Islanders claimed the right were not obviously totemic. have to go home. to self­determination under the United “We’re so young, we don’t What would happen if Nations Charter. The charter granted have a long history,” Leona planes stopped bringing in that right to “peoples,” but it didn’t define Roberts, a member of the regular supplies? Would the what that meant. What did it take to be islands’ legislative assembly, islands become remote once a people? How did some people become says. “And there’s no native population, more, hoping the deliveries came in, re­ a people? Was it a matter of time? Shared no carvings to tell us who we are.” lying on homegrown food if they didn’t? culture? Children born on the land? Was When asked what it meant to be a In the old days, fruit was shipped in once there, on the other hand, a point at which Falkland Islander, most people with deep a month—it was hard to grow anything a population was so transient and unsta­ roots in the islands would talk about sur­ on the islands other than berries—and ble that it looked less like a society than vival in isolation and bad weather; mak­ people called mutton “365” because they like an airport? Islanders liked to point ing do with very little; figuring out how ate it every day, sometimes for all three out that their old families had lived in to fix something without training or the meals. Could that happen again? Would the Falklands for more generations than proper parts; helping one another out be­ younger people who’d grown up in Stan­ many Argentine families had lived in cause nobody else was going to do it, be­ ley learn to slaughter sheep? Maybe the Argentina—for practically as long as Ar­ cause there was nobody else. A lot of people who missed the way the Falklands gentina had been a country—and some being a Falkland Islander had to do with used to be would get what they wanted: worried that if the islands again came to being poor, but now Falkland Islanders be inhabited mostly by travellers and were no longer poor. “When Premier Oil Ailsa: Another World War. Heaven for- bid, but it might sort the world out. contract workers from abroad this ad­ researched its first environmental and Tony: Shut shore down for a month. vantage would be lost. social­ impact statement, we had people Ailsa: We’d have to learn to live on our People had come to the Falklands for saying, We’ve got to protect our way of own resources and get along together for once. so many different reasons that it was hard life, we’ve got to protect our way of life,” to combine them into the kinds of larger Mike Summers, the head of the cham­ It seemed inevitable that the plague national legends that explained who you ber of commerce, says. “And at some point would come. Everyone was waiting. For were. Most of the usual stories were not in a meeting I said, ‘So what is that, then?’ weeks, some people had been saying on available. The first arrivals had not tamed And there was a silence. And I said, ‘You Facebook that the government ought or transformed the land, uprooting trees see—the problem is, we don’t know.’ ” to close the borders, at least to the cruise and plowing fields: there were no trees, ships, but the passengers kept arriving, and the sheep took the land as it was. n late March, as the plague drew closer, walking all over Stanley, spreading God The islanders had rid themselves of their Iand the planes stopped coming, the knows what. colonial masters, but not by revolution; islanders, like people everywhere, sat at Now, though, with the beginning of the colonial masters had wanted to be home and went online, trying to figure fall in the Southern Hemisphere, the rid of them. A liberating war had been out what was going to happen. Oil prices tourism season was over. There would won, but not by the islanders themselves. had plunged since the pandemic began, be no more cruise ships, and the bed­ Moreover, although the islands now had and COVID had been spreading among and­breakfasts and the gift shops would plenty of money, they were still reliant workers living in close quarters on rigs, shut. With borders closing in other on Britain in many ways—for medical so it seemed unlikely that drilling would countries and the uncertainty of flights, care, education, and defense, for profes­ start anytime soon. With restaurants many of the experts and consultants had sionals and experts. Independence seemed closing in Europe, demand for fish was gone home. The long­term islanders impossible, at least in the foreseeable fu­ a fraction of what it had been, and that would be on their own again for the ture; the place was just too small. was in addition to the possibility that winter. And if people started dying ev­ Most people now described them­ Brexit would result in European tariffs eryone would mourn, because everyone selves as Falkland Islanders first and Brit­ approaching twenty per cent. It was not would know who they were. 

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 45 THE POLITICAL SCENE THE SURRENDER The Mueller investigation’s missed opportunities.

BY JEFFREY TOOBIN

obert Mueller submitted his final have welcomed. He never issued a grand- with NBC’s Lester Holt and in a con- report as the special counsel jury subpoena for the President’s testi- versation with visiting Russian offi- R more than a year ago. But even mony, and even though his office built cials, the real reason was related to the now—in the midst of the coronavirus a compelling case for Trump’s having Russia investigation. pandemic and the Administration’s trag- committed obstruction of justice, Muel- Rosenstein was distraught over how ically bungled response to it, and the ler came up with reasons not to say so the White House had used his memo. mass demonstrations following the kill- in his report. In light of this, Trump Concerned about Trump’s firing of ings by police of George Floyd, Bre- shouldn’t be denouncing Mueller—he Comey, he named an independent pros- onna Taylor, and many others—Presi- should be thanking him. ecutor, now known as a special coun- dent Trump remains obsessed with The events that led to Mueller’s ap- sel, to look into a possible connection what he recently called, on Twitter, the pointment began shortly after Trump between the Trump campaign and Rus- “Greatest Political Crime in the His- took office, when he met several times sia. (Jeff Sessions, the Attorney Gen- tory of the U.S., the Russian Witch- with James Comey, the director of the eral, had recused himself from matters Hunt.” In the past several months, the F.B.I. Over dinner at the White House, relating to Russia.) Rosenstein didn’t President has mobilized his Adminis- on January 27, 2017, Trump said that he consider anyone except Mueller for the tration and its supporters to prove that, expected “loyalty” from Comey—spe- post. Mueller had both the skills and from its inception, the F.B.I.’s investi- cifically, as he would later make clear, the bipartisan credibility that the job gation into possible ties between his he wanted an announcement from the required. Having worked in the Jus- 2016 campaign and the Russian gov- F.B.I. that he was not under suspicion tice Department during the Cold War, ernment was flawed, or worse. Attor- for misconduct with Russia during the he hardly needed lessons on the ma- ney General William Barr has directed campaign. At the time, Michael Flynn, lign intentions of the government in John Durham, the United States At- Trump’s former national-security ad- Moscow. Mueller had been a federal torney in Connecticut, to conduct a viser, was being investigated for lying prosecutor in the nineteen-eighties, criminal investigation into whether to the F.B.I. As Comey later testified, the head of the Justice Department’s F.B.I. officials, or anyone else, engaged on February 14th, at a meeting in the criminal division during the George in misconduct at the outset. Senator Oval Office, the President told every- H. W. Bush Administration, and then, Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, one else to leave, then asked Comey to starting in 2001, the F.B.I. director for the chairman of the Senate Judiciary drop the investigation of Flynn. “I hope twelve years. Until May 17th, when Ro- Committee, has also convened hearings you can see your way clear to letting senstein named him as the special coun- on the investigation’s origins. this go, to letting Flynn go,” Trump said. sel, Mueller knew very little about the The President has tweeted about “He is a good guy.” state of the Russia investigation. An- Mueller more than three hundred times, Comey declined either to publicly drew McCabe, who, as Comey’s for- and has repeatedly referred to the spe- clear Trump of wrongdoing or to close mer deputy, was the acting director cial counsel’s investigation as a “scam” the investigation of Flynn, and the Pres- of the F.B.I., invited Mueller to the and a “hoax.” Barr and Graham agree ident resolved to fire him. On May 8, J. Edgar Hoover Building for a briefing. that the Mueller investigation was ille- 2017, Trump told Rod Rosenstein, who At the first Senate Judiciary Com- gitimate in conception and excessive had recently been confirmed as the mittee hearing on the Russia investiga- in execution—in Barr’s words, “a grave Deputy Attorney General, to write a tion, on June 3, 2020, Graham opened injustice” that was “unprecedented in memo describing Comey’s perfor- the proceedings by saying, “It’s important American history.” According to the mance as the F.B.I. director, in partic- to find out what the hell happened.” He Administration, Mueller and his team ular his handling of the investigation wanted to know whether, when Mueller displayed an unseemly eagerness to un- into Hillary Clinton’s use of private was appointed, there was any evidence cover crimes that never existed. In fact, e-mail. The following day, Rosenstein that Trump’s campaign had been collud- the opposite is true. Mueller had an submitted the memo and Trump fired ing with the Russians. McCabe’s briefing abundance of legitimate targets to in- Comey. Sean Spicer, the President’s of Mueller, along with a subsequent meet- vestigate, and his failures emerged from press secretary, told reporters that the ing between Mueller and Rosenstein— an excess of caution, not of zeal. Espe- President had done so for the reasons neither of which has been previously cially when it came to Trump, Mueller stated in Rosenstein’s memo, but, as reported—begin to address Graham’s avoided confrontations that he should Trump soon confirmed in an interview question. These meetings demonstrate

46 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 361667513

Robert Mueller was celebrated for his careful approach, but his caution played straight into the hands of the White House.

ILLUSTRATION BY SERGIY MAIDUKOV THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 47 that, from the beginning, Mueller was in- ference room. For that first meeting, describe the F.B.I.’s Russia investiga- structed to conduct a narrow, fact-based after McCabe welcomed Mueller and tion to date. “We will not get through criminal investigation. his associates, Aaron Zebley and Jim the whole story in this one meeting,” Quarles, the acting F.B.I. director offi- McCabe said, according to people who cCabe was a generation younger ciated from a seat at the middle of the attended the briefing. “It’s too long and Mthan Mueller and still in awe of table, a gesture of respect. complicated. We will tell you how we him. He had worked at the F.B.I. when There was a long agenda, including got here.” McCabe told Mueller that Mueller was the director, and had at- a host of logistical matters. For one thing, Crossfire Hurricane—the code name tended countless meetings in what was Mueller’s team had no place to work. for the Russia investigation—had begun then Mueller’s conference room, on the The investigation would include a great shortly after the hack of the Democratic seventh floor of the Hoover building. deal of sensitive information, so any National Committee e-mails, which He knew that Mueller was a relentless space would have to be secured as a Sen- surfaced in July, 2016. The e-mails, which inquisitor, and that Mueller’s face, which sitive Compartmented Information Fa- were released by WikiLeaks, showed resembles an Easter Island moai, be- cility, or SCIF. Mueller had begun to hire that some Party officials had favored trayed little besides impatience. Muel- a staff of prosecutors, but he also needed Clinton over Bernie Sanders, poison- ler could intimidate outsiders and in- F.B.I. agents and analysts assigned to ing relations between the two candi- siders alike with his silence. He didn’t his team. Rosenstein had not given the dates’ supporters on the eve of the Par- praise subordinates; he needled them, Office of Special Counsel a specific ty’s convention. Around that time, the and they came to see this goading as a budget, but Mueller needed at least rough Australian government informed the sign that they were still in good stand- guidelines, and also support staff, to F.B.I. that, in the spring of 2016, George ing. (“Are you done playing with your begin organizing his inquiries. (Mueller’s Papadopoulos, an official from the food?” he would ask those who took team was eventually installed in underuti- Trump campaign, had told Alexander too long with a task.) Now, improba- lized space in Patriots Plaza, a commer- Downer, an Australian diplomat, that bly, Mueller was coming to McCabe cial building on the southwest water- the Russians were planning to release for information. As the F.B.I. director, front, near Nationals Park, where the hacked e-mails related to Clinton’s cam- Mueller had presided from a seat at the city’s major-league baseball team plays.) paign. After the hacking took place, head of the rectangular table in the con- The purpose of the meeting was to McCabe explained, the Australians told the F.B.I. about the conversation. “We’ve known for years that the Russians were probing our political systems,” McCabe said. “But July is when we say, Fuck, this is actually happening.” McCabe told Mueller that, follow- ing the hacking and the Australian dis- closures, the Bureau had started look- ing at Trump campaign officials who had ties to the Russians. These included Carter Page, who had become involved in pro-Russian activities and had drawn the interest of the F.B.I. almost a de- cade earlier, and Papadopoulos. Paul Manafort, who served for a time as Trump’s campaign chairman, had long- standing financial and political ties to the pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. McCabe said that the F.B.I. didn’t know whether Trump was aware of the connections: “Were these people just rogue morons?” Flynn, the former national-security adviser, who had worked on the cam- paign, appeared to have relatively weak ties to the Russians. Between Trump’s election and his Inauguration, Flynn had spoken several times with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador to the United States. U.S.-government sur- “Then, when I got a little money, I said I’m never veillance revealed that the two discussed eating off the ground again.” the possible easing of sanctions that the Obama Administration had imposed to him, as was Starr’s seemingly desper- cisions are the most revealing, and on Russia as punishment for its inter- ate search to find something to pin on defining, failures of Mueller’s tenure as ference in the 2016 election. On Janu- his target. Persistent news leaks from special counsel. ary 24, 2017, after Trump Administra- Starr’s office and Starr’s frequent ses- The President initially vowed to tion officials, including Vice-President sions with reporters in the driveway of coöperate with the investigation, and Mike Pence, denied that Flynn and Kis- his home, in suburban Virginia, were he hired the Washington lawyer Ty lyak had discussed the sanctions, a pair also anathema to Mueller, who began Cobb to expedite the release of docu- of F.B.I. agents interviewed Flynn at his inquiry by imposing a comprehen- ments and the appearance of witnesses. the White House. McCabe told Muel- sive press blackout. Relations between Mueller’s office and ler that Flynn had apparently lied to According to McCabe, there ap- the Trump White House got off to a the agents about his conversations with peared to be possible prosecutable cases smooth start. As a condition for repre- Kislyak, and said that those statements against Papadopoulos and Flynn, for senting Trump, Cobb made the Presi- should be on Mueller’s agenda, too. false statements, and against Manafort, dent promise not to attack Mueller, There was also the issue of possible for financial improprieties. (In the first whom Cobb knew and respected. obstruction of justice once Trump be- several months of the investigation, Throughout 2017, Trump mostly hon- came President. The Comey-Trump Mueller won guilty pleas from Papado- ored that pledge. encounters had led the F.B.I. to open poulos and Flynn and secured a pair of Cobb started sending documents to a criminal investigation of the Presi- wide-ranging indictments against Mueller that summer, and interviews dent for obstruction of justice shortly Manafort, who was later convicted in began in the fall. But Trump gave mixed before Mueller was appointed. Trump’s one case and pleaded guilty in the other. signals about whether he would agree pointed request for Comey’s “loyalty” In 2020, the Trump Administration to testify. At a press conference in June, could almost have been mistaken as the sought to drop the case against Flynn, he was asked, “Would you be willing to behavior of a novice. But the later meet- even though he had pleaded guilty.) speak under oath to give your version ing with Comey, when Trump asked Mueller decided to take on the range of events?” Trump answered, “One hun- everyone else to leave the Oval Office, of issues he discussed with McCabe dred per cent.” On another occasion, he was more suspicious. “It looked like but little else. He also brought indict- said, of prospective questioning by Muel- Trump knew he shouldn’t do it,” Mc- ments against more than a score of ler, “I’m looking forward to it, actually” Cabe said. “That’s why he kicks every- Russians for attempts to interfere in and “I would do it under oath.” At other one out.” the 2016 election, but they certainly times, he said he thought the weakness After McCabe’s briefing, Mueller, would not agree to appear in an Amer- of the evidence against him would ob- Zebley, and Quarles went to the Jus- ican courtroom. viate the need for testimony: “When tice Department for an introductory Trump’s political adversaries, un- they have no collusion—and nobody’s meeting with Rosenstein. Rosenstein aware of Mueller’s determination to found any collusion at any level—it wasn’t as familiar with the evidence as run a brisk, narrow investigation, be- seems unlikely that you’d even have an McCabe and his team were, but he had came invested in the expectation that interview.” No one around Trump knew a broader piece of advice for Mueller. he would uncover such sweeping and whether he wanted to testify, and he Now that he was Mueller’s boss, it could devastating proof of criminal misdeeds was just as evasive with his lawyers as be interpreted as a command. “I love that a misbegotten Presidency would he was in public. Ken Starr,” Rosenstein said, according be forced to come to an end. There By late 2017, Mueller had made to people present. (Starr was the inde- were “Mueller Time” T-shirts and Rob- it clear that he wanted to interview pendent counsel who oversaw the Clin- ert Mueller action figures—G.I. Joes Trump. The President’s lawyers, led at ton Whitewater investigation; Rosen- for the MSNBC set. It was all the bet- that point by John Dowd, a veteran stein had been a prosecutor on the ter that Mueller was a Republican and Washington defense attorney, and Jay Arkansas portion of that inquiry.) “But no one’s idea of a political partisan. But Sekulow, a constitutional-law expert his investigation was a fishing expedi- Trump’s fiercest defenders and Muel- and a conservative activist, knew that tion. Don’t do that. This is a criminal ler’s most devoted fans misjudged the Mueller’s leverage, in political if not investigation. Do your job, and then special counsel from the beginning. legal terms, would only dwindle with shut it down.” time. Defense attorneys always try to In other words, far from authorizing ueller did not use the F.B.I. in- delay, especially in politically sensitive a wide-ranging investigation of the Pres- Mformation as a catalyst for a investigations, where the attention of ident and his allies, the Justice Depart- deeper examination of Trump’s history the news media, and of other politi- ment directed Mueller to limit his probe and personal finances. Nor did he de- cians, generally moves on to other mat- to individuals who were reasonably sus- mand to see Trump’s taxes, or examine ters. Trump’s lawyers stalled, demand- pected of committing crimes. Temper- the roots of his special affinity for Pu- ing a list of the topics that Mueller amentally as well as professionally, Muel- tin’s Russia. Most important, Mueller wanted to address. Several weeks later, ler was inclined to follow this advice. declined to issue a grand-jury subpoena Mueller supplied the list. Trump’s law- The very notion of a criminal investi- for Trump’s testimony, and excluded yers were encouraged—Mueller clearly gation lasting more than eight years, as from his report a conclusion that Trump had not discovered a trove of damning the Whitewater case had, was repellent had committed crimes. These two de- new evidence. On the list were such

