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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 This previously unpublished story was Haruki Murakami (“Confessions of a found in his papers, and will appear in Shinagawa Monkey,” p. 40) has published a forthcoming edition of “The Old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.

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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

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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. What of famous arias at the start of their recording ca- Essentially Ellington Festival doesn’t come through is a new dimension of reer, to show companies and audiences what they JAZZ For twenty-five years now, Jazz at Lin- the artist; if anything, Gunna leans deeper can do with some of the most beloved solos in coln Center has been throwing teen-agers into into the subdued flexes and laid-back verses opera. Aleksandra Kurzak, having released such a the lions’ den with the Essentially Ellington for which he’s already known. Fans never meet disk of coloratura showpieces a decade ago, uses Festival competition, which asks high-school the impulsive second self he’s promised, though the format again on “Desire,” staking her claim as students to take on the challenging and elegant that likely won’t matter to those looking for an a lyric soprano who can handle more than vocal music of the Duke Ellington Orchestra and extension of his woozy catalogue.—Julyssa Lopez decoration. She doesn’t wholly make her case in other classic big bands. This year, J.A.L.C. the album’s heavier repertoire—“Madama But- offers free virtual events—streaming on Zoom, terfly,” “Il Trovatore,” “Tosca”—but her singing jazz.org, and the organization’s social-media John Lee Hooker: is rarely less than lovely, with an enviably fluid pages—that include a live Q. & A. with Wynton legato. Still, it’s the acrobatic staccati, tight trills, Marsalis, a master class with the saxophonist “The Sensation Recordings” and efficient runs that prove she has the vocal Ted Nash, jam sessions that blend self-isolating BLUES Of all the canonical postwar bluesmen, John finish of a prima donna.—Oussama Zahr students with J.A.L.C. band members, and a Lee Hooker was the most deliberately primitive: climactic all-day listening session featuring with only a guitar and one stomping foot, he eighteen American and five international en- was as forcefully rhythmic as any band, blues or Muzz: “Muzz” sembles.—Steve Futterman (June 8-12.) otherwise. “Documenting the Sensation Record- ROCK The chic new trio Muzz unites the Inter- ings 1948-52,” a fascinating (if sometimes dull) pol singer Paul Banks with the producer and three-disk set of his early work, demonstrates multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaufman and the Gunna: “Wunna” that Hooker’s roughness was intentional—the drummer Matt Barrick, who played in the fondly HIP-HOP The Atlanta rapper Gunna recently numerous alternate takes of a handful of songs remembered bands Jonathan Fire*Eater and the evoked his zodiac sign—he’s a Gemini—to are all at least a little different, many markedly Walkmen. Listeners should head elsewhere for explain why he titled his new album “Wunna.” so. Those variations take hold because the songs a full spectrum of human sentiment: on Muzz’s The name, he says, refers to an alter ego who themselves—“Boogie Chillen,” “Grinder Man,” self-titled début album, the trio rides one prevail- inspires spontaneity in his music. Though he and “House Rent Boogie” among them—retain ing vibe with a relentlessness to rival Weird Al sometimes speeds up his flow over skittering their hypnotic allure.—Michaelangelo Matos Yankovic’s. But, where Yankovic knows no pain, Muzz seems immune to joy. Banks, never the perkiest vocalist, might be auditioning to read a HIP-HOP Camus audiobook. Songs build around him with muted opulence; frequently deployed horns and organs color the margins without overwhelming the music’s essential fragility. The album’s secret weapon may prove to be Barrick’s drumming: busy but unflashy, his beats conjure their own kind of elegance and gloom.—Jay Ruttenberg

jixiansheng Philip Glass Ensemble: “Music in Eight Parts” CLASSICAL Despite its modest twenty-two-min- ute length, the newest recording by the Philip Glass Ensemble—its first without Glass among the players—is a historic event. “Music in Eight Parts” documents a transitional work from 1970, when the composer’s language was at its most rigorous and austere. The score, likely sold by Glass to cover debts incurred from producing his opera “Einstein on the Beach” at the Met, was rediscovered in 2017, at Christie’s auction house, and arranged by the composer Alex Gray to suit the present ensemble’s instrumentation. After this year’s live performances were scut- tled by COVID-19, the players recorded their parts in isolation, for subsequent assembly—a process that served to heighten the music’s intrinsic clockwork elegance.—Steve Smith The opening seconds of Run the Jewels’ new album, “RTJ4,” are as ex- plosive as a crack of lightning: Killer Mike and El-P unleash a torrent of Sweet Spirit: “Trinidad” adrenaline on “Yankee and the Brave,” a track that introduces the loose ROCK On Sweet Spirit’s 2017 record, “St. Mojo,” concept of an absurdist TV show about two hustlers on the run after its lead singer, Sabrina Ellis, self-identified as being framed by cops. The story line captures the mutinous spirit of these someone who “laughed at teacher, partied under the bleacher, and drank” to the sound of cocky real-life rap insurgents, known for their relentless rebukes of injustice, glam guitars. On the sextet’s third LP, “Trini- oppression, and capitalism. But here they’ve evolved from blunt radicals dad,” Ellis remains that storied American rock into clear-eyed prophesiers who take no joy in how well placed their fury creature, a proud outsider forever teetering between sass and vulnerability, but the musi- has been. Their delivery becomes almost sermonlike on “Pulling the Pin,” cal ground has shifted, with the Austin group which features Mavis Staples lamenting, “At worst, I’ve been right from increasingly embracing the gleaming textures the start.” Still, their defiance never wavers; Killer Mike closes the record and body-moving agenda of pop. Rock bands that flirt with such sounds—the shiny world by referencing the brutality that black bodies have endured, declaring, above the bleachers—tend to appear naïve or

“Last words for the firing squad was ‘Fuck you, too.’ ”—Julyssa Lopez even mercenary. Yet Sweet Spirit grasps the right MVM BY ILLUSTRATION

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BNY Mellon Wealth Management conducts business through various operating subsidiaries of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation. ©2020 The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation. All rights reserved. made by some seventeen thousand silkworms A RT ONLINE that Oxman placed on a rotating mesh base to encourage the insects to spin fibre sheets rather than cocoons. The show’s art works double as prototypes: a wall of what look like amber strips of molted reptile skin are samples of 3-D-printed polymers, biodegradable alternatives to plastic. A number of sculptures use mushroom-based melanin, suggesting transformative uses for the material, including as energy-harvesting components for building façades. Despite the emphatically physical nature of these fantastic experiments, the show translates well online thanks to installation images, audio commentary, and a Q. & A. with Oxman and the curator Paula Antonelli—a digital index of innovations that are at once otherworldly and earthy.—J.F. (moma.org)

“Vida Americana” This thumpingly great show at the Whitney, sub- titled “Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1924-1945,” picks an overdue art-historical fight. The usual story revolves around young, often immigrant aesthetes striving to absorb Euro- pean modernism. A triumphalist tale composed What does patience mean in a pandemic? Ryan McNamara offers one answer backward from its climax—the postwar success with “Fleshcore” (above), a three-minute video whose percussive audio remixes of Abstract Expressionism—it brushes aside the prevalence, in the thirties, of politically themed the hold music that callers endure when trying to file unemployment claims figurative art: social realism, more or less, which with the New York State Department of Labor. McNamara doesn’t appear became ideologically toxic with the onset of the in his new piece, but he is a magnetic performer in his own right—a dancer Cold War. What to do with the mighty legacy of the era’s big three Mexican painters, Diego with no formal training who is at his most inventive when he’s thinking Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro about bodies as bridges between physical and virtual worlds. (His 2013 Siqueiros? As little as possible has seemed the tour de force “MEEM: A Story Ballet About the Internet” won Performa’s rule, despite the seminal influence of Orozco and Siqueiros on the young Jackson Pollock. Malcolm McLaren Award.) In the slight but touching “Fleshcore,” an online But, with some two hundred works by sixty art- commission for the Guggenheim’s “Works & Process” series (premièring ists and abundant documentary material, the on June 13, at guggenheim.org), McNamara unites nine of his longtime curator Barbara Haskell reweaves the sense and sensations of the time to bring it alive. Without collaborators—Kim Brandt, Burr Johnson, Kyli Kleven, Mickey Mahar, Jen the Mexican precedents of amplified scale and Rosenblit, Quenton Stuckey, Brandon Washington, Josh Weidenmiller, and passionate vigor, the development of Abstract Emily Wexler—by layering choreographed movements that each dancer Expressionism lacks crucial sense. As for the politics, consider the persistently leftward tilt of performed for the camera in isolation. As all the faces, fingers, torsos, and feet American art culture ever since—a residual han- merge, trancelike, into one exquisite corps de ballet, the solitary confinement kering, however sotto voce, to change the world. of quarantine gives way to the tenderness of human contact.—Andrea K. Scott (The Whitney is temporarily closed, but a selec- tion of the show’s works and related videos are available online.)—Peter Schjeldahl (whitney.org) tone, projecting sophistication without aspiring 1899 poem “An August Midnight,” stopping to monetary glitz. Like many pop records, “Trin- at a lovely moment when various insects meet Guo Fengyi idad” ultimately lives and dies on the charisma the writer “At this point in time, at this point This Chinese artist didn’t begin making her of its front person. Regardless of any real-life in space.” Laure Prouvost whispers a text she astonishing scrolls until 1989, when she was in profile, Ellis looms like a star within the singer’s wrote, introducing it with a glossary of elegantly her late forties. That was the year of the Tian- own mind—which, as any rocker knows, is the bizarre word substitutions (“Remember, when anmen massacre, but Guo wasn’t responding to only place that matters.—J.R. I say ‘cigarette,’ it means ‘left’ ”). Rashid John- world events—the mythic beings she brought 1 son recites a nighttime poem by Amiri Baraka, to electrifying life (from the Buddhist deity written in 1957 but eerily suited to the present Avalokiteshvara to Santa Claus) came to her moment. Marilyn Minter’s anti-Trump limerick in visions. A few years earlier, severe arthritis A RT is hardly a lullaby—but it might pair well with had forced the artist to quit her job as a chem- a nightcap.—Johanna Fateman (newmuseum.org) ical analyst in Xi’an, where she lived until her death, in 2010, at the age of sixty-eight. She “Bedtime Stories” took up Qigong to alleviate pain; soon she was The Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan is well “Neri Oxman: Material Ecology” transcribing revelations. She believed that her known for his sarcasm (you’ve probably heard This Israeli-American artist—who is also an scrolls, most of which are twelve to thirty feet about the banana he duct-taped to an art-fair architect, a designer, and a professor at M.I.T.— high, had the power to heal. You might think of wall); in this project, which he dreamed up for works “between the grown and the made,” as them as monuments to uncertainty—“I draw the New Museum, he shows his sweet side. Every she explains in a short video accompanying the because I do not know,” Guo once said—making day through the month of June, a different artist online iteration of her currently closed MOMA her chimeric figures ideal viewing right now. Two shares a bedtime story (very loosely defined) show, now part of the museum’s “Virtual Views” concurrent exhibitions of her work were closed on the museum’s Web site. The first broadcast series. Oxman and her collaborators in M.I.T.’s by the pandemic, in March, but you can read the strikes a warm, wistful note: Iggy Pop reads a Media Lab use natural processes and substances Drawing Center’s richly illustrated publication love letter to his late dog, which he first spotted to produce stunning objects that convey a cap- “Guo Fengyi: To See from a Distance” online from across a highway in Mexico. Others take tivating organic-futurist vision. The main at- and take a video tour of the artist’s work on the more aloof, philosophical, or cryptic approaches. traction at MOMA is “Silk Pavilion II,” a mon- Gladstone gallery’s Web site.—Andrea K. Scott

Tacita Dean reads most of Thomas Hardy’s umental, gracefully torqued tentlike structure, (drawingcenter.org and gladstonegallery.com) MCNAMARA RYAN COURTESY

8 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 1 ingly cinematic score was used in the ballet’s (Dan Levy), a hypebeast who learns to fall in DANCE première, in 1938. The Royal Danish Ballet’s love. The amazingly deranged diction of Cather- version, from 1971, is by the American-born, ine O’Hara, as the perpetually verklempt Moira, Hamburg-based John Neumeier. In a 2016 per- would make Billy Wilder weep.—Doreen St. Félix Alvin Ailey formance, now being screened by the company During what would have been its late-spring run on its Web site, Ida Praetorius and Andreas at Lincoln Center, Alvin Ailey American Dance Kaas, as the young lovers, exhibit the Danes’ Unorthodox Theatre is keeping up a strong virtual presence particular skill at inhabiting characters with This four-part Netflix miniseries, about a nine- with Ailey All Access. On June 4, in conjunc- the naturalness of theatre actors, as well as teen-year-old woman’s escape from her Hasidic tion with Lincoln Center at Home, the com- the freshness of the Danish dancing style. The community in Brooklyn, is loosely based on the pany streams an excellent program from 2015, company is also screening a full version of the best-selling 2012 memoir by Deborah Feldman, with Ronald K. Brown’s uplifting “Grace,” the late Petipa ballet “Raymonda,” short on plot who left the Satmar sect of Hasidic Jews in outside-the-comfort-zone challenge of Wayne but long on Hungarian-flavored dances, and Williamsburg and ultimately settled in Ber- McGregor’s futuristic “Chroma,” and, naturally, set to a glistening score by Glazunov.—M.H. lin. Cutting back and forth in time, the show Ailey’s “Revelations.” Excerpts of “Revelations,” (kglteater.dk/xtra) depicts Esty Shapiro (played by Shira Haas, performed by the troupe’s scattered dancers, 1 an elfin Israeli actress) as her marriage to the also serve as the finale for the first-ever online reserved and childish Yanky is arranged and, Ailey Spirit Gala, on June 11. For the occasion, in excruciating detail, the ways in which her Troy Powell, the artistic director of Ailey II, is TELEVISION life is monitored and restricted. Esty’s flight choreographing a piece that somehow features a from Brooklyn has the feel of a thriller, com- cast of forty-five company members, alumni, and plete with a cat-and-mouse chase as Yanky and students.—Brian Seibert (alvinailey.org) Schitt’s Creek his rascally cousin Moishe fly to Germany to A family affair from Eugene Levy and his son, pursue her. The city of Berlin is portrayed as a Dan. Bankruptcy lands the Roses, a family of fantasy of secular, multicultural bohemianism, Camille A. Brown & Dancers snobs, in the small town of Schitt’s Creek, which and by the end of the series Esty has assumed Brown’s “ink,” from 2017, is her best yet. The the patriarch, Johnny (Eugene Levy), forgot that the look of a starlet, her pixie cut suddenly conclusion of a trilogy investigating Afri- he even owned. The Canadian sitcom wrapped chic and paired with red lipstick. But Haas’s can-American identity, it’s a distillation of her in April, after six seasons; though it bordered on remarkable performance manages to convey the gestural language, drawing, in a more abstract saccharine in the middle, its last couple of seasons reserves of pain, both personal and communal, form, on the storytelling skills she’s developed were reinvigorated by the maturation of David in Esty’s story.—Rachel Syme as an in-demand choreographer for theatre. A powerful solo for Brown leads into duets of love and male bonding, moments of connection that ON TELEVISION build to a communal explosion. On June 3, you can watch the piece for free on the Facebook page for the Arts Center at New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus, where her company performed it last year.—B.S.

Dance Theatre of Harlem With the final performances of its fiftieth-anni- versary season cancelled, this much cherished troupe now throws its hat in the ring of the moment by presenting samples of its archive online for free. For its first offering, available on YouTube and Facebook June 6-7, the com- pany fittingly turns to its first production of a full-length classic, “Creole Giselle,” from 1984, which sets the nineteenth-century French ballet amid the plantations, bayous, and caste system of Louisiana. It’s a slice of dance history well worth revisiting. In the days running up to the screening, online conversations and interviews with cast members provide context while build- ing suspense.—B.S. (dancetheatreofharlem.org) “Central Park,” Martha Graham Dance Company an animated musical sitcom on Apple TV+, cleverly imag- ines the Olmsted-Vaux oasis as the grand green stage of a fractured folktale. The “Martha Matinee” for June 3-6 is devoted to the early, starkly pure piece “Primitive Myster- Created by Loren Bouchard and Nora Smith (both of “Bob’s Burgers”) ies.” A phalanx advances, forming lines, wedges, and Josh Gad (who also performs), it offers a show-opening number that and circles, within which circulates a figure in rhapsodically asks, “Where else can your son and daughter / splash in dirty white; Graham’s inspirations included depictions of the young Virgin in Catholic ritual and Na- hot-dog water?” The Park’s manager, Owen Tillerson (Leslie Odom, Jr.), is tive American religious practices. The screening an endearing dork of a storybook caretaker; he and his family—a harried includes archival footage, from 1964, featuring journalist wife (Kathryn Hahn) and two cheeky children (Kristen Bell Yuriko, a leading Graham dancer from the forties on, as well as film of Graham and her company and Tituss Burgess)—live in a castle within its acreage. His antagonist is a in “Heretic,” from 1929. The following week, the splendid sour candy of a villainous zillionaire, Bitsy Brandenham (Stanley company screens Graham’s 1958 Greek drama, Tucci), who stomps around her penthouse while plotting to buy up the Park “Clytemnestra,” and rare rehearsal footage of Graham.—Marina Harss (marthagraham.org) and desecrate it with condos and commerce. Owen’s geeky-dad identity is central to the spirit of the show, with its fight songs of self-actualization and Royal Danish Ballet its fine moralizing for the common good. It’s got heart in the harmonies “Romeo and Juliet” has been a staple of ballet and poop-scooper jokes in the uplifting ballads. Like a glorious sugar maple

COURTESY APPLE COURTESY stages since Sergei Prokofiev’s heart-catch- bordering Sheep Meadow, its sap is of an enchanted sort.—Troy Patterson

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 9 1 by Nisha Ganatra.—Richard Brody (Streaming MOVIES on Amazon, Fandango Now, and other services.) Manufactured Landscapes Jennifer Baichwal’s documentary about the pho- tographer Edward Burtynsky, from 2006, proves The High Note The Liberation of L. B. Jones even more revealing than the photographs it cel- The sincere charm of this romantic comedy This drama, from 1970, the last film directed ebrates. Tagging along on a trip to China, where triumphs over its plodding pace and narrow by William Wyler, offers an outraged view of Burtynsky takes intricately detailed pictures of purview. Dakota Johnson stars as Maggie American racial politics. It’s set in a small Ten- colossal industrial activities and their aftermath, Sherwood, the personal assistant to Grace nessee town, where a young black man, Sonny she captures the intimate experience of rapid in- Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross), a fabulously pop- Boy Mosby (Yaphet Kotto), returns after a long dustrialization—the drudgery of exacting factory ular singer and songwriter whose artistic am- absence with plans to kill a white police officer labor, the inhuman scale of urban development bitions are stifled by the safe and profitable who’d brutalized him years earlier. Meanwhile, in Shanghai, workers enlisted to destroy their course set by her manager, Jack (Ice Cube). the town’s most prosperous black resident, own cities at the Three Gorges Dam—more ef- Maggie, a lifelong Grace Davis fan, is also an L. B. Jones (Roscoe Lee Browne), hires a white fectively with her filmed images than he does encyclopedic music buff and aspiring producer attorney, Oman Hedgepath (Lee J. Cobb), to with his stills. Starting with an eight-minute who reworks Grace’s recordings in the studio represent him in divorce proceedings. L.B.’s tracking shot inside a vast, hangarlike factory after hours and inadvertently oversteps her wife, Emma (Lola Falana)—a black woman—is (an old trick redone joltingly well), she adds a bounds. Meanwhile, she meets a talented but having an affair with another white police officer bracing dose of analysis to Burtynsky’s tireless unrecognized young singer, David Cliff (Kel- (Anthony Zerbe), whose interests Hedgepath legwork. A photograph that he took outside the vin Harrison, Jr.), whose material she helps puts ahead of his client’s. The drama is centered factory impassively depicts an enormous Riefen- shape—while pretending to be an experienced on the unequal legal system and the violence that stahl-like array of uniformed laborers (organized producer. The resolution seems to have been results from it, as the town’s white authorities at the photographer’s request), but Baichwal gets furnished by an algorithm, though the script, view black women as their legitimate prey and close enough to hear a foreman chide his off-duty by Flora Greeson, takes some clever detours brandish the law as a threat to black residents. underlings for the quality of their work.—R.B. and adds some hearty dialogue. Johnson offers L.B. is burdened by the memory of a suppressed (Streaming on Tubi and Amazon Prime.) her familiar yet spontaneous air of earnest civil-rights protest; his effort to honor that mem- innocence; Ross delightfully exudes worldly ory, and Sonny Boy’s pursuit of revenge, render swagger, and Harrison brings smoldering the drama diagnostic, confrontational, and ag- Something Different energy to his thinly sketched role. Directed onizing.—R.B. (Streaming on Amazon Prime.) The Czechoslovakian director Věra Chytilová’s astonishing first feature, from 1963, is a mod- ernist melodrama about a gymnast, Eva, whose WHAT TO STREAM public identity is at odds with her self-image. She’s played by the real-life Olympic-champion gymnast Eva Bosáková, and her mother, Vera, is played by the actress Vera Uzelacová; the entire film is an intricate and teeming blend of docu- mentary and fictional portraiture. Eva is prepar- ing for one final competition while dealing with injuries and the demands of athletic life. Vera, a stay-at-home mother, is struggling to care for her young son and to reconnect with her husband when she encounters a tempting single man (in a meet-cute of exquisitely simple comedy). Eva finds an emotional outlet in her performances, which Chytilová showcases with a deft and daring graphic power. The director presents the inner life of gymnastics with startlingly imaginative images that expose, by contrast, the homog- enizing banality of televised sports and the emptying of athletic experience that results. In Czech.—R.B. (Streaming on the Criterion Channel.)

While You Were Sleeping Trouble on the tracks: Sandra Bullock is a sad and lonely subway clerk (yeah, right) who drags a handsome customer (Peter Gallagher) away from an oncoming train. She’s in love with him, but he’s in a coma, and his brother (Bill Pull- man) falls in love with her. Out of this pleasing The South Korean director Hong Sang-soo has turned difficulties finding confusion, the director, Jon Turteltaub, has financing into a virtue. Working quickly, on budgets under a hundred fashioned something so simple and predictable thousand dollars, he has become one of the world’s most prolific filmmak- that you have no option but to submit. The re- quired resolution is a long time in coming, but ers—he has made fifteen features in the past decade—and has parlayed his there’s plenty to keep you diverted, including commercial independence into uninhibited artistry. This month, Lincoln the light backchat among the semi-weirdos who Center presents a virtual retrospective of his films, including the U.S. theat- make up the brothers’ family, and Bullock’s ridiculously watchable performance. She knows rical première (on June 12) of his mainly English-language romance “Hill of one of the secrets to doing romantic comedy: Freedom,” from 2014, one of his most audacious films. It’s a brisk tale told treating the romance as a good joke. With Peter with a deft intricacy, in which a young Japanese man travels to Seoul in search Boyle, Glynis Johns, and Jack Warden. Released in 1995.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of the woman he loves; while waiting for her, he builds new relationships of 5/29/95.) (Streaming on Hulu, Amazon, and with people he meets there. The story is anchored by a series of letters and other services.) sketched in Hong’s distinctive style of confrontational dialogue filmed in long 1 takes; its time structure is whimsically but poignantly fractured, and its casual For more reviews, visit

internationalism weaves political history with personal life.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town / 12 ALAMY PHOTO

10 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 people in?” which led to a light-bulb with iceberg lettuce, tomato, and raw moment. The diner sits on the edge of white onion on the side. a shopping plaza with an ample park- The prices on the drive-in menu— ing lot. What if, the manager suggested, which also includes a “Scarface” Cuban they turned the lot into a drive-in movie and “The Breakfast Club” (an egg, cheese, 1 theatre and delivered food to customers bacon, ham, and sausage sandwich)— in their cars? are higher than usual, so that some TABLES FOR TWO And so it came to pass that I sat in of the proceeds can go to people in need; my station wagon, one recent evening, the diner recently donated breakfast A Drive-In Grows in Queens dipping steak-cut French fries into to the residents of a nursing home across 31-91 21st St., Queens ketchup squirted out of packets onto the street. Tickets, which must be reserved the plastic lid of a precariously balanced online in advance, are thirty-two dollars The charmingly chintzy, seafoam-green, to-go container. A girl of about eight, her per vehicle, with a required minimum of neo-Art Deco Bel Aire Diner, which corkscrew curls pulled into a high pony- two people. The movies have skewed fam- was built in Astoria, Queens, in 1965, has tail, popped out of a nearby sunroof to ily-friendly and crowd-pleasing: “Grease,” been open all twenty-four hours of every dance to Top Forty hits that were blaring “Dirty Dancing,” “The Princess Bride.” single day since it was purchased, in 1996, from the drive-in’s speakers as we waited Count the renaissance of the drive-in by a Greek-American couple named for the sun to go down. When the sky among the pandemic’s paltry silver linings. Archie and Patty Dellaportas. In mid- darkened, I fixed my gaze on a large in- Last weekend, the Bel Aire held a “Not So March, when New York City’s restau- flatable movie screen positioned next to Boozy Brunch: Car Hop Edition” (serving rants were ordered to halt dine-in ser- a dumpster, onto which directions were alcohol to people in cars is forbidden in vice, the Bel Aire did not skip a beat in projected: tune your car radio to 107.9 New York), with stuffed French toast and offering takeout, which had long ac- FM, keep smoking to a minimum, wear a live d.j. Kal is looking into hosting grad- counted for a sizable portion of its busi- a mask if you need to use the rest room. uations and has received inquiries from ness. “We delivered when only pizza was The food I ordered on the Bel Aire’s an opera company, a duelling-piano act, delivered,” Kalergis (Kal) Dellaportas, Web site after I parked had arrived in and a platinum-selling artist he declined Archie and Patty’s oldest son, who cur- a plastic bag via a gloved and masked to name on the record. In recent weeks, rently runs the place with his brother server, who swung it through my sunroof. couples have planned weddings at drive-in Peter, told me by phone the other day. (Kal considered putting waitstaff in roller theatres in Oklahoma, Utah, and Texas. “We were one of the first restaurants in skates but decided it was too compli- In the Bronx, the hospitality group that Queens to sign up with Seamless.” cated; he’s looking into trays that hook puts on the Bronx Night Market is orga- Still, in the first few weeks of the pan- onto open car windows, like the ones nizing a “drive-in festival” for later in the demic, the diner’s over-all sales dropped at the Brownstone Pancake Factory, in summer, featuring film screenings, food, by seventy per cent. Increased takeout Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, which is and other entertainment, in parking lots orders helped them stay above water, Kal currently offering carhop service.) Inside near Yankee Stadium. When I asked Kal told me, but barely; the Bel Aire has a the bag were hefty house-made mozza- what he thought of the competition, he hundred and eighty seats. One day, he rella sticks with an unusually high ratio laughed. “If it wasn’t us, someone else was asked his manager, “How can we bring of cheese to crunchy breading and a pair gonna do it first,” he said. (Dishes $9-$27.)

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEROME STRAUSS FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW FOR JEROME STRAUSS BY PHOTOGRAPH people in without actually bringing of “Pulp Fiction” cheeseburger sliders, —Hannah Goldfield

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 11

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT Administration created a National Se- video). As has often been the case with BURNING CITIES curity Council Directorate to mitigate riots, the chaotic fury in Los Angeles the impact of such events; the Trump was not simply a response to one inci- here, yet again, were the flames. Administration largely disbanded it. dent but an accretion of anger at innu- TBefore the furious conflagrations On Friday, Trump tweeted that the merable issues with a police department erupted in Minneapolis, the final weeks protesters in Minneapolis were “thugs”— which had gone unaddressed for years. of May had already seemed like the a term with deep-rooted racist conno- The Crime Bill authorized the civil- answer to a grim math problem: What tations—and later noted that the mil- rights division of the Department of is the product of a crisis multiplied by itary was present in the city. “When the Justice to intervene in the instance of a crisis? The official mortality count of looting starts,” he warned, “the shoot- chronically troubled departments, by the COVID-19 outbreak in the United ing starts.” This situation, too, is part negotiating consent decrees that laid States swept toward a hundred thou- of a long-building problem whose warn- out specific reforms to be followed, and sand, while the economic toll had left ing signs have gone unheeded by the provided for monitors to oversee their forty million people out of work. It current Administration. Progressives implementation. Like the precursors to was difficult to countenance how so have widely criticized the 1994 Crime the coronavirus, Los Angeles—and later much misery could come about so Bill, which was spearheaded by Joe Ferguson and Baltimore—was an in- quickly. But on Memorial Day we be- Biden, but an element of that legisla- dicator of how such problems could came video witnesses to the horrific tion has been underappreciated. The play out without intervention. But, in death of George Floyd, at the hands 1992 Los Angeles riots broke out after this area as well, the Trump Admin- of the Minneapolis Police Department. the acquittal of four police officers who istration has functioned like a building By Friday, the looted shops, the charred had violently assaulted Rodney King contractor who can’t recognize a load- buildings and cars, the smoldering (an incident that was also captured on bearing wall. Third Precinct—these were evidence In July, 2017, in an address to law- of what the world looks like when a enforcement officers in Suffolk County, crisis is cubed. New York, Trump told them to use These seemingly disparate Ameri- more force when taking suspects into can trials are not unrelated; they’re custody. “Like when you guys put some- bound by their predictability and by body in the car and you’re protecting the ways in which the Trump Admin- the head,” he said. “You can take the istration has exacerbated them since hand away, O.K.?” The following May, they began. In March, the President Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a claimed that “nobody knew there would speech to the National Association of be a pandemic or epidemic of this pro- Police Organizations, said that the Jus- portion,” and he has echoed that sen- tice Department “will not malign en- timent throughout the course of the tire police departments. We will not try emergency. But virtually everyone pay- to micromanage their daily work.” That ing attention to public health saw some- November, as one of his last acts on the thing like the novel coronavirus com- job, Sessions issued a memorandum ing. In less than two decades, we have that severely curtailed the civil-rights seen epidemics of the SARS, MERS, division’s ability to pursue decrees with

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA JOÃO BY ILLUSTRATIONS Ebola, and H1N1 viruses. The Obama police departments. This meant that,

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 13 in communities plagued with bad po- incidents featured a victim of a differ- as ill-advised and as detrimental to the licing, resentments could accrue un- ent racial background from the officers public well-being as recommending in- checked by any higher authority until involved, and each was highlighted as jecting disinfectant or self-prescribing they reached their detonation points. an example of police misconduct. Like hydroxychloroquine. Those detonations tend to resemble the the COVID cases that emerged in Seat- Our problems generally do not stem streets of Minneapolis last week. tle at the beginning of the year, Min- from treacherous unknowns; they’re the On Thursday, in a press conference neapolis is a study in the importance result of a failure to make good use of that was short on developments or new of foresight and planning, and an ex- what is known already. In July, 1967, after information, Erica MacDonald, the ample of what happens when neither a brutal police raid at an after-hours bar U.S. Attorney for the District of Min- of those things occurs. in Detroit, that city exploded in retal- nesota, said, “To be clear, President The President posted his “the shoot- iatory violence. A month later, Martin Trump as well as Attorney General ing starts” tweet early on Friday morn- Luther King, Jr., gave a speech to the William Barr are directly and actively ing, just hours before Officer Derek American Psychological Association, in monitoring the investigation in this Chauvin, who had knelt on George which he described riots as “durable so- case.” But what, precisely, does that Floyd’s neck for eight minutes, was taken cial phenomena” that arise in conjunc- mean? Barr presides over a civil-rights into custody and charged with third- tion with discernible conditions—acts division that has been stripped of its degree murder and second-degree man- of lawlessness that mirror the excesses chief mechanism for creating compli- slaughter. Twitter, in an unprecedented of those charged with upholding the ance among police officers. In the past move, labelled Trump’s tweet a viola- law. Leaders cannot predict the future, five years, the Twin Cities area has seen tion of company policy against “glori- but they can be cognizant of the im- three other controversial police shoot- fying violence.” A Presidential threat to mediate past, and the possible dangers ings: of Jamar Clark, in 2015; of Phi- have the United States military shoot it suggests. They cannot be clairvoyant. lando Castile, in 2016; and of Justine civilians is the opposite of leadership, They need only be intelligent. Damond, in 2017. Each of these fatal the antithesis of wisdom—a comment —Jelani Cobb

DEPT. OF TIME T R AVEL yew trees in the front yard. The yews the rungs with your feet. At the bot- SIX FEET UNDER surrounded a rusty iron pipe, about tom, there’s a kind of entryway that four and a half feet in diameter, with you duck through, and then you’re a round cover, set down vertically in in a chamber with an arched ceiling the ground; he assumed it was some maybe seven feet high. The space is kind of drainage pipe. But the more about eight feet across by twelve feet he examined it, once the yews were long, and when you talk the sound gone, the odder it seemed. He sent an echoes with a metallic reverb. “Basi- rom the high ridge in West Or- inquiry to the offices of the Township cally, it’s a David Bowie tin can,” Mans- Fange, New Jersey, where David of West Orange, and a woman there field said. He pointed out a yellow- Mansfield lives, you can see the tow- quickly called him back. She had never and-black “Fallout Shelter” sign, ers of lower Manhattan on the hori- come across such a thing before. She of the sort that the Office of Civil De- zon. Mansfield is a famous musician said that a building permit issued for fense used to post in school basements; who plays violin, guitar, pedal steel that address in 1961 allowed for the guitar, mandolin, and Dobro, all of construction of a steel fallout shelter. which he has in the basement studio “I looked through some rust holes of his ranch-style house on a quiet in the top of the pipe and I saw a lad- street. When asked if he went to Juil- der,” Mansfield told a recent visitor. liard, he replied, “Well, I started tour- “Two of my daughters joined me. The ing with Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thun- oldest has a film degree, and she filmed der Revue when I was nineteen, so ...” me opening the hatch and going down. (You can also see him fiddling on roller A lot of vines had grown into the entry skates in Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s tube, and the underground room itself Gate.”) He is soft-spoken and slim, was full of cobwebs, and hundreds of with dark eyes and curly brown-and- crickets covered the floor and ceiling. gray hair. I brought in a Shop-Vac and vacu- Both Mansfield and his wife, Mag- umed everything. The crickets were gie, fell ill with Covid-19 in March. kind of sluggish, but when I emptied She was sicker than he was, but nei- them out into a patch of sunlight they ther needed to be hospitalized. When came to life.” they got better, he turned to long- For the visitor’s benefit he lifted the neglected projects around the house. hatch and led the descent. To use the She suggested he get rid of some dead ladder, you turn backward and feel for David Mansfield

14 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 he bought it on Amazon and hung it on the wall to perk up the place. The temperature was a few degrees cooler in the room than the warm spring af­ ternoon aboveground. On the floor in a corner was a small wooden crate, up­ side down, that said “Hoffman Bev­ erages” on its side. A short stay in the shelter gives a new appreciation for the birdsong and greenery and breezes up top, in un­ confined New Jersey. After climbing out, Mansfield and the visitor sat on the deck behind the house and looked through the trees at the distant new World Trade Center and its neighbor­ ing skyscrapers. Maybe the person who installed the bomb shelter imagined escaping into it, staying for the rec­ ommended two weeks, and reëmerg­ ing to find Manhattan nuked and gone. “Like Charlton Heston, he would come out and look to the east, and say, ‘What “Pains me to say it, but Greg is much more interesting as a book.” have you done?’” Mansfield said, hold­ ing up his arms beseechingly. “I did some research, and I found •• that fallout shelters like this one sold 1 for a hundred and fifty dollars—not square hole in the wall behind her, a lot, even for the time,” he went on. THE PICTURES as if to conceal it. “We’re still fixing “Installing a shelter was a patriotic act, ACCENT QUEEN the place up, can you tell?” she asked. so that we Americans could survive a She turned the computer to shakily war with the Russians. And then the display another cavity cut out of the Cuban missile crisis happened the year wall, meant to be a fireplace but tem­ after this shelter was installed. Funny porarily housing a vase of delphini­ to remember when nuclear war was ums. “We’re getting a mantelpiece this what we worried about—all those week!” she said. Powley, who is twenty­ drills, putting our heads under our recent Tuesday found the English eight, was born and raised in West desks in school. It’s weird to be going A actress Bel Powley plunked down London by an actor father and a cast­ through this pandemic and sheltering in an orange­and­navy­blue­patterned ing­director mother, but the house is here for a different reason. And nu­ armchair in the corner of her bedroom, in Dalston, on the city’s eastern side. clear war now seems maybe not so in the London house where she has “In New York terms it would be, like”— bad. In the bigger picture, climate been self­isolating with her boyfriend, she paused—“I feel like I live in Car­ change will be worse.” the actor Douglas Booth. Booth, who roll Gardens?” A big laugh. On the corner of the deck stood a is known to American audiences for Powley began her career when she wire plant stand. Somewhat rusted, it, his role as the hair­metal bad boy Nikki was thirteen, on “M.I. High,” a popu­ too, had been in the fallout shelter. The Sixx, in last year’s Mötley Crüe bio­ lar BBC kids’ show about teen spies, plant stand’s design recalled the era pic, “The Dirt,” had just bought a bar­ but, in the decade and a half since, she when objects began to be made of in­ becue grill, and Powley was hiding out, has had relatively ample opportunity terestingly twisted wire. “That plant hoping that she wouldn’t be asked to to familiarize herself with the metro­ stand was the only other object in the help assemble the contraption. (“I was, politan landscape of the American fallout shelter, besides the beverage like, ‘I’m getting out,’” she said cheer­ coasts. She broke through in the U.S. crate,” Mansfield said. “I thought I’d fully, over Zoom. “It looked like it was in 2015, by playing a sexually preco­ bring it out and put it here.” a million pieces, like a spaceship.”) The cious girl in nineteen­seventies San He and the visitor regarded the couple had bought the house toward Francisco, in Marielle Heller’s movie plant stand in silence. After a few mo­ the end of 2019, and had only been in “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” and in ments’ mental sojourn in the sixties, it for a few months when lockdown 2018 she starred on Broadway as a Mansfield added, pensively, “Eddie went into effect. Powley bobbed from Queens cop in Kenneth Lonergan’s Haskell just died.” side to side in front of her laptop, at­ “Lobby Hero.” This summer, she ap­ —Ian Frazier tempting to align her head with a large pears in Judd Apatow’s film “The King

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 15 knows she can’t save him. She’s strong knockoff ) and trivia quizzes. Before the enough to self-preserve.” pandemic, Houseparty was a Gen-Z She went on, “I think because, on a hangout, a mid-tier player in the video- fluke, I started my movie career with calling leagues. Then the app gained ‘Diary,’ I’ve been considered since then fifty million new users in one month. a lot for American roles. People are al- It’s the virtual living room to Zoom’s ways, like, ‘Oh, she can do the accent.’” virtual office. Powley’s real-life accent, she says, is On a recent Sunday, a few new- “probably the most neutral London ac- bies—an educator in the U.K., an ob- cent there is. My dad’s family was very stetrician in New York City, a P.R. man- middle class.” His father was a surgeon, ager for an ovulation-tracking app in and his mother was a nurse. “His ac- Berlin—gathered on Houseparty for cent is probably a little bit more posh a birthday celebration. The app was than mine,” she said. “And, then, my glitching. “I can’t really hear anyone,” mum grew up in a working-class North the Berliner said, as he poured himself London family.” She became animated. a glass of sparkling rosé. “Shall we “Actually, my great-grandparents on switch to Zoom?” my mum’s side were Orthodox Jews Three hours later and six thousand Bel Powley from Russia, and when they were es- miles to the west, Julia Onken was get- caping from the pogroms on a boat, ting ready to do a group workout on of Staten Island,” which will be avail- heading to New York with all the other Houseparty; she works in marketing able on demand on June 12th. Powley Jews, they got off at the wrong stop.” for the app. At twenty-six, she was al- plays Kelsey, the sweet but exasperated She paused. “Isn’t that insane? The boat ready a little old to be on the app— friend-with-benefits of the trauma- docked to refuel in Dublin, and about before the lockdown, she said, ninety tized stoner Scott, played by the co- ten Jewish families got off.” Her grand- per cent of users were under twenty- median Pete Davidson, who also co- mother, she says, speaks Yiddish with four, though older generations have wrote the screenplay, which is based a thick Irish accent. “On ‘The King of since been catching on. As a millen- loosely on his own life as a Staten Is- Staten Island,’ one of the makeup art- nial recently texted a friend, trying land native who lost his fireman father ists told me her family had done the to arrange a meeting on Houseparty, when he was a child. (Davidson’s fa- same thing!” she said. “So then they “FaceTime is so pre-Covid.” ther died in the Twin Towers on 9/11; were all, like, ‘Fuck, we’re in Dublin.’” Onken, who lives in San Francisco, in Apatow’s version, Scott’s dad is killed Another big laugh, and it was time to said, “I haven’t left my apartment, but in a house fire.) go and see if the barbecue grill was in I’m more social than I think I’ve ever With her pale, bare face, relaxed one piece. been.” The night before, she’d had a ponytail, and oversized T-shirt bearing 1—Naomi Fry first date with a guy who lives three the words “Beautiful Is Boring,” Pow- blocks away. “We matched on Bum- ley seemed like the laid-back British PLATFORMS ble, and he suggested FaceTime and antithesis of the spray-tanned, dolled-up IN THE HOUSE wine,” she said. “I was, like, Houseparty Kelsey. (In one scene, in which Kelsey and White Claw?” tries and fails to get Scott’s attention Houseparty users are encouraged by bringing a Tinder date to the restau- to imagine that they physically inhabit rant where he works, she yells, “Look their digital space. Opening the app at me! Look at my tits! It’s literally the sends an alert that you are “in the Eiffel Tower holding them up in here!”) house,” where you can “wave” at oth- “Kelsey’s look is a lot,” Powley said. here have been reports, lately, of ers, or, if you like, “ghost” them. As at “When I was preparing for the movie, Tpeople suffering from something an actual social event, it can be hard I became obsessed with ‘Made in Staten called “Zoom fatigue.” It’s a second to avoid old acquaintances. Signing up Island.’ It’s a reality show basically about pandemic we should have seen com- sends a notification to every user who the children of the Staten Island Mob.” ing: the video-conferencing tool Zoom, has your number: your boss, your ther- She held up her phone, which displayed for weeks the most downloaded app apist, your ex. Friends can wander into a Googled image of a group of unsmil- in the App Store, has caused wide- groups at will—or by accident—un- ing, elaborately groomed youngsters. spread burnout. less someone “locks the room.” Once “See? The girls were an inspiration for What to do? One could try this inside, it can be hard to hear over Kelsey’s look, and it was so much fun spring’s second-most downloaded app the chatter. Despite the cheery prompts to put together: big lips, eyebrows, and see if it’s any better. Houseparty, that the app provides—“Harry Potter straight-straight hair, tiny outfits.” But launched in 2016, allows users to con- is the same age as Kim Kardashian,” the role never descends into parody. vene in “rooms” of up to eight people “You can’t hum while holding your “She has her feet on the ground,” Pow- and entertain themselves with virtual nose”—conversation tends toward ley said. “She loves Scott, but she also board games (including a Pictionary small talk. An activity helps.

