PRICE $8.99 MAR. 29, 2021

THE STYLE & DESIGN ISSUE MARCH 29, 2021

7 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 15 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Jelani Cobb on Georgia’s fight over voting rights; curating family photographs; solidarity at Amazon; records are for playing; N.Y.C.-parking hardball.

AMERICAN CHRONICLES Carrie Battan 22 The Unravelling What happens when knitting and politics collide.

SHOUTS & MURMURS Eli Grober 29 Things Vaccinated People Still Should Not Do

ON AND OFF THE AVENUE Patricia Marx 30 Stand Up Straight! Pushing and pulling our way to better posture.

THE WORLD OF TELEVISION Ian Parker 34 Fixer-Upper Can HGTV renovate itself in a time of crisis?

ANNALS OF FASHION Judith Thurman 44 Eye of the Needle A Black designer’s vision and the fabric of history.

FICTION Ayşegül Savaş 56 “Future Selves”

THE CRITICS BOOKS David Remnick 62 Philip Roth, revealed. 69 Briefly Noted Hannah Fry 70 The limits of statistics.

A CRITIC AT LARGE Jill Lepore 74 Where constitutions come from.

PODCAST DEPT. Rachel Syme 80 Wellness made weird.

POP MUSIC Hua Hsu 82 Pharoah Sanders keeps transcending.

ON TELEVISION Alexandra Schwartz 84 Art and faith in “Shtisel.”

POEMS Aria Aber 41 “Dirt and Light” Robert Pinsky 58 “At Mt. Auburn Cemetery”

COVER Reyna Noriega “House Style”

DRAWINGS Yasin Osman, Harry Bliss, Joe Dator, Jon Adams, Maggie Larson, Liana Finck, Emily Flake, Edward Steed, Frank Cotham, Jason Adam Katzenstein, Teresa Burns Parkhurst, Johnny DiNapoli SPOTS JooHee Yoon

CONTRIBUTORS

Ian Parker (“Fixer-Upper,” p. 34) con- Judith Thurman (“Eye of the Needle,” tributed his first piece to The New p. 44), a staff writer since 2000, began Yorker in 1994 and became a staff writer writing for the magazine in 1987. Her in 2000. most recent book is “Cleopatra’s Nose,” a collection of her New Yorker essays. Patricia Marx (“Stand Up Straight!,” p. 30), a staff writer, published “You Greg Clarke (Sketchpad, p. 21) is an il- Can Only Yell at Me for One Thing lustrator. He co-authored, with Monte at a Time: Rules for Couples,” illus- Beauchamp, “A Sidecar Named Desire: trated by Roz Chast, last year. Great Writers and the Booze That Stirred Them.” Robert Pinsky (Poem, p. 58) most re- cently edited the poetry anthology Naila Ruechel (Photographs, p. 44-54), “The Mind Has Cliffs of Fall.” His a photographer and a director, is based latest collection is “At the Foundling in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. Hospital.” Patrick Berry (Puzzles & Games Dept.) Carrie Battan (“The Unravelling,” p. 22), began constructing puzzles in 1993. He a staff writer, has been contributing to lives in Athens, Georgia. the magazine since 2015. A Family Aria Aber (Poem, p. 41), the author of Eli Grober (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 29) “Hard Damage,” won a 2020 Whiting Tradition for writes “Here’s Something,” a weekly Award. She is a Wallace Stegner Fellow Generations humor newsletter. at Stanford University. Reyna Noriega (Cover), a visual artist, Ayşegül Savaş (Fiction, p. 56) has writ- published “In Bloom: A Poetic Doc- ten the novels “Walking on the Ceiling” Situated on 2,500 acres of unspoiled umentary of the Journey to Higher and “White on White,” which will paradise, Ocean Reef provides a long list Self ” in 2019. come out in the fall. of unsurpassed amenities enjoyed by generations of Members, including a 175-slip marina, two 18-hole golf courses, tennis facilities, state-of-the-art THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM medical center, K-8 school, private airport and more.

There are only two ways to experience Ocean Reef Club’s Unique Way of Life – as a guest of a Member or through the pages of Living magazine. Visit OceanReefClubLiving.com or call 305.367.5921 to request your complimentary copy. N EWS DESK DAILY COMMENT Ronan Farrow on Lindsey Boylan’s Jiayang Fan on the Atlanta shootings account of harassment and bullying and the escalation of anti-Asian under Andrew Cuomo. discrimination and violence.

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and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008. / GETTY VARNER MEGAN RIGHT: YORKER; THE NEW FOR WIDLINE CADET LEFT: THE MAIL How will you be THE HEART OF THE MATTER and shift to ones that are more sustain- able for marine life and humans alike. remembered? Joshua Rothman brings much-needed Rebekah Staub attention to artificial hearts and to the 1Denver, Colo. challenges faced by the engineers, doc- tors, and patients who are invested LEARNING TO LET GO in this technology (“Missing a Beat,” March 8th). I am a co-founder of a na- Ann Patchett’s personal history about tional coalition for women with heart coming to terms with surrendering ma- disease. It is important to remember terial possessions should be required read- that artificial-heart research has dis- ing for anyone who would like to avoid proportionately focussed on male pa- leaving chaos and heartache to their heirs tients and that, at this stage, experi- (“How to Practice,” March 8th). Now well mental hearts often only fit the chests into my eighties and having downsized of large men. Yet heart disease is the twice, I find myself sorting and tossing leading cause of death for women in almost daily. The best gift I’m leaving my the United States, and almost as many out-of-state children is contact informa- women as men die of it each year. Gen- tion for the professional organizer who der bias in cardiac clinical trials and in has been invaluable to me since my hus- access to advanced medical technolo- band died, two years ago. Once every- gies persists, owing to sexism, misin- thing designated in my will has been dis- formation about the extent to which tributed, and my kids and friends have women experience heart disease, and chosen any other stuff they might enjoy, medical negligence, intentional or not. the organizer will swoop in and haul the Women—and their doctors—need to remainder away. She will auction, sell, do- demand their rightful place in this crit- nate, or otherwise dispose of it, so that ical area of cardiac research. my loved ones, without a care, can throw Nancy Loving a party—and a few ashes. Co-founder, WomenHeart Fran Moreland Johns Through a charitable Corvallis, Ore. San Francisco, Calif. 1 gift in your will, UNDER THE SEA Patchett’s piece brought me to tears. Last your name can live summer, I helped my parents move out on as a champion Ian Urbina’s revealing report on fish farm- of our family home of fifty-four years. My ing in Gambia observes that aquacul- sister midwifed their winnowing while I of the causes and ture “reduces the problem of bycatch— sifted through family history, embodied communities dear to the thousands of tons of unwanted fish in our belongings. There wasn’t enough you—for generations. that are swept up each year by the gap- time—there is never enough time— ing nets of industrial fishing boats” to honor the memories, longings, and (“The Smell of Money,” March 8th). unrealized lives that those things carry It’s worth noting that bycatch often in- with them. We donated objects by the car- cludes other forms of marine life, such load, trusting that they would be loved by as sea turtles, dolphins, sharks, and sea- someone else, somewhere else. More layers birds. These species are routinely cap- remain to excavate. Patchett gives me hope tured and killed by industrial fishing that, somehow, we will continue to move on. Contact us at methods; even large whales become en- Rachel Hershfang giving@nyct-cfi .org or tangled in gear, as their feeding grounds Newton, Mass. often overlap with commercial-fishing (212) 686-0010 x363 areas. From my experience working in • to start your legacy today. ocean conservation, I believe that, if we Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, want to fulfill our increasing demand address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited www.giveto.nyc for seafood, reverse climate change, and for length and clarity, and may be published in achieve justice for workers at sea, we must any medium. We regret that owing to the volume stop using destructive fishing methods of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 5 $

Also available in 20 $189

Ross-Simons Item #933957 To receive this special offer, use offer code: WILD5 1.800.556.7376 or visit ross-simons.com/wild In an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, many New York City venues are closed. Here’s a selection of culture to be found around town, as well as online and streaming.

MARCH 24 – 30, 2021

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Since 2016, the Baltimore-raised experimental musician Josiah Wise has been warping the dimen- sions of soul music as serpentwithfeet. His début, “soil,” from 2018, was packed with quietly knock- ing, R. & B.-tinged electronic music. With his new album, the more refined yet more ambitious “DEACON,” he dares to make gospel pop. Inspired by his move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Wise sets songs about heartbreak aside, centering his voice in search of gentler, more sensuous sounds.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL JACK LYONS 1 ers as well as all the characters. The director, Joe both P.R. executives (who belatedly realize that THE THEATRE O’Byrne, intercuts film of Conroy performing “The Chairs” ends with a double suicide) and in a small theatre in Dublin with footage of the visionary theatre directors. Boosted by a terrific Aran Islands. It’s a good, evocative package, cast (even small roles are filled by such experts The Aran Islands though inevitably less intense than an in-person as André Holland, Estelle Parsons, and Corey “And that’s my story”: such is the matter-of-fact performance would be.—Ken Marks (irishrep.org) Stoll), this production, part of Playwrights ending used by one of the colorful narrators of Horizons’ “Soundstage” podcast, is among the these tales of magic and murder, told by natives funniest to emerge from the pandemic.—Elisa- of the desolate, starkly beautiful Aran Islands, off The MS Phoenix Rising beth Vincentelli (playwrightshorizons.org) Ireland’s western coast. They were written down, The Dane Cruising conglomerate is preparing 1 in 1898, by John Millington Synge, a poet, travel to resume operations post-COVID with a voy- writer, playwright (“The Playboy of the Western age inspired by Columbus’s expedition to the World”), and founding member of the Abbey Bahamas. The onboard entertainment will be an DANCE Theatre. He had visited the place at the urging avant-garde production of the Ionesco play “The of W. B. Yeats, and in his time there, among Chairs.” Surely this will all go swimmingly. elemental figures both human and topographical, Conceived by Trish Harnetiaux (who also wrote “Afterwardsness” he found a deep Irish story, imbued with a char- the script) and Katie Brook (who also directed), One of the advantages of being in a fifty-five- acter equal parts primitive, pagan, and Catholic. this six-part audio play follows the Dane front thousand-square-foot venue is that it’s practi- Our guide on this wet, rocky, dangerous tour—a office, mockumentary style, as it tries, in various cally like being outside—which is why the Park streaming production from the Irish Rep—is the conference calls, to tackle the mounting com- Avenue Armory is able to present an in-person fine actor Brendan Conroy, who single-handedly plications of the ship’s launch. Harnetiaux has series in the spring, among the first live events to narrates Synge’s tales, embodying the storytell- a sure comic touch and delivers a zingy satire of take place in the city since last March. Still, the protocols are extensive: ten-per-cent audience capacity, rapid testing at the door, and carefully PODCAST DEPT. choreographed entrances and exits for audience members. The first of the Armory shows is by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. Jones, a choreographer whose work always responds to whatever is happening around him, has made a new hour-long piece, “Afterwardsness” (running March 24 and March 26-31), built on stories with familiar themes, including the isolation brought on by the pandemic and the trauma of racial vio- lence. The music, by Olivier Messiaen, Holland Andrews, and Pauline Kim Harris, is performed live.—Marina Harss (armoryonpark.org)

Boston Ballet For the past year, most of the virtual offerings from ballet companies have consisted of either archival material or tailor-made new work. But this program, available March 25-April 4, is more like a conventional gala—selections from the classical repertory, all newly filmed at the company’s studios. Alongside bits from “Swan Lake,” “Giselle,” and “Sleeping Beauty,” there are excerpts from less often performed works, such as the teasing “Cigarette” solo from Serge Lifar’s 1943 ballet “Suite en Blanc,” set to music by Édouard Lalo, and two solos from August Bournonville’s “William Tell,” with music by Rossini. It’s a good opportunity to see a cross-section of the company’s principal danc- My knowledge of the all-male striptease dance troupe Chippendales more ers, including Lia Cirio, Viktorina Kapitonova, and Junxiong Zhao.—M.H. (bostonballet.org) or less began with a “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which Chris Farley and Patrick Swayze compete for a coveted spot in the revue. By the time that Israel Galván sketch aired, in 1990, the eleven-year-old Chippendales franchise had passed Is it theatre of the absurd, or just absurd? It’s into the pantheon of pop-culture cheese, and the glittering bow ties and a question often raised by the experimental gleaming, oil-slicked pectorals were easy, sleazy punch lines. What I did not flamenco dancer Israel Galván. But his new know is that the group’s origin story is far more macabre and complicated than film, “Maestro de Barra,” available on the Joyce Theatre’s Web site March 25-April 7, is clearly savvy businessmen capitalizing on an untapped spigot of female desire. The comedy, and it’s delicious. Handsomely shot in concept was the brainchild of Somen (Steve) Banerjee, an Indian immigrant black-and-white, the thirty-minute work takes and a former janitor, who roped in some questionable partners to finance his place in short segments in and around a tapas bar. Galván dances to Chopin—and to flamenco shirtless wonders. What happened next is the stuff of grimy L.A. noir—mil- singers reciting the menu and commenting lion-dollar profits, hired hit men, cocaine binges, grisly murders, countless on a soccer match. He plays the plates and tanning booths. In the new Spotify podcast “Welcome to Your Fantasy,” the the cutlery and the tiled floor, his tremendous facility at the service of his uninhibited, kooky historian Natalia Petrzela charts both the complex gender politics that led imagination.—Brian Seibert (joyce.org) Chippendales to become a phenomenon and the web of lies, malevolence, and jealousy that brought it all crashing down. Her research and reporting place Mark Morris Dance Group what might seem like a tacky, tabloidish subject in its full, fascinating cultural On March 30, the company presents the third

context, laying bare all of the nuance behind the bare chests.—Rachel Syme installment in its series of video dances, “Dance SINGH HANS JASJYOT BY ILLUSTRATION

8 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021

IN THE GALLERIES “Works & Process” The performance series is back in action, with in-person shows in the Guggenheim Museum’s spiral rotunda. On March 30, the champion beatboxer Chris Celiz and members of Beatbox House join forces with the b-boy Anthony Vito Rodriguez and a crew of krump and flex dancers to present “The Missing Element.” On March 31, the Masterz at Work Dance Family, directed by the ballroom figure and trans-femme choreographer Courtney ToPanga Washington, addresses gender and transition- ing through street dance, double Dutch, karate, and1 more.—B.S. (worksandprocess.org) A RT

Michelle Grabner Gingham is the unlikely muse of this tireless American artist, who is also a well-known curator and educator. In Grabner’s wily monochrome works, painted simulations of the patterned fabric merge with their linen backgrounds, unsettling the distinction be- tween fine art and craft—and the hallowed pretensions of the modernist grid. Some of the new works (all untitled) in the artist’s current exhibition at the James Cohan gal- lery incorporate jam-jar lids emblazoned with Grabner’s favorite, homey tablecloth pattern. These found metal disks and cast-bronze fac- similes are inset into wood panels, forming In 2012, Jesse Aran Greenberg co-founded the now defunct gallery low reliefs that are less lyrically clever than 247365—and he’s kept pace with that name ever since. “LMNOP” is everything else on view. The show’s standout the third exhibition that the indefatigable artist-curator has organized is a tall tile installation that greets viewers at the entrance. Bronze and ceramic squares in the subbasement of the Marinaro gallery since last December, under form a richly textured irregular grid, prov- the imprimatur of his roving JAG Projects. (It’s on view until April 11.) ing that Grabner’s open, hierarchy-flattening The title refers to the speediest part of the alphabet song and captures approach does not preclude forays into the realm of the monumental.—Johanna Fateman the show’s playful spirit, but, given the splashy color of most of the works (jamescohan.com) here, a better name might have been “ROYGBIV.” Two thirty-foot-long polychrome scrims, by Rachel B. Hayes, run down the middle of the Guadalupe Maravilla narrow space, like giant handkerchiefs from a magician’s trick. Among Fleeing civil war in his native El Salvador, Gracelee Lawrence’s cheeky rainbow-ombre sculptures is a bunch of Maravilla arrived in the U.S., in 1984, as an bananas that’s also a foot; Matthew Fischer’s stained-glass toolboxes unaccompanied eight-year-old. Some thirty years later, the Brooklyn-based artist was pack similar visual punch lines. And Ryan Trecartin contributes an antic diagnosed with and survived colon cancer. series of drawings, whose lengthy titles have the same word-soup appeal He channels both of these experiences in his as the dialogue of his better-known movies. The caption of the draw- impressive début at the P.P.O.W. gallery’s handsome new space, in Tribeca. Like the ing pictured above begins darkly—“a government forgot to negotiate Brazilian modernist Lygia Clark before him survival”—but ends brightly: “it’s all lighting design.”—Andrea K. Scott (among others), Maravilla believes that his art has curative powers. The most arresting works here—towering sculptures made from mate- rials the artist collected throughout Central On!,” created remotely during the pandemic which is that nothing in this world can stop America—incorporate large gongs designed and introduced with the choreographer’s droll her from making dances and moving. This for vibrational rituals known as sound baths. humor. “Flesh Study,” set to Philip Glass’s veteran of cinema (“White Nights,” “Hair”), (During the exhibition, Maravilla has been “Victor’s Lament,” plays with rhythm and mad Broadway (“The Catherine Wheel,” “Movin’ conducting small group sessions on site and scenes. “Kitten Lake” is a miniature “Swan Out”), ballet, and the avant-garde spent part via Zoom.) But even alternative-medicine Lake,” featuring cats and their humans. of last year staging a piece on Zoom, featuring skeptics will admire the formal ingenuity of “Lonely Fugue,” an adaptation of Morris’s dancers beamed in from around the world: Maravilla’s polyphonic “healing machines,” 1987 work of the same name, arranges sixteen L.A., New York, Copenhagen, St. Petersburg. whose extended family includes Nick Cave’s dancers and chairs, filmed from four points Her willingness to adapt to new and difficult “sound suits” and the Aztec god Quetzal- of view, in conjunction with Mozart’s Fugue circumstances is echt Tharp, as is her extraor- coatl.—Andrea K. Scott (ppowgallery.com) in C Minor.—B.S. (markmorrisdancegroup.org) dinary fitness routine, illustrated here in all its strenuous detail. Also included are interviews, rehearsal footage of her new work (an adapta- Lucy McKenzie “Twyla Moves” tion of “The Princess and the Goblin,” from A characteristically chilly weirdness perme- This documentary, premièring on March 26 2012), and archival film of her freewheeling ates this Brussels-based, Glaswegian artist’s as part of PBS’s “American Masters” series, early dances and collaborations with Mikhail exhibition at Galerie Buchholz. Trying to un-

illustrates an essential fact about Twyla Tharp, Baryshnikov.—M.H. (pbs.org/twylatharp) tangle all the knotted references in McKenzie’s AND MARINARO THE ARTIST COURTESY