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 49 subjects as Trump’s knowledge of Flynn’s contacts with Russians and his deci- sion to fire Comey. The campaign was PEDESTRIAN CROSSING, CHARLOTTESVILLE another topic: what Trump knew of a meeting, in Trump Tower in June, 2016, A gaggle of girls giggle over the bricks at which several of his campaign ad- leading off Court Square. We brake visers spoke with someone they were told was a representative of the Rus- dutifully, and wait; but there’s at least sian government; Trump’s awareness of twenty of these knob-kneed creatures, WikiLeaks’ efforts to obtain documents stolen from the Democratic National blond and curly, still at an age that thinks Committee; his communications with impudence is cute. Look how they dart his lawyer Michael Cohen and their plans to build a Trump Tower in Mos- and dither, changing flanks as they lurch cow. Dowd was optimistic that Trump, along—golden gobbets of infuriating foolishness if well prepared, could handle these is- sues. They even made a tentative deal or pure joy, depending on one’s disposition. with Mueller for Trump to testify, on At the moment mine’s sour—this is taking January 27, 2018, at Camp David. But the most important issue, the scope of far too long; don’t they have minders? the questioning, was not resolved. Just behind my shoulder in the city park Trump’s lawyers and Mueller’s team met frequently at Mueller’s headquar- the Southern general still stands, stonewalling us all. ters, in Patriots Plaza, and, as the date When I was their age I judged Goldilocks of the Camp David interview ap- proached, the negotiations grew in- nothing more than a pint-size criminal creasingly tense. Dowd has a bluster- who flounced into others’ lives, then ing style, and he berated Mueller about the basis for the investigation. Trump assumed their clemency. Unfair, had hired Dowd in large part because I know, my aggression—to lump them the lawyer and Mueller had known each other for years. Dowd played on into a gaggle (silly geese!) when all this familiarity. they’re guilty of is being young. So far. “Cut the bullshit, Bob,” Dowd said, at one meeting, according to people —Rita Dove present. “You know you have nothing on him.” Dowd was aware that, if any accusations were made, the most cru- tions during the campaign, but that any- Comey. But Mueller said that he needed cial would be obstruction of justice: thing after he was elected should be off to know why Trump had done so. “What’s your theory, Bob? What law limits, owing to executive privilege—a Sekulow asked Mueller whether, in did the President violate? You’re seri- highly debatable assertion. Mueller his position, he would allow Trump to ously going to claim that firing the F.B.I. greeted this, too, with silence. testify. Sekulow was not posing a rhe- director is a criminal act? You know he Sekulow asked Mueller why he torical question. He really wanted to can fire the director for any damn rea- needed to interview the President at know: What was in it for Trump to an- sons he wants.” Mueller absorbed most all. Mueller’s prosecutors had the doc- swer Mueller’s questions? of these sallies in silence. uments and the testimonies of others. Mueller was aware that few lawyers Sekulow, who had often argued be- They knew the facts—that Trump had would choose to allow a client like fore the Supreme Court, was originally fired Comey, that he’d tweeted insults Trump, with his propensity to lie con- hired to deal only with constitutional at Jeff Sessions. What more did they stantly and egregiously, to answer ques- issues for the defense team. But he grad- need? Mueller finally replied, and his tions in a grand-jury setting. Mueller ually assumed an expanded role on words, in a way, defined his investiga- said something about “the best inter- Trump’s behalf, usually playing the tion: “We need to know his state of ests of the country,” but Sekulow had scholar to Dowd’s pugilist. Sekulow op- mind.” It was a narrowly legalistic re- made his point, and the meeting ended posed any direct questioning of the Pres- sponse. In order to obtain a conviction soon afterward. A few days later, about ident, but, to avoid undercutting Dowd, for most crimes, including obstruction two weeks before the scheduled Camp he tried simply to narrow the scope of of justice, prosecutors must prove that David session, Dowd called Mueller to the planned interview. He told Muel- the defendant had bad or corrupt in- tell him that Trump would not be sit- ler that he thought Trump might be tent. As Sekulow pointed out, Mueller ting for an interview. able to answer questions about his ac- already knew that Trump had fired This presented Mueller with the

50 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 question of whether he should issue a ticipated benefits for our investigation Mueller eventually capitulated on a grand-jury subpoena for Trump to tes- and report.” But Mueller himself was grand-jury subpoena and on an oral in- tify, and thus invite a battle in court. responsible for much of the delay. In terview. Then he gave up on questions There were two key precedents in the this critical moment, he showed weak- about Trump’s actions as President. Fi- Supreme Court rulings. In United States ness, and Trump pounced. After his nally, Trump’s lawyers presented Muel- v. Nixon, in 1974, the Court unanimously lawyers refused the Camp David in- ler with a take-it-or-leave-it proposal: ordered President Nixon to turn over terview, he began to attack Mueller. Trump would answer only written ques- White House tapes for use in the Wa- “The Mueller probe should never have tions, and only about matters that took tergate-conspiracy trial against his for- been started in that there was no col- place before he became President. Muel- mer aides. In Clinton v. Jones, from lusion and there was no crime,” he ler took it. 1997, the Court ordered Bill Clinton to tweeted in March, 2018, in one of his Even this process was protracted. give a deposition in Paula Jones’s sexual- first direct attacks on the special coun- Mueller didn’t submit the written ques- harassment civil case against him. sel. “WITCH HUNT!” tions until September 17, 2018. Seku- Mueller’s team later argued to low, with Jane and Martin Raskin, hus- Trump’s lawyers that the Nixon case rump was dissatisfied with Dowd, band-and-wife Florida defense lawyers showed that Presidents had to coöper- Twho he felt had misled him about who had joined Trump’s team, took ate with criminal investigations of the how quickly he could wrap up the charge of preparing the responses. This White House. Sekulow responded that Mueller investigation. Seeking a law- turned out to be a maddening endeavor. a grand-jury subpoena for Trump was yer who would take a harder line on Before drafting answers, they had to different. The Watergate tapes already his behalf, Trump hired Rudolph Giu- talk to Trump to get a sense of what existed; Nixon did not have to disrupt liani, who came on in April, 2018. he knew. Trump had trouble focussing, his duties to prepare his testimony. As During the transition from Dowd to and his anger about the Mueller inves- for the Jones case, Mueller asserted that Giuliani, Sekulow asked Mueller for a tigation led him to avoid meeting with the courts regarded criminal investiga- pause in negotiations about Trump’s the Raskins. In fact, it was hard for any tions as a higher priority than civil mat- possible testimony. At last, on May 5th, of Trump’s lawyers to get on his calen- ters. The Court had directed Clinton Trump’s team requested a briefing ses- dar. As Philip Rucker and Carol Leon- to give a deposition in a civil case; this sion for Giuliani. At the meeting, Giu- nig reported in the Washington Post, was powerful evidence that the Justices liani wanted to nail down a commit- one session came to an end when news would uphold a grand-jury subpoena, ment from Mueller to follow a Justice broke that pipe bombs had been mailed where the public interest was greater. Department policy, established by its to prominent Democrats and media Sekulow replied that the Jones case con- Office of Legal Counsel (O.L.C.) in outlets; another was interrupted by cerned only Clinton’s behavior before 1973 and reaffirmed in 2000, barring phone calls from the Turkish President, he took office, so the questioning did the indictment of a sitting President. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the Chi- not risk disclosure of matters relevant Aaron Zebley, from Mueller’s staff, nese President, Xi Jinping. to his Presidency. Thus the Jones case confirmed that Mueller would honor The Raskins fastidiously checked had little bearing on how a court would the policy. Trump’s verbal responses against the address a grand-jury subpoena for Trump Giuliani said that he might agree to documentary record—videos of his to talk about his actions as President. allow the President to answer written campaign appearances, his personal Which side was right? In truth, no questions, but only about his actions schedule, e-mails among his campaign one knew. But if Mueller had issued subordinates—and the answers, nom- the subpoena in January, 2018, there was inally provided and signed by Trump, a chance that the Supreme Court would were submitted to Mueller on Novem- have carried out an expedited review ber 20th. Mueller and his staff had low and issued its decision by the end of expectations for Trump’s answers; the June, when the investigation would have President didn’t meet them. He said been just a year old. Mueller may have twenty-two times that he failed to “re- been concerned about dragging things call,” and twelve times that he had no out, but no one could have fairly ac- “recollection.” cused him of doing so had he subpoe- Mueller’s prosecutors did what they naed Trump at that time. And Trump’s during the campaign. Everything he could at that late date: they wrote a testimony would certainly have been did as President was covered by execu- letter. Opposing lawyers write one an- the most important piece of evidence tive privilege. other a lot of letters, to “make a record” in this investigation. Not so, Mueller said. They went back in case a dispute winds up in court. Instead, Mueller kept negotiating and forth over this familiar ground. But most disputes do not end up in for an interview. Later, he wrote in his Finally, Giuliani said, “What are you court, and the letters are often displays report, “We thus weighed the costs of going to do? Are you going to subpoena of aggression that serve only to give potentially lengthy constitutional liti- the President?” the lawyers, or their clients, a rush gation, with resulting delay in finish- Mueller said, “We’ll get back to you.” of satisfaction. From May, 2017, to ing our investigation, against the an- More weeks passed. December, 2018, Mueller’s prosecutors

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 51 and Trump’s lawyers exchanged letters ous ‘Russia-related matters’ was suffi- the evidence was not sufficient to sup- about document production, about wit- ciently important and necessary to jus- port criminal charges.” Certainly, Muel- ness interviews, and about the special tify the immense burden the process ler found abundant evidence that counsel’s desire to interview the Pres- imposed on the President and his Office. Trump and his campaign had wanted ident. On December 3, 2018, Quarles, You still have not done so.” to collude and conspire with Russia, who handled much of the negotiating They concluded, “When we em- but hadn’t been able to prove that they over the interview, addressed the in- barked on the written question and an- had done so. The report’s verdict adequacy of Trump’s answers. “The swer procedure, we agreed to engage pointed more to insufficient evidence questions are easy to understand, call in a good faith assessment of any as- than to innocence. for straightforward responses and are serted need for additional questioning In March, 2019, Zebley, who func- sufficiently detailed to make clear what after you had an opportunity to con- tioned as Mueller’s deputy, called Ed is being asked,” he wrote. He com- sider the President’s answers. Your let- O’Callaghan, who was Rod Rosen- plained that the written format gave ters have provided us no basis upon stein’s deputy, to alert him to Part 2 of investigators “no opportunity to ask which to recommend that our client the report, on obstruction of justice. follow-up questions that would ensure provide additional information on the Rosenstein had designated O’Callaghan complete answers and potentially re- Russia-related topics as to which he as his liaison with the Mueller office, fresh your client’s recollection or clar- has already provided written answers.” and O’Callaghan had met regularly ify the extent or nature of his lack of with Zebley during the investigation. recollection.” ueller’s office started pulling to- The two dealt with bureaucratic issues Quarles proposed that the President Mgether the report in mid-2018. It like budgets, and Zebley gave O’Cal- grant Mueller an interview on ten areas was an enormous undertaking. Each of laghan advance notice of major devel- relevant to his investigation. “They also Mueller’s investigative teams had been opments, such as when the special coun- involve matters of your client’s knowl- creating informal chronologies of events, sel was going to obtain indictments or edge and intent that can only be effec- and the lawyers began integrating and guilty pleas. tively explored through the opportu- cross-referencing their efforts, drawing “I just wanted to let you know that nity for contemporaneous follow up on hundreds of F.B.I. interviews and we are not going to reach a prosecuto- and clarification,” he wrote. The letter grand-jury examinations, thousands of rial decision on obstruction,” Zebley was either a masterpiece of passive ag- pages of transcripts, and millions of said. “We’re not going to decide crime gression or a study in self-delusion. documents from the executive branch or no crime.” After all, Trump’s lawyers had spent a and from private parties. They split the “Are you saying that you would have year and a half avoiding an interview. report into two parts, the first about indicted Trump except for the O.L.C. With the intent of sounding tough, the Russia investigation, and the sec- opinion?” O’Callaghan asked, referring Quarles only underlined the weakness ond about obstruction of justice in the to the Justice Department policy that of the special counsel. White House. prohibits the indictment of a sitting Trump’s lawyers took nine days to The conclusion of Part 1 was straight- President. No, Zebley said. “We’re just answer, and, when they did, all four forward. As the executive summary not deciding one way or the other.” lead lawyers—Giuliani, Sekulow, and states, “Although the investigation es- Mueller had uncovered extensive the Raskins—signed the response. tablished that the Russian government evidence that Trump had repeatedly The letter, three single-spaced pages perceived it would benefit from a Trump committed the crime of obstruction of long, dated December 12th, was an aria presidency and worked to secure that justice. To take just the most promi- of triumphant disdain. “This White outcome, and that the Campaign ex- nent examples: Trump told Comey to House has provided unprecedented pected it would benefit electorally from stop the investigation of Flynn (“Let and virtually limitless cooperation with information stolen and released through this go”). When Comey didn’t stop the your investigation,” they wrote, adding Russian efforts, the investigation did Russia investigation, Trump fired him. that the President “has supplied writ- not establish that members of the Trump instructed his former aide Corey ten answers to your questions on the Trump Campaign conspired or coor- Lewandowski to tell Attorney Gen- central subject of your mandate.” They dinated with the Russian government eral Sessions to limit the special-coun- went on, “The President answered the in its election interference activities.” sel investigation. Most important, questions despite the additional hard- This was taken, especially by Trump, Trump told Don McGahn, the White ship caused by the confusing and sub- as a total exoneration. “No collusion,” House counsel, to arrange for Muel- stantial deficiencies of form we artic- he said countless times, which was more ler to be fired and then, months later, ulated to you in our transmittal letter. true than not. Trump himself had not told McGahn to lie about the earlier And he did so in spite of the fact that, colluded with the Russians. But Muel- order. (Both Lewandowski and Mc- as of eighteen months into the SCO’s ler’s verdict was more nuanced. The re- Gahn declined to help engineer Com- investigation, you had failed to specify port goes on to say that, “while the in- ey’s firing.) any potential offense under investiga- vestigation identified numerous links The impeachment proceedings tion, let alone any theory of liability, as between individuals with ties to the against Nixon and Clinton were rooted to which the President’s provision of Russian government and individuals in charges of obstruction of justice, and direct information regarding his vari- associated with the Trump Campaign, Trump’s offenses were even broader and

52 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 more enduring. Moreover, Mueller’s staff was so difficult to parse, it opened the For those who knew Barr, especially had analyzed in detail whether each of door for the report to be misrepresented in recent years, a letter he wrote on Trump’s actions met the criteria for ob- by countless partisans acting in bad June 8, 2018, did not come as a great struction of justice, and in the report the faith, including the Attorney General surprise. (The letter became public six special counsel asserted that, in at least of the United States. months later, soon after Barr’s nomi- these four instances, it did. But Muel- nation.) It was a memorandum of more ler still stopped short of saying that hen Trump took office, William than ten thousand words, addressed to Trump had committed the crime. WBarr was sixty-six years old, and Rosenstein and Steven Engel, who led Mueller’s team faced a dilemma. If basically retired. He had served as At- the O.L.C. Even the subject line—“Muel- Mueller had brought criminal charges torney General in 1991 and 1992, the ler’s ‘Obstruction’ Theory”—dripped against Trump, the President would final years of George H. W. Bush’s Pres- with contempt. “I am writing as a for- have had the chance to defend him- idency. In this role, he supervised Muel- mer official deeply concerned with the self in court, but, in light of the O.L.C’s ler’s work as the head of the criminal institutions of the Presidency and the opinion, Mueller could not charge division. Barr went on to a prosperous Department of Justice,” it began. “I re- Trump. So Mueller decided not to say tenure as general counsel to GTE, the alize that I am in the dark about many whether Trump committed a crime, telephone company that became Ver- facts, but I hope my views may be use- because he was never going to face an izon; he left in 2008, with about twenty- ful.” The gist was that much of Muel- actual trial. The report stated, “A pros- eight million dollars in deferred income ler’s investigation was illegitimate. ecutor’s judgment that crimes were and separation payments. Barr then Barr said that Trump’s decision to fire committed, but that no charges will served on corporate boards, supported Comey was within his power as Pres- be brought, affords no such adversar- Catholic charities, worked part time at ident. Mueller’s approach to the in- ial opportunity for public name-clear- Kirkland & Ellis, an élite stronghold quiry, Barr wrote, “would have grave ing before an impartial adjudicator.” for conservative lawyers, and joined consequences far beyond the immedi- In other words, in a gesture of fairness the rightward shift of the Repub- ate confines of this case and would do to the President, Mueller withheld a lican Party. He and Mueller went to lasting damage to the Presidency and final verdict. the same Christmas parties, and their to the administration of law within the That still left the issue of what Muel- wives attended the same Bible-study Executive branch.” Six months after ler should say about Trump’s conduct. class. While Mueller was leading the Barr wrote his letter, Trump nomi- His judgment was announced in what F.B.I., and then the special counsel’s nated him for a return engagement as became the most famous paragraph of office, Barr was mostly at home, stew- Attorney General. the report: ing about the immoral, disorderly drift Once Barr was confirmed, in Feb- of American government and society. ruary, 2019, he took over formal control Because we determined not to make a tra- ditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents diffi- cult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confi- dence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not com- mit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal stan- dards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not con- clude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

