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THE FICTION ISSUE JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 5 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 13 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Jelani Cobb on the protests in Minneapolis; a nuclear-age time capsule; playing Staten Island; when Zoom seems passé; not invited to the party. LETTER FROM REYKJAVÍK Elizabeth Kolbert 25 Independent People Why has Iceland’s coronavirus plan been so successful? PROFILES Hua Hsu 32 The Making of Americans How Maxine Hong Kingston reshaped literature. FICTION Ernest Hemingway 18 “Pursuit as Happiness” Haruki Murakami 40 “Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey” Emma Cline 48 “White Noise” CLOSE ENCOUNTERS Miranda July 21 Praying Matthew Klam 29 Breaking Stride Bryan Washington 45 You Miss It When It’s Gone Ottessa Moshfegh 57 Brooklyn THE CRITICS BOOKS Joan Acocella 62 A new biography of Andy Warhol. James Wood 69 Megha Majumdar’s “A Burning.” 71 Briefly Noted James Marcus 72 The disappearing fame of Longfellow. THE ART WORLD Peter Schjeldahl 76 Edward Hopper’s clarity of vision. ON TELEVISION Doreen St. Félix 78 HBO expands its streaming services. THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 80 “Shirley,” “The Vast of Night.” POEMS Melissa Ginsburg 36 “Pastoral” Alex Dimitrov 53 “More” COVER Richard McGuire “This Side Up” DRAWINGS Avi Steinberg, Jason Adam Katzenstein, Liana Finck, Tom Toro, David Sipress, Frank Cotham, Julia Suits, Emily Flake, Roz Chast, Charlie Hankin, P. C. Vey, Jack Ziegler, Amy Kurzweil SPOTS Timo Kuilder CONTRIBUTORS Hua Hsu (“The Making of Americans,” Elizabeth Kolbert (“Independent People,” p. 32), a staff writer, was a 2019 fellow p. 25) has been a staff writer since 1999. at the New York Public Library’s Cull- Her book “The Sixth Extinction” won Our newest catalog is here. man Center for Scholars and Writers. the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. Request a complimentary copy @chiltons.com. Emma Cline (“White Noise,” p. 48), the Ernest Hemingway (“Pursuit as Hap- author of “The Girls,” will publish piness,” p. 18), who died in 1961, won “Daddy,” a story collection, this year. the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature. This previously unpublished story was Haruki Murakami (“Confessions of a found in his papers, and will appear in Shinagawa Monkey,” p. 40) has published a forthcoming edition of “The Old fourteen novels in English, including Man and the Sea.” Freeport + Scarborough, Maine “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,” “1Q84,” 866-883-3366 chiltons.com and “Killing Commendatore.” Miranda July (“Praying,” p. 21) is a film- maker, an artist, and the author of five Ottessa Moshfegh (“Brooklyn,” p. 57) books. Her latest movie, “Kajillionaire,” has written five books of fiction, in- will be released in September. cluding, most recently, “Death in Her Hands,” which will be out this month. Richard McGuire (Cover) is a multi- disciplinary artist. Matthew Klam (“Breaking Stride,” p. 29) Caring for first contributed to the magazine in Will McPhail (Sketchpad, p. 17) is a New the earth. 1993. He is the author of “Sam the Cat” Yorker cartoonist. His first graphic novel, ©2020 KENDAL and “Who Is Rich?” “In.,” will be published next April. Discover a retirement community with an emphasis on sustainability where Melissa Ginsburg (Poem, p. 36), the au- Bryan Washington (“You Miss It When the pure beauty of nature is nurtured. thor of the poetry collection “Dear It’s Gone,” p. 45) is the author of “Lot,” Weather Ghost,” will publish her sec- a collection of stories. His first novel, ond novel, “The House Uptown,” in 2021. “Memorial,” comes out in October. EQUAL HOUSING 1.800.548.9469 OPPORTUNITY kao.kendal.org/environment THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM LETTER FROM WASHINGTON POSTSCRIPT Susan B. Glasser on why Donald Masha Gessen, Michael Specter, Trump is the most mendacious and Calvin Trillin remember the President in U.S. history. AIDS activist Larry Kramer. Download the New Yorker Today app for the latest news, commentary, criticism, and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008. / GETTY MCGANN CATHERINE RIGHT: / GETTY; ANGERER DREW LEFT: 2 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 THE MAIL THE WALLS OF ROUND HILL took my wife back to Round Hill Road, to see the grounds of Seabury Evan Osnos’s survey of how country- House, the former conference center club Republicans have embraced of the Episcopal Church, where