10 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 curiously intense sculptures and freestanding oted to characteristically innovative online paintings raises more questions than answers, presentations. For those eager to see Salonen Marcus Strickland but the backstories fascinate nonetheless. One on the podium, his Houston Symphony début JAZZ Those who only know Marcus Strickland’s prominent subject is the young Soviet resis- promises much, not least an ensemble in peak music through his most recent recording, “Peo- tance fighter Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who condition, the orchestra having returned to ple of the Sun”—an elaborate studio concoc- was captured and killed behind German lines action on the Jones Hall stage all the way tion replete with singers, pop-song forms, during the Second World War; in Russia, she back in July. The live-streamed event includes spoken-word passages, and enough sonic pro- is seen as a Joan of Arc figure, portrayed in Bach arrangements by Webern, Berio, and duction to downplay the leader’s instrumental statues with cropped hair and bound wrists, Klemperer, solo violin pieces by Bach and flair—may be startled by just how much horn dressed in a tattered slip. In McKenzie’s show, Salonen, and Beethoven’s evergreen Sym- this man can play. Employing a trim trio pow- the martyr’s face tops fibreglass figures wearing phony No. 1.—Steve Smith (March 27 at 9; ered by his brother, E.J., on drums, Strickland replicas of garments designed by the French houstonsymphony.org.) molds this live stream at Bar Bayeux into a couturier Madeleine Vionnet. New pieces from demonstration of unabashed vigor, unleashing the artist’s ongoing “Quodlibet” series pair from his saxophones and bass clarinet when he reproductions of abstract art that hung in her Víkingur Ólafsson: “Reflections” pounces upon the bandstand.—Steve Futterman childhood home with tabletop compositions. CLASSICAL Last year, the Icelandic pianist (March 24 at 7:30; barbayeux.com.) With these trompe-l’oeil objects, McKenzie Víkingur Ólafsson released “Debussy Ra- 1 achieves the rather creepy illusion of family meau,” a compelling mix of works by two snapshots arranged on marble surfaces. The composers who were born a couple of centu- show’s title, “No Motive,” aptly evokes an un- ries—and several musical eras—apart. Ólafs- MOVIES solved crime—with her works as the visually son’s Debussy, in particular, is a revelation: his transfixing evidence.—J.F. (galeriebuchholz.de) playing emphasizes the crystalline structure 1 of the post-Romantic composer’s harmonic Bachelor Flat language, moving away from the hazy pond This latter-day screwball comedy, from 1962, is of colors that can make Debussy sound like the director Frank Tashlin’s daring, uproarious MUSIC the pianistic equivalent of Claude Monet. reworking of Howard Hawks’s “Bringing Up Ólafsson’s new album, “Reflections”—a quiet Baby.” Terry-Thomas plays Bruce Patterson, a companion to its more authoritative prede- middle-aged British archeologist at a California Allie Crow Buckley: cessor—homes in on Debussy in previously university who is about to marry Helen Bush- unreleased tracks, meditative reworkings mill (Celeste Holm), a high-flying fashion de- “Moonlit and Devious” by contemporary musicians, and intimate, signer. But Helen has a secret—a prior marriage ROCK In 2019, the Los Angeles singer-songwriter low-fidelity home recordings. With nothing and a teen-age daughter, Libby (Tuesday Weld), Allie Crow Buckley introduced herself with “So left to prove but plenty more to say, Ólafsson who, while her mother is out of town, turns Romantic,” an EP featuring five new composi- has made a classical mood record. It sounds up at Bruce’s house pretending to be a tough tions and, as an encore, a rendition of the Black like a dream, vividly realized.—Oussama Zahr runaway. Meanwhile, Bruce’s inquisitive friend Sabbath ballad “Changes.” Like the original, Buckley’s version laments a romantic bust-up through haunted vocals that stand apart from the LATIN POP spare instrumentation. On the title track of her full-length début, “Moonlit and Devious,” Buck- ley supplies what feels like a retort. Echoing the Black Sabbath recording, the musician sounds as if she is singing from the bottom of a well, only this work seems a song of cheer—she recounts a long-distance romance in tones bordering on the lascivious. “Being good in your absence / I sink my teeth into the bit,” Buckley sings, defying the gothic church organ rumbling beneath her. The song encapsulates an album of incongruities, its instinctive brooding tempered by a California lightness.—Jay Ruttenberg

Going In ELECTRONIC The Bunker New York, the produc- tion banner of the Brooklyn d.j. Bryan Kasenic, has put on the sharpest electronic-music streams of the pandemic, often hosting long, engrossing sets from spinners such as Mike Servito and Pat- rick Russell. To christen the Bunker’s new sub- label, Going In, which specializes in slow-wind- ing ambient music, Kasenic has enlisted more than forty performers for a two-day streaming celebration. (The event is free, but donations are encouraged.) Many sets are live, not d.j.’d, and The twenty-one-year-old Chilean-American singer Paloma Castillo, several—including those of the techno giant An- who performs under the name Paloma Mami, exudes a laid-back cool- thony Child (a.k.a. Surgeon) and the acclaimed ness on even her most kinetic singles, among them the jolting Diplo jazz vocalist Christina Wheeler—will be fully improvised.—Michaelangelo Matos (From March collaboration “QueLoQue,” from 2020. Castillo sinks deeper into 26 at 7 to March 28 at 9:30; thebunkerny.com.) smooth nonchalance on her lithe new album, “Sueños de Dalí,” each song a relaxed, low-key blend of R. & B. and light dembow rhythms. She Houston Symphony weaves in and out of Spanish and English lyrics, never drawing too much CLASSICAL The pandemic has prevented the attention to the project’s bilingualism, and stays limber on the slightly conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen harder-hitting beats of “I Love Her” and “Traumada.” Throughout the from leading concerts with the San Francisco Symphony since he became the ensemble’s record’s ten-song arc, Castillo remains composed and unruffled, proving

ILLUSTRATION BY MOKSHINI BY ILLUSTRATION music director, in September, so he has piv- herself to be a young artist guided by self-possession.—Julyssa Lopez

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 11 Michael (Richard Beymer), a law student, a tape recorder are his constant companions, newly hired producer—a white Army lieutenant sparks erotic misunderstandings and pushes whether he’s musing on his cinematic and ro- (Ned Bellamy)—while working to become a Bruce into ever-wilder schemes to hide Libby. mantic ideals and doubts or spending the night producer herself, in the hope of telling stories Tashlin plays cartoonishly expert high-speed with his girlfriend, Penny (Eileen Dietz), a in which ordinary people, including members games with opening and closing doors, and he model who is unwilling to appear in his movie. of ethnic minorities, will recognize their own gleefully piles on ribald jokes involving a priapi- McBride fuses David’s inner life with the life experiences. With images filmed (by Ahmed cally huge dinosaur bone, a pair of breastplates, of the city, in everything from the pace of the El Maanouni) in a silky, high-contrast black- a vibrating bed, recalcitrant pants, upright um- streets and the verve of Top Forty radio to a and-white, Dash infuses the visual repertory brellas, and Jessica, a dachshund who’s a real wondrous, hectic view of television. David’s of musicals and melodramas with modernist hound dog. With winks and nods at science personal testament to the sweet normalcy that inflections—most powerfully in a scene of vast fiction and Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” a dream he is about to lose—and the time capsule that symbolic impact, set in a sound studio where sequence, and a film-within-a-film, Tashlin he’ll leave behind in case he doesn’t make it engineers dub the voice of a Black singer, Es- celebrates pop culture as a mind-expanding back—is also an extraordinary portrait, through ther Jeter (Rosanne Katon), onto footage of a Freudian truth serum.—Richard Brody (Stream- sharp and sentimental inventions, of the moods white actress. Dash blends intimate portraiture ing on Amazon, YouTube, and other services.) and tones of the era.—R.B. (Streaming on Tubi.) with echoing reflections and multiple expo- sures, capturing Hollywood’s harrowing game of multiple hidden identities.—R.B. (Streaming David Holzman’s Diary Illusions on Kanopy and the Criterion Channel.) This ingenious, scruffy 1967 metafiction by In this thirty-four-minute featurette, from 1982, Jim McBride is an exotic fruit grown in New Julie Dash ingeniously revives classic-Holly- York from the seed of the French New Wave. wood themes and styles in order to subject The Merchant of Venice The titular protagonist (L. M. Kit Carson) is a them to a sharp historical critique. It’s set Michael Radford’s 2004 adaptation of Shake- young filmmaker living in a studio apartment during the Second World War, in the ficti- speare’s play stars Al Pacino as Shylock, and the on the Upper West Side who, upon learning of tious National Studios, where a Black female look of him—heavy of tread, eyes darting and his imminent draft into the Army, decides to executive, Mignon Dupree (Lonette McKee), wary—defines the encompassing mood. The record his life on film. A 16-mm. camera and is passing as white. She’s being harassed by a text has been sliced and pared, and what remains is intimate and sorrowful, as if the characters knew from the start what manner of tribulation they would face. Antonio (Jeremy Irons) seems WHAT TO STREAM already to be mourning the loss not just of his ships at sea but of his friend Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes) to the wealthy and marriageable Portia (Lynn Collins). Her early scenes are the weakest in the movie, the comedy of the semi-fantastic sitting uneasily amid the gathering gloom. What Radford does best is shove and wheedle the story along, so that the court scene and even the final bickering over marital rings take on the air not merely of patchings-up but of bristling suspense. Much is at stake here, and, to judge by Pacino’s burning gaze, the loser, in so villainous a society, is never really in doubt.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of 1/3/05.) (Streaming on Amazon, iTunes, and other services.)

Posse Mario Van Peebles’s 1993 Western—rowdy yet earnest, playful yet scathing—peels away layers of militarism, colonialism, and crony capitalism to reveal a rotten core of white-supremacist violence. The action begins in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, in Cuba, where Black troops are forced to the front lines as cannon fodder. A handful of them (plus one white soldier, played by Stephen Baldwin) desert with a trove of stolen gold and make it to New In “Tales of the Four Seasons,” a quartet of films from the nineteen- Orleans with a sadistic colonel (Billy Zane) on nineties, Éric Rohmer reworked his career-long theme: the dangers of their trail. The Black veterans (Charles Lane, Tom Lister, Jr., and Tone Loc) and their leader, false love in the quest for the real thing. (Film Forum, which reopens Jesse Lee (Van Peebles), fight their way West on April 2, will release all four, one per week, on its virtual cinema only, to Freemanville—an all-Black outpost founded starting on March 26.) Three of the films involve the power and the by Jesse’s father, who was killed by the Ku Klux Klan. Jesse seeks revenge for the murder while pitfalls of assisted romance—well-meaning efforts to set people up. also leading a fierce battle to save the town In the cycle’s first film, “A Tale of Springtime,” a philosophy professor from ruthless businessmen. Van Peebles tells who has been paired off with a younger friend’s father discovers the the story with ferocious vigor and unsparing brutality, entering Jesse’s haunted memory and perversity of reason in matters of the heart; “A Tale of Summer” (which dramatizing the farsighted schemes and impro- Rohmer, born in 1920, based on experiences from his youth) sets the visational daring on which the men’s survival affairs of students against a quasi-autobiographical backdrop of rising depends. Lane’s idiosyncratic, puckish per- formance as the loquacious Weezie lends the artistic ambitions. The most luminous and rapturous film in the set, “A bloody action antic humor.—R.B. (Streaming on Tale of Autumn,” reunites Rohmer with the actresses Marie Rivière Amazon, the Criterion Channel, and other services.) and Béatrice Romand, his longtime collaborators, in a wine-country 1 drama that’s as much about friendship as love; and “A Tale of Winter,” For more reviews, visit

centered on Christmas, is, fittingly, a vision of a miracle.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town FILMS JANUS COURTESY

12 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 the appeal; without it, the steep prices gold chocolate coins on the table with were hard to justify. the check. In a paper bag of condiments, When, in October, 2019, the Times I found my beloved foil-wrapped disks. gave the restaurant a scathing review, The other day, I ventured back to I was inspired to reassess for myself. I headquarters. To mark the return to 1 didn’t make it there before March of limited-capacity dining, Peter Luger 2020, and, suddenly, it was too late. announced a corny gimmick: celebrity TABLES FOR TWO When a friend told me recently that wax figures, on loan from Madame Tus- she’d had Luger delivered, I was skep- sauds, would be seated between tables Peter Luger Steak House tical. But she’d enjoyed the experience of warm-blooded customers. My lunch 178 Broadway, Brooklyn so much that she repeated it, despite the reservation was for a booth outside, but, cost. My expectations for delivery were freshly vaccinated and double masked, I In his new biography of Mike Nichols, measured. Then they were exceeded. could steal a peek at Audrey Hepburn. the critic Mark Harris details how, a Opening a plastic-and-aluminum At my table, in the shadow of the few months into shooting Tony Kush- deli container to find the iconic wedge historic Williamsburgh Savings Bank ner’s “Angels in America,” for HBO, salad was like seeing an old friend: the building, I ordered another wedge salad the production fell behind schedule and refreshing crunch of tightly coiled ruf- (rapture, again) and a burger, a beauti- Nichols’s “spirits started to flag.” What fles of iceberg, the surprisingly juicy ful mass of luscious ground beef whose would cheer him up? “Most often, the chopped tomato, the chunky blue- iodine tang played perfectly off a sweet, answer was food,” Harris writes. Nich- cheese dressing, the unmistakable, salty slice of American cheese, a fat ols’s then assistant would “go to Peter thick-cut, heart-clogging bacon. I was cross-section of raw white onion, and Luger’s every day to get him and the similarly exhilarated by the creamed a big, domed sesame bun. Inside the cast burgers for lunch.” spinach, the fried potatoes, and the restaurant, there were no wax figures Until a few weeks ago, Peter Luger, chocolate mousse, with its enormous to be found; they’d gone back to Times which was founded in 1887, was just dollop of schlag (suspiciously if delight- Square after just five days. The dining about the last New York restaurant I fully reminiscent of Cool Whip). room looked the same as ever, if subdued. would have associated with takeout. I It wasn’t so much that any of the Before dessert—a Holy Cow sun- had loved it, once, but before the pan- dishes stood out on their own—al- dae, with vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, demic I hadn’t been in years. A fam- though I did note, as ever, how easily and walnuts, plus schlag and a cherry on ily tradition of steak-fuelled birthday a knife slid through rosy slices of the top—I asked for a burger to go, a spirit celebrations had fizzled out. On my dry-aged porterhouse—as it was that lifter for my husband, hard at work at his last visit, in 2015, I’d sat in the over- they shouted “steak house” loud and desk. “How do you want it cooked?” my flow space upstairs, where wall-to-wall clear, making for a combination that slightly surly server asked. I hesitated. carpeting and generic banquet chairs I would never replicate on my own Medium? Medium rare? No, medium. were a sad substitute for the well-worn and that brings me the coziest plea- “Get it medium rare and it will be me- wooden floors and furniture that give sure. One of my favorite parts of my dium by the time you get it home,” he the main dining areas the charming feel earliest Peter Luger visits was when an said, with a twinkle in his eye. He was of a German beer hall. Luger’s atmo- inevitably brusque yet joke-cracking right. (Dishes $6.95-$114.95.)

PHOTOGRAPH BY GABRIEL ZIMMER FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW ZIMMER FOR GABRIEL BY PHOTOGRAPH sphere had always been at least half of veteran waiter would toss a handful of —Hannah Goldfield

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COMMENT voting on Sundays, when many Black ter, even as its intent is being eviscer- THE BATTLE FOR GEORGIA churches take their congregants to poll- ated in the capitol. ing places. The Senate bill would cut Since the defeat of Donald Trump, he National Center for Civil and mobile voting facilities, end no-excuse voter-suppression efforts have emerged THuman Rights, which opened, to absentee voting, and require people who in Republican-controlled legislatures great fanfare, in June of 2014, is housed are qualified to vote absentee to pro- across the country. But the campaign in an austere wood-fibre-and-glass vide a witness’s signature on the ballot in Georgia has particular resonance, in structure in downtown Atlanta. It is sit- envelope. Additional proposals would part, because it is so blatantly egregious. uated at 100 Ivan Allen, Jr. Boulevard, end, among other things, automatic Republicans argue that the bills are nec- a street named for the late mayor who, voter registration at the Department essary in order to “secure” elections, but on his first day in office, in 1962, re- of Driver Services. All these measures the November ballots were scrutinized moved the “White” and “Colored” signs are meant to diminish turnout and undo exhaustively, and no significant instances from city hall. The civil-rights center— the state of affairs that led to Demo- of fraud were found. Because Raphael like the nearby King Center and streets crats winning the Presidential race in Warnock, the first Black U.S. senator around the city that have been renamed November and both Senate runoff races ever elected from Georgia, won in a for the architects of the movement—is in January. The capitol sits in the state’s special election and has to run for a full a step in the continued institutionaliz- Fifth Congressional District, which term next year, control of the Senate ing of Atlanta’s history as a theatre of Congressman John Lewis represented could again depend on the state. Last the struggle for racial equality. Its per- until his death, last year. Lewis helped Wednesday, Warnock delivered his first manent exhibits, ever mindful of the lead the fight for the passage of the speech on the Senate floor, and tied the nation’s enduring racial inequalities, are Voting Rights Act of 1965. That law is cause of voting rights to the fight over nonetheless a kind of exultant retro- justly celebrated in the civil-rights cen- the filibuster. “It is a contradiction,” he spective: the objects on display there noted, “to protect minority rights in the are artifacts of a moral triumph. Across Senate while refusing to protect minority town, in the state capitol, however, a rights in the society.” different type of historical preservation Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian has taken root, a campaign designed Kemp, who became a target of Trump’s not to remember the ugliness of the rage and, as a result, may face a primary past but to resurrect it. challenge, needs to ingratiate himself Earlier this month, both of the Re- with conservatives, which suggests that publican-controlled chambers of the the bills stand a good chance of be- Georgia legislature passed bills that coming law. Yet the calculations are not would impede voting, particularly for just political, as Georgia’s own history African-Americans. The House bill demonstrates. Amid the turbulence of proposes to shorten the period of early the nineteen-sixties, Atlanta billed it- voting, prevent ballots from being self as “The City Too Busy to Hate,” mailed out more than four weeks be- a slogan that James Baldwin, in his fore an election, reduce the use of bal- book “The Evidence of Things Not lot drop boxes, further criminalize giv- Seen,” amended to “The City Too Busy ing food or water to those waiting in Making Money to Hate.” Atlanta’s

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA JOÃO BY ILLUSTRATIONS line to vote, and severely restrict early forward-looking reputation on race was

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Curbside pickup No-contact delivery intricately bound up with its perspec- The potential economic fallout of of all Georgians and the growth of tive on commerce. Mayor Allen was the voter-restriction effort started com- free enterprise.” Last week, Coca-Cola elected on the basis of his prior lead- ing into focus last Monday, when the and Home Depot told the Washing- ership of the Chamber of Commerce, New Georgia Project, which has fought ton Post that they support the chamber’s where he noted that formal segrega- for equal voting access, staged a die-in position, while Delta called for “broad tion fed a perception of the city as back- outside Coca-Cola’s corporate head- voter participation, equal access to the ward, and hampered its efforts to at- quarters, to urge it not to support of- polls, and fair, secure elections pro- tract investment. ficeholders who vote for the bills. (The cesses.” Salesforce, the San Francisco- In the decades since, this perception day before, the company had tweeted, based software company, which also of Georgia has been true to a lesser but “RT if you’ve ever hidden the last Coca operates in Georgia, took a more di- nonetheless significant degree. Racist Cola in the fridge”; the New Georgia rect route, tweeting, “A person’s right policy is still bad for business: in 2019, Project replied, “RT if you’ve never to cast their ballot is the foundation following the passage of a restrictive backed anti-voting legislation.”) Coca- of our democracy.” abortion law that disproportionately af- Cola, which donated the site for the It’s possible that the state’s current fected women of color, Hollywood stu- civil-rights center, is based in Atlanta, Republican leaders understand less dios threatened to cancel productions as are Delta, a founding sponsor, and about these issues than Ivan Allen did in the state. (According to the Georgia Home Depot, one of whose founders half a century ago. But there will be Department of Economic Develop- is a major donor. a cost—and not just a moral one— ment, film production generated nearly Nsé Ufot, the project’s C.E.O., said if Georgia continues its march back- ten billion dollars in revenue in 2018.) that the action was part of a larger ward. To the extent that there is an im- Stacey Abrams, who ran against Kemp campaign. Companies “giving their pediment to the leadership’s plunging that year, managed to talk some high- employees the day off on Juneteenth the state back into its ugly past, it will profile projects out of abandoning the and tweeting out the Black Lives Mat- likely not be for love of democracy or state; the law was struck down last year. ter hashtag,” she said, “are silent in this the Constitution. It will be for rever- Today, eighteen Fortune 500 compa- moment, while our right to vote is be- ence of another piece of paper that em- nies have operations in Georgia, the ing attacked.” In February, the Cham- bodies deeply held American values: same number as in Florida, a state with ber of Commerce announced its “com- the dollar bill. twice the population. mitment to protect the votes and rights —Jelani Cobb

B R AVE NEW WORLD ing profession, and that people who “I realized it made me feel so much REPAVI N G MEMORY LANE spend their days swiping and saving in better to see only a few good photos the name of posterity are also known as rather than getting lost in too many family-photo curators. “Photo manag- meh ones,” she recalled. ers can help organize and curate collec- Dervaux charges a hundred and tions, digitize prints, suggest backup twenty-five dollars an hour and works systems, re-house in archival storage, with about forty clients a year. Almost and help you tell your story through all of them are people with money and levator operator became a job some- photo book design, videos, websites, and kids and years’ and sometimes decades’ Etime in the latter half of the eigh- countless other ways,” reads the Web teenth century, first appearing as its site of the Photo Managers (formerly own category on the U.S. Census in the Association of Personal Photo Cu- 1910. It is the only job since 1950, ac- rators), est. 2009. cording to a recent study, to have been Isabelle Dervaux, on the line in fully eliminated by automation. Occu- Brooklyn, explained that she was born pations come and go, their life spans in Valenciennes, in the north of France, following trend and technology. Town which is traditionally populated by criers, soda jerks, lamplighters, clock sugar-beet farmers, slag miners, and winders, pinsetters, and ice cutters give lace makers. She went to art school, way to air-traffic controllers, genetic moved to New York in 1991, married counsellors, drone operators, influenc- an American, moved to the West Coast, ers, and social-media managers. The worked as a freelance illustrator (mostly other day, a journalist was scrolling for magazines), had two kids, and moved through Instagram and spotted an in- back to New York—her husband’s home teresting-sounding gig in another us- town—when the economy imploded er’s bio: personal-photo organizer. in 2008. Soon after, she lost her job, A call to Fort Greene (no operator as an adjunct professor at Parsons, so necessary) confirmed that personal- she started cataloguing her own fam- photo organizing is, indeed, an emerg- ily’s photographs. Isabelle Dervaux