Nothing in Mueller’s mandate re- quired him to reach such a confusing and inconclusive final judgment on the most important issue before him. As a prosecutor, his job was to determine whether the evidence was sufficient to bring cases. The O.L.C.’s opinion prohibited Mueller from bringing a case, but Mueller gave Trump an un- necessary gift: he did not even say whether the evidence supported a pros- ecution. Mueller’s compromising lan- guage had another ill effect. Because it that Barr was going to release a letter about the report that afternoon, and he asked whether Mueller’s team wanted to review it first. Zebley had thought Barr would release Mueller’s summa- ries, not a gloss by Barr on the report. After conferring with Mueller and oth- ers on the team, Zebley told O’Cal- laghan that Mueller didn’t want to see Barr’s letter—he wasn’t going to vouch for it. This decision may have made sense at the time, but in retrospect it was a strategic error, depriving Mueller of the opportunity to dissociate him- self in advance if the letter turned out to be misleading. Barr released his letter at about three-thirty that afternoon. In it, he •• said that he was addressing the “prin- cipal conclusions” of Mueller’s report. But the letter, though not technically of the Mueller investigation from Ro- the report. During his confirmation inaccurate, spun the special counsel’s senstein. But Barr let Rosenstein con- hearings, Barr had promised to re- findings about Russia in a way that tinue to supervise it. The Zebley- lease it. The question was how, and was favorable to Trump. As for ob- O’Callaghan phone calls took place, when. The lengthy report would have struction of justice, Barr explained that in part, to set up a meeting between to be reviewed for grand-jury mate- Mueller had “determined not to make Barr and his staff and Mueller and his rial and other matters that should not a traditional prosecutorial judgment. team, on March 5, 2019. The meeting be made public. What should Barr Instead, for each of the relevant ac- was Barr’s first chance to assess the release immediately after receiving tions investigated, the report sets out Mueller investigation before the re- the report? The Mueller team had evidence on both sides of the question port was released. It was a fairly re- prepared a one-page introduction and and leaves unresolved what the Spe- laxed session. Mueller gave a brief in- a roughly ten-page summary of each cial Counsel views as ‘difficult issues’ troduction. (Later, Barr’s team noted part, and Mueller told Barr that it of law and fact concerning whether that Mueller looked tired and old. Be- would be appropriate to release those the President’s actions and intent could cause Mueller had been the focus of sections immediately. Barr said he be viewed as obstruction. The Special so much public attention for nearly would think it over. Based on ex- Counsel states that, ‘while this report two years and said so little in public, changes during the next two weeks, does not conclude that the President he had taken on an almost mythic sta- the Mueller team expected Barr to committed a crime, it also does not tus, even among people who once knew release the summaries as soon as he exonerate him.’” him well, like Barr. To see him after received the report. This, too, was accurate. Barr went this exhausting enterprise was startling. Around noon on Friday, March 22nd, on, “Deputy Attorney General Rod He was an old seventy-four.) a courier delivered a single copy of Rosenstein and I have concluded that Zebley summarized Part 1 of the the four-hundred-and-forty-eight- the evidence developed during the report, explaining that the special coun- page report to O’Callaghan, at the De- Special Counsel’s investigation is not sel had found insufficient evidence to partment of Justice. Rosenstein and sufficient to establish that the Presi- charge anyone affiliated with the Trump O’Callaghan alerted Barr to its arrival, dent committed an obstruction-of-jus- campaign with a substantive crime relat- and Barr advised Congress that the tice offense.” In other words, Mueller ing to Russia. Quarles handled Part 2. report had been delivered. He also hadn’t reached a conclusion on whether There would be no conclusion about informed Pat Cipollone, the White Trump committed a crime, but Barr whether Trump had committed a crime. House counsel. Trump’s lawyers, scat- had. In just two days, without speak- Barr was puzzled. No recommenda- tered around the country, rushed to ing to the authors of the report about tion? That’s right, Quarles said. It Washington so that they could pre- their evidence or their conclusions, Barr wasn’t that Mueller was unable to reach pare their response. Rosenstein’s staff and Rosenstein asserted that they had a conclusion about whether Trump spent all Friday reading and digesting digested hundreds of pages of dense had committed a crime but that, under the report. On Saturday, they prepared findings and decided that the Presi- the circumstances, he had chosen not a draft of a letter that Barr would re- dent had not committed a crime. The to do so. lease the next day. letter was an obvious act of sabotage As the meeting was breaking up, On Sunday, March 24th, around against Mueller and an extraordinary Barr asked about the public release of noon, O’Callaghan called Zebley to say gift to the President. By leaving the

54 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 disclosure of the report and its conclu- context, nature, and substance of this Office’s unprecedented situation. As he entered sions entirely up to Barr, Mueller had work and conclusions. We communicated that into office, and sought to perform his brought this disaster on himself and concern to the Department on the morning of March 25. There is now public confusion about responsibilities as President, federal his staff. critical aspects of the results of our investiga- agents and prosecutors were scrutiniz- tion. This threatens to undermine a central ing his conduct before and after tak- rump was at Mar-a-Lago for the purpose for which the Department appointed ing office, and the conduct of some of Tweekend, and he spoke to report- the Special Counsel: to assure full public confi- his associates. At the same time, there ers on the tarmac on Sunday after- dence in the outcome of the investigations. was relentless speculation in the news noon, before returning to Washington. Even with its restrained language, media about the President’s personal Trump declared that the Mueller re- the letter would have caused a sensa- culpability.” Barr went on, “There is port was a “complete and total exon- tion if Mueller had leaked it, but it did substantial evidence to show that the eration.” He said, “It’s a shame that not become public for more than a President was frustrated and angered our country had to go through this. To month. Barr called Mueller on Thurs- by his sincere belief that the investiga- be honest, it’s a shame that your Pres- day, March 28th, acting like the injured tion was undermining his Presidency, ident has had to go through this.” Back party. “What was up with that letter, propelled by his political opponents, in Washington, Trump’s lawyers gath- Bob?” he said. “Why didn’t you just and fueled by illegal leaks.” Finally, Barr ered in the Yellow Oval Room to toast pick up the phone?” Mueller said that said, “The President took no act that their success. They had planned for his staff had worked hard on the sum- in fact deprived the special counsel of months to release a “prebuttal” of the maries, and expected that they were the documents and witnesses necessary report, but Barr had done it for them. going to be released. Mueller suggested to complete his investigation. Apart Trump arrived in the early evening and that Barr issue the summaries right from whether the acts were obstruc- thanked everyone. He had been say- away. “We don’t want to do it piece- tive, this evidence of non-corrupt mo- ing it for months—no collusion, no meal,” Barr replied. “We just want to tives weighs heavily against any alle- obstruction—and the Attorney Gen- get the whole report out.” The ability gation that the President had a corrupt eral confirmed it. to release some or all of the report was intent to obstruct the investigation.” The following morning, O’Cal- in the hands of the Department of Jus- Barr neglected to mention, in these laghan called Zebley to check in. Zeb- tice, not the special counsel. fawning remarks, that the Mueller in- ley explained that Barr’s letter had said At the end of the week, Barr revealed vestigation had taken place because the that the Mueller report had related facts that he would conduct a review of the Russian government had engaged in a “without reaching any legal conclu- full report for information that was re- systematic attempt to help Trump win sions”—a claim that wasn’t true. The lated to a grand jury or otherwise sen- the election—an attempt that the can- report had, in fact, concluded that the sitive, and then release it with those didate and his staff encouraged. It was special counsel couldn’t rule out that bits redacted. There would be no re- true that Trump believed the investi- Trump had committed a crime. Zeb- lease of the summaries. The review of gation was undermining him, but self- ley asked whether O’Callaghan was the report proceeded at a stately pace. pity does not represent a defense of his still planning on releasing Mueller’s ex- As days, then weeks, passed, the con- efforts to interfere with the investiga- ecutive summaries. O’Callaghan said ventional wisdom hardened: Mueller tion. And the only reason that Trump that he’d look into it. Later that day, had found nothing. took “no act” to interfere with the in- Zebley sent O’Callaghan the executive On April 18th, Barr announced at a vestigation was that his subordinates, summaries with all grand-jury mate- news conference that he was releasing including Don McGahn and Corey rial redacted, so that they could be re- Lewandowski, refused to follow his di- leased immediately. O’Callaghan did rectives to do so. not respond. Barr continued to diminish Muel- Many people on Mueller’s staff were ler’s report and to dilute its impact. furious with Barr, who had undermined Trump finally had an Attorney Gen- two years of work by mischaracteriz- eral who put the President’s personal ing it for Trump’s benefit. And, with and political well-being ahead of the the report still secret, no response could national interest, the traditions of the be made. Mueller was aggrieved in his Justice Department, and the rule of law. customarily reticent, rule-following But Barr was able to dismantle the fashion. On Wednesday, March 27th, the Mueller report. What the Attor- Mueller report only because the special he wrote a private letter of modest pro- ney General said next received little at- counsel and his staff had made it easy test to Barr: tention, because journalists immedi- for him to do so. Robert Mueller for- ately began diving into the report and feited the opportunity to speak clearly The introductions and executive summa- revealing its contents. (Rosenstein’s fro- and directly about Trump’s crimes, and ries of our two-volume report accurately sum- zen stare, while he was standing be- Barr filled the silence with his high- marize this Office’s work and conclusions. The summary letter the Department sent to Con- hind Barr, drew more notice.) “It is volume exoneration. Mueller’s investi- gress and released to the public late in the af- important to bear in mind the context,” gation was no witch hunt; his report ternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the Barr said. “President Trump faced an was, ultimately, a surrender. 

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 55 FICTION SUBSTITUTE, BERLIN; TYPOGRAPHY BY JULIE DOUCET TYPOGRAPHY BY SUBSTITUTE, BERLIN;

56 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 er family was happy about it. drinking and dancing and smoking cig- bullet holes, and it was sort of under- It was a big deal to get one of arettes. It was the greatest evening of stood, without her needing to ask, that H the new places. The entire dis- her life. she was going to move in. The equip- trict was a building site, a showcase for All they wanted was to jump around. ment was set up in their living room. the socialist future. She reckoned she It wasn’t a big deal, but it sent the piss- The guitar and vocal plugged into a had about five more years before she schnapps-cabbage men crazy. They single amp. She bashed away at some- turned into one of the horrible sows thought the punks were agents of the one’s borrowed kit. She didn’t know who gave her the evil eye from behind C.I.A. Poison from the West, a threat what to do, so at first she did every- their net curtains when she walked past to good order. Not that you could get thing at the same time, hit with the with her friends. Five years of life. At any of the real punk clothes unless you sticks and stamped on the pedal, mak- weekends she’d take the train to Alex- knew someone who could cross over. ing a big lumbering primitive noise. She anderplatz and hang around with other You had to improvise, make studs and would get better, but not much. teen-agers. Sooner or later they were patches and buttons out of whatever always chased away by the police. was available. You sat on park benches hen it was the three of them. Katja She never got on at school and left in your homemade outfits. You couldn’t Tsang, and Elli played guitar. Mon- to become an apprentice at a textile fac- stay put for ten minutes without the ika had never met anyone like them, tory in a town just outside Berlin, which cops coming. girls from art school who spent their improved things because she could move At the factory she got another talk- days making things, as if it were a job. out of the family home and live in a ing to, and they told her someone else They weren’t ashamed of being differ- hostel. It was O.K. at first, but the bore- needed her place at the hostel. It was ent. They laughed at the idea that they dom was like acid. She had a bad tem- a punishment, of course—they didn’t could ever end up as net-curtain twitch- per, and sometimes got into fights. One really bother hiding it. What could she ers, disgusting baby factories doing the day some old piss-schnapps-cabbage do? Better to lie down on the tracks ironing while some man drank himself man at the factory called her into an than go back to live with her doormat stupid in front of the TV. Katja de- office and gave her an official warning. of a mother and her piss-schnapps-cab- claimed her crazy poetry into the mi- She already had a mark against her be- bage dad. There seemed to be no third crophone, all this gothic stuff about cause she didn’t want to join the Free option, so she went into the city and blood and graves and ravens, while Elli German Youth. got fucked up on paint thinner and threw poses and windmilled her arm Every weekend she would take the tried to shake her head off her shoul- as she slammed down on the strings. train back to the city. The first time she ders, pogoing in a courtyard behind a Elli was shy, except when she played saw punks, it was amazing, like being church in Prenzlauer Berg as a band guitar. Katja was a social force. She electrocuted, jolted out of her dead skin. thrashed cheap guitars and a singer seemed to have an almost supernatu- A couple sitting in a square in Fried- rhymed “shit and boredom have no bor- ral ability to make things happen. What- richshain, like two peacocks. The boy ders” with “everyone is taking orders.” ever you needed, whatever plot you’d had a leather jacket, and his hair was Two cool girls were dancing next to just hatched in the bar, she would be spiked up. The girl wore a dog collar, her, jerking their heads and punching there with an idea, a connection. It and her head was shaved so that only the air. When some limp dick tried to would turn out she’d seen exactly the a sort of lock or tuft hung down at the hit on one of them, Monika gave him thing you needed, discarded in the street, front. They just didn’t give a shit. a shove, sent him sprawling. or had bumped into someone from the She didn’t have to think twice. She We need a drummer, the girl with old days—Katja had old days, it was hacked off her hair, dyed the tufts with the bleached crop said. Monika told her one of the sophisticated things about watercolors, and spiked them up with she couldn’t play drums. That’s O.K., her—a guy who liked her and could be soap. Then she went back to look for she said. It doesn’t matter. And just like persuaded to help. One day she breezed the punks. Why not? She had nothing that a third option opened up. The girls, in and told them she’d got the band a else going on. Even then it wasn’t as if Katja and Elli, were living in a place gig. She said it as if it were the most she were really doing anything. Taking on Linienstrasse, with a rotating cast natural thing in the world, but to Mon- the train, drinking, wandering around, of boyfriends to carry furniture and fix ika the prospect was terrifying. Getting drinking more, hoping for something things. It was a tenement that had been up in front of people, making a spec- to happen. But that was all anyone was declared unfit for habitation—on one tacle of herself. doing. It was what there was to do. side there was nothing but rubble, on In the G.D.R., you needed permis- Soon she knew most of the crew, at the other a building whose frontage had sion from the authorities to play music least by sight. The peacock couple, ev- collapsed, a sort of skeleton that no one in front of an audience. You had to au- eryone. The boys from Köpenick, the had got around to demolishing—but dition for a committee. The official pop idiot with the army greatcoat who several of the apartments were occu- musicians were all balding men who’d stabbed his own leg on a dare. It wasn’t pied by young people who didn’t have done their military service and trained such a big scene. Bored kids. She went a hope of getting on the list for official at the conservatory. Of course no one to a party where a band played in the housing. That was where they took her was ever going to give the green light attic of someone’s house. Fifty of them to jam, in this building whose façade to some dirty punk girls, so they had in there, throwing themselves around, was pocked with thousands of wartime no option, really. The gig was a secret,

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 57 or as much of a secret as something like tures. One evening, as she was sweep- that type. You could go to music school, that can be. ing up, her last task before leaving, a man he said, leaning out of a car window. So there were official bands and un- in a roll-neck sweater let himself in and Another man was driving, matching official bands, but few as unofficial as stood watching her. He had that look. her pace as she walked home from work. Die Gläsernen Frauen. They’d needed They all had it, that unclean cleanliness. You could get some time in a record- a name, and naturally Katja had one. He offered her a cigarette. He was ing studio, whatever you want. She could The Transparent Women. There had older than her, but not by much. In do this, she should do that. She told once been a transparent woman and a some places, he would have been con- him to stick his studio up his ass, and transparent man, anatomical models sidered handsome. What are you doing he made a sad-clown face. Honey, don’t made out of some kind of see-through here? he said. This place is not for you. be like that. You ought to be sweet to plastic, technological mar- Like a lover, a leading man me. You wouldn’t want anything to go vels of the nineteen-twen- in a movie. It was absurd. wrong in your life. You wouldn’t want ties that children were taken What did he want? Noth- there to be any misunderstandings. to see on school trips to the ing bad. He wanted her to He gave her a time, an address, held German Hygiene Museum, be able to stretch her cre- out a piece of paper with the details. in Dresden. It was a good ative wings. He did a little When she wouldn’t take it, he finally name, Monika thought, a drumming mime. He swept got out of the car and came after her. defiant name. his hair back from his face He blocked her path and stuffed the The concert wasn’t much. and lit a cigarette, doing paper into the front pocket of her jeans, A couple of dozen people some kind of cool-cat busi- pulling her close to him and grinding in a dusty room, the cellar ness with his lighter. He his knuckles against her belly. She would of a building where some said he had a car outside, be there or else he would “spank her bot- friend of Katja’s worked or lived, Mon- could he give her a ride home? No? tom.” Hearty chuckles as the car pulled ika wasn’t exactly sure. They borrowed Well, then, he could take her out in- away. When she got into work the next another amp and found a drum kit that stead. He would buy her a drink, hear day, there were three more records in was a little better than the first, though about her big dreams. She was a girl her locker. She left them where they one of the heads was patched with tape, with big dreams, he could tell. were. She didn’t even want to touch them. and the cymbals were the kind with She wanted nothing to do with him. leather straps, made to be used in an or- Everything about him was wrong. Go he didn’t go to the meeting. She had chestra or carried in a marching band. away, she said, but he wouldn’t stop Swhat she thought of as a perfect ex- The kit’s owner had hung them awk- talking. Finally she waved the broom, cuse. The band was heading out on the wardly from a pair of homemade stands. made as if she were going to hit him road. Ten days of Katja singing “Better There wasn’t a stage; they just walked with it. He laughed. O.K., O.K., hold- off dead than getting kicked in the head,” out into silence, some scattered clapping. ing up his hands. He didn’t take her se- Katja singing “Only if I’m dreaming can And then they attacked. One two three riously at all. I left you something, he I say I’m free.” Leipzig, Dresden, Halle. four, into their first number, which was said. In your locker. Barns and cellars and old factories. In just Katja shouting “Stupid bear! Stu- When she was sure he’d gone, she each place there were young people, floors pid bear!” while Elli played some chords checked. Her lock was still attached, but and couches to crash on, hands to pass she’d copied from a Ramones song. Ev- inside was something she hadn’t put there. a bottle or a cigarette. So, yes, she felt eryone was surprised, of course—three A record. It was an LP by an all-girl band hopeful. There were people like her. That girls playing music—but soon people from London. She knew them. She had didn’t mean their lives were “nice.” Or were dancing. Katja and Elli’s art-school a tape—maybe Elli had copied it from “liberating.” Mostly they were tired and friends, the kids from the park. A few one of her friends—with a couple of their scared. They were making do, getting apprentices from the meatpacking plant songs on it. They were good, but this wasted on whatever was to hand. There hung at the edges while the punks fought album had a sort of soft-porn cover, the was always a bad atmosphere when D.G.F. in the mosh pit. Monika battered her three band members topless and covered played, an edge of violence. When they kit and it sounded like dead bodies hit- in mud, like sexy savages. It was sup- were onstage in Dresden, someone threw ting the ground and the guitar and the posed to be shocking. As a present from a glass bottle at Elli, which hit her on vocal fed back so that the whole thing that guy, it was just sleazy. He knew so the side of the head. She staggered, then was just a mess of distortion, you couldn’t much about her taste and at the same went down on her hands and knees. Mon- say what it was, or if it was music ex- time he’d found a way to leer at her. She ika stopped playing, thinking she was actly, but it had something. Energy. Life. thought about throwing the record away, badly hurt, but she was only trying to but despite the shitty cover the band was find the bottle to throw back. f course the factory hadn’t lasted, good, and if she decided not to keep it When they got home to Berlin, Mon- Obut Monika needed to do some- she could swap it for something, so she ika knew there’d be a reckoning, but she thing; it was illegal not to have a job, put it in her bag and took it home. didn’t think it would be so quick or so and after a lot of hassle she found one He left it two weeks. Long enough brutal. When she went to work, her boss, in the neighborhood, at a workshop for her to think he’d got the message. a nice old man who’d never seemed to where they electroplated bathroom fix- He made her jump, of course. He was mind how she looked or where she spent