16 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 11 Once Onken was ready, Aimee Jen, SKETCHPAD BY WILL McPHAIL a thirty-year-old in black leggings and BLOCK PARTY a baggy gray T-shirt, joined the room. “This is my first time on Houseparty,” she said, through a chirrup of feed- back. “I feel so old and uncool.” She, too, was stuck at home, although her dog, a diabetic mutt named George, sometimes forced her out of the house. At noon, the women opened Insta- gram and started a live Barry’s Boot- camp class. While Jen fiddled with her volume, Onken performed a series of squats. On Instagram, a muscle-bound instructor shouted into the camera: “Let’s go hard! Hold it! We’ve got eight seconds, then we’re going to lay on the floor, in five! In four! In three! Two! One!” Onken lay on her back with the soles of her feet in closeup. On the other side of the split screen, the dog saun- tered into the shot and sat on Jen’s legs. After catching her breath, Onken was on to her next Houseparty appoint- ment, a pub quiz with college friends in London. “We’ve been hosting these quizzes every few days,” Georgina Cow- ard, a fashion merchandiser, who was quarantining in Southwark, said. “You can get really upset and depressed, or you can just make the most of it.” Her co-host, Fiona Endersen, agreed. “We were finding that conversations went straight back to coronavirus,” she said. “But, with this, people feel like they’ve escaped for an hour.” The room filled up, and Coward, holding a big inflatable microphone, started asking questions: Zayn Malik’s age (twenty-seven), the scent of a can- dle recently released by Gwyneth Pal- trow (her own vagina). The contes- tants, lonely but not alone, slumped on sofas or lounged in bed, half-drunk wineglasses foregrounded in their rect- angles of screen. For a sonic round, Coward and Endersen sang snatches from “The Sound of Music.” Onken was stumped. “I don’t know a single musical!” she said. The first prize, a four-pack of toi- let paper, went to Coward’s brother. Endersen told him he could pick it up when the lockdown ended—unless somebody else won it in the meantime. There’d be another quiz next week, she said. “For now, there’s nothing else to do but call people.” —Fergus McIntosh marlin each day and on one day I caught five. We were very popular along the waterfront because we butchered all our fish and gave them away, and when we came in past the Morro Castle and up the channel toward the San Francisco piers with a marlin flag up we could see the crowd starting to run for the docks. The fish was worth from eight to twelve cents a pound that year to a fisherman and twice that in the market. The day we came in with five flags, the police had to charge the crowd with clubs. It was ugly and bad. But that was an ugly and bad year ashore. “The goddam police running off our regular clients and getting all the fish,” Mr. Josie said. “To hell with you,” he told a policeman who was reaching down for a ten-pound piece of marlin. “I never saw your ugly face before. What’s your name?” The policeman gave him his name. “Is he in the compromiso book, Cap?” “Nope.” The compromiso book was where we wrote down the names of the peo- ple to whom we had promised fish. “Write him down in the compro- fiction miso book for next week for a small piece, Cap,” Mr. Josie said. “Now, po- liceman, you go the hell away from PURSUIT AS HAPPINESS here and club somebody who isn’t a friend of ours. I seen enough damn by ernest hemingway police in my life. Go on. Take the club and the pistol both and get off the dock unless you’re a dock police.” hat year we had planned to fish “Where would we get the nine Finally, the fish was all butchered Tfor marlin off the Cuban coast dollars?” and apportioned out according to the for a month. The month started the “You pay me when you get it. You book and the book was full of prom- tenth of April and by the tenth of got good credit with the Standard Oil ises for next week. May we had twenty-five marlin and Company at Belot across the bay, and “You go on up to the Ambos Mun- the charter was over. The thing to when we get the bill I can pay them dos and get washed up, Cap. Take a have done then would have been to from last month’s charter money. If shower and I’ll meet you there. Then buy some presents to take back to Key we get bad weather, you can write we can go to the Floridita and talk West and fill the Anita with just a lit- something.” things over. That policeman got on tle more expensive Cuban gas than “All right,” I said, and we fished my nerves.” was necessary to run across, get cleared, another month. We had forty-two “You come on up and take a shower, and go home. But the big fish had marlin by then and still the big ones too.” not started to run. had not come. There was a dark, heavy “No. I can clean up good here. I “Do you want to try her another stream close in to the Morro—some- didn’t sweat like you did today.” month, Cap?” Mr. Josie asked. He times there would be acres of bait— owned the Anita and was chartering and there were flying fish going out o I walked up the cobbled street her for ten dollars a day. The stan- from under the bows and birds work- Sthat was a shortcut to the Ambos dard charter price then was thirty-five ing all the time. But we had not raised Mundos Hotel and checked if I had a day. “If you want to stay, I can cut one of the huge marlin, although any mail at the desk and then rode her to nine dollars.” we were catching, or losing, white up in the elevator to the top floor. My

18 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BEN GILES room was on the northeast corner and day and I can cook, instead of us wast- the Anita’s seen. You could put in the trade wind blew through the win- ing money on sandwiches. We can enough social life to make it appeal dows and made it cool. I looked out run into the cove for lunch and I’ll to everybody.” the window at the roofs of the old cook in there. We’re getting those “I’m laying off social life.” part of town and across at the harbor wavy-striped bonito all the time. “Sure, Cap. But you got plenty to and watched the Orizaba go out slowly They’re as good as little tuna. Carlos remember. Laying off won’t harm you down the harbor with all her lights says he can pick us up stuff cheap in now.” on. I was tired from working so many the market when he goes for bait. “No,” I said. “Thank you very much, fish and I felt like going to bed. But Then we can eat supper nights in the Mr. Josie. I’ll start working in the I knew that if I lay down I might go Perla of San Francisco restaurant. I morning.” to sleep, so I sat on the bed and looked ate there good last night for thirty- “What I think we ought to do be- out the window and watched the bats five cents.” fore we start on the new system is for hunting and then, finally, I undressed “I didn’t eat last night and saved you to eat a big rare steak tonight so and took a shower and got into some money.” you’ll be strong tomorrow and wake fresh clothes and went downstairs. “You got to eat, Cap. That’s maybe up wanting to work and fit to fish. Mr. Josie was waiting in the doorway why you’re a little tired today.” Carlos says the big ones can come of the hotel. “I know it. But are you sure you any day now. Cap, you got to be at “You must be tired, Ernest,” he said. want to try another month?” your best for them.” “No,” I lied. “She don’t have to be hauled out for “Do you think one more of these “I’m tired,” he said. “Just from another month. Why should we leave would do me any harm?” watching you pull on fish. That’s only it when the big ones are coming?” “Hell no, Cap. All they got in them two under our all-time record. Seven “You have anything you’d rather is rum and a little lime juice and mar- and the eye of an eighth.” Neither do?” aschino. That isn’t going to hurt a Mr. Josie nor I liked to think of the “No. You?” man.” eye of the eighth fish, but we always “Do you think they’ll really come?” Just then two girls we knew came stated the record in this way. “Carlos says they’ve got to come.” into the bar. They were very nice- We were walking up the narrow “Then suppose we hook one and looking girls and they were fresh for sidewalk on Obispo Street and we can’t handle him on this tackle we the evening. Mr. Josie was looking at all the lighted have.” “The fishermen,” one said in windows of the shops. He never “We’ve got to handle him. You can Spanish. bought anything until it was time to stay with him forever if you eat good. “The two big healthy fishermen in go home. But he liked to look at ev- And we’re going to eat good. Then from the sea,” the other girl said. erything there was for sale. We passed I’ve been thinking about something “N.S.L.,” Mr. Josie said to me. the last two stores and the lottery- else.” “No social life,” I confirmed. ticket office and pushed open the “What?” “You have secrets?” one of the girls swinging door of the old Floridita. “If you go to bed early and don’t asked. She was an awfully nice-look- “You better sit down, Cap,” Mr. Josie have any social life, you can wake up ing girl and in her profile you could said. at daylight and start to write and you not see the slight imperfection where “No. I feel better standing up at can get a day’s work done by eight some early friend’s right hand had the bar.” o’clock. Carlos and I’ll have every- marred the purity of the line of her “Beer,” said Mr. Josie. “German thing ready to go and you just step rather beautiful nose. beer. What you drinking, Cap?” on board.” “The Cap and I are talking busi- “Frozen daiquiri without sugar.” “O.K.,” I said. “No social life.” ness,” Mr. Josie said to the two girls, Constante made the daiquiri and “That social life is what wears you and they went down to the far end of left enough in the shaker for two more. out, Cap. But I don’t mean none at the bar. “You see how easy it is?” I was waiting for Mr. Josie to bring all. Just take it on Saturday nights.” Mr. Josie asked. “I’ll handle the so- up the subject. He brought it up as “Fine,” I said. “Social life on Sat- cial end and all you have to do is get soon as his beer came. urday nights only. Now, what would up in the mornings early and write “Carlos says they’ve got to come you suggest I write?” and be in shape to fish. Big fish. The in this next month,” he said. Carlos “That’s up to you, Cap. I don’t want kind that can run over a thousand was our Cuban mate and a great com- to interfere with that. You always did pounds.” mercial marlin fisherman. “He says good when you worked.” “Why don’t we trade,” I said. “I’ll he never saw such a current and when “What would you like to read?” handle the social end and you get up they come they’ll be something like “Why don’t you write good short early in the mornings and write and we never seen. He says they’ve got to stories about Europe or out West or keep yourself in shape to fish big fish come.” when you were on the bum or war or that can run over a thousand pounds.” “He told me, too.” that sort of thing? Why don’t you “I’d be glad to, Cap,” Mr. Josie said “If you want to try another month, write one about just things that you seriously. “But you’re the one of us Cap, I can make her eight dollars a and I know? Write one about what two that can write. And you’re younger

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 19 than me and better suited to handle into a skiff. That marlin dressed out “Can you get any more out of her?” the fish. I’m putting in the boat at just five hundred pounds and I saw the I called to Mr. Josie. what I figure is the depreciation on huge steaks cut from him on the mar- “Not in this world,” he said. “What the engine, running her the way I do.” ble slab in the old market. you got left?” “I know it,” I said. “I’ll try to write Then, on a sunny day, with a heavy “Damn little.” well, too.” dark stream, the water so clear and in “He’s big,” Carlos said. “He’s the “I want to keep proud of you,” so close that you could see the shoals biggest marlin I’ve ever seen. If he’ll Mr. Josie said. “And I want us to catch in the mouth of the harbor ten fath- only stop. If he’ll only go down. Then the biggest goddam marlin that ever oms deep, we hit our first big fish just we’ll run up on him and get line.” swam in the ocean and weigh him outside the Morro. In those days there The fish made his first run from honest and cut him up and give him were no outriggers and no rod hold- just off the Morro Castle to opposite away to the poor people we know and ers and I was just letting out a light the National Hotel. That is about the not one piece to any damn clubbing rig, hoping to pick up a kingfish in way we went. Then, with less than police in the country.” the channel, when this fish hit. He twenty yards of line on the reel, he “We’ll do it.” came out in a surge and his bill looked stopped and we ran up on him, re- Just then one of the girls waved to like a sawed-off billiard cue. Behind covering line all the time. I remem- us from the far end of the bar. It was it his head showed huge and he looked ber that there was a Grace Line ship a slow night and there was no one as wide as a dinghy. Then he passed ahead of us with the black pilot boat but us in the place. us in a rush, with the line cutting par- going out to her and I was worried “N.S.L.,” Mr. Josie said. allel to the boat and the reel empty- that we might be on her course as “N.S.L.,” I repeated ritually. ing so fast that it was hot to the touch. she came in. Then I remember watch- “Constante,” Mr. Josie said. “Er- There were four hundred yards of ing her while I reeled and then work- nesto here wants a waiter. We’re going fifteen-thread line on the reel and half ing my way back to the stern and to order a couple of big rare steaks.” of it was gone by the time I got into watching the ship pick up her speed. Constante smiled and raised his the bow of the Anita. She was coming in well outside of finger for a waiter. I got there by holding on to hand- us and the pilot boat would not foul As we passed the girls to go into holds we had built into the top of the us, either. the dining room, one of them put out house. We had practiced this run and Now I was in the chair and the fish her hand and I shook it and whis- the scramble over the forward deck was straight up and down and we had pered solemnly in Spanish, “N.S.L.” to where you could brace against the a third of the line on the reel. Carlos “My God,” the other girl said. stem of the boat with your feet. But had poured seawater on the reel to “They’re in politics and in a year like we had never practiced it with a fish cool it and he poured a bucket of water this.” They were impressed and a lit- that passed you like a subway express over my head and shoulders. tle frightened. when you are at a local station, and “How are you doing, Cap?” with one arm holding the rod, which Mr. Josie asked. n the morning, when the first day- was bucking and digging into the butt “O.K.” Ilight from across the bay woke me rest, and the other hand and both bare “You didn’t hurt yourself up in the I got up and started to write a short feet braking on the deck as the fish bow?” story that I hoped Mr. Josie would hauled you forward. “No.” like. It had the Anita in it and the “Hook her up, Josie!” I yelled. “He’s “Did you ever think there was a waterfront and the things we knew taking all of it.” fish like that?” that had happened and I tried to get “She’s hooked up, Cap. There he “No.” into it the feeling of the sea and the goes.” “Grande. Grande,” Carlos kept say- things we saw and smelled and heard By now I had one foot braced ing. He was trembling like a bird dog, and felt each day. I worked on the against the stem of the Anita and the a good bird dog. “I’ve never seen such story every morning and we fished other leg against the starboard an- a fish. Never. Never. Never.” each day and caught good fish. I chor. Carlos was holding me around trained hard and found all the fish the waist and ahead of us the fish was e did not see him again for while standing, instead of sitting in jumping. He looked as big around as Wan hour and twenty minutes. a chair. And still the big fish had a wine barrel when he jumped. He The current was very strong and it not come. was silver in the bright sun and I could had carried us down to opposite Co- One day we saw one towing a com- see the broad purple stripes down his jímar, which was about six miles from mercial fisherman’s dinghy, with the sides. Each time he jumped he made where the fish first sounded. I was dinghy down by the bows and the a splash like a horse falling off a cliff tired but my hands and feet were in marlin making splashes as a speed- and he jumped and jumped and good shape and I was getting line boat would each time he jumped. That jumped. The reel was too hot to hold on him now quite steadily, being care- one broke off. Another day, in a rain and the core of line on it was getting ful never to pull harshly or to jerk. I squall, we saw four men trying to hoist thinner and thinner in spite of the could move him now. It wasn’t easy. one, wide and deep and dark purple, Anita going full speed after the fish. But it was possible if you kept the

20 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 close encounters by miranda july PRAYING

hese two things happened when I was twenty-five, Tduring a time when I would do free-associative book searches at the Multnomah County Library, in Oregon. The search always began when I entered the lobby, trig- gered by the first word I overheard. So, if someone was talking about having “branzino for dinner,” I’d search “branzino” on the clunky computers, and then scan the au- thor names until I came upon someone who shared a first or last name with someone I knew, and then sometimes not even check out that book but open it at random, stab my finger at a page, and search for whatever word I hit, etc., etc., until I finally landed on something recommended by my great friend the universe. I wasn’t showy about my technique, but if anyone had been interested I’d have very willingly elaborated, maybe as the start of a longer conver- sation. It was right after I had checked out one of these conjured books that a security guard swooped up beside small man with him, whose first language wasn’t English. me. This had happened elsewhere, more than once, but They seemed dislocated, homeless, or maybe just travel- one couldn’t steal from the library, so I was almost certain lers, passing through. The small man and I both shouted, I was innocent this time. He scanned the area and then, in “Help!” and “Does anyone know CPR?” One lady said, “I a low voice, told me that I was being followed. do, but I don’t feel very confident about my skills,” and “By you?” I whispered. slunk away. Eventually, a security guard arrived—it wasn’t “No, by a man with a blue backpack. We’ve been the same one—and then several more eons passed while watching on the cameras.” we waited for an ambulance. In the meantime, this big “You were watching me?” man’s sweaty face turned a kind of gray-blue, and the “Only once we noticed you were being followed. He’s small man began to lose it in the way you do when sec- gone now, but, since you’re leaving, too, we wanted you to onds might save the person you love most in the world. be aware.” He was wringing his hands, like in the cartoons, and I glanced around. whimpering, and every so often he would turn to me and “Maybe you want to call a friend to pick you up, de- say, “What do we do? What do we do?” pending on how you were planning on getting home.” I’m twenty-five, I’m still twenty-five, like the week be- It sounded to me like I already had a friend to pick me fore, so I have no idea what to do, but I know what he up; he was wearing a blue backpack. I mean, those weren’t means—to do nothing, well, that isn’t enough. So I said, my exact thoughts, but I had a hard time understanding “Let’s pray.” He looked at me with a kind of insane hope, that this was bad, not good, news. I had thought I was on like maybe I had powers, maybe I knew God personally. I a lonely, possibly pointless vision quest, so the news that laid both my hands on his friend’s massive shoulders and someone had been faithfully following my serpentine path bowed my head. The small man did the same. I’d only and that both of us had been watched over by multiple ever seen praying in movies, but it’s basically begging, cameras? It was like those stories of models being discov- right? That’s what I did—I begged with all my heart for ered while shopping for jeans at the mall. Anything could the man to live, knowing that he was dying, right there happen! I was a person who hoped to have many follow- against my knees, under my hands, on the library floor. ers someday—this guy was just early, ahead of his time. The E.M.T.s asked if we were both going in the ambu- The guard waited with me until my bus came and then I lance, and I said no, of course, and the little man hurried got on it, a minor celebrity—well, not really, but happy. off with the stretcher. I just stood there for a few minutes The second thing happened a week later, same library, and very quickly there were all new people in the lobby but this time as I was coming in. I was probably returning and none of them knew what they had narrowly missed. A the book I had been followed finding and now my ears man walked past with a backpack. It wasn’t blue, but I got were poised, ready to receive a new first word. But instead a bad feeling anyway. Yes, anything could happen, but also: this happened: a large man walking in front of me fell anything could happen. So I left. What was I going to do? backward, such that I had to sit down very quickly and Random book search? No, I never did that again. Not that kind of catch his head in my lap before letting it slide to I grew up all at once right then, but some things punch the floor in front of my knees. He was having a stroke or you in the face and you fly through the air and land some- a heart attack. He wasn’t alone; there was another, very where completely different. You walk on from there. 

ILLUSTRATION BY MARTA MONTEIRO THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 21 line just this side of the breaking point. said. “You can stick with him forever, keeping the line almost at breaking “He’s going to come up,” Carlos Cap. You want some more water on point and feeling the metal of the reel said. “Sometimes the great ones do your head?” drum revolve in slow jerks under my that and you can gaff them while they “Not yet,” I said. “I’m worried about fingers. are still innocent.” the rod. His weight has just taken the “How’s the time?” I asked Mr. Josie. “Why does he come up now?” I temper out.” “You’ve been with him three hours asked. An hour later the fish was coming and fifty minutes.” “He’s puzzled,” Carlos said. “And in steadily and well and he was mak- “I thought you said he couldn’t go you’re leading him. He doesn’t know ing big slow circles. down and die,” I said to Carlos. what it is about.” “He’s tired,” Carlos said. “He’s “Hemingway, he has to come up. “Don’t ever let him find out,” I said. going to come in easy now. The jump- I know he has to come up.” “He’ll weigh over nine hundred ing has filled up his air sacs and he “Tell him so,” I said. dressed out,” Carlos said. can’t go deep.” “Get him some water, Carlos,” “Keep your mouth off of him,” “The rod’s gone,” I said. “She won’t Mr. Josie said. “Don’t talk, Cap.” Mr. Josie said. “You don’t want to work straighten at all now.” The ice water felt good and I spat him any different, Cap?” It was true. The rod’s tip now it out onto my wrists and told Car- “No.” touched the surface of the water and los to pour the rest of the glass on the When we saw him we knew how when you lifted to raise the fish and back of my neck. Sweat salted the really big he was. You couldn’t say it to reel to take up line the rod did places on my shoulders where the har- was frightening. But it was awesome. not react. It was not a rod anymore. ness had rubbed them bare but it was We saw him slow and quiet and al- It was like a projection of the line. It so hot in the sun that there was no most unmoving in the water with his was still possible to gain a few inches warm feeling from the blood. It was great pectoral fins like two long pur- of line each time you lifted. But that a July day and the sun was at noon. ple scythe blades. Then he saw the was all. “Put some more salt water on his boat and the line started to race off The fish was moving in slow cir- head,” Mr. Josie said. “With a sponge.” the reel as though we were hooked to cles and as he moved on the outgo- Just then the fish stopped taking a motorcar, and he started jumping ing half of the circle he took line off out line. He hung steady for a time, out to the northwest with the water the reel. On the incoming circle you feeling as solid as though I were hooked pouring from him at each jump. gained it back. But with the temper to a concrete pier, and then slowly he I had to go into the bow again and gone out of the rod you could not started up. I recovered the line, reel- we chased him until he sounded. This punish him and you had no command ing with the wrist alone, as there was time he went down almost opposite over him at all. no spring in the rod at all and it was the Morro. Then I worked my way “It’s bad, Cap,” I said to Mr. Josie. as limp as a weeping willow. back to the stern again. We called each other Cap inter- When the fish was about a fathom “Do you want a drink, Cap?” changeably. “If he decided to go down under the surface, so that we could Mr. Josie asked. now to die we’d never get him up.” see him looking like a long purple- “No,” I said. “Get Carlos to put “Carlos says he’s coming up. He striped canoe with two great jutting some oil in the reel and not spill it says he caught so much air jumping wings, he started to circle slowly. I and put some more salt water on me.” held all the tension I could on him, “Can’t I get you anything really, to try to shorten the circle. I was hold- Cap?” ing up to that absolute hardness that “Two hands and a new back,” I indicates the breaking strength of said. “The son of a bitch is as fresh the line when the rod let go. It did as he was at the start.” not break sharply or suddenly. It just The next time we saw him was an collapsed. hour and a half later, well past Co- “Cut thirty fathoms of line off the jímar, and he jumped and ran again big rig,” I said to Carlos. “I’ll hold and I had to go into the bow while him on the circles and when he’s com- we chased him. he can’t go deep and die. He says that ing in we can get enough line to make When I got back to the stern and this is the way the big ones always act this line fast to the big line and I’ll could sit down again, Mr. Josie said, at the end when they’ve jumped a lot. change rods.” “How is he, Cap?” I counted him jumping thirty-six There was no question anymore of “He’s just the same as always. But times and maybe I missed some.” catching the fish as a world’s record the temper is starting to go out of the This was one of the longest or any other sort of record, since the rod.” speeches I had ever heard Mr. Josie rod was broken. But he was a whipped The rod was bent like a full-drawn make and I was impressed. Just then fish now and on the heavy gear we bow. But now, when I lifted, it did the big fish started down and down should get him. The only problem not straighten as it should. and down. I was braking with both was that the big rod was too stiff “She’s still got some left,” Mr. Josie hands on the drum of the reel and for the fifteen-thread line. That was

22 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 my problem and I would have to work it out. Carlos was stripping white thirty- six-thread line off the big Hardy reel, measuring it with his arms extended as he pulled it out through the guides of the rod and dropped it on the deck. I held the fish all that I could with the useless rod and saw Carlos cut the white line and pull a long length of it through the guides. “All right, Cap,” I said to Mr. Josie. “You take this line now when he comes in on his circle and take in enough so Carlos can make the two lines fast. Just take it in soft and easy.” The fish came in steadily as he rounded on his circle and Mr. Josie brought the line in foot by foot and passed it to Carlos, who was knotting it to the white line. “He’s got them tied,” Mr. Josie said. He still had about a yard of the green fifteen-thread line to spare and was holding the live line in his fingers as the fish came to the inside limit of his circle. I broke my hands loose from •• the small rod, laid it down, and took the big rod that Carlos handed me. “Cut away when you are ready,” I such a fish and I did that. I’ve ruined “The charter’s supposed to be up said to Carlos. To Mr. Josie I said, your life and my life.” today. Now I’ll fish for nothing, if you “Let your slack out soft and easy, Cap, “Hell,” I told him. “You mustn’t talk want.” and I’ll use a light, light drag until we nonsense like that. We’ll catch plenty “No.” get the feel of it.” of bigger fish.” But we never did. “I’d rather it was that way. Do you I was watching the green line and Mr. Josie and I sat in the stern and remember him going up toward the the great fish when Carlos cut. Then let the Anita drift. It was a lovely day National Hotel like nothing in the I heard a cry such as I have never on the Gulf, with only a light breeze, world?” heard a sane human being make. It and we looked at the shoreline with “I remember everything about was as though you could distill all de- the small mountains showing behind him.” spair and make it into a sound. Then it. Mr. Josie was putting Mercuro- “Have you been writing good, Cap? I saw the green line slowly going chrome on my shoulders and on my It isn’t too hard doing it in the early through Mr. Josie’s fingers and then hands, where they had stuck to the mornings?” watched it go on down, down, and rod, and on the soles of my bare feet, “I’ve been writing as good as I can.” out of sight. Carlos had cut the wrong where the skin was chafed through. “You keep it up and everybody is loop of the knots he had made. The Then he mixed two whiskey sours. all right for always.” fish was out of sight. “How’s Carlos?” I asked. “I may lay off it tomorrow morning.” “Cap,” Mr. Josie said. He did not “He’s pretty broke up. He’s just “Why?” look very well. Then he looked at his crouching down there.” “My back’s bad.” watch. “Four hours and twenty-two “I told him not to blame himself.” “Your head’s all right, isn’t it? You minutes,” he said. “Sure. But he’s down there blam- don’t write with your back.” ing himself.” “My hands will be sore.” went down to see Carlos. He had “How do you like the big ones “Hell, you can hold a pencil. You’ll I been vomiting in the head and I now?” I asked. find in the morning you’ll probably told him not to feel bad, that it could “It’s all I ever want to do,” Mr. Josie feel like it.” happen to anyone. His brown face said. Strangely enough I did and I worked was all tied up and he was talking in “Did I handle her all right for you, well and we were out of the harbor at a low strange voice so I could hardly Cap?” eight o’clock and it was another per- hear him. “Hell yes.” fect day, with just a light breeze and “All my life fishing and I never saw “No. Tell me true.” the current close to the Morro Castle,

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 23 as it had been the day before. On that “He kept wanting to kill somebody ranean is on its brightest and clearest day we didn’t put out any light rig when to show how much he liked me and day. The eyes were wonderful and the we hit the clear water. We had done I kept telling him it wasn’t necessary face certainly not beautiful and now that once too often. I slacked out a big and to just have a drink and forget it looked like blistered leather. cero mackerel, which weighed about about it. So he would quiet down a “You have a good face, Cap,” I said. four pounds, from the one really big little and then he would want to kill “Probably the only good thing about outfit we had. It was the heavy Hardy somebody again.” that son of a bitch was that he could rod and the reel with the white thirty- “He must have been a nice fellow.” see it.” six-thread line. Carlos had spliced back “Cap, he was worthless. I tried to “Well, I’m going to stay out of joints on the thirty fathoms of line he had tell him about the fish so as to take now until this business is over,” Mr. Josie taken off the day before and the five- his mind off it. But he said, ‘Shit on said. “Sitting there on the square with inch reel was full. The only trouble your fish. You never had any fish. See?’ the all-girl orchestra and that girl who was that the rod was too stiff. In big- So I said, ‘O.K., shit on the fish. Let’s sings, it was fine and wonderful. How game fishing a rod that is too stiff kills settle for that and you and me both do you really feel, Cap?” the angler, while a rod that bends prop- go home.’ ‘Go home hell!’ he says. ‘I’m “I feel pretty bad,” I said. erly kills the fish. going to kill somebody for you as a “It didn’t hurt you in the gut? I was Carlos spoke only when spoken to present and shit on the fish. There worried always when you were in the and he was still in his sorrow. I could wasn’t any fish. You got that straight?’ bow.” not afford my sorrow because I ached So then I said good night to him, “No,” I said. “It’s in the roots of too much and Mr. Josie was never Cap, and I gave my money to Don- the back.” much of a man for sorrow. ovan and this policeman knocks it off “The hands and feet don’t amount “All he’s been doing all morning is the bar onto the floor and puts his to anything and I bandaged up the shaking his goddam head,” he said. foot on it. ‘Like hell you’re going harness,” Mr. Josie said. “It won’t chafe “He’s not going to bring any fish back home,’ he said. ‘You’re my friend and as bad. Did you really work O.K., that way.” you’re going to stay here.’ So I said Cap?” “How do you feel, Cap?” I asked. good night to him and I said to Don- “Sure,” I said. “It’s a hell of a habit “I feel good,” Mr. Josie said. “I went ovan, ‘Donovan, I’m sorry your mon- to get into and it’s just about as hard uptown last night and sat and listened ey’s on the floor.’ I didn’t know what to get out.” to that all-girl orchestra on the square this policeman would try to do and I “I know a habit is a bad thing,” and drank a few bottles of beer and didn’t care. I was going home. So as Mr. Josie said. “And work probably then I went to Donovan’s. There was soon as I start for home this police- kills more people than any other habit. hell in there.” man hauls out his gun and starts to But with you when you do it then you “What kind of hell?” pistol-whip a poor damn Gallego who don’t give a damn about anything else.” “No-good hell. Bad. Cap, I’m glad was in there drinking a beer and who’d I looked at the shore and we were you weren’t along.” never opened his mouth all night. No- off a lime kiln, close to the beach where “Tell me about it,” I said, holding body did anything to the policeman. the water was very deep and the Gulf the rod well out to the side and high I didn’t, either. I’m ashamed, Cap.” Stream made it almost to shore. There so that the big mackerel skipped at the “It isn’t going to last much longer was a little smoke coming up from edge of the wake. Carlos had turned now,” I said. the kiln and I could see the dust of a the Anita to follow the edge of the “I know it. Because it can’t. But truck moving along the rock road on stream along past the fortress of what I didn’t like the most was that the shore. Some birds were working Cabañas. The white cylinder of the policeman saying he liked my face. over a patch of bait. Then I heard teaser was jumping and darting in the What the hell kind of face have I got, Carlos shout, “Marlin! Marlin!” wake and Mr. Josie had settled in his Cap, that a policeman like that would We all saw him at the same time. chair and was slacking out another big say he liked it?” He was very dark in the water and, mackerel bait on his side of the stern. I liked Mr. Josie’s face very much, as I watched, his bill came out of the “In Donovan’s there was a man too. I liked it more than the face of al- water behind the big mackerel. It was claimed he was a captain in the secret most anybody I knew. It had taken me an ugly bill, round and thick and short, police. He said he liked my face and a long time to appreciate it because it and the fish behind it bulked under he said he’d kill any man in the place was a face that had not been sculp- the surface. for me as a present. I tried to quiet him tured for a quick or facile success. “Let him have it!” Carlos yelled. down. But he said he liked me and he It had been formed at sea, on the “He’s got it in his mouth.” wanted to kill somebody to prove it. profitable side of bars, playing cards Mr. Josie was reeling his bait in He was one of those special Machado with other gamblers, and by enter- and I was waiting for the tension that police. Those clubbing police.” prises of great risk conceived and un- would mean that the marlin had re- “I know them.” dertaken with cold and exact intelli- ally taken the mackerel.  “I guess you do, Cap. Anyway, I’m gence. No part of the face was handsome glad you weren’t there.” except the eyes, which were a lighter NEWYORKER.COM “What did he do?” and stranger blue than the Mediter- A conversation with the author’s grandson.