18 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 worth of gigabyte-gobbling outtakes. By Curate a family’s photos and they’ll “You could drive from here to Ohio, Dervaux’s estimation, a family of four be organized for a day; teach them how he’d talk the whole way,” Gray said. generates five thousand photos annu- to take better pictures and they’ll be “Coldest I’ve ever been on a line was ally. “It gets worse every year,” she said. organized forever. “My philosophy is in Minnesota,” Hadley said. “Wind- In sorting through them, she uses the Let’s try not to take a picture that you’re chill thirty-five below zero. To strike a same mantra she once applied to her il- going to have to delete later,” Dervaux Hormel factory in fucking February!” lustration portfolios: “Only show your said. “If it’s too dark, do not take the He tossed off some of his greatest hits: best work and be ruthless.” She explained, picture!” Take pictures at the begin- “I’ve organized a peanut-butter plant “A mom will look at a picture and see ning of the birthday party, she said. in Albany. A dog-food plant in Vir- her child, just normal. I will see the child And don’t try to document every sin- ginia. Poultry plants in Mississippi. All and the garbage can that’s on the play- gle day. “When you have a baby that’s kinds of nursing homes. Piggly Wig- ground, and somebody’s foot with some one year old, every photo is important, glys.” He added, “I tried to organize a ugly sandal.” Where a parent hesitates, but, in twenty years, you’re just going condom plant down in, uh ...” Dervaux is sure she wants to delete that to want the best ones,” Dervaux said. “Eufaula,” Gray said. overexposed portrait or blurry holiday “You kind of have to do this for your “Down in Eufaula, yeah,” Hadley shot. She said, “I’m looking for what Ro- future self.” went on. land Barthes called a ‘punctum’—some- 1—Lauren Collins “That’s the one that Steve Harvey thing in a picture that touches the viewer, ended up buying,” Gray added. even if it’s indescribable.” ALABAMA POSTCARD Around four-fifteen, traffic picked A family once hired Dervaux for QUITTIN’ TIME up. Some workers waved as they drove eighty hours, to curate their photos and away. Others honked. A few offered a be done with it, but she prefers a ped- thumbs-up. The majority sped into the agogical approach, working side by side dark without a sideward glance. with a client, so that the client can do “She’s gotta drive all the way back his or her own sentimental labor in the to Walker County,” Gray said, reading future. The goal is to whittle every year’s the license plate of a beat-up Honda. collection down to no more than twelve t three-twenty-seven on a recent “That’s a long ways.” hundred keepers (“faved” on an iPhone), Amorning in Bessemer, Alabama, “Bless her heart,” Hadley said. He a couple of hundred selections for a Randy Hadley, a sixty-five-year-old went on, “We’re here this early just digital album, and, finally, twelve to fif- man, was dancing at a traffic light. He in case she rolls her window down teen “best” photos that would qualify wore a fedora and had a trimmed white and we can lean over there and have for a holiday card or to hang on a wall. goatee, and he waved a sign as he shim- a conversation for two minutes.” He Swiping around in strangers’ cam- mied: “Without Change, Nothing added, “Some days you’ll catch fif- era rolls is not without occupational Changes.” Beside him, a burly younger teen. Some days you’ll catch fifty. It’s hazards. Dervaux has stumbled across man named Curtis Gray held up a just like going fishing.” nudes, birthing closeups, and enough different sign: “Don’t Back Down.” Eventually, Hadley was in need of is-this-a-rash-or-what selfies to over- Gray watched Hadley, who, in turn, a rest room. “Jeff Bezos just built a house whelm a dermatologist. The process watched workers file out of the nine- with twenty-five bathrooms,” he said of sorting through photos is, in many hundred-thousand-square-foot Am- when he returned from the woods. ways, a process of sorting through emo- azon fulfillment center up the hill, “They ain’t got twenty-five in there,” tions. “Some people don’t want to see near where ancient Native American Gray said, motioning to the warehouse. their ex-husband pop up on the screen,” mounds once stood. A man drove by and honked affir- Dervaux said. “We’ll export those so “I don’t know what kind of dance matively. “Our president was down here they won’t be mixed up with your new that is,” Gray said, pulling his hood up the other day,” Hadley said, “and he husband.” Photos, she said, fall into against the cold. He and Hadley, mem- goes, ‘Everybody is so friendly. How three categories: 1) family, friends, and bers of the Retail, Wholesale and De- do you know if they don’t like you?’ I memories; 2) places and things; and 3) partment Store Union, have been pass- said, ‘Trust me—you’ll get that finger practical information (a screenshot of ing out pamphlets and holding up their in just a second.’” a bike-rental agreement, a recipe, a class signs in this spot almost every day since Traffic picked up again around five. schedule). “In the past, we were pho- October, in an attempt to unionize a Employees lit their post-work cigarettes tographing physical things to remem- group of Amazon workers in America and raced away, music cranked. A ber the past,” she said. “But now what for the first time. Voting on whether woman asked Hadley for help adjust- we do is we photograph ideas. We pho- to form a union has already begun. ing her rearview mirror. A man got out tograph things for the future, like a Gray’s earliest successful campaign was of his car to swear at a driver who’d cut number we want to call.” One of her at the Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant, in him off. Someone asked Gray when niftiest tricks is using the search func- Russellville, Alabama, a decade ago. the votes would begin to be tallied. (The tion to locate “documents” in Apple Hadley’s been at it longer. He has honed end of March.) The sky turned from Photos to easily cull all the random the art of talking through boredom and black to purple to pink and blue. Had- pictures of pieces of paper. bad weather. ley shared some TikTok videos he’d

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 19 made with his wife, including one in done two thousand of everything we’d which the two are dressed as dinosaurs. ever done.” The book weighs more Gray chuckled at stories he’d heard be- than five pounds and costs a hundred fore and would no doubt hear again. bucks. She had insisted on printing it At one point, a car with three pas- near Detroit, rather than overseas: “It sengers drove by, smoke pouring from was more expensive to do that, but it the windows. “Let’s go!” one yelled to meant a lot to give the work to Mich- Hadley and Gray. igan people.” “You smell a lot of weed,” Hadley Linna was in her apartment, or, said, as they skidded off. really, her splendid athenaeum, in a “He ain’t lying,” Gray said. converted schoolhouse in Prospect A few hundred yards down the road, Heights—two big rooms teeming at another entrance, Jose Aguilar and with scrupulously arranged books, rec- Mona Darby stood in matching cold- ords, and old magazines, as well as re- weather jumpsuits, holding union signs. tired jukeboxes, radios, and various They’d shown up at four. There was ephemera, such as a can of Camp- less traffic at their post. Darby was lis- bell’s tomato soup signed by Andy tening to Steve Harvey on her phone. Warhol and later inadvertently opened, Aguilar was watching TikToks. emptied, and tossed in the trash by A woman drove by with her thumb Miriam Linna the oddball Norton rockabilly artist down. They’d seen her before. She be- Hasil Adkins. longed to a small group of aggressively had a copy back in his apartment. “I’m kind of a more-is-more per- anti-union workers. Their marriage—a celebrated meet- son,” Linna said. “Her and the white guy in a silver ing of the minds, ears, and shelves— There were fleets of B-movie post- truck,” Darby said. “He’s crazy.” lasted until Miller’s death, of cancer, ers (“Dragstrip Riot,” “The Sinister Aguilar agreed. “The other day, he in 2016. In addition to some musical Urge,” “Juvenile Jungle”) and racks stopped and said, ‘You know what, you collaborations (Linna, before meeting of catchy titles, of a genre she calls waste your time. You need to go home.’ Miller, had been the founding drum- “sleaze paperback.” A visitor thumbed I said, ‘You waste your time. You need mer of the punk band the Cramps), through “Side-Show Girl: Men Loved to go home and get some rest.’” they became perhaps the country’s Her at Their Peril!” Linna has one of He told a story about two workers preëminent archivists of old rocka- the world’s largest collections of pulp who’d opposed the unionizing of a poul- billy and doo-wop records, among paperbacks. An additional six thousand try plant. “Since Day One, they said, other treasures. They started the un- are housed in a haunted castle in Cleve- ‘No union, no union.’ Well, we win the derground magazine Kicks and the land, along with the bulk of the Nor- election. And they’re the first people Norton Records label, and Linna es- ton Records inventory. (She and Miller to join the union. I said, ‘O.K., wel- tablished a Kicks Books imprint, which had lost about a quarter of a million come to the family.’” published works by Sun Ra and Har- records, all of their files, and the Kicks Seven o’clock arrived. The sun felt lan Ellison. Books inventory when Hurricane Sandy good. It was time to go to Cracker Barrel. At the time of Miller’s death, he swamped their Red Hook storehouse, Hadley made a final pronouncement. had been working for more than ten in 2012. “Thousands of books dissolved “When we win,” he said, “I’m gonna buy years on a meticulous history of a rel- into nothing,” Linna said.) She has a that building over there, across the street, atively obscure Detroit label called For- thing for juvenile delinquency; for a and make it our union hall. That’ll be tune Records. Its catalogue, catholic of while she published a magazine called Chapter 2.” genre, was a kind of Gnostic gospel of Bad Seed. “J.D. stuff is my forte,” 1—Charles Bethea rock and roll, embodying an alterna- she said. Another forte: mid-century tive and mostly neglected story line of teen-culture, hot-rod, true-crime, and SHOW-AND-TELL rock’s disparate roots. At first, Linna African-American magazines. She has MORE IS MORE was too grief-stricken to take up the copies of pretty much every issue of project, but after a few years she and Dig, Hop Up, Ebony Song Parade, Miller’s co-author, a musician and writer Bronze Thrills, Jive, Sepia, Hep, and named Michael Hurtt, got down to the Pro. “People say I’m an obsessive col- harder-than-they’d-thought job of fin- lector. I say, Not really. I just get what ishing it, with the encouragement of interests me. My interests are limited their editor, Marc Miller. and specific.” iriam Linna met Billy Miller “Mind Over Matter: The Myths Linna, who is sixty-five, has had Min 1977, while browsing at a rec- and Mysteries of Detroit’s Fortune Rec- hardly any visitors in a year. She was ord fair. She was looking for “You ords” came out in the fall. “We printed wearing two masks, a black sweater, Must Be a Witch,” by the Lollipop two thousand copies,” Linna said the black leggings, and leopard-print flats. Shoppe, a sixties garage band, and he other day. “It was a gamble, but I’d She has sandy blond bangs, and her

20 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 show­and­tell patter bore traces of both SKETCHPAD BY GREG CLARKE the Midwest and downtown tough. N . Y. C . ’S LATEST BLOOD SPORT: PANDEMIC PARKING Born in Ontario and reared in Ohio, she moved to New York in 1976 and worked at the Strand bookstore until she and Miller married, in 1989. Fortune, too, was founded by a cou­ ple, Devora and Jack Brown, who set up a recording studio in the back of their Detroit record shop in 1946 and started producing sessions with every kind of singer and musician in town. Devora, a songwriter, had the ear; Jack ran the business. They hus­ the impostor the spot holder tled their records, had a few minor Stealthily secures metered parking Deters would-be parking foes through hits, but never made anyone rich, in­ disguised as an outdoor-dining shed fear and intimidation cluding themselves. “They had a busi­ ness model that was no model at all,” Linna said. “It was simply a love of the music.” She went on, “Billy wanted Fortune to be known. Maybe because it was run by a couple, just like our label was, he understood the strug­ gles they had. “So,” she said. “Do you want to hear anything?” She pulled down a bunch of 45s, re­ treated into a corner, to a turntable set the surveillant the trumper up behind a rattan bar, and began spin­ Listens for the sound of Refuses to accept the loss ning Fortune sides, loud as can be, while ignition startups of a parking spot nodding and bobbing and air­drumming. She had no concern about damaging rare artifacts. “Records are for playing,” she said. “Leave Me Alone,” by Nathaniel Mayer and the Fabulous Twilights. Then “Route 16,” a mambo/doo­wop one­of­ a­kinder, by Nolan Strong, whose high tenor, in the lead of the local group the Diablos, inspired the singing style of Smokey Robinson. Then “Help Mur­ der Police,” by the Hi­Fidelities; “Sally the deflater the haggler Bad,” by the Utopias; George Young’s “Buggin’ Baby”; the Richard Brothers’ Takes the air out of mass-transit- Willing to trade this covid-19 vaccine “Drunk Driver’s Coming”; the Andre eschewing new car owners appointment for your parking spot Williams classic “Jail Bait.” (“This is Keith Richards’s favorite Fortune re­ cord,” Linna said.) The recordings, none quite like the other, all had in common a burning, reverb­y, almost oversaturated verve. “It’s the grittiest music you could pos­ sibly imagine,” she said. Her counter­ intuitive clincher was a piece of ethe­ real doo­wop, written and recorded by Devora Brown and performed by Lit­ tle Eddie and the Don Juans, called the oracle the jackal “This Is a Miracle.” It was, and still is. Foresees parking-spot openings in Stalks motorists walking —Nick Paumgarten your neighborhood for a fee to their cars american chronicles cat ears. Coyle knit three prototypes, and within a few days the group had named it the Pussyhat, a reference to THE UNRAVELLING Trump’s hot-mike moment with Billy Bush. “Krista had this vision of massive How politics tore the fabric of an online crafting community. amounts of people wearing the same style, the same hat,” Coyle said. by carrie battan She went on, “I just said, ‘Let me take a picture of this, and I’ll put it on Rav- elry.’ ” Ravelry, which is often called “the n the spring of 2016, Jayna Zwei- On November 10th that year, two Facebook of knitting,” has nine mil- Iman, an artist, persuaded her friend days after Donald Trump was elected lion registered accounts—about a mil- Krista Suh to buy a Groupon for cro- President, Zweiman called Suh and told lion of which are active every month— cheting lessons at a yarn store in Los her that she wanted to go to the Little an exhaustive database of patterns and Angeles called the Little Knittery. Yarn Knittery to find comfort. Zweiman was yarns, and hyperactive message boards. shops, like bike or record stores, can be particularly interested in the concerns “Telling a knitter to check out Ravelry alienating to newcomers; patrons and of older women at the store, and when is like telling someone who just got employees sometimes act like members she learned about the Women’s March a computer, ‘Hey, you should check of an exclusive club who share the lan- she knew that she wanted to partici- out Google,’” Edith Zimmerman, an guage of obscure wool blends. But Kat pate. She had a background in socially avid knitter and the creator of a pop- Coyle, who has owned the Little Knit- minded design projects, and she and ular e-mail newsletter called Drawing tery for nine years, has worked hard Suh considered knitting a special hat to Links, said. When new knitters come to make it an inviting place, outfitting commemorate the march. Coyle agreed into the shop, Coyle typically says, “Get it with worn Persian rugs, a giant pink to help write a pattern that would be on Ravelry. Just get on. It’s going to sofa, and several comfortable chairs. visually striking but accessible to knit- blow your mind.” She added, “It goes Every Friday there were “knit nights,” ters of all levels. Looking around the all over the world. And that’s what hap- open to all. After a few lessons, Zwei- store, they selected a fuchsia-colored pened” with the hat. “It went all over man and Suh became regulars. The yarn produced by a Uruguayan fibre the world.” crowd ranged in age from adolescent company called Malabrigo. The easiest After Coyle posted the Pussyhat to geriatric, and sitting around knitting type of hat to knit is a flat rectangle, pattern to the site, the women worked or crocheting gave Zweiman an “op- folded and sewn together, which pro- with more than a hundred and seventy- portunity to really listen,” she told me. duces two floppy corners that resemble five yarn stores around the world, which

“We were kind of innocent and naïve, thinking that people will behave well,” one of Ravelry’s founders said.

22 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 PHOTOGRAPH BY GREG ARDEN AND SOLOMON BURBRIDGE served as dropoff and pickup points for and “Build the Wall.” These hats even- knitter friend suggested Ravelry. After knitters and hat recipients. “The coun- tually led to a ban of all Trump discus- the beta testers, who were sworn to se- try sold out of pink yarn,” Coyle said. sion on Ravelry. crecy, contributed various ideas for im- (Four years later, Malabrigo’s fuchsia “Ravelry is just a microcosm,” Kim provement, Jessica went to the Mary- yarn is often on back order.) Some peo- Denise, one of the site’s volunteer mod- land Sheep and Wool Festival, one of ple went to the Little Knittery think- erators, told me. “Knitters are just the the country’s largest events for yarn lov- ing that they could buy Pussyhats. “And same as society.” Denise joined the site ers, and began spreading the word. we said, ‘We don’t make them for sale,’” in 2009, and even then she noticed a When she got back to her hotel that Coyle told me. “ ‘You have to knit your “growing radicalization among Obama night, Jessica said, she opened her com- own or get somebody to knit it for you.’ ” haters” on Ravelry. “Trump brought that puter to find “thousands of people on By January 21, 2017, the day of the to a head.” Jessica Marshall Forbes, the waiting list to get in.” She called Women’s March, Zweiman claims, hun- one of the site’s two founders, remem- Cassidy. “What should we do?” she dreds of thousands of hats had been bers the early days of Ravelry well. “You asked. “Should we take the waiting list knitted, creating a visual symbol of a know, we just wanted to make a nice down?” It was, as Jessica said, “an inno- moment in political history. “We cre- Web site about yarn,” she told me. “I cent time” in the social Internet—Twit- ated a sea of pink pixels,” she said. Pro- look back on it now, like, ‘Oh, it wasn’t ter was barely a year old—but she was totypes of the Pussyhat later appeared so bad.’ Because look what we’re deal- already getting a taste of how easily in several exhibitions at major art mu- ing with now.” users could be ruffled. Some people on seums. Sandra Markus, the chair of the the waiting list accused the site of being fashion department at the Fashion In- aunched in 2007 by Jessica Mar- “just a popularity contest. You have to stitute of Technology (F.I.T.), has pub- Lshall Forbes and Cassidy Forbes, know somebody to get in.” lished research on Ravelry’s Pussyhat a young married couple, Ravelry was Cassidy soon quit her day job. With Project group, which has about forty- intended to serve the needs of skilled no funding and no experience in business, five hundred members, some of whom crocheters and knitters like Coyle, who she and Jessica began selling T-shirts still assemble on a regular basis to dis- was among the several hundred people featuring yarn jokes like “Where my cuss knitting and politics. She remem- invited to test out the site during its stitches at?” or “I swatched,” a reference bers the discussions around the Pussy- beta phase. Cassidy and Jessica had met to the small pieces of fabric that more hat at her local yarn store on the Upper as undergraduates at the University of fastidious knitters create before starting West Side, where women gathered to New Hampshire. Five years after grad- a project. They turned their small apart- knit. “To be able to really combine the uation, Jessica was working for Brandeis ment into a fulfillment center and sold political with the craft,” Markus said, University’s study-abroad program; she about thirty-two hundred shirts. “In- “I think it was the first time it was ever took up knitting as a way to pass her stead of getting money from outside in- done in such a significant, visually im- thirty-minute commute. As Jessica be- vestors, we were really started by the pactful way.” came increasingly proficient, Cassidy community itself,” Jessica said. By the “I know how much knitters like a noticed her frustration in finding knit- end of the year, Ravelry had fifty-seven project,” Coyle told me. “I also knew, ting patterns. At the time, there were thousand users. from my own community, they were re- many popular blogs focussed on knit- Ravelry became the largest crochet- ally anxious and depressed. And what’s ting—Yarn Harlot, the Knitter’s Re- and knitting-pattern database in the knitting good for? Soothing the nerves.” view—but finding patterns and infor- world, and it enabled designers to sell Not everyone on Ravelry was soothed, mation about techniques could take their patterns without going through though. “Embarrassing and degrad- hours of research. Cassidy, a computer an established publication. The site ing,” a user named Glassbonnie wrote, programmer, didn’t know how to knit, currently lists more than a million pat- of the Pussyhat. GirlsandDogs called but she could build an online database. terns, for traditional hats, sweaters, it an “incredibly ugly hat with a vulgar The couple began to talk about what a scarves, cowls, and mittens, and for name.” Others argued that the energy knitting Web site might look like, and objects that would be hard to find in dedicated to the Pussyhat could be they sent out feelers on Jessica’s blog, a store or a knitting magazine: Sas- channelled into providing for the home- frecklegirl: “The idea is to create an en- quatch-mask balaclavas, garter belts for less, a comment that produced more cyclopedia of cool patterns (and yarn Barbies, dog sweaters adapted from run- digital sniping. “Unless all of your knit- too??) to mix in blogging and other so- way looks, ChapStick holders in the ting is for charity, please don’t try to cial aspects. I think it would be nice if shape of a penis. (Cassidy has never knit lecture people on what they want to knitters had a place where they could or crocheted seriously. She once made make for themselves for their own rea- share their completed creations, get help an octopus but never finished the eighth sons and on their own time,” Merry- for works in progress, and get ideas for leg, and the object is referred to in the mcg14 wrote. future projects.” Forbes home as “the septopus.”) Users During Trump’s term, hat patterns One commenter wrote, “You’d better can also meticulously log their projects, sparked political discourse. As he geared contact a patent attorney ASAP! Seriously.” from pattern to yards of yarn required up for reëlection, his supporters began The couple made a New Year’s res- and tiny modifications added to a pat- publishing patterns for hats with slo- olution to launch the site, which they tern, photographing each step of the gans like “Make America Great Again” tentatively called Entangled, before a process. Upon completing a project, a