58 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 her leisure time, told her that he was neck man probably had a sow wife at think that? They were just going to sorry but he couldn’t keep someone like home twitching one just like it as she have a little chat. her around anymore. She didn’t have to spied on the neighbors. The threat hidden in that twee ask what he meant. Could she clear out It was the first time she’d seen him bloodless phrase. her locker? Yes, he did mean right away. in uniform. He looked primmer than He pressed a button on the tape re- The records were still in there. She didn’t he did when he was roaming around corder and began. Factual questions. know what to do with them, so she stuffed the city in civilian clothes. He had placed Names and places, information about them into a borrowed shopping bag along his hat neatly on the desk, next to a the band, people she had met in other with the rest of the locker’s contents— pale-pink file. He didn’t look up as the cities. I don’t know, she kept saying. I her lunch box, her spare clothes. And of guards brought her in, just pretended can’t remember. In that moment, she course when she walked out onto the to read. Sit, he said, waving vaguely at was telling the truth. She really couldn’t street the man in the roll-neck sweater a chair at the foot of the T. He pushed remember anything. It was something was waiting with his smirking friend. back a strand of his thick black hair, she was good at, practiced in. Partial Two junior piss-schnapps-cabbage men, smoothed and patted it with a flattened self-erasure. She could live for long pe- leaning on their piss-schnapps-cabbage palm. No, on your hands. Still he didn’t riods as if her memories were not hers, car. She tried to give him back the rec- look up. She was confused, and he raised as if they were just images taken from ords. He’d had his fun, now he could his voice. Put your hands under your films or books. leave her alone. This time he didn’t pre- buttocks, palms down. Sit on your hands. He oscillated between unctuous tend to find her cute. Silly bitch, did she She did as she was told. He opened up compassion and petulant threats. Had think she could just mess him around? a file and made some kind of note. she given a single moment’s thought He told her to get in the car. It was time In front of him he had a telephone, to her family, her friends? Take it from she understood a few things. a tape recorder, and a box with a row him, the consequences of these things They drove for a short while and of buttons whose function was not ob- were never limited to one person. She pulled into a courtyard, next to a deliv- vious. In front of her was a microphone. should imagine, he said, that she was ery truck with a picture of fruit and veg- Things were going to change, he said. throwing a stone into a pond. The rip- etables on the side. A man in blue over- From now on there would be no time ples would spread out. Luckily for her alls was leaning on the hood. As they for romantic games. She asked if she he had a solution. To what, she won- drew up, he ground out a cigarette with was under arrest. No, what made her dered, other than the trouble that he his boot. They took her from the car and told her to get in the back of the truck. She hesitated, and they were rough as they pushed her inside. She had a mo- ment to see that the interior was divided into little windowless compartments, before she was shoved into one and the door locked behind her. She was left in complete darkness, sitting on some kind of stool. The engine started, and she groped around to see if there was a bar or a handle, something to hold on to. These things are easy enough to read about. Transported in total dark- ness, brought out into a punishingly bright place, banks of neon strip lights trained down on a garage with reflec- tive white walls. The transition from darkness to dazzling light, a shock de- signed to induce a physical crisis, to reduce the subject to a state of abjec- tion, nothing but a half-blind animal, stunned and panicking. They were quick but thorough, pho- tographing her, taking fingerprints. The interrogation room was furnished in the style of any other government office. A pair of wood-veneer desks were ar- ranged in a T-shape. At the window hung a dirty lace curtain. The lace cur- tain was funny, she supposed. The roll- “False alarm—the King is just sleeping. Long sleep the King!” himself was causing? His solution was residential street, facing a row of mai- hungry. She just wanted to forget about this: Together they would write out an sonettes. Behind her was a high wall everything for a few hours. After she’d agreement. She would confirm her loy- and a watchtower. She didn’t have a way had some sleep, she would handle it. alty to the German Democratic Re- of telling the time, but from the light She ran into the bathroom, stripped off public and agree to work with the Min- she guessed that it was late afternoon. her clothes, and stood shivering under istry for State Security. A small thing. She chose a direction that seemed the thin trickle of the shower. Most people would see it as their pa- likely to lead to a main road, and began Her plan was to tell Katja first. She triotic duty. walking. Eventually she found a U-Bahn wanted to do it when the two of them She didn’t want to provoke him— station, and arrived home at more or were alone, but somehow she never she had no sense of the limits of his less the normal time, as if she’d just found the right moment. There were power, what he could realistically do to finished her day at the workshop. When always people in the apartment, or they her—but, as he whined on, a bolus of she came through the door, Elli was sit- were all out somewhere, watching a disgust rose in her throat. All of it, the ting at the kitchen table smoking a cig- band or with a big group at a bar. As fake delivery truck, the cell, the blinding arette. Everything O.K.? she asked dis- the days went by, a sort of skin or scab lights, just so a repressed little man could tractedly, then squinted at Monika’s bag. grew over the memory of her arrest. issue threats and shuffle papers at his You have records, she said, brightening Why pick away at it? Little by little she desk. She had to concentrate to fight up. What did you get? At first Monika fell into a kind of magical thinking, as her nausea, and because speaking made didn’t understand. Then she felt sick. if the reality of what had happened to it worse she didn’t speak, didn’t say the She’d forgotten about Roll-neck’s “gifts.” her depended on its being told, put into things he wanted her to say. Again and Without thinking, she had brought a words. Instead she swallowed it, forced again she swallowed the words and piece of him home. Mechanically, she it down into the pit of her stomach and shook her head and eventually he dug the records out of the bag and barred its way back out with the gate seemed to run out of steam. With one handed them over. Seeing Elli reading of her teeth. more twist he could probably have bro- the sleeves made her feel guilty, as if she Elli had a boyfriend, whose name ken her, but he didn’t see it. Instead he were exposing her to a contagious dis- was Kurt. Another musician, a bass pressed his call button and ordered the ease. Her friend’s amazed, slightly en- player. One morning Monika was lying guards to take her to her cell. vious expression told her that she’d made in bed when Kurt put his head round As she sat and waited for whatever a problem for herself. The records were her door. Had she seen his notebook? would happen next, she tried to divert too good, too recently released to come He’d left it on the kitchen table. She her mind from the more frightening without an explanation. I swapped them propped herself up on her elbows and possibilities, but there was nothing else with Peter, she said, the first thing that said no, she hadn’t, and just at that mo- to dwell on, no way to distract herself. came into her head, and then cursed ment she spotted it, or, rather, they both If it got really bad, could she escape? herself because this Peter was a close spotted it simultaneously, lying on top The light fixture would hold her weight. friend, in and out of the apartment all of the beer crate where she kept her She still had the laces in her shoes. Then the time. The lie could easily be found clothes. There was no reason for it to she heard the sound of keys and the out. She had a sudden sense of threat, be there. They had all been at a party. door’s heavy bolt being drawn. Roll- the springing of the trap set by Roll- She’d come in and gone straight to bed, neck came in, and ordered her to stand. just fallen in drunkenly without even She caught the sour hormonal stink of turning on the light. her own sweat. He could smell it, too. Kurt was more quizzical than angry. His face was a mask of disgust. If you want to read my secret thoughts, I’m going to throw you back, he said, he said, you could just ask. But the note- in a tone of professional regret. She book was only the beginning. Over the thought she had misheard. Throw her next few weeks, all sorts of personal back, like a fish. He stepped aside, mak- things went missing or were moved ing an irritated gesture at the open cell around in the apartment. Someone took door. Could he offer one word of ad- a hundred marks from the pocket of vice before she left? She ought to go neck as she left the cell. Go straight Elli’s leather jacket. Katja’s photos were straight home. She wouldn’t want peo- home. You wouldn’t want people to start left out on her bed. No one came out ple to start wondering where she’d been. wondering where you’ve been. Why and made accusations, but these small That weaselly hint of concern. As if the should she lie? What was the point? crimes and clumsy invasions of privacy two of them were complicit in some- Because he’d put the idea into her head? put everyone on edge. Who would leave thing, a scheme or a love affair. But then again how was she to tell the a used sanitary towel by her bed? Or story without inviting suspicion? Every tear pages out of Elli’s books? A bad he was given back the borrowed question would breed more questions. atmosphere developed. Katja and Elli Sshopping bag, still filled with the Why hadn’t she ever said anything be- became conspiratorial, exclusive. Some- contents of her work locker, and es- fore about talking to the Stasi? Were times Monika thought she was going corted to the front gate. The gate closed the records payment for some kind of mad. Was she actually responsible, doing behind her, and she found herself on a service? She was exhausted and very all these things without knowing?

60 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 Then came the fight at the church. Even the old Chekists of the secret po- lice only dared to go so far against the Lutherans, and some pastors took ad- vantage of this latitude to do political things, such as letting punk bands play in their halls. The pastor of a church in Friedrichshain was a bearded young man who painted abstractions and be- lieved in turning swords into plowshares. On the night of the concert, there was a good atmosphere, at least at the beginning. Another band played before D.G.F., and the crowd was excited, whooping and cheering as it waited for them to come on. A few people had even crossed over from West Berlin for the show. Katja introduced her to an English guy who was dressed, for some reason, in a Weimar-era postman’s uni- form. He’d brought some tapes of un- derground industrial music as a pres- ent. He said he wanted to take the three “She may have an incredible body, but we have incredible ice cream.” of them into a studio. Though he was obviously trying to score with Katja, the offer seemed to be genuine. •• The church hall had a proper stage, and they were standing in the wings, tion of a waiting car, talking loudly about to keep me safe? She could have said, I waiting to go on, when some skinheads how they were “here to protect” her and know you don’t give a damn about me, arrived. Not a few. Twenty or thirty. It “get her to safety.” The street was full so cut the shit and tell me what this is was 88 Tommy’s birthday, and they’d all of people who had come outside to get really about. Instead she flopped down been drinking. Everyone knew 88 away from the fight. The men made onto a chair and almost in a whimper, Tommy and his idiot friends, but to- such a noise, raising their voices. They the whimper of a frightened little girl, night there were more of them, a lot of drew everybody’s attention. a beaten dog, she asked why he had to faces she didn’t recognize. D.G.F. went Pastor Daniel was in the crowd, hold- make it so obvious to her friends. And into their first song, and right away the ing a handkerchief against a wound on as she heard herself she understood what skins pushed their way to the front. his forehead. He frowned as he saw her he’d done, how completely he’d won. They started spitting and making ob- go past. She tried to shake the men off, He’d made his abuse into a shared se- scene gestures. From farther back, some- but one of them poked her in the small cret, a cozy secret that had alienated her one threw a bottle. Monika was pro- of her back with a fist or a stick, a quick from her friends, and she was disgusted tected behind the kit, but at the front discreet attack that caused a flash of in- with him, and with herself for falling it was bad. Katja was jabbing at shirt- tense pain. While she was incapacitated, for it, and with the sordid world that less men with her mike stand, warning they more or less picked her up and made such a thing possible. them to keep back. During the second threw her into the back seat of a car. He was using his indoor voice, his song a couple of guys started Sieg heil- They drove her to a hairdresser, of forked tongue. He told her he admired ing and one of them got onstage and all places, nearby in Lichtenberg. The her loyalty to her friends, however mis- pushed Elli down into the crowd and lights were on in the shop even though guided. He made offers. Perhaps she after that it was chaos. As if at a signal, it was almost midnight. She could do needed money? He might be able to the stage was full of skinheads throw- with a makeover, said one, laughing. organize a stipend. She told him to do ing punches, kicking over the P.A., beat- Mousy little thing like her ought to do whatever he wanted. She’d had enough. ing people with mike stands. Monika something with herself. She should take He pretended to be offended. He had, cowered behind her kit, unable to see a little more pride in her appearance. he said, a sworn duty to uphold the law. what had happened to her friends. When They led her to the back of the shop He took that seriously. Did she not take she spotted an opening between the where, of course, the roll-neck man was that seriously? Surely, after such a dis- scuffling bodies, she ran for a side door. waiting, natty in driving gloves and a gusting display of violence, it would be Almost as soon as she got outside, new brown leather jacket. Have a seat, obvious even to someone as obtuse as she was grabbed by two men in bureau- he said. Don’t worry, you’re safe now. her that negative decadent elements cratic raincoats who smelled of ciga- She could have defied him. She could were at work in her little milieu. rettes. They hustled her in the direc- have said, Pig, when did I ever ask you She threw up her hands. So why the

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 61 hell had he arrested her, instead of them? He claimed not to understand. Them? The skinheads. The ones who did the SHANGHAI violence. She couldn’t believe how lit- tle he seemed to understand. Skinheads? I fell in love many times these months Did he really not know what they were? with certain evenings, He asked her to describe them. Ah, yes, the city awash in green Neptune light. he said. Ah, yes. So did these animals When I was low, I was low. have names? And the city welcomed it, wrestled Tommy. a steady heat from my melancholy. He smiled and took a pad out of his To be shanghaied once meant pocket. Tommy. Very good. So what to be kidnapped against your will else did she know about this Tommy? during a shortage of sailors. A surname, perhaps? Where did he Some were forced to sign with guns to their temples. live? And then she saw what he was Others, beat unconscious, woke doing, getting her to give him infor- to the wide roaring sea, ready to serve. mation, to report to him, and she had It was violent. Today, the bright plazas a feeling like looking into a pit. No, she speed us into manic dream, said. Just that. No. He pretended to be the kind where you know surprised. Wasn’t this Tommy one of your executioner is coming the real criminals, the ones she thought and we all get high he ought to be focussing on? Well, then, on the fluorescence and doom. surely she should be happy to assist. I’m This is a place where I’ve let people down. not working with you, she told him. But the penance is different. I’m not one of your creatures. Not like New York with her sad gargoyles. There was a rustle of plastic curtain Instead, Shanghai has her young, surveilling moonlight. beads. She swivelled on the chair and Outside, a wild and holy river runs full of tanks there he was, as if she’d magicked him and neon boats peppered below a bulbous skyline. into being. 88 Tommy the skin, his white T-shirt with a few spots of red near the collar. He grinned a doughy grin. He something on him, too. She stood up, nonsense. On my mother’s life. You looked drunk. She was so confused that without speaking. Then she turned and don’t give a shit about your mother, she just sat there with her mouth open. walked to the door. Katja said. She could not put it all together. Roll- Once outside, she started running, neck’s smirk. Tommy’s presence. His easy, convinced that Tommy was coming astor Daniel had found out that casual air, leaning in the doorway, scuffing after her, but after a few blocks and a PMonika needed money and offered the sole of his boot against the floor. few turns she realized she was alone, her work as a gardener. When she Roll-neck let her take it all in for a and allowed herself to slow down. Even- showed up, she could tell that he was minute. We have many people helping tually she had to stop and rest, prop- suspicious. There was a lot to be done us, he said. In all sectors of society. So, ping her hands on her knees, coughing on the church grounds, he said. He sup- it was late. Perhaps he ought to let and spitting into the gutter. posed he could use her. A couple of Tommy drop her off? Someone should When she got home she found the days later, she walked home after a day see her to her door. apartment full of people. The atmo- in the garden, dressed in old clothes, You could come and meet the boys, sphere was unfriendly. They squinted mud on her boots, to find everyone Tommy said. Roll-neck thought that at her through a haze of cigarette smoke. waiting for her in the living room, not line was hilarious. Meet them? All of So who were her friends? She tried to just Katja and Elli but most of her close them? No, no, Tommy, she wouldn’t explain as best as she could. Yes, they friends, people from other bands, the like it. He grinned at her. Maybe, Roll- were cops. Of course they were. They’d pastor himself. They had set up a sort neck said, they should play a game. If been harassing her. She’d never given of courtroom. They sat around the walls. she agreed to work for him he’d give them a thing. She’d found out that they Elli went first. Monika had left with her a head start. She didn’t understand. were working with Tommy. That part some policemen after the fight at the He gestured to Tommy, and then to of it people seemed to believe. Tommy gig. She’d claimed they were harassing the door. Say yes and she would have with the pigs. But why hadn’t she said her, but many people in the room had five minutes before he unleashed the anything before? She told them all to seen pictures that told a different story. beast. Tommy looked angry at being fuck themselves and shut herself in her What pictures? From a folder, Elli pro- called a beast, but he didn’t say any- room. After a while, Katja followed duced a grainy black-and-white pho- thing. An expression crossed his face, her. I would be so sad, she said, to think tograph of her talking to Roll-neck out- a brief collapse of his drunken smirk. that you could ever do something like side the electroplating workshop. It Maybe, she thought, Roll-neck had that. Monika promised her it was must have been taken from far away.