24 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 work, met with colleagues, run errands. Anyone who’d spent more than fif- teen minutes near the man in the days before he’d experienced his first symp- toms was considered potentially in- fected. (“Near” was defined as within a radius of two metres, or just over six feet.) The team came up with a list of fifty-six names. By midnight, all fifty- six contacts had been located and or- dered to quarantine themselves for four- teen days. The first case was followed by three more cases, then by six, and then by an onslaught. By mid-March, confirmed COVID cases in Iceland were increasing at a rate of sixty, seventy, even a hun- dred a day. As a proportion of the coun- try’s population, this was far faster than the rate at which cases in the United States were growing. The number of people the tracing team was tracking down, meanwhile, was rising even more quickly. An infected person might have been near five other people, or fifty-six, or more. One young woman was so ac- tive before she tested positive—going to classes, rehearsing a play, attending choir practice—that her contacts num- bered close to two hundred. All were sent into quarantine. letter from reykjavík The tracing team, too, kept growing, until it had fifty-two members. They worked in shifts out of conference rooms INDEPENDENT PEOPLE in a Reykjavík hotel that had closed for lack of tourists. To find people who had How Iceland managed to beat the curve. been exposed, team members scanned airplane manifests and security-camera by elizabeth kolbert footage. They tried to pinpoint who was sitting next to whom on buses and in lecture halls. One man who fell ill had n the morning of Friday, Febru- week, we just don’t know,’” Pálmason recently attended a concert. The only Oary 28th, Ævar Pálmi Pálmason, a recalled. “And then, two hours later, we person he remembered having had con- detective with the Reykjavík police de- got the call.” A man who’d recently tact with while there was his wife. But partment, was summoned by his boss. been skiing in the Dolomites had be- the tracing team did some sleuthing and Iceland did not yet have a confirmed come the country’s first known corona- found that after the concert there had case of COVID-19, but the country’s De- virus patient. been a reception. partment of Civil Protection and Emer- Two other cops, two nurses, and a “In this gathering, people were hug- gency Management wanted to be pre- criminologist had been assigned to Pál- ging, and eating from the same trays,” pared. Suppose somebody tested mason’s team. “With our detective tech- Pálmason told me. “So the decision was positive? A team would be needed to niques to find people, we began to gather made—all of them go into quarantine.” track down everyone with whom that some information from the case,” Pál- If you were returning to Iceland from person had been in contact. Pálmason’s mason told me. The man, the team overseas, you also got a call: put your- supervisor told him he was going to learned, had been back in Iceland for self in quarantine. At the same time, lead that team. several days before he’d been diagnosed. the country was aggressively testing for “We were just talking: ‘If and when During that time, he’d done all the the virus—on a per-capita basis, at the the first case happens—it could be this things people normally do—gone to highest rate in the world. Iceland never imposed a lockdown. Swimmers at Laugardalslaug, a public pool in Reykjavík, on May 18th. Only a few types of businesses—night

PHOTOGRAPH BY VALDIMAR THORLACIUS THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 25 clubs and hair salons, for example— with the head of the firm, Kári Stefáns- illuminated manuscript—a relic from were ever ordered closed. Hardly any- son, a neurologist and a national celeb- another era. One of the crew members one in Reykjavík wears a mask. And rity. He told me that he would work told me that he and almost all of his yet, by mid-May, when I went to talk things out. colleagues, including the pilots, had been to Pálmason, the tracing team had al- A few days later, the no became a given three months’ notice; they were most no one left to track. During the yes, with qualifications. I’d have to enter working only occasional flights. Despite previous week, in all of Iceland, only a “modified” quarantine for journalists. the generalized gloom, it was thrilling two new coronavirus cases had been The list of rules ran four single-spaced to be going somewhere; for the previ- confirmed. The country hadn’t just man- pages and included provisos on how to ous eight weeks, the farthest I’d trav- aged to flatten the curve; it had, it use—or, really, not use—public rest elled was to the liquor store. seemed, virtually eliminated it. rooms. It laid out a half-dozen scenar- When we landed at Keflavík, Iceland’s ios—“interview of a public figure in a international airport, I faced my first cri- had initially planned to go to Iceland private company setting,” “interview of sis of conscience. Among the many pro- I in March, for a story unconnected to any person in a private setting out of scribed activities for me, I knew, was the coronavirus. Suddenly, the trip was doors”—with detailed instructions for shopping. But it was nearly 10 p.m., and called off. The European Union was how each one should be handled. An Icelandair had cancelled the flight’s meal barring Americans from entering, and “interview of a public servant in the service. Was I allowed into the duty-free the United States was barring Europe- workplace” was allowed, but with nu- store? I decided that I was. Dinner that ans. Flights were being cancelled. There merous conditions. (“The director of night was beer and licorice. didn’t seem any way to resurrect the trip, the public entity must be informed and until it occurred to me: what if I wrote assent to the interview even if they are he next day, Stefánsson offered about Iceland’s response to COVID-19? not the interviewee. .. . The journalist Tto pick me up at my hotel. (Crisis I looked online and learned that all should not explore the site, even with No. 2: “Even those being interviewed those entering the country were required a guide, but only visit the space desig- should maintain 2 metres distance from to submit a form outlining how they nated for the interview.”) the journalist in quarantine as much as planned to quarantine for two weeks. I Icelandair had, by this time, sus- possible.”) As soon as I got into his applied to the Ministry for Foreign pended service from the United States, Porsche, he asked me where I was from. Affairs for an exemption as a journal- except for sporadic flights out of Bos- I said western Massachusetts. “Massa- ist. The answer came back: no. ton. The day I left, a Saturday, the in- chusetts is probably the most boring I did some e-mailing and phoning ternational terminal at Logan was as place on earth,” he declared. around. Iceland, which has three hun- solemn and silent as a mausoleum. Not Stefánsson, who is seventy-one, is dred and sixty-five thousand residents— a single ticket desk was open. On the tall and broad-shouldered, with white about half the population of Denver— plane, I counted fourteen seats occu- hair and a white, Hemingwayesque is a famously tight-knit country. Almost pied, out of nearly two hundred. I spoke beard. For most of the eighties and nine- everyone, quite literally, is related to ev- briefly with a woman seated a few rows ties, he lived in the U.S., teaching first eryone else, and if two people want to in front of me. She was going to visit at the University of Chicago and then know how exactly their families are in- her fiancé, an Icelandic soccer player, at Harvard. He returned to Iceland with tertwined they can consult a genealogy and was unhappy that they would be the notion of using the country’s small, database run by an Icelandic biotech spending the first two weeks of her stay inbred population to study the connec- firm called deCODE Genetics. Iceland in separate apartments. tion between disease and genetic vari- was able to test so many people because, The in-flight magazine, which ap- ation. This was before the human ge- at the height of the outbreak, deCODE parently hadn’t been replaced for sev- nome had been fully sequenced, and turned its state-of-the-art facilities over eral months, was filled with pictures of Stefánsson was sailing into uncharted to screening for the virus. I got in touch vacationers in the snow. It read like an waters. He founded deCODE, and it grew into a large company, which, like much of the rest of Iceland, went bank- rupt following the financial crisis of 2008. DeCODE is now owned by an American biotech company, Amgen; its o9ces are in a sleek, metal-clad build- ing not far from Reykjavík’s municipal airport. Refrigerated storage rooms in the basement hold blood samples from a hundred and eighty thousand Iceland- ers—roughly one of every two people in the country. Stefánsson told me that he’d decided to get involved in COVID-19 research a “How much more grass do we have to eat before we get thin?” few days after Iceland’s first case was announced. He was driving to his o9ce manding that the government spend fatal consequences of attempting to fight one morning when he heard on the radio more on health care, and a third of the the virus by drinking bleach. Three- an estimate of the virus’s fatality rate. country’s adult population signed it.) quarters of Icelanders tuned in at some “They predicted that 3.4 per cent of those At any given moment, he’s almost sure point. Reynisson, Guðnason, and Möller who were infected would die,” Stefáns- to be wrangling with one ministry or an- became so well known that they were son recalled. “And I couldn’t understand other; in March, when the Icelandic Data referred to simply as the “trio,” or the how they could calculate the death rate, Protection Authority said that it couldn’t “tripod,” or, as one person put it to me, not knowing the distribution of the virus rule immediately on a request from the “holy trinity.” in society. So when I came to work I sat deCODE, Stefánsson issued a lengthy That evening, the holy trinity had down with my colleagues. And I told denunciation on Facebook. But, when I put on bathrobes to attempt another them we should offer to screen the gen- asked Stefánsson about the miraculous rescue. About eral population in Iceland.” Icelandic government’s re- forty per cent of Iceland’s Iceland’s university hospital was al- sponse to COVID-19, he had export revenue comes from ready testing people who had symp- only kind words. tourism. To make up for all toms of COVID-19. But by testing peo- “This was done in an the Americans and English ple who had no symptoms, or only very extremely balanced way,” and Germans who would mild ones, deCODE picked up many he said at one point. “And be staying home because of cases that otherwise would have been I think the authorities did COVID-19, the government missed. These cases, too, were referred pretty much everything had commissioned a com- to the tracing team. By May 17th, Ice- right.” At another point, he mercial to encourage Ice- land had tested 15.5 per cent of its pop- told me, “The remarkable landers to travel domes- ulation for the virus. In the U.S., the thing in this whole affair tically over the summer. figure was 3.4 per cent. is that in Iceland it has been run en- Reynisson, Guðnason, and Möller went Meanwhile, deCODE was also se- tirely by the public-health authorities. into separate rooms—Reynisson on one quencing the virus from every Icelander They came up with the plan, and they side of the hall, the two others on the whose test had come back positive. As just instituted it. And we were fortu- opposite side. At the count of þrír, tveir, the virus is passed from person to per- nate that our politicians managed to einn, they were supposed to open their son, it picks up random mutations. By control themselves.” doors, bedroom-farce style. Then Rey- analyzing these, geneticists can map the nisson was to look into the camera and disease’s spread. At the beginning of n Reykjavík, I stayed at one of the deliver the punch line: “We’ll come the outbreak, travellers returning to Ice- Ifew hotels that were open, in an Art along, just in case.” (Each time he did land from the Italian Alps seemed to Deco building not far from the parlia- so, the camera crew cracked up; I had be the primary source of infections. But ment. One evening, upon returning to to assume it was funnier in Icelandic.) researchers at deCODE found that, the hotel, I found a film crew and a As one take followed another, I tried to while attention had been focussed on jumble of equipment blocking the hall- picture the director of the National In- Italy, the virus had been quietly slip- way. In front of the cameras stood two stitute of Allergy and Infectious Dis- ping into the country from several other middle-aged men and a woman, all eases, Anthony Fauci; the head of the nations, including Britain. Travellers dressed in white terry-cloth bathrobes. Centers for Disease Control and Pre- from the West Coast of the U.S. had Though I’d been in Iceland for only two vention, Robert Redfield; and the White brought in one strain, and travellers days, I recognized them. They were the House coronavirus-response coördina- from the East Coast another. The East team who had guided Iceland’s response tor, Deborah Birx, in terry cloth. Coast strain had been imported to to COVID-19: the country’s director of As it happened, I had an appoint- America from Italy or Austria, then ex- emergency management, Víðir Reynis- ment the next morning to speak to ported back to Europe. son; its chief epidemiologist, Þórólfur Möller. She was back in her own o9ce, By sequencing the virus from every Guðnason; and its director of health, in a sleek glass tower by the harbor. The person infected, researchers at deCODE Alma Möller. first thing she said when I sat down was could also make inferences about how Reynisson, Guðnason, and Möller “I’m so sorry. I knew from early Febru- it had spread. “One of the very inter- worked together out of an improvised ary that the U.S. would be in great trou- esting things is that, in all our data, there COVID command center in the o9ces ble.” Möller is an intensive-care physi- are only two examples where a child in- of the Icelandic Coast Guard. Through cian by training; in 1990, she became fected a parent,” Stefánsson told me. March, April, and much of May, they the first woman to serve as a helicopter “But there are lots of examples where gave a joint briefing every day at 2 P.M., doctor with Iceland’s Coast Guard. The parents infected children.” at which they discussed, matter-of-factly, job entailed such tasks as being lowered Stefánsson is a frequent critic of the what they knew and what they didn’t. in a harness onto fishing boats in the Icelandic government. He often fires Sometimes they invited guests, such as North Atlantic to treat sick crew mem- off opinion pieces to newspapers, on a psychologist who spoke about how to bers. In 2018, she became the country’s subjects ranging from the management talk to kids about the pandemic. On first female director of health. of fisheries to hospital financing. (A few occasion, they warned about misinfor- Möller pulled up a series of graphs years ago, he circulated a petition de- mation—for instance, the potentially and charts on her laptop. These showed

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 27 that, per capita, Iceland had had more ment decided to look into how many on the island’s southern coast, sparking COVID-19 cases than any other Scandi- Icelanders had perished for any reason an outbreak that, by 1709, had killed navian country, and more than even since the outbreak began. It turned out about a quarter of the country. Italy or Britain. There was an outbreak that over-all mortality in Iceland had Today, Iceland is still far from any- in a nursing home in the town of Bol- actually gone down since the corona- where. Its nearest neighbor, Greenland, ungarvík, in northwestern Iceland, and virus had arrived. is mostly ice, and the capital city of Nuuk one in the Westman Islands, an archi- I asked Möller about masks. In Mas- is almost nine hundred miles away. But pelago off the southern coast, which sachusetts, an executive order issued by jets and cruise ships have turned Reyk- seemed to have started at a handball the governor requires that masks be worn javík into a bucket-list destination; last game. (In Europe, handball is a team by anyone entering a store, taking a cab, year, almost two million foreign tour- sport that’s sort of a cross between bas- or using public transit, and violators can ists visited, four times the number that ketball and soccer.) be fined up to three hundred dollars. In visited just a decade ago. Iceland’s first “The numbers in the beginning were Iceland, masks aren’t even part of the COVID casualty was, perhaps not sur- terrible,” Möller said. She attributed the public conversation. Möller said that prisingly, a vacationer. The man, whose country’s success in bringing the case- wearing one might be advisable for a name was not released, was Australian. load down in part to having got an early person who is sick and coughing, but He died on March 16th, shortly after start. The “trio,” along with officials from that person shouldn’t be walking around arriving at a medical clinic in Húsavík, Iceland’s university hospital, had begun in public anyway. “We think they don’t a small town on the northern coast meeting back in January. “We saw what add much and they can give a false sense known for whale-watching. His widow, was going on in China,” she recalled. of security,” she said. “Also, masks work who also tested positive, was ordered “We saw the pictures of people lying for some time, and then they get wet, into isolation, a development that dead in emergency departments, even and they don’t work anymore.” prompted an outpouring of sympathy on the street. So it was obvious that Möller was careful not to suggest from Icelanders. A woman named Rakel something terrible was happening. And, that Iceland had beaten the virus. She Jónsdóttir set up a Facebook group, With of course, we didn’t know if it would seemed almost embarrassed by the idea Love from Us, so that people could post spread to other countries. But we didn’t of claiming credit for herself, for the messages to her; more than ten thou- dare take the chance. So we started pre- trio, or for Iceland. The furthest she sand people joined. “You may not see paring.” For example, it was discovered would go, when pressed, was to say, us, you may not know us, but we all that the country didn’t have enough “We are a nation that’s used to catastro- think of you and have you in our hearts,” protective gear for its health-care work- phes. We deal with avalanches, earth- Jónsdóttir wrote. ers, so hospital officials immediately set quakes, eruptions, and so on.” Among Icelanders, too, are big travellers: in about buying more. the slides she showed me about the 2018, more than eighty per cent of them Meanwhile, Möller began assem- country’s experience with COVID was vacationed abroad. I spoke to several peo- bling a “backup” team. “You know, ev- one labelled “Success?” ple in Reykjavík who’d brought the virus erybody knows everyone in Iceland,” home from overseas. One was Börkur she said. “And so I rang up the presi- celand was one of the last (more or Arnarson, an art dealer. I went to speak dent of the Icelandic Medical Associ- Iless) habitable places on earth to be to him at his gallery, i8, which was closed ation and the head of the nurses’ asso- settled by humans, sometime toward to the public at the time. (Rule 4b: “Only ciation.” Doctors who had recently the end of the ninth century. Genetic those being interviewed should have di- retired, nurses who had gone on to other analysis performed by deCODE shows rect interaction with the journalist.”) jobs—all were urged to sign up. When that the island’s original inhabitants Arnarson, who represents, among new cases started to be diagnosed in a were mainly men from Norway and others, the Danish-Icelandic artist Ola- great rush, the backup team, along with women from the British Isles. (It seems fur Eliasson, had been in New York, doctors whose offices had been shut by likely that the women were seized by attending the Armory Show, at the the pandemic, counselled people over the Vikings and brought along by force.) beginning of March. After the show the phone. “If you were seventy, if you For centuries, hardly anyone from ended, he’d gone to a crowded party had high blood pressure, you got called anywhere else bothered to travel to Ice- where finger food was served. “I’m not every day,” Möller told me. “But, if you land; it just didn’t seem worth the effort. a news guy,” he told me. “But I knew were young and healthy, maybe twice a Isolation, combined with low popula- what was going on here in Iceland, and week. And I’m sure that this led to fewer tion density, tended to keep out epi- I knew what was going on in Europe. hospital admittances and even to fewer demics—the island was, for example, And I was struck by how New York- intensive-care admittances.” spared the Black Death. But, when dis- ers were so confident. They didn’t be- This, in turn, appears to have cut ease did slip in, the effects on a popu- lieve it was going to happen, or, if it down on fatalities. Iceland’s death rate lation that lacked immunity could be was going to happen, somehow it was from COVID-19 is one out of every one devastating. In 1707, an Icelander con- going to be O.K.” hundred and eighty confirmed cases, or tracted smallpox during a trip to Co- Arnarson started to feel crappy al- just 0.56 per cent—one of the lowest in penhagen. He died on his way home most as soon as he got home. His daugh- the world. The figure is so low that it and was buried at sea. His clothes con- ter signed the family up for COVID tests raised some doubts. Möller’s depart- tinued on to the town of Eyrarbakki, that were being offered by deCODE;

28 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 close encounters by matthew klam BREAKING STRIDE

ineteen seventy-eight, eighth grade: I’m five feet nine, Na hundred and three pounds, and am often mistaken for a girl. Dave, a kid in my homeroom, same height, blond like me, is somehow fat and skinny at the same time. We both know “Let’s Get Small,” the Steve Martin album (“We’re basically into the intellectual scene”), and, although we use it to transfix girls and keep cretins off balance, there’s something else going on. In a romantic coupling, you turn inward, but friendships put you shoul- der to shoulder to take on the world. Ninth grade: We drink vodka at Martha Cedarholm’s and throw up in the street. I sleep over at Dave’s house, and it’s comfortable. Our mothers like the same kind of pottery. My father, who’s sometimes fun, is prone to rages and tantrums, like a child, while Dave’s father, also fun, is a child psychiatrist. His parents casually slip into French at breakfast. His three older sisters have been known to sit on him and put his hair in doll curlers, but they’ve also dedicate a song to me—“Cherry Tree,” by 10,000 Maniacs— taught him how to have a conversation. about a guy so dumb he can’t read, and I feel honored. Tenth grade: We’re in high school now, still no girl- There are months when I barely know what he’s up to. friends, so, for prom, we rent a limo with four other boys, I send him short stories, and he sends me TV scripts and dressed, by our fathers, in blazers and loafers. We’re not tapes of his band. At some point, I realize I’ve been imi- cool, and it’s almost beside the point that two of the guys tating his laugh since ninth grade, and make myself stop. in the limo are on acid, and one of them is a dwarf. For Our twenties: In Minneapolis, I meet his first serious someone who feels anxious in a group, it’s good to belong girlfriend, and he doesn’t confide sexual details to me, anywhere, with anyone, with Dave. doesn’t treat her like an obstacle to our friendship, and we Eleventh grade: We have busboy jobs at Le Château, a all get along. That night, even though almost everything big, corny restaurant run by a mean French family, in a in our lives is terrible—I’ve been living on a waiter’s salary stone mansion overlooking the Hudson Valley. The for a decade, he hates writing ad copy—we sound so sure maître d’ is not so sure about us; neither are the waiters, of ourselves and are so good at mirroring, listening to, and the captains, the wine guys, or Joseph, who hired us, or his inspiring each other that we tape an hour of our drunken lieutenant, Koos. Individually, we do a capable job of jabbering. That tape later lands in my mother’s car, and clearing, hauling trays and dish tubs, but as a team we’re she plays it until it breaks. incompetent and despised. The grandmother catches us Our thirties: Dave moves to L.A. to try to get a TV eating food off people’s plates, we’re blamed for breaking show on the air. We settle into a cross-country thing. the ice machine, and the staff generates a growing list of While we’re crashing at my aunt’s house in Montauk, he insulting nicknames for us. But there’s a wonderful smell points out that, in a short story I recently published, a of baguettes in paper bags, and on the drive home we own character named Dave is the obnoxious older brother. the road, dissecting the strangeness of a menacing world. About this act of inexplicable hostility I say almost noth- Twelfth grade: Mr. Henriquez’s humor class. I memo- ing, and we never mention it again. rize Steve Martin’s “The Gospel Maniacs,” a bit about a Marriage, children, knee surgeries. Work triumphs and corrupt TV minister, and perform it, because religion is disasters. In New York City, I see ads on taxis for a TV horseshit and comedy is a protest against small-minded- show he’s created, but after two seasons it’s gone. Our ness. It doesn’t go over with my classmates, and Dave is the friendship becomes superfluous, voluntary, sporadic. We only one laughing—for the entire four and a half minutes. tell each other the good things. The bad things we keep to College: Even though ours is a bond based on achieving ourselves. Eventually we don’t even share the good news. nothing, Dave gets into a very good college. I enroll at an Sometimes I wonder if the friendship is merely commem- underfunded state school, because it’s the place that let me orative, but then I see him, we assess the changes, throw a in. This isn’t the first time that one of us breaks stride and Frisbee, talk all night, drink and smoke a few disgusting inadvertently wounds the other, and it won’t be the last. cigarettes, and he’s the same, a ramblin’ guy, an overgrown But the summer after freshman year we work together eighth grader. He visited in January and left behind a jar doing pool construction, and on the way to work he plays of peanut butter and a bottle of vermouth. That may be all a tape of the radio show he d.j.’s, so that I can hear him I see of him for a while. 

ILLUSTRATION BY MARTA MONTEIRO THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 29 when his came back positive, Arnarson Thor, and another souvenir store called which was erected in the late eighteenth went into isolation in a studio loaned idontspeakicelandic. I stopped by a shop century as a prison. to him by an artist friend. Every day, that was stuffed with puffin figurines As I was ushered into her office, she someone on the team of nurses and doc- and model Viking ships. (This was an told me that she had agreed to see me tors phoned him. “They asked, ‘How admitted violation of Scenario 5; by this mostly because it was easier than argu- are you doing? What are your symp- point, though, I’d been tested for the ing with Stefánsson. I asked her why she toms? Are you getting all the help virus myself, and the result had come thought Iceland had done so much bet- you need?’” he recalled. “And that was back negative.) It was empty except for ter at dealing with COVID-19 than so really amazing. It was so comforting, two women working there. many other countries. “We were follow- knowing that they were doing this.” He “We have no tourists and we are a ing the news from China very closely,” was given a number to call in case of tourist shop,” one of them said, when I she said. “So we started our preparations an emergency: “I don’t think they were asked about business. She hunched her long before the first case tested positive getting many calls, because they were shoulders together: “Normally, we are here in Iceland. And it was very clear so proactive.” While he was in isolation, so crowded you cannot walk.” from the beginning that this was some- his wife and his daughter, who’d origi- Having effectively eliminated the thing that should be led by experts—by nally tested negative for the virus, came virus—the week I was there, only one scientific and medical experts.” She went down with it. They received the same new case was confirmed—Iceland now on, “And the experts, they were very hum- treatment. None of them ended up going finds itself in a position at once envi- ble. They were saying, ‘We really don’t to the hospital or to a clinic. able and awkward. Obviously, the fewer know everything about this virus.’ And Arnarson spent nearly six weeks on people who enter the country, the less I think one of the strengths of the pro- his own; with his family in isolation, he likely a new outbreak. But no visitors cess is that we just said, ‘Well, we don’t couldn’t go home once he’d recovered. means empty hotels, unsold trolls, and know what is going to happen next.’” During that time, along with the rest thousands upon thousands of lost jobs. Jakobsdóttir praised the work of the of Iceland, he watched the trio daily at (Icelandair may require a government contact-tracing team, which had com- 2 P.M. “The three of them—the police- bailout; well before the virus hit, it was pelled one of her three sons to go into man, the doctor, and the epidemiolo- losing money.) quarantine. (Her husband took him to gist—they’re such heroes,” Arnarson Even as I was struggling to abide by a summer house for two weeks.) I asked said. “They were just calmingly talking the rules of my modified quarantine, about the plan to reopen the border. to the people, with just the facts and longingly eying the coffee bars and the She noted that all the countries in Eu- just the basics. There were no politics public rest rooms, Icelandic authorities rope were struggling with this issue. and no politicians in the way.” were considering how to reopen the “We think we are taking a really cau- border. On May 12th, the country’s tious step, by saying we are going to t the height of the outbreak, Ice- Prime Minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, an- start this experiment, where people can Aland’s government imposed a ban nounced a plan to let visitors into the choose between a test or quarantine,” on gatherings of more than twenty peo- country by mid-June. Under the plan, she said. “If it works well, it might be- ple. It also closed high schools and uni- foreigners arriving at Keflavík would be come the arrangement, at least for the versities. (Primary schools and day-care presented with three options. They could next few months. It won’t save the tour- centers remained open, on a limited show a certificate confirming a recent ism sector in Iceland this year. We are schedule.) The restrictions started to negative COVID-19 test, be screened for very much aware of that. But we need ease up in early May. By the time I ar- the virus, or go into quarantine. Who somehow to insure that people can come rived, the schools had reopened, the would perform the screening, and how and leave the island, and we need to do limit on gatherings had been raised to this would all work, was left unspecified. it without putting too much pressure fifty, and people were again getting their The day after Jakobsdóttir’s an- on the health-care system. So it’s a del- hair cut. Across from where I was stay- nouncement, I was talking to Kári icate balance.” ing, the building that once housed Ice- Stefánsson about it when he asked, “Do That evening, the weather was clear land’s state telephone company was you want to talk to the Prime Minis- and cool—by New York standards, too being converted into a hotel. Every day, ter?” I said sure. He called her press sec- cool to eat outside, by Reykjavík stan- I woke to the clang of construction. retary, who didn’t answer, so he dialled dards balmy. The outdoor cafés were In the absence of tourists, though, Jakobsdóttir directly. She picked up. crowded. Restaurants had been asked many businesses in Reykjavík remained Jakobsdóttir, who is forty-four, is a to arrange their tables to keep groups shuttered. One day, I took a walk down member of the Left-Green Movement. two metres apart, but some diners, I no- Laugavegur, the city’s equivalent of Fifth She became Prime Minister in 2017, at ticed, had pushed the tables closer to- Avenue. Spúútnik, a used-clothing store, a particularly turbulent moment in Ice- gether. Everyone was talking and laugh- was open, as was Swimwear & Bikini, landic politics: two governments had ing, masklessly. The scene was completely a bathing-suit shop. But Óðinn, a store collapsed in quick succession, one owing ordinary, which is to say now exotic— stocked with troll dolls and assorted to a scandal involving a sex offender, just people meeting up with friends for other “Icelandic memorabilia,” was the other to a scandal involving offshore dinner. For a traveller these days, this “closed until further notice.” So was Ice- assets. She works out of a handsome might be an even better draw, I thought, land Memories, a souvenir shop called building known as the Cabinet House, than glaciers or whale-watching. 

30 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 Books Fuel the Future for Children

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fi rstbook.org fi rstbookcanada.org brofiles THE MAKING OF AMERICANS The genre-defying life and work of Maxine Hong Kingston. by hua hsu

n 1973, Maxine Hong Kingston and gusts distressing. She couldn’t think. epic, surreal dreamscapes. By the end, her husband, Earll, took a vacation More pressing, they hadn’t realized that you don’t know which, if any, of these I to Lāna’i, a small Hawaiian island across the beautiful turquoise bay was stories are true, or whether they consti- about eighty miles southeast of O’ahu, a military base. They had left Califor- tute a reliable depiction of Chinese- where they lived. There was little to do. nia to escape the war. But each day they American life. Lāna’i was essentially a pineapple plan- looked out the window and saw huge “The Woman Warrior” changed tation, and they were awakened each cargo planes delivering young Amer- American culture. For those who un- morning at five, when a siren called icans, like Maxine’s brothers, to fight derstood where Kingston was coming workers to the fields. The Kingstons in Vietnam. from, it was encouragement that they stayed at the only hotel on the island, By the time they went to Lāna’i, Max- could tell stories, too. For those who which was largely empty. The bulb for ine and Earll were looking to overcome didn’t, “The Woman Warrior” became the movie projector was broken. The the sense of drift that had lingered after the definitive telling of the Asian im- bowling alley was closed for repairs. the sixties. Earll studied acting at the migrant experience, at a time when there Maxine turned her desk to face the wall, University of Hawai’i, and Maxine taught weren’t many to choose from. Younger and began writing. high school, writing in her spare time. Asian-American writers would later The Kingstons had moved to O’ahu There was only one other guest at the complain of receiving “a generic Max- after getting burned out on life in Berke- hotel: Frederick Exley, whose début novel, ine Hong Kingston rejection letter” from ley, where they met as college students, “A Fan’s Notes,” had been a finalist for publishers who regarded “The Woman in the early sixties. They got caught up the National Book Awards in 1969. Max- Warrior” as monolithic. in the era’s celebration of free expression ine would see him at the bar each morn- “The Woman Warrior” won the 1976 and consciousness-seeking excess, and ing, though they never spoke. This is a National Book Critics Circle Award for the movements for civil rights and peace. place where writers come, she thought. nonfiction, and in the eighties and nine- But by 1967 they had taken one too many This is where people find inspiration. ties Kingston was one of the most fre- friends to the hospital after bad acid She went back to her room and contin- quently taught living authors at Amer- trips. Some people left for communes, ued writing down stories and memories. ican colleges and universities. “As an never to return. Every peace demonstra- “The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of account of growing up female and Chi- tion seemed to end in a riot. The period a Girlhood Among Ghosts,” the result- nese-American in California, in a laun- surrounding the Vietnam War, King- ing book, was published three years later, dry of course, it is anti-nostalgic. It burns ston recalled, felt like one during which when Kingston was thirty-five. In the the fat right out of the mind,” John “good and evil became distinct,” yin and seventies, publishers had begun respond- Leonard wrote, in the Times. “As a yang going separate ways. ing to America’s social realities by offer- dream—of the ‘female avenger’—it is They had a son, Joseph, and set off ing challenging, textured depictions of dizzying, elemental, a poem turned into for Japan, which Earll remembered what it meant to be part of a minority. a sword.” When Barack Obama pre- fondly from his days as a serviceman. “The Woman Warrior,” which was mar- sented Kingston with the National But, during a stopover in Hawaii, they keted as a memoir based on Kingston’s Medal of Arts, in 2014, he said that, saw a “For Rent” sign above a grocery upbringing, seemed to adhere to typi- while writing his first book, “Dreams store in Kahalu’u, along Kāne’ohe Bay, cal preconceptions—the cascading from My Father,” he had turned to “The and decided to stay. They tried to live effects of patriarchal traditions, the stern Woman Warrior” for inspiration. as they had in Berkeley, in an improvi- and unaffectionate immigrant parents, Kingston and Earll used the proceeds sational community, their doors open the children caught between duty and from the novel to put down a deposit to anyone. But things started to go miss- dreaming. But, unlike most ethnic com- on a house in the Mānoa Valley, a lush, ing, and it was unclear whether their ing-of-age tales of the time, it seeded quiet neighborhood just east of down- neighbors also believed in communal doubt about its own authenticity. The town Honolulu. They lived there until sharing or if they were taking advan- characters tell one another stories drawn 1984, when they returned to California. tage of the Kingstons. Kahalu’u is on from Chinese lore and Chinatown gos- Earlier this year, Kingston, who is the island’s windward side, and Max- sip, imagining alternative time lines. The seventy-nine, was back in Honolulu. ine, like many Chinese people who be- book is complex and captivating, a con- Joseph, a musician, now lives in their lieve that wind disturbs one’s qi, or life- stant toggling between the mundane old house with his wife, Saki, and their force equilibrium, found the constant grit of the family’s laundry business and two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Hana

32 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 “The Woman Warrior” changed literary culture. But Kingston plans to release her final work only after she dies.

PHOTOGRAPH BY GIONCARLO VALENTINE THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 33 Mĕi. Saki was due to give birth to their bic response to the nineteenth-century Kingston told me. “Who hangs out at second child in mid-February, and Max- influx of Chinese workers, was still law, a Chinese gambling parlor? What white ine and Earll had come to help out. and Tom Hong couldn’t enter America woman would do this?”) I walked up a path lined with mod- legally. He tried to sneak in from Cuba Kingston was a quiet child, and she est, well-kept homes bearing historic- twice before finally succeeding, in 1927. didn’t learn to speak English until she registry plaques. The Kingston house Hong had been a scholar in his home was five. She says that her I.Q. was stood out. A covered, two-story deck village of Sun Woi, near Canton, but once recorded as zero. When asked to seemed to grow haphazardly out of the in America he could find only menial paint a picture for class, she produced house’s side, and it was decorated with jobs—washing windows, doing laun- a sheet of paper that was completely a Bob Marley shirt and a sign for a local dry. Like many Chinese-American men, black. (It was meant to be a depiction council meeting about invasive pigs. A he sent money home to his family, prom- of curtains on a stage before a show.) wetsuit and a swing hung from the ceil- ising to bring them over when the op- Her earliest memories are of the Sec- ing, while a small statue of a cat stood portunity arose. ond World War—cousins in uniform guard. Kingston called my name and Hong was a skilled gambler. One going overseas, illustrations in Chinese waved from a second-floor window. I night, in Manhattan’s Chinatown, he newspapers portraying torture by the wasn’t sure where the front door was. won six hundred dollars from a man Japanese. She became fascinated with She met me on the deck, holding a also named Hong. The other Hong was warfare and soldiers. Her mother nar- manila envelope, which held manuscript unable to pay the debt. Instead, he agreed rated the history of China as one long pages. Kingston hasn’t published any- to give Maxine’s father his visa papers, string of conquest and conflict. “We thing substantial since her 2011 mem- which Hong used to bring Chew to were always losers. We were always on oir, “I Love a Broad Margin to My Life.” America, in 1999. Hong and Chew the run,” Kingston told me. Late last year, I asked if she was work- headed west, to Stockton, a busy port When she was a teen-ager, she wrote ing on anything new. She laughed. I had town in central California. an essay about being American that a vision, she told me over the phone, During their fifteen years apart, was published in the magazine Amer- that my last book would be a posthu- Chew had studied Western medicine ican Girl. But it was hard to see a path mous one. and become a doctor. But in Stockton as a writer. She remembers reading Lou- she was just another immigrant. They isa May Alcott’s “Eight Cousins,” in axine Hong was born on Octo- ran a laundry and a gambling house. which a white character marries “a Mber 27, 1940, in Stockton, Califor- Chew foraged for herbs and vegetables highly satisfactory Chinaman” named nia, to Tom Hong and Chew Ying Lan. in empty lots. Maxine was named for Fun See. This struck Kingston as a Her father had left for America in the a blond woman who frequented her fa- meaningful, vaguely sympathetic ges- twenties in search of work. But the Chi- ther’s predominantly Chinese gambling ture. But Fun See was still exotically nese Exclusion Act of 1882, a xenopho- tables. (“She was probably such a floozy,” “other,” with his long fingernails and queue, his yellow skin and peculiar man- ners. That’s me, Kingston thought. She realized that she would never be a March sister. “I felt like I was popped out of her writing,” she said. “Out of American literature.” Hong went to Berkeley in 1958, to study engineering, but she fell in with the emerging counterculture and be- came an English major instead. She had grown up in a traditional house- hold beholden to Confucian values. When she began reading Beat poetry, she was finally able to “put a word” to her maelstrom of feelings. “I’m always struggling with being in the present, always resolving to be here, be here, be here,” she said. She met Earll, a fellow English major who was a couple of years older. They married in 1962, the year she graduated. The next year, she gave birth to Joseph. As Maxine and I left the house for a nearby café, she pointed to the second- floor window—the office where she “No, thanks. Reading is my escape.” wrote much of her second book, “China Men,” a collection of stories about the to maintain a kind of plausible deni- the moral punch lines often lost in trans- lives of Chinese immigrant men. Ha- ability, should she ever run into trou- lation, the misunderstood silences. But waii is a good place to write about Asians, bles of her own while writing about what stayed with me was the realiza- she said, because there are so many of family secrets or her antiwar work. tion that her characters weren’t merely us here. And the notion of the “talk She titled her first book “Gold Moun- trying to survive in this harsh, diffi- story,” the improvisational, oral tradi- tain Stories,” and quickly sold it to Knopf. cult world but to remake it through tion that drives “The Woman Warrior,” Charles Elliott, her editor, told me in an their fantasies and dreams. These char- is central to Hawaiian culture. (“Talk e-mail, “What was clear to me from the acters emerged from their realist set- story” is also the translation of the Chi- start was the distinctive hard authority tings aching for impossible things, like nese expression for “storytelling.”) of her writing.” He made only two major peace, or world-changing art, or having We cut across a neighbor’s driveway, suggestions: renaming the all the friends in your life- following a set of stone steps shaded by book “The Woman War- time in the same room at large trees. She was wearing leggings rior,” to emphasize that it once, or Chinese parents and a loose-fitting striped shirt, clutch- was a single work and not and their American kids ing a bag with berries on it and the ma- a collection, and categoriz- simply seeing eye to eye. At nila envelope. Her hair is white and ing it as nonfiction, because the time, it felt impossible frayed, like a penumbra. it “was essentially a kind of to me that such grandiose, At the café, she told me about a memoir, and far more inter- almost flamboyantly hope- dream she had the night before. I was esting as such.” Bookstores ful visions could emanate coming to interview her, but I was Tyra labelled it fiction, nonfic- from characters who oth- Banks, the host of “America’s Next Top tion, sociology, anthropol- erwise seemed so relatable Model.” I suggested that the dream ogy, biography, women’s lit- to me. Her books open in might have to do with questions of erature, Chinese literature, and Asian darkness and trauma. But they always changing fashions, or enduring rele- literature. In a letter to the Chinese- suggest the possibility of greater light. vance. Her work has paved many paths American writer Shawn Wong, in 1976, Kingston has a hoarse, gently an- for later generations, from the un- Kingston wrote, “This confusion really imated way of speaking, retaining varnished immigrant coming-of-age makes me feel good.” the measured cadence of her days as a stories of Amy Tan to the knowing The book opens with a warning from teacher. (She has referred to her voice way in which writers like Viet Thanh mother to daughter: “You must not tell as that of a “pressed duck.”) Often, her Nguyen and Junot Díaz have compli- anyone what I am about to tell you.” unassuming, offbeat nature leads peo- cated that experience. But Kingston To read “The Woman Warrior” is to ple to underestimate her. John Leonard has kept a low profile in the past de- conspire with its narrator, who is never wrote that the author remained a cipher: cade, and her books are no longer as named but is referred to by other char- “Who is Maxine Hong Kingston? No- pervasive in trendy bookstores or on acters as Little Dog. Her mother tells body at Knopf seems to know. They college syllabuses. her the story of her aunt, the “no-name have never laid eyes on her.” After Leo- woman,” who killed herself and her nard’s glowing review, someone at Knopf hen Maxine and Earll realized newborn child by jumping into the explained to her that the Times was a Wthat they had somehow moved family well. Her village had turned very important newspaper. Elliott didn’t closer to the Vietnam War, they began against her, knowing that the child’s fa- meet Kingston until she came to New working at a local church, which pro- ther could not be her husband, since York to accept the National Book Crit- vided sanctuary to soldiers who had he had left for America. It’s a mother’s ics Circle Award for nonfiction. “I was gone AWOL. “They built the most beau- warning to her daughter as she ap- mostly struck by how small she was,” tiful community,” she remembered. “The proaches puberty. But Little Dog stud- he recalled. “When she stood behind extremes were happening all the time.” ies what her mother is doing, telling a the podium, she disappeared, and had There was “pure hell,” and then the at- story, denying its central protagonist to stand beside it.” tempt to overcome it by imagining new the dignity of a name, and recognizes “The Woman Warrior” conveys the ways of living together. “The times a kind of power. She begins retelling sense of being told a story, and recog- were so desperate that people resorted the story herself, imagining different nizing it as such. To many readers, the to magic,” she said, recalling moments, versions of it. Maybe her aunt was a dark, psychological tales offer an au- like the yippies’ attempt to levitate the victim of rape. Or maybe she was in thentic account of what it was like to Pentagon, in 1967, when young people control of her own passion. The truth grow up in an immigrant household. tried to will peace and utopia into being. of it matters less than the apparatus it- But Kingston plants seeds of doubt that But the church was raided, and par- self—why she is forgotten, and how this experience can be generalized. “Chi- ents tried tricking their children into she can be remembered. nese Americans,” she writes, “when you returning to the base. Other times, When I first read Kingston, in my try to understand what things in you soldiers would get tired of life as de- late teens, I was drawn to the familiar- are Chinese, how do you separate what serters and ask to be driven back. Ini- ity of it all: the immigrant enclave where is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, in- tially, Kingston blurred the line be- anyone non-Chinese was called a sanities, one family, your mother who tween nonfiction and fiction, in part “ghost,” the cautionary folktales with marked your growing with stories, from