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 23 being, like, ‘What have we done? We’ve created a monster, and we can’t get out of it.’” “ t is surprisingly difficult to say what Iknitting is,” Richard Rutt writes, in “A History of Hand Knitting,” from 1987. The craft, with its simplicity, feels an- cient, but its foundational elements— knit-and-purl stitches, in alternating patterns, which make for a smoother garment and provide a palette for deco- rative stitching—are relatively modern. The earliest known garment to feature purl stitches is a pair of crimson silk stockings owned by Eleanor of Toledo, “Let’s take off all their personal protective equipment.” a Spanish noblewoman, in 1562. Even in its earliest periods, hand knitting had a sociopolitical bent, as the •• proletariat toiled to make luxury gar- ments for European royalty. In a clever user gives the work Ravelry’s most sat- Ravelry was formed by estranged users reversal, Madame Defarge, the villain- isfying designation, an “FO,” or Fin- of a more center-right group called ous tricoteuse of “A Tale of Two Cit- ished Object. Conservative Knitters. After John Mc- ies,” encodes her stitches with the names One of my favorite patterns is for a Cain lost his Presidential bid to Barack of aristocrats who were next to be guil- sweater with an ambitiously detailed Obama, the group’s name was changed lotined during the French Revolution. map of the globe, knit using a tech- to the Bunker—which was meant to Although Defarge may be fictional, nique called intarsia. The sweater ap- signify a place of safety, although some knitting was a way for Frenchwomen peared in a special collector’s edition interpreted it as a reference to Nazi to harness social and economic power of Vogue Knitting in 1991. One Ravelry bunkers. In early 2009, after a series of during the Revolution, most often by user noted that it took her twenty-five inappropriate comments were posted, making “bonnets de la Liberté ”—Liberty years to finish the garment. “I was very the Bunker was shut down. One mem- caps—which were worn by nearly ev- glad that the Eastern Bloc countries ber likened the burgundy scarf worn eryone in Paris. hadn’t yet separated when this pattern by Obama at his Inauguration to a Across the Atlantic, knitting was al- was created,” a Raveler wrote in her noose. Later that year, one of the group’s ready part of the formative nation: in log, because it would have been so users wrote a five-thousand-word ac- 1664, Massachusetts had passed a law time-consuming. count of the saga on her blog, Teapot requiring all children to learn to spin and “Finding people you had things in Tantrums, which was titled “Badge of weave. At knitting bees, women stitched common with online was still a new Honor—Too Conservative for Ravelry?” stockings and other garments, sometimes thing,” Jessica said. On the site’s lively In the post, she invited the offending turning the events into frenzied com- message boards, groups include Foun- Bunkermate to clarify the scarf-as- petitions. During the American Revo- tain Pen Lovers, Christians with De- noose comment: “The reference, which lution, knitting came to represent a form pression, Modest Girls-9-18, and the was obviously lost on some people, was of resistance to Britain, which manu- Completely Pointless and Arbitrary that WE were sick enough over his factured a majority of the American col- Group. During the 2008 election, so- election to hang ourselves.” At the bot- onies’ knitted goods. In the early days cial activity on the forums intensified. tom of the post, the woman behind of his Presidency, George Washington Ravelry had just one full-time employee Teapot Tantrums linked to eleven other was so distressed that his slaves might in addition to Cassidy and Jessica, and blogs, where aggrieved knitters com- not be knitting to their full potential at they continued to address members’ plained about censorship and lamented Mount Vernon—where his wife had her concerns individually, giving users the the “inappropriate” patterns published own personal knitter, a physically handi- sense that Ravelry was a community on Ravelry, adding, “Parents, take heed capped enslaved man named Peter—that of acquaintances, rather than a rapidly and protect your underage fiber en- he wrote in panic to his estate manager: growing social-media network and thusiasts from what they will see on “Doll at the Ferry must be taught to Knit, commercial platform. “We were kind this site.” and MADE to do a sufficient day’s work of innocent and naïve, thinking that Some anti-Ravelry posts written of it, otherwise (if suffered to be idle) people will behave well, but this is not on other blogs began to challenge the many more will walk in her steps. Lame the case, even on a Web site about yarn,” real Ravelry in Google-search results. Peter, if nobody else will, must teach her, Jessica told me. “It was bad,” Cassidy told me. “I re- and she must be brought to the house A hard-right group called McCain member crying in bed at night and for that purpose.”

24 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 Knitting was also a tool in the war ment—as if knitting by hand were not nest decades later. Often, people pick against society’s great fear: idleness. Any- already agonizingly slow enough— up knitting during a life change—a one wielding a pair of needles takes on whose proponents advocate selecting divorce, a new commute, a breakup, a an air of industry, and one newspaper fibre more carefully and giving extra pregnancy. The actress Judy Greer says writer during the Revolutionary War consideration to project choices. that it helped her quit smoking. (She extolled the “Knot of Misses busy at It is hard to quantify how many peo- became a regular at the Little Knit- their Needles . . . [where they] exclude ple have picked up the craft since the tery.) Edith Zimmerman, the newslet- Idleness from their solitary Moments.” coronavirus pandemic began, but in ter writer, learned to knit during a pe- In “Little Women,” the March sisters 2020 Ravelry had its biggest year of riod of intense boredom and isolation knit and sewed while their father served pattern sales. Last September, Michelle after she moved from New York to as a chaplain in the Civil War. Jo saw Obama told Rachael Ray, “Hold on, Cape Cod, and continued to rely on it the craft as a prison: “For I’m dying to girl. Over the course of this quarantine, when she quit drinking. “Not having go and fight with Papa, and I can only I have knitted a blanket, five scarves, something to hold every night, my stay at home and knit, like a poky old three halter tops, a couple of hats for hands felt like they were empty,” she woman!” As the war drew to a close, Barack, and I just finished my first pair told me. the abolitionist Sojourner Truth taught of mittens for Malia. . . . I’m a knitter.” Zimmerman is partly responsible freed slaves how to knit as a means of She also revealed that she’d become for my experience with Ravelry. I, too, supporting themselves. part of a “knitting community” online, learned the basic stitches as a child During the First World War, de- under a pseudonym. Last July, after from my mother, who wowed our rela- mand for socks for soldiers skyrocketed craft enthusiasts on TikTok began con- tives with gifts of matching sweaters at on account of “trench foot,” a fungus structing versions of a fifteen-hundred- Christmas. But I didn’t think about knit- that attacked wet feet. Homebound and-sixty-dollar patchwork J. W. An- ting again until the fall of 2019, when, British women began to knit furiously, derson sweater worn by Harry Styles, out of some panicked desire to find a using an array of colors in their socks. Anderson released a free pattern for way to occupy myself away from a screen, Fearing that an army with unmatched the sweater. I ordered a giant pair of wooden nee- socks would look unprepared and cha- Every knitter I spoke to in recent dles and a few balls of comically chunky otic, the British government distrib- months told me a similar story: they white yarn. Many hours of YouTube tu- uted a pattern for socks, knit in dark- learned the basic stitches in childhood torials later, the yarn became a blanket gray and green wool. The government from a female relative and promptly that weighed at least ten pounds and asked women to use the Kitchener forgot the skill, only to resume in ear- was filled with unsightly holes and loose stitch—named for Britain’s Secretary of State for War, Herbert Kitchener—a technique designed to produce seams that would not chafe. Printing other patterns was banned, because spies had been caught encoding information into the stitches of knitted garments. After the war, the rapid growth of the textile industry made knitting a hobby. It could be used to achieve per- sonal or political goals, or to explore new forms of self-expression. During the six- ties and seventies, hippies filled the shops of Haight-Ashbury with garments knit- ted or crocheted by those who objected to mass production and consumption. Within the feminist movement, some saw knitting as a symbol of domestic oppression, others as an act of resistance against a misogynist capitalism. (Today, ninety-eight per cent of Ravelry users are women.) Eventually, knitting came to seem value-neutral, a kind of personal palli- ative. In a culture suddenly compelled by the desire to slow down, knitting draws people away from the hamster wheel of technology and productivity. There is even a “slow knitting” move- ends. I gave it to some friends, whose tacted her, she asked if I had a Ravelry sidy and Jessica have tried to protect dog took a liking to it. account. I did, but I had never used it Ravelry from outside forces. Today, the A couple of months later, I quit my seriously. Like many novice knitters, I site has five employees, including its day job to write full time, and a cou- found the site overwhelming, its design founders, all of whom work remotely. ple of months after that the pandemic outdated and difficult to navigate. On ( Jessica has gone part time in recent struck. With the extra free time and an Zimmerman’s recommendation, I be- years, in order to raise the couple’s two obligation to stay home, I spent many gan to explore the site, and a new world children.) Although pattern sales on the hours a day learning new techniques opened up to me. Ravelry does not use site grew to more than twenty-eight and browsing online for rare wool algorithms to serve any of its patterns, million dollars last year (two per cent blends. Knitting allowed me the illu- yarns, or users, and there is no automat- of which was collected by Ravelry), the sion that at least something was pro- ically refreshed feed. Proactive curios- founders refuse to call it an e-commerce gressing. It also recalibrated my aes- ity is required to get anywhere, which platform, instead describing it as an on- thetic world view. I found that the most ultimately makes the site a soothing line community for fibre enthusiasts. fun things to knit were the sorts of gar- browsing experience. It is the only so- Rather than use an ad service, like Goo- ments I would never have dreamed of cial-media platform that makes me feel gle, that would serve targeted ads based buying from a store. I couldn’t walk both calmer and smarter. on demographic data, Ravelry selects outside without noticing an interest- It seemed inconceivable that a com- ads exclusively for fibre-related prod- ing cable on someone’s sweater or try- munity like Ravelry could be divisive. ucts and events. The founders have no ing to guess the fibre in a scarf. Knitting was a way to escape the dy- public-relations or marketing firm, and I had always been skeptical of the namics that caused people to fight in- customer support is still provided by kind of breathless sentimentality that cessantly online, and its adherents are employees. Cassidy has written nearly tends to accompany self-described uniquely bound by the ethics inherent thirty thousand public-forum posts on “makers,” but I quickly came to see in the craft. I can think of no other ac- Ravelry, most of them in response to knitting as the rarest form of pleasure: tivity that punishes cheating or impa- users’ concerns. In addition, six hyper- a practical magic that embodies many tience so brutally, as evidenced by my active Ravelry users serve as volunteer good things while introducing nothing thousands of yards of tangled knots or moderators, making sure that nothing bad. “Its main tenets are enjoyment and hours spent tearing out projects after on the main boards infringes on com- satisfaction, accompanied by thrift, in- I’d taken shortcuts. “A good knitter al- munity guidelines. ventiveness, an appearance of industry, ways has the courage to undo her work Cassidy and Jessica have received a and, above all, resourcefulness,” Eliza- and fix a big mistake,” the economist number of inquiries from outside inves- beth Zimmerman (no relation to Edith), Loretta Napoleoni writes, in “The Power tors hoping to partner with the site. “I’ve the host of a groundbreaking PBS se- of Knitting,” from 2020. literally deleted any message from an ries called “Knitting Workshop,” wrote. outsider industry,” Cassidy told me. “I Zimmerman was an arbiter of all of the assidy was initially reluctant to be don’t even know how many of those we’ve aforementioned qualities, developing Cinterviewed. “I can’t remember the not responded to.” Early on, they met mathematical formulas to help knitters last time we answered a press request with a publisher, because Jessica was a perfectly size their garments, regard- because we don’t really want to be part fan of some of the people who worked less of needle or yarn size. of non-knitters/crocheters’ writing about there. “We weren’t interested at all in After I started knitting, I frequently the craft, it’s usually cringe,” she wrote. selling,” Cassidy said. “We were just try- noticed mentions of the craft in Edith But, since I had an active profile on the ing to form relationships.” Cassidy re- Zimmerman’s newsletter. When I con- site, she agreed. For fourteen years, Cas- called the publisher’s C.E.O. telling them,

“Well, what do you know—turns out he knew exactly what he’d do with a car if he caught one.” “If you’re going to be like this . . . then users were spilling over onto Instagram, people often call Deplorable for short. we’ll just build our own Ravelry. And where Ravelers blasted their concerns to She used a blocked phone number, and you’re only two people.” But no knitting a larger online community. “People were refused to tell me her real name or where Web site has overtaken Ravelry. accusing us of all sorts of things, saying, she lived, except that it was in upstate More recently, though, potential ‘You have to do better than this,’” Cas- New York, “far from the city.” It struck threats to Ravelry have come from its sidy said. On the morning of June 23, me as a serious amount of precaution for own users. In 2019, a decade after the 2019, frustrated by the drama, she an- a discussion about knitting. Deplorable Bunker group was dissolved, Donald nounced that Ravelry would be banning told me that she is a thirty-seven-year- Trump announced his reëlection cam- all Trump-related content, including ca- old homemaker with two young chil- paign. “As the country got more highly sual Trump-related chatter dren, and that she and her polarized, the dialogue on Ravelry got on the forums. In a post on mother had just finished more polarized, and patterns got more the site, the Ravelry staff ex- knitting and mailing out a polarized,” Sandra Markus, the chair of plained the new guidelines. batch of thirty-six “Stop the the fashion department at F.I.T., said. “You can still participate if Steal” hats to their custom- Markus is a longtime Ravelry user, whose you do in fact support the ers. She talked about her first research on Ravelry is one of the few administration, just don’t knitting pattern, which she academic analyses of social-media ac- talk about it here,” the post wrote in 2018. A friend had tivism which focus on middle-aged and read. “We cannot provide a wanted to make a hat that older women. “Both groups claimed the space that is inclusive of all said “Walk Away,” a ref- flag as their own. A lot of groups knit- and also allow support for erence to the social-media ted patriotic shawls,” she said. “And it open white supremacy. Sup- campaign that encouraged was really one way for older women to port of the Trump administration is un- liberals to abandon the Democratic Party. have their voices heard.” deniably support for white supremacy.” Deplorable had never tried stranded col- A user called Deplorable Knitter Ravelry’s ban appeared in the Times orwork, a centuries-old technique pop- published a hat pattern whose stitch- and was mentioned on “The Late Show ularized in the Shetland Islands which ing read “Build the Wall.” The pattern with Stephen Colbert.” Cassidy hoped uses multiple strands of yarn to produce became a flash point on the site. “When that other sites would follow Ravelry’s lettering. “My first hat, it looked fine in she first started coming out with pat- example. “I really thought we might have my pictures,” she said. “It wasn’t the best terns, conversations became vitriolic,” done something that mattered,” she said. thing. But on the inside,” where the ex- Markus said. The site had long forbid- “But nobody followed our lead, even in cess colored strands are held, “it was scary.” den any patterns that included Con- the yarn community.” Eighteen months These days, Deplorable is a stranded- federate flags, and MAGA-related con- passed before the assault on the Capi- colorwork expert. She joined Ravelry tent was taking on a similar flavor. Some tol, when major social-media sites began several years ago under a different name, left-leaning Ravelry users said that they de-platforming Trump. and every Saturday morning she would felt unsafe on the site. “I don’t want to On the day of the ban, Kim Denise, eagerly browse patterns. When she pub- be a place where people are radicalizing,” one of the volunteer moderators, told lished the pattern for her WalkAway Jessica told me. “Our community users me, “I was, like, I’m so psyched. I’m hat, she created a new account for the came to us and said, ‘This kind of rhet- so proud to be part of Ravelry.” Then Deplorable Knitter persona. “I knew oric is actually hate speech.’ We have to the ban happened. “And it was, like, that a lot of fibre people lean left, but believe that.” Oh, my God. I wish we’d thought this I looked at it, like, I wanted to just be Even before the complaints, Cassidy through.” Right-wing trolls began sign- a voice on the other side. They’ve got and Jessica were mulling over how to ing up for Ravelry accounts and spam- all the ‘F Trump’ patterns, so I just fig- address the onslaught of Trump-related ming threads with anti-Ravelry or pro- ured I’d make one that was positive.” content that they found offensive. Soon, Trump sentiment. Denise described it The WalkAway pattern had some suc- Cassidy said, “it became clear that there as “hordes of screaming people lining cess on the site, so she continued to pro- wasn’t going to be any allowing some up to sling feces at us. . . . It was terri- duce more patterns for hats with pro- Trump stuff and not allowing other stuff. ble.” Users scurried to help moderators right slogans. In January, 2019, she made It wasn’t going to be possible.” She drew by flagging posts for deletion. They re- the “Build the Wall” pattern, which had up an outline of the things the site would cruited a retired moderator to help deal been categorized as hate speech on need to do before initiating a ban on with trolls. Within a couple of months, Ravelry even before the widespread Trump content—improvements to re- most of the activity generated by the Trump ban. It was removed. Six months porting and flagging systems, as well as Trump ban had subsided. Conserva- later, she released a pattern for a hat language to express the new guidelines. tive users banded together, in a move- that read “God Is Love,” which was At around the same time, Cassidy came ment hashtagged #RavelryExodus, de- also removed. She told me, “I had made out to her family as a transgender woman. leting their accounts and shifting to it with rainbow yarn. And they said I “I was going through some stuff,” she other platforms to sell patterns. (De- was being homophobic.” told me, and she could be impulsive plorable Knitter prefers #ByeRavelry.) Jessica admitted that Ravelry has strug- when dealing with issues on the site. One afternoon in January, I received gled to pinpoint exactly what constitutes Spats between conservative and leftist a call from Deplorable Knitter, whom inappropriate content. “Some of this stuff