62 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 blew a whistle. In ones and twos, doz- ens of police officers jumped out of the vans and doubled round the corner. In the year or so that she’d been liv- I fed a cat here. And named her. ing at the band house, more people had Creaturely orange, she disappeared on Hankou Road. moved in. The building had turned into It broke up my whole day. I had that small burst of fantasy a little community. Roll-neck got out of our life together, me and her, of the car and opened the rear door. a new origin story that keeps repeating. Come on, he said. She refused. He told It says: here, here, here. An eternal present that keeps loss at bay. her not to test his patience and began That is the trick of this city. It looks like a weird hope, to stroll across the street. She followed the human species struck by a wondrous asymmetry. him, her feet like lead. The police had There is a dimension where the cat stays. herded the tenants down into the court- Where I stay, too. There is a version yard. They stood there, shivering in their where the world goes uncrushed, nightclothes, listening to the sound of and instead my beloveds multiply, their apartments being searched, bangs and with them, their laughters. and crashes echoing in the stairwells. We all wake to simultaneous dawns People she knew, Katja and Elli among breaking over Hong Kong and Nairobi, them, stared openmouthed as Roll-neck Guatemala City and Madrid. walked her in from the street. Sur- When one beloved says good morning, rounded by high gray walls, he stuck another says, good morning. his hands in his pockets and began to And for another, maybe it is still night. whistle, a jaunty little tune to accom- Here it comes again. Night. pany him as he ambled about, explor- It starts over, but this time ing. She followed behind, because stay- we have tails and survive. ing in the courtyard would have been We come when called. even worse. He visited almost every —Megan Fernandes occupied apartment in the building, blandly unconcerned about the destruc- tion going on all around him. Monika Who gave her the photograph? She night, and told her she’d be charged watched policemen pull out drawers, kept asking, but Elli carried on. There with vagrancy. She really didn’t care. tip books and records off shelves as Roll- were a lot of reasons to be suspicious. She didn’t see what difference it made. neck peered around like a tourist in an Monika had just attached herself to In the morning they let her out, and old church. Finally, he pushed open the their group. She had no friends, except Roll-neck was waiting on the street, door of Katja and Elli’s place. She saw the ones she’d met through them. Had looking like the cat that got the cream. the pile of kindling that had been their she been ordered to worm her way in? I thought we’d lost you, he said. That living-room furniture, their clothes Elli wasn’t afraid to give her opinion. would have been a shame. She let him ground underfoot. The basin and toi- Monika was a snitch. She should leave. put her in the car. She knew she smelled let had been smashed, and water was What hurt most was the way Katja bad, and she didn’t care. They drove to pooling on the bathroom floor, which looked at her. As if she were a bug or a Prenzlauer Berg, through the streets of was covered in unsleeved records, grimy spider. With a feeling like sinking into war-damaged tenements, and as they with boot prints. She looked out of the icy water, Monika understood what her got closer she could feel the horror window. From the other side of the future would be. These people had creeping up. She realized where he was courtyard, she heard the sound of glass picked her up and invited her in. Elli taking her. There was a line of police breaking, someone crying. was right: without them she had no one. vans parked around the corner from the As she stood in the apartment that And now they were telling her to go. building. He drew up behind them. The had been her home, Monika felt com- They didn’t even let her stay there thing is, he said, if you’d coöperated pletely dissociated, as if she no longer that night. She was told she could come when I first asked you, all the people occupied her body. It was self-protec- back for her things in the morning. She asleep in there would still be your tive, she supposed. A way of distancing didn’t know where to go and it was late friends. You’d be in there sleeping, too, herself from what was happening to her. and the weather was warm, so she slept instead of out here. It wouldn’t have Roll-neck walked her down the stairs, in a park. That was what she did for a had much of an effect on your life. A half supporting her. And when she broke couple of days, hung around in the park, chat every week or two. A cup of coffee. down in the car afterward, when she until she was so tired and hungry that Things would have gone on much as began shaking and screaming, he spoke she fell asleep on a bench in the mid- normal. And instead all this has to hap- kindly to her, rubbing her back and dle of the afternoon and woke up to pen. Why? Because you gave us no offering her a handkerchief. He knew find it dark and a couple of cops shak- choice. Order must be kept. Now please it was unpleasant, but he had to make ing her. They put her in a cell over- watch. He gave a signal to a man who her see how things were. This was how

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 63 another woman, who was badly hurt. A broken nose, a cracked skull. She was arrested and charged with assault. Roll- neck did nothing to help. He told her that the situation was her own fault. He washed his hands of her. She was sentenced to eighteen months in the women’s prison at Hoheneck, a grim red brick fortress on a hill above a Saxon market town. It had a bad reputation, and the reality was worse. Sleeping in a dormitory. Up at five for labor, sew- ing tablecloths and bed linens under signs extolling order and cleanliness. There was never a moment when she was unobserved. After she got out, she moved to Pots- dam and eventually found work in a factory canteen. She served and swept and scrubbed, and tried her best, as far as possible, never to speak to another living soul. Then one day she arrived to find the canteen workers gathered round a radio, listening as if their lives depended on what the announcer was saying. Hadn’t she heard? The borders were open in Hungary. She didn’t be- •• lieve it. She thought it must be a ruse, a way to entrap traitors. From then on, things moved very fast. The G.D.R. the world worked. He would have liked key. He often brought a bottle and would began to collapse. People were packing her to be useful in Berlin, but there were badger her to drink with him. She usu- and leaving for the West. Not her. She other places, too. He would find her ally refused, until one evening she was wasn’t fooled. It was impossible to be- somewhere else to live, give her a new sent to a poetry reading at an apart- lieve that the whole system would fold start. He made her feel grateful to him. ment in Leipzig. The poets were good just like that. Then he took her to an office where people, and she felt shitty enough about Everything happened without her. she wrote out a document, a declara- reporting on them that when Roll-neck The dancing on the Wall, the cham- tion that she was loyal to the G.D.R., was debriefing her she said yes to the pagne, the banners hanging in the stair- and was coöperating with the Ministry offer of a glass. Later on, when every- wells of the occupied Stasi buildings. for State Security of her own free will. thing was blurry, she let him take her She didn’t even visit the West until al- to the bedroom and do what he wanted. most a year after the change. A day he moved out of Berlin. The Stasi She was aware, from a great distance, walking around the other side of the Sused her in other cities, where she of Roll-neck’s white body, his grinding city, looking in the windows of the wasn’t known. She was taken to places and whimpering, his ragged breathing shops. She went into the KaDeWe, the where the band had played and told to next to her on the pillow after he came. big department store, and rode the glass get back in touch with people she’d met She felt almost tenderly toward him. elevator up and down. When she came when she still belonged to herself, when After all, he was the only one. The only to the food hall, the luxurious displays she was, as she put it, “still a person.” one who knew her, who listened to her, of chocolate and fruit and delicatessen In a few cases the contacts had heard who cared if she lived or died. goods, she couldn’t take it anymore and rumors about the police raid and wanted By this point, she felt she had no in- hurried away. She did not belong in nothing to do with her. But others wel- side. She was a sort of hall or public such a place. comed her, gave her a meal or some- gallery that people could walk about in Soon enough, the secrets started to where to stay, and she paid them back as they pleased. Gradually Roll-neck come out. Researchers were looking by making reports, reports that caused found her less useful. The targets she through the Stasi files, trying to recon- trouble for them, opened up the pos- was supposed to observe became sus- struct documents that had been hast- sibility of harassment, or prison. picious. They could tell something about ily shredded or burned. Victims wanted Roll-neck would meet her in hotel her was wrong. She was drinking more to talk about who had done what. There rooms or private apartments. There was and more and one night got into a fight were ugly scenes on the TV, media de- always somewhere to which he had the at a bar and used a heavy ashtray on nunciations. Friends found out the truth

64 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 about friends. Heroes turned out to ing pickles at a street market. He was worked as hard as she could to under- have feet of clay. wearing a cap with earflaps, and his mine the influence of the decadent West. Maybe it was a sign of her naïveté, breath was spilling out in a frosty plume, Most of Roll-neck’s cruelties—the way or her isolation, but it didn’t occur to and somehow the sight of him, wrapped he’d pressured her, the guilt he’d made Monika that any of that would touch in his hat and scarf, offering samples her feel—had served no useful purpose her. After all, who was she? Nobody. to the shoppers, was pathetic. It was at all, because Katja had already been Nothing. like a balloon bursting. Finally she could telling them everything. It was even She didn’t recognize the man who believe that it was gone, the thing whose more perverse than she’d imagined. In came to the door, until he reminded face he had been. She hurried away be- a secret ceremony, during the time that her that he used to write a fanzine. Then fore he could spot her. That night she they were in the band, the Stasi had she remembered him, one of the Köpe- cried as she hadn’t done for years. awarded Katja a medal and the rank of nick boys. He used to wear a dog col- captain. Finally Monika understood the lar and an army shirt. Turned out he’d ittle by little, she made a life for purpose of parading her in front of her done well in the new Germany, learned Lherself. One with small dimensions, friends on the day of the raid. It had the tricks. He was now a journalist for but safe and sustainable. Sometimes at been to protect Katja, to divert suspi- a big weekly news magazine. Out of weekends she packed a picnic and went cion from their real asset. his writing he’d squeezed a watch and to the lake, or took a bus out to the This time she read the newspapers. a fancy tape recorder and a little VW countryside. Then came the revelations A tabloid printed a picture of Katja Golf, parked on the street outside. He about Katja, and everything was diffi- holding up a hand to ward off a pho- wanted to put certain questions to her, cult again. Naturally, with the fall of tographer. There were other pictures, accusations of an unpleasant nature. the Wall, Katja had become an import- interviews with people the band had Documents showed that she had been ant person. It was inevitable, a woman known in Berlin, all saying how shocked an informer. She’d sent people to prison. with her charisma. After her days in they were to discover the truth about Go away, she said. She had nothing to the band, she’d been part of the move- their famous friend. There was a brief say to him. ment for democracy. She’d written po- revival of interest in D.G.F., the three- Though she never read what he etry and made speeches and chanted piece band with two informers. Mon- wrote, her neighbors did. They began slogans. At the reunification ceremony ika moved again, though that didn’t to spit on the ground when she walked she’d even been invited to sing a song stop a journalist from finding her and past and let their dogs do their busi- at the Brandenburg Gate. She was an following her down the street to ask ness outside her door. Someone pushed artist, an activist, a victim of the Stasi, about her Stasi “colleague.” After a a note through the letter box, calling a national symbol of resilience in the month or two, things died down again. her terrible names. By that time she face of oppression. She’d just published And that was more or less that. She had another job, quite a nice one, serv- a memoir when they found her file, and did a lot of drinking and tried to work ing lunch to children at a kindergar- for Monika it felt like the night of the out what she would say to her friend if ten. One day a teacher told her that skinhead attack all over again, when she ever saw her again. Ten years after “someone like her” had no business near she’d turned round to find Tommy reunification, someone found Katja in children. They didn’t fire her. They didn’t standing in the doorway. The shock a small South German town and per- have to. She took her things and never was just as great. suaded her to give an interview for a went back. When she looked back, it seemed to TV documentary. Monika barely rec- Through all this, she had doubts. Monika that her best memories of Katja ognized her. She’d got fat, and her hair Everyone said that the Stasi was gone, were actually invented. She had usually was badly dyed. The bohemian disor- but was it really true? For her, it had been kind, but it was the sort of kind- der of her youth had become an ugly simply sunk underground, into the walls ness that cost nothing. She’d always won jumble. She was breeding dogs, or rab- and the floorboards, the fabric of things. so effortlessly, and no one had ever bits, or something. Animals for pet Objects still moved around in her apart- thought to question how she did it. Now shops. She said she didn’t regret what ment. She’d find the tea in the coffee it seemed so obvious, the ease with which she’d done. She’d followed her heart. jar, her books in a different order on she could get hold of things, make things So what if things had changed around her shelves. There were unexplained happen. Monika could barely process her? She’d turned out not to be right setbacks. A stolen bike, lost parcels at what was in the articles, couldn’t draw about the world. That was true of many the post office. All of it was suspicious. it into the circle of her imagination, so young people. Who could see into the The texture of her reality was soft, she made an appointment at the office future? A few months later, Monika spongy. She couldn’t trust that anything that handled the Stasi archives. She was saw Katja’s face again, in a newspaper would take her weight. She often won- allowed to read only the material that obituary. She had gone out to the Wann- dered what had happened to Roll-neck. pertained to her, but that was enough. see and walked into the water. She had Sometimes it was as if he were still with Katja had been recruited by the Min- taken a lot of sleeping pills and filled a her. At any time he might walk in, istry for State Security in high school. backpack with rocks.  smirking and carrying a bottle of cheap She was described as “highly motivated,” booze. And then quite unexpectedly and “committed to the cause of social- NEWYORKER.COM she saw him, standing in the cold, sell- ism.” She had reported everything, Hari Kunzru on privacy and surveillance.

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 65 THE CRITICS

ON TELEVISION I WILL SURVIVE “I May Destroy You,” on HBO.

BY DOREEN S T. FÉLIX

ho hasn’t been there? A she dances for a white paramour, the get away with wearing such a flashy thing. deadline looms, but inspi- seduction a hilarious failure of grunts Essiedu and Opia are understated W ration won’t come. In the and flailing limbs. Coel is an astonish- and frequently superb, while Coel chan- pilot of “I May Destroy You,” a mesmer- ingly inventive physical performer; a ce- nels her enormous energy into a stand- izing twelve-episode series for HBO rebral clown, she brings to mind, in her out performance. A wreck of charisma, and BBC One, written and co-directed wiriness, and her willingness to contort Arabella dodges inquiries about the sta- by the aggressively free-minded Michaela her angular face, both Lucille Ball and tus of her book, willing her white agents Coel, Arabella (Coel), a young East Lon- Kim Wayans. Coel treats sex as slap- into shell-shocked submission. At a don writer who owes her book agents a stick and desire as an embarrassment, trashy night club in Ostia, Italy, where draft, abandons her laptop and slips into and finds a freedom in abjection. This Arabella sojourns with Terry on the the night—just for an hour. She and an black woman cannot live, or create, in publishing agency’s dime, she gets high acquaintance drift to a place called Ego the margins. on “ket” and coke and upstages the go-go Death Bar. A late-night crew parties and Like “Chewing Gum,” which drew dancers. She lives precariously, attract- shares a round of shots. At some point, on an early-adult dalliance Coel had with ing bemused protectors; as she staggers the bar begins to disintegrate and blur. Christianity, “I May Destroy You” is a out of the night club, the moralizing Arabella dizzily claws her way to the semi-fictional portrait of the artist and drug dealer Biagio (Marouane Zotti) door. Is the scene comedic? Then a tem- her social world. In 2018, Coel revealed follows her home, picking up the house poral blackness: Arabella bolts awake at that she had been drugged and assaulted keys that she drops, and later becomes her writing desk, a gash on her forehead. while working on Season 2 of “Chew- her on-off boyfriend. As ever, in Coel’s Somehow, she meets her deadline, but ing Gum.” Arabella, like Coel until a few hands, cheer can turn to darkness in an the next day a reel of horrible action col- years ago, lives in a cluttered East Lon- instant. Soon after her night at Ego onizes her brain: a man, sweating and don flat with a gentle white male room- Death Bar, Arabella, realizing what must panting, thrusting in a bathroom stall. mate, Ben (Stephen Wight), who sup- have happened, calls Terry: “Yo, T., I just It will be a while before she can acknowl- ports her like a piece of old furniture. got spiked, you know.” At the police sta- edge that the image is a memory. Many Coel and Sam Miller direct the series tion, she describes to two kindly female of us have been there. with an unaffected intimacy—we hardly officers the image that has been replay- Coel, who is thirty-two, was born to notice how many shots of Arabella fea- ing in her mind. “Who is he looking Ghanaian parents and grew up in East ture her sitting on the toilet, her panties at?” one of the policewomen asks. Ara- London public housing with her mother hugging her calves. Arabella has impro- bella, who has been quipping and alert, and sister. A prodigiously talented writer, vised a family in her mates Kwame (Paapa suddenly shrinks and crumbles, hiding director, showrunner, and actor, she has Essiedu), a gay aerobics instructor with her face in her sweater. an anthropological interest in all kinds a Grindr addiction, and Terry (Weruche Arabella’s philosophy of art is distinct of physical congress, in what happens Opia), an aspiring actress. The world of from that of her creator. Explaining her when one body encounters another. In these characters, who have scrambled to- career path, she tells another writer, “Ev- 2015, she made “Chewing Gum,” a joy- gether their own avant-garde, feels eryone on Twitter was, like, ‘You should ful series adapted from a one-woman lived-in. Combat boots are scuffed; there’s make a book.’” For Arabella—the au- play she wrote while in acting school, not a lot of money, but everyone wants thor of the self-published “Chronicles in which she portrayed Tracey Gordon, to be seen, flirted with, consumed. Ara- of a Fed-Up Millennial,” drawn from an awkward virgin fanatically attempt- bella carries with her a trippy ikat-print her viral tweets—writing is either some- ing to shed her chastity. Tracey’s en- bomber jacket like a comfort blanket, thing to avoid or an act of improvisa- trance into womanhood is a cringe com- and loves her pink ombré wig like some- tional bombast. Her black fans often

edy: dressed in nauseating tribal costume, one who’s been told that she alone can stop her on the street, shouting her pithy GUTIÉRREZ LUCI ABOVE:

66 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 In her new show, Michaela Coel, a prodigiously talented writer, director, and performer, takes on life after sexual assault.

ILLUSTRATION BY XIA GORDON THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 67 sullivan+ associates ARCHITECTS sayings back to her. Coel, by contrast, a perated agents suggest that she confer meticulous psychological observer, re- with a Cambridge graduate, Zain (Karan sists rhetoric; her ear is so attuned to the Gill), also a writer. At the meeting, Ar- rhythm of East London chatter that, abella blushes as he finishes her sen- martha’s vineyard when characters talk shit to one another, tences. The two end up having sex; Zain 15% off code it feels not written but overheard. removes the condom without Arabel- NewYorker15 la’s consent. At first, Arabella is merely 100% COTTON orga BEDDINGnic May Destroy You” is a beguiling annoyed that she has to take a morn- Made in the USA: Grown to Sewn “ I study of friendship and casual ing-after pill, and they start dating. But Luxuriously soft. Woven to last a lifetime. trauma and writing as a path—albeit later, listening to a podcast for sexu- 4 pillowcases with every queen and king set AmericanBlossomLinens.com 888-825-0110 not a simple one—to reinvention. The al-assault survivors, Arabella concludes arc of the narrative deals with the af- that Zain breached a boundary. At an termath of Arabella’s assault. She tries event for writers hosted by her publish- Your Anniversary Immortalized not to dwell on it. “I just make sure I’m ing company, she takes the stage and in Roman Numerals around someone, anyone,” she tells her outs him publicly. “He is a rapist,” she 3-Day Rush Available! therapist. “If I’m not, I say, ‘There are says, high on her strange new power. Crafted from Gold and Platinum JOHN- CHRISTIAN.COM hungry children . . . not everyone has a “Not rape-adjacent, or a bit rape-y— OR CALL 888.646.6466 smartphone.” On the therapist’s advice, he’s a rapist.” Her dramatic speech breaks she takes up painting. She experiences the Internet, and she becomes a sort of Sit well — the new Nautilus Chair. panic on seeing a waiter serve glasses of rape-survivor influencer, a phenome- water in a hotel lobby. She shaves her non of our confused time. Isn’t it the A design homage to mid-century head, then goes back to the wig. Her dark genius of many black women art- Danish lounges. An symptoms blend into the usual chaos ists to turn their hardship into mate- authentic, original design made in Maine. of her adult life, becoming baggage and rial? Her gift is the ability to create com- Request a also momentum. “I May Destroy You” munion around the particularities of complimentary embraces sprawling tangents, and these her race, her gender, her voice. When catalog @chiltons.com. further furnish its nonjudgmental world Arabella suggests that she pivot the view. Two episodes take us back to Ar- topic of her book, her publisher, a

chiltons.com 866-883-3366 abella’s adolescence, in which she and haughty black woman, shouts, “Rape! Terry act as unwitting protectors of the Fantastic!” Later, Arabella develops a entitled black teen-age boys around queasy friendship with an old high- them. In another episode, an adult Ar- school acquaintance, Theo (portrayed abella grapples with the memory of with eerie subtlety by Harriet Webb her rolling-stone father’s infidelity. Coel and, in flashback, Gaby French), who exerts a kinetic control over the story’s runs a therapy group for sexual-assault many threads and characters—especially survivors, and who similarly draws on the calm Kwame, the attitudinal oppo- victimhood for affirmation. site of Arabella, who is also a victim of In the so-called #MeToo era, there sexual assault. The tone is never stable. is a basic hunger for narratives of sex- “I May Destroy You” is a hangout ve- ual assault and consent. How can art- hicle, a detective story, a nonlinear trav- ists maintain their creative dignity when elogue, and a comic bildungsroman. Be- encouraged to exploit their own selves? cause Coel focusses on hustling black Coel’s honest mimicry of empowerment women and black queer people, I could talk, and her depiction of the murky ap- say that the show is political, but mostly peal of the social-media outrage cycle, the writing steers away from didacti- at times approach the satirical. Toward cism. It resides in the gray areas of the the end of the series, some of its daring post-liberation sexual economy: the pun- tonal ambiguity is lost, as plotlines are ishingly banal moment when a consen- coerced into social commentary. But at sual hookup between two men turns its best this show is abrasively psycho- forceful; the awkward atmosphere when logical; it is, as all good art can be, “trig-

E23G671 a gay black man goes stealth, thinking gering,” because it sounds and feels and that he can find safety in a white woman, moves the way we do. In Coel’s uni- Wear our who, in turn, fetishizes black men. verse, as in ours, pleasurable experiences new offi cial In “I May Destroy You,” violation is are everywhere imperilled, always risky, hat to show the omnipresent, cultural weather. Coel always subject to audit. And yet we yearn your love. treats perpetrators with curiosity, and for experience. We tend toward survival newyorkerstore.com/hats refuses to infantilize or pity the victims. and evolution. We put our trauma to In the fourth episode, Arabella’s exas- use. We finish the goddam book. 