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 35 what is Chinese? What is Chinese tra- dition and what is the movies?” By the end of “The Woman War- PASTORAL rior,” Little Dog has taken the scraps of her family’s story, passed down from her I was unincorporated mother, and added to it: “The beginning I was without a body is hers, the ending, mine.” The poet and I was lots novelist Ocean Vuong told me that his Not lots yet parcels life was both “mirrored and altered” by “The Woman Warrior”: “I found Max- I was ground ine’s audacious centering of Chinese- Where the pipes will go American life, its idiosyncrasies, polit- I was shrubs I was ical inflections, its refusal to sugarcoat Brush and the space or cast the façade of an elegant surface over immigrants, startlingly life affirm- Between shacks I lacked ing.” In his novel “On Earth We’re Governance I was Briefly Gorgeous,” from 2019, the nar- Lean-tos I was dens rator is named Little Dog, partly as a In the earth and nod to Kingston. “The Woman Warrior” initially cre- Roots of the weak ated divisions among Asian-American Sweetgum I was pear writers and readers. In 1974, Jeffery Paul And turtle sunning Chan, Frank Chin, Lawson Fusao Inada, I was lungs un- and Shawn Wong had published a gal- vanizing collection titled “Aiiieeeee! An Breathing I was the site Anthology of Asian-American Writ- On the horse’s neck ers.” They shared Kingston’s interest Where bats came in the psychological entanglements Nightly to feed I was of being Asian-American. Chin also studied literature at Berkeley, though The blood coagulating he and Kingston never met. But the Into morning I was “Aiiieeeee!” authors were invested in a Waiting for full dark kind of brash realism that clashed with Again I was waiting the hallucinatory play of “The Woman Warrior.” After Chin read the book, he For the wound wrote Kingston the first of many let- To reopen I was led ters accusing her of purposely mis- To a tree a weak representing Chinese culture. Other Tree strung with nets Asian-American male critics dismissed her as someone who aired the commu- I was the bat hoping nity’s dirty laundry and capitalized on To be caught I the trendiness of American feminism. Couldn’t heal myself The rift between Chin and Kingston Fast enough continues to this day, standing in for different versions of authenticity— —Melissa Ginsburg whether the concept is something stir- ring and immovable or is more contin- gent and intimate, perhaps even ugly. sat outside, on the patio. The only sounds his son for a daughter. Actually, that Chin once wrote her a heated letter were from chirping birds, clucking chick- happened, and the son was my father. saying that the only reason for meet- ens, the occasional snort of a distant pig. My grandmother got really mad and ing would be for “a public fight, but I’m She pointed out a shack a few yards away, they traded back.” In the book, this man not anxious for that.” where Robert Louis Stevenson had once seems kind, even charming, in his ob- worked. When she moved to Mānoa, she session with bringing some feminine ingston pulled out a sheet of hand- took comfort in knowing that a fellow- energy into their home. “The way I wrote Kwritten notes detailing various trans- writer had found inspiration looking out it was to show how he loved her, how lations of my Chinese name. (Joseph at this valley. he just wanted to hold her, and he wanted and Saki have named their son Malu “I write something that I wish for,” to sing to her. But I wrote it to give my- Hua, which shares a Chinese character Kingston said. “In ‘China Men,’ there’s self a grandfather who would love me with mine.) The café had closed, and we the story of my grandfather who traded as a girl.” Growing up, she said, she’d

36 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 always heard people in her family say the first time, touring the country as that was here, which was formed at ran- that they didn’t want girls. “So I wrote part of a delegation of writers spon- dom, it’s gone.” it for myself.” sored by U.C.L.A. and the Chinese Kingston realized that her life as a When she completed “China Men,” Writers Association. She spent time writer had begun to exacerbate a sense she and Earll flew to New York. After with Leslie Marmon Silko and Toni of loneliness. She couldn’t reconstruct reading the manuscript, Elliott told her Morrison. In an e-mail, Silko recalled the missing book, nor did she want to. that she had failed. “You don’t under- the three of them visiting an old story- After the fire, she began asking people stand men,” she remembers him saying. tellers’ hall in southern China. “The at her readings to bring things for her— “They’re lonelier than this.” Woman Warrior,” she wrote, “is story- talismans, other objects, maybe even Devastated, Kingston got on a bus telling at its highest level, where webs their own stories. She wanted to write uptown to her friend Lilah Kan’s apart- of narrative conjure the ghosts that stand with other people. ment, where she and Earll were stay- up and reveal all.” At a reading at San José State Uni- ing. “I just felt terrible,” she said. She One day, they were on a boat going versity, she invited a man named Bob was met by Kan, Earll, and about ten down the Li River, and Morrison saw Golling to a writing workshop that she friends, who greeted her with cham- a young woman doing laundry along was organizing at Berkeley for veterans. pagne and pot to celebrate her big meet- the shore. Morrison waved to her and Golling had been trying for years to ing. They went ahead with the party, as said, “Goodbye, Maxine.” She gets it, write a story about an experience he had she retreated into the corner with her Kingston thought. If immigration hadn’t before going to Vietnam. In June, 1223, Selectric typewriter and wrote a scene brought her to the U.S., “that could have he went to the first meeting, and lis- based on her father’s time in New York. been me,” she said. “Were you my pos- tened to everyone else’s “hair-raising” So much of the immigrant story is joy- sible other life?” stories from the war. There was a brief less hard work. America is so free that writing exercise, but he couldn’t produce you are even free to work through the n the summer of 1221, Kingston’s fa- anything. Afterward, he said, he drove holidays, Kingston wrote. She wanted Ither died. She and Earll had moved home, feeling that he had been “singu- to give the immigrant workers a day to Oakland; she was teaching at Berke- larly unsuccessful,” and thought that he off. Her father enjoys a night out on ley and writing her next book. That fall, would never go back. But Kingston ar- the town, ending up at a tearoom, where she was driving home from Stockton, ranged another meeting the following Chinese men could buy dances with where her family had gathered to mark month, and Golling kept writing. The white women. Her father fox-trots with the hundredth day since her father’s death, workshop for veterans has continued as many blondes as he desires, then re- when she heard on the radio that a fire ever since, and Golling now helps plan turns home alone, wondering if his wife was sweeping through the East Bay. She and organize the meetings. Eventually, will ever make it to America. began driving faster, hoping to reach he published his story, about his job es- “I give the narrative to all these men, their house in the hills of northern Oak- corting the bodies of deceased service- but there’s still this voice that’s me,” land before the fire did. Firefighters had men, in “Veterans of War, Veterans of Kingston told me. “My father is danc- set up barricades along the main roads, Peace,” a collection edited by Kingston, ing with this blonde—I described the so she sneaked up the side of the hill on from 2006. cascading blond hair, the beautiful blue foot. Her house had burned to the ground. The workshop meets quarterly, and eyes. And I hope that the reader un- She saw the pages of the manuscript for the members were supposed to assem- derstands that I am very lonely, ’cause her next book, but they disintegrated ble at a senior citizens’ center, in Santa that’s the opposite description of me. into ashes when she touched them. It Rosa, on March 21st. But the group de- That’s not me. Maybe indirectly you was her only copy. cided to cancel, in advance of Califor- can feel my being left out of this scene.” Kingston had been a hundred and nia’s shelter-in-place orders, for fear of Usually a slow and methodical writer, fifty-six “excellent” pages into the se- infecting the facility’s elderly tenants. she finished the scene in an hour. Then quel to “Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake The participants resolved to keep the she read what she had written aloud Book” (1282), a novel about a brooding date free and write by themselves. I to the party. “Is this lonely enough?” dreamer named Wittman Ah Sing, who talked to Golling that morning. He she asked. aspires to write a play that will feature was at his home, near Auburn, Cali- “China Men” won the 1281 National everyone he has ever met, and in the fornia, coördinating the “virtual word- Book Award for nonfiction. Kingston process end the Vietnam War. Ecstatic shop” by e-mail. attended the award ceremony in New and overwhelming, it occasionally reads “I always tell people, ‘We’re not a ther- York wearing leis from her Hawaiian like a trippy handbook for how to be a apy group,’” he said. “But therapy hap- friends. She donated her papers to Berke- good friend. pens.” He remembers everything about ley’s Bancroft Library. At the ceremony, As we sat on the patio, Kingston said, the first meeting at Berkeley—where Kingston pulled her father aside and “I remember standing there in the fire he parked his car, whom he sat next to, showed him a display featuring some of and facing loss. And one of the feelings Kingston’s “warm, sensible” clothes and his notes written as poetry in the mar- that really strongly came to me was this gently assertive manner. He describes gins of her books. “My writing, my writ- community is gone and, you know, peo- her as a “big sister.” When someone talked ing!” her father, a shy man, cried out. ple kept talking about rebuilding, and for too long, she would bang together In 1284, Kingston visited China for there’s no rebuilding. The community two sticks, to comedic effect. “She always

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 37 goes, ‘Pay attention to what people are Waikīkī hotels where Joseph occasion­ not working for this heading toward a saying, not just with your ears but with ally gigs. I was standing next to King­ climax and then a reconciliation and your heart,’” he said. When you do that, ston, but she didn’t notice me until she ending.” “we can share those few minutes of read­ had carefully nestled her granddaugh­ Joseph came out to give me a CD ing and writing together and become ter back in her stroller. of his latest album, “Love Doll,” before another person. It’s magic.” When I spoke to Kingston before leaving for work. “There’s something in In the nineties, Kingston would bring going to Honolulu, she’d mentioned that there to offend anybody and everybody,” some of the veterans to her public events being a grandmother had sapped her of he said, chuckling. Kingston pointed to and readings, inviting them to share the intense drive to work. When you’re a laid­back, ukulele­driven pop tune their work alongside her. They felt that younger, she told me, you have a vague called “Bonging Along,” which she had they were ambushing audiences who desire to do something great. When she posted on her Facebook page. “Robert had come to hear Kingston. But their was bringing up Joseph, she would give Pinsky said that he loved the recitative hesitation quickly disappeared. “She al­ him a bag of marshmallows and disap­ from that song,” she told me proudly. ways greets us with a hug that says we pear to write for twenty minutes. “My “The poet laureate of the United States!” are here together,” Golling told me. son said we never had food in the house, The idea for publishing a novel post­ The anxieties of the sixties were re­ only alfalfa sprouts,” she told a reporter humously came to Kingston after learn­ turning. In 2003, as the United States in 2011. “I suppose it looked like we were ing of Mark Twain’s autobiography, prepared to invade Iraq, Kingston was spending a lot of time together, as he which wasn’t released in uncensored arrested during a protest in front of the was here and I was working at home. form until 2010, a hundred years after White House. Her writing charted new But I was emotionally not there. From his death. If Kingston knew that she extremes—she briefly wrote poetry that the beginning of my life, I have always wouldn’t have to answer for her work, was searching and jagged, skeptical of been making up fantasies and stories perhaps she would be able to write more fiction’s capacity for imagining a way out and characters of the other world. Peo­ freely. At first, her notes represented an of the world’s problems. She no longer ple around me were not as interesting.” attempt to capture each day’s “inten­ wrote about the “Chinese past,” she said. Now she could be with her grand­ sity,” she said. In time, she realized that Now she was focussed on the “Ameri­ children and do absolutely nothing. she had written about twelve hundred can present.” Just as long­lost friends Writers, she told me, are interested in single­spaced pages. She continued writ­ from the sixties occasionally showed up understanding the past, or projecting ing. She told her agent, Sandy Dijkstra, on her doorstep, older characters started into the future. None of this makes that the book would remain unpublished resurfacing in her work. Fa Mu Lan, sense to a child. “They are in the pres­ for a hundred years. “I was stunned, from “The Woman Warrior,” returns at ent, and then we are in the present with shocked, and more,” Dijkstra said in an the end of her memoir, and Wittman them,” she said. e­mail, “and told her that I could not and Taña, the couple at the center of Later that day, I again met Kingston promise to be a living and functioning “Tripmaster Monkey,” show up in “The on the deck of her family’s home. She agent a century from now.” Kingston Fifth Book of Peace,” from 2003. appeared from inside the house with has not shown her any of it. “Maybe The last chapter of “The Fifth Book two glasses of iced tea and her manila you can persuade Maxine to show it to of Peace” recounts a version of her work envelope. From the deck, you could see us MUCH SOONER,” she said. “Magical with veterans. It feels like a thematic thinking works on the page, but not so riff on “The Woman Warrior”; the be­ well in real life.” ginning was hers, and the ending is Kingston leaned across the table theirs, together. Before publication, she and asked me if I remembered that, gave a draft to Golling to read. “I had at the beginning of “Tripmaster Mon­ no edits,” he told me coolly, then laughed. key,” Wittman imagines leaping off the In the book, Kingston describes see­ Golden Gate Bridge. She pointed out ing Golling at that initial meeting, in that, at the end of “Broad Margin,” Fa June, 1993, the first veteran to arrive: his Mu Lan returns and takes her own life. fading sailor’s tattoo, his description of In that book, Kingston goes on to list himself “not as a writer but as a house­ past the valley toward Waikīkī. Some the people in her life who have died in husband, father of six sons.” Kingston young men installing a solar panel across the past four years. “Each one who dies, wrote, “He asks large questions, and has the street chatted and listened to Tra­ I want to go with you,” she writes, be­ come here for answers.” vis Scott at a respectable volume. King­ fore wondering, on the next page, “Why ston opened the envelope and showed continue to live?” ne morning, Maxine, Earll, and me some of her novel, which she has “In all of these books, I’m preparing OJoseph took Hana Mĕi to the Ho­ tentatively titled “Posthumously, Max­ the reader and myself to deal with sui­ nolulu Zoo, which sits at the far east­ ine.” It was formatted in dense blocks cide,” she said. “You know how when ern end of Waikīkī’s tourist district. It of text, like a script. “I know I could die you go to the doctor you fill out a ques­ was early, and the sounds of gibbons, at any moment,” she said. “So I was tionnaire and they ask you, ‘Do you have hooting and snorting, filled the air. I writing a work which could end at any any suicidal thoughts?’” she asked. “I al­ chatted with Earll about the kitschy, old moment. And it’ll be O.K., because I’m ways put ‘No.’ But the truth is that I

38 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 have suicidal thoughts every day and I don’t tell anybody. I’ve been through therapy and everything, but I don’t even tell my therapist. I don’t want to upset them. Isn’t that a dumb reason?” When she was a child, she remem- bers asking God to strike her dead, just to see if it would happen. “I pretty much know that I’m not going to do it,” she said. But the writer’s privilege is to ex- plore where this darkness comes from. “I don’t want my family to think that I think about killing myself every day, you know?” she said. “And, so, this word ‘posthumously,’ I can delve into it and see what’s going on.” She reached into the manila enve- lope and took out a few sheets of paper. She put on a pair of glasses and read a vignette in which Maxine and Earll are flying home, worried that they will miss their connecting flight. They try “Thank you so much for coming.” to enlist the help of various flight at- tendants, but nobody seems to care. They make their way to the front of •• the plane, hugging their bags to their bodies as the door opens and they run describes them engaging in works full to grow on,” outlining who we might to the next gate. Maxine sees a young of formal complexity, experimenta- be in the future. “It’s really enjoying Asian-American soldier, who smiles tion, and contradiction, all of it meant my present life,” she said. “I am really at her, and then another. She wonders as some kind of final statement of enjoying going to buy that winter if they will help their “aunty” and offer what art can be. What Kingston read melon. I’m deeply into it.” They are to carry her luggage. But they don’t. to me—the story about the plane, an- moments that allow her to anchor in Earll eventually reaches the gate and other about going to Chinatown with the serene here and now of everyday blocks the door so that the plane can’t Earll to buy a winter melon for the life. “I’m so sane in my work. That’s leave until Maxine arrives. New Year’s dinner—had little to do why it’s fiction.” When Kingston speaks, her sentences with the status of the novel or the pos- The rain had stopped, and it was rise and fall, as if she were trying to tame sibilities of art. She had rendered mun- time for me to leave. We planned to her thoughts. But when she reads there’s dane moments in plain language. The meet in the East Bay in late March. a cool theatricality, an assertiveness that Maxine in these pieces, she explained, Maybe we could go for a walk at Berke- snaps everything into place. After she is her “actual self ”—how she hopes ley, or go see “Mulan,” the latest Dis- finished the scene, she removed her that Hana Mĕi will remember her. ney adaptation of the Chinese folk- glasses and smiled. “I’m being self- (The book will be available to her tale that she refashioned for “The indulgent,” she explained. The skies had grandchildren during their lifetime.) Woman Warrior.” turned gray and it began to pour, the I remarked on how different these vi- It was the week before everyone water draining into a small tiled foun- gnettes were from her work from the learned about social distancing. It had tain that Joseph had built along the edge seventies and eighties; they were be- become harder to find baby formula of the house. I assumed that the Asian- reft of drama or utopian longing, of and hand sanitizer on the island, American soldier and the flight atten- attempts to “make my mind large, as though hoarding still seemed like a dants held some deeper meaning. She the universe is large, so there is room plot point in a dystopian novel. Down- demurred. “There’s nothing cosmic for contradictions,” as she once wrote. stairs, Earll was sitting at a table read- about trying to get the plane,” she said. The “best life,” she replied, is “where ing the newspaper. He had turned “It’s just the present.” A way of expel- there isn’t great drama happening.” eighty-three a few days earlier, and I ling passing feelings of pettiness. I thought about what Kingston had wished him a belated happy birthday. said about the veterans’ group: A writer We chatted about Super Tuesday. Saki hen the scholar Edward Said is always alone, even when she is col- quietly shushed the newborn. I shook Wwas nearing the end of his life, laborating, or giving herself over. These Earll’s hand, and Maxine jumped he explored the idea of “late style,” how sketches of her life weren’t for anyone between us. “We’re not supposed to artists’ work accommodates the aware- but her. They were not, as the mother touch!” she exclaimed, laughing, and ness that their days are numbered. He in “The Woman Warrior” said, “a story pulled the door shut. 

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 39 40 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY HISASHI OKAWA fiction CONFESSIONS OF A SHINAGAWA MONKEY by haruki murakami

met that elderly monkey in a small its nose, for it snored louder than any was certainly more peaceful than bath- Japanese-style inn in a hot-springs cat I’d ever heard. Occasionally the ing with some noisy tour group, the way Itown in Gunma Prefecture, some rhythm of its snores fitfully missed a you do in the larger inns. five years ago. It was a rustic or, more beat. Everything in this inn seemed to precisely, decrepit inn, barely hang- be old and falling apart. was soaking in the bath for the third ing on, where I just happened to spend The room I was shown to was Itime when the monkey slid the glass a night. cramped, like the storage area where one door open with a clatter and came in- I was travelling around, wherever the keeps futon bedding; the ceiling light side. “Excuse me,” he said in a low voice. spirit led me, and it was already past was dim, and the flooring under the ta- It took me a while to realize that he was 7 p.m. when I arrived at the hot-springs tami creaked ominously with each step. a monkey. All the thick hot water had town and got off the train. Autumn was But it was too late to be particular. I told left me a bit dazed, and I’d never ex- nearly over, the sun had long since set, myself I should be happy to have a roof pected to hear a monkey speak, so I and the place was enveloped in that spe- over my head and a futon to sleep on. couldn’t immediately make the connec- cial navy-blue darkness particular to I put my one piece of luggage, a large tion between what I was seeing and the mountainous areas. A cold, biting wind shoulder bag, down on the floor and set fact that this was an actual monkey. The blew down from the peaks, sending fist- off back to town. (This wasn’t exactly monkey closed the door behind him, size leaves rustling along the street. the type of room I wanted to lounge straightened out the little buckets that I walked through the center of the around in.) I went into a nearby soba- lay strewn about, and stuck a thermom- town in search of a place to stay, but noodle shop and had a simple dinner. It eter into the bath to check the tempera- none of the decent inns would take in was that or nothing, since there were no ture. He gazed intently at the dial on the guests after the dinner hour had passed. other restaurants open. I had a beer, some thermometer, his eyes narrowed, for all I stopped at five or six places, but they bar snacks, and some hot soba. The soba the world like a bacteriologist isolating all turned me down flat. Finally, in a des- was mediocre, the soup lukewarm, but, some new strain of pathogen. erted area outside town, I came across again, I wasn’t about to complain. It beat “How is the bath?” the monkey asked an inn that would take me. It was a going to bed on an empty stomach. After me. desolate-looking, ramshackle place, al- I left the soba shop, I thought I’d buy “It’s very nice. Thank you,” I said. My most a flophouse. It had seen a lot of some snacks and a small bottle of whis- voice reverberated densely, softly, in the years go by, but it had none of the quaint key, but I couldn’t find a convenience steam. It sounded almost mythological, appeal you might expect in an old inn. store. It was after eight, and the only not like my own voice but, rather, like an Fittings here and there were ever so places open were the shooting-gallery echo from the past returning from deep in slightly slanted, as if slapdash repairs had game centers typically found in hot- the forest. And that echo was ...hold on been made that didn’t mesh with the springs towns. So I hoofed it back to a second. What was a monkey doing here? rest of the place. I doubted it would make the inn, changed into a yukata robe, and And why was he speaking my language? it through the next earthquake, and I went downstairs to take a bath. “Shall I scrub your back for you?” the could only hope that no temblor would Compared with the shabby building monkey asked, his voice still low. He had hit while I was there. and facilities, the hot-springs bath at the the clear, alluring voice of a baritone in The inn didn’t serve dinner, but break- inn was surprisingly wonderful. The a doo-wop group. Not at all what you fast was included, and the rate for one steaming water was a thick green color, would expect. But nothing was odd about night was incredibly cheap. Inside the not diluted, the sulfur odor more pun- his voice: if you closed your eyes and lis- entrance was a plain reception desk, be- gent than anything I’d ever experienced, tened, you’d think it was an ordinary per- hind which sat a completely hairless old and I soaked there, warming myself to son speaking. man—devoid of even eyebrows—who the bone. There were no other bathers “Yes, thanks,” I replied. It wasn’t as if took my payment for one night in ad- (I had no idea if there were even any I’d been sitting there hoping that some- vance. The lack of eyebrows made the other guests at the inn), and I was able one would come and scrub my back, but old man’s largish eyes seem to glisten to enjoy a long, leisurely bath. After a if I turned him down I was afraid he bizarrely, glaringly. On a cushion on the while, I felt a little light-headed and got might think I was opposed to having a floor beside him, a big brown cat, equally out to cool off, then got back into the monkey do it. I figured it was a kind offer ancient, was sacked out, sound asleep. tub. Maybe this decrepit-looking inn on his part, and I certainly didn’t want Something must have been wrong with was a good choice after all, I thought. It to hurt his feelings. So I slowly got up

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 41 “Yes, that’s truly lovely music,” the monkey said. “So that professor taught you lan- guage?” “He did. He didn’t have any children, and, perhaps to compensate for that, he trained me fairly strictly whenever he had time. He was very patient, a person who valued order and regularity above all. He was a serious person whose fa- vorite saying was that the repetition of accurate facts was the true road to wis- dom. His wife was a quiet, sweet person, always kind to me. They got along well, and I hesitate to mention this to an out- sider, but, believe me, their nighttime ac- tivities could be quite intense.” “Really,” I said. The monkey finally finished scrub- bing my back. “Thanks for your patience,” he said, and bowed his head. “These are the very weapons your mother and I used in our famous duel.” “Thank you,” I said. “It really felt good. So, do you work here at this inn?” “I do. They’ve been kind enough to •• let me work here. The larger, more up- scale inns would never hire a monkey. out of the tub and plunked myself down Our conversation paused at this point. But they’re always shorthanded around on a little wooden platform, with my The monkey continued firmly scrubbing here and, if you can make yourself use- back to the monkey. my back (which felt great), and all the ful, they don’t care if you’re a monkey or The monkey didn’t have any clothes while I tried to puzzle things out ratio- whatever. For a monkey, the pay is min- on. Which, of course, is usually the case nally. A monkey raised in Shinagawa? imal, and they let me work only where for a monkey, so it didn’t strike me as The Gotenyama Garden? And such a I can stay mostly out of sight. Straight- odd. He seemed to be fairly old; he had fluent speaker? How was that possible? ening up the bath area, cleaning, things a lot of white in his hair. He brought This was a monkey, for goodness’ sake. A of that sort. Most guests would be over a small towel, rubbed soap on it, monkey, and nothing else. shocked if a monkey served them tea and with a practiced hand gave my back “I live in Minato-ku,” I said, a basi- and so on. Working in the kitchen is out, a good scrubbing. cally meaningless statement. too, since I’d run into issues with the “It’s got very cold these days, hasn’t “We were almost neighbors, then,” food-sanitation law.” it?” the monkey remarked. the monkey said in a friendly tone. “Have you been working here for a “That it has.” “What kind of person raised you in long time?” I asked. “Before long this place will be cov- Shinagawa?” I asked. “It’s been about three years.” ered in snow. And then they’ll have to “My master was a college professor. “But you must have gone through all shovel snow from the roofs, which is no He specialized in physics, and held a sorts of things before you settled down easy task, believe me.” chair at Tokyo Gakugei University.” here?” There was a brief pause, and I jumped “Quite an intellectual, then.” The monkey gave a quick nod. “Very in. “So you can speak human language?” “He certainly was. He loved music true.” “I can indeed,” the monkey replied more than anything, particularly the I hesitated, but then came out and briskly. He was probably asked that a lot. music of Bruckner and Richard Strauss. asked him, “If you don’t mind, could you “I was raised by humans from an early Thanks to which, I developed a fond- tell me more about your background?” age, and before I knew it I was able to ness for that music myself. I heard it all The monkey considered this, and speak. I lived for quite a long time in the time. Picked up a knowledge of it then said, “Yes, that would be fine. It Tokyo, in Shinagawa.” without even realizing it, you could say.” might not be as interesting as you ex- “What part of Shinagawa?” “You enjoy Bruckner?” pect, but I’m off work at ten and I could “Around Gotenyama.” “Yes. His Seventh Symphony. I al- stop by your room after that. Would that “That’s a nice area.” ways find the third movement particu- be convenient?” “Yes, as you know, it’s a very pleasant larly uplifting.” “Certainly,” I replied. “I’d be grateful place to live. Nearby is the Gotenyama “I often listen to his Ninth Symphony,” if you could bring some beer then.” Garden, and I enjoyed the natural scen- I chimed in. Another pretty meaning- “Understood. Some cold beers it is. ery there.” less statement. Would Sapporo be all right?”

42 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 “That would be fine. So, you drink thankful to have a bed to sleep in and there, not part of human society, not beer?” three square meals a day. Not that it’s part of the monkeys’ world. It was a har- “A little bit, yes.” paradise or anything.” rowing existence.” “Then please bring two large bottles.” The monkey had finished his first “And you couldn’t listen to Bruckner, “Of course. If I understand correctly, glass, so I poured him another. either.” you are staying in the Araiso Suite, on “Much obliged,” he said politely. “True. That’s not part of my life now,” the second floor?” “Have you lived not just with humans the Shinagawa Monkey said, and drank “That’s right,” I said. but with your own kind? With other some more beer. I studied his face, but, “It’s a little strange, though, don’t you monkeys, I mean?” I asked. There were since it was red to begin with, I didn’t think?” the monkey said. “An inn in the so many things I wanted to ask him. notice it turning any redder. I figured mountains with a room named arai- “Yes, several times,” the monkey an- this monkey could hold his liquor. Or so—‘rugged shore.’ ” He chuckled. I’d swered, his face clouding over slightly. maybe with monkeys you can’t tell from never in my life heard a monkey laugh. The wrinkles beside his eyes formed their faces when they’re drunk. But I guess monkeys do laugh, and even deep folds. “For various reasons, I was “The other thing that really tor- cry, at times. It shouldn’t have surprised driven out, forcibly, from Shinagawa and mented me was relations with females.” me, given that he was talking. released in Takasakiyama, the area down “I see,” I said. “And by ‘relations’ with “By the way, do you have a name?” south that’s famous for its monkey park. females you mean—?” I asked. I thought at first that I could live “In short, I didn’t feel a speck of sex- “No, no name, per se. But everyone peaceably there, but things didn’t work ual desire for female monkeys. I had a calls me the Shinagawa Monkey.” out that way. The other monkeys were lot of opportunities to be with them, The monkey slid open the glass door, my dear comrades, don’t get me wrong, but never really felt like it.” turned, and gave a polite bow, then slowly but, having been raised in a human “So female monkeys didn’t turn closed the door. household, by the professor and his wife, you on, even though you’re a monkey I just couldn’t express my feelings well yourself?” t was a little past ten when the mon- to them. We had little in common, and “Yes. That’s exactly right. It’s embar- Ikey came to the Araiso Suite, bear- communication wasn’t easy. ‘You talk rassing, but, honestly, I could only love ing a tray with two large bottles of beer. funny,’ they told me, and they sort of human females.” In addition to the beer, the tray held a mocked me and bullied me. The female I was silent and drained my glass bottle opener, two glasses, and some monkeys would giggle when they looked of beer. I opened the bag of crunchy snacks: dried, seasoned squid and a bag at me. Monkeys are extremely sensitive snacks and grabbed a handful. “That of kakipi—rice crackers with peanuts. to the most minute differences. They could lead to some real problems, I Typical bar snacks. This was one atten- found the way I acted comical, and it would think.” tive monkey. annoyed them, irritated them sometimes. “Yes, real problems, indeed. Me being The monkey was dressed now, in gray It got harder for me to stay there, so a monkey, after all, there was no way I sweatpants and a thick, long-sleeved eventually I went off on my own. Be- could expect human females to respond shirt with “IyNY” printed on it, prob- came a rogue monkey, in other words.” to my desires. Plus, it runs counter to ably some kid’s hand-me-downs. “It must have been lonely for you.” genetics.” There was no table in the room, so “Indeed it was. Nobody protected I waited for him to go on. The mon- we sat, side by side, on some thin zabu- me, and I had to scrounge for food on key rubbed hard behind his ear and finally ton cushions, and leaned back against the continued. wall. The monkey used the opener to pop “So I had to find another method of the cap off one of the beers and poured ridding myself of my unfulfilled desires.” out two glasses. Silently we clinked our “What do you mean by ‘another glasses together in a little toast. method’?” “Thanks for the drinks,” the monkey The monkey frowned deeply. His red said, and happily gulped the cold beer. I face turned a bit darker. drank some as well. Honestly, it felt odd “You may not believe me,” the mon- to be seated next to a monkey, sharing a key said. “You probably won’t believe me, beer, but I guess you get used to it. I should say. But, from a certain point “A beer after work can’t be beat,” the my own and somehow survive. But the on, I started stealing the names of the monkey said, wiping his mouth with the worst thing was not having anyone to women I fell for.” hairy back of his hand. “But, for a mon- communicate with. I couldn’t talk with “Stealing their names?” key, the opportunities to have a beer like monkeys or with humans. Isolation like “Correct. I’m not sure why, but I seem this are few and far between.” that is heartrending. Takasakiyama is to have been born with a special talent “Do you live here at the inn?” full of human visitors, but I couldn’t just for it. If I feel like it, I can steal some- “Yes, there’s a room, sort of an attic, start up a conversation with whomever body’s name and make it my own.” where they let me sleep. There are mice I happened to come across. Do that and A wave of confusion hit me. from time to time, so it’s hard to relax there’d be hell to pay. The upshot was “I’m not sure I get it,” I said. “When there, but I’m a monkey, so I have to be that I wound up sort of neither here nor you say you steal people’s names, does

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 43 that mean that they completely lose their they’re out. I scout around for some- took a deep, slow breath, the kind of name?” thing with their name on it and take it.” breath a long jumper takes before he “No. They don’t totally lose their “So you use that object with the wom- starts his approach run. name. I steal part of their name, a frag- an’s name on it, along with your will “I believe that love is the indispens- ment. But when I take that part the power, to steal a name?” able fuel for us to go on living. Someday name gets less substantial, lighter than “Precisely. I stare at the name that’s that love may end. Or it may never amount before. Like when the sun clouds over written there for a long time, focussing to anything. But even if love fades away, and your shadow on the ground gets my emotions, absorbing the name of the even if it’s unrequited, you can still hold that much paler. And, depending on the person I love. It takes a lot of time and on to the memory of having loved some- person, they might not be aware of the is mentally and physically exhausting. I one, of having fallen in love with some- loss. They just have a sense that some- get completely engrossed in it, and some- one. And that’s a valuable source of thing’s a little off.” how a part of the woman becomes a part warmth. Without that heat source, a per- “But some do clearly realize it, right? of me. And my affection and my desire, son’s heart—and a monkey’s heart, too— That a part of their name has been which until then had no outlet, are safely would turn into a bitterly cold, barren stolen?” satisfied.” wasteland. A place where not a ray of “Yes, of course. Sometimes they find “So there’s nothing physical involved?” sunlight falls, where the wildflowers of they can’t remember their name. Quite The monkey nodded sharply. “I know peace, the trees of hope, have no chance inconvenient, a real bother, as you might I’m just a lowly monkey, but I never do to grow. Here in my heart, I treasure the imagine. And they may not even rec- anything unseemly. I make the name of names of those seven beautiful women I ognize their name for what it is. In some the woman I love a part of me—that’s loved.” The monkey laid a palm on his cases, they suffer through something plenty for me. I agree it’s a bit perverted, hairy chest. “I plan to use these memo- close to an identity crisis. And it’s all but it’s also a completely pure, platonic ries as my own little fuel source to burn my fault, since I stole that person’s name. act. I simply possess a great love for that on cold nights, to keep me warm as I live I feel very sorry about that. I often feel name inside me, secretly. Like a gentle out what’s left of my own personal life.” the weight of a guilty conscience bear- breeze wafting over a meadow.” The monkey chuckled again, and ing down on me. I know it’s wrong, yet “Hmm,” I said, impressed. “I guess lightly shook his head a few times. I can’t stop myself. I’m not trying to ex- you could even call that the ultimate “That’s a strange way of putting it, cuse my actions, but my dopamine lev- form of romantic love.” isn’t it?” he said. “Personal life. Given that els force me to do it. Like there’s a voice “Agreed. But it’s also the ultimate I’m a monkey, not a person. Hee hee!” telling me, ‘Hey, go ahead, steal the name. form of loneliness. Like two sides of a It was eleven-thirty when we finally It’s not like it’s illegal or anything.’” coin. The two extremes are stuck to- finished drinking the two large bottles I folded my arms and studied the gether and can never be separated.” of beer. “I should be going,” the monkey monkey. Dopamine? Finally, I spoke up. Our conversation came to a halt here, said. “I got to feeling so good I ran off “And the names you steal are only those and the monkey and I silently drank our at the mouth, I’m afraid. My apologies.” of the women you love or sexually de- beer, snacking on the kakipi and the dried “No, I found it an interesting story,” sire. Do I have that right?” squid. I said. Maybe “interesting” wasn’t the “Exactly. I don’t randomly steal just “Have you stolen anyone’s name re- right word, though. I mean, sharing a anybody’s name.” cently?” I asked. beer and chatting with a monkey was a “How many names have you stolen?” The monkey shook his head. He pretty unusual experience in and of it- With a serious expression, the mon- grabbed some of the stiff hair on his self. Add to that the fact that this par- key totalled it up on his fingers. As he arm, as if making sure that he was, in- ticular monkey loved Bruckner and stole counted, he was muttering something. deed, an actual monkey. “No, I haven’t women’s names because he was driven He looked up. “Seven in all. I stole seven stolen anyone’s name recently. After I to by sexual desire (or perhaps love), and women’s names.” came to this town, I made up my mind “interesting” didn’t begin to describe it. Was this a lot, or not so many? Who to put that kind of misconduct behind It was the most incredible thing I’d ever could say? me. Thanks to which, the soul of this heard. But I didn’t want to stir up the “So how do you do it?” I asked. “If little monkey has found a measure of monkey’s emotions any more than was you don’t mind telling me?” peace. I treasure the names of the seven necessary, so I chose this more calming, “It’s mostly by will power. Power of women in my heart and live a quiet, neutral word. concentration, psychic energy. But that’s tranquil life.” As we said goodbye, I handed the not enough. I need something with the “I’m glad to hear it,” I said. monkey a thousand-yen bill as a tip. “It’s person’s name actually written on it. An “I know this is quite forward of me, not much,” I said, “but please buy yourself I.D. is ideal. A driver’s license, student but I was wondering if you’d be kind something good to eat.” I.D., insurance card, or passport. Things enough to allow me to give my own At first the monkey refused, but I in- of this sort. A nametag will work, too. opinion on the subject of love.” sisted and he finally accepted it. He Anyway, I need to get hold of an actual “Of course,” I said. folded the bill and carefully slipped it object like one of those. Usually, steal- The monkey blinked widely several into the pocket of his sweatpants. ing is the only way. I’m pretty skilled at times. His thick eyelashes waved up and “It’s very kind of you,” he said. “You’ve sneaking into people’s rooms when down like palm fronds in the breeze. He listened to my absurd life story, treated

44 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 close encounters by bryan washington YOU MISS IT WHEN IT’S GONE

n my last trip to a gay bar for the foreseeable future, Omy boyfriend and I played Jenga on a sofa outside. I pulled a piece from a nook. He slid one from a cranny. A bachelor party was next to us, and eventually someone ran into our tower of blocks. Immediately, fifteen pairs of hands, all of them various shades, stooped to gather the pieces. Our fingers touched from time to time, grazing wrists, and we laughed about the touching, didn’t think twice. Another time, in Austin, we found a gay bar on a noth- ing Saturday night. There was no reason for the place to be packed from wall to wall, with people breathing all over one another, sweating and pulsing and winding and shov- ing—but it was. We were. We were a blob of gas and air. At one point, I elbowed the guy shaking beside me, and after I apologized he touched my ear and said it was fine. One night a few years back, at a gay bar in New Orleans, I was watching a drag show prep when a group of construc- tion workers wandered in, holding helmets and kicking boots and already more than a little drunk. Some of the on the balcony, and he noted the physical proximity of the bar’s regulars traded glances. The performers took the stage. space. Everyone stands so fucking close, he said. Just Eventually, recognition rippled across the workers’ faces. But then, a man slipped between us, cupping our elbows, not one of them took a dollar bill from his pants, and his buddies even looking at us. followed, showering the stage. The performers pulled them One night, at a gay bar in Tokyo, I sat with a group of onstage, where they continued to dance. We tipped, cheered. strangers, laughing at something I can’t recall, but it was One night, at a gay bar in Houston, I watched a group enough to keep us from breathing. We’d come from Texas, of guys huddled around a man who was flailing his hands, Singapore, Toronto, San Francisco, London, and Seoul—I’d tickling the Christmas lights hanging above him. He never met them before, and will almost certainly never looked maybe forty. He’d just come out. His friends stood meet them again. But still: we laughed until we were beside him, reining their guy in, asking passersby to give hoarse, leaning on one another’s shoulders, basically crying. him a kiss on the cheek to celebrate. A loose line formed One night, at a gay bar in Sydney, after a long night of beside them, ebbing and flowing with the music, congratu- pretending to drink with writers, I shared exactly one beer lating and patting and chanting as though we’d all just with a stranger. We talked about our jobs, and then bánh won some championship. mì, and then video games, and then religion, and also the Another night, at a bar in Doyama, nearly halfway fact that he was a break-dancer. When I asked how that across the world in Osaka’s Umeda district, I spent a per- worked, he stood up. He motioned for me to follow. He’d fectly rainy hour drinking next to the only other patron. pull a move, guiding my limbs until I did the same. We did When we stepped outside, he kissed me, and then I that for nearly two hours, stumbling through the motions. watched him walk away. A little later, I told the friend I It’s worth wondering how a space largely free of threats was staying with about it, and he narrowed his eyes and evolves when every space becomes a threat. It’s worth won- then rolled them into the back of his head. dering what the function of these spaces is, and whether One evening, at a dancy gay bar in Houston, sometime they’ll survive, and what their survival will mean as the na- after eleven but almost certainly before one, the crowd ture of physical space continues to change. Some of us reached that point in the evening where people start dis- waited a long time for those spaces. Some might not mind robing, loosening ties and opening buttons and wrapping waiting a bit longer. Some of us don’t have time to wait. hoodies around their waists. I don’t remember much about You miss it when it’s gone. the music or the conversations or any of that. But it was But, before everything changed, there was one night— early February. So I remember the steam. walking back to our car from a gay bar in Houston—when One night, a few days after the Pulse shooting, I sat in we skipped along the broken sidewalk, buzzed on proxim- an Atlanta gay bar where nobody said anything at all. In- ity and beer and chilaquiles. Turning the corner, we ran stead, we touched the small of one another’s back in pass- into a guy staggering back to his own car, with his own ing and gently squeezed every neighboring shoulder. people. We hugged in the street. Apologized. Kissed one One night, in New Orleans, I sat with a straight another’s cheeks. We said, Sorry, thank you, love you, be friend who had never been to a gay bar before. We vaped safe, goodbye. 