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 27 is so nuanced,” she said. “Think about into the pandemic and three weeks after big issue with people being very con­ what tweet got Trump banned. It was the killing of George Floyd. The re­ cerned that, if they don’t support a call­ not about attending the Inauguration.” design, meant to lift the spirits of its out, they’ll be called out themselves,” She went on, “We went through some users and improve the low­vision and she told me. “Not joining it seems scary pretty crazy rabbit holes: ‘O.K., this is an mobile­ user experience, was not well to people.” Cassidy found herself in de­ eagle, but it isn’t really the Nazi eagle. Or received by all. Some longtime users re­ fensive conversation with Ravelers on is it?’ It’s just, like, ugh.” ported that the site was now triggering the forums, by e­mail, and on other One morning in June, 2019, Deplor­ seizures and migraines. One suggested social­ media platforms. Jessica, who is able discovered that she’d been perma­ that the redesign had induced gender known on the site as Mama Rav, tends nently banned from Ravelry, after re­ dysphoria. Nearly four hundred pattern to be more accommodating, and on July ceiving repeated notices of violation of designers signed an open letter asking 30th she wrote a post addressing users’ site guidelines. “I was being painted as Ravelry to fix the site’s format. The Ep­ concerns. She apologized for the stress a horrible person, and I couldn’t do any­ ilepsy Foundation of America issued a that the redesign had caused, and said thing to disprove it,” she said. “I felt ter­ standard warning about Ravelry on its that Cassidy would be taking a step rible. It felt horrible.” When Ravelry social­ media profiles. “Members of our back. “It will take a period of adjust­ formally announced its Trump ban, De­ epilepsy community have expressed con­ ment, but in the future Cassidy’s role plorable experienced the relief of sol­ cerns about some of the content on the will be focused on technical work,” she idarity with her fellow­knitters who’d knitting and crocheting community Rav­ wrote. “She no longer has access to the been called out: “It’s not just me, it’s all elry,” the caution read. customer service emails and her Rav­ of us. Everybody who likes the Presi­ There was some confusion about the elry mail is disabled.” dent is horrible.” elements of the new site that were mak­ Jessica was within earshot of Cassi­ Deplorable started a Web site, as well ing people sick. Dave Gibson, the pres­ dy’s phone conversation with me, which as a podcast, hosted on YouTube, called ident of a Web­site­development com­ was growing more emotional. “Jessica Politically Incorrect Knitters, along with pany called Propeller Media Works, is here, and she wants me to put it on another knitter named Anne Pinkava. which specializes in digital­accessibility speaker,” Cassidy told me. “You know, Deplorable began selling patterns and issues, told me that most Web sites are we haven’t commented on any of this, ready­made hats on Etsy, where one of doing “terribly” with accessibility. But so I think I probably got carried away her “Stop the Steal” hats was also banned. Ravelry “doesn’t seem unusually bad to talking to you.” I asked her if, given the outcome of the me,” he said. “There are these basic things, Jessica interjected, “So the really hard election and Trump’s failure to overturn like missing alt tags,” he went on, re­ thing is that migraines and seizures are the results, she would continue to pro­ ferring to text that accompanies images caused by so many different things.” A duce pro­Trump patterns. “It’s going to that enable blind users to read a Web Ravelry user who is a neurologist told depend on what is going on in the news,” site. When I spoke to Katie Mazza, a her that stress is usually a key factor. “And, she said. user for more than a decade, she told me especially in this time of extreme uncer­ Deplorable spoke about Ravelry as if that she’d experienced migraines, and tainty, we made some mistakes, putting it were an ex­boyfriend for whom she that several of her closest friends, all of out a redesign in the midst of a pandemic, still had a soft spot. “You know, Pinter­ whom she’d met on Ravelry, had simi­ when people were already on edge,” Jes­ est and Google searches or whatever is lar complaints. “My friend sent me a sica continued. “And, because people are my new go­to,” she said. “It’s not as fun. screenshot of Ravelry and, before I could so passionate about Ravelry, I think that I mean, anyone who’s been on Ravelry even read what it was, I felt pain in my intensity switched over, you know what knows that you get on there, and you eyes,” she told me. “It’s weird. That’s the I mean? That level of intensity of love search, and you can find eight hundred only way to describe it.” and passion for the site, and feeling like thousand things and fall in a rabbit hole. In early February, I called Cassidy to they were a part of it, they felt betrayed. You know, I miss that.” She added, “But ask her about the problems, discussion Which I totally get.” I don’t need it. It’s O.K. You work it out.” of which had taken on a frenzied tone Cassidy returned to the conversation that week. “Honestly, we’ve been strug­ a bit calmer. I pointed out to the found­ ast summer, Ravelry announced that, gling with it, and it’s been really, really ers that most users probably weren’t even Lfor the first time, it would radically hard,” she said. “We had to take them aware that this controversy was taking redesign the site. The company had hired seriously, even though the claims seemed place. They were downloading their knit­ Livia Nelson, a product designer, to change outlandish.” Within a few days of the ting patterns and logging their projects what Cassidy had made thirteen years launch, Ravelry made it possible for us­ with the same enthusiasm they always before. The revamping featured a new ers to toggle back to the old version of had. I also said that I couldn’t think of logo, color scheme, and font. Nelson wrote, the Web site. But some people were still a single social Web site that wasn’t ex­ “To everyone who is as excited as we are complaining. “If there was something periencing some kind of turmoil mag­ about Ravelry’s future possibilities, thank to fix, we would fix it,” Cassidy told me. nified by the events of the past year. you—it makes the thousands of hours “I shouldn’t even really get into this, be­ Cassidy laughed. “Even talking about we’ve spent on the new look over the last cause it’s very upsetting.” it now, it feels silly,” she said. “This is a 14 months worth it!” Cassidy has noticed a growing dy­ much bigger thing than what’s happen­ It was mid­June, about three months namic. “The knitting community has a ing with us.” 

28 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 shouts & murmurs Not Order Fries and Then Eat Your Friends’ Fries Off Their Plates No kind of vaccine will ever make it O.K. to do this. Even if you’re vacci- nated and eating outdoors, masked and distanced, just order your own damn fries.

Play Devil’s Advocate You may be protected against COVID-19, but you’re not protected against look- ing like a jerk. Just admit that you like being disagreeable, and then keep the rest to yourself.

Eat Hot Dogs Horizontally, As if They’re Corn on the Cob Some people like to eat their hot dogs in this fashion. This is super weird, and, no matter how vaccinated you are, you are not allowed to do it.

Use Both Armrests on a Plane or a Train Just because it’s safe for you to travel again doesn’t mean that you’re the only one travelling. Are both of your elbows really that tired?

Get On the Subway Before Letting Riders Off You have never been and are still not allowed to do this. You may have the antibodies, but you don’t get to be anti THINGS VACCINATED PEOPLE everyone else’s body. STILL SHOULD NOT DO Suddenly Stop Walking Up a Flight of Stairs to Look at Your Phone by eli grober Like developing a vaccine, going up stairs is an activity that demands your full attention. You may be immune to Fully vaccinated people can visit with other that was clearly not meant to solicit the novel coronavirus, but you’re cer- fully vaccinated people indoors .. . and refrain such a reply. Similarly, getting the vac- tainly not immune to a person behind from quarantine and testing following a known cine does not give you the green light you walking straight into your butt. COVID-19 exposure if the vaccinated person remains asymptomatic. to cc two hundred people on an e-mail. Get to the top of the stairs, then look —Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Better to bcc them. at your phone, and then be grateful for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. modern medicine. Stay Unmuted During Group Zooms ere at the C.D.C., we have an- Just because you’re fully vaccinated Suggest That You and Your Friends Split Hnounced a new set of public- doesn’t mean that everyone wants to the Bill, Even Though You Ordered a Steak health recommendations for people hear all the sniffing and typing and and Everyone Else Just Got Drinks who are fully vaccinated against fidgeting you do while in a Zoom meet- Inoculation doesn’t stop this from being COVID-19. However, there are a num- ing. Mute yourself, whether you’ve got wrong. In fact, doing this might give ber of things that vaccinated people the shot or not. you COVID. The data isn’t in yet. are still not allowed to do. Please fa- miliarize yourself with this list. Walk in the Middle of a Busy Sidewalk This list will be updated regularly Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson— based on community-spread levels of Reply All none of these will prevent other people SARS-CoV-2, and also on community- Once you are fully vaccinated, you are from getting really annoyed that you spread levels of doing really annoy-

LUCI GUTIÉRREZ LUCI still not allowed to reply all to an e-mail won’t stay on your side of the pavement. ing things. 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 29 because I’m short I try to stand as tall as possible in conversation with others.) “The key thing is that you want a setup where you can change your body posi- tion every twenty to thirty minutes,” Tasha Connolly, a physical therapist, told me in a video chat. She explained that a pro- longed hold of any position overstretches certain muscles and shortens others, and that that can create asymmetries. A few years ago, the news was full of warnings about the “sitting disease.” Sitting, every- one said, was the new smoking. A study reported in the Annals of Internal Medi- cine in 2017 found that subjects who in- terrupted their sitting every half hour re- duced their chance of dying by fifty-five per cent. Not long ago, with the reputa- tion of chairs in ruins, standing desks be- came fashionable—that is, until new stud- ies showed that prolonged standing was just as bad as sitting, leading to muscu- lar fatigue, varicose veins, and a doubled risk of heart disease. Let’s start at the beginning. The story goes that when Plato was asked for a definition of a human being he came up with “featherless biped.” This prompted Diogenes the Cynic to present Plato with a plucked chicken. Not to be out- on and off the avenue witted, Plato modified his definition. “A featherless biped with flat nails,” he said. My point is not that philosophy in the STAND UP STRAIGHT! fourth century B.C.E. was a sport for smart-alecks who had a thing for poul- Has the pandemic made us all slouches? try but that standing on two feet, which became habit among our ancestors seven by patricia marx million years ago, according to Ashley Hammond, of the American Museum of Natural History, is a defining aspect am sitting with my shoulders scrunched, to rear its head, but the effects are cu- of the true human condition. This mile- Imy feet up on my desk, and my rear mulative. You might feel fine, fine, fine stone may have also marked the begin- end tilted so that I am as close as one for a long time, and then you go to bend ning of slouching, the phrase “stand up can be in a chair to lying down. In a down and pick something up and your straight,” and backache. pasta police lineup, I’d be elbow maca- back goes into spasm.” The choice was More recently, as the coronavirus con- roni. “Did you nag me about posture clear: work on my posture or never bend tinues to keep us mostly indoors, work- when I was young, back in the sixties?” down to pick anything up again. (I’m ing in improvised offices where ergo- I asked my mother recently. “Evidently thinking about it.) Shani Soloff, the nomically unsound ironing boards, not,” she said. Remarkably, I am not founder of The Posture People, a com- coffee tables, and laps pinch-hit as desks, among the estimated eighty per cent of pany of physical therapists based in Stam- our sloppy ways of sitting could be tak- Americans who suffer from back trou- ford, Connecticut, was less dire. After ing a toll. Parked in front of a computer, bles. So far. Can I continue to get away examining my conformation, over Zoom, we tend to tuck under our tailbones, with my saggy posture forever? she said that, “while you like to fold in candy-cane our spines, scrunch up our “The answer is no, and here’s why,” on yourself,” I had other bad habits that shoulders, and crane our necks forward Robert DeStefano, a chiropractor who kept me from being hobbled; namely, like wilted sunflowers. According to many works with the New York Giants, told constant fidgeting and frequently visit- experts, for every inch that the head lists me. “It might take years for bad posture ing the refrigerator. (My theory is that off kilter, the force impinging on the neck and the back increases by ten Ironing boards, coffee tables, and laps pinch-hitting as desks could be taking a toll. pounds. A survey among seven hundred

30 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY ANNA HAIFISCH and seventy-eight software workers in being interviewed by Beyoncé and hold who was still traumatized by being lockdown last spring found that shoul- yourself accordingly; or pretend that punched in the back as a child by his al- der, elbow, and wrist pain had doubled. someone’s punching you in the stomach coholic mother, whenever she observed Bad posture has been blamed for indi- (maybe Beyoncé?). him slouching. Another volunteer was gestion, constipation, high blood pres- motivated by the memory of a seventy- sure, cracked teeth, infrequent orgasms, t’s time to buckle up into a posture five-year-old actress she’d once seen at negative thoughts, and difficulty per- Icorrector. You wouldn’t be the first. Saks—her cosmetically altered face made forming arithmetic calculations; some- The duchess Consuelo Vanderbilt (1877- her look youthful, but when she turned where, someone has probably implicated 1964) wrote in her memoir about the around a severe hunchback exposed the it in the Presidential-election results. “horrible instrument” she was ordered to Dorian Grayish truth. Before we work on improving our in- endure as a child to enforce a plumb The most common type of corrector ternal scaffolding, it would be useful to stance, describing it as “a steel rod which on the market is the upper-back brace define the ideal. If you are a soldier, G.I. ran down my spine and was strapped at for clavicle support. This looks like a Joe sets the standard, according to Ser- my waist and over my shoulders—an- backpack without the pack, or like an geant First Class Erik A. Rostamo, the other strap went around my forehead to emotional-support-animal harness, and U.S. Army’s Drill Sergeant of the Year. the rod.” Even more adorable is the neck tends to be made from a black stretchy What if you’re a civilian? When viewed swing. Invented in France in the eigh- synthetic material. It is worn over or under in profile, the average human spine, a teenth century, this tackle-and-pulley sys- one’s clothes, with adjustable straps that stack of twenty-four articulated vertebrae tem, fastened to the ceiling on one end exert a backward tug on the shoulders, and nine fused ones on the bottom, should and on the other to a headpiece worn by and after prolonged use, according to my be shaped like a seahorse, curving gen- the user, supposedly stretched the spine volunteers, makes the wearer’s armpits tly inward at the neck (cervical) and low- and not supposedly left the user dangling ache. Beginners are advised to wear the er-back (lumbar) regions and outward in with only her toes touching the ground. brace for five to fifteen minutes a day, the middle (thoracic) region. These three Today’s so-called posture correctors are and then incrementally progress to an curves help us maintain balance, facili- spa-like by comparison. The majority fall hour or two. Vi Weeks, a college sopho- tate flexibility, and serve as shock absorb- into two categories: restrictive braces, har- more, appreciated the three inches she ers. (Wouldn’t you rather be going down nesses, shirts, and bras that encourage the estimates she gained in height when her the stairwell as a Slinky than as a pret- alignment of your torso; or small elec- Selbite Posture Corrector ($9.98) was busy zel stick?) The curves are supported by tronic gizmos, the size of brownies, that doing its job, but, when the brace was off, muscles. An exaggerated curve—called ping or vibrate at the inkling of a slump. her spine reverted to its previous convex- kyphosis in the upper back and lordosis, Amazon sells dozens of varieties; pos- ity, despite the product’s claim to effect or swayback, in the lower back—can lead ture is an approximately $1.25-billion in- “long-term muscle memory.” David Kim, to discomfort and, in extreme cases, can dustry. Many of the physical therapists, a dermatologist, wore his ComfyBrace reduce mobility. Seen from the front, you chiropractors, and osteopaths I talked to ($19.97) on four consecutive workdays, should be more or less symmetrical. A said that these aids are fine to use in the for nine backbreaking hours a day. His balanced alignment of your spine, referred short term, helping you identify postures once admirable carriage had deteriorated to among the posturati as a “neutral spine,” you should be emulating. Others regarded after years of hunching over his patients. exerts the least amount of strain on mus- them as Rembrandt might a paint-by- Of his brace, Kim said, “It definitely made cles, tendons, and the skeleton, allowing numbers kit: gimmickry that gets in the me more cognizant of my posture. I feel us to function efficiently. way of learning technique and that might like my lower back was less tired and achy Toward this end, when sitting, you foster dependence. toward the end of the day.” Will Amer- should have your back touching the chair’s Tony Pletcher, a Seattle physical ther- inger, an art dealer in Palm Beach, found back, derrière scooched into the crook apist, is concerned that these quick fixes himself looking at his watch after only of the seat, shoulders relaxed, legs un- could lead to muscle atrophy. “When ten minutes of wearing his VOKKA cor- crossed, knees bent at a right angle, feet our bodies are provided constant exter- rector ($27.99), whose padded, shield- on the floor, and head erect (it helps if nal support, we often actually lose the shaped panel runs the length of the back the computer screen in front of you is at ability to perform these movements on and looks sturdy enough to joust in. “The eye level and an arm’s length away). When our own,” he said in an e-mail. Anil directions warn that your back and shoul- standing, you should have your feet shoul- Nandkumar, who works at the Ortho- der muscles ‘may feel stretched.’ They’re der-width apart and parallel, knees gen- pedic Physical Therapy Center, at Hos- not kidding,” he said. “A bit jarring on tly bent, arms hanging nonchalantly by pital for Special Surgery, mentioned that the kidneys, too.” Ameringer gave up after your side, stomach pulled slightly in, and eight out of every ten patients ask him a week. “It’s designed to pull your shoul- shoulders relaxed and pulled back. If this about the correctors, and said, “Long ders back while pushing a metal plate is too many body parts to keep tabs on, story short, I usually do not recommend against your lower back,” he said. “The perhaps one of the many pointers I found these correctors to patients, because they problem is that it does one or the other.” on the Internet will help: imagine there’s are ‘passive’ tools.” Is it possible that something could be a string attached to the top of your head, I chose fifteen devices and sent them good for you and also feel good? Accord- pulling you upward; walk as if you’re to people I know who want to improve ing to one tester, who is parked at her wearing a cape; fantasize that you are their posture. The group included a man desk in Los Angeles all day, such is the

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 31 case with Dr. Toso’s BackRX ($39). This and heels and don’t complain. They are hook-and-eye closures. The bra lessened remedial belt loops around your waist the kind of people who wink at you.” Lia her back pain, pulled her shoulders back, and knees, while you are seated, thereby Grimanis, the founder of Up with and compelled her to walk tall. She plans using the weight of your legs to exert a Women, an organization that helps re- to wear it on days that she does not ex- forward tug that supports your lower cently homeless women and families, re- ercise, in order to have something to feel back, undoing your slouch. “It’s restric- gards the ramrod-straight with awe. virtuous about. tive and weird but really comfortable, sort “They are like the children of gods,” she Must we be pushed and pulled and of like a girdle but just for your back,” said. “Doors open easily for them.” Or, squeezed into verticality? Isn’t there a she said. “I’ve used it while working and as another volunteer confessed, “I could more civilized way? Sort of. The Up- I definitely sit straighter, and my lower never have good posture, because peo- right Go c ($99.95) is an electronic “wear- back feels better.” It also helps to make ple might think I have a high opinion able” the size of a Tic Tac box that sticks you sit ergonomically in any chair—even of myself.” Among certain types—the to your back with reusable adhesive, or, in a canoe, the Web site brags, because rebellious, the avant-garde, hipsters, Oscar if attached to the necklace provided, is hasn’t the world been crying out too long Wilde—slouching is cooler than erecti- worn as a pendant. If the device detects for a way to paddle without lumbar strain? tude. (Certain actresses, too. “Don’t copy that you are orthopedically out of line, Until a philosophy grad student named those slouching celebs!” a head- it vibrates. It knows when you’ve been Luke tried the AlignMed compression line in the Daily Mail read in c011. “Bad bad or good because, at the outset, you shirt ($95)—a black zippered short-sleeved posture won’t just cause a bad back, but calibrate your alignment settings to an top that could pass for a wetsuit—only depression too!” The droopers listed, spot- app on your phone connected to the de- his mother’s nagging had kept him pos- ted slouching at the Golden Globes, in- vice by Bluetooth. The app keeps a tally turally respectable. Aspiring to the sil- cluded Michelle Williams, Anne Ha- of your vibrating vs. non-vibrating min- houette of a four-star general, he wore thaway, and Tilda Swinton.) utes, along with other stats you won’t the shirt on three occasions, a few hours care about unless you are writing a Ph.D. each time (“I can’t say it was comfort- hatever else you might think about dissertation on the topic of your spinal able”), and found that he was more up- Wbreasts, they are on gravity’s side, deviations. A casting-director acquain- standing, but not dramatically so. Actu- not yours. That’s where the Leonisa tance sampled an Upright for a couple ally, he realized that his original posture posture-corrector bra comes in ($45). of weeks. It made her feel like a failure. was better than he’d thought. He de- Every day for a week, from nine to five, “I want to go to sleep, but my goal is a cided he preferred his natural, relaxed my friend Jancee wore one. She described hundred and sixty more ‘upright min- physique to one that hinted at a lifetime the sleek, wireless, lightly padded gar- utes,’” she said. She was not sure that of maternal psychological abuse. ment as “a cross between a sports bra watching Netflix in bed counted. Her Posture is a body language that ev- and a compression sock.” Initially, it felt daily goal, determined by the app, was eryone understands. “People with good “comforting and warm, like a tight hug,” five hundred minutes. Although she is posture seem professional and confident,” she said, but by afternoon the hug be- now more conscious of how she posi- a friend who fears that her posture may came “creepy and uncomfortable,” and tions herself, she recognizes that the de- be amoeba-like told me. “They wear suits she looked forward to clawing open the vice is fallible. “When I empty the dish- washer, it buzzes like crazy,” she reported. How do the electronic gadgets com- pare with the glorified rubber bands that yank you upward? Two Brooklyn sisters, nine-year-old Rosie and six-year-old Bella, tried one of each: the Semloo in- telligent posture corrector ($1c.99) and the Aaiffey back brace ($14.99). The sis- ters differentiated the two types by call- ing them Buzzy and Not-Buzzy. “Not- Buzzy is very annoying,” Bella said. “It hurts your shoulders and it’s not tight, but it feels like it’s tight.” Rosie had a dif- ferent problem: “If you wear Not-Buzzy to school, it could look like you’re wear- ing a bra.” Also, once, when she was wear- ing Buzzy and leaned down to snuggle the cat, it buzzed, “so unless you want to snuggle by squatting somehow, it’s very hard.” Do the girls consider posture im- portant? Rosie: “I think it may be im- portant to your body, but I don’t really “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, your roots are showing.” know, because I don’t know a lot about bone stuff. Whether it’s important to That, she said, led to doctors linking poor your life, I think, depends on who your posture and poor health. “It gave rise to parents are and if they care.” Bella: “No.” a lot of aggressive and reductionist public- Unlike wearables, the Gaiam Classic health campaigns.” In the early nineteen- Balance Ball Chair ($70) wears you. Josie hundreds, hunching over was said to cause Abugov, twenty, spent an hour a day for “sinking organs,” and in the nineteen- two weeks perching on what is essen- twenties a poster created by the National PRIVATE ISLAND FOR SALE tially a desk chair with a small backrest Child Welfare Association showed a 15 acres, deep water dock. Ample fresh water supply, and a yoga ball substituting for a seat little boy standing tall in an attempt to submarine power cable.1800 sq. ft. post and beam house, guest cottage, workshop, tractor shed, cushion. “While using the defend himself against a and tractor. device itself, I do have bet- baseball-bat-wielding ogre Located on the Sasanoa River, Georgetown, Maine. ter posture,” she e-mailed. who was labelled—in black Near Robinhood Marine. “The contraption forces your letters—“TUBERCULOSIS.” $1.25m back straight and core to be “It is a topic you bring engaged—but I haven’t no- up only if you want to do CONTACT: [email protected] or 207-841-7257 ticed a marked improvement something about it—namely, in my default posture.” The improve yours or someone real benefit, she concluded, else’s,” the historian Sander is that the device makes you Gilman said, over Zoom. think about your posture. In “Stand Up Straight!: A Not everyone agrees that History of Posture,” Gilman sitting on a sphere is beneficial. And some looks at posture as a cultural construct, doubt whether sitting, or even slouching, a way to read an individual’s social status, is toxic. Kieran O’Sullivan, a physiother- and “a means for society to separate the apist at the University of Limerick, be- ‘primitive’ from the ‘advanced’, the ‘ugly’ THE NAUTILUS LOUNGE CHAIR lieves that people today are almost par- from the ‘beautiful’, and the ‘ill’ from the 2020 GOOD DESIGN® AWARD WINNER FREEPORT, PORTLAND AND SCARBOROUGH | MAINE anoid about posture. When I asked him ‘healthy’.” At Ellis Island, immigrants’ CHILTONS.COM about the widely touted claim that being spinal bumps and bows were thought to immobilized in one position does damage indicate moral weaknesses, and provided to tissues, he replied, “Yet a baby spends grounds for denying people entry into the nine months in the womb completely country. In many American colleges, from flexed/curled up and doesn’t seem to the nineteen-forties through the seven- Rise and have irreversible contractures when it ties, compulsory nude “posture photos” shine comes out.” Gavin Smith, an osteopath were taken of freshmen. Among the dis- 40-carat lemon in London, goes even further, suggest- quieting purposes: studying the connec- quartz set in 18-karat gold ing that slumping can increase spine tion between personality types and mor- with diamonds length and reduce stiffness in vertebral phological traits, aiming ultimately to and sapphires joints (by increasing the amount of fluid create a master race through matchmaking. between disks). Smith told me that, in It’s hard to be a biped. Yes, it may be the comments section of an article in easier to send a text standing on two legs which he was quoted, someone had writ- than on four, but the advantage comes Designed and made ten, “What’s next? ‘Experts say that with a lot of wear and tear on our skel- in Durham, NC jumping into a hungry tigers den might etons. I asked around for ideas about www.jewelsmith.com be good for your health?’” how to redesign the human body so that What is it about posture that evokes it might better accommodate our mod- such visceral feelings? Beth Linker, a ern needs. Rodney Brooks, a roboticist, VIRTUAL DISCOVERY MEETING APRIL 7TH history-of-science professor at the Univer- suggests that we implant two titanium sity of Pennsylvania, told me, “If I tell pegs into our backs, roughly shoulder LIFE, people the title of the book I’m working width, and use them to hang ourselves on a on”—“Slouch: Fearing the Disabled up on the wall, placing our desks and Body”—“they immediately sit up straight, computers in front of us. Kyle Jensen, a Scale as if I’m judging them.” She went on, senior lecturer at the Yale School of of You. “For a long time, posture was something Management, would move our eyes to that only queens and kings and the upper stomach level to avoid slouching toward class would talk about. It was seen as a the computer screen. The most radical matter of discipline and appearance. Then, redesign suggestion came from a ten- in the nineteenth century, Darwin and year-old named Najya, who said, “I A Life Plan Community other evolutionary scientists claimed that would take out the spine, so you’re lying human posture led to brain development.” on the floor.” 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 33 the world of television FIXER-UPPER In the streaming era, does HGTV need to be more than wallpaper? by ian parker