68 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 prose can sometimes read like a sort of A CRITIC AT LARGE dramatized phenomenology. Even on a bustling city street, her characters can come across as frontierspeople, or toil- THE ART OF THE UNRULY ers on a polar expedition. As she in- vokes a world of pounding hearts and Joyce Carol Oates went to war against the literary fetish for form—and won. thumping ears and watering mouths, she exhibits a refreshing freedom from BY LEO ROBSON embarrassment, an indifference to the concept of overkill. Oates’s friend the novelist John Gard- ner once suggested that she try writ- ing a story “in which things go well, for a change.” That hasn’t happened yet. Her latest book, the enormous and fre- quently brilliant “Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.” (Ecco)—the forty-ninth novel she has published, if you exclude the ones she has written under pseudo- nyms—is a characteristic work. It be- gins with an act of police brutality, and proceeds to document the multifari- ous consequences for the victim’s wife and children: alcoholism, low-level criminality, marital breakdown, incip- ient nervous collapse. In a 1977 journal entry, Oates acknowledged that her work turns instinctively toward what she called “the central, centralizing act of violence that seems to symbolize something beyond itself.” Perhaps the most heavily ironic statement in her œuvre comes in her second novel, “A Garden of Earthly Delights” (1967), when a woman says, “Nobody killed nobody, this is the United States,” while the most characteristic piece of expo- sition may be found in “Little Bird of Heaven” (8009): “Daddy was bringing me home on that November evening n Joyce Carol Oates’s novel “Because gory here for his creator’s own meth- not long before his death-by-firing- IIt Is Bitter, and Because It Is My ods—his approach to composing a credo squad to a house from which he’d been Heart” (1990), Jinx Fairchild, a star high- emerging as a credo in itself. As far banished by my mother.” Among con- school athlete, is assigned a five-hun- back as the novels in Oates’s Wonder- temporary American fiction writers— dred-word paper on the topic “I Be- land Quartet, such as “Expensive Peo- and, since the deaths of Philip Roth lieve.” To his surprise, Jinx finds himself ple” (1968) and “them” (1969), which re- and Toni Morrison, she possesses a endlessly tweaking the essay—“in a fe- ceived the National Book Award fifty strong claim to preëminence—Oates rocity of concentration,” Oates tells us, years ago this fall, Oates has deployed most clearly displays what Henry James “as singleminded as his concentration her zeal for revision to forge a style of called “the imagination of disaster,” a on basketball.” The aim of this “exhaust- rousing roughness. Her dozens of nov- faculty or frailty she often gives to her ing” process is not to sharpen his syn- els and hundreds of short stories, many creations. (“Sometimes she thought tax or to clarify his thinking but to pre- of them set in western New York, forgo idly about earthquakes, fires, buildings sent the truth as he perceives it and to an air of cool mastery in favor of a kind cracking in two,” we read in “them.” demonstrate his newfound sense that of cultivated vulnerability, an openness “She thought of fires, of bulldozers lev- “words on paper” can be “expressions to engulfment. Human existence, in eling trees and buildings.”) of the soul.” her handling, seems a primarily somatic But where James wanted to tame his THE RICHARD AVEDON FOUNDATION AVEDON THE RICHARD

© It’s hardly a stretch to see an alle- enterprise, and her greedily adjectival sense that life was ferocious and sinis- ter, contingent and multiple, Oates taps Oates in New York, June 5, 1995 (contact print). her feeling of inner chaos as a creative

PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD AVEDON THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 69 with an edition of James’s prefaces (“The Art of the Novel”). In an essay on Dosto- yevsky’s “The Possessed,” Oates lamented that critics with a “Jamesian sensibil- ity ... simply cannot see” the structure of longer novels, and argued that the loose baggy monster—in James’s noto- rious phrase—“is loose and baggy and monstrous only to the critic who con- fuses his own relative short-sightedness with an aesthetic principle.” Oates wasn’t alone in this crusade— at least, not at first. In 1949, when she was a schoolgirl in Niagara County, the Nobel Prize was awarded to William Faulkner, a writer who was steeped in the work of Dostoyevsky and dismissed James as a “prig.” Many of the best- “Got a message from Dimitri in Athens. He says known novelists who emerged during your thumb is crushing his house.” those years—Lessing, Bellow, Mailer, Styron—had paid tribute to the Rus- sian model. In criticism, too, escape •• routes from the formalist cul-de-sac were taken up in, notably, Iris Murdoch’s resource. James said that the artist’s eter- aesthetic would surely prove divisive, polemics “The Sublime and the Beau- nal problem was how to create a geo- and the conditions have often been tiful Revisited” (1959) and “Against Dry- metric pattern that disguises the fact harsh. If Jinx Fairchild, straining to ex- ness” (1961), and in Frank Kermode’s that “relations stop nowhere”; Oates has press his soul, is a stand-in for Oates- “The Sense of an Ending” (1967), a study talked of the elastic and the fluid. In ian principles, then Mrs. Dunphy, the of “the dilemma of fiction and reality” 1968, she voiced a desire to publish “a senior-year English teacher, could be that considers the devices used by “The long work with many characters, many said to embody official literary stan- Idiot.” And Blackmur himself had a events, a jagged and unclean plot, closely dards. (The scene takes place in 1957.) change of heart, embracing a radical tied in with ‘reality’”—a formulation She gives Jinx a D-plus and insists that new position that yielded essays such that would have kept James awake for he was lucky not to receive an F. “You as “The Loose and Baggy Monsters of months—and, whatever the charges know the rule,” she says. “No run-on Henry James” (1951) and a study of the that have been levelled at Oates’s work, sentences.” When Jinx resubmits his European novel that dwells on the work she cannot be accused of failing to re- assignment, he receives a B-plus and of Dostoyevsky, presented as explicitly alize this ambition. the message is clear—in playing it safe, superior to the products of “form.” In books as disparate as her first novel, he is denying himself the opportunity What distinguishes Oates’s record the star-crossed romance “With Shud- to achieve something transcendent. is not just longevity but doggedness. dering Fall” (1964), the celebrated urban Oates’s portrayal of killjoy politesse For a while, she had a kindred spirit in epics “them” and “Wonderland” (1971), might be seen as a nose thumbed at Iris Murdoch, who, around 1970, started the unfairly derided mystic-politico-psy- grudging book reviewers, but her atti- writing novels in a mode that Oates chosexual thriller “The Assassins” (1975), tude toward Mrs. Dunphy’s strictures called “self-consciously ‘Russian,’” being the academic chamber piece “Marya: A has deeper roots. “looser, freer, more ribald,” notable for Life” (1986), the Eisenhower-era chron- a “breathless, plunging, unedited” voice icle “You Must Remember This” (1987), high-achieving product of nine- and “unresolved, troubling, provocative the Marilyn Monroe bio-fiction “Blonde” A teen-fifties academe—she was the endings.” By contrast, Bellow’s books (2000), and the post-9/11 small-town valedictorian of her graduating class at became shorter and tidier, and, anyway, mystery “Carthage” (2014), characters Syracuse University, in 1960—Oates re- for all the creative ebullience—the “wa- insist that experience is a mess of shards jected what she saw as the prevailing terfalls of self-displaying energy”—ex- and shreds. Jessalyn McClaren, in pieties of literary conduct: “symmetry, hibited in a novel like “Humboldt’s “Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.,” reflects unity of tone, precision.” In a study of Gift,” his had always been, in Oates’s that the mental mode she calls “widow- D. H. Lawrence’s poetry—one of a se- view, an art of “accommodation, not think,” far from helping her to navigate ries of strikingly ambitious literary es- terror.” And Oates’s contemporary Anne changed circumstances, is nothing more says she has published—she took aim Tyler, a onetime grad student in Slavic than “a barely controlled panic of neu- at the rationalist agenda promoted by studies whose early books “resembled rons crazily firing.” the eminent critic R. P. Blackmur, who the meandering of streams,” had been Even in a receptive climate, such an had led the Henry James revival in 1934, seduced by the charms of conventional

70 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 structure. Oates, all the while, favored Oprah’s Book Club. It’s a classically ac- various crises—prompting Sophia, for the flood over the levee, while striving complished piece of work, with resem- example, to reëxamine everything she to curb the mysticism and the slalom- blances to Roth’s “American Pastoral.” previously knew, from familiar roads to ing plotlines of the books she published professional habits. (She no longer feels in the years after completing the Won- ates’s latest novel begins more or comfortable killing animals for lab tests.) derland Quartet. Exorbitant attacks ap- Oless where “We Were the Mul- Family life is a suitable subject for a peared (one by James Wolcott, in Har- vaneys” more or less ended, in an inten- novelist with Oates’s emphases. As well per’s, was titled “Stop Me Before I Write sive-care unit, with the death of a patri- as serving as a mirror of mores, a site for Again”). But despite her view that J. D. arch. The opening scene takes place on drama and violence (“a battleground,” in Salinger’s “dignified withdrawal into si- an afternoon in the fall of 2010, when the words of one character), it is also an lence is understandable,” given the “jeer- Whitey McClaren, a sixty-seven-year- occasion for sensory description, chal- ing and dismissive” critical response to old businessman and onetime mayor of lenging the writer to convey what the his last published work, silence was never Hammond, New York, pulls off the high- psychoanalyst R. D. Laing called “the likely to be her path. way near his home town, just beyond a texture, the taste one might say,” of fa- Like Philip Roth, who followed a “grimy and graffiti-defaced” overpass, to milial experience. The family unit is also late-sixties sensation (“Portnoy’s Com- approach a pair of patrol cops in the pro- a breeding ground for myth. “You may plaint”) with a series of near-misses and cess of attacking a “dark-skinned young have thought our family was larger,” Judd outright duds and then regrouped, Oates man,” and is beaten up and then tased. Mulvaney recalls; in the new novel, it produced an amazing run of books, start- (“Trying to rise. Oh but his heart is isn’t long before we discover that there’s ing in the mid-nineteen-eighties, with pounding—hard.”) From this briskly bru- more to Whitey McClaren than his a similar emphasis on history and au- tal scene, Oates spins a seven-hundred- “good-natured and approachable” persona. tobiography, which has continued today, and-eighty-page portrait of rumination, And so the family theme mobilizes notably “Marya,” “Because It Is Bitter,” recrimination, and renewal. “Night. Sleep. Oates’s essential skepticism. Although “Black Water” (1992), “What I Lived Death. The Stars.”—the title comes from she has written frequently about social For” (1994), “Zombie” (1995), “Blonde,” Whitman—is a novel of aftermath, an injustices—“them” culminates in the 1967 “Missing Mom” (2005), “The Gravedig- epilogue drawn to epic length, the story Detroit riot—she is not so much a real- ger’s Daughter” (2007), “Carthage,” and of what happens to a group of people ist as an impressionist, with a gift for a “A Book of American Martyrs” (2017). robbed of their “lynchpin” or “anchor.” poetic and idiosyncratic kind of group She has received a shelf ’s worth of life- (Oates employed a similar narrative strat- portraiture. “Impossible to characterize time-achievement awards—including, egy in “Assassins” and in her 2001 novel our family’s experience,” a man reflects in May, the Institut de France’s two- “Middle Age: A Romance.”) in the early pages of her best-selling gothic hundred-thousand-euro Prix Mondial “We Were the Mulvaneys” was rare saga “Bellefleur” (1980): “Are we beset Cino Del Duca. If this feat of rallying among Oates’s books in using a single by tragedy, or merely farce?—or melo- and renewal has not attained the same first-person narrator. The new novel is drama?—or pranks of fate, sheer hap- legendary status as the achievement written in her favored roaming third penstance, that cannot be deciphered?” known as “late Roth,” it is partly be- person, and is told from more than half There is no answer, and no higher force cause Roth found a palatable compro- a dozen perspectives. There are two Mc- to whom we might appeal for judgment. mise—coursing fluency repurposed as As the narrator of her Princeton-set hor- oratorical clarity—while Oates refused ror novel, “The Accursed,” warns, in an to adapt her vision of how a novel should author’s note, “There may be multiple, and behave. Just as Jules, in “them,” aspires competing, histories; as there are multiple, “to break free of the morass of the flesh” and competing, eyewitness accounts.” Or, and become “pure spirit,” so Oates has in Judd’s words, “What is a family, after wanted to do away with customary all, except memories?” To Oates, the reality modes of reference and description, to of family life is social reality in excelsis, be free to write in a way “quite unre- and perhaps the ultimate subject for a deemed by poetic grace,” in a phrase novel. (Many of Oates’s favorite works from her study of D. H. Lawrence. (She Claren sons: Thom, in his late thirties, in the form—“The Brothers Karama- described the language in one of her the second-in-command at McClaren, zov,” “Women in Love,” “The Sound and novels as “deliberately clumsy at times.”) Inc.—a commercial printer that long the Fury”—tussle with saga conventions.) She has wanted to be able to leave be- ago diversified—and the runt of the lit- The pinballing point of view of Oates’s hind, when it suits her purposes, the ter, Virgil, a thirty-one-year-old artist novel unsettles any fixed concept of the embankments of orderly syntax and plot. and dropout. There are three daughters, local institution known as “the McCla- That her counter-aesthetic represents a Beverly (prom queen turned bored rens.” When we read about “the wonder set of convictions, and not any deficien- housewife), Lorene (local high-school of an older brother to a younger,” this is cies of technique, was made plain, in principal), and Sophia (a pharmaceuti- just one of a vast number of permuta- 1996, by the publication of “We Were cal-lab assistant), as well as Jessalyn, tions. Elsewhere, we are shown the bur- the Mulvaneys,” which appeared on the their beloved “mommy.” Whitey’s death den represented by a younger brother to Times best-seller list and was chosen for sends the remaining McClarens into an older, and the “innocently-sisterly”