ILLUSTRATION BY MARTA MONTEIRO THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 45 me to beer, and now this generous go sideways, and, worst-case scenario, person is believable. And I just didn’t get gesture. I can’t tell you how much I ap- she’d think I was insane. Chances were the feeling that what the Shinagawa preciate it.” that the monkey was an off-the-books Monkey had told me was a made-up The monkey put the empty beer bot- employee, and the inn couldn’t acknowl- story. The look in his eyes and his ex- tles and glasses on the tray and carried edge him publicly for fear of alerting the pression, the way he pondered things it out of the room. tax office or the health department. every once in a while, his pauses, ges- On the train ride home, I mentally tures, the way he’d get stuck for words— he next morning, I checked out of replayed everything the monkey had nothing about it seemed artificial or Tthe inn and went back to Tokyo. told me. I jotted down all the details, forced. And, above all, there was the total, At the front desk, the creepy old man as best as I could remember them, in a even painful honesty of his confession. with no hair or eyebrows was nowhere notebook that I used for work, think- My relaxed solo journey over, I re- to be seen, nor was the aged cat with ing that when I got back to Tokyo I’d turned to the whirlwind routine of the the nose issues. Instead, there was a fat, write the whole thing out from start city. Even when I don’t have any major surly middle-aged woman, and when I to finish. work-related assignments, somehow, as said I’d like to pay the additional charges If the monkey really did exist—and I get older, I find myself busier than ever. for last night’s bottles of beer she said, that was the only way I could see it—I And time seems to steadily speed up. In emphatically, that there were no inci- wasn’t at all sure how much I should ac- the end I never told anyone about the dental charges on my bill. “All we have cept of what he had told me over beer. Shinagawa Monkey, or wrote anything here is canned beer from the vending It was hard to judge his story fairly. Was about him. Why try if no one would be- machine,” she insisted. “We never pro- it really possible to steal women’s names lieve me? Unless I could provide proof— vide bottled beer.” and possess them yourself? Was this proof, that is, that the monkey actually Once again I was confused. I felt as some unique ability that only the Shi- existed—people would just say that I was though bits of reality and unreality were nagawa Monkey had been given? Maybe “making stuff up again.” And if I wrote randomly changing places. But I had the monkey was a pathological liar. Who about him as fiction the story would lack definitely shared two large bottles of Sap- could say? Naturally, I’d never heard of a clear focus or point. I could well imag- poro beer with the monkey as I listened a monkey with mythomania before, but, ine my editor looking puzzled and say- to his life story. if a monkey could speak a human lan- ing, “I hesitate to ask, since you’re the I was going to bring up the monkey guage as skillfully as he did, it wouldn’t author, but what is the theme of this with the middle-aged woman, but de- be beyond the realm of possibility for story supposed to be?” cided against it. Maybe the monkey didn’t him to also be a habitual liar. Theme? Can’t say there is one. It’s really exist, and it had all been an illu- I’d interviewed numerous people as just about an old monkey who speaks sion, the product of a brain pickled by part of my work, and had become pretty human language, who scrubs guests’ backs long soaks in the hot springs. Or maybe good at sniffing out who could be be- in the hot springs in a tiny town in what I saw was a strange, realistic dream. lieved and who couldn’t. When some- Gunma Prefecture, who enjoys cold beer, If I came out with something like “You one talks for a while, you can pick up falls in love with human women, and have an employee who’s an elderly mon- certain subtle hints and signals and get steals their names. Where’s the theme key who can speak, right?” things might an intuitive sense of whether or not the in that? Or the moral? And, as time passed, the memory of that hot-springs town began to fade. No matter how vivid memories may be, they can’t conquer time.

ut now, five years later, I’ve decided Bto write about it, based on the notes I scribbled down back then. All because something happened recently that got me thinking. If that incident hadn’t taken place, I might well not be writing this. I had a work-related appointment in the coffee lounge of a hotel in Akasaka. The person I was meeting was the ed- itor of a travel magazine. A very attrac- tive woman, thirty or so, petite, with long hair, a lovely complexion, and large, fetching eyes. She was an able editor. And still single. We’d worked together quite a few times, and got along well. After we’d taken care of work, we sat “Let’s take our fun where we find it.” back and chatted over coffee for a while. Her cell phone rang and she looked at next to me on the bench. I was redoing (A copy monkey?) Or was something me apologetically. I motioned to her to my lipstick with my compact, and, when else, other than a monkey, doing this? take the call. She checked the incoming I looked back, the handbag was gone. I I really didn’t want to think that the number and answered it. It seemed to be couldn’t understand it. I’d looked away Shinagawa Monkey was back to steal- about some reservation she’d made. At for only a second, and I didn’t sense any- ing names. He’d told me, quite matter- a restaurant, maybe, or a hotel, or a flight. one nearby or hear any footsteps. I looked of-factly, that having seven women’s Something along those lines. She talked around, but I was alone. It was a quiet names tucked inside him was plenty, for a while, checking her pocket plan- park, and I’m sure if somebody had come and that he was happy simply living out ner, and then shot me a troubled look. to steal my bag I would have noticed it.” his remaining years quietly in that lit- “I’m very sorry,” she said to me in a I waited for her to go on. tle hot-springs town. And he’d seemed small voice, her hand covering the phone. “But that’s not all that was strange. to mean it. But maybe the monkey had “This is a weird question, I know, but That same afternoon I got a call from the a chronic psychological condition, one what’s my name?” police, saying that my hand- that reason alone couldn’t I gasped, but, as casually as I could, I bag had been found. It had hold in check. And maybe told her her full name. She nodded and been set outside a small po- his illness, and his dopa- relayed the information to the person on lice station near the park. The mine, were urging him to the other end of the line. Then she hung cash was still inside, as were just do it! And perhaps all up and apologized to me again. my credit cards, A.T.M. card, that had brought him back “I’m so sorry about that. All of a sud- and cell phone. All there, un- to his old haunts in Shi- den I just couldn’t remember my name. touched. Only my driver’s li- nagawa, back to his former, I’m so embarrassed.” cense was gone. The police- pernicious habits. “Does that happen sometimes?” I man was quite surprised. Maybe I’ll try it myself asked. Who doesn’t take the cash, sometime. On sleepless She seemed to hesitate, but finally only the license, and leaves nights, that random, fanci- nodded. “Yes, it’s happening a lot these the bag right outside a police station?” ful thought sometimes comes to me. days. I just can’t recall my name. It’s like I sighed quietly, but said nothing. I’ll filch the I.D. or the nametag of a I’ve blacked out or something.” “This was the end of March. Right woman I love, focus on it like a laser, “Do you forget other things, too? Like away, I went to the Motor Vehicles office pull her name inside me, and possess a you can’t remember your birthday or your in Samezu and had them issue a new li- part of her, all to myself. What would telephone number or a PIN number?” cense. The whole incident was pretty that feel like? She shook her head decisively. “No, weird, but fortunately there wasn’t any No. That’ll never happen. I’ve never not at all. I’ve always had a good mem- real harm done.” been deft with my hands, and would ory. I know all my friends’ birthdays by “Samezu is in Shinagawa, isn’t it?” never be able to steal something that be- heart. I haven’t forgotten anyone else’s “That’s right. It’s in Higashioi. My longed to someone else. Even if that name, not even once. But, still, some- company’s in Takanawa, so it’s a quick something had no physical form, and steal- times I can’t remember my own name. I taxi ride,” she said. She gave me a doubt- ing it wasn’t against the law. can’t figure it out. After a couple of min- ful look. “Do you think there’s a connec- Extreme love, extreme loneliness. Ever utes, my memory comes back, but that tion? Between me not remembering my since then, whenever I listen to a Bruck- couple of minutes is totally inconvenient, name and losing my license?” ner symphony I ponder that Shinagawa and I panic. It’s like I’m not myself any- I quickly shook my head. I couldn’t Monkey’s personal life. I picture the el- more. Do you think it’s a sign of early- exactly bring up the story of the Shi- derly monkey in that tiny hot-springs onset Alzheimer’s?” nagawa Monkey. town, in an attic in a rundown inn, asleep I sighed. “Medically, I don’t know, but “No, I don’t think there’s a connec- on a thin futon. And I think of the when did it start, you suddenly forget- tion,” I said. “It just sort of popped into snacks—the kakipi and the dried squid— ting your name?” my head. Since it involves your name.” that we enjoyed as we drank beer to- She squinted and thought about it. She looked unconvinced. I knew it gether, propped up against the wall. “About half a year ago, I think. I remem- was risky, but there was one more vital I haven’t seen the beautiful travel-mag- ber it was when I went to enjoy the cherry question I had to ask. azine editor since then, so I have no idea blossoms. That was the first time.” “By the way, have you seen any mon- what fate befell her name after that. I “This might be an odd thing to ask, keys lately?” hope it didn’t cause her any real hard- but did you lose anything at that time? “Monkeys?” she asked. “You mean the ship. She was blameless, after all. Noth- Some sort of I.D., like a driver’s license, animals?” ing was her fault. I do feel bad about it, a passport, an insurance card?” “Yes, real live monkeys,” I said. but I still can’t bring myself to tell her She pursed her lips, lost in thought She shook her head. “I don’t think about the Shinagawa Monkey.  for a while, then replied. “You know, now I’ve seen a monkey for years. Not in a (Translated, from the Japanese, that you mention it, I did lose my driv- zoo, or anywhere else.” by Philip Gabriel.) er’s license back then. It was lunchtime Was the Shinagawa Monkey back to and I was sitting on a park bench, tak- his old tricks? Or was another monkey NEWYORKER.COM ing a break, and I put my handbag right using his M.O. to commit the same crime? Haruki Murakami on symbols and monkeys.

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 47 48 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 PHOTOGRAPH BY SUE DE BEER fiction WHITE NOISE by emma cline

he dreams had mostly stopped. He called Joan. “This is off the rec- “O.K., Harvey. I’m just walking down- Still, he found himself awake, ord,” he said, instantly. stairs, O.K.? Just hold your horses.” T blinking in the dark room. Her voice was sleepy. “Hello?” “And this is off the record, Joan.” Four A.M. He lay unmoving for a mo- “Do you agree?” he said. “I need a “Yes, Harvey.” ment under the duvet. His T-shirt was verbal.” “This time tomorrow”—he corrected stuck to his back—night sweats, the pil- “Harvey?” she said. himself—“or, you know, tomorrow, not low swampy, the sheets damp. Roll to “A verbal,” he said. “Off the record.” sure when, specifically, this whole case the other side. Spread out on the chilly “Sure, Harvey.” will be revealed for what it is: an elab- sheets. Keep the eyes closed. As soon as He heard someone in the back- orate fraud, an attempt to litigate regret both eyes opened, it would be straight ground. “Who is that?” and make me a scapegoat. A fraud, it to dull business, an organizer already laid “It’s Jerry. We’re in bed.” bears saying, that you and your cohorts out with his morning meds, a bottle of “Well, get out of bed, O.K.? This is at the so-called paper of record were room-temperature Fiji water alongside. for your ears only. I’ll call back in five.” willing participants in. A lot of very bad This time tomorrow, he would know Joan liked him. Legitimately liked actors there, your colleagues. Some everything. Well, not exactly this time, him. She was tough, no-nonsense, but might say there’s a civil RICO case to be more like 10 a.m., but, in any case, all happy to soft-pedal an actor’s D.U.I. in made against you—” would be decided. He believed, truly, return for a lengthy profile, gladly ac- She didn’t respond. that he would be exonerated. How could cepted screening invitations and was a “Joan?” he not be? This was America. Maybe reliable fixture at after-parties. They’d “Sorry, my kid has an ear infection, there was a moment, a day or two right had fun times. The junket for the film I think she’s awake. Can you hold on when this all began, when he believed that he’d triaged out of near-disaster: a second?” that this might be it, the end of the Harvey had hunkered down in Sag and He hung up the phone. road. He understood Epstein hanging basically rewritten the script, while the Time to get dressed, start the whole himself in his cell—because what would director was hauled out of rehab and mess again. The Loro Piana half-zip, life look like, afterward? No more din- barely propped up by a team of A.D.s. navy, good American bluejeans. The ankle ner parties, no more respect, no buffer An Academy campaign. The liaison in bracelet was slim enough that it actually of fear and admiration that kept you in Japan who took them to Gold Bar— did seem more like a bracelet. Even as a kind of pleasant trance, the world shap- the only white people in the place. Uni light as it was, it messed with his stride, ing itself around you. on filet mignon, a skinny press assistant this little annoyance, ever present, never And, yes, there was a moment when hanging around who wouldn’t touch quite fading into the background. Enough people no longer returned his calls, it. Who cringed when he put his arm clearance underneath to pull up his thin looked away from him on the street, no around her, cowering on the banquette. red socks. Socks from the place the Pope room at the inn, etc. But, almost as They’d left her at the place, as a joke. As gets his. Tomato red, cotton lisle, made quickly, other people showed up, rushed he remembered it. Let her try to find in this tiny shop by the Vatican. to fill the void. Came to his Super Bowl her way back to the hotel at 3 A.M. in He splashed his face with water. party, let him use country houses, con- Tokyo. This was before phones, when Tightened his belt. He was losing sult with family lawyers. He was stay- people got legitimately lost. And, as he weight. Funny that this was what it ing at Vogel’s Connecticut house now, remembered, Joan hadn’t exactly gone took, in the end. Not the hugely expen- for example. A man wouldn’t let an- out of her way to help the girl, or insist sive doctors, the sachets of vitamins other man stay in his home if he was they take her home. She had thought meant to replace meals, the overnight truly a leper. it was funny, too. sleep study at Weill Cornell and daily He was fully awake now, adrenaline He dialled again. Pilates instruction. All it took, it turned lighting up his brain, the itch to make Joan answered on the first ring. out, was total annihilation. Attempted plans, get to work. He turned on the “I want to give you the first inter- annihilation, he corrected himself, the bedside light and sat against the pil- view after I’m exonerated,” he said. “I threat of annihilation. lows. He guzzled the last of the stale do. But I want to make sure you have “There’s been an assassination at- water, groped for his legal pad. It was all the facts, all the facts. ’Cause there tempt,” he heard in his head, as if from better, he’d learned, after the punish- is a lot,” he said, “a lot that has been a news announcer, “an attempt on the ing rounds of discovery, to keep lists suppressed in this case. You would be President’s life.” This had been a recur- on paper. Papers got misplaced, pa- shocked to find out even a fraction of ring thought lately: an assassination at- pers disappeared. what the other side buried—” tempt, an assassination attempt. He had

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 49 survived an assassination attempt. Be- ach, absently. “Breakfast, no, not yet. My with me. Patting the hotel bed, over and cause how else could you describe what juice, the regular.” over. Gripping a wrist with his face in they were trying to do to him? The “Certainly. The breakfast room is all a moue of sorrow—come on, he said, shocking, incredible resources they had set up. Let me know if you need any- come on. Be a nice girl, not a sour one. marshalled against one man? He was thing else.” I gave you a massage. Now you can give just a man, just one man in red socks Gabe brought in the coffee, the glass me one. It’s only fair. and a too-thin T-shirt, an ache in his of juice. Grapefruit juice interfered with He aimed the remote at the big tele- left molar, a bad back that was basically Harvey’s Lipitor. So lately he was al- vision. It took up almost the whole wall, on the verge of collapse, all his cartilage lowed only a splash with seltzer. He a very Master of the Universe, situa- scraped away so his spine was a teeter- missed the full glass, the scathing mouth- tion-room setup, a little rich for Vogel, ing Jenga stack of disks. ful that used to start every day. Four news- who was, essentially, a money manager. papers were lined up in tidy order along- He clicked the remote once, clicked little frightening, the carpeted stairs, side the placemat—he’d gotten used to twice. The screen remained blank. A his ankles feeling hollow and frail. blurring his vision a little, preëmptively, “Gabe,” he called out. Nothing. He gripped the bannister. Better to just just to lessen the shock upon encounter- “Gabe,” he said, louder, aware of how take the elevator from now on, one of ing his own face suddenly on the front aggro his voice sounded, a bark, really, the reasons Vogel had offered the house page, his name swimming above the fold. exactly what people expected from him. up, that cheesy elevator. Seeing the photos had been rough, He should watch himself, just get into Downstairs was quiet, the rooms dark, worse than he’d imagined. You let go of the habit of corralling certain impulses, though a few lights were on in the a lot of things, had to get used to shame, though who was here to make a note kitchen. He’d assumed no one was but it was hard to totally abandon van- of any bad behavior except Gabe? awake, but then Gabe stepped out from ity. Harvey hobbling with the walker, “Of course,” Gabe said, taking the the pantry. He was fully dressed, face the suit that the lawyers had insisted be remote. He was so anodyne, so mild— bright and avid. slightly ill-fitting, slightly cheap. They hard to imagine him having sex, eating “Good morning,” Gabe said, smoothly, wanted to make everyone feel sorry for food, meeting any human need. He as if this were a normal hour, as if it weren’t him. A strange pose to take, at least in asked what channel Harvey would like. only 5 a.m. Harvey supposed that was public. It was, he supposed, what he News, naturally. On mute. what Gabe’s job entailed, being perpet- used to do easily enough in private— The sun was not visible yet, but the ually unsurprised. “Can I get you a little my mother died today, he said, watch- light had changed. A new day, time to breakfast? Coffee?” ing the girl’s face change. I’m so lonely, get to work. He dialled the lawyer’s num- “Coffee, yes.” Harvey patted his stom- just sit with me a minute, just lie here ber. It went straight to voice mail. He dialled again. The same. And again. The coffee was cold. Gabe brought a new carafe before Harvey could shout for him. As Gabe poured a fresh cup, the pos- sibility of God considering Harvey’s fate floated across his mind: a frowning white-bearded daddy gazing down, mak- ing a list of his good deeds, his failings. Like maybe this would be taken into account tomorrow. Affect the verdict. Harvey forced himself to catch Gabe’s gaze, forced himself to smile. “Thanks,” he said, smiling hard so his eyes crinkled, and Gabe smiled back, pleasantly, though his brow furrowed a little and he seemed to be in a hurry to leave the room. O.K., the day had barely started and already he was being kind, making moves. On the giant screen a blonde in a red fitted dress was leaning on the news desk, staring feverishly into the camera, and Harvey stared back, down- ing the cup of coffee. She was gestur- ing at numbers on a green screen, num- “Oh, I’ve always wanted to pretend to want bers that he didn’t understand yet, to hike the Appalachian Trail.” numbers that meant nothing to him, but soon enough the blond woman hand. O.K.? And definitely no food.” “Well,” Don DeLillo said, squinting would reward his attentions: the con- “Got it,” he said. Loud enough that at the sun, squinting at the mousy bird. text would be explained, the meaning the man looked over. “I’ll see you.” revealed. Nancy was droning on—a bankruptcy “Yes,” Harvey said, his eyes un- He went outside to make a few calls, lien, some claimant who’d worked in blinking, his voice freighted. “Yes, I’ll putting on a waxed barn jacket from the Holmby Hills house coming out of see you soon.” the front closet. Sure, all the staff had the woodwork. And then all at once he signed N.D.A.s, but better to be care- placed the man next door. A shock, but arvey could visualize the plan, see ful. He strode far enough away that Vo- then, when Harvey thought about it, why Heach step of the process, the whole gel’s house—a boxy brick Colonial with should it be a surprise? He was a pri- thing unfolding cleanly in his mind’s eye flickering gas lamps, likely repro, at the vate man, famously so—why wouldn’t without any hiccups or stutters. “White gravel entry circle—was barely in sight, he be in Connecticut, making a life Noise,” the unfilmable book. Harvey’s though now the neighbor’s driveway among these people? Like comeback. Why would he was visible. Vogel should landscape this a secret agent, embedded in find himself here, on this out, so you didn’t have to gaze on the plain sight. Harvey hung up earth, in the year 2020, if neighbors, or, more important, so the on Nancy. His whole body not for this exact purpose? neighbors didn’t gaze on you. was aimed at the man, his The rights were avail- The sun was up now, a thin disk that brain vibrating. How could able—Nancy found out in offered no warmth, even as dew started he indicate, in the tone of two minutes. Of course they to drip from the hedges. Nature was his voice, his expression, were, because everything revving itself up. He was chatting to that, yes, he knew exactly would go smoothly this time. Nancy, the most loyal of the assistants. who the man was, and, no, His head was spinning. He’d Nancy, with her M.S. boyfriend and he wouldn’t make a fuss? seen attempts, back in the schizo mother, her sad Minnesota child- “Morning,” Harvey called day. Recalled a script for that hood—she would never leave him. across the fence, a cheery, neighborly weirdo hockey novel Don DeLillo wrote “Harvey?” Nancy was saying. “Kris- greeting, and Don DeLillo lifted his hand under a pseudonym, another script kick- tin wants to come up around three, she in a wave. ing around for the football book. Hadn’t wants to leave the city before traffic. Is “Nice day,” Don DeLillo said. He got Rudin had the rights, for a hot minute? that O.K.?” to his feet, ambling closer to Harvey. What was that first line? He tried to A turning, a shift—something drew “Beautiful day,” Harvey said, his heart remember. A screaming comes across his eye across the vast lawn, above the pounding with glee, and it felt like they the sky! A screaming. Beautiful. Vicious. hedges. A man, opening the front door were speaking in code, a mutually agreed- A great first line. Maybe float a presen- of the house next door, padding outside upon code. A thrill just to make contact. tation card with the text, not strain to in old-fashioned pajamas, a puffy coat. A meeting of equals. be too literal, try to squeeze an arty image He paused for a moment, tilting his “Field sparrow,” Don DeLillo said. out of it. Just let it land in the original gray face to the chilly sun. Then he “Hmm?” form. A screaming comes across the sky. walked down the steps and made his “There’s a field sparrow,” Don De- That was confidence. Already he was way along the driveway to the front gate. Lillo said. He pointed—Harvey followed overwhelmed—calls to make, people to Did he see Harvey standing there? He the line of his finger until he spotted it: recruit. Draw up some preliminary num- didn’t appear to. He stooped to pick up a small brown bird, like a mouse, hop- bers. But this felt right, exactly right. the blue plastic bundle of the newspa- ping in the icy gravel. It was dull, the The perfect thing to jump into the mo- per, then walked back to the terrace. He color of dishwater. ment, the very second that this circus sat on a wooden bench, wriggling the “Very rare bird,” Don DeLillo mused. ended and he was declared innocent. paper from its sleeve. “This time of year. Never had one before.” Thank you, he beamed out to the world, What was it about the man’s face? “Interesting,” Harvey said. thank you. One of the couples thera- “Harvey?” Nancy was saying. “I’ve heard of them showing up after pists had suggested the keeping of a “Sure, sure,” he said. “Kristin. Three.” storms, you know. Adverse conditions.” gratitude journal—even his ex-wife had “She’s bringing Ruby.” “Right.” snorted at that idea—but here he was, “Mmm.” They were communicating something, appreciating his blessings. The man shook the paper open, a hidden message coursing underneath The buzz of his phone. The law firm. though now he stopped reading to sweep this conversation—Do you know who I Finally. some debris from the seat of the bench. am? Don DeLillo was asking. Can I trust “Hello, team,” Rory said. When Rory He was near enough that Harvey could you? Are you on the level? had signed on to Harvey’s defense, the see the two sad clouds of eyebrows, wispy, Yes, Harvey was trying to send back, papers had taken great glee in publishing fading. Why did he know this face? straining to be absolutely clear, straining a photo, gleaned from Rory’s daughter’s “And Dr. Farrokhzad is coming at to communicate the entirety of his soul Facebook, of Rory in a pink pussy hat eleven. They’ll set up in the guest bed- in a pressurized beam of light straight and aviator sunglasses, accompanying room. They wanted me to remind you, to Don DeLillo’s being: yes, you can trust his daughter to the Women’s March. no liquids for at least two hours before- me, yes, I’m on the level. There were at least five people on

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 51 the call. Harvey could not quite tell what remember—” Harvey ended the call. the dimpled chocolate, observe the pleas- they were saying. People kept cutting A quick Google, and, yes, it was fuck- ing chestnut sheen. A form of medita- each other off—“If I can just jump in ing “Gravity’s Rainbow.” Well. So what. tion, he congratulated himself. for a second”; “piggybacking off Rory’s He’d been close, and the gist was the Like his mantra from that trip to point about an immediate motion”— same, wasn’t it? A rending of the known Kashmir—the producers had gone way and now they were talking about what world. That was the whole fucking point. over budget, Harvey swooping in to the next steps would be if there was an- whip things into shape. That weekend, other delay, what protections they could nough time, before the 11 a.m. doc- George had insisted they all charter a put in place for the walk out of the court- Etor visit, to watch some things down plane to go visit this famous guru. The house. None of them seemed to address in the screening room. They still had Beatles got their mantra from this guy, the real question. him on the list for new releases, though George told them. “But,” Harvey interrupted, “what’s they seemed to arrive a week or two late It had been a miserable trip, mon- going to happen? They’re going to say now, and the union projectionist was soon season or some such, his armpits I’m innocent, right? Not guilty. Isn’t that hard to coax out of the city. One of the rashy. All Harvey drank was Coca-Cola what you promised?” subtle ways he was punished, these days. and bottles of warm water, took blown- “Now, Harvey,” Rory said, his twenty- In their absence, he found himself out shits on the hour. The whole gang three-hundred-an-hour voice oozing watching television—up until recently, of them arrived at this guru’s place, the through the phone. “We are just going he had somehow been unaware of just breezy arcades and Dentyne white of through what will happen, hypotheti- how many television shows there were, the walls. They were supposed to go in, cally. Just to cover all the bases. We’ve the astonishing glut of content that had one by one, sit at the feet of this ema- mounted a tremendous defense, and been barfed out and was just waiting ciated guru in his caftan. Receive their I think there’s not one thing we could patiently to be consumed. life-changing mantras, each one specific have done better. But. You know we The screening room was on the low- to each person, your mantra somehow can’t promise anything.” est level. Easiest to just take the eleva- the exact mantra that would correct all “Then why,” Harvey said, wiping tor. Squat leather couches, each with a your life’s ills. his damp brow, “the fuck would you say blanket folded neatly on its arm. In the The guru stared out at Harvey from anything?” back, there was a refrigerator, well- his little skull. Harvey had made himself The mood shifted. stocked baskets of food: chips, candy in hold the guy’s gaze. As the guru leaned “Sorry.” He was still aware that God a drawer. He shouldn’t. But he did—a forward, placed a dry hand on Harvey’s was tracking these moments of polite- jumbo box of Junior Mints. Who was head, he whispered Harvey’s mantra. But ness, these moments of catching him- here to stop him? Harvey sniffled just at that moment, the self. Or not catching himself. “You guys He’d been watching a show set in Coca-Cola he’d pounded on the way over read ‘White Noise’?” he said. Chernobyl—probably eight or ten mil bubbling up behind his sinuses, and he Silence on the line. an episode, if he had to guess. The whole couldn’t make out the mantra. “Come on, how many people are “Saving Private Ryan” chopper thing And here’s the rub—the guru would on this call, five? Aren’t you all Ivy going on, sooty-faced character actors never, it turned out, repeat the mantra. League boys? None of you fuckers read who looked like guys from his child- “Are you kidding?” ‘White Noise’?” hood neighborhood in Queens, a pas- But the guru wasn’t kidding. Harvey The silence was uneasy. sel of dogs roaming through an impec- got angry. “Please,” he said. “Come on. “Don DeLillo. American master. ‘A cable set. Incredible, the things they I’ll pay you. Whatever you want. Just screaming comes across the sky,’” Har- were doing these days. The amount of repeat it. Write it down if you don’t vey said. He said it again, his voice money, almost perverse! And this got wanna say it. Whatever, O.K.?” dropped an octave. “A screaming,” he him jazzed all over again, this DeLillo The man just looked at him placidly. said. “Comes across. The sky.” project, because how could anyone argue On the flight back, queasy from the “Isn’t that ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’?” with this level of production value, this diarrhea meds, his headphones block- He didn’t recognize the voice. “Who impact? They were the culture-makers, ing out the world, Harvey slept fitfully. said that?” he’d always believed—everything trick- When he woke up, there was his assis- Rory edged in. “Harvey, excuse me—” led down from people like him, choices tant, across the aisle, alert to whatever “Who. The fuck. Said that? I don’t made in a certain room in a certain office his next request would be. She’d gotten know you. Why the fuck are you on in Manhattan, choices that shaped the a mantra, too. He took the empty seat this call if I don’t know you? Isn’t that discourse. And even Don DeLillo would next to her. illegal?” respect that. Though how much better “So.” He tented his fingers, leaned on Rory again. “Harvey, that’s Ted, he’s to approach him only after the public the armrest. “Crazy trip, right? Funny?” been in court with us every day.” vindication—hands clean, blank slate. “Yeah,” she said, cautiously. “If you’re “I don’t fucking know a Ted.” A handful of Junior Mints mashed wondering about Helen, she knows we “Harvey—” against the roof of his mouth. The sugar want the full breakdown by Monday, “Never mind,” Harvey said. “I’ll check made his bad molar zing. He stopped, and I’m just waiting to hear back from in later.” considered a single waxy Junior Mint B team—” “Try to relax,” Rory said, “and just balanced on the end of his finger. Study “I don’t need to talk about work right

52 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 sweater and a long skirt, perched on a boulder by the rocky shoreline. She looked MORE brave, sorrowful, as if she’d persevered through a great difficulty. Probably she How again after months there is awe. could not have designed a better exit for The most personal moment of the day herself, as clean and frictionless as slip- appears unannounced. People wear leather. ping away from a party. People refuse to die. There are strangers Harvey refreshed his e-mail. Refreshed who look like they could know your name. the news sites. He searched his name, And the smell of a bar on a cold night, scanning the comments sections, a re- or the sound of traffic as it follows you home. cent habit. Or more of a compulsion, Sirens. Parties. How balconies hold us. forcing himself to wade through the vit- Whatever enough is, it hasn’t arrived. riol until he came across at least one nice And on some dead afternoon comment. He took it as an omen, and when you’ll likely forget this, as soon as he read that single nice com- as you browse through the vintage ment he was released. It took a while, again and again—there it is, this time, but he found one: what everyone’s given up Maverick1972: It’s verrry INTER- just to stay here. Jewelled hairpins, ESTING how the girls are suddenly scratched records, their fast youth. crying when they were asking for jobs and Everything they’ve given up cars at the time! Harvey isn’t a monster its to stay here and find more. not his fault hes got what they wanted and took what he could who would blame him!!!! —Alex Dimitrov Not the most eloquent defender, Mav- erick1972, but it gave him heart, a little rush of victory. And why shouldn’t he now,” Harvey said. “I’m just chatting. Some people resisted, some people did feel confident? One of the younger law- Can’t we just chat?” not. Some people went still, unmoving; yers had e-mailed him PDFs of all the Her smile flickered. some people started laughing, out of exhibits, shown him how to scroll through “You have a good time?” Harvey asked. discomfort. He enjoyed it all, even these the evidence they’d amassed over the “Um. Yeah. It’s been interesting.” milder victories—it was like different past two years. A simple glance and it “You’ve never been to India, right?” flavors of ice cream. And, ultimately, was all there: photos of every single one He was just guessing. he was always sated, the other person of them, hugging him. Kissing his cheek! She blinked behind her glasses. “No, breathing hard, squinting, shifting, some Pushing themselves into him, pressing never. A really beautiful country,” she new shame in her face. their faces to his face, practically hump- said. “Really inspiring.” Now he woke in Vogel’s screening ing him there on the step-and-repeat. “Right.” room to the looping menu screen, the Uncle Harvey, they called him, The silence made the girl squirm. season over, his hands smeared with afterward. “So, you know,” Harvey said. “Tell Junior Mints. A glance at his phone— Gabe knocked on the door. Time for me what your mantra is.” twenty minutes before the doctor arrived. the infusion. A new way they were treat- She shifted, uncomfortable. “Come An infusion for his back pain, some- ing chronic pain, a new attempt to mit- on,” she said. Trying to giggle. “You’re thing he’d never tried before. igate the constant shock from his spine, never supposed to tell what your man- Enough time to splash his face up- his body a bombed-out war zone: the tra is.” stairs, swish around a little toothpaste, only thing that helped lately was the “Oh, please,” he said. “You don’t be- change his shirt. His eyes were blood- horse pills, swimmy Vicodin afternoons lieve that stuff. I think you should just shot, his throat sore. light-headed in the sauna, scratching tell me.” Harvey lay on his bed with his shoes his chest and arms, slapping his limp “I really shouldn’t,” she said. on. Or not his bed. Vogel’s bed. He missed dick without any response. He’d forgot- But here was the thing. They both his own bed. No way to keep the bed, ten he wasn’t supposed to drink water knew, as soon as he asked the question, was the gist. His ex-wife wanted the bed, before the infusion, much less house a that she would tell him her mantra. It among other things. She got the bed, box of Junior Mints, but probably, like was just a matter of how long it would and most everything else. Now she was most suggestions, it didn’t really matter. take, what the moments between his sleeping on the horsehair and cashmere. Harvey got to his feet, with some effort. demand and her capitulation would look She’d been interviewed by Vogue, her por- Groped for his phone. An e-mail he’d like. In the end, it would be the same trait taken by that photographer who started to Nancy—cc Lewis, Honor Keat- to him as any other moment of triumph. shot everyone like they were in a Cadil- ing, a few of the sharper guys from the Only the in-between was different, made lac commercial or a police procedural. old days, people who’d been waiting to up of a different sequence of conces- Very network. His ex-wife’s gaze was hear what he was kicking around. He sions, the particulars of each person. downcast, a waif dressed in a thick knit was like Bob Evans, he thought, his heart

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 53 stirring, marshalling Towne and Nichol- The doctor came in—tan, sexless, “Yeah, sure. Sure I’ve been to Miami.” son to make “Chinatown.” And here it a chain around his neck, and hairless “We went. Me and my husband. I was—the perfect property, his very own forearms. Plum-colored scrubs. Had he think he liked it more than me. He saw, “Chinatown,” only better, because it didn’t done that on purpose, removed all his he liked the”—she stopped, made a bal- need that little creep Polanski to rewrite body hair? looning gesture in front of her flat chest. the whole thing. Though, it was worth “Sir?” the doctor said. “All the swimsuits. His eyes were, like, pointing out, look what had happened Harvey didn’t look up from his phone. pow,” she said, a googly expression on to Polanski—sex with a thirteen-year- “Sir? her face. “I think he wanted to stay.” old—anal!—and he’d basically been sen- “Jesus, what?” “Sounds like a real dick, Anastasia.” tenced to parole, no jail time. Everything “I just need your finger, sir. Let’s just She giggled. Amazing, these Soviet ruined by a few unfortunate press pho- slip this on,” the doctor said, clipping a girls, just happy to have a husband. Prob- tos leaking when he was sup- pulse monitor on his ring ably husbands who knocked them around posed to be in preproduction. finger. Harvey pretended not a little, why not. The things he could do Despite all that, Polanski was to notice the man’s smirk. for Anastasia, if she gave even the slight- still making movies, still ski- Fuck him. Fuck the hairless est indication of receptivity. He reminded ing the Swiss Alps with pals doctor. himself to ask Gabe to find out more and winning awards. Harvey “O.K.,” the doctor said. about her. Who was this husband? Some was small potatoes, compared. “Remember the basics from pale Russian with sunken eyes, guzzling These were grown women. the phone consultation?” protein shakes from Costco, probably a How could anyone think Harvey stared at him— pit bull in the back yard. Harvey belonged in jail? It Gabe had done the required Harvey adjusted himself in the big was so unlikely. He’d only half phone call in Harvey’s place. leather chair. listened to the jail consultant, He nodded. “Comfy?” Anastasia said. a meeting set up in Rory’s conference “We’ve been starting people at a hun- “Mmm.” room. The man had tried to scare Har- dred, for chronic pain like yours. How They mixed in an anti-emetic, and vey, slamming the table hard when he does that sound?” a little Xanax, too, so people didn’t freak saw Harvey was on his phone. Harvey shrugged. “Let’s do more.” out, Anastasia explained. “So you won’t “Do you think this is a joke?” the “It might be best to just see how you even be worried.” man had screamed, neck ropy above his respond at a hundred.” The doctor came back in, smiley, fratty. polo shirt, spittle flying from his mouth “More,” Harvey said, mildly, and “And are we feeling ready?” He looked and landing, to Harvey’s disgust, on his watched the doctor start to respond. only at the air around Harvey, no lon- own lips. He wiped it away, deliberately. “More,” Harvey said again, smiling a ger making direct eye contact. Good. Went back to his e-mails. little, “more,” and the doctor finally gave Let the doctor be afraid. He’d signed “White Noise”—they could make a up, sensing, maybe, that Harvey could an N.D.A., they all did. real art-house push, emphasize that this keep this up as long as it took. The machine was the size of a toaster. was an old-fashioned movie, a classic. “O.K.,” the doctor said, brightly, “let’s A thin tube hooked up to a port in the What Bob Evans would call a people do one-thirty-five,” as if he had been back of his hand. Anastasia prepared picture. Get Brian on the phone. In time the one to suggest it. He left, and a the area with a shot of lidocaine. Had for next awards season—it wasn’t a crazy nurse came in. him make a fist. goal, wasn’t a totally unrealistic time- The nurse was named Anastasia, a “Big strong veins!” she cooed. line. People wanted to help him. He Russian with bleached hair and too- He looked away when she inserted had a million favors left to call in. dark eyebrows. Shapeless scrubs, a pair the I.V. Didn’t want to think of the veins He shuffled to the guest room, still of white Keds, tightly laced. She was right there, under the surface. Unset- typing on his phone. “Now is the PER- brusque but not unkind. tling how it took mere seconds to gain FECT TIME to do this MOVIE,” he wrote. “And how are you, Anastasia?” Har- access to his insides, open him up. “we as a nation are hungry 4 meaning.” vey said. “O.K.,” the doctor said. “O.K. All set?” The curtains in the guest room were “Good,” she said, cheerful. She was Harvey felt his phone buzz in his drawn, but the lights had been turned maybe twenty-five. pocket. “Hold on,” he said. up to a blazing wash, a fat leather re- “Having a good day?” “Don’t jostle the I.V.” cliner pulled into the center of the room, She made a face, then smiled. “Back It was not, as he guessed, an e-mail a whole setup already plugged in and at work, you know. It’s fine.” from the producers. Just an e-mail from humming away—a bursting I.V. sack, “Right. You do anything fun lately?” his accountant: “Sending good thoughts a heart monitor, a silver tray of anti- She didn’t seem at all bothered by for tomorrow.” Yes, sure, Dave, thanks septic swabs and packaged needles. his questions, happy to chat. “I went on for your good thoughts. None of your “NancY pls get Numbers pulled vacation with my husband.” thoughts are good thoughts, that’s why 2gether aSAP so I cn present 2 don “Oh, yeah?” he said. “Where did you you’re an accountant. delillo 2morrow eve, find out if thre is go with this husband?” Harvey said, “Is this going to be nice resto nearby, make a res, he can “Have you been to Miami?” scary, Anastasia? Are you going to watch bring wife is f he has or gf?” “Have I been to Miami?” he said. over me?”