ne morning last June, a dozen Realtors,” which could offer opportu- executives at HGTV, the pop- nities to feature oddballs whose pitches O ular home-renovation television for shows had been rejected by HGTV network, which for twenty-six years has over the years: a Realtor who special- offered content that is cheering and con- ized in polyamorous families; a circus flict-free—or “safe, tied in a bow, like a performer; a Realtor-ventriloquist. warm hug,” as Jane Latman, the network’s “And the guy who lived with the president, recently put it—met on Zoom bear!” Robert Wimbish, a senior direc- to share transgressive thoughts. They tor of programming and development, were discussing unsafe content, or, at said. “That idea should never die.” least, material that might be less straight- forwardly comforting than the scene— o spend time with Ruch and his repeated on HGTV, in slight variations, Tcolleagues, in the course of the past a dozen times a day—in which home- year, was to see an undaunted response owners cover their mouths in shocked to two crises. One crisis, the pandemic, delight at a newly painted mudroom. shut down most television production; The meeting had been called by Loren at HGTV, this resulted, among other Ruch, a fifty-one-year-old senior exec- experiments, in a hurriedly commissioned utive, whom one could imagine hosting gardening show shot partly by Martha a peppy, good-humored daytime game Stewart—regal and spacey, talking to show. The meeting’s topic was code- her peacocks—and by members of her named Project Thunder. staff. The other, slower-moving crisis, “So, ‘Meth-House Makeover,’ ” Katie to which the Project Thunder meet- Ruttan-Daigle, a vice-president of pro- ing was one response, was the likely gramming and development, said. Her demise of cable, the medium for which colleagues laughed. “It is a very dark HGTV was engineered, and where it world,” she went on. “And rehabbing grew, over decades, to outperform al- a meth house is not easy.” most all its rivals. “That’s the tagline—‘Rehabbing a In Loren Ruch’s description, HGTV meth house is never easy,’” Ruch joked. has succeeded on cable television be- Ruttan-Daigle sketched out three cause it is “aspirational and attainable at possible approaches: a series that, each the same time.” Its shows focus on homes week, documented the experience of that often are worth more than the me- people who had unwittingly bought a dian sale price of a single-family house former meth lab; a series about a clean- in America—about three hundred and ing company specializing in meth labs; fifty thousand dollars—but are not “The a series about entrepreneurs who look World’s Most Extraordinary Homes,” for inexpensive former meth labs to to borrow the title of a series on Net- buy and renovate: meth-house flippers. flix. They look something like houses “The first one and the last one fit more belonging to people we know, except into our brand,” Ruttan-Daigle said. that, after renovation, they have very few “I love the idea of starting the show mirrors (because mirrors curse the life in hazmat suits,” Ruch said. of a camera operator), and, like a prop- The meth-lab concept, he said, de- erty owned by an Airbnb Superhost, served to be explored further, at another they combine blocky beige furniture with meeting. The executives then discussed one or two unmissable design gestures: a show called “Nightmare Neighbors an “accent” wall of color, or painted let- 911,” and a concept that they began re- ters spelling “B-O-N A-P-P-E-T-I-T.” ferring to as “The World’s Weirdest In 2015, HGTV became a top-five At the end of a typical HGTV renovation

34 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 show, there’s a new kitchen island, pendant lighting, a dozen lemons in a wire basket, and an open-plan domestic space.

ILLUSTRATION BY SEBA CESTARO THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 35 cable network, measured by its average decay are about outrunning death, they in which a young married couple in audience in the course of the day. That are, at a more immediate level, about Laurel, Mississippi, does home make­ year, it reported an annual revenue of sanding floors. overs—“yet here we are.” more than a billion dollars, from ad­ An hour of HGTV may cost about vertising and from licensing fees paid two hundred thousand dollars to make. oren Ruch, who is HGTV’s senior by companies carrying the channel. At meetings last year, executives at Lvice­president of development and HGTV was bought by Discovery, HGTV began using Discovery’s secret production, grew up in the San Fer­ Inc., in 2018, and since that time it has term for a planned streaming service, nando Valley, in Los Angeles. As a teen­ been ranked at No. 4. Last year, only Project Thunder, and the clamor in the ager, he liked to take the bus to CBS Fox News, MSNBC, and name seemed to point, wryly, Television City to join the audience for CNN had larger average to a problem: if an HGTV shows like the “Match Game–Holly­ audiences, and HGTV out­ show is spectacular enough wood Squares Hour.” “I dreamed of ranked all its sibling Dis­ to lure on­demand subscrib­ the day I would be able to attend ‘The covery channels, including ers, is it still an HGTV show? Price Is Right,’ ” he told me. “But they TLC, the Food Network, HGTV is viewing for a hotel had a minimum age of eighteen.” He and Animal Planet. room reached late at night, later worked in L.A., as a producer on But HGTV is a splen­ or—as I noticed on a visit one morning­ news programs, and on after­ did, crenellated house in morning a couple of years noon talk shows and game shows. In a neighborhood built on ago—for the windowless 2005, he joined Scripps, at the time quicksand and termite tun­ break room used by N.Y.P.D. HGTV’s parent company. He lives with nels. American cable­TV detectives in the police sta­ his husband in a Hell’s Kitchen condo subscriptions peaked twenty years ago. tion beneath Union Square. HGTV is that he describes as “clean modern,” but The broader category of linear pay tele­ television of recuperation, or respite. Hil­ last spring, after a death in the family, vision—cable and satellite combined— lary Clinton has said that the network he spent an extended period in South­ peaked in 2009, when subscriptions were was part of a personal regimen under­ ern California, and appeared in Zoom maintained by eighty­eight per cent of taken after her defeat in the 2016 Pres­ meetings from a series of sometimes gar­ American households. Today, that num­ idential election, noting, “I believe this ish rented and borrowed apartments. ber has fallen below sixty­five per cent, is what some call ‘self­care.’” Not long “Every place has a picture of Marilyn and more than three­quarters of Amer­ ago, Mark Duplass, the actor and direc­ Monroe,” he said. “Why? Why is that ican households have signed up for at tor, wrote, “Would that the afterlife is mandatory in Palm Springs?” least one streaming service. Scott Fee­ just a dark, quiet room with all the best When we first spoke, Ruch pointed ley, the president of High Noon Enter­ HGTV shows playing on a loop.” out that, unlike much reality television, tainment, a Colorado­based television Michael Lombardo, who at HBO HGTV shows tell stories about people production company that, last year, was green­lit “Game of Thrones” and “Veep,” having a happy experience that is an making nine HGTV shows, recently told me, “If I’m sitting there at the end actual milestone in life—and not just said, “It’s hard for me to imagine that, of the day, I’m likely to go to HGTV. the milestone of being seen on TV by in five years, anybody’s going to be pay­ It’s relaxing, it’s slightly affirming.” He your friends. “I love doing this, because ing for cable.” Michael Lombardo, the went on, “I watch ‘House Hunters,’ ninety­ five per cent of the people who former head of programming at HBO, continually. I love ‘Love It or List It.’ ” are participating are celebrating one of who now oversees television at Enter­ (On the former show, which has been the best days of their life,” he said. “They tainment One, described the cable busi­ airing for more than two decades, peo­ find a new house! Or they’re fixing up ness as “running on fumes.” ple visit three houses on the market an existing house. They’re selling a A television network that has pros­ and then buy one; on the latter, people house, moving on. You’re proud to have pered on cable can hope to maintain agree to pay for a renovation of their your name in the credits.” its audience on a streaming service— own house, and when it’s done they Many HGTV shows, like “House its own or someone else’s. But the lat­ decide whether to stay or to move into Hunters,” involve people looking for a est streaming­video subscriptions have a new place that the show has found.) place to buy. These shows often tell a been sold on the promise of content Lombardo has detected—in himself story that’s untrue—that is, the buyers that is remarkable. Disney+ launched and in others—a new resistance to am­ may have already purchased the house, in 2019, with ads touting blockbuster bitious television shows, of the kind and may even have moved into it, then franchises: “The Simpsons,” the “Toy that he used to buy. “I become annoyed moved out for filming. (To use the lan­ Story” movies, the Marvel universe. The when they command your attention,” guage with which HGTV forgives it­ service has since acquired more than a he said, and laughed. “Is this just all a self, such programs are “back­produced.”) hundred million subscribers, and it has response to Trump’s four years—you An increasing number of the network’s spent upward of ten million dollars on know, P.T.S.D.? Or is this because no­ shows in recent years have centered on each episode of “The Mandalorian,” its body watches without a phone in their contests or celebrities. But the rest is “Star Wars” spinoff. HGTV is low­ hand?” A sigh. “The television revolu­ renovation. To describe a typical episode budget and unassuming. If, at some tion was not supposed to end with me of one of these shows comes close to de­ level, the network’s narratives of reversed and you talking about ‘Home Town’ ”— scribing every episode of every show.

36 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 Near the start, people are seen walking Being adept at this work, the Fords ter renovation shows have, as their great through a kitchen judged to be dated often made their way through a scene progenitor, “Fixer Upper,” which starred and cramped. When the episode ends, without hearing a word from their di- Chip and Joanna Gaines, and ran on there’s a new kitchen island, pendant rector. At times, Anderson called out HGTV for five seasons, until 2018. On lighting, a dozen lemons in a wire bas- prompts: “Use your descriptive words, such shows, the renovation of all or part ket, and an open-plan space that was please.” When she wanted the Fords to of a house, done in the course of a few once three rooms and has now become supply some back-and-forth to wrap up months, is overseen by two easygoing one. At some point between these scenes, a scene, she said, “Button me up.” During people with some design and construc- an amiably self-deprecating man in pro- the destruction of the kitchen, she spoke tion experience, and whose fondness for tective glasses will have taken a sledge- to David Sarasti, a cameraman who had each other finds expression in low-stakes hammer to a plaster wall. previously worked on “House Hunters banter and eye rolls. (Joanna Gaines: On an afternoon last August in the International,” in which nothing moves “You walk around with a black tooth Pittsburgh suburb of Carnegie, in a very quickly. “When Steve throws some- and you still think you’re the hottest guy mid-nineteenth-century house on seven thing, get a low-angle shot,” Anderson in America. That’s why I love you.”) acres of land, Mary Beth Anderson was told him. “So when it comes through, The dominant filming style is “follow- directing an episode of “Home Again it’s going toward the lens.” Pause. “But doc”: while renovating, the designers— with the Fords,” an HGTV show hosted not killing you.” the “talent,” in HGTV nomenclature— by Leanne and Steve Ford. The Fords The Fords first appeared on HGTV tend to talk to each other rather than are siblings who grew up in Pittsburgh. three years ago, in “Restored by the to the viewer. Story lines are buttressed Leanne, an interior designer with a re- Fords.” That show was in the category with later interviews given directly to a semblance to Diane Keaton, once worked of widely appealing, low-concept ma- camera, and with voice-overs. as a fashion stylist in New York and L.A. terial that HGTV executives call “bread To date, HGTV’s talent pairings Her brother became a contractor and and butter” content. (This language ex- have included a mother and daughter; carpenter in Pittsburgh; tall and long- tends, in meetings, to “ultimate bread a gay couple; old pals; and, in the haired, he has the smiling, slightly foggy and butter” and “bread-and-butter-ad- case of Christina Haack and Tarek El air of someone delighted to have found jacent.”) Contemporary bread-and-but- Moussa, a married couple who, after the weed that he thought was lost. Mid-afternoon, he was swinging a ham- mer at kitchen cabinets and orange For- mica countertops; he’d then toss the de- bris across the room. In the narrative of the show, the scene would fall on either side of the first ad break. The Fords had reached the moment that HGTV peo- ple refer to as Demo Day. Anderson had told me earlier, “Steve knows we need crash-bang-boom. And we’ll get crash- bang-boom.” She was directing from the next room, standing in front of two moni- tors. When things looked right, she stroked a screen with three fingers. The show’s script was unwritten, but it ex- isted in six-act detail in her head. That afternoon—and, earlier that day, in a smaller house on the other side of Pitts- burgh—she kept cameras running for takes of several minutes. The Fords qui- etly needled each other—Leanne in the role of dream-big adventurer, Steve in the role of pragmatist, or slacker. (Le- anne said to Steve, “Usually, your bot- tom line is ‘Less work.’”) They pulled up carpeting and started reading old copies of the Pittsburgh Press that had been used as padding underneath. “We should just découpage this onto the floor!” Leanne told Steve, half seriously. “I think if you had to ask, ‘Can I pull off this hat?,’ The floors were later painted white. you know the answer.” ied the evolution of unscripted televi- sion, told me, “Instagram sort of pre- professionalizes people, so they can be plucked out of that, ready-made.” Ben Napier, who co-hosts “Home Town” with his wife, Erin, said, “For a lot of design- ers, and a lot of contractors, this is the end goal—they want to be on HGTV.” This wasn’t true of the Napiers. “It’s a big accident,” Erin said. A few years ago, Ben was working as a youth pastor and doing carpentry on the side; Erin, a graphic designer, had started a statio- nery business. After they gave an inter- view to Southern Weddings magazine, an HGTV producer e-mailed them. “We were taken aback,” Ben recalled. “‘Do you want to be on TV?’ ‘Sure, let’s try.’ ” This past January, the Napiers were on the cover of People. Renovation shows also need home- owners. A notice published on High “You are a four-year-old? In that case, a three-year-old Noon’s Web site last year indicated how could have painted this.” this typically works. Without naming a show, the company announced that it was looking for homeowners close to •• San Antonio who would be “comfort- able allowing an experienced designer the sixth season of their show, “Flip or reality television, not long after the fi- to renovate and rearrange their space Flop,” became a divorced couple. (The nancial crash of 2008, they were part- without overseeing it,” and who have ninth season of “Flip or Flop” began ners in a real-estate company flipping “an existing renovation budget of at least airing last fall.) Drew and Jonathan foreclosed properties in Vancouver and $75k and are willing to vacate during Scott, the Property Brothers, whose Las Vegas. A typical new HGTV host renovation.” HGTV shows use the real various shows for HGTV are among is likely to have less real-estate experi- money of homeowners to cover the cost the channel’s biggest hits, are lean ence than the Scotts, and less show-busi- of renovations, but producers may qui- Canadian twins in their early forties. ness polish. Loren Ruch referred to “a etly incorporate discounted goods and Mary Beth Anderson, who has worked vaudeville quality” in the twins, but services, in a way that jumbles our sense with the Scotts, affectionately referred added that “it feels authentic, because of what seventy-five thousand dollars to them as the Bros. Their onscreen re- their chemistry is so authentic.” HGTV’s can buy. Steve Ford acknowledged that semblance to assured eleven-year-olds preference, now, in its bread-and-but- participants “are getting more for their doing a cute Sunday-afternoon com- ter casting is for an agreeableness that buck than they should,” and said that an edy skit for indulgent parents has re- is perhaps less knowing, and more neigh- HGTV viewer could be forgiven for sulted in a licensing deal with Lowe’s, borly, than that of the Scotts. In a meet- thinking, “Oh, I can do this! I can make a quarterly magazine called Reveal, and ing last year, Matt Trierweiler, an HGTV this crazy thing happen at my house that a video game in which a player adds executive, questioned whether a pair of should be in a magazine. And I can do furnishings and floor coverings to a would-be hosts, seen in a video pitch, it for X dollars!” bare room. (A speech bubble over a car- had qualities that made one want “to On renovation shows, hosts and toon Scott: “This is a great choice. It’s go get a drink with them.” owners usually walk through the prop- modern and cozy at the same time.”) But finding people with untutored erty together, then discuss a redesign. The network premières twenty to charisma is hard—in part because to- The hosts’ counsel is real, to a point, thirty new series each year. High Noon, day’s potential hosts know that HGTV but the contributions of an unseen de- the production company, has a staff is searching for them. Their social- sign team are rarely acknowledged. member whose sole job is to identify media postings of interior-design ac- Viewers then see the hosts take the lead new talent, on social media and else- tivity may be as much a lure for an in the renovation, alongside voiceless where. The Scott brothers began flip- agent or a producer as a reflection of a subcontractors wearing T-shirts whose ping real estate when they were in their stand-alone career. Maureen Ryan, the logos have been blurred out. The im- late teens, and then tried to start careers deputy director of the Center for 21st plication that the hosts are involved in in film acting (Drew) and in stage magic Century Studies at the University of day-to-day management is less authen- ( Jonathan). When they first broke into Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who has stud- tic. And a process that we know is usu-