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 71 way in which the housewife Beverly can altogether more churning and (to bor- When she reflects that “a widow’s life” be rude to the slightly younger high- row a term of praise, from a 1977 jour- is “a posthumous life; a left-over life, school principal Lorene; when Beverly nal entry) “agonizingly thorough.” For you could say,” she realizes that putting is using her “good-daughter” voice on the a while, the novel seems to be concerned such a melancholy truth into words phone to Jessalyn, it’s “bright-glittering with Thom’s attempt to achieve legal makes it “sound exalted and profound like bubbles on a stream beneath which, justice for Whitey’s death, and with his somehow,” when in fact the widow’s if you looked closely, you’d see sharp- attempts to frighten off Jessalyn’s new condition was “a diminishment, like a edged rocks and rubble.” The novel has boyfriend, Hugo Martinez, a Newark- wizened pea or a crumpled napkin.” But been constructed to maximize flexibil- born photographer and poet whom some even to say that is “to hope to inflate ity. Among its fifty-two chapters is a brief of the McClaren children view as a the diminishment, and in this hope there composite picture entitled “Recurring gold-digger. (“How would Mom ever was folly.” Cliché after cliché is tested Dreams of the McClaren Children.” meet a Cuban?” Lorene wonders.) Yet and then dispatched, along with any An isolated vignette—“The Widow’s neither of Thom’s projects comes to dom- sense of consolation. Orgy”—shows Jessalyn giddily empty- inate our interest. And the novel is so ing Whitey’s expensive liquor bottles into teeming with nuances and details and ates’s habits are designed to unset- the kitchen sink. (“Oh, Mom. What on inklings that you barely have time to Otle us and, though pleasure is never earth have you done.”) And toward the register the irony that Whitey died in out of the equation, the novel avoids end, in another vignette, we are reminded the course of defending a victim of ra- many traditional narrative strategies for that Beverly, the daughter lost in grief, is cial profiling, despite having been soft ginning up tension. The reader is shown, a mother, too: on police violence during his time as long before any of the surviving char- Heedless Brianna came in, bounding up Hammond’s mayor—or that Thom’s two acters are, the circumstances of the nov- the stairs in jeans so tight-fitting slender legs, causes are inherently at odds, one per- el’s central narrative event. Whitey’s thighs, buttocks you could wonder (her mother taining to the fallout of a racially charged roadside encounter with the Hammond wonders!) how in hell the girl can breathe, po- assault, the other incipiently racist. police is presented as answers to a se- nytail bouncing sassily behind her, of course At times, there’s little to hold on to. ries of factual questions (Why did he Beverly lowered her voice so the girl wouldn’t hear, certain that the girl could not hear, and But then, why should the reader be pull over? Where had he been driving some minutes later there came Brianna in re- afforded the feeling of terra firma so from?). And a character can be intro- verse, out of her room and down the stairs persistently denied to the characters? duced with the syntactic equivalent of thudding on her heels with the arrogance of As soon as Jessalyn has started enjoy- a four-car pileup: one who weighs two hundred pounds and not ing the memory of the stone house at one hundred, and again Beverly lowered her Just a glance at Thom McClaren, tall and voice out of maternal discretion just as Bri- 99 Old Farm Road, filled with her five rangy-limbed, sandy-haired, handsome face anna halted at the foot of the stairs and turned children and their five sets of friends, now just perceptibly beginning to thicken, in to her, twisting at the waist like a dancer in a she corrects herself: “Well, that wasn’t his late thirties—(Virgil often stared, when [he brilliantly tortured posture, young face livid accurate perhaps. By the time Virgil was believed] Thom wasn’t aware of him)—you with indignation: “For God’s sake, Mom! old enough to bring friends home, Thom could see that Thom was one of those persons Grandpa Whitey is gone.” who feels very good about himself, and his was too old to wish to bring his friends self-estimate is (largely) shared by those who If Dostoyevsky was a specialist in the home; not to mention those girlfriends gaze upon him. “dialogical,” Oates serves up something of Thom’s he hadn’t dared bring home.” (The brackets are hers.) Now and again, you’re reminded of Martin Amis’s griev- ance that, though James Joyce could take you anywhere, he keeps taking you places you don’t want to go. And yet there is great joy to be de- rived from the novel’s submerged pat- terns, its mind-boggling fecundity, its gallimaufry of devices (stream of con- sciousness, analytic omniscience, sen- tences both snaking and staccato), its combination of intricacy and lucidity. An early chapter called “The Seed” moves from the McClaren children waking up in the family home, via some reflections on sibling order, to an unsituated flash- back of Virgil explaining that he wants to drift like a cottonwood seed, and his father telling him that a seed is supposed to take root and grow. The evocation of an extended period (“In his twenties he’d disappeared for weeks, months at a time”) then settles into a dramatic scene, a de- bate between Virgil and Whitey on the BRIEFLY NOTED concept of “use”; Whitey thinks that “we are here on earth to be of use,” while Vir- Humankind, by Rutger Bregman, translated from the Dutch gil wants to know “what kind of use, for by Elizabeth Manton and Erica Moore (Little, Brown). This whose use, at what price to the user.” The lively social history examines pessimistic views of human debate, in which Jessalyn “intervened, nature, from Hobbes to “Lord of the Flies,” and argues that, gently,” is seen from various perspectives: in fact, humans are “pretty decent.” Bregman cites evolu- Sophia, usually Virgil’s ally, hopes this tionary theories on “survival of the friendliest” and psycho- time that their father will rebuke him; logical studies showing that most people embrace evil only “the McClaren siblings” collectively no- when it is “masquerading as good.” Such speculations, the tice that Virgil never seems hurt by Whit- book insists, are anything but abstract. Demonstrating how ey’s remarks; Virgil thinks, “This was un- cynical views of human nature are often self-fulfilling— fair! And inaccurate!”; and Whitey feels prison inmates treated as irredeemable have much higher frustrated that he cannot defeat his own recidivism rates than those who aren’t—Bregman offers a son in argument, while regretting that he compelling case for reshaping institutions and policies along had agreed to give him that eccentric genuinely humane lines. name. (“Not likely ... that he’d have such frustrating experiences with a son named Scandinavian Noir, by Wendy Lesser (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Matthew.”) The rest of the chapter can- Lesser, the editor of The Threepenny Review, reflects on her ters through Virgil’s past: loving poetry forty-year obsession with Nordic crime fiction. Surveying and painting as a “dreamy child”; enroll- the genre’s themes and methods, she argues that its energy ing at Oberlin College, and then leaving; comes from the way it reveals a gap between Scandinavian accepting a teaching job in North Ham- civic ideals and reality. On trips to Denmark, Sweden, and mond, and then resigning; struggling to Norway, she finds evidence of social failures that appear in articulate his philosophy of “extreme al- the novels, but also much to praise: police officers who rarely truism”; and slipping into codependency use guns, a more moderate criminal-justice system. She with Jessalyn (“You are ‘enabling’ our son,” writes of her “exuberant relief ” in knowing that, “somewhere Whitey tells her, using a piece of newly in the world, there’s a respite” from the cruelties that mar acquired jargon). Then we slip back into life in the U.S. the family’s bedside vigil. Although Oates rejects cohesion as Blue Ticket, by Sophie Mackintosh (Doubleday). In this dark a formal virtue, she has a coherent vi- fable, Mackintosh explores the strictures inhibiting a wom- sion of what literature can deliver. She an’s right to choose. Living in a quietly menacing, unnamed believes in the itching and the ornery society, Calla yearns to have a child. But she is forbidden and the oddly shaped, and has been try- from doing so: at a coming-of-age ceremony, she received a ing to produce fiction that feels as irre- “blue ticket” and was implanted with an IUD. (Those given ducible to simple meanings, as resistant “white tickets” are expected to become happy mothers.) Try- to paraphrase, as the subject matter it ing to conceive, and then to escape the country with her un- portrays. The heroic figures in “Night. born child, Calla encounters many who see her as aberrant, Sleep. Death. The Stars.” are Jessalyn but she also finds other pregnant blue-ticket women, one of and Hugo Martinez and, perhaps above whom becomes a lover and a protector, and a white-ticket all, Virgil. The other McClaren siblings woman who has recently self-administered an abortion. Mac- represent a bullying orthodoxy, like the kintosh sensitively conveys resonant questions about moth- “tradition-oriented critics” of the fifties. erhood, female solidarity, queer love, and bodily autonomy. “He doesn’t care at all that Daddy is seriously ill,” an unnamed McClaren says Seeing the Body, by Rachel Eliza Griffiths (Norton). A daugh- of Virgil, while Beverly claims that some ter mourns her mother’s death in this collection of poems, part of Virgil’s brain is missing—“the excavating her personal loss amid the wider traumas of rac- part that is sensitive to social cues.” The ism and misogyny. “Behind my eyes/a dead woman looks four-page scene that follows, beginning back at me with no trace/of recognition,” she writes. Griffiths, “Hi, Dad,” makes it clear that Virgil cares who is also a visual artist, includes a series of anguished pho- as much as anybody. At one point, he tographic self-portraits, and she is fascinated with the power takes a deep breath, lifts a handmade of images to document and distort. In her elegiac, enraged woodwind instrument to his mouth, and poems, the injustices suffered by women and black people produces, Oates tells us, a series of ear- find an echo in the cosmic injustice of mortality. Ultimately, nest, breathy notes “so airy, you couldn’t the work draws lyrical intensity from its resistance to obliv- define them as flute-sounds.”  ion and its insistence, despite despair, on life.

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 73 GET YOURS AT GQ.COM/NEWYORKER BEST STUFF

There’s nothing square about a square-faced The box also includes $200+ VALUE timepiece, especially one as understated as the luxe goods from: Breda Virgil watch. We asked the brand to turn Ezra Arthur FOR ONLY $50 up the vintage vibes—so Breda created a gold-and- Sisley-Paris black edition of the $115 watch (complete with a Lumin faux-reptile strap) specially for GQ. Get one in the Harry’s Learn more at Fall 2020 Best Stuff Box...before it sells out. & more gq.com/newyorker change anything, though, except their BOOKS fortunes. They aren’t sellouts, by any stretch; they’re just not pretentious about their goals. They want to find an FAKE BOOK audience, and to win over that audi- ence. They refuse to compromise with What happens when David Mitchell writes a rock novel? management on any artistic decision, but they’re never really asked to, be- BY JONATHAN DEE cause there’s nothing disturbing enough about their music to make anyone try jixiansheng to get them to compromise it. Though they are, fictionally speaking, near-con- temporaries of Bucky Wunderlick, the Garbo-like rock god at the heart of Don DeLillo’s “Great Jones Street,” it’s hard to imagine any of Utopia Ave- nue’s members sharing Bucky’s credo: “That’s why we’re so great. We make noise. We make it louder than anybody else and also better. Any curly-haired boy can write windswept ballads. You have to crush people’s heads. That’s the only way to make those fuckers listen.” Instead, the band goes through the usual succession of rough gigs in lousy halls (a brawl breaks out in one when Griff, the drummer, gets beaned by a beer bottle); they travel between en- gagements in a broken-down van, fondly named the Beast. They get ex- cited the first time they hear a song of theirs on the radio. They listen in awe to “Sgt. Pepper” when it comes out. While on tour, one of them is the victim of a trumped-up drug charge. They’re more pleased than disillusioned to be following this classic path. And for quite a while, until late in the book, when it more or less sheds its skin, the genre comforts of the rock novel seem here’s a side of rock and roll— figures—young, reasonably talented, all that “Utopia Avenue” is interested Tdefiant, anarchic, Dionysian, sub- eager to succeed—come together to in providing. versive, doomed, Romantic—that has form a band of that name. They are in- always appealed to literary novelists, troduced to one another by a wise and he rock novel, broadly speaking, but that’s not its only side. Plenty of benevolent manager (maybe the first Tis less concerned with the making its practitioners make decent music, one in the history of the rock novel) of music (an experience hard to trans- and decent livings, without feeling the named Levon Frankland, who spots late into prose) than with authenticity need to subvert or defy anything at all. them playing in other, subpar bands of attitude: an aggressive commitment Nor does everyone feel oppressed by and has a hunch, their disparate musi- to iconoclasm and a proud aversion to celebrity; all that star-maker machin- cal influences notwithstanding, that bullshit. A strong line extends from ery has to get stoked with something, they would sound great together. All DeLillo to Jonathan Lethem to Jenni- and for every Dylanesque refusenik in this is set in mid-sixties London, when fer Egan to Eleanor Henderson to Steve the world there are ten thousand vol- and where it was possible to believe Erickson, with many excellent stops in unteers for fame. Why shouldn’t they uncynically that new music could between; somewhere along the way, get the literary treatment, too? change the world. though, the purer-than-thou asceticism In David Mitchell’s novel “Utopia The likable quartet—Griff, Dean, of that “authenticity” became a weari-

PHOTOGRAPH: PAKO MERA / ALAMY / MERA PAKO PHOTOGRAPH: Avenue” (Random House), four such Elf, and Jasper—are not really out to some trope of its own. Looked at one way, Mitchell’s lack of interest in re- “Utopia Avenue” comfortably inhabits a genre, only to swerve away from it. bellion (despite setting his novel at the

ILLUSTRATION BY BEN WISEMAN THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 75 virtual ground zero of music-as-rebel- cied myself a big fish in a small pond, but I you read about me. . . . Just most of it.” lion) constitutes a fresh take. Unfor- wasn’t even a fish. I was susceptible to distrac- Or when Brian Jones says, “I come up tunately, while the characters’ happy- tion. Greenwich Village. Beatnik readings. Folk with tons of ideas for Mick and Keith sessions. I went on long walks, posing as a to-be-here vibe ironically plays as flâneur, but only the French can get away with but all I get from them is sarcasm. I subversive, other aspects of Mitchell’s that. I watched the boats on the East River. ought to write songs, you know. Even scene-setting don’t fare as well, partic- Once, I took the elevator up there.” Leonard Wyman’s got one on Satanic Traves- ularly when it comes to the music it- nods at the Empire State Building. “I looked ties. That settles it. I begin. Tomorrow. self. Guitar solos are “pyrotechnic”; Elf, over Manhattan and was seized by an absurd Got any drugs?” desire to take it. To own it. Do we write songs the keyboardist, is twice described as as a substitute for possession?” The aura of reality that these speeches playing “slabs of Hammond chords.” are meant to enhance is undermined in Mitchell’s song titles don’t sound like I find passages like this mortifying, most cases by the fact that the speaker song titles, and his poundingly metri- though I recognize that many readers devoted a lifetime to not talking like cal lyrics don’t really sound like lyrics: will not. The technique of incorporat- that. One can argue that Bowie’s fame ing real people into fictional narratives is now at such a level that anything goes, What is plotted will unravel. is an established literary convention, that he has ascended, Nixon-like, into What is built slip out of joint. Good intentions get forgotten. one that, like all techniques, can be the realm of imagination’s raw material. Makes you wonder, what’s the point? employed well or badly. Still, it is one But what did poor Gene Clark ever do thing to stick into the mouth of a char- to get dragooned into this pantomime? But the most troubling play for that acter of your own invention a clichéd He led a brilliant, tragically short life, elusive authenticity comes in the nu- line of dialogue such as “Problem is, if and, if you want to write a novelization merous cameo appearances, within the fame is a drug, it’s hard to kick,” but of that life, have at it; but this is just narrative, by real-life rock stars. And quite another, especially if you care opportunism. He should have been more they don’t just get spotted from across about music at all, when Gene Clark, famous than he was; one of the com- the room, either; they say things. David of the Byrds—Gene Clark, who wrote pensations of that should be that he is Bowie, Brian Jones, John Lennon, Steve “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better”!—is spared this deepfake afterlife as a poorly Winwood, Keith Moon, Sandy Denny, made to say it. Or when Bowie says to scripted spokesman for the real. Syd Barrett, Jimi Hendrix, or, in this a member of Utopia Avenue, “We met instance, Leonard Cohen: on the stairs last time, too . . . I was on he swerve comes late in the nov- “I’m not one of life’s settlers. I came here my way up, then. Now I’m going down. Tel’s feel-good, rise-to-modest-fame [to New York] to write The—or just A—Great Is that a metaphor?” Or when Allen narrative, though the groundwork, in American Novel. I wince at the cliché. I fan- Ginsberg says, “Don’t believe everything retrospect, is visible throughout. Jas- per, the band’s gifted, eccentric lead guitarist, appears—to judge from the chapters narrated from his perspec- tive—to be mentally ill, to a much greater degree than his bandmates and his manager suspect. As his delusions intensify, Jasper begins to hear an om- inous knocking sound. Since no one else can hear it, its source would seem to be in his head. Yet he has heard it before, as a boy at an English board- ing school; with the aid of a sympa- thetic schoolmate gloriously named Heinz Formaggio, he once traced the sound to a mirror, wherein he encoun- tered not his own image but that of “a man, older, shorter than Jasper, with East Asian eyes, in ceremonial robes.” A psychiatrist named Dr. Galavazi helped Jasper to quiet the knocking then. But now it is back. Mitchell, whose novels range through different modes and genres with ex- traordinary facility, has a lucid, kinetic style at all times, but he is never more impressive than when writing in close third person about characters in altered “I go by Michael now.” mental states—captivity, physical pain, madness. Here is Jasper, in an unsus- with the unerring instincts: wasn’t that quite real, more real than the various pecting girlfriend’s bed: also the name of a character in Mitch- historical genre trappings, such as Car- ell’s “The Bone Clocks” (2014)? Heinz naby Street, or the Chelsea Hotel, or 01:11 a.m., says her clock. A classical LP is on her Dansette. Jasper clicks the PLaY toggle. Formaggio—wasn’t there a Heinz zombie David Bowie. (In fact, the ani- An oboe has lost its way. Upon hearing a vio- Formaggio in “Ghostwritten” (1999)? matronic quality of the “real” characters lin in the thorns, the oboe picks a path toward On the Internet there are wikis de- is made a little more palatable by the it, metamorphosing into what it seeks. It’s beau- voted to the universe of fictional char- thought that they might never have been tiful and perilous. Sleep pulls Jasper down, hyp- acters in Mitchell’s eight available nov- there in the service of realism in the first nogogic fathoms down. Nothing of her that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something els (another, which is currently reposing place.) The sense of supernatural threat, rich and strange. Far above, the hull of the steamer in a time capsule, is slated to be pub- of being pursued, for mysterious reasons, darkens the lilac sea. Look. A coffin sinks, trail- lished in 2114) and to tracking their ap- across time, as part of a conflict too large ing bubbles. Inside is Jasper’s mother, Milly pearances, whether major or for individual lifetimes to Wallace. From inside the coffin, Jasper hears a minor, across multiple works. contain: this is the novel’s knock . . . knock . . . knock . . . Soft, yes, drowned, yes, persistent, yes, real? Yes. Only in a loose, nonrealis- reality, even as the charac- tic sense are characters with ters (apart from Jasper) are Notwithstanding the pressures of the same name always the oblivious of it. growing fame—or the sudden avail- same characters; sometimes There are a couple of ability of drugs, or the fact that three they’re better understood as ways to think about this. of the band members are straight men different incarnations, living Mitchell’s chef-d’œuvre re- and the fourth is a woman—Utopia different lives with the same mains “Cloud Atlas,” an al- Avenue’s interpersonal chemistry re- soul. Six years ago, Mitch- most unsummarizable work mains intact. As their sales and their ell was asked in an interview of such narrative sweep and reputation ascend, they weather indi- about these recursions across chronological scope as to vidual, very un-rock-star-like personal his œuvre—whether he saw his books make other “epic” novels seem as though crises: a death in the family, father is- as “one contiguous whole” or as discrete they were symphonies composed on toy sues, struggles to acknowledge sexual- entities laden with reader-friendly Eas- pianos. The recursions, the concordances ity. Jasper suffers mostly in silence, more ter eggs—and this was his answer: within that novel—across cultures, across and more tortured and unreliable, until For my first two or three books it was the centuries—were thrilling, not least be- finally, during a show in New York that latter. Now more and more it’s the former. I’m cause they made you wonder how the seems like the leading edge of Utopia beginning to see an über-book that overlays ev- author could possibly keep so broad a Avenue’s conquest of America, he col- erything I write. Everything I write is an indi- vision straight in his own head. Five lapses onstage, apparently catatonic; vidual chapter. The answer has changed over novels later, though, the questions posed time. I see it as an architect of an ever-morph- and his interior world, for a time at ing building that puts out tentacles, adds sto- by all this connectivity feel different. The least, supplants the reality outside it. ries, and billows deeper. Very interesting!! fact that a door in a hospital ward is At which point, questions about the oddly numbered “N9D,” which is short- novel’s genre bona fides, about its pass- Few of these echoes in “Utopia Av- hand for “Number9Dream,” the title of ing or failing any authenticity tests, are enue” have plot ramifications. Jasper, at another Mitchell novel, or the fact that rendered moot; Mitchell had a differ- one point, stumbles onto an old record- a rave review in the Village Voice of a ent destination all along. Not unlike ing of a sextet composed by Robert Utopia Avenue album is written by Jerry Jasper himself, “Utopia Avenue” turns Frobisher, who is a central character in Nussbaum (from “Cloud Atlas”): do out to have been a sort of host for some- “Cloud Atlas” (2004). Elf, the keyboard these correspondences amount to claims thing else entirely. player, who’s trying to come to terms about the world—about time’s decep- To go further would be to give too with her sexuality, gets involved with a tive elasticity, about the butterfly effect much away—not to everyone, perhaps, woman named Luisa Rey, who has ap- of individual human lives—or simply but certainly to readers of Mitchell’s peared in at least two other Mitchell about the work of David Mitchell? Is earlier work. Jasper’s last name, de Zoet, books. Does it matter to the plot that this a great writer of unfathomably long will have tipped off such readers; in 2010, Elf ’s girlfriend, who plays only a bit part vision making a kind of Yoknapataw- Mitchell published a historical novel in “Utopia Avenue,” is Luisa instead of pha out of the entirety of space and time, called “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob someone else? Not really; but it satisfies, or the rendering of something like fan de Zoet,” about a Dutch trader in eigh- because where we might have settled service? Maybe both. Just as the mem- teenth-century Japan. He turns out to for a realistic randomness there is in- bers of Utopia Avenue themselves are be Jasper’s distant ancestor, a fact that stead design. the flip side of DeLillo’s vision of rock casts the strange details of that halluci- What it all amounts to is that “Uto- music and its myth-scaled heroes, Mitch- natory mirror image in another light pia Avenue” exists on two different ell’s cross-referencing for its own sake entirely. Indeed, for Mitchell devotees, planes. Jasper’s suffering, his visions and could be the more benevolent, affirma- alarms will have sounded throughout auditory “hallucinations”—tragically, tive side of our era’s taste for conspiracy, the novel (as throughout this review) at pathologically insubstantial to the other in which everything is improbably con- the mention of certain other names as characters within the realistic landscape nected and there’s a secret pattern that well. Levon Frankland, the manager of the book—are, to the initiated reader, only the enlightened can see. 