54 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 She laughed. “Yes,” she said. “Noth- After maybe an hour, the sensations so conscientious, he thought. Perfect ing to worry about.” She put the eye started to fade. He felt a familiar sorrow, blond angel. mask over his face. Got even closer to like when, as a kid, he could sense the “Have you. Ever tried it?” he said, adjust the strap. He wished he had used end of a movie nearing, knowing soon with some effort. the trimmer—he had a corsage of wiry it would all be over, knowing that soon “No,” she said. “No, not yet.” black hairs at each ear. He had the feel- he would be returned to the harsh real- “You should try it,” he said to An- ing, lately, when he looked in the mir- ity of the world and its disappointments. astasia. “You have to try it.” ror, that a pile of glue was staring back Harvey was legitimately bereft. He “I see all the people when they come at him, like he was melting. pushed the eye mask away from his eyes out, some are crying. But mostly they “O.K.,” Anastasia’s voice came, faint with a clumsy hand—it felt like he was are happy, they have a good experience. from the new darkness. “Now I put on wearing mittens. And then the feeling Did you have a good experience?” the headphones. Yes?” was replaced with the information— “Oh, yes.” Should he try to explain They were big, noise-cancelling. curious!—that he was now lying on the more? “Very good.” “Blanket,” he said. Then reminded him- floor. It didn’t feel any different from “So maybe I should try it.” self to throw in a “please.” being in the chair. He remained on the “When’s your birthday? Make him Yes. A heavy fur blanket pulled over floor, very still. Feeling his chest rise give you one for your birthday. The his body, tucked by Anastasia right up and fall. doctor.” under his chin. Maternally, gently. He Anastasia opened the door, made a “Next month, actually.” couldn’t remember if he had sent the noise of surprise, then left. She returned “O.K.,” Harvey said. “It’s settled. e-mail to Nancy—he should do that, with the doctor. Together they worked I’m getting you an infusion for your he thought, quickly, make sure that ball to hoist Harvey back into the chair. His birthday.” got rolling. But where was his phone? legs felt weak. But he was smiling, a big She laughed, prettily. “Thank you.” No matter. He no longer cared where dopey smile. She was not even a little bit afraid his phone was. Because here it was, it “You fell,” the doctor said. of him. had arrived: “I didn’t feel anything.” “We’ll just set you right up in bed,” The cool whoosh of the future in “That’s normal.” she was saying. “Let’s just lie down for his veins. He had to pee, badly, his bladder a bit, O.K.?” Ah. Ahh. glowing. He hoped that she never stopped Had he yelled the word “help”? Or Anastasia removed the I.V., easing telling him what to do, never stopped just mouthed it. Whatever panic he felt the medical tape from his arm, care- explaining what was coming next. had appeared and disappeared in the ful not to rip out the hair. She was “Right, up we go, right on the bed. Now same instant. Welcome, the void said. We’ve been waiting for you. Then his body started to rise, like a balloon nearing the ceiling, bobbing lightly. Wow, he thought, mildly. A nice drift over the city. What city? I don’t know. A city. Maybe the city from the Apple TV screen saver, a generic grid twinkling below. He was moving so slowly. When he tried to squeeze his brain around any future plans, around mak- ing the movie, his thoughts just slipped away. All he could think of was the words “white noise.” White noise, yes— how better to describe what this feel- ing was? Why couldn’t all of life be this way, this uninflected witnessing, the relief of being a vegetable? Keep him hooked up to the machine, doctor. Twenty-four hours a day, just let him rest. Bye! Bye, Harvey! What was Harvey but a cardboard cutout, really, an idea of himself? How funny that he had ever cared so much. your legs. Swing them up for me. Very “Just wanting to touch base,” Rory was Kristin patted his upper arm. “Well, good.” saying. “I don’t want to alarm you, but I we’re here to get your spirits up. O.K.? Harvey lay on the bed. know we’re just concerned, about Jurors We’ll think positive.” “Are you gonna stay here?” he mum- 3 and 9, especially. We fought tooth and He wished Gabe would just take bled. “Stay with me?” nail to keep them off, and with good rea- over, like a cruise director, steer them No response. When he opened his son, and the consultant thinks they could toward the proper activities, keep them eyes, she was gone—he was alone. be the vocal ones in a closed room—” all energized and happy, maintain group A vague image of the women jurors morale, but Gabe had disappeared. “How unch in the dining room. Gabe pour- appeared to him, the one with a spider was the drive?” Ling ice water from a carafe. A square pin on her lapel, the other in a silky shirt “Easy. Whatever.” of black cod, the size and thickness of a buttoned to the neck, a tight cornrowed “Boring,” Ruby said. “How come pack of cards. Charred broccolini. A bun on her head, always staring his way. there’s an elevator in a house?” scoop of bland white rice, flecked with In any other situation, he would have “For people like me,” he said, “peo- parsley. He still felt dazed, his thoughts been aware of the women’s existence for ple in pain. It’s easier than the stairs.” dropping a little bit behind. He wasn’t half a second. If that. He resented having Kristin’s face rippled—who knows hungry—a few halfhearted forkfuls of to think about them at all. Which one why? rice. He felt different from the person of them had laughed when they’d shown “Are you hungry? Come in,” he said. he had been that morning, like he’d the photos of his naked body? His arms “Let’s sit. Sit down at least—why are stepped off to the side of himself. His and legs starfished in that well-lit room? we just standing around?” phone buzzed on the tabletop—Rory, “Just want to keep you up to date on Gabe had put out silver bowls of po- the lawyers. He let it go to voice mail. our thinking,” Rory finished. tato chips, peanut M&M’s. He appeared After a few moments, the phone shiv- “Well,” Harvey said. Should he ask in the doorway to take their drink or- ered: they had left a message. He read him to repeat himself? “I guess,” he said ders: Kristin wanted an espresso and a the transcription, auto-generated by slowly, “I’m glad to be up to date. On glass of seltzer, Ruby was already chew- the phone, with one squinted eye: your thinking.” ing the potato chips and shook her head. “Chow had Lee it’s roar a couple “Water for me, too,” Harvey said. be back” nap upstairs, and now the elevator Ruby sat on the floor, leaned back He didn’t click to see the rest of the A glided soundlessly down to the against Kristin’s legs. Kristin perched gibberish, letting his eyes close fully, his ground floor, depositing him, the vul- primly on the love seat, playing absently head resting on his folded arms. nerable human, safely at his destination. with Ruby’s hair. It occurred to him that Kristin texted—five minutes away. He padded toward the front door, one maybe she, too, was antsy, needed some- Some sense of duty, visiting her father hand trailing lightly along the wall, in thing to occupy herself. in his hour of need. There had been no case he needed the support. Kristin was “Having a good trip?” he said. way to indicate that he would prefer to milling around the entry hall, Gabe flut- “We went to Ellis Island,” Kristin said. be alone, in order to more effectively tering in the background. She was in a “You know, my grandparents are in tranquillize himself: he’d rather spend turtleneck and a quilted vest. Silver ear- the . . . book, register, whatever there. the day with Anastasia or hunker down rings and pulled-back ponytail. Awfully Did you see them? Find their names? in the peaceful bowels of the screening severe. She looked sober and anxious, Your great-grandparents. When they room, knocking himself out with end- her daughter clutching her hand tightly, came from Warsaw.” less episodes. Life was in many ways though she was eleven or twelve. “Uh, no. You didn’t tell me that.” worse these days, but you had to admit: “Grandpa!” the girl said, when she “You didn’t tell me you were going.” God had given people the tools they caught sight of him approaching, hob- A run of beeps from Ruby’s phone, needed to be happy. bling down the hall. her head bowed in concentration. Kristin was his oldest daughter, un- For a moment, Harvey was taken “And,” Kristin said, “we saw a mat- married with an A.D.D. kid, from de- aback, his chest warming with legit joy. inée of ‘Hamilton.’” signer sperm that had apparently not She sounded so guileless, Ruby, so cheer- “I’ve seen it twice already,” Ruby said. been so designer. Kristin ran a founda- ful and wholesome. When he smiled at “This one wasn’t even the original cast.” tion aimed at improving graduation rates, her, already the girl seemed uninter- “That’s true,” Kristin said. “Her friend and had signed a public pledge to give ested. Was this an A.D.D. thing? at school is the kid of—what’s the guy, away at least half her wealth in her life- “Hello, you,” Harvey said. He cleared the guy from ‘Cheers’ who did that time. Kristin, with her peculiar features, his throat. He felt less groggy, less glitchy. Broadway show a few years ago? They her downy cheeks. Kristin, who wrote “Hello, both of you.” were living out here, for the run. Ruby an op-ed about choosing not to fly pri- “How are you, Dad?” Kristin said, visited for spring break.” vate anymore, for which she was roundly hugging him with one arm. Kristin looked at him expectantly, and deservedly mocked. She had never “You know.” He zipped and unzipped as if he would have follow-up ques- been able to see the wave coming, about the half-zip of his sweater. “The bas- tions. He folded his hands neatly on to knock her down, though it was the tards try to get you down.” He blinked his stomach. clearest thing in the world. at the top of the girl’s head. “Sorry. I “How’s your back?” she said. Rory called again—Harvey answered. mean the jerks.” “Better,” he said. And it was true, since

56 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 close encounters by ottessa moshfegh BROOKLYN

n the late fall of 2006, I went out for what I knew would Ibe my last night of drinking. I remember stopping at Kellogg’s Diner to buy some Advil and a SlimFast, which I chugged on my way to the bar where I was meeting a girlfriend and a guy she was dating. There was something ceremonious about drinking that SlimFast, like putting on war paint. I thought it would protect my stomach from all the alcohol I was about to pour into it. I had never cared to do such a thing before. The first few rounds of drinks were unremarkable, and I was bored with my girlfriend and her guy. Then we went to another bar, which I think was on Graham Avenue. I remember that the bartender was an old Polish woman who could see that I was up to no good. I had probably had ten drinks by then. I turned to the man next to me. “Why do you smell so strongly of doughnuts?” was my opening line. “I don’t smell like doughnuts.” To me, he did. In fact, the whole bar smelled like doughnuts. “Am I hallucinating?” I asked the man. “I don’t care,” he said. “Let me buy you a drink,” I told him. “Let me buy this whole bar a drink!” But I didn’t. The bartender deliberately ignored me. I was broke, sloppy, depressed, angry, bloated, desper- so long. I kind of spaced out with my feet half over the ate, and addicted. Apart from the SlimFast, this night, so edge of the platform, playing with my balance. far, was like any other night. Whether I was drinking at a “Hello.” bar or alone at home, self-centered dissatisfaction plagued I turned and saw an angel. He was seven feet tall, wore me. I couldn’t really get drunk anymore. I barely slept. I brown pants and a blue puffy coat, and smiled as if the liked to drink sake instead of coffee in the mornings. sight of me actually made him happy. Somehow I had held down a job, but I was always hung- “Hi,” I said. over, cranky, and rude, insensitive to everything but my I stepped toward him, away from the platform edge, right own bad mood. as the train arrived. I felt the breeze at my back. I understood It was probably already three in the morning when I left that this man had appeared just in time to save my life. my friends on Graham to go and “get into some trouble.” The train doors opened. He went inside and gestured The smell of doughnuts followed me. I figured my ol- for me to follow him, as though he were a maître d’. He factory nerve was on the fritz, or maybe that SlimFast was smiled continuously and sat a few seats away from me. I working on me in mysterious ways. I wandered in and out don’t recall what we talked about during the ride, but I re- of bars, looking for someone or something to turn the member that he was very calm, very polite, asked me sim- night into an adventure, but all I found were a few more ple questions that I tried to answer without slurring. The drinks. I knew I had a bottle of vodka at my apartment. doughnut smell was even more powerful at that point. Maybe there was enough left to obliterate me. I kept “I’m getting off here,” he said, as the train pulled into thinking, If I can just drink enough tonight, I won’t need the Myrtle-Willoughby station. to drink again for the rest of my life. I told myself, Go out “Me, too.” I lived a block and a half away. with a bang. It was still dark out, but I could feel the sun readying to I was impatient waiting for the subway at the Lorimer break. The angel walked me to my door, quietly, dutifully, Street station. I don’t know what the G train has been like as if he had been sent there just to return me to safety. since—I haven’t taken it in a decade—but back then you Before I went inside, I asked him, “Do you smell could wait an hour for a train at night. I paced along the doughnuts?” edge of the platform, peering into the tunnel for lights. The He looked a little embarrassed, and laughed, and said, station was pretty empty. I was impatient to get home to “I work the graveyard shift at Dunkin’ Donuts.” that vodka. I kept leaning out over the tracks to look for I shook his hand and thanked him, went inside, and the train coming. Darkness. It was driving me crazy to wait got into bed. In the morning, I poured out the vodka. 

ILLUSTRATION BY MARTA MONTEIRO THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 57 the infusion he had felt less pain. Had Hadn’t Kristin majored in English? “Gabe,” Harvey said, clutching at mostly just been less aware of pain, had Shouldn’t she look thrilled, instead of the man’s shirt as he refilled the Barolo. not returned to the fact of the pain at concerned? “Can we get that clock off, turn it off. the end of every thought. “I’m trying “I’m gonna send you his books,” Har­ Is it new? How come I hear every sin­ this new therapy. New thing, very cut­ vey announced. “Right now. For you, too, gle tick?” ting edge. It was actually much better Ruby, a set for each of you.” The gesture “Of course,” Gabe said. “No prob­ than the surgery. You should try it,” Har­ pleased him. He pulled up Amazon on lem. I’ll take the batteries out right away.” vey said. “It’s not just for, you know, pain.” his phone, squinting at the screen. “Now, Ruby watched this exchange with How could he communicate what let me just get this going,” he said, peck­ interest. he had experienced earlier, how impor­ ing out letters in the search bar. Harvey’s phone kept buzzing on the tant it was that his daughter get an in­ “Dad, I don’t need all of Don De­ table: texts of support. Last­minute ex­ fusion as soon as possible? Maybe he Lillo’s books.” hortations from the lawyers, a request could get Anastasia to come back this “Please, it’s a pleasure. A gift.” to RETURN MY CALL ASAP—he barely evening, get Kristin hooked up. Hell, “We’re actually in the middle of de­ glanced at those. Some talk of bail, what even Ruby. All three of them zonked cluttering right now,” Kristin said. to do if the judge denied their mo­ out in big easy chairs, drifting through “Nonsense,” he said. “This is litera­ tion—“remanded,” not a word he space, attended to by a loyal blonde. ture. Great literature. And maybe you’ll wanted to probe too hard. His eyes “And what about generally?” Kristin want to help. I’m doing an adaptation went soft, not exactly taking it in. Much said. “Are you O.K.? Are you afraid?” of ‘White Noise.’ It’s going to be big, better to focus on the other messages, “Am I afraid?” He blinked, rapidly. sweetie. Huge. Maybe Ruby can intern the “Don’t let this get you down” text, “No, I’m not afraid.” That’s what he on the set, like what’s­her­face Obama. the “Soon this will all be in the rear­ should try to make clear: how even Would you like that, Ruby? See how a view!” e­mail. though you felt, on the infusion, like you movie gets made?” “Look at this,” Harvey said, turning were floating through space and would Ruby shot him a thumbs­up with­ the phone toward Kristin so she could never return to earth, it didn’t scare you. out looking over, enchanted by her phone. see the latest lengthy text, a fat bubble “I just,” Kristin said. “I don’t know. “You have something in develop­ of blue filling the screen. “Paulie says I’m here for you. I know Franny has not ment?” Kristin sounded skeptical. “But he’ll take me out the minute this is all been the most supportive”—Frances, his where’s the financing coming from? I over. Said to pencil in Capri in Au­ other daughter, ensconced in Seattle with thought Bob was—” gust.” Nice to imagine August on the her bitchy tech husband; Frances, who “Listen, sweetie. Everyone wants to boat, the dinner at the cliffs, the low sent him a lengthy e­mail, subject line get in on my next project. You know votives along the table. Maybe Don “RAPE,” and cc’d her shrink—“but you how many calls I get a day, people sniffing DeLillo could join. Make a note to will always have me.” around to see where I’m headed after all have Nancy overnight Don DeLillo a “Thanks. I don’t think. I mean, I this wraps up? What moves I’ll make?” DVD of “Contempt.” don’t know but I don’t think this is gonna Saying the words made him even “Great,” Kristin said. go badly. You know? No one has given more certain—they sounded true. “What?” Harvey put his phone any indication that this is going to go “But what if. I don’t know. You know, down. “Why do you say it like that, sideways.” what if this doesn’t go as you”—she like it’s bad?” She didn’t look entirely convinced. seemed to be picking her words care­ “It’s just. I don’t know if you should He suspected she thought that this scale fully, cognizant of Ruby at her feet—“as be, like, celebrating.” of punishment made sense. It would you planned?” Ruby was eagle­eyed now, taking have made him angry, usually—how “Please. You think I’m going to jail? this in. could anyone believe he deserved this? Look at me, I’m an old man.” “Who’s celebrating?” He gestured Had he killed anyone? But that anger, at the table, the staid windows seg­ so easily called forth, now seemed to n early dinner, a fire crackling menting the quickly darkening sky. “Is exist on the other side of a pane of glass. Apleasantly in the dining room. His this a celebration, some wild party? I He pointed to where the roofline of appetite had returned, and he swabbed thought we were having a peaceful din­ the house next door was visible through the steak juice from Vogel’s embarrass­ ner? A quiet dinner with my daughter the living­room window, the jag of black ing Wedgwood plate with a fat Parker and granddaughter.” gables. “You know who lives over there?” House roll. Ruby ate plain spaghetti Kristin sighed, stared at her still full he said. “In that brick house?” He paused, and an undressed salad. She drank ice plate. “Sorry.” to summon the appropriate level of water from a wine goblet. Kristin looked Another piece of steak, another drama. “Don DeLillo.” bored, ready to leave. Was it such a Parker House roll. The green beans he Kristin seemed distracted, not quite chore to spend time with him? grabbed with his fingers, everything listening. “The writer?” The clock in the kitchen was ticking speckled from the pepper mill wielded “Yes. Yes, exactly, the writer. Pretty so loudly he heard it from the dining by Gabe. “Thank you,” Harvey made wild, huh, right next door to your Pops. room. Didn’t Kristin notice? Didn’t Ruby? a point of saying to Gabe. “Thank you,” We’re actually doing a little project to­ Why were they all just sitting here eating he repeated, to no one in particular. gether, me and Don.” as this steady tick marked every second? Ruby gulped her ice water.

58 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 “You tired, sweetheart?” Kristin asked her. Ruby shrugged. “She’s getting tired,” Kristin said. “We should think about going pretty soon.” “I’m not tired,” Ruby said. “It’s a long drive back,” Kristin said. “I don’t love driving in the dark.” Harvey finished his wine. Tilting the empty glass back and forth. “What’s the difference between the dark now and the dark in a few hours?” He had not meant it to sound accusatory—he really wondered. “Dessert?” Gabe said, appearing in the doorway. “Angel-food cake and ber- ries, or crème brûlée? We have sorbet.” “I’m full,” Kristin said. “Sounds so yummy, though.” “Cake,” Ruby said, scooting up on her chair. “And, like, what kind of sor- bet do you have?” “Gabe, bring out all the sorbets,” Harvey said, “and one of everything else. My family is visiting. It’s a special occasion.” “Really?” Ruby looked at Kristin, who smiled tightly. On the table, Har- vey’s phone buzzed. Joan, the reporter, had sent a series of question marks. If you really want to talk with me honestly, I think we should set up a chat tonight. Harvey turned his phone over. “You could spend the night,” Har- vey said. “We could watch something, “It may make me look dumb, but it’s technically downstairs.” To Ruby, “There’s candy just as dangerous as a motorcycle.” in the screening room. You can pick whatever. King size.” “She’s already had a lot of sugar today.” •• “Skittles have horse hooves in them,” Ruby said. “Sick, right?” fore he could respond, maybe even take Don DeLillo, was silent, all the win- “It is sick.” He nodded at the gloomy Ruby’s hand in his, Kristin had pushed dows black. No car in the driveway, no horse painting over the mantelpiece, her chair back, was gathering up her signs of life. Where had he gone, Don jittery in the light of the candle. “You purse, folding her soiled napkin. “We DeLillo? notice all these horses everywhere? It’s, should hit the road,” she said. like, every room has a horse painting. “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep pstairs, Gabe had laid out his I saw on the, you know, hand towels, over? There’s so many rooms. You can Uclothes for the morning: The too. A horse caricature.” ride the elevator.” suit hanging from the closet door. The “You mean silhouette,” Kristin said. Kristin smiled, sadly. red socks draped alongside the butter- Harvey shrugged. “You’re probably “Tea? Coffee? Anything? Let me scotch split-toe bluchers. The walker right.” call Gabe,” he said. But their departure probably folded and waiting by the Ruby patted his hand, once, twice. was already set in motion. Pretty soon door downstairs. The gesture moved him. It would be he would be waving at their car as they He sat on the closed lid of the toi- fun, having Ruby intern on the movie. pulled away and left him alone, and let, waiting for the bath to fill. The He had a swift and detailed daydream: then that was exactly what he was doing. ankle bracelet was waterproof, fine to Don DeLillo writing Ruby a letter of He lingered outside in the driveway, wear in the shower, but he’d thought, recommendation for college, Ruby the barn jacket zipped up, his bare head at first, that he had to keep it dry, so waving from the dais of her gradua- cold, his nostrils sharpening with frigid he’d started taking baths. And now he tion, beaming love at Harvey. But be- air. The house next door, the house of preferred baths, liked feeling like a tea

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 59 “No, no,” he said, “not threatening, just—” “Don’t you dare threaten me, Har- vey. Do not. Fucking. Dare.” He had never heard her sound like that. Her tone so careful, clipped. Like she was talking to someone doomed. A new and sudden panic was seizing him, a freezing bite at the nape of his neck, as if he’d been taken in the jaws of a terrible animal. Perhaps a resolution would not be as clean as he’d assumed, not be as swift and total. All the things that had happened he could barely re- member, so that at first he’d actually listened with some interest to the tes- timony, curious to hear what he’d sup- posedly done. But it had quickly be- come boring. He assumed everyone had felt the same way, assumed ev- eryone was similarly bored. It had all “According to this, couples who read in bed together are happier. seemed to occur at the wrong end of It doesn’t say anything about the harmonica.” a telescope, far away and distorted— tales set in hotel rooms, hallways of restaurants that had closed almost •• a decade ago. Bar 89 no longer ex- isted. The girl was saying he had called bag, steeping in the scalding water. with Joan. She had always helped him. her once from his cell phone, told Around his body, the bathwater was “Harvey,” Joan said. She sounded her he was standing out in front of cloudy with soap, tepid water he drained weary. “I don’t have time to do any- Lady M and did she think it was to- and refilled with more hot water. His thing before tomorrow. You should get tally naughty if he went inside and phone and a heavy tumbler of Scotch some sleep.” got a cake? on the porcelain ledge, the Scotch not “Listen, listen. Just stay with me, This made him look up—had he exactly condoned by his doctors. But O.K.? Joan? You know me. You’ve said that? Gabe seemed to understand this was known me for years. I’m not a monster. As the trial had gone on, Harvey a special night, a night that deserved You know I’m not a monster.” found himself fuzzing out, daydream- kindness. The pour had been especially He’d worked hard, hadn’t he? Bought ing, filling and refilling his water glass generous. Harvey slipped the soap his mother a house. Let Nancy’s M.S. just to have something to do. The other under each armpit, around the belly, boyfriend piggyback on her health in- girl said he had wanted to film her. the groin that he didn’t quite acknowl- surance. “You can tell the truth from Made her pose for him. edge, a habit from childhood, hitting the lies, can’t you, Joan?” “And did you pose for him?” the area with soap but never looking “Harvey.” Was she just going to keep She nodded through tears. He at his body, his gaze focussing some- repeating his name in that doomed glanced at the jury—no one seemed where beyond. Then his legs, his knees register? Why was she acting like it too distressed. Rory hadn’t made eye poking out of the water like two bald was already over, like he’d already been contact with him, but Harvey could monks. The soap shot out from his convicted? His heart beat rapidly. He tell, by a slight upturn of his lips, that fist—he groped for it in the opaque clutched the phone harder to his ear he, too, thought this was ridiculous. water, then gave up. with wet hands. “Joan. I remember “Did he invite you to parties?” the A knock on the door—Gabe. “I’m things, too, Joan. Remember that girl lawyer said. “And you attended, even just going to close up the house for the in Tokyo? Gold Bar,” he said, trium- after this incident?” night,” he said. “I left a sleeping pill on phantly. “Gold Bar. You left her there. The girl looked at her hands. “I the nightstand with a fresh bottle of water. She was crying and you left her there. like parties,” she said. “Everyone likes Can I get you anything else for now?” Remember that, Joan?” parties.” “Thanks,” Harvey called in the di- “Jesus, Harvey.” The trial could have ended right rection of the closed door. “Nothing. “So you do remember?” there. Thanks.” “What is this? Are you threatening “Joan,” Harvey said. “Wait.” Another missed call from Rory. me?” Her voice was a monotone, a pro- But it was over. He had lost her. Forget Rory. He should get in touch fessional monotone. “Goodbye, Harvey.”

60 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 He called back. Once. Twice. Five around it, heading toward the fence. He said, near enough now for Harvey to times. The calls went straight to voice was moving fluidly, moving without any make out his face above his scarf, a face mail. pain. The car came in and out of sight, mooning out of the darkness—his eyes the interior light still on, the beacon were wet berries. abe had turned down the bedcov- guiding his way. “I’m fine,” Harvey said. “And you?” Gers, dimmed the lights. Drawn all Here was the fence, and there, on the “The alarm?” Don DeLillo gestured the curtains. Another slug of Scotch. other side, was Don DeLillo. He was behind Harvey. Pajama pants drawstringed at his waist, still sitting in the car—talking on the “Oh, yes.” He made as if to glance a purple Lakers T-shirt he found in phone, Harvey could see now, a rectan- back at the house, then actually did. Vogel’s top drawer. Fuzzy socks with gle of light casting Don DeLillo’s face The house was all lit up, a birthday snowflakes on them, white wool and in sickly blue. The radio was on, or music cake hovering in the void. “I forgot the, ice blue, his pajama pants tucked into was playing, the chatter drifting through uh. Security code.” the top. Cozy, cozy. He could, at this the night, in the intermittent silence of “Right.” moment, meet every one of his needs: the alarm. Harvey started to wave. Don “I saw your light,” Harvey said, try- always be warm, always be fed. What DeLillo would know what to do. How ing to be crystal clear, to communicate, if that changed? Unbearable, unthink- to fix the things that had gone wrong. with every word he spoke, that he had able. Who knows how long he sat there The alarm behind him was louder, he received the message. “I saw you were in the dim room? How long until a wasn’t imagining it. Don DeLillo had awake, too. Both of us,” Harvey said, sound outside broke the spell? noticed, too, his head cocked, his face with significance, “couldn’t sleep.” Harvey made his way to the win- turning in Harvey’s direction. Didn’t Don DeLillo see how alike dow, and pulled back the curtain. The “It’s me,” Harvey called out, raising they were, didn’t he feel it? See how noise was coming from the house next his hand, waving, hoping to be seen in they were men, both of them, men up door, Don DeLillo’s house—it was his the darkness. “I’m here.” late on this dark winter night, ponder- car, Don DeLillo’s car, popping along Don DeLillo was unfolding him- ing what the new day would bring? the gravel, coming to a stop in front of self from the car, standing with one Don DeLillo was studying Harvey, the house. The car’s interior lights turned hand cupped over his eyes—but why? his face turned to the side. His brows on, bright enough that Harvey saw the There was no sun. bloomed on his old gray face. outline of Don DeLillo in the driver’s “Hello,” Harvey said, and Don De- “Maybe,” Don DeLillo said, slowly, seat. He seemed to be sitting very still, Lillo paused, the driver’s door ajar. “maybe you just needed some fresh air. sitting very upright. Was he waiting for Harvey was pressed right up against Sometimes that helps me. When I Harvey to join him? Waiting for their the fence now, the slats coming to his can’t sleep.” midnight meeting, there in the quiet chin, only his head poking over, like a “Yes,” Harvey said, beaming. “That’s countryside? An assignation amid its gargoyle. “Good evening,” Harvey yelled, exactly right. We both needed some air.” sleeping citizens, dreaming in their beds, in a rush. His hands were gripping the His fingers were freezing, almost unaware of Harvey and Don DeLillo fence slats, which were, for some reason, numb. But his back didn’t hurt, not at vibrating on a higher frequency? Why damp. His loafers were soaked. all. His nose was runny but he didn’t else would Don DeLillo just be sitting “Is everything O.K.?” Don DeLillo make to wipe it. He tasted salt in his there, the dome light like a beacon, called. smile. “Don’t worry,” Harvey said, al- summoning Harvey? “I just want to talk,” Harvey said, “if most whispering. “I’m not gonna make you have a minute? Just a quick”—he a scene, or turn this into a big deal. I arvey shrugged on the barn jacket, just,” he said, “want you to know. It’s Ha beanie with earflaps that he an honor to meet you.” grabbed from a basket of gloves and Don DeLillo looked bewildered. hats in the entry closet. A horse appliqué “Do you want me to call someone?” on the hat, hovering right over his brow. Don DeLillo said. One great yank and the front door Don DeLillo was close enough that was open—except the world was end- Harvey could touch him, if he tried, if ing, an earsplitting, pants-shitting sound he made an effort. Did he reach out ripping through the silence. An alarm— first, or did Don DeLillo back up, his he was in danger! Or, actually, he was arms flapping a little, his phone clutched the danger—he’d set off some security rocked on his toes, his mind grasping to his chest? Why did he look con- system, but no time to explain to Gabe. for the word—“a quick chat.” fused? There was so much Harvey He strode out into the brisk night. A “Hold on, I’ll call you back,” Don wanted to tell him—they had so much night, he noted, of no stars, a poetic ob- DeLillo said into the phone, then shut to decide. But there was time, he re- servation, one he would share with Don the car door, making his slow way on minded himself. There was all the time DeLillo. The alarm continued its steady the gravel toward Harvey. He was com- in the world.  bleat, the volume seeming to increase. ing closer. Every step was audible, an The covered patio furniture hulked icy crunch. NEWYORKER.COM in shadowy arrangement—he glided “Are you all right?” Don DeLillo Emma Cline on fictionalizing odious men.

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 61 THE CRITICS

books BIGGER THINGS TO HIDE BEHIND Andy Warhol and the reign of Pop. by joan acocella

ndy Warhol’s life may be bet- lined up on banks of metal shelving, steel mills, because they were reputedly ter documented than that of ready for the person who would work willing to do any kind of work, at any A any other artist in the history their contents into a fittingly rich bi- wage. As a result, they were also the of the world. That is because, every ography. Seven years ago, he arrived: most looked-down-upon ethnic group few days or so, he would sweep all the Blake Gopnik, formerly the lead art in the city. Andrej was a manual laborer; stuff on his desk into a storage box, critic of the Washington Post. (His Julia a domestic. When she didn’t have date it, label it “TC”—short for “time brother, Adam, is a writer for this mag- enough work, she went door to door, capsule”—and then store it, with all azine.) Gopnik is fantastically thor- often with her sons in tow, selling dec- the preceding TCs, in a special place ough; the book is nine hundred pages orative flowers made from cut-up peach in his studio. As a result, we have his long—not counting the seven thou- cans. Andrej died in 1942. The two older movie-ticket stubs, his newspaper clip- sand endnotes, available in the e-book boys quit school and took full-time jobs. pings, his cowboy boots, his wigs, his edition or online. But you don’t lose Andy stayed in school. For most of his collection of dental molds, his col- heart, because Gopnik is a vivid chron- youth, he was cosseted by his family. lection of pornography, the countless icler. Here is a small clip from his de- When the Warhols acquired a new Baby Polaroids he took of the people at scription of the repair job Dr. Rossi did Brownie Special camera ($1.25), he im- the countless parties he went to—you on Warhol’s innards after the 1968 mediately laid hands on it, and never let name it. We have copies of bills he shooting. The surgeon found it go. His brothers built him a darkroom sent and also of bills he received from in the basement. Also, he fell in love increasingly exasperated creditors, in- two holes in the arc of the diaphragm mus- with the movies; he said that he wanted cle, pierced both right and left as the bullet cluding one (“PAY UP YOU BLOW- crossed through Warhol’s body; an esophagus to make his living showing films. This HARD”) from Giuseppe Rossi, the severed from the stomach, so that food and was an unusual life plan for a boy of his doctor who, in 1968, saved his life after gastric acid were spilling out from below; a background, but Julia saved nine dol- a woman who felt she had been in- liver whose left lobe was mashed and bleed- lars—nine days’ wages from her house- sufficiently featured in his movies came ing and a spleen utterly destroyed and spill- cleaning—to buy him a projector. He ing more blood than any of the other organs. to his studio one day and shot him. [The] bullet had also cut a ragged hole in War- showed Mickey Mouse cartoons on a In one box, I’ve heard, there is also a hol’s intestines, releasing feces and upping wall in the apartment. slice of cake, on a plate. It wasn’t just the chances of fatal infection. Warhol liked to describe himself as material objects he kept. When pos- self-educated, a widely accepted claim. sible, he taped his phone conversa- Reading this, I felt as though I were In fact, he went to an excellent art col- tions, and sometimes had an assistant having the operation myself. lege, the Carnegie Institute of Tech- type them up. He believed in the power nology, where a number of his teach- of the banal. This faith was the well- arhol was born in Pittsburgh in ers recognized his gifts and kept the spring of the Pop-art paintings—the W1928, the youngest of the three work that he turned in to them, a rare Campbell’s soup cans, the Brillo car- sons of Andrej and Julia Warhola, who tribute. The minute he got out of school, tons—that made him famous in the had immigrated to the United States in 1949, he packed his belongings in a nineteen-sixties and changed Amer- from a small village in what is now Slo- paper bag and got on an overnight ica’s taste in art. vakia. The townsfolk were Carpatho- Greyhound bound for New York City. After Warhol’s death, in 1987, a mu- Rusyns, a Slavic people, and the family He was twenty. seum dedicated to his work was estab- was Byzantine Catholic. (Warhol, as an Warhol lived in a series of roach- lished in his home town, Pittsburgh. adult, sporadically went to Mass. “Church ridden sublets, usually shares, while try- The time capsules—six hundred and is a fun place to go,” he said.) Slavs were ing to break into commercial illustration. ten of them—were shipped there and much in demand in Pittsburgh, with its Once, when he was showing samples

62 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 COURTESY 303 GALLERY; OPPOSITE: LUCI GUTIÉRREZ LUCI OPPOSITE: GALLERY; 303 COURTESY Warhol would tell interviewers to talk to his assistant: “He did a lot of my paintings.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN SHORE tion, so that his complexion was lighter here, darker there. He also had a bul- bous nose, or so he thought, and he got a nose job. By the time he was in his thirties, he had lost much of his hair. Thereafter, he glued a toupee to his scalp every morning. His most cele- brated wig was a silver one, which he usually wore with a fringe of his brown hair peeping out at the neck. These difficulties boded ill for his sex life, and he was widely said to be lousy in bed. He thought sex was “messy and dis- tasteful,” a friend reported. He’d do it with you once or twice, and that was it. Gopnik, as is his practice, also gives competing evidence: “Within a few years Warhol was having surgery for anal warts and a tear, and a decade later he was taking penicillin for a venereal disease.” Warhol’s friend and collabo- rator Taylor Mead said that Warhol “blows like crazy.”

arhol lied constantly, almost •• Wrecreationally. He lied about his age even to his doctor. He told Who’s Who that he was born in Cleveland, to of his work to the editor-in-chief of ing the pictures.” The man unzipped. the “von Warhol” family. (He had traded Harper’s Bazaar, an insect crawled out Three years after Warhol arrived in in Warhola for Warhol soon after of his portfolio, to his mortification. New York, his mother turned up on his arriving in New York.) He adopted The editor felt so sorry for him that doorstep. She explained to one of his a gentle, whispery voice, into which she gave him an assignment. Warhol friends, “I come here to take care of my he might then drop a little grenade. If was not shy. In the Museum of Mod- Andy, and when he’s okay I go home.” someone asked how he was, he might ern Art, he went up to a staffer and pro- She stayed for almost twenty years. The say, “I’m okay,” and then, coming closer, posed that he design Christmas cards household had a large, smelly collection he would add, “But I have diarrhea.” for the gift shop. (He got the job.) A of Siamese cats. At one point, there were Some people thought he was stupid. friend remembered seeing him in a reportedly seventeen of them, mostly Not those who knew him well. “War- bookstore, flipping through the record named Sam. (But Julia, pointing, could hol only plays dumb,” a friend said. bins to see which labels were doing the introduce them separately: “That’s the “He’s incredibly analytical, intellectual, most interesting jackets. Then he went good Sam, that’s the bad Sam, that’s the and perceptive.” home and cold-called the art directors. dumb Sam . . .”) Between the cats and His commercial specialty was draw- “He was like a little Czech tank,” an- Julia’s late-life drinking problem, War- ings for women’s-wear ads—above all, other friend said. hol seems to have been hesitant to in- shoes. In 1955, the high-end women’s Many people who met him in those troduce her to his friends. On the other shoemaker I. Miller gave him a con- years, and later, found him strange— hand, one boyfriend said he thought tract for a minimum of twelve thou- a “weird little creep,” in the words of Warhol was grateful for her presence, sand dollars’ worth of work per year, a one. He was unabashedly homosexual, because it gave him an excuse not to lot of money at the time. He also did and in the early fifties that was weird have sex. He would explain to his guest window dressing, notably for Bonwit enough. He liked to do drawings of that he didn’t want to make any bed- Teller. But already he was looking be- nude boys, their nipples and crotches room noises as long as his mother was yond this: he wanted to be a gallery dotted with little hearts, like soft kisses. within earshot. artist. Teachers and classmates from If he met a man who appealed to him, Warhol claimed that he was a vir- Carnegie Tech provided some connec- he might say that he liked to photograph gin until he was twenty-five, and some tions, and Manhattan’s gay community penises, and would this man mind? people would say that that was no sur- supplied more. He also had a few spe- “No, of course not,” one self-possessed prise. All his life, he was pained by his cial godfathers, attracted to him, it British curator replied. “What are you looks. He was cursed with terrible skin, seems, by his charm (not everybody going to use them for?” “Oh, I don’t not just acne but what seems to have thought he was creepy) and by his drive. know yet,” Warhol said. “I’m just tak- been a disorder of pigment distribu- Perhaps his most important guide was