my Trumpism was brilliantly done (“The siblings and I spent hours playing. Greenwich Rebellion,” May 11th). But there was no way to get near the Osnos makes their conversion to estate. All access was blocked off by winner-take-all libertarianism seem high walls. so natural that one wonders whether William Heuss the super-rich ever felt the need for, 1South Yarmouth, Mass. as John Kenneth Galbraith termed it, “a truly superior moral justification FUNGI: THE FINAL FRONTIER for selfishness.” Members of the older generation in Greenwich, Connecti- I enjoyed Hua Hsu’s piece on myco- cut, who called the prominent resident philes—in particular, his discussion of Prescott Bush a “Ten Commandments the mycologist and mushroom evan- man,” must have admired both his sense gelist Paul Stamets (Books, May 18th). of decorum and his moral stature. In I must admit that I was hoping for a this vivid chronicle, the absence of mention of Stamets’s twenty-third- religious congregations prompts one century sci-fi namesake, Lieutenant From to wonder whether a turn away from Commander Paul Stamets, a charac- faith has led members of the one per ter on the show “Star Trek: Discov- Pulitzer Prize winner cent to usher in what Osnos calls “a ery.” In the series, Stamets, played by and acclaimed author-illustrator vision of politics that forgives cruelty Anthony Rapp, is a so-called astro- as the price of profit.” A decline in mycologist who serves as the ship’s the importance of religious services— “spore-drive specialist.” His responsi- Jules Feiffer as a moral and reputational obliga- bilities include using spores from a tion among peers—has perhaps has- particular species of fungus to move tened wealthy Republicans’ embrace the ship instantaneously to any point of cruelty toward the vulnerable as the in the universe, travelling along a sub- price of profit for themselves. space “mycelial plane.” Real-world sci- Claudia Koonz entists have deemed this propulsion Chapel Hill, N.C. system nonviable, but the spirit of the concept—in a show whose purpose, I was saddened, but not surprised, as Manu Saadia wrote in this maga- to read Osnos’s account of the ubiq- zine, in 2016, was “to imagine foreign, uitous high stone walls erected by even utopian futures”—is in keeping The much-anticipated wealthy property owners in Green- with the real Stamets’s advocacy for sequel to Bark, George wich, where I grew up. My brother the use of fungi to improve our world. and I, as children in the Round Hill Stamets and other mycophiles seem AVAILABLE NOW Road area, once surreptitiously stocked to intuit that the ability to create such our coaster wagon with canned goods utopias might involve, as Hsu puts it, from our mother’s pantry and sold “giving oneself up to the weft of a them to neighbors—ostensibly to connected world, and making peace raise money for cancer research, but with one’s smallness.” actually to buy candy at the Round Tracy L. Bealer Hill Store. When our mother discov- New York City ered the ruse, we were punished and made to send the money to the Amer- • ican Cancer Society. It was a life les- Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, son about questionable entrepreneur- address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited ship—one commonly taught in that for length and clarity, and may be published in once inviting countryside environ- any medium. We regret that owing to the volume ment. Ten years ago, at age seventy, I of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter. MICHAEL DI CAPUA BOOKS HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS 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. JUNE 3 – 16, 2020 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 361667513 The theatre initiative the Homebound Project has been live-streaming batches of original short plays, written and shot in isolation, to benefit food-deprived children during the pandemic. The next edition, available June 3-7, includes the actors Diane Lane, Blair Underwood, and Ashley Park and the playwrights Bess Wohl, John Guare, and Michael R. Jackson, the winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama. The “Hamilton” star Phillipa Soo, above, will appear in a work by Clare Barron. Watch at homeboundtheater.org. PHOTOGRAPH BY REBECCA REEVE 1 beats in songs such as “Skybox,” most of the MUSIC project stays tethered to the rapper’s signature Aleksandra Kurzak: “Desire” languid delivery, inspired by his mentor Young OPERA Singers typically issue a calling-card album Thug, who appears twice on the record.