38 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 ally slow and dispiriting becomes fast at first showed unadorned how-to shows with the idea of tranquillizing Amer- and delightful. A compact, time-lapse that, as Lowe remembered them, could ica. In 2019, Lindsey Weidhorn, a for- narrative includes setbacks that take be “pretty lame.” A host—often “some- mer HGTV executive who oversaw us into an ad break—asbestos, a burst one with a teaching background,” Lowe “Fixer Upper,” and who currently runs pipe—but not failure. Things work out. said—would talk to the camera about her own production company, approv- Then the space is staged—furnished scrapbooking, quilting, or oriental rugs. ingly told Country Living that the net- using almost nothing that belongs to Much of this programming was shot, work was “like Xanax.” the homeowners. Borrowed vases and cheaply, in the network’s own studio, in Kathleen Finch, now a senior Dis- end tables will be put back on a truck Knoxville, Tennessee. The host of “The covery executive, joined Scripps in 1999. after the cameras leave. Since the crash Carol Duvall Show” asked her audience The guidance at the time to HGTV of 2008, HGTV has retreated a little such questions as: “Ladies, we’ve been producers, she said, was “Get the talent from dramas of flipping, which climax stencilling on everything under the out of the way—viewers just want to in a renovated house that’s ready to be sun—did you ever think of stencilling see the couch.” She went on, “We ac- shown to new buyers, at a price that on your shoes?” tually had shows that were nothing but brings a profit. (In 2009,Time maga- Freddy James, an early HGTV em- before and after. Here’s a living room zine put a Scripps executive on a list ti- ployee, and now a senior vice-president before—slow pan—and here’s the liv- tled “25 People to Blame for the Finan- at Discovery, recalled, “We would shoot ing room after. That was literally a show.” cial Crisis”; it’s fair to note that real-es- four episodes in a day. We would order (It was called “The Big Reveal.”) Finch tate shows on other networks were more sixty-five episodes at a time. Nobody worked on various Scripps channels, in- overheated, and more blithe about fi- orders sixty-five episodes of any show cluding the Food Network, before be- nancial risk.) But even when an HGTV now.” He went on, “As we started grow- coming president of HGTV, in 2011. show centers on renovations done for a ing, we realized how much more our She brought some expertise in creating home’s current occupant, the “reveal” audience was engaged when we got into stars. At the time, there was no HGTV moment still has something of a Real- real homes. Those studio shows felt very equivalent of Emeril Lagasse or Bobby tor-client dynamic. The camera surveys antiseptic.” But, for years, there were no Flay—partly because the restaurant in- the new space with a steady, desirous large-scale home renovations: the net- dustry is more likely than the interior- gaze: these shots are known as “beau- work was squeamish about debris and design industry to elevate people with ties.” The producers then discover if they dirt. James added, “When we would the kind of glad-handing skills useful were successful in casting owners ready show a bathroom, we had a rule about for reality television. As Ruch recalled to show a little emotion. “You never not showing the toilet. We acted like it, “Kathleen said, ‘That’s going to be know if you’re going to get yellers,” Loren those things didn’t exist.” the secret to the next phase of who we Ruch told me. When reactions are Lowe was proud to remember that are.’” In 2011, the network began show- muted, “the talent has to pick up the there was no product placement. That ing “Property Brothers,” which had just slack,” Jane Latman said, laughing. A rule was later relaxed. A contemporary started a run on Canadian television. final scene may show guests milling HGTV program may contain a shot, The Scotts were looser and flirtier than around a kitchen island with booze, as for example, of a Wayfair truck full of those hosts who’d come before, and, if to dispel the worry that to redesign a Finch explained, they “opened up the house around the idea of “entertain- network to a whole different vibe—they ing”—a notion that HGTV participants were funny, they were kind of smart- seem encouraged to express—is to build ass.” The show’s arc—an unwelcoming a delusion out of drywall. As Rebecca suburban space; some sprucing up; a re- Solnit wrote, in a 2014 essay collection, veal—wasn’t innovative, and yet “they “The house is the stage set for the drama really turned HGTV into a different we hope our lives will be.” kind of network,” she said. “Suddenly, men started watching it. Before that, we n 1993, Ken Lowe, a junior executive only cared about women.” Iat Scripps, which is based in Cincin- furnishings pulling up outside a house. HGTV’s audience is still seventy- nati, proposed to his board the idea of The scene is filmed twice, once without per-cent female, but, according to Scott a cable channel devoted to homes and the Wayfair logo, in case the sponsor- Feeley, at High Noon, there’s evidence gardens, aimed at a primarily female ship ends. that scenes of demolition help “keep the audience. Such a network, he empha- Lowe, describing early viewer reac- men around.” Ruch, agreeing, said that sized, would offer an alternative to ex- tions, said, “The word that kept com- the draw for men seems to be “dirt and ploitative talk shows of the “Jerry ing back, right after we launched, was, grime,” and also some talk of “financial Springer” variety, which had prolifer- ‘I’m “addicted” to this network. I watch information.” The Scotts didn’t discover ated on daytime television during the it day and night.’ Or ‘I’ll turn it on and the entertainment value of demolition— past decade. Lowe told me that he pro- just leave it on, like a night-light.’ ” As for example, on a 2008 episode of “Love posed a channel with “no profanity, no an institution, HGTV seems unusually It or List It,” someone sawed a pool violence, no sexual innuendo.” ready to discuss its achievement with- table in half—but they made it pivotal. HGTV, launched the following year, out hyperbole, and it’s apparently at ease And, as Drew Scott joked to me, “we

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 39 just made it look good.” A decade after has competed on “Dancing with the ever seen what I do?’” If a mainstream the arrival of “Big Brother” and “Survi- Stars.” Ruch said, “I think that they HGTV show may leave a home resem- vor,” when the slipperiness of reality-TV helped me realize that we could be big- bling a new Marriott hotel suite that is storytelling had become widely under- ger than we thought.” keen not to seem frumpy, Ford’s de- stood, there was something reassuringly signs are more open to material that’s unenhanced about a big hammer mak- n Pittsburgh, the Fords and their uneven and secondhand. Once, as a ing a big hole, and creating an opportu- Icrew ate sandwiches on a deck fac- guest judge on “Brother vs. Brother,” in nity for what HGTV directors call a ing a chicken coop. Although the show which Drew and Jonathan Scott com- “Here’s Johnny!” shot. would be renovating only one part of petitively renovate two houses, Ford On “Property Brothers,” demolition the house, the homeowners had been quietly asked, “Is it bad that I love the was almost inevitable, given that the encouraged to leave for the day. “It’s not ‘before’ pictures?” To see this on HGTV Scotts were committed to what they fun for them,” Anderson said. And, al- was like watching someone casually called, in the language of real-estate though the family’s three children were playing with the detonator on a Dooms- agents, “open-concept” designs. Open- delightful, they were not silent. During day device. plan ground-floor spaces have long the break, Leanne Ford asked Ander- Victoria Chiaro, the HGTV execu- suited American suburban developers. son, “Can I explain the book thing?” tive who works most directly with the Witold Rybczynski, the author of She wanted me to know that, when she Fords, recently recalled the shoot for “Home: A Short History of an Idea,” had placed books on shelves so that the “Restored by the Fords” pilot. The a classic 1986 study of domestic archi- their spines faced the wall, this wasn’t director was a showrunner from High tecture, recently described the effect of an affectation but, rather, the result of Noon whom Chiaro described as “re- such spaces on buyers: “It looks like a HGTV’s anxiety about showing copy- ally good at getting homeowners to cry sort of modest house, and you open the righted imagery. from happiness.” When there were in- door and you see all the way to the back In 2010, Leanne Ford and her then deed tears during a filmed interview, of the house. That’s always a kind of kick.” husband bought a former schoolhouse the director “turned around and high- It also suits television. A wide, well-lit near Pittsburgh. She wrote a blog about fived me—it was just such a magical setting is as valuable to sitcoms and to renovating it, which led to a photo shoot moment.” Chiaro, hearing herself, “The Sopranos” as it is to the tearful in Country Living and an approach from laughed: “First of all, we’re evil for discovery of a newly tiled backsplash. a High Noon producer. When, in 2015, high-fiving when somebody’s crying. If this arrangement does not especially HGTV commissioned a short test video But it was just—from Day One, the suit a family that hopes to contain its of the Ford siblings—a “sizzle”—Le- show felt special.” emission of sounds and smells, that’s anne’s interior-design experience still The first season of “Restored by the easy to overlook. As Maureen Ryan, of extended to only three or four projects. Fords,” shot around Pittsburgh, was the University of Wisconsin-Milwau- Her personal style at that time (big popular enough that HGTV execu- kee, put it, “We want to imagine our- round sunglasses, bleached hair) and tives ordered more. But the second sea- selves at the kitchen island baking muf- her taste in home furnishings—white son didn’t do as well as they’d hoped. fins while benevolently watching our walls and white tiles; bits and pieces Jane Latman, HGTV’s president, said, children in the other room—like, not from thrift stores—were deemed un- “Leanne’s designs were a little too much fighting.” On “Property Brothers,” even the same from episode to episode.” At moderately sized houses were revamped an earlier time in HGTV’s history, the to supply the “flow” that North Amer- program might have been left alone, ican buyers of large new suburban homes as a niche showcase for almost-bohe- had come to expect. According to Loren mianism. But, in a world of cord-cut- Ruch, ninety per cent of HGTV ren- ting, it was vulnerable. As Chiaro said, ovations involve open floor plans. “We are trying to become destination Ruch recalled meeting the Scotts viewing.” For people producing shows for the first time, over dinner in New like “Restored by the Fords,” the chal- York: “They were, like, ‘One day, we’re lenge had become to make it “special going to host “Saturday Night Live”! suited to basic cable. “They sent an and different and intriguing” while still And we’re going to win an Emmy for e-mail that said, ‘You’re too cool,’” Ford shaping it as recognizable “comfort our work on HGTV!’” Ruch, return- told me, adding, “I’m not that cool.” By television.” Chiaro said, “It’s a very del- ing home that night, told his husband, the time the conversation resumed, a icate balance. People come to us know- “These guys are crazy. Who says that, little later, Ford had done more designs, ing what to expect—it’s always rain- the first time you meet them?” (In their and interest in claw-foot tubs had ad- bows! It’s really reliable.” memoir, the Scotts say that their am- vanced further into the suburbs. Nev- bition was always to build a brand.) ertheless, Ford recalled that, when film- hree years ago, Discovery, Inc., Ruch went on, “Then I jumped on that ing began, she had to resist one form Tbought Scripps Networks Inter- bandwagon.” The Scotts have not of editorial nudging: “They kind of said, active, for $14.6 billion. (Advance Pub- hosted “Saturday Night Live,” but they ‘Can you do pops of color? Because that’s lications, the owner of Condé Nast, have been parodied on it. Drew Scott what people like.’ You think, ‘Have you which publishes The New Yorker, has

40 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 health. Ruch described “an incredible impact on ‘Property Brothers,’ and on DIRT AND LIGHT other shows on the network that peo- ple may have forgotten about, or just Last night it startled me again—I dreamed hadn’t watched for a while. It brought of the corn maze through which we walked, people back in.” “A Very Brady Reno- almost a decade ago, in the presence vation” was nominated for a Daytime of our other lovers. It was all burned down. Emmy. HGTV still owns the house. Purple corn glowed in the fields enveloping In a meeting last year, I heard a refer- the ruined maze, the woodlands washed ence to “A Very Brady Sleepover.” by October sun. Instead of you, I found in the salt-white music As Freddy James put it, HGTV had of that familiar landscape an old piano, hollowed to evolve from “We’re there when you by the draft of time, and the handle of a porcelain cup need us” to “I’ve got to have you.” Scott in scorched soil. Relics of an imagined, Feeley, at High Noon, said, of his com- civil life. Today, in the lemony light by your grave, pany’s relationship with HGTV, “It I recited Merrill: Why did I flinch? I loved you, then touched used to be that we could just send them the damp and swelling mud, blue hyacinths talent and say, ‘Hey, we love these peo- your mother planted there— ple, let’s do a show!’ And you could al- ants were swarming the unfinished plot of earth most get a green light on that. Now like the black text of an infinite alphabet. I couldn’t you’ve got to go in with more of a read it. There was no epiphany, just dirt, the vast curtain splashy, unique concept built around between this realm and the other. You never speak to me, the talent.” I thought, not even in dreams. In 2019, Victoria Chiaro came up For hours, I sat there, mocked by the bees— with an idea for a third season of “Re- silly girl, their golden faces laughed, she still wants stored by the Fords” that would extend and wants. A warm gust shook the trees, beyond the fact that the hosts are sib- and a pigeon settled into the dusk lings who find it hard not to smile when of a wet pine, and then another. the other is talking. Episodes would be longer, and would tell a lavishly emo- —Aria Aber tional story about people who were re- turning to the Pittsburgh area after liv- ing elsewhere—perhaps to a property a minority stake in Discovery.) “I loved hours,” Ruch said. HGTV paid $3.5 with family history. In the case of the working for Scripps,” Ruch said. “But million, outbidding the former ’NSync Carnegie episode, Vicki and Dave Saw- it wasn’t a super risk-taking company.” singer Lance Bass. yer, a retired couple, were moving back There were now opportunities to make The show’s star was its outsized con- into a house where they’d lived earlier what Ruch called a “shiny-penny cept, and participants tried to look com- in life, and which was now occupied by show”: the kind of expensive produc- fortable in that concept’s shadow. Le- their daughter and her family. In the tion that, with heavy promotion, might anne Ford had a role that included past, HGTV had shied away from shows lure new viewers. sitting alongside Christopher Knight, involving childhood homes: an inher- Two years ago, HGTV executives the actor who played Peter Brady, as itance story tends to start with death. held an urgent meeting to discuss the they unpacked “Brady”-era blenders And the network has often preferred fact that a Los Angeles house used in bought on eBay. Ruch recalled that to keep homeowners out of view in the exterior shots of “The Brady Bunch” when Kathleen Finch saw an early edit scenes between the walk-through and had come onto the market. Ruch and of the first episode “she said, ‘We’ve a the reveal. The new show would ask his colleagues quickly settled on a sce- missed opportunity here. I’d rather the viewers to invest not only in the Fords nario that, as Freddy James, the Dis- show be ninety minutes instead of sixty but in the lives, and the old photographs, covery vice-president, described it, minutes—but we need to explain to of returnees. The show was given a new would “make no sense to a normal per- people how this all came together.’ ” title, “Home Again with the Fords.” An son.” The Scott twins, leading a cast of And so Ruch flew to L.A., to be in- easy half hour of prettification—crash- other network stars, would remake the terviewed on what would be, in its first bang-boom, a new countertop—would house’s interior to resemble the sitcom’s ten minutes, a TV show about making become an earnest hour-long journey: studio sets, and they would do this a TV show about a TV show. “A Very voyage and return. “Tie it to Vicki!” alongside the surviving “Brady” cast Brady Renovation” secured HGTV’s Anderson instructed the Fords during members, who, in reveals each week, biggest audience in two years—al- the shoot in August, as they discussed over four weeks, would also play the though, given the show’s costs, and its opening up a space next to the demol- roles of astonished clients. “We came limited future life as a repeat, its suc- ished kitchen, and turning it into an art up with the idea, and basically had an cess had to be measured more as a per- studio. “Will Vicki like it?” offer on the house within twenty-four ceived boost to the brand’s over-all At the end of that afternoon, the

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 41 Fords stood under a tree in the garden, “Keeps us in business, right?” she said. an alienating drama of privilege? The to record observations that would be “Because now everyone’ll be putting answer: each week, a celebrity nomi- dropped into footage of the day’s action. up walls.” nates someone he or she knows, who Anderson reminded her talent of a fur- The Scotts live in L.A. Drew Scott, isn’t famous, for a renovation. The nom- ther deviation from old bread-and-but- who is married and has no children, de- inee moves out; the Scotts discuss the ter practice: “We’re not saying ‘Demo fended the default “Brothers” renova- space with the celebrity; the celebrity Day’ anymore.” tion, saying, “I think it really depends swings a hammer; the nominee, whose They had spent the afternoon de- on your family dynamic.” He added, “I design preferences are apparently never molishing. Sheepishly, Leanne Ford love that open flow, because we love to sought, moves back home. The first ep- asked, “Am I allowed to say ‘demo’”— entertain and have family and friends isode, featuring Brad Pitt, reached the pause—“ ‘lition’?” over.” Jonathan Scott—who had recently largest HGTV audience since “A Very begun sharing a house with the actress Brady Renovation.” spoke to the Scott brothers last Zooey Deschanel, who has two chil- Jonathan Scott, looking back on a I spring, at a time when many people dren—allowed that some people might decade of HGTV work, said, “We’ve now were having their first painful experi- now prefer separate, contained spaces. hosted four hundred hours of original ences working and schooling from He then took care to add that Scott Liv- programming. Four hundred episodes. home. Lara Dodds, a Milton scholar ing, the furnishing and décor line that We’ve helped four hundred families. at Mississippi State University, had just the brothers own, was looking to expand That means we’ve posted more content tweeted, “I want an HGTV show called into pandemic-appropriate items. He in our genre than anyone in history.” ‘How Do You Like Your Open Con- gave the example of nesting tables. Drew said, “I was actually looking cept Now?’” Erin Napier, whose show The Scotts take pride in having up stats on the only show that comes is relatively light on demolition, and helped HGTV transcend its origins as, close to ours. That’s Bob Vila. Remem- tends to feature smaller, older houses in Jonathan’s words, “that sock-darning ber ‘This Old House’? He’s the closest, than the HGTV average, told me, “I’m and napkin-knitting channel.” When at—what was it?” an introvert—I like to hide in a nook. we spoke, they had just launched “Ce- “Two hundred and eighty half-hour I think America needs to talk about lebrity IOU,” a show that seemed to episodes,” Jonathan said. this open-concept thing. Y’all liked it exist primarily as an answer to a devel- before you really had to live in it.” Jane opment-meeting question: How can “ his Old House,” in which houses Latman, HGTV’s president, was san- HGTV offer a renovation to a movie Tare renovated over multiple weekly guine about a possible societal shift. star without that interaction becoming episodes, was created in 1979 by Russell Morash, then a producer and a director for Boston public television. In the pre- vious decade—at a time, Morash said recently, when “there were no such things as leeks”—he conceived of “The French Chef,” with Julia Child. Now retired, and speaking from his nineteenth-century farmhouse in Lexington, Massachusetts, Morash recalled that he once accompa- nied Child to an appearance on a live morning show in New York. He sat in the control room while she did a cook- ing demonstration. Morash said, “You could see the restlessness on the part of the professionals—guys were rolling their eyes and saying, ‘Oh, my God!’” Morash has detected the same im- patience in most of the home-improve- ment television that followed “This Old House.” “They can’t wait for anything to boil,” he said. “What you get is a skim- ming effect, taking the cream off the top—the laughs, the cries, the sobs, the dramatic moments.” (“Probably sounds a little snobby,” he noted.) The differ- ence between “This Old House” and HGTV, he proposed, was the difference “I can’t wait to forget everything I learned between using a crowbar and a sledge- about myself during quarantine.” hammer. He went on, in imitation of an HGTV executive, “Next we’re going to to be a general reluctance to rule out a walking into somebody’s house and try it nude. You know, ‘This Old Nude birdhouse competition. The perfect for- turning it upside down,” Lil Jon said. House.’ ” When I mentioned to Morash mat for combining renovation and dat- “Why don’t we just take this whole HGTV’s plans for a show involving ing proved elusive. Pitches that sur- wall out, take a ceiling out, and go up, competitive topiary, he laughed: “Jeez vived a first discussion advanced to a like, twenty feet?” He didn’t remove Louise. I can see it now—great yews sizzle reel, or to a longer “proof of con- his sunglasses, and described search- will be reduced to branches.” cept” tape, or to a “one-act.” Some ideas, ing for furnishings on Etsy. When it Brian Balthazar, a former HGTV like those raised in the Project Thun- was over, Chiaro said to her colleagues, executive who now has his own pro- der meeting, were under consideration “I know—it’s a lot. But people are going duction company, recently said that, if only for a streaming app, to tune in, because every- television cameras add ten pounds to and not for linear TV. One one’s going to be, like, someone’s perceived body weight, “the day, after watching a short ‘What the hell is Lil Jon opposite is the case with holiday décor— tape showing a young cou- doing on HGTV? And the cameras take ten pounds away.” You ple being cute, in the “Fixer please give me more.’ ” The cannot have too much. In the middle Upper” mold, Ruch told his show’s working title was of August, in midtown, a television stu- colleagues, “Like, they’re “Torn Down for What.” dio dressed as Santa’s workshop was skilled. They’re legit. You Toward the end of last amply filled with Christmas ornamen- buy their legitimacy. You year, Project Thunder tation, including giant models of candy can tell they’re good fam- went public: Discovery an- canes. A British-based production com- ily people. But there’s just nounced that it would pany was filming the finale of “Biggest something that’s, like, a lit- launch a streaming app, Little Christmas Showdown.” Three tle flat.” He went on, “Two years ago, Discovery+, in 2021. When I spoke to pairs of miniaturists—or doll-house we would have gone straight to pilot.” a senior Discovery executive, he pro- makers—had advanced from an earlier In April, the executives liked a siz- posed that this was the product for round, and, working against the clock, zle reel featuring a real-estate agent which Discovery had bought Scripps. in a format similar to “The Great Brit- who, not long before, had appeared in “We needed more content,” he told ish Baking Show,” had just finished a rejected pitch described as “Tipsy me. “For the past four or five years, making tiny furnishings for a “Christ- House Hunting.” (One of Ruch’s col- we’ve been slowly banking content mas dream-vacation cabin.” Artificial leagues, describing the agent’s appeal, for this moment.” The new service, snow fell behind a false window. said, “She is a little unexpected and a he said, would start off with fifty-five Loren Ruch was visiting the set, along little unorthodox—and maybe some- thousand hours of programming, com- with Sarah Thompson, the HGTV ex- times she is getting them drunk.”) And pared to only ten thousand hours on ecutive steering the production. The the team was eager to move ahead with Disney+, and it would undercut com- show had reached its climax. Its host, a show starring Patric Richardson, a petitors on price. the Broadway actor and singer James courtly Minnesota-based expert on Even as HGTV had been maneu- Monroe Iglehart, repeated lines that “conservation-level” laundering. As vering into emotion and drama, and were being spoken into an earpiece: Ruch summarized it, the show would trying to expand the network’s reach, “One lucky team will unwrap that big be about “a nostalgic connection to its primary value to its corporate par- Christmas present, worth fifty thou- stuff that you love, but that’s not work- ent lay for the moment in the size of sand dollars, while the rest of you will ing for you because of . . . this stain.” its library, which includes nearly nine- go home with a little lump of coal!” A colleague said, “It’s like the stain is teen hundred episodes of “House The winners were announced. The the entry point for the story.” Ruch Hunters,” in its various formats. Ac- next scene—to be shot later—would agreed: “ ‘It all started with one stain.’ ” cording to the executive, the appeal show them in the Poconos, walking into He went on, “This is something that of Discovery+ would be less “Every- an actual house that had been done up we just would have never done in the one’s talking about ‘The Queen’s Gam- exactly like their miniature. To smooth past. It feels small and quaint. But, now bit,’ ” and more “That’s a lot of great the edit from studio to cabin, Iglehart that the whole world is at home doing shit I love.” blindfolded the winners by putting out- laundry seven days a week, it’s a world When the app launched, in Janu- sized Santa hats over their heads. that people would find strangely com- ary, its content was primarily search- “We’re leaning into the whimsy,” forting.” HGTV commissioned “The able not by channel names but by sub- Thompson explained to Ruch. Laundry Guy.” ject matter: Relationships, True Crime, “For God’s sake, it’s a doll-house At another development meeting, Home, Paranormal & Unexplained, competition,” he replied, supportively. Victoria Chiaro played her colleagues Food. Subscribers have since found a proof-of-concept tape showing the their way to more than fifty thousand uring HGTV development meet- rapper Lil Jon in the role of disruptive of the fifty-five thousand hours of pro- Dings last year, executives repeat- tastemaker, advising a suburban cou- gramming available. Michael Lom- edly tested their shared sense of the ple. The tape didn’t include an actual bardo, the former HBO executive, was boundary between splashy television renovation but, rather, suggested how surprised to find that he had bought concepts and absurdities. There seemed such an episode might start. “I love a subscription. 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 43 annals of fashion EYE OF THE NEEDLE How the Black designer Ann Lowe made her way among the mid-century white élite. by judith thurman