64 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 Emile de Antonio, an artists’ agent, mer; Gopnik calls him “the Great forting to watch.) For live interviews, who introduced him all around; he Sponge.” In any case, the day after he would often bring along Gerard knew John Cage, whom Warhol re­ Latow shared with him her little brain Malanga, who worked with him, and vered, and lots of collectors. (“I gave bomb, Warhol (or his mother, in an­ say, “Why don’t you ask my assistant a little party for a terribly rich woman other version) went to the Finast super­ Gerry Malanga some questions? He I knew,” de Antonio recalled, “and I market across the street and came home did a lot of my paintings.” There was served just marijuana and Dom Peri­ with one can of every kind of Camp­ some truth to this. Of the works listed gnon, and Andy did a beautiful menu bell’s soup on sale there. By the fol­ above, all but the 1962 “Campbell’s Soup in French.”) Another useful person was lowing year, 1962, he had produced Cans” were silk screens, usually based Ivan Karp, the director of the Leo Cas­ “Campbell’s Soup Cans,” a montage on photographs that someone else had telli Gallery, Manhattan’s most presti­ of all thirty­two varieties. Today, this taken, and made with Malanga wield­ gious art mart. Through Karp, Warhol painting hangs in the Museum of Mod­ ing the squeegee. From 1963 to 1972— eventually met Henry Geldzahler, a ern Art—“the ‘Nude Descending a the period during which he made most curatorial assistant at the Metropoli­ Staircase’ of the Pop movement,” in of his Pop art—Warhol produced no tan Museum, whose job there was to the words of Henry Geldzahler. It is hand­drawn work. find out who the hot new artists were both a slap in the face and a great joy: and tell the curators. so fresh, so brash, so red and white, so unning parallel to Warhol’s icon­ In the fifties, the United States al­ certain that it has covered every kind Roclasm about authorship was a cer­ ready had a pocket of conceptual art, of soup in the world, from Pepper Pot tain coolness toward his subjects. “For but the star painters were the Abstract to Scotch Broth. an artist with a lifelong reputation for Expressionists, above all Jackson Pol­ In rapid succession, the Campbell’s sucking up to stars,” Gopnik writes, lock and Willem de Kooning, with Soups were followed by Warhol’s other “Warhol also had a lifelong knack for their e4ortful drips and impastos. At now famous Pop paintings: “Green making art that underlined their short­ the Ab Exes’ heels were the young Rob­ Coca­Cola Bottles” (1962), “192 One comings and hollowness.” Probably the ert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, Dollar Bills” (1962), “Brillo Soap Pads most important discussions of War­ part conceptual, part painterly, and edg­ Box” (1964), the Marilyn Monroes and hol’s work are the books and essays that ing into “Pop,” a style that used im­ Elizabeth Taylors and Marlon Bran­ the philosopher Arthur Danto wrote agery from mass culture—comic strips, dos and Elvises. For some, you can eas­ on him from the mid­sixties onward. movies, advertising—and adopted a ily construct a background narrative. These are not exactly art criticism. Their light, playful tone, the very opposite of The “Marilyn Diptych,” comprising scope is broader. Danto says that War­ the Abstract Expressionists’ heavy lift­ fifty silk screens of Monroe, fading hol’s work, by disposing of modern­ ing. Warhol, too, was interested in this from garish color to spectral black­ ism’s assertions that painting should be popular matter and manner, and he was and­white, was exhibited just after her about the nature of painting, liberated annoyed that other people were, as he death. But I see no story lurking be­ it to go its own way, while the art crit­ saw it, stealing a march on him. Ac­ hind the Liz Taylors or the Elvises or, ics stayed back in the schoolroom, ar­ cording to a famous story, he was com­ for that matter, the panels of twenty­ guing. Danto doesn’t say he loved War­ plaining about this to friends one night four Statues of Liberty (1962) or thirty hol’s work, but I think he did. I’m sorry and asked if anyone could think of that he liked the Brillo carton—it sup­ pop­culture images that no one else plied the title of his book “Beyond the had used. A decorator named Muriel Brillo Box”—better than the Camp­ Latow said she had a suggestion, but bell’s soup cans, but he probably en­ she wanted fifty dollars, up front, be­ joyed the irony that the Brillo box War­ fore she would reveal it. The unembar­ hol immortalized was designed by an rassable Warhol sat down and wrote a Abstract Expressionist painter, James check. Then Latow said, “You’ve got Harvey, doing a money job on the side. to find something that’s recognizable The Ab Exes looked upon Warhol with to almost everybody . . . something like hatred. At a party in the late sixties, a a can of Campbell’s Soup.” Mona Lisas (1963). All of these ladies, drunken de Kooning said to Warhol, Gopnik calls this Warhol’s “eureka not to speak of Elvis and Brando, were “You’re a killer of art, you’re a killer of moment,” and it is typical of the book’s stars, and Warhol, from his childhood beauty, you’re even a killer of laughter.” sophistication that the crucial, seed­ until the day he died, was enthralled Warhol didn’t kill laughter—he would ling idea of Warhol’s Pop art should by celebrity. have been less famous if he had done be attributed, without apology, to some­ He soon became a celebrity him­ so—but his humor is muted, deadpan. one other than Warhol. Often, artists self, if an unusual one. In his thirties, In 1964, he produced a series of nine silk who are praised for birthing a new he was famous, in TV interviews, for screens of Jacqueline Kennedy’s face, trend are not the actual originators but putting two fingers over his lips and based on press photos: one that showed the ones who made the trend appeal­ saying things like “er” or “um,” but not her in the famous pillbox hat, just be­ ing to a large public. Warhol had as much more, as the cameras rolled. (You fore J.F.K. was shot; the second as Lyn­ much of the latter gift as of the for­ can see this on YouTube. It is discom­ don Johnson was being sworn in, on the

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 65 airplane back to Washington; the third window in the nearby Time-Life Build- the Velvets broke up in less than a year. at Kennedy’s funeral. There was noth- ing. Thereafter, until the mid-seventies, (“Always leave them wanting less,” War- ing overtly mocking about these works. he made scores of movies, some of them hol said.) But for a while Warhol’s film But in 1964, when, in the public mind, pure and severe, like “Sleep” and “Em- showings and performances—notably, Kennedy’s body was not yet cold, they pire,” and others, such as “The Chelsea “The Exploding Plastic Inevitable” and raised a question: What was Warhol Girls” and “Lonesome Cowboys,” sham- “++++”—were multimedia events, saying? Viewers might have asked the bling and funny and dirty, with drag featuring the superstars bopping around same of his earlier “Death and Disas- queens sitting around licking bananas in a desultory fashion to the Velvets’ ters” series (1962-65), worked up from or people having dilatory conversations discordant strains while two or more photographs of bloodied corpses hang- about sex, or having sex. films were projected side by side or, in- ing out of wrecked cars, mangled bod- But the movies were not just mov- deed, in superimposition. ies of people who had jumped to their ies. They were the motion-picture wing It hardly needs to be said that drugs deaths, the electric chair in of what was by now a were involved here, and this fact, aug- which Ethel and Julius Ro- whole “scene.” In 1964, mented with reminiscences of Warhol’s senberg, convicted of spying Warhol moved his profes- associates, has contributed to a portrait for the Soviet Union, were sional headquarters into of him as a sort of Mephistopheles, lur- executed, and so on. Like the a vast space he came to ing his young friends to their ruin. A soup cans, the silk screens call the Factory—it had key story is that of Freddy Herko, part were often cheerfully mul- housed a hat factory be- of the West Village postmodern-dance tiplied and, like the Mari- fore he moved in—on scene in the sixties. One day, a while lyns and the Liz Taylors, cov- East Forty-seventh Street, after he had stopped hanging around ered with washes of bright just west of the United the Factory, Herko took a bubble bath, color: blue, red, violet, yellow. Nations. The place was and some LSD, at a friend’s apartment, In the same year as the filthy, but Warhol’s friend danced naked for a while, and then, to “Nine Jackies,” Warhol unveiled silk Billy Name (né Billy Linich, but Linich the strains of Mozart’s “Coronation screens of his “Flowers,” big, blobby hi- was a name, right? So why not just go Mass,” threw himself out a window. biscus blossoms against a grassy field. by Name?) moved in with a pack of fel- When informed of Herko’s death, War- They looked like wallpaper or, as Gop- low speed freaks and transformed the hol commented that he was sorry not nik suggests, Marimekko dress fabrics. space with tinfoil and spray paint, so to have been there to film the fall. In any case, they were something that, that in the end every surface was silver. This story won him an enduring unlike a picture of an electric chair, you Just as Warhol’s movies were not reputation, with those so minded, as might be willing to hang over your liv- merely movies, the Factory was not an emotionless person, a sort of freak— ing-room sofa. This was what they were merely a place where things were made. an image reinforced by his paintings apparently designed for, because Warhol It was also a showcase for a certain group of soup cans and electric chairs. Cold (or Malanga) turned out more than four of people who clustered around War- heart, cold art. Gopnik doesn’t say hundred and fifty of them, in different hol. Billy Name was one; Gerard Ma- whether or not he believes the report, versions—different sizes, different col- langa another. Also important was On- but he concludes that, if it is true, it orways, to use Gopnik’s inspired word— dine (Robert Olivo), wild and vicious. says as much about Warhol’s desire to and they sold like hotcakes. Warhol Best known to outsiders was Edie Sedg- shock as about his supposed lack of claimed to be proud of them. If I’m not wick, a sweet-faced and rather hapless feeling. He also points out that War- mistaken, Gopnik doesn’t believe him. rich girl who, in black tights and ex- hol used the joke more than once. When He quotes Warhol announcing, the fol- pensive sweaters, often went along on his relationship with Edie Sedgwick lowing year, that he has retired as an Warhol’s outings, as his “date,” and paid was coming to an end—she ran off artist. The “Flowers,” Gopnik writes, the tab. These and a few others were with Bob Dylan—he said to a friend, were “pretty much his last notable Pop Warhol’s superstars, as he called them. “When do you think Edie will com- paintings.” But, as the author does not In 1966, he also became the man- mit suicide? I hope she lets us know, flat-out say but repeatedly implies, they ager of a proto-punk rock band, the so we can film it.” If this was nasty, it were also pretty much Warhol’s last no- Velvet Underground, hatchery of Lou was also clear-eyed: six years later, Sedg- table paintings, period. “I hate paint- Reed, John Cale, and others, all pretty wick died of a barbiturate overdose. ings,” he told a reporter in 1966, adding, much unknown at that point. One of Warhol also applied the joke to him- “That’s why I started making movies.” its members described a typical show: self, saying that he always regretted “Some sailors or something were in the that no one had been there, in 1968, to e had made his first film in 1963. audience of five, and we played some- film him being gunned down. HTitled “Sleep,” it was five and a thing and they said, ‘You play that again half hours long, and all it showed was and we’ll fuck the shit out of you.’ So n June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas his boyfriend, John Giorno, sleeping. we played it again.” “Our aim was to Oemerged from the elevator at the The next year, he followed this up with upset people,” one of the band’s found- Factory. She was a local eccentric, the “Empire,” eight hours, overnight, of the ers said, “make them vomit.” Warhol founder and sole member of a femi- Empire State Building, shot from a knew little about music, and he and nist organization she called SCUM, the

66 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 Society for Cutting Up Men. She was nik’s chronicle, the “after” had been was Warhol’s real office number—can’t also, apparently, suffering from an acute coming for a while. Like most of War- seriously have been intended to bring mental disorder. She had previously hol’s Pop paintings, the great major- in cash. Rather, it proclaimed that, drifted into Warhol’s studio a few times ity of his films were made in less than henceforward, “selling out” would be, and he had put her in a sexploitation five years. Then, it seems, he got bored. for Warhol, an aesthetic move. film, “I, a Man,” in 1967. She felt he He fielded a few works in the I-dare- But gradually the sellout pose stuck. should have used her more, and this you-to-say-this-isn’t-art manner of his When, two years later, Warhol told a was the reason for her visit. Entering hero and friend Marcel Duchamp, who, reporter that his artistic medium was the studio, she fired several times at by exhibiting a signed urinal, in 1917, “business,” he meant it. In Gopnik’s Warhol and also put a bullet in a friend more or less invented conceptual art. words, this declaration “launched a new of his who was visiting. Then she In 1972, at Finch College, in New York, approach to his life and his art that turned around and stepped back into Warhol did his “vacuum-cleaner piece,” would mold both for the following two the elevator. A few hours later, in Times which involved his vacuuming a patch decades, and then shape his reputation Square, she told a bewildered cop, “The of carpet in the college’s art gallery, for all the years afterward.” Reverting police are looking for me. I am a flower signing the dust bag, propping it on a to his I. Miller days, he began design- child. He had too much control over pedestal, and going home. But, as Gop- ing ads: a sundae for Schrafft’s, a lim- my life.” (She got three years. “You get nik points out, “Where Duchamp’s ited-edition bottle for Absolut vodka, more for stealing a car,” Lou Reed urinal had involved a transformation and the like. He also had an idea for said.) Meanwhile, an ambulance had of the banal into art, if only by the art- a chain of Andy-Mat diners. “They’re taken Warhol to Columbus Hospital, ist’s say-so, Warhol’s update involved for people who eat alone,” he explained. where he was laid out on a table for jettisoning transformation altogether “You sit at a little table, order up any Dr. Rossi’s ministrations. His mother, so that banality itself, left to do its sort of frozen food you want, and watch summoned by one of his associates, banal thing, could count as high art.” TV at the same time. Everyone has his stood in the lobby, praying for her Some years before, Warhol had own TV set.” “good, religious boy.” The doctors had placed an ad in the Village Voice: “I’ll Warhol’s new enterprises didn’t her sedated and taken home. After the endorse with my name any of the fol- take up much of his time. Gopnik surgery, Warhol stayed in the hospital lowing; clothing AC-DC, cigarettes says that the artist gave maybe two for two months, eating candy, talking small, tapes, sound equipment, ROCK days each to the later silk-screen por- on the phone, and trying to manage N’ ROLL RECORDS, anything, film, and traits—and that it showed. “Ever more the studio from afar. film equipment, Food, Helium, Whips, vacant,” Gopnik calls these paintings. Gopnik describes the assault by MONEY!! love and kisses Andy War- Unsurprisingly, Warhol’s star fell. By Solanas as the dividing line between hol, EL 5-9941.” This comically blatant the time, in the early eighties, that he Warhol’s “before” and his “after.” He announcement—the phone number began doing collaborative paintings slowly got rid of his disreputable en- tourage, or they, feeling less valued, left him. He acquired fancier friends, like Lee Radziwill and Mick Jagger. He bought an estate in Montauk, and a chocolate-brown Rolls to go with it. In 1969, he founded Interview, a publication that was advertised as being devoted to movies (the origi- nal title was inter/VIEW: A Monthly Film Journal) but soon became a mag- azine about celebrities. Apparently, he did not often work on it—one of the early editors said he never read it until the printer delivered it—but it helped to snag clients for another de- partment of his activities, the manu- facture of silk-screen portraits of friends, patrons, and assorted big names: Dennis Hopper, Dominique de Menil, Gianni Versace, the Shah of Iran, Chris Evert, Dolly Parton, Imelda Marcos. “Let me just check my e-mail, my texts, my missed calls, Instagram, Seeing Warhol’s brush with death Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, my credit score, my horoscope, as a watershed has obvious narrative the results of this latest personality test, the S. & P., the Dow, the news, appeal, but, on the evidence of Gop- this article about cute dogs, and the weather, and then we can go.” with Jean-Michel Basquiat—Gopnik without his joining of high culture rested. Gopnik, though he does be- guesses that the young prodigy re- and low, without his love of sizzle and lieve that his subject is a genius, treats minded the older man of his earlier flash, without his combination of ten- him fairly, calmly, and fondly. If War- self—the association was enough to derness and sarcasm, without the use hol tells a good joke, Gopnik relays damage Basquiat’s reputation. A critic of photography and silk-screening it. In the hospital, soon after he was for the Times wrote that their work and advertising. shot, Warhol said to a friend, “You together looked “like one of Warhol’s If any artist of the past half century know, we gotta get some bigger things manipulations, which increasingly deserves a biography as detailed as this to hide behind.” When the artist stuffs seem based on the Mencken theory one, then, it is Warhol. Still, the long a photograph of Brando down the about nobody going broke under- tail end of Warhol’s career forces Gop- front of his pants, we hear about it. estimating the public’s intelligence. nik into some tight corners as a critic. As for Warhol’s love life, Gopnik man- Basquiat, meanwhile, comes across as He acknowledges that, even by the end ages to convince us, without senti- the all too willing accessory.” Basquiat of the sixties, Warhol was treading water mentality, that, however many cute soon distanced himself, which hurt as an artist. I believe that’s true, and that guys Warhol went through, he always Warhol. Gopnik feels, too, that War- Gopnik thinks so, too. Yet elsewhere, just wanted to fall in love with some- hol was not as indifferent to artistic and often, he tries to defend Warhol body and settle down. He did fall in quality as he made himself out to be. against the charge of having made in- love, often—usually with someone Soon after the Centre Pompidou, in ferior work in the seventies and eight- who loved him less—but it never Paris, opened, Warhol spent a day ies. Most frustrating are the instances worked out for long. The last boy- looking at its modern-art masterworks when he excuses mediocre paintings by friend, Jon Gould, a young vice-pres- and wrote in his diary, “I wanted to saying that mediocrity was what War- ident at Paramount, declined to sleep just rush home and paint and stop hol was going for, and that we should in Warhol’s room with him, saying doing society portraits.” congratulate him for having achieved that the artist’s dachshunds farted on Still, many rich people were happy his goal. him in bed. Gould died of AIDS within to have him do portraits of them. This At times, the defenses reminded a few years. third arm of his empire fell into a neat me of the philosopher Karl Popper’s Then, there is Warhol’s mother, with synergy with the others—the fancy famous objection to Freudian analy- whom he lived for most of his life. By Montauk house, the celebrity maga- sis, on the ground that it was “unfal- the time he was courting Jon Gould, zine—and made him a lot of money. sifiable.” (If you said that you’d never Julia, now in her late seventies, was He enjoyed spending it. He liked to wanted to have sex with your mother, downstairs, going bats, hiding food in buy loose diamonds and walk around this was instantly interpretable, via secret places around the house. In 1971, jiggling them in his pocket. In his the theory of repression, as an admis- she moved back to Pittsburgh, living later years, he went antique shopping sion that you wanted to have sex with first with one of Warhol’s brothers and most mornings and eventually bought your mother. If, on the other hand, then in a nursing home. A cousin re- around a million dollars’ worth of heir- you said that you wanted to have sex peatedly wrote to Warhol, telling him loom furniture. He had no space for with your mother, voilà: you wanted that Julia survived only in the hope most of it in his living quarters and to have sex with your mother.) Gop- that Andy would visit her before she therefore had to stash it in empty nik writes that, in the sixties and sev- died. He didn’t visit, nor, eventually, rooms upstairs. enties, “ ‘Andy Warhol’ may have pro- did he attend her funeral, though he moted some banal popular culture. paid for it. One day soon afterward, a arhol once tried to give an old Andy Warhol, the brilliant artist in- reporter asked him what was on his Wfriend one of his Marilyn Mon- side those quotes, could be counted mind. He answered, “I think about my roe silk screens, and the man, who on to turn it into art.” Really? How bird that died. If it went to bird heaven. disliked Pop, said, “Just tell me in your can you tell the difference between But I really can’t think about that. It heart of hearts that you know it isn’t the two? “Anything bad is right,” War- just took a walk.” art.” Warhol, imperturbable, answered, hol declared, and Gopnik calls this Fifteen years after his mother died, “Wrap it up in brown paper, put it “as close as he ever came to a guid- Warhol, fifty-eight, followed her. It’s in the back of a closet—one day it will ing aesthetic principle.” But is it a a wonder that he lasted that long. All be worth a million dollars.” He was good principle—not just for Warhol, his later life, he suffered from an in- right, Gopnik says, but off by two or- but for us? Better, surely, just to ac- fected gallbladder. He wore a girdle— ders of magnitude: in 2008, a Warhol knowledge that the bad stuff was bad there’s a collection of them, dyed in silk screen sold for a hundred million than to try to turn its badness into a pretty colors, in the time capsules— dollars. There was no huger reputa- postmodern triumph. just to keep his guts in. He was in con- tion than Warhol’s in the art of the If special pleading for the late pe- stant pain. Finally, one day in Febru- sixties, and in late-twentieth-century riod is the book’s one real weakness, ary of 1987, he checked himself into art there was no more important de- its great strength is its tone. In his New York Hospital. When the sur- cade than the sixties. Much of the time, Warhol was very controversial. geons pulled out his gallbladder, they art that has followed, in the United Some people thought he was a ge- found it falling apart with gangrene. States, is unthinkable without him, nius; others, that he should be ar- He died the next morning. 

68 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 a police procedural, but one shouldn’t mistake its extraordinary directness and openness to life with the formulaic ac- celerations of genre: Majumdar’s novel is compelling, yet its compulsions have to do with an immersive present rather than with a skidding sequence. Her char- acters start telling us about their lives, and those lives are suddenly palpable, vital, voiced. I can’t remember when I last read a novel that so quickly disman- tled the ordinary skepticism that attends the reading of made-up stories. Early Naipaul comes to mind as a precursor, and perhaps Akhil Sharma’s stupen- dously vivid novel “Family Life.” Sharma has spoken of how he avoided using “sticky” words—words involving touch and taste and smell—so as to enable a natural velocity; Majumdar finds her own way of achieving the effect. “A Burning” is about the fateful inter- actions of three principal characters, who take turns sharing their narratives. At its center is a young Muslim woman named Jivan, who lives in the slums of Kolkota, and who witnesses a terrorist incident that tips her life into turmoil. A halted train at a nearby station is firebombed, and the ensuing inferno kills more than a hundred people. At home, Jivan makes books the mistake of posting a politically risky question on Facebook—“If the police didn’t help ordinary people like you and INFAMOUS me, if the police watched them die, doesn’t that mean that the government is also a A début novel follows three characters in the wake of a terror attack. terrorist?”—which attracts official atten- tion. The police come for her in the mid- by james wood dle of the night. Everything fits: she was seen at the railway station, carrying some kind of package; clothes soaked in ker- illiam Faulkner claimed that he ent authorial filter in a continuous oral osene are found at her home; she has Wwrote “As I Lay Dying” in six present, even when they are relating their been chatting with a “terrorist recruiter” weeks, and the speed makes sense— own histories. This is the form that Megha on Facebook; above all, she is, conve- it comports with the quick intimacy Majumdar uses for her first novel, “A niently, poor and Muslim. She is charged of the book’s form, in which a chorus Burning” (Knopf); she may have taken with the crime, and spends the rest of of first-person narrators plunge us into six weeks or six years to write it, but her the novel in prison, awaiting a trial that their soliloquies. This novel, hovering book has a similar urgency of appeal. Its will not occur for a year. somewhere between the older episto- characters are at the very front of the There are two people whose testi- lary structure and pure dramatic mono- stage, and we can feel their breath. mony could save Jivan, and much of the logue—between correspondence and a Majumdar marshals a much smaller novel turns on their capacity and their playscript—becomes magically liberated cast of speakers than Faulkner did, and willingness to offer it. One is an aspir- from the more burdensome narrative her spare plot moves with arrowlike de- ing actress named Lovely, who also lives machinery, that wheezing apparatus of termination. It begins with a crime, con- in the slum. Lovely—the name she took persuasion and pastness. Instead, we get tinues with a false charge and impris- at eighteen—is a so-called hijra, a des- the immediacy of voice, characters press- onment, and ends with a trial. The book ignation that affords intersex and trans- ing themselves on us without any appar- has some of the elements of a thriller or gender people a recognized status, but a perilously ambiguous and marginal one. Megha Majumdar’s “A Burning” captures a society’s complex dynamism. She lives in a group house with other

ILLUSTRATION BY CHLOE CUSHMAN THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 69 hijras; the little community survives by mild estrangement curdles into righ- the one with which Jivan evokes her offering occasional “blessings” (for a mar- teous condemnation: mother’s awkward inaccessibility at home: riage, a birth), and by begging. With “Then my mother cooked, hidden in the When he thinks about it, an old anger flick- characteristic buoyancy, Lovely calls her- ers to life. He had begun to dream of her as a kitchen. An atmosphere of smoke and self a “he-she” and a “half-half,” and her mentee, but she had not considered him a men- chili about her deterred conversation.” jaunty, theatrical, yearning voice domi- tor. She had considered him perhaps no more When Jivan is arrested, her mother tries nates the book. It is introduced with than a source of occasional free food. She had to visit her at the police station, and Ma- was quick, fearless simplicity: fooled him. .. . Now he knew, there some- jumdar’s minimal description of her ap- thing wrong with Jivan the whole time. There Sunday morning! Time to go to acting class. was something wrong in her thinking. proaching the guards—“the stooped With my hips swinging like this and like that, woman who came right up to them, her I am walking past the guava seller. Majumdar finds all the resources she feet in bathroom slippers”—concisely “Brother,” I am calling, “what’s the time?” needs within this tightly bound trio, renders a powerlessness the mother her- “Eight thirty,” he is grumbling, because he steadily widening the novel’s vision of self doesn’t grasp. Elsewhere, Majumdar is not wishing to share with me the fruits of his wristwatch. Leave him. I am abandoning Kolkatan, and Indian, life. Jivan—inde- gets a brief scene to shimmer. In prison, my stylish walk and running like a horse to the pendent and intelligent, living at home Jivan insists that she has the “right” to local train station. . . . Nothing is simple for a but mentally elsewhere—had been on tell her side of the story to the press. “You person like me, not even one hour on the train. the way up: “From an eater of cabbage, have the right?” one of the inmates re- My chest is a man’s chest, and my breasts are I was becoming an eater of chicken.” She plies, mockingly: “Under a smile she bur- made of rags. So what? Find me another woman in this whole city as truly woman as me. was working as a shop assistant in a ies all else she meant to say.” When the clothing store called Pantaloons; she had journalist tells Jivan that his editor will Jivan has been teaching Lovely to bought a smartphone on an installment make her story “better,” she laughs in be- read English; the package that she was plan. In prison, she is now among the musement. Her story would be better, carrying on the day of the incident con- outcasts: “We feel we are living at the she says, if her father had not broken his tained some books that she was taking bottom of a well. We are frogs.” Her back, if her mother had not been at- to her student. Throughout the novel, companions include Yashwi, who has tacked, if she had finished school. “Not Majumdar uses the continuous present robbed houses: “In one of them she left better like that,” the journalist says. “Then tense (“I am abandoning my stylish walk”) a grandfather tied up so tight he suffo- like what?” Jivan asks. and various eccentricities of phrasing cated. But she is a nice girl, always smil- Generally, Majumdar abjures com- (“the fruits of his wristwatch”) to “sound” ing.” And Nirmaladi, who used to work mentary and interior analysis in favor of Lovely’s Bengali into English. This, along as a cook, “until she accepted twenty incident, the decisive ramifications of ac- with the character’s hardened esprit of thousand rupees for putting rat poison tion. In masterly fashion, she uses very the streets, lofts her off the page: in a family’s lunch.” And Kalkidi, whose few strokes to help us see how PT Sir husband threw acid on her face, “but, begins to transform himself from a mod- Even a future movie star is having to make somehow, she is the one in jail.” Jivan is est schoolteacher to a government offi- money. One morning my sisters and I are spray- ing rose water in our armpits, braiding our visited by an apparently sympathetic jour- cial. One day, on his way home from the hair, putting bangles on our arms, and together nalist, and the encounter allows Majum- school, he is drawn to a rally held by the we are going to bless a newborn. The general dar to fill in a little backstory. We hear Jana Kalyan (“Well being for All”) Party, public is believing that we hijras are having a something about Jivan’s parents: her fa- a stand-in for one of India’s regional par- special telephone to god. So if we bless, it is ther is a former rickshaw driver stricken ties. A Bollywood star is headlining the like a blessing straight from god. At the door of the happy family, I am rattling the lock thuck with back problems; her mother, weather event; groups of men are waving saffron- thuck thuck. permitting, buys food at an illegal night colored flags. PT Sir is handed a Party market and cooks meals to sell on the flag and his forehead is smeared with red The third protagonist, a physical- street at dawn. When she was attacked paste: he’s in. At the rally, he’s at first education teacher called PT Sir, knew after visiting the market one night, Jivan merely curious, even disdainful of the Jivan when she was one of the “charity decided to drop out of school and get a thronged, uneducated supporters, lured students” at S. D. Gosh Girls’ School. job. And their house—a single room of from the local villages “by a free box of Impressed by Jivan’s athletic prowess, brick, tin, and tarp near a garbage dump, rice and chicken.” But then one of these he took an interest in her, gave her extra “a dump that was so big and occupied men gets up on the roof of a car and food, hoped that she might consider by so many crows screaming kaw kaw starts yelling “Praise to the Motherland!” him a mentor. But she left school early, from dawn to night, it was famous,” Jivan PT Sir watches as the man pulls a dag- and never acknowledged the relation- recounts. “I would say, ‘I live in the house ger from the waistband of his trousers ship. Unlike the two other principals, behind the dump,’ and everybody would and waves it in the air, where it glints in PT Sir is represented in a close third- know where I meant. You could say I the sun. Alarmed, admiring, he thinks person present, a voice no less alive lived in a landmark building.” how free this man seems, how unlike his than the self-presentations of Jivan and Majumdar has a gift for using small colleagues at school. Later, on the train Lovely, but one which appropriately dis- details and fleeting incidents to nudge home, a muri walla, a puffed-rice seller, tances us from this stiffly moralizing her fiction into larger suggestion. Some- sees the red mark on PT Sir’s forehead man of military bearing. When PT Sir times it’s a phrase—walls “plump with and the Party flag in his hand, and def- sees a news report about the arrest, his damp”—or a poignant shorthand, like erentially gives him a free portion of

70 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 food: “For you, no charge.” PT Sir “feels the other passengers staring at him. They must be thinking, who is this VIP?” His BRIEFLY NOTED status has just changed; a fuse has been lit. Gradually, PT Sir will bind himself Dark Mirror, by Barton Gellman (Penguin Press). In 2013, the au- ever more tightly to the inner workings thor, reporting for the Washington Post, was among those who of the anti-Muslim Jana Kalyan Party. brought to light the trove of top-secret N.S.A. files leaked by Edward Snowden. Here he delves even deeper into the maze lot is essentially about desire and ob- of government secrecy and surveillance, but at the book’s core Pstruction, and the question of whether is his wary, exasperating relationship with his source, who slides that obstruction is removed or solidified. between principled candor, exaggeration, and evasion. Gellman Majumdar’s story is, in this sense, clas- takes us through his efforts while reporting to weigh the pub- sically simple. The two protagonists who lic’s right to know against the need for secrecy on national- may be able to save Jivan find themselves security matters, as he carefully charts the course toward trans- unwilling or unable to do so; at the same parency. Even so, when an N.S.A. spokesperson accuses him time, their own prospects brighten at the of being “in love with your source,” he takes seriously the pos- cost of Jivan’s freedom, and in relation sibility that her words might bear some truth. to their connection to her. PT Sir soon has reason to see that she is roundly con- The Compton Cowboys, by Walter Thompson-Hernández (Wil- demned, not least because his former as- liam Morrow). The history of African-American ranching in sociation with her is part of what orig- California has its roots in the westward migration following inally made him attractive to the Party the Civil War. This vivid group portrait of contemporary leader, Bimala Pal. Lovely, so desperate black cowboys at Richland Farms, in Compton, is a story to break into the movie business, is at both of heritage and of urban unrest, gang violence, and con- last noticed by agents and directors be- frontations with the police. The Compton Cowboys met, in cause of her link to the infamous Jivan; the eighties and nineties, in a youth horseback-riding pro- yet, the more distance she puts between gram mostly funded by white donors. Taking over the ranch herself and her former teacher, the more as adults, they sought to reclaim the legacy of black cowboys. employable she becomes. Their activities, the author shows, sparked a culture clash in It’s only at the end of this brief, brave the wider community, but they have also revived interest in novel that one becomes fully aware of the black cowboy life style, indelibly captured in the Cow- how broad its judgments have been, how boys’ motto: “Streets raised us. Horses saved us.” fierce and absolute its condemnations. Through the gaps that open up among Man of My Time, by Dalia Sofer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The and behind these three characters, a large ruptures of the 1978 Iranian Revolution govern the life of Hamid, Indian panoply emerges. The book’s sur- the stoic narrator of this novel, which shuttles between the past face realism—that great boon to writ- and the present day. Working for years as a government inter- ers—is abundant and busy and life-sown: rogator, Hamid became estranged from his family, who fled to muri wallas, pillow-fillers, guava sellers, America. But on a trip to New York, accompanying a govern- a man who grinds tobacco in his palm, ment minister on a diplomatic mission, Hamid visits his mother, not to mention theatrical agents, school- who asks him to fulfill his father’s wish to have his ashes scat- teachers, hijras, criminals, and criminal tered in Iran. Sofer shows how one generation’s revolt gives rise politicians. But the system that at once to another’s. At one point, Hamid, asking the minister for re- supports and undermines this diverse vi- assurance that history’s disturbances will resolve into peace, is tality is seen with an unrelentingly cold told instead that “the world is inclining toward darkness.” authorial eye, in all its small and large corruption, its frozen inequality, murder- Tropic of Violence, by Nathacha Appanah, translated from the ous racism, political opportunism, and French by Geoffrey Strachan (Graywolf ). This novel by a unalleviated poverty. At the same time, Mauritian-French writer takes place off the coast of Mozam- because societies are complex, and be- bique, on the island of Mayotte, which is officially part of cause Megha Majumdar is a sophisti- France, and by far its poorest region. Migrants flock to Ma- cated student of that complexity, her novel yotte despite its poverty, in the hope of acquiring French pass- gains flight as a tale of competing dyna- ports. In Appanah’s sobering story, a baby boy, Moïse, aban- mism. Her three ambitious and intelli- doned by his migrant mother, is adopted by a nurse, grows gent characters are all moving up, out of into a rebellious adolescent, and becomes entangled with a the class they were born into; Jivan’s plight sadistic teen-age gang leader. Appanah offers a portrait of a is that this ambition, forced by circum- place both beautiful and brutal, suggesting that Mayotte, stance into a desperate resolve, involves damaged by colonization, corruption, poverty, and neglect, is a struggle that she seems fated to lose.  fated to afflict its inhabitants in turn.