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 77 on “The Star-Spangled Banner” set a MUSICAL EVENTS precedent for this kind of politically charged musical commentary, but Mc- Gill’s gesture has an eerie stillness, al- UNDER PRESSURE most like a meditation. It has inspired a torrent of responses from other mu- Musicians and composers react to the pandemic and to the protests. sicians. Billy Hunter, the principal trum- peter of the Metropolitan Opera, has BY ALEX ROSS offered a rendition of the national an- them that goes silent at the words “free” and “brave.” African-Americans are severely un- derrepresented in classical music, al- though you wouldn’t necessarily know it from the frequency with which peo- ple of color are now featured in promo- tional brochures. Online discussions in the wake of nationwide Black Lives Mat- ter protests have made clear how un- comfortable the role of a black classical musician can be. One day, with the col- laboration of the Los Angeles Opera, the mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges led a Zoom panel on racial inequality with a distinguished group of colleagues: Julia Bullock, Karen Slack, Lawrence Brown- lee, Russell Thomas, and Morris Rob- inson. After the singers described their reactions to Floyd’s killing and their own fraught encounters with the police, they addressed subtler but pervasive tensions in the opera world. Robinson spoke of the “perpetual paranoia” that he felt as a six-foot-three, three-hundred-pound black man: “I walk around every opera rehearsal I’ve ever been to guarded, cog- nizant of the fact that my interaction needs to be very public, in front of ev- eryone and very innocuous. ... This prac- ticing safe distance has always been a n May 27th, two days after a Min- The video, titled “TakeTwoKnees,” lasts practice of mine.” He revealed that he Oneapolis police officer murdered about ninety seconds, but it has the has never been hired by a black admin- George Floyd, Anthony McGill, the weight of a symphonic statement. istrator, has never shared the stage with principal clarinettist of the New York McGill later recounted that he had a black director, and has never taken a Philharmonic, posted a recording of been searching for some way to respond cue from a black conductor. himself playing “America the Beauti- to Floyd’s killing. His wife, Abby, sug- The conversation became even more ful.” It is a rendition with a difference. gested “America the Beautiful,” and as piercing when Bullock queried the very McGill begins by swelling slowly into he was trying out the song on his clar- gesture of gathering black singers to de- an initial G, from silence. When he inet he played a wrong note and slipped liberate age-old racial disparities. To her, reaches the portion of the melody match- into the minor, at which point he found it seemed a possible cover for inaction. ing the words “America, America,” he his message. “We shouldn’t pretend like “What are we even doing here?” she changes a high E-natural to an E-flat, life and the world is always major be- asked. “We’ve had that conversation.” thereby wrenching the key from C major cause we want it to be,” he told NPR. Thomas—who, like the others, lost his to C minor. He remains in the minor “Sometimes life is minor. It goes off its principal work in March—declared that mode to the end. Then he goes down true melody. It goes off of that simple, one issue on his mind was whether he on both knees, his clarinet behind his beautiful melody that we all expect it to was going to have enough food to feed back, as if shackled, and bends his head. be.” Jimi Hendrix’s dissonant fantasia his family. I watched the video twice, noting how my own nagging unease The clarinettist Anthony McGill, playing “America the Beautiful” in a minor key. affirmed the truth of what was being

78 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL ROGERS said. Brownlee made the point with ing field of electronic noise, with deep chine; in another, Stephen Cornford cre- maximum directness: “Just like Alco- bass tones periodically intruding. As ates a moody soundscape with piano, holics Anonymous, you have to state you move the jars toward your ears, the amplified central heating, and cherry-tree and realize that you have a problem.” general wash of frequencies drops out, twigs. I was especially haunted by Kate Classical music, which is to say white and a shimmering spectrum of isolated Carr’s “on every stair another stairway classical music, has a problem. tones emerges. When the jars cover your is set in negative,” which the composer ears, the booming bass predominates. describes as “a piece on lamentation and he prevalent sensation of the world As Fure later explained to me, “Your rage.” It is dominated by a murky old Tcracking in two—Willa Cather said skull becomes a kind of contact micro- reel-to-reel tape of hymn-singing, run this of the year 1922, and it might be phone—you’re hearing through the backward. The acoustic is that of an un- said of 2020 as well—is palpable enough bones of your body.” I had my computer derwater canyon, but it was recorded in that I’ve been wondering how soon the hooked up to speakers, through a dig- Carr’s bathroom, in London. rupture will leave traces in the work of ital-audio converter, and with the vol- composers. The lack of any immediate ume cranked up high those interior pul- amentation and rage, artfully re- opportunity for performance has made sations became disconcertingly intense. Lfracted, also surfaced in Bang on it unlikely that composers will sit down Fure had achieved her goal: far from a Can’s second online marathon of the to write the hour-long symphony they’ve being attenuated by digital transmis- pandemic period, which took place on been meaning to tackle, yet the corona- sion, her piece delivered an experience June 14th. Amid a slew of premières, the virus pandemic and its attendant isola- so vivid that I almost felt the need to composer-cellist Tomeka Reid offered tion have already yielded some notable lie down afterward. a new piano piece, “Lamenting G.F., experimental scores. The turn toward On another day, I attended a virtual A.A., B.T., T.M.,” which marks four protest may inspire a wave of work in a concert by the Nadar Ensemble, a Bel- recent killings of African-Americans: much different register. The strangeness gian new-music group. It was offering George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Bre- of this moment lies in how it has pulled “FITTINGinSIDE,” a participatory 2007 onna Taylor, and Tony McDade. Fol- people both toward an extreme inward- work by Stefan Prins. The score calls lowing a technique made famous by ness and toward an outward explosion for audience members to walk outside Bach, Reid converts the letters into of feeling. The radically expanded vo- a performance space, listening on ear- note names, with “M” becoming mi, cabulary of music since 1900 is equipped phones to a recording of a trombonist. or E, and “T” translated to C-sharp. to span that divide. They then go inside to see the trom- Notes representing “B.,” “L.,” and “M.” One striking response to COVID-19 bonist in person, with city sounds en- also come into play. The work, which comes from the composer and inter- croaching through the earphones. For was given a full-bore performance by media artist Ash Fure, who has won no- this online version, an audience of thirty- Vicky Chow, veers from shivery strum- tice for her sensorially engulfing sound five signed in to a Zoom meeting and mings of the interior piano strings to a environments, including the installa- ambled around their neighborhoods for kind of dissonant boogie-woogie frenzy tion-opera “The Force of Things.” The fifteen minutes, experiencing a mon- and, finally, to an extended coda in a prospect of creating works that could tage of sights and sounds on their withdrawn lyrical mode, suggestive of be heard only via streaming technology, phones: the playing of the trombonist, speechless grief. with its compression of data, initially Thomas Moore; visual feeds from other The Bang on a Can stream also trav- challenged her. She hit on the idea of people’s walks; and a prepared ambient elled to Madison, Wisconsin, for an all- composing an electronic piece that would soundtrack. The bleeding together of too-brief visit with Roscoe Mitchell—a pass into an acoustical environment as- these experiences was grippingly disori- founding member of the Art Ensem- sembled by listeners at home. After ex- enting. Was that dog barking on my ble of Chicago, a titanic figure in avant- perimenting with various possibilities, street or on one in Riga? Was that the garde music, and a great African-Amer- she became fascinated by the sonic prop- noise of a motorcycle or a trombone? ican artist. Mitchell’s appearance had erties of Mason jars, which, when held As I half blindly shuffled about, I drew no explicit political message, but it car- up to the ears, act as filters, blocking a couple of reproving stares, to which ried immense weight all the same. He certain sounds and highlighting others. I wanted to respond that I was no phone- stood before a panoply of cymbals, bells, The ghost ocean that we all heard in addicted zombie—I was attending a and other resonating percussion, with conch shells as kids is a related effect. global musical event. an array of paintings behind him—his The result was “Interior Listening An extensive library of COVID-era own creations, in a vibrant, semi-Sur- Protocol 01,” an eight-minute video sound art has accumulated at AMPLIFY realist style. He began with a delicate piece that appeared on an online pro- 2020: Quarantine, an online festival wash of metallic timbres, and then gram by the International Contempo- headed by Jon Abbey, of Erstwhile Rec- picked up a soprano saxophone to issue rary Ensemble. The listener, equipped ords. Culled from experimental com- a pointillistic smattering of tones. Like with a pair of Mason jars or tall glasses, posers around the world, these projects so much of Mitchell’s work, the perfor- mirrors movements that Fure makes in conjure sonic otherness from the con- mance conjured otherworldly vistas the video, for which Leah Wulfman stricted, mundane circumstances of lock- with economical means. Serene and se- supplied a hypnotic visual design. The down. In one recording, Choi Joonyong vere, it gave its own unyielding answer audio component is a gradually mutat- throws golf balls into a washing ma- to a history of hate. 

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 79 set adrift in the country. (The funniest THE CURRENT CINEMA specimen is Mr. Salter, the foreign edi- tor of a major London newspaper in Ev- elyn Waugh’s “Scoop,” who braces him- IN THE RUNNING self for a trip to the mossiest backwoods of England. Travelling, he admits, “al- “Irresistible” and “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.” ways upsets me.”) Deerlaken is flustered by the political circus much as a quiet BY ANTHONY LANE New England town was by the onslaught of a production company in “State and he mood of the new Jon Stewart private jet from the East Coast. Arriv- Main” (2000), and the image of Jack’s Tfilm, “Irresistible,” is caught by the ing in Deerlaken, he walks into a bar daughter, Diana (Mackenzie Davis), with song at the start—Bob Seger’s “Still the and, to the bemusement of the bar- her arm stuck up the rear end of a cow Same,” from 1978. Listen to the upbeat tender, orders “a Bud and a burger.” In is standard visual shorthand for the ick- cynicism: holding out for better times a Hofbrau? Dummkopf. iness of the outdoors; Billy Crystal pulls but guessing that nothing will change. Gary is on a mission. He has come the identical move in “City Slickers” “Moving game to game,” Seger sings. to meet Jack Hastings (Chris Cooper), (1991). In every case, we need to ask: is “Turning on the charm/Long enough a.k.a. Colonel Jack, a retired marine, a the movie mocking the slicker or chan- to get you by.” That certainly fits Gary farmer, and a widower. A video of him, nelling—wittingly or otherwise—his disorientation and his distaste? The question is a serious one, in Stew- art’s new film, because it troubles his po- litical good faith. He clearly despairs of a broken system, and his conscience nat- urally allies him with Colonel Jack. Yet the movie can’t help tuning out the voices of the very people whose cause it seeks to espouse. Consider the sequence in which a group of locals are shocked to hear that Jack’s Republican rival is now spending money on his own campaign. All we get are multiple shots of Gary’s reaction to the news—comically over- wrought, the implication being that these people are even greener and more prim- itive than he thought. Sure, he’s the hero of the drama, in his wicked fashion, and, sure, Carell is the star. (As usual, he is Steve Carell stars as a Democratic political strategist in Jon Stewart’s film. half frozen in a rictus of desperation: eager to please, wherever possible, but Zimmer (Steve Carell), a Democratic taken as he hymns the virtues of decency basically hating people anyway.) Wouldn’t strategist, who crawls from the wreck- and public service during a town meet- it be nice, though, if Davis, for one, were age of the 2016 election and goes hunt- ing, has gone viral, and Gary believes allowed to get a word in edgewise? If ing for fresh hope. Unexpectedly, he that such a fine fellow should stand for you want to see a proper mayoral race, finds it in Deerlaken, Wisconsin. Or, as office not only in this conservative dis- as noisy and as crowded as a sack of cats, a title onscreen refers to it, “Rural Amer- trict but maybe far beyond. “He’s a Dem- try “Hail the Conquering Hero” (1944). ica, Heartland U.S.A.” ocrat,” Gary says. “He just doesn’t know It’s a Preston Sturges film, which means And that’s the problem. The rural is it yet.” Grudgingly, Jack agrees to run a democratic overload: everyone gets a an abstraction, somewhere out in the for mayor, if Gary will take charge of word in, all the time. nation’s midriff, beloved of political tac- the campaign. And so, lever by lever, the To be fair, “Irresistible” picks up in ticians but rarely visited. (Hillary Clin- machinery of electioneering is cranked the final quarter, with the aid of a clever ton famously forgot, or neglected, to into life, from flyers and lawn signs to twist that whistles in from nowhere. We swing through Wisconsin during her pollsters, number crunchers, and a war get an assortment of different endings, campaign, and wound up losing the room stuffed with banks of monitors. If each undercutting the last. It’s as if this state.) And, even when it is visited, the Mr. Smith won’t go to Washington, dozy film has woken up, belatedly, to its heartland is all too easy to misread; we Washington will come to Mr. Smith. comic responsibilities and opportuni- spot Gary, schmuckiness incarnate, look- A noble tradition, not merely of mov- ties. We even hear the director himself, ing up Wisconsin on Wikipedia as he ies, stretches out behind “Irresistible.” over the end credits, quizzing Trevor munches baby balls of mozzarella on a Gary is an update of Aesop’s town mouse, Potter, the former chairman of the Fed-

80 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD A. CHANCE eral Election Commission, about super Union, the body that has overseen Eu- Christopher Guest did it beautifully in PACs. Stewart reckons that he’s found rovision since its birth, in 1996. What we “Best in Show” (2000), with his parade a loophole—a way to rook the whole are about to watch, in other words, is a of purebred dogs and their crossbred damn racket and play it for a fool. So promo masquerading as a satire. owners. His observations rang with the why make a movie about it? Why not Whether you can satirize the Euro- bark of truth; patient and percipient, he pack a bag, take your plan to Heartland vision Song Contest is another matter. seemed to happen upon the comedy of U.S.A., and try it out? The joke that has sustained Eurovision the situation, whereas Dobkin hurries over the decades, and that feeds “The to manufacture it—and, weirdly, takes n a small fishing town on the Icelan- Story of Fire Saga,” is that the ardent half an hour longer to complete the job. Idic coast live Lars Erickssong (Will gravity with which it is treated by the As for Ferrell, a noted Eurovision nut, Ferrell) and Sigrit Ericksdottir (Rachel contenders stands in inverse proportion there’s no mistaking his affection for the McAdams). They are not brother and to their talent; where else can you wit- brave hogwash of the genre, but even he sister—or, as Lars is careful to add, “prob- ness such a mountainous range of human is felled by the movie’s swerve into P.R.: ably not.” In a tight-knit community, incompetence, in all its self-deluding a sing-along, say, in which genuine vic- you can’t always be sure. But he and Sig- glory? When I went to Oslo, in 2010, tors from Eurovisions past team up in rit are tied in a kinship that is warmer to report on the contest for this maga- a rolling medley. Look, there’s Conchita than blood. Both of them worship the zine, it was the first occasion since child- Wurst! And Netta! And the cute lad Eurovision Song Contest, the annual hood on which I found myself weep- with the violin! If these folks leave you competition in which nations are brought ing with laughter, sometimes through blank, this may not be your film. together in jubilant harmony by the rit- my nose. Would that Dobkin’s film could Yet all is not lost. However weak the ual torture and murder of three-minute summon such sweet tears. thunder of this tale, it is stolen, with some pop songs. Lars and Sigrit, who perform There are smatterings of plot. By flair, by Dan Stevens. Since quitting as Fire Saga, dream of representing Ice- diktat, the country that triumphs at Eu- “Downton Abbey,” he has tried out one land at the finals; how that dream pans rovision has to host the competition the style of movie after another. He was a out is told in “Eurovision Song Contest: following year. That prospect alarms the beefy killer in “The Guest” (2014), and The Story of Fire Saga.” governor of the Central Bank of Ice- the horned lead in “Beauty and the Beast” Has there ever been a title more land (Mikael Persbrandt), who knows (2017). Only now, though, in the role of hedged with nerves? Could it be that the how ruinous the cost would be. He is a Russian crooner named Alexander movie’s director, David Dobkin, is con- therefore quite content that the Icelan- Lemtov—clad in shimmering brocades, cerned that viewers might not have heard dic entrants should be Lars and Sig- and blow-dried to a feathery perfection— of Eurovision? It’s as if Mel Gibson, on rit—a pair of guaranteed losers. So they has Stevens discovered his calling. Alex- the brink of releasing “Braveheart,” had fly to Edinburgh, where the contest is ander has a throbbing vibrato and a big decided to rename it “The First War of taking place; there, they go head to head thing for Sigrit. “You are beautiful and Scottish Independence, 1296-1328: The against acts such as Belarus’s Moon Fang, kind, I handsome and rich—this is typ- Story of William Wallace.” What’s touch- San Marino’s Dalibor Jinsky (with “Hit ically vairy winning combination,” he ing about Dobkin’s film is that the anx- My Itch”), and, from Sweden, Johnny tells her, proposing that she join him to iety never fades. “Is Eurovision like ‘The John John. These artistes are fun, but forge a new duo. “I can throw in Fabergé Voice’?” an American asks. “No, it’s not no more so than the real ones who sprout egg, personal submersible, pet tiger.” like ‘The Voice,’” Lars replies. All is ex- forth in an average Eurovision year. That When Eurovision comes storming back plained, or foretold, in the opening cred- which already lies beyond parody is, by next year, that’s what I want to see.  its, where we learn that the movie was definition, impossible to lampoon. made “in association with E.B.U.” This It’s not a bad strategy, inserting your NEWYORKER.COM stands for the European Broadcasting fictional characters into a factual event. Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, JULY 6 & 13, 2020 81 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Brooke Bourgeois, must be received by Sunday, July 12th. The finalists in the June 22nd contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the July 27th 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

“You’re right. It is easier with the ball.” Keith Donohue, Wheaton, Md.

“He just loves finding new ways to be indifferent.” “Tell me about a time you identified Greg Smith, Portland, Ore. a problem that others didn’t see coming.” Scott Smith, Toronto, Ont. “Remember, whoever drops him gets to dry him off.” Wayne Anderson, Huntington Beach, Calif. ©J&JCI 2020 BORN IN LE BRASSUS

RAISED AROUND THE WORLD

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