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 71 Yet Longfellow’s fame proved to be more perishable than expected. How did he reach the summit, and what ex- plains the century-old collapse of his literary reputation, which now shows some flickering signs of revival? Nich- olas Basbanes tells the tale with dili- gence, affection, and an occasional note of special pleading in “Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfel- low” (Knopf). The poet was born in 1201 to a dis- tinguished New England family in Port- land, a hundred miles or so north of Boston. His father, Stephen Longfel- low, served in both the state legislature and the U.S. Congress. His mother, the culture-loving Zilpah Longfellow, dis- cussed literature with young Henry, warning him away from the obscurity he so admired in Thomas Gray’s odes. Poetry, she told him, must instruct and improve. He should avoid poems that “excite the imagination only”—a lesson he may have taken too much to heart. At the age of fifteen, Longfellow was packed off to Bowdoin College, in nearby Brunswick. His family had considerable clout on campus: his grandfather had helped to found the school, and his fa- ther sat on its board of trustees. But this books otherwise dutiful son already had some ideas of his own. “I hardly think Nature designed me for the bar, or the pulpit, THE PUBLIC POET or the dissecting-room,” he informed his father. In a subsequent letter, he When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ruled supreme. added, “I most eagerly aspire after fu- ture eminence in literature.” This got a by james marcus predictably lukewarm reception from the elder Longfellow, who had himself trained as a lawyer and doubted whether n March 26, 1222, Ralph Waldo was, in his heyday, the most famous his son could make a living as a writer. OEmerson went to a funeral. As the poet in the English-speaking world. “There is not wealth enough in this coun- elderly writer stared into the open cas- Perhaps T. S. Eliot, in his sports-arena- try to afford encouragement and patron- ket, he grew perplexed. He could not filling prime, would be a comparable age to merely literary men,” he replied. identify the body. He seemed to know figure. But Eliot was lionized by many In the biographies of literary talents, that the man had been a friend—in- people who didn’t read his poetry, the father is often viewed as the heavy, deed, he felt sad that the bearded stranger whereas Longfellow’s books were de- crushing the life out of his sensitive child. in the casket had predeceased him— voured not only by the literati but by But Stephen Longfellow happened to but Emerson had no idea who he was. ordinary readers. When Longfellow be right. At the time, the self-sustaining “Who is the sleeper?” he finally asked was received by Queen Victoria, in 1262, American writer was a rare thing. So a his daughter. The answer was Henry she noticed the servants scuffling to get compromise was fashioned, presumably Wadsworth Longfellow. a glimpse of him. To her amazement, with familial help. Longfellow, who had Emerson was in the throes of de- they all knew his poetry. No other vis- just graduated from Bowdoin at eigh- mentia. Even so, the story seems like a itor had provoked “so peculiar an inter- teen, was offered a chair at the college small allegory of Longfellow’s disap- est,” she noted. “Such poets wear a crown in modern European languages. pearance from American culture. He that is imperishable.” The fruits of nepotism did not end with the gig itself. To prepare his son After a century-old collapse, the poet’s reputation shows some signs of revival. for the job, Stephen Longfellow stepped

72 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY CARSON ELLIS up to finance a lengthy trip to Europe. an honest admission from a ruined man, know exactly what—and that is striking, Henry crossed the Atlantic in 1826 and who may have felt that he had little else. given that the two were such ceaseless made his way straight to Paris, where But the central drama of his life, and chroniclers of their own lives. Basbanes, he procured a claret-colored waistcoat certainly the narrative at the heart of having dived deep into the unpublished and various other dandyish accessories. Basbanes’s biography, was about to begin. journals and correspondence of both par- From there he travelled to Spain, Italy, There would be another marriage, a be- ties, comes up empty-handed. What is and Germany. He spent more than three loved family, a steady ascent to fame and clear is that in 1843, four years after rid- years abroad, assuring his increasingly fortune as a poet. Just not quite yet. iculing the love offering that was “Hy- skeptical parents that he was learning The agent of this transformation perion,” Fanny crossed Longfellow’s path loads. No doubt he treated some of this was Fanny Appleton, the eighteen- at a party and they decided to get mar- time as a lark—spring break in the Eter- year-old daughter of a Boston textile ried. Thus began what the groom called nal City. Yet he returned home in 1829 magnate. Brilliant, beautiful, as book- his “Vita Nuova of happiness.” with a remarkable command of French, besotted as her future husband, she was The marriage (including its agoniz- Italian, and Spanish. This qualified him, clearly hard to resist. Basbanes seems ing preamble) altered the course of in an after-the-fact manner, for his post almost as infatuated with her as his Longfellow’s career as a poet. He had at Bowdoin—and prepared the ground subject was, putting Longfellow on the published short poems since his teen- for his role as the first great internation- back burner for twenty pages while he age years, in newspapers and magazines. alist of American letters. narrates Fanny’s European sojourn of His first volume of verse, “Voices of the the mid-eighteen-thirties. Night,” appeared in 1839, followed by ongfellow was bored at Bowdoin, What Fanny sought in a suitor, the “Ballads and Other Poems,” in 1841. Lwhere he taught for the next six author tells us, was “intellectual engage- Both bundled together Longfellow’s years. He cranked out textbooks on ment above all else.” She had already own poems with his translations, sug- French and Italian grammar and de- batted away numerous candidates, and gesting that the two roles were virtually spised his life in the sticks. “I suppose when she first encountered Longfellow, indistinguishable. Both showed his met- you think I am dead,” he wrote to a friend. in Interlaken, Switzerland, in the sum- ric ingenuity, his deep acquaintance with “But it is not so; I am only buried—in mer of 1836, he did not strike her as a European literature, and a weakness for Brunswick.” potential soul mate. “Mr L. very inquis- Romantic mush that was frequently Gradually, though, his spirits began itive,” she wrote in her diary one night, offset by his lightness of touch: to lift. In 1831 he married Mary Potter, sounding a little fatigued. She seems to the cultivated daughter of a Portland have found him a harmless nerd, whose So blue yon winding river flows, It seems an outlet from the sky, judge, which took the edge off his rural idea of a good time was to read aloud Where waiting till the west wind blows, isolation. He reshuffled his European from his own journals or to translate The freighted clouds at anchor lie. reminiscences into “Outre-Mer: A Pil- German ballads on the fly (with Fanny grimage Beyond the Sea,” a hodgepodge supplying some of the best lines). But now his domestic happiness em- travelogue in the vein of Washington When Longfellow left, in August, to boldened him to try his hand at more Irving. And then he was offered the es- take up his Harvard appointment, Fanny ambitious projects. In 1845, he published cape he was hoping for—the Smith seemed almost surprised by her sense of “The Poets and Poetry of Europe,” a Professorship of Modern Languages at loss. But he was captivated by her. After hefty anthology of translations (some Harvard. There was only one stipula- she returned to America with her fam- of them done with Fanny) which was tion: he would have to return to Europe ily, in 1837, he bombarded her with notes, the first of its kind in America. That to solidify his grasp of German. books, articles, and a pair of castanets— same year, Longfellow also set to work Longfellow was jubilant. He departed this last gift ushering in a long period on “Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie.” Based with Mary in April, 1835, and after stops of silence. The strange fact is that Fanny on a folkloric nugget he borrowed from in England and Denmark they pro- kept Longfellow waiting for seven years. his Bowdoin classmate Nathaniel Haw- ceeded to the Netherlands. As planned, He suffered bouts of depression, inform- thorne, it was published in 1847 and he immersed himself in one language- ing one friend that “a leaden melancholy made Longfellow a national celebrity. learning adventure after another. But in hangs over me:—and from this I pass He was henceforth not merely a poet early October, Mary, who was pregnant, at times into feverish excitement, bor- but a creator of American mythology— had a miscarriage, followed by an infec- dering on madness.” He took the bold which Americans, in what many still tion. She died on November 29th, after step of publishing a novel, “Hyperion,” regarded as a history-starved wilder- issuing a final plea to her husband: whose young lovers were plainly pat- ness, bought by the cartload. “Evange- “Henry, do not forget me.” terned on himself and Fanny, and made line” went through six printings in a A grieving widower adrift in Europe, sure that she got a copy. Yet even this matter of months. Longfellow numbly went about his ap- four-hundred-and-thirty-nine-page bil- pointed task, vacuuming up more lan- let-doux failed to move her. (In a letter is contemporaries mostly adored guages (he came to know fifteen). “There to a friend, she dismissed it as “desul- Hhis books. “I read your poems over are wounds which are never entirely tory, objectless, a thing of shreds and and over,” Hawthorne gushed to the au- healed,” he wrote his sister-in-law. He patches like the Author’s mind.”) thor after bingeing on “Voices of the did not wish to let go of his sorrow— Then something happened. We don’t Night” in 1839. “Nothing equal to some

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 73 of them was ever written in this world.” tion of literature, this is certainly news superman: he brings peace to his peo- The excitable John Greenleaf Whittier that stays news.) ple, and teaches them to grow corn and wrote about “Evangeline” in similar So the original readers of “Evange- jot down their thoughts in a pictographic terms: “Eureka!—Here, then, we have line” responded to its archaic music, its alphabet. In this sense, he is cast as a it at last! An American poem, with the romantic agonies, and its endlessly un- modernizer, turning noble savages into lack of which British reviewers have so scrolling panorama of the New World. solid citizens. Yet Longfellow never strays long reproached us.” Even Walt Whit- This last point helps to explain Whit- from what he took to be the animism man, an unlikely fan, declared that “his tier’s delight at having stumbled across of the Ojibwa: what greater gift is there influence is like good drink or air. He an “American poem.” But how Ameri- to a poet than a world in which every is not tepid either, but always vital with can was it? Like many post-colonials, bird, tree, and insect has a soul? This flavor, motion, grace.” Longfellow’s compatriots were battling means that the tiniest incident—say, the What, exactly, were his peers respond- over the question of national identity, descent of crows upon a cornfield—takes ing to? “Evangeline” is a good place to with a good many factions in the mud on a Homeric heft: start. The poem is a verse narrative—a pit. Some, like Emerson, argued that Soon they came with caw and clamor, romance, really—built on a factual foun- the ballast of European culture would Rush of wings and cry of voices, dation: Britain’s expulsion of the Aca- need to be cast off—that the new na- To their work of devastation, dians from what are now the Canadian tion should be made up from scratch. Settling down upon the corn-fields, Maritime Provinces between 1788 and But Longfellow, with his vast mental Delving deep with beak and talon, For the body of Mondamin. 1763. This was essentially an act of ethnic reservoir of languages and literatures, cleansing, and Longfellow is alert to the felt otherwise. He was, as we now say, When it was published, in 1888, “The tragedy of the Acadian exile. But the a globalist. Instead of Emerson’s slash- Song of Hiawatha” quickly outstripped engine of the poem is Evangeline’s search and-burn approach to America’s cul- “Evangeline” in its success, selling four for her lover, Gabriel, dragged away by tural patrimony, he preferred Goethe’s thousand copies on its first day alone. the British on a ship and dumped some- notion of Weltliteratur—the idea that There was a wealth of parodies, “made where in the American outback. Her all poems and cultures were in constant, tempting,” as Basbanes notes, “by the odyssey plays to Longfellow’s strengths chattering, shape-shifting dialogue. tom-tom tempo of the meter.” But these, as a pastoralist, on display in the famous Longfellow took this cross-pollinat- too, were a tribute to the poem’s perva- first lines: ing tendency to new heights in “The sive presence in American popular cul- This is the forest primeval. The murmuring Song of Hiawatha.” “I have at length ture, which eventually spawned not pines and the hemlocks, hit upon a plan for a poem on the Amer- only related works of art but Hiawatha- Bearded with moss, and in garments green, ican Indians,” he confided to his jour- branded tobacco, bicycles, dishes, Christ- indistinct in the twilight, nal in 1884. He would “weave together mas stockings, soap, potato sacks, ther- Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and their beautiful traditions into a whole.” mometers, and biscuit tins. Truly, Long- prophetic . . . As usual, he preferred an imported fellow was everywhere. By the end of In a typical move, Longfellow chose meter—in this case, the rapid-fire tro- his life, as the scholar Bliss Perry pointed to write his North American epic in chees and poetic architecture of the Finn- out, carping about this beloved icon was dactylic hexameters, a meter most com- ish epic “Kalevala.” But Longfellow was no more acceptable than “carrying a rifle monly identified with ancient Greek into a national park.” and Latin verse. It can sound cumber- some to the contemporary American hen the worm turned. Not surpris- ear, less like poetry than like highly Tingly, it was the modernists who decorative prose—prose in its Sunday ejected Longfellow from the pantheon, best. Still, there are many stretches viewing his metrical sleekness and where the dancing dactyls propel the front-parlor gentility as the worst kind narrative forward. For every moment of Victorian dross. The critic Van Wyck of fustian (Longfellow never met an Brooks delivered the death blow in 1918. extended simile he didn’t like), there “Longfellow is to poetry,” he declared, are surprising bits of lyricism: “Nearer determined to immerse himself in the “what the barrel-organ is to music.” Rep- and round about her, the manifold flow- particulars of Native American legend. utations rise and fall and rise again, and ers of the garden / Poured out their He pored over Henry Schoolcraft’s eth- many writers retreat into a kind of hi- souls in odors, that were their prayers nographic studies as well as an autobi- bernation when they die, waiting for the and confessions.” And, lest we pigeon- ography given to him by George Cop- warmth of renewed acclaim to bring hole Longfellow as a nature guy, he is way, an Ojibwa lecturer and erstwhile them back to life. Yet Basbanes seems quick to supply a memorable couplet Methodist minister. The result was a to take Longfellow’s banishment rather about an epidemic in Philadelphia: “So world-spanning fantasia, unfolding in personally. In fact, he alleges a hit job. death flooded life, and, o’erflowing its lines “so plain and childlike, / Scarcely Longfellow, he insists, “was the victim natural margin, / Spread to a brackish can the ear distinguish / Whether they of an orchestrated dismissal that may lake, the silver stream of existence.” (To are sung or spoken.” well be unique in American literary his- borrow Ezra Pound’s famous defini- Longfellow’s protagonist is an Ojibwa tory—widely revered in one century,

74 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 methodically excommunicated from the best work, only mildly intoxicating, the ing. His hands and face were burned ranks of the worthy in the next.” equivalent of near beer. He also had the as well, and swollen for weeks. The psy- Come now. Many revered writers bad luck of operating in the shadow of chic wounds were deeper still. Writing have dropped down the memory hole, Whitman and Emily Dickinson, the to his dear friend George William Cur- including Longfellow’s peers William two mighty poles of American poetry, tis, he described himself as “utterly Cullen Bryant and James Russell Low- maximal and minimal, ego-drunk and wretched and overwhelmed,—to the ell. For that matter, the passing decades ecstatic. Forgivably, he looks more than eyes of others, outwardly, calm; but in- have yielded additional reasons for a little wan in their company. wardly bleeding to death.” Longfellow’s critical antagonists to beat And yet. “Hiawatha” will always give It was not in Longfellow’s nature to him over the head. There is, for exam- pleasure, its singsong acceleration like write about himself. He once described ple, the matter of cultural appropria- riding a bicycle downhill on a crisp au- “I” as “that objectionable pronoun.” tion and the big fat target that is “Hi- tumn afternoon. The earworms, of which But he did produce a handful of lyrics awatha.” The poet would probably play there are many, will keep echoing in our throughout his career that seemed to the Weltliteratur card and move on. And, head, long after we’ve forgotten their spring directly from his own suffering. indeed, his multiculturalism now looks original provenance. The poems of Several of these went on to become na- admirably prescient. So does his social mourning, which made Longfellow into tional touchstones. “Resignation,” about conscience, which led him to publish the nation’s grief counsellor, may even his daughter’s death, was published in “Poems on Slavery,” in 1842—a daring elicit what they did more than a cen- 1849—and over the next few decades its move at the time, and the object of a tury ago: tears. key lines turned up on children’s tomb- vicious review by Edgar Allan Poe. (The stones throughout the United States. collection, Poe sneered, was “intended his last point is worth dwelling on. Then there is “The Cross of Snow,” an for the especial use of those negrophilic TAfter the turbulence of his early elegiac sonnet that Basbanes thought so old ladies of the north, who form so decades, the second half of Longfellow’s crucial to understanding Longfellow large a part of Mr. LONGFELLOW’s life can easily seem a sunlit vista of ease that he chose it as his title. friends.”) The poet also backed up his and accomplishment. The most cele- Longfellow finished the poem on words with deeds, using some of his brated poet of his day, he was also among the eighteenth anniversary of Fanny’s profits from “Hiawatha” to secretly buy the best paid—in 1874, the New York death, slipped it into an envelope, and slaves out of bondage. If any writer of Ledger forked over four thousand dollars deposited it in the vast drift of his pa- his era is able to survive the obstacle (the equivalent today of more than eighty pers. In this sense, it is a private utterance. course of cancel culture, it is likely to thousand dollars) for a single poem, It is not, of course, a raw confessional, be Longfellow. “The Hanging of the Crane.” He con- and the first half consists of a fairly The ultimate litmus test, however, tinued to function as the great conduit straightforward treatment of Fanny’s is the poetry. I snapped up the Library between world literature and the Amer- portrait on the wall. But then, without of America edition of “Poems and Other ican public, translating “The Divine any reader-friendly transition, Longfel- Writings” with a thrill of anticipation, Comedy” and overseeing a thirty-one- low cuts to something more mysterious: fully hoping to encounter the Prome- volume behemoth, “Poems of Places,” There is a mountain in the distant West thean figure of Basbanes’s biography. conceived as “a kind of poetic guide- That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines Reader, I tried. I thumbed through sev- book” for its indefatigable readers. Not Displays a cross of snow upon its side. eral hundred tissue-thin pages, added even fame managed to corrode his good my wobbly midrash in mechanical pen- nature. Year in and year out, Longfellow Basbanes suggests that the image is cil, chanted long passages aloud. I en- personally greeted the fans that flocked derived from a very specific source, the countered the gems I have mentioned to his Cambridge dwelling, offering each painter Thomas Moran’s “The Moun- above, and many more. I was also won one an autographed card from a stack tain of the Holy Cross” (1875), which de- over by the sheer decency of the man, he kept at hand. picts an alpine oddity: cruciform trenches which seems somehow inextricable Yet this phase of his life was also on the flank of a Colorado peak, whose from his creations. As Oscar Wilde marked by catastrophic loss. In 1848, depth and placement keep the snow noted, perhaps with double-edged irony, his baby daughter died after a short ill- within them from melting. Longfellow “Longfellow was himself a beautiful ness. (The Longfellows had three more was doubtless drawn to the cross as an poem, more beautiful than anything he daughters, and the poet commemorated emblem of Christian suffering. But what ever wrote.” them in “The Children’s Hour,” thereby sticks in the mind, and stirs the heart, Still, the vagaries of taste have per- introducing “the patter of little feet” are those “sun-defying” depths, where formed their dismal magic. So much of into the sentimental lexicon.) More we are too numb to feel our pain, or to his work seems dull, shopworn, generic. horrifically, his beloved Fanny perished control it. As a poet, Longfellow would The Victorian music is there, sometimes in 1861, when her dress caught fire, most visit these depths only infrequently. It’s gloriously, but just as often on the best likely from a few drops of hot sealing a pity. They brought out something ex- toy piano you ever heard. It was Rob- wax falling onto the garment. Long- traordinary in him: muted songs of lam- ert Lowell who characterized Longfel- fellow tried to quench the flames with entation, more moving for having been low as “Tennyson without gin.” That’s a small rug, and then with his arms, but delivered sotto voce, the sadness bleed- about right—he is, except in his very it was no use—she died the next morn- ing through the satin finish. 

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 75 uranium—of things that answered to his feelings without exposing them. Nearly every house that he painted strikes me as a self-portrait, with brood- ing windows and almost never a visi- ble or, should one be indicated, invit- ing door. If his pictures sometimes seem awkwardly forced, that’s not a flaw; it’s a guarantee that he has pushed the communicative capacities of painting to their limits, then a little bit beyond. He leaves us alone with our own sol- itude, taking our breath away and not giving it back. Regarding his human subjects as “lonely” evades their truth. We might freak out if we had to be those people, but—look!—they’re doing O.K., however grim their lot. Think of Samuel Beckett’s famous tag “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” Now delete the first sentence. With Hopper, the going-on is not a choice. I haven’t seen “Edward Hopper: A Fresh Look at Landscape,” a large show at the lately reopened Beyeler Founda- tion, Switzerland’s premier museum of the art world modern art, outside Basel. I take its fine catalogue, edited by the exhibition’s cu- rator, Ulf Küster, as occasion enough APART for reflecting anew on the artist’s stub- born force. I rely as well on memories Edward Hopper’s solitude. that we likely share of encountering “Nighthawks” (1942) and “Early Sun- by peter schjeldahl day Morning” (1930), but also, really, anything from his hand. Once you’ve seen a Hopper, it stays seen, lodged in ’ve been thinking a lot about Ed- perceptions apply from coast to coast. your mind’s eye. The reason, beyond Iward Hopper. So have other stay- Born in Nyack in 1112, and dying in exacting observation and authentic feel- at-homes, I notice online. The visual 1967 after living for half a century in ing, is an exceptional stylistic clever- bard of American solitude—not lone- an apartment on Washington Square, ness. Hopper was explicit on this score, liness, a maudlin projection—speaks he couldn’t conceivably have developed saying, in 1933, “I have tried to present to our isolated states these days with as he did in any other culture. His sub- my sensations in what is the most con- fortuitous poignance. But he is always jects—atomized persons, inauspicious genial and impressive form possible to doing that, pandemic or no pandemic. places—are specific to his time. But me.” Exasperated by questions of what Aloneness is his great theme, symbol- his mature art, which took two decades his works meant, he squelched one in- izing America: insecure selfhoods in a to gestate before consolidating in the terviewer by exclaiming, “I’m after ME.” country that is only abstractly a nation. nineteen-twenties, is timeless, or per- The remark reflects his debts to Euro- “E pluribus unum,” a magnificent ideal, haps time-free: a series of freeze-dried, pean Romanticism and Symbolism, thuds on “unum” every day through- uncannily telling moments. which he absorbed in depth while strip- out the land. Only law—we’re a polity Though termed a realist, Hopper is ping away any stylistic resemblances. of lawyers—confers unity on the United more properly a Symbolist, investing Highly literate, he read and reread nine- States, which might sensibly be a Bal- objective appearance with clenched, teenth-century German and French kans of regional sovereignties had the melancholy subjectivity. He was an able poetry all his life. His poetic liberties Civil War not been so awful as to re- draftsman and masterly as a painter of in a realist mode point back to one of move that option, come what may. Hop- light and shadow, but he ruthlessly his favorite predecessors, Gustave Cour- per’s region is the Northeast, from New subordinated aesthetic pleasure to the bet. And a certain smoldering vehe- York to parts of New England, but his compacted description—as dense as mence in Hopper puts me in mind of 2020 HEIRS OF JOSEPHINE N. HOPPER / LICENSED BY ARS, N.Y. / LICENSED BY N. HOPPER HEIRS OF JOSEPHINE 2020

Théodore Géricault, except tamped ©

“Cape Cod Morning,” from 1950. Once you’ve seen a Hopper, it stays seen. down to static views of drab actualities. RESOURCE, ART / D.C. WASHINGTON, MUSEUM, ART AMERICAN SMITHSONIAN N.Y.

76 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 Hopper imported, or smuggled, some on suspenseful narrative tactics, which one way or another. The naked fact of emotive powers of European traditions I would enlarge to cover methods of their existence is provocative enough. to unforgiving American soil. composition and aspects of tempera- “Why is there something rather than Having studied in New York with ment. Hitchcock storyboarded scenes nothing?” cosmologists wonder. Hop- Robert Henri and other preceptors of and shots for his films. Hopper (in- per is all ears for the answer. the Ashcan School, who addressed cidentally, an addicted moviegoer) as Politically, Hopper was “a sort of modernity with vernacular realism, he much as did the same for his paintings. McKinley conservative,” his friend the had three sojourns in Paris. There he I once got to inspect a stack of studies novelist John Dos Passos remarked. emulated minor Post-Impressionists that he’d made on paper. Some sheets The artist scorned the New Deal art with restless variations of tonal con- bore only drawn rectangles: seeking programs of the thirties as sops to me- trasts and off-kilter compositions. Back the right proportions for what he had diocrity. Interrupting a vacation on home, while supporting himself as a in mind. Then there were congeries of Cape Cod in 1940, he returned to New commercial illustrator, he found a way details with which he auditioned, in York to register to vote in order to cast forward by way of etching. Heavily effect, particular body parts, architec- his ballot against Franklin Roosevelt. inked cows, railroad tracks, and a banal tural features, or other elements that The orientation leaves no mark in his house in “American Landscape” (1920) would be knitted into dramatic wholes. work that I can detect—Hopper’s ar- presaged a direction unlike that of any Both he and Hitchcock aimed for the tistic passion disallowed the trivia of of his contemporaries. The closest was soundness and the suddenness of sights opinionating—but it chimes with a his mystically inclined acquaintance that compress time in service to a pre- wary individualism that could seem to Charles Burchfield, whose rapturous imagined vision. Each knew the feel- refuse agreement about practically ev- treatments of unprepossessing sites in ing—because he felt it—that the effort erything with almost everybody except western New York State have aged very would trigger in viewers. his painter wife, Josephine Nivison. well, informing a trend today among Hitchcock shares with Hopper a Having first met as art students around young painters toward potent repre- predilection for jarring relations of 1905, they married in 1924 and were sentation. Less imitable, Hopper has backgrounds to foregrounds in picto- symbiotically a unit. (Their closeness never ceased to influence the think- rial space: perhaps someone or some- strikingly recalls that of Hitchcock’s ing, at the very least, of subsequent art- thing relatively innocuous is nearby taut, creatively collaborative marriage ists. Willem de Kooning, as Küster re- and something less calming is yonder. with the screenwriter Alma Reville.) counts in the catalogue, praised him Lubin offers the example, from “North Nivison supervised a detailed ledger of to an interviewer in 1959. De Kooning by Northwest,” of the distant crop-dust- all Hopper’s works and served, at her noted a startling effect of the summar- ing plane at work “where there ain’t no insistence and with his consent, as his ily brushed woods in the background of crops.” In certain pictures of rural dwell- only model when he painted nudes. “Cape Cod Morning” (1950), in which ings by Hopper, woods (like those in She was as vivacious as he was taciturn. a woman is seen from the side lean- “Cape Cod Morning”) or topograph- (She once joked that talking with him ing forward at a bay window and star- ical formations subtly menace a human was like dropping a rock down a well ing at something beyond the picture’s intrusion. But in Hitchcock’s work, and and waiting to hear it hit, in vain.) Hop- right edge: “The forest looks real, like in Hopper’s, especially, the unnerving per’s last painting, “Two Comedians” a forest, like you turn on it and there relation of the far to the near is often (1965), pictures the pair of them in com- it is, like you turn and actually see it.” reversed, and what’s mysterious, if not media-dell’arte costume as Pierrot and That’s on the mark with Hopper: there- sinister, becomes identical with our Pierrette on a stage, taking a bow. ness that becomes hereness, in a view- point of view. What are we doing here, Nivison aside, or standing guard, er’s eye and mind. seeing that? Voyeurism—the saddest Hopper’s independence feels absolute, excitement—may be suggested. The repelling attempts to associate him catalogue essay by David M. Lubin, emotional tug of many of Hitchcock’s with any other artist or social group. A the esteemed scholar of art his- characters and all of Hopper’s requires In this, he updates and passes along to tory in relation to popular culture, their unawareness of being looked at. the future the spirit of a paradigmat- makes a connection that I’ve often To see them is to take on a peculiar re- ically American text, “Self-Reliance,” thought about myself: Hopper and Al- sponsibility. Hopper often produces minus Ralph Waldo Emerson’s opti- fred Hitchcock. The Yank painter and the unease even in unpeopled land- mism. The free, questing citizen has the Brit cinéaste display remarkable scapes and views of buildings, as if devolved into one or another of mil- parallels as visual storytellers. Hitch- catching nature and habitation defense- lions rattling around on a comfortless cock, learning American experience lessly exposed in disarray, mundanity, continent. Can you pledge patriotic from scratch after immigrating to Hol- or squalor. The New England coast- allegiance to a void? Hopper shows lywood in 1939, at the age of thirty-nine, lines, lighthouses, and sailboats that he how, exploring a condition in which, acknowledged the influence. The Bates painted on summer excursions get off by being separate, we belong together. house in “Psycho” reproduces, with sim- relatively easy. He liked them. But they, You don’t have to like the idea, but, plifications, the already suitably omi- too, feel taken by surprise, depicted once you’ve truly experienced this nous Victorian in Hopper’s “House by from odd angles of vision. No judg- painter’s art, it is as impossible to ig- the Railroad” (1925). Lubin concentrates ment is passed on anyone or anything, nore as a stone in your shoe. 

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 77 works of the Japanese animation direc- tor Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. The library is nowhere near as deep as Netflix’s, but that lends HBO Max a veneer of the bespoke. Still, as eco- nomic depression looms, what seemed like a necessity a few months ago may now be, for many people, an unjustifi- able luxury. HBO Max meant to celebrate its inauguration with a newly shot “Friends” special. The series, which WarnerMedia grabbed from Netflix, along with “The Big Bang Theory,” is its biggest syndi- cation coup. But the novel coronavirus doesn’t like reunions. Several original series were also put on pause mid- development, which is fine, since the real draw is WarnerMedia’s archive. The new shows that came into being just before the shutdown are plastic sim- ulacra of shows of yore—the kind of pretty, algorithmic television that pleas- antly empties a quarantined mind. “The Sopranos” is in no danger of being sur- passed by any of them. “Love Life,” from the newcomer Sam Boyd, starring the fizzy Anna Kendrick as a twentysome- thing struggling to find romance in New York City, is like “Girls” on low-battery mode. “Legendary,” a competition be- yn televisiyn tween houses in the ballroom commu- nity, has an irksome superficiality; you can always tell when producers forget NETWORK POLITICS that reality TV is a craft. It dazzles be- cause of its contestants but is cavalier The offerings of HBO Max. in its shiny corporatizing of a queer art. The best of the new shows is “The Not- by dyreen st. félix Too-Late Show with Elmo,” on which Cookie Monster serves as co-host and guests include such child-friendly ce- nappy as it sounded, the term “stream- yourself participating in a bitter joke: lebrities as John Mulaney, who made a Sing wars,” in retrospect, was an over- we have invented cable. quirky and moving children’s special last blown way to describe the competition HBO, the tentpole of WarnerMedia, year for Netflix, and a giggling Jimmy between the companies that hoped to is still a symbol of prestige television, Fallon. Elmo is a conscientious inter- monopolize TV streaming. Little about and a lingering fidelity to the network viewer and an icon for our homebound the rollouts of the major subscription will, I suspect, draw many people to time; like all of us, he is perpetually services this year has seemed grand or HBO Max, even though the network pantsless and very hairy. I asked Xavier, strategic. A better martial allusion? Clus- has done a poor job of explaining what my five-year-old nephew, what he terfuck. Teasers promise portals to un- the new service actually is, or how it thought of “Not-Too-Late,” and he said precedented ways of viewing programs differs from the video-on-demand fix- it was “the best thing in the world!” new and old, but so much curation soon ture that predates it, HBO Now. Sub- starts to look like clutter. Subscribe to scribers, paying up to fifteen dollars a n anomaly on this cutesy slate is Apple TV+, Disney+ and Hulu, Netflix, month, will get access to all HBO se- A“On the Record,” a wrenching the ill-fated Quibi, and now HBO ries, more than two thousand feature film about sexual assault in hip-hop. It Max—the latest of the big-deal bun- films, other WarnerMedia television was directed by Kirby Dick and Amy dles to première, in late May—and find properties, and attractive extras like the Ziering, who, in the documentaries “The Invisible War” and “The Hunt- “On the Record” is a lesson in power and its caprices. ing Ground,” about sexual assault in the

78 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY LILY PADULA Your Anniversary U.S. military and on college campuses, didn’t have time for any of Simmons’s Immortalized respectively, have forged an empathetic “tall, skinny bitches.” (In the film, Dixon, in Roman Numerals 3-Day Rush Available! style of muckraking. More than a dozen transported by the memory, imitates Crafted from Gold and Platinum women have accused Russell Simmons, the handler’s accent, her eyes flicker­ JOHN- CHRISTIAN.COM the mogul co­founder of Def Jam Re­ ing.) Dixon details her sustained sex­ OR CALL 888.646.6466 cordings, of sexual misconduct, from ual harassment by Simmons, who, she the eighties to 2014. Journalists such as alleges, exposed himself to her at work Melena Ryzik and Joe Coscarelli, at the and lured her to his apartment in 1995 Times, have found the accusers credi­ and raped her. (Simmons said in a state­ ADVERTISEMENT ble, but Simmons, despite being forced ment to the filmmakers, “I have issued to leave his companies in 2017, has countless denials of the false allega­ suffered relatively few legal ramifica­ tions against me. . . . I have lived my tions. Years ago, he reinvented himself life honorably as an open book for de­ as a mild­mannered yogi; recently, he cades, devoid of any kind of violence moved to Bali. He and other pioneers against anyone.”) of the scene have been accorded a com­ The title is a double entendre; the WHAT’S THE plicated veneration in the black­music directors watch as Dixon, in 2017, goes space. In some ways, this esteem is more to the Times with her story, and then BIG IDEA? intractable than that given to any indi­ takes calls from Coscarelli, who tells Small space has big rewards. vidual artist. Cancel R. Kelly, and R.&B. her that other women have accused endures. But how to excommunicate a Simmons of misconduct as well. The forefather who successfully pitched hip­ intimate portrait soon seamlessly ex­ hop to the world as valuable, in every pands to include testimonies from the sense of the word? Cancel Russell Sim­ activist and former model Sil Lai mons, and the house falls. Abrams, the rapper Sherri Hines, and TO FIND OUT MORE, CONTACT JILLIAN GENET | 305.520.5159 How “On the Record” came to HBO the screenwriter Jenny Lumet, who de­ [email protected] Max is a lesson in power and its ca­ scribed her alleged assault by Simmons prices. In January, shortly before the in an open letter published in the Hol- film was to première at Sundance, Oprah lywood Reporter. Winfrey, who had signed on as an ex­ “On the Record” is an alternative ecutive producer, pulled out. Apple TV+, history, a version of VH1’s “Behind the working with Oprah, dropped out, too. Music” narrated not by the male vic­ Speaking to Gayle King on CBS, Win­ tors but from a black feminist perspec­ frey framed her decision in terms of tive that sees hip­hop as the enterprise journalistic caution: “I just care about of ingenious yet wounded men. The getting it right, and I think there are underdog status accorded to the genre, some inconsistencies in the stories.” She the film suggests, permitted unchecked Wear our new has also said that Simmons pressured decadence and unchecked power. “I official hat to show her to drop the project but that his didn’t want to let the culture down,” your love. efforts did not influence her decision. Dixon says. “I love the culture.” After Regardless, the commotion overshad­ leaving Def Jam, Dixon worked for the owed the film before it was widely seen. record executive L. A. Reid, who she “On the Record,” which HBO Max alleges harassed her, and then left the picked up in February, follows Drew music industry. (Reid denies having ha­ Dixon, the daughter of Sharon Pratt, rassed Dixon.) the first black female mayor of Wash­ No emergent hip­hop fanatics can ington, D.C. Dixon grew up a music claim their education complete with­ obsessive in D.C. and, after graduat­ out hearing the sociological analyses ing from Stanford, came to New York delivered in the film by the music jour­ in 1992, to make a name for herself in nalist and theorist Joan Morgan, the the industry; early in the film, we watch legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, and as she walks down the Bedford­Stuyve­ Kierna Mayo, the longtime steward of 100% cotton twill. sant blocks where, a generation ago, Ebony. The film’s buzziest line of in­ Available in white and black. she befriended the Notorious B.I.G. quiry is its audit of #MeToo, which did When Dixon, a phenomenal speaker not make space for the experiences of and a true believer, was working in black women. The mixture of rage and A.&R. at Def Jam in 1994, she recalls, resignation I felt after watching was newyorkerstore.com/hats one of Simmons’s handlers warned her compounded by the suspicion that “On to make herself invisible, because he the Record” may get lost in the shuffle. 

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 79 the current cinemn you?” Shirley says, and Rose soon warms to the role of sorcerer’s apprentice, learn- ing to berate the moral fecklessness of MID-CENTURY MURK their menfolk, and to chip away at so- cial norms. At a party, hosted by the “Shirley” and “The Vast of Night.” wife of the dean, Shirley pours red wine on a silken couch and watches—or by nnthony lnne imagines—her protégée quietly drop- ping sandwiches on the rug. Just one question: Where are the kids? In reality, the Hymans had four children, three by the time that “Hang- saman” was published. If they are air- brushed out of “Shirley” (even as the fictional Nemsers are conjured into ex- istence), it must be because they would sorely inconvenience the mood for which Decker strives. Jackson, according to her biographer, “loved rooms that were filled with books and cats and color and sun- light,” but only the books make it into the film, plus one cat—black, of course, to suit the witching hour. Lines are de- livered either snappishly or with listless pauses. “They talk. About me. In town,” Shirley says. At one point, Rose finds her sprawled on the floor, with her eyes wide open and her stockings rolled down. Elisabeth Moss stars as the writer Shirley Jackson in Josephine Decker’s film. Thunder crashes outside. The camera lurches sideways, like a drunk. Help! he title of Josephine Decker’s new choice of casting directors when toil No one can question Decker’s cre- Tfilm, “Shirley,” refers neither to the and trouble loom. To “Shirley” she lends ative right to take such liberties with novel of that name by Charlotte Brontë both heft and bite, as well as a pair of the truth. Movies live and thrive on ir- nor, in a slightly different vein, to Shir- thick spectacles and a thrumming— responsibility. How strange it feels, ley Temple, whose dimple-powered ca- and draining—unhappiness that rarely though, when so little seems to be lib- reer now seems beyond belief, but to lets up. Most of the movie is set in Ben- erated in the process. Jackson’s book of the author Shirley Jackson. She is in- nington, Vermont, where Shirley is start- essays on her domestic exploits, “Life delibly linked to The New Yorker, where ing to labor on “Hangsaman” and where Among the Savages” (1953), rich in the her most affronting tale, “The Lottery,” Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg) is teach- comedy of parental mishaps, is a fasci- was first published, in 1948, causing ing at the all-female college. There, if nating complement, not an embarrass- thousands of readers to drop the but- rumor be true, he sports with his charges. ment, to her graver tales of the stifling ter knife. She wrote reams of other sto- He has a dense beard, a wicked smile, and the macabre. “Shirley,” by contrast, ries, plus half a dozen novels, such as and, when we first see him, a festive coats her in gothic excess as if glazing “Hangsaman” (1951) and “The Haunt- garland of ivy wreathing his brow. Were a ham, and of her humor scarcely a ing of Hill House” (1959). Her dark star the camera to pan down, we would, no shred remains. As a sworn devotee of has continued to ascend, summoning doubt, observe his cloven hooves. “Airplane!,” I found myself praying that an invaluable biography by Ruth Frank- The plot, devised by Merrell in her once—just once—she would utter the lin, “A Rather Haunted Life,” and a novel, turns on the introduction into words “And don’t call me Shirley,” thus more presumptuous offering, “Shirley,” the Hyman household of another cou- rending the veil of gloom from top to by Susan Scarf Merrell, who uses scraps ple: Fred Nemser (Logan Lerman), a bottom. Sadly, it was not to be. of Jackson’s experience, not least her youthful professor, and Rose (Odessa abrasive marriage to the literary critic Young), his new bride, who is great with here is no such town as Cayuga, Stanley Hyman, to beget a work of fic- child. “Well, I hope it’s yours,” Shirley TNew Mexico, but, thanks to “The tion. And that is the book that Decker remarks to Fred, at the dinner table, un- Vast of Night,” we feel we know it well. has chosen to bring to the screen. Ours sheathing her claws without ado. Rose We know that its population is less than not to reason why. is initially, and understandably, dismayed five hundred; that its radio station is Jackson is played by Elisabeth Moss, by such an approach; as the months WOTW, staffed by a young fellow who, having reigned over “The Hand- crawl by, however, the two women draw named Everett Sloan ( Jake Horowitz); maid’s Tale,” on TV, is now the first close. “I’m a witch, didn’t anyone tell and that Fay Crocker (Sierra McCor-

80 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY DEANNA HALSALL mick), who has a part-time job on the Wacky Shack Salon in Whitney, Texas, We think of other boys: the one who switchboard at the telephone exchange, where the bulk of the action was filmed. is spirited off in “Close Encounters of is sixteen years old, with a cousin named The whole enterprise probably cost less the Third Kind” (1977), or the one at Ethel and a brand-new tape recorder. than one per cent of the budget of, say, the start of “Invaders from Mars” (1953), Everybody in Cayuga seems to know “Star Trek Beyond” (2012), and Patter- who spies a flying saucer from his bed- everyone else, and, on the night when son has revealed that, for some of the room window. “The Vast of Night” re- the movie takes place, most of the ev- travelling shots, the camera was mounted lies on Fay, an older but no less eager eryones are at the high school, support- on a go-kart, run by a Whitney kid of witness. In McCormick’s fine perfor- ing their basketball team, the States- eighteen. But here’s the thing: all mem- mance, she is by turns the most intent men, at a big game. So the town feels ory of “Star Trek Beyond” has been sur- of listeners, when required, and also the kind of deserted, as if it were waiting gically extracted from my hippocam- busiest of bees. (“I never ride in cars, I for something. pus, whereas “The Vast of Night” is the just walk everywhere!”) There’s an amaz- Fay is a science nut in bat-wing spec- most absorbing piece of small-scale sci- ing scene in which the camera, as if tacles. (Everett, naturally, prefers the ence fiction—the best since “Monsters” challenging Fay to a race, pulls away Buddy Holly look. In the eyewear stakes, (2010), for sure—into which it’s been from her and out through the door of Shirley Jackson has some serious com- my privilege to be sucked. As Everett the telephone exchange, before snak- petition.) The era, I’d guess, is the late says, “If there’s something in the sky, I ing fast and low along the main street nineteen-fifties, after Sputnik, and talk wanna know.” Same here. of Cayuga, then off through yards and of space is in the air. Fay reads maga- There are flickers of in-jokes. The orchards, and winding up amid the zines like Modern Mechanics, and thrills hero’s name is a nod to the actor Ev- cheerleaders on the basketball court. A to the futures that they promise. By the erett Sloane, familiar from “The Big guided tour, you might say, to an entire year 2000, she tells Everett, you’ll have Knife” (1955) and “Somebody Up There way of life. Full marks to the go-kart. “a miniature television screen, and you Likes Me” (1952). And “The Vast of Is that life under genuine threat? Are can keep it in your pocket, so you can Night” is framed as an episode of a TV the Soviets coming, as Everett says? call your friend in Rome, or New York.” series, “Paradox Theater”—“caught be- How about forces from farther away? The only downside being that “if you tween logic and myth,” we learn, and Toward the end, we find out, with the call your friend, and he doesn’t answer, clearly modelled on “The Twilight aid of special effects, though part of me then you know they’re dead.” All of Zone,” which first screened in 1959. Yet wishes we didn’t. The movie might have which means that Fay is ready and Patterson is no spoofer, and his film is been cheaper still, I reckon; Patterson primed when a call comes through on a careful compound of gravity and buzz. could have skipped the effects, saved the switchboard. Not a regular voice— Trifling chatter among the good folk the cash, and got himself a trim at the more of a chewy, stuttering sound. Un- of Cayuga is interspersed with long, Wacky Shack. So skillfully has he probed friendly, too. Somebody mentioned a patient takes, in which a single charac- the power of suggestion, dealing in glim- squirrel that bit through the wires up ter tells of past events. We hear from mers and snatches, that the idea of a at the school, so maybe it’s the same Billy (Bruce Davis), who calls into solution feels redundant. What matters critter. Maybe it’s not. WOTW and recounts the time when, about Everett, Fay, and their fellow- The movie is directed by Andrew on military detail, he helped to build a Americans, after all, is their craving to Patterson, though I’m damned if I can large structure for housing a mysteri- believe—to fear, under the vast of night, spot him in the credits, either at the ous craft. Then, we have Mabel (Gail that somebody up there doesn’t like beginning or at the end. Still, they do Cronauer), an elderly lady at 1212 Syc- them. That’s enough.  list Nehemiah Knox as “Assisant Edi- amore, whose little son ventured out tor,” without the “t,” and have the cour- into the darkness long ago and was, she NEWYORKER.COM tesy to thank Donut Hut and Carla’s claims, “taken up from this Earth.” Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 8 & 15, 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 Lars Kenseth, must be received by Sunday, June 14th. The finalists in the May 25th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the June 29th 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

“All his pitches have been inside.” Ben Fishel, Washington, D.C.

“I have to hang up. I’m on deck.” “Try the stairs. This takes an eternity.” Susan F. Breitman, West Hartford, Conn. Michael Crowley, Washington, D.C.

“Seriously, you wouldn’t believe my seats.” Brent Colburn, Princeton, N.J.

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