Lowe fits a débutante for a gown, 1962. From left: couture evening wear from the fifties; at right, a sixties masterpiece, American

44 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 Beauty, between a white coming-out dress and a sophisticated sheath in sari-style silk.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY NAILA RUECHEL THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 45 n 1953, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier mar- lavished with hand-painted flowers. tle Rock in 1916, she dreamed of be- ried John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Jessica Regan, an associate curator at coming a designer, but spent most of I one of those “weddings of the cen- the Met Costume Institute, compares her life working for the federal govern- tury” that seem to occur every few years. Lowe to Mainbocher: “She was a bril- ment. On the side, she founded a school She was a twenty-four-year-old for- liant example of the American couture in Harlem that offered classes in dress- mer débutante, who had been work- tradition—a sculptural designer whose making and millinery. In 1979, she ing for a Washington newspaper as an work was a dialogue with the body of opened the Black Fashion Museum, in “Inquiring Camera Girl” while pros- the woman who wore it.” a brownstone on 126th Street, a few pecting for a husband. He was a fresh- Lowe’s evening and bridal wear were blocks from Lowe’s apartment. man senator from Massachusetts with sold coast to coast in upscale depart- Lane spent decades building the mu- his eyes on the White House. But you ment stores. She owned salons at sev- seum’s archives. By the time her daugh- know all that, and what ensued. You eral locations on Madison Avenue. In ter donated them to the N.M.A.A.H.C., may even recall the pictures of Jackie’s her heyday, the mid-fifties, she claimed they contained about two thousand gar- dress—one of the most photographed that she sold a thousand gowns a year, ments designed, fabricated, or worn by bridal gowns in history. grossing three hundred thousand dol- African-Americans. The earliest arti- Jackie was the architect of her own lars. (Her math tends to be inflected facts—a muslin dress, a bonnet—were myth, and pretty much everything she by hyperbole. Each gown was an orig- the handiwork of enslaved women. But wore after her marriage was chosen to inal that required hours of intensive Lane also collected the showstopping enhance it. Her Gallic ancestry, embel- labor; Balenciaga, by comparison, pro- outfits that Zelda Wynn Valdes cre- lished in the retelling, was a central duced about three hundred pieces of ated for such stars as Ella Fitzgerald; motif. In that regard, her wedding gown couture annually.) Geoffrey Holder’s costumes for “The was a disappointment to her. According Yet Lowe commuted to the Upper Wiz”; and the drab-chic day wear of to Kennedy historians, the young Miss East Side from a ground-floor apart- Arthur McGee, a dressmaker’s son, who Bouvier had lobbied for something ment in Harlem that she shared with was the first Black designer to run a svelte and Parisian. But Joseph Ken- her sister Sallie, who did the cooking. studio on Seventh Avenue. In Lane’s nedy, the groom’s father and impre- The same millionaires who cherished collection, a simple rayon dress that sario, overruled her. He was wary of the finesse of her needlework haggled Rosa Parks had been sewing for herself sending the wrong message: decadent shamelessly over her prices, and she rou- when she refused to give up her bus seat foreign glamour. tinely undercharged them, explaining in Montgomery shared pride of place The dress that Jackie got was a in interviews that the sheer happiness with the opulent ball gowns of Ann chaste confection of ivory silk taf- sewing brought her was its own re- Lowe. “Lane had done something that feta with a portrait neckline, a daintily ward. Retailers profited from her la- the great costume collections in the tucked bodice, and a parasol skirt ap- bel’s cachet but didn’t advance the costs United States had not,” Robin Givhan pliquéd with frilly rosettes. She wore of her materials or her labor, and the wrote, in the Washington Post. “She fo- it with regal aplomb, though her pique debts she incurred to suppliers helped cused on storytelling”—the stories that may have simmered. In 1961, Mrs. Ken- ruin her. (She was ruined several times, clothes tell of pride and hardship, tri- nedy’s first year in the White House, but staged more comebacks than Mu- umph and endurance. a writer who interviewed her for the hammad Ali.) The Kennedy wedding, Lowe’s rediscovery is due largely to Ladies’ Home Journal reported that the for which Lowe also dressed the brides- the work of Black fashion scholars and gown had been made by “a colored maids, was a notable debacle for her. curators, beginning with Lane, and in- woman dressmaker” and was “not the A plumbing disaster in her studio de- cluding, more recently, Elaine Nichols, haute couture.” stroyed the gowns shortly before the of the N.M.A.A.H.C.; Elizabeth Way, That “colored woman dressmaker,” event; toiling sleeplessly, she re-created of the Fashion Institute of Technology; Ann Lowe, was in fact a consummate them at her own expense. She never and Margaret Powell, a textile histo- couturier. Her work was admired by complained to the family. She did, how- rian from Pittsburgh. A draft of Pow- Christian Dior and by the legendary ever, indignantly refuse to use the ser- ell’s master’s thesis on Lowe was pub- costumer Edith Head. Jackie’s formi- vice entrance at the Auchincloss farm, lished online, in 2012, by the Corcoran dable mother, Janet Auchincloss, was threatening to take her work back to School of the Arts & Design, and she a faithful client. Jackie and her sister, New York if it and she weren’t ushered was working on a full-scale biography Lee, had both made their Newport through the front door. when she died of cancer, at forty-three, débuts in a Lowe dress. Marjorie Merri- two years ago. weather Post, the heiress and philan- n 2007, a retired biology teacher from Despite assiduous research, however, thropist (Donald Trump bought Mar- IWashington, D.C., Joyce Bailey, made much of what is known about Lowe’s a-Lago from her estate), chose a silk- a landmark bequest to the recently es- life—especially her youth—comes from faille robe de style, attributed to Lowe, tablished National Museum of Afri- interviews that she gave as an elderly for her portrait by an artist who had can American History and Culture. woman. One can’t discount her lapses painted Queen Elizabeth. Olivia de Bailey’s glamorous mother, Lois K. Al- of memory, or her genius for embellish- Havilland accepted her first Oscar in exander Lane, is a singular figure in the ment. But one also can’t discount the a strapless Lowe number of aqua tulle history of Black fashion. Born in Lit- paucity of public records documenting

46 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 THE MUSEUM AT FIT (5) AT THE MUSEUM © PREVIOUS SPREAD: SOURCE PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY COLLECTION OF THE SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF OF MUSEUM THE NATIONAL SMITHSONIAN OF COLLECTION COURTESY PREVIOUS SPREAD: PHOTOGRAPHS: SOURCE / GETTY 7); BETTMANN (3); COURTESY (1, 2, 4, 6, AND CULTURE HISTORY AMERICAN AFRICAN An ethereal evening dress, in tones of pearl, with embroidered lace cutwork appliqués on the bodice and skirt.

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 47 courthouse. Around 1860, Cole bought the freedom of his wife, a young woman of mixed race: Georgia Thompkins, or Tompkins—Lowe’s grandmother. Geor- gia’s father owned the plantation where she and her enslaved mother worked as seamstresses. Lowe’s mother, Jane, was born during the Civil War. At some point during Re- construction, she met Ann’s father, Jack Lowe, of whom nothing is known. But by the beginning of the twentieth cen- tury Jane and Georgia had established themselves as society dressmakers in Montgomery, the state capital, catering to political wives and daughters. Ann’s education in the segregated schools of Alabama would have been rudimentary, and she dropped out at fourteen. But her apprenticeship in the family busi- ness trained her for one of the few vo- cations by which a woman could sup- port herself respectably. It also gave her a rare example of female autonomy.

owe’s driving ambition, she told LMike Douglas, as a guest on his talk show in 1964, was “to prove that a Negro can become a major dress de- signer.” She cut the figure of one, bird- like and soignée. Her uniform was an exquisitely severe black suit or dress, accessorized by a trademark hat, a taut chignon, red lipstick, and dark glasses. By then, Lowe was the tenacious sur- vivor of a game in which most con- testants get thrown o7 the island. Who Lowe’s label advertised what one scholar called a “nostalgic ideal of femininity.” now remembers Gustave Beer, a con- temporary of Charles Frederick Worth? the births, marriages, and deaths of house square. George Wallace, the in- What about posh Carolyne Roehm, a African-Americans, not to mention famous segregationist, and his wife, fixture of the Reagan era? Does Bill their accomplishments. Several dozen Lurleen, who succeeded him as gover- Gaytten ring a bell? (He briefly re- of Lowe’s dresses have been lovingly nor of Alabama, raised their family in placed John Galliano at Dior.) preserved—out of thousands. The fab- Clayton, and racial strife has a long From early childhood, Lowe pos- ric of her biography is an imperfect history there. On Election Day, 1874, sessed a transcendent self-confidence patchwork. a white-supremacist mob carried out in her gifts. At five or six, she had started According to her own chronology, a violent coup in Barbour. Its members turning scraps of silk into the trompe- Lowe was born in Clayton, Alabama, murdered at least seven Black voters, l’oeil flowers that became her signature in 1898. In the census of 1910, however, and wounded scores, while routing hun- as a couturier. Her husband, she said, she figures as a married woman of dreds of others at their polling places. forbade her to work—he wanted a stay- twenty-one, living with her first hus- Having destroyed ballots already cast, at-home wife—and she obeyed him band, Lee Cone (his name has ubiq- the insurrectionists unseated a Recon- for a while. But when her mother died, uitously been reported as “Cohen”), a struction judge duly elected by a ma- in 1914, Ann was recalled to Mont- tailor, in the town of Dothan, about jority of Alabamians—many of them gomery to finish four ball gowns for fifty miles from her birthplace. free men of color. Alabama’s First Lady, Elizabeth Kirk- Clayton is the seat of Barbour One of those men was Lowe’s grand- man O’Neal. It was, Lowe said, “my County, a center of plantation culture father General Cole (“General” was his first big test in life,” and it inspired her before the Civil War. A Confederate given name, not a rank), a carpenter who to feel that “there was nothing I couldn’t monument still stands in the court- had helped build the original Clayton do when it came to sewing.”

48 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 Within two years, Lowe’s life was Maki Oh, among others. But she wasn’t flamboyance. Volatile women are an transformed by a chance encounter at the first to wear them. Women of color occupational hazard of the fashion a Dothan department store. An out-of- have been dressing First Ladies at least business, not to say of the plantation town shopper noticed Lowe’s clothes since 1861, when Mary Todd Lincoln house. Stoical, reserved Mrs. Keckley and remarked that she had “never seen hired Elizabeth Keckley as her per- had a gift for talking Mary Lincoln a colored girl so well dressed.” That lady, sonal “modiste.” through her bouts of outrage and de- Josephine Lee, the wife of a wealthy Keckley was born on a Virginia pression. And when the Lincolns lost citrus grower from Tampa, had four plantation in 1818. Her father, Armi- their son Willie, at eleven, to typhoid, daughters, the eldest of whom were stead Burwell, was its owner. She and months after Keckley’s son was killed twins engaged to be married. She offered her mother, a skilled seamstress, were on the battlefield, the two women Lowe a job as her live-in dressmaker, his house slaves. For three decades, grieved together. initially to create gowns for the wedding she endured a life of violence and deg- That companionship, however, had party. Lowe, who had recently given radation. Burwell “loaned” her to his a bitter aftermath. In 1867, the widow birth to a son, Arthur, ditched her hus- son Robert (a minister), and when Lincoln, short of funds, decided to sell band and leaped at the opportunity: “I Keckley was eighteen one of Robert’s her luxurious White House wardrobe. picked up my baby and got on that parishioners took it upon himself to Keckley travelled to New York to help Tampa train.” “subdue” the girl’s “stubborn pride” with the sale. No buyers were found, Lowe recalled her years in Tampa with a whip. Later, she fell prey to a and their foray was derided in the press. as the happiest of her life. The local local shop owner, who raped her for The next year, Keckley donated a trove press celebrated her work in its ac- four years. A son, George, was born of Lincoln memorabilia to Wilber- counts of weddings and galas. An of those assaults; he would die as a force, including the bloodstained bon- “Annie Cone” dress was a status sym- Union soldier. net that Mary had worn to Ford’s The- bol. Jessica Regan noted that Lowe In 1847, Keckley and George were atre. Her gift infuriated the former became famous for her surface em- transported to St. Louis, Missouri, by First Lady, who had wanted the items bellishments—“for tiny carnations her white half sister and new mistress, back. But the worst affront came sev- with organza petals, each one minutely Anne Garland. As the Garlands’ for- eral months later, when Keckley, seek- hand-finished. But the interior struc- tunes dissipated, they hired “Lizzie” out ing in part to raise sympathy for Mrs. ture of a dress was just as important to sew for ladies of their acquaintance. Lincoln, published a memoir with the to her. Invisible tacking stitches keep A few of those ladies grew fond of Keck- sensational title “Behind the Scenes, the layers of fabric moving together; ley, and loaned her the price of her free- Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years a lightly boned bodice holds the bosom dom. Her artfulness as a couturier, how- in the White House.” The condem- stable on a dance floor. Her empha- ever, had increased her value as a piece nation it received, especially from the sis on a perfected fit made her clients of property. The Garlands demanded Lincoln family, effectively ended a feel secure.” twelve hundred dollars for mother and career that depended on deference That security was a luxury that Lowe son. (Abraham Lincoln and his wife and discretion. herself couldn’t enjoy. She raised her had recently paid that sum for a house son as a single mother in the Jim Crow in Illinois.) lizabeth Way, who wrote a mas- South. They lived in the staff quarters Once she was a free woman, Keck- Eter’s thesis on Keckley and Lowe, of a rich man’s house. Its owners were ley sent George to Wilberforce Uni- was struck by their similarities, she “sincere” with her, Lowe later recalled, versity, in Ohio, a historically Black told me. “Their skills were inherited yet she had to navigate boundaries of institution, where she herself later from enslaved ancestors, and they both race and class that neither talent nor taught domestic arts. In 1860, she set- transformed them into free labor. More affection could breach. As Elaine Nich- tled in Washington, D.C., and estab- remarkably, they were able to build a ols noted in a recent e-mail to me, Lowe lished a dressmaking business, with a client network of élite white women was “helping young, wealthy white bipartisan clientele that included the who came to respect their professional women (and their parents) live in a wives of Stephen A. Douglas, Rob- authority. Lowe represents a transi- world of fantasy.” In that respect, she ert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. A tional figure in fashion history—a belongs to a tradition of African-Amer- daughter of Edwin Sumner, the Union bridge between the old-fashioned ar- ican dressmaking that stretches back general, arranged the job interview tisan that Keckley was and the mod- before the Civil War. “A dressmaker, in with Mrs. Lincoln. ern designer.” some senses, is a body servant,” Eliz- Mary Lincoln, like Jackie, was The American South has never abeth Way observed. “She works on a Francophile and a clotheshorse. been a bastion of modernity in fash- her knees.” Her extravagance was notorious. Un- ion. Even in the North, chic women like Jackie, she had a dumpy figure of Lowe’s generation—and of Jack- ichelle Obama was the first chat- and pretentious taste. (Her sartorial ie’s—looked to Paris. When Lowe Melaine of the White House to ideal was the Empress Eugénie.) began her career, designer ready-to- champion the work of Black design- Keckley dressed her with an elegance wear was five decades away. Mrs. Lee, ers—Tracy Reese, Laura Smalls, Duro befitting her station—and her self- however, realized that Lowe had the Olowu, Byron Lars, Mimi Plange, and importance—but toned down the potential to create sophisticated haute

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 49 couture—at down-home prices. In medallions towards the bottom of the cascade down the bodice; molten satin 1917, the family sponsored her enroll- skirt are connected with sprays of bril- bubbles at the hem like a pool of can- ment in an established dressmaking liants ... in a pattern reminiscent of dle wax. school, S. T. Taylor, on lower Broad- tree branches or curling smoke.” The way, in Manhattan. cloth has decayed, but the embellish- ome of the greatest designers have Nearly every American designer ment is intact. Each tiny bead was at- Sbeen hopeless with money. Paul of the past century gravitated to New tached individually. Poiret and Charles James both died York, the capital of self-invention. It Lowe may have distinguished her- destitute. Yves Saint Laurent was a was a magnet for Lowe, too. She was self in the South, but she was also financial imbecile, but his partner, unprepared, however, for the preju- stymied there. Her white competi- Pierre Bergé, managed their fortune dice she encountered among North- tors had an insuperable advantage, cannily. Lowe never had a Bergé, not erners. “The whole idea to admit a Powell writes. A Black dressmaker to mention a yacht, a country house, Negro girl to a high-class fashion could not get credit or rent a work- or an art collection—common perks school was absurd,” she told a jour- space in the downtown business dis- of success in fashion. Her son, Ar- nalist in 1966. The school’s director, trict; her clients had to visit her in a thur, kept her books and paid the bills. who was French, “didn’t believe I had segregated neighborhood. Josephine But after his premature death, in a the $1,500 for the course—he just Lee, for one, felt that Lowe was “too car accident, no one capable took over. laughed. When I showed him my good to waste herself ” in a provin- In 1962, the Internal Revenue Service bankbook, he stopped laughing, but cial backwater. shuttered Lowe’s salon for nonpay- he still didn’t believe that I could learn By 1928, Lowe had moved to New ment of taxes. what he was teaching there.” Here York with several assistants and rented The timing was ironic, since the one should note that Harvard’s tui- a third-floor studio on West Forty- new First Lady’s patronage, or even a tion, at the time, was a hundred and sixth Street. “No one flocked in,” she public acknowledgment, might have fifty dollars, and that S. T. Taylor, ac- told the Daily News, in 1965. “I kept rescued Lowe. But Jackie’s reported cording to Margaret Powell, advertised afloat for a whole year making the slight was more painful to her than its courses in the Crisis, the N.A.A.C.P. wedding gown and trousseau for Car- any lost business, and she registered magazine. It is entirely plausible, lotta Cuesta”—a former Gasparilla her chagrin in a letter of heartbreak- though, that Lowe’s fellow-students queen. In the early months of the ing dignity. “My reason for writing snubbed her—until they were hum- Depression, Lowe went looking for this note is to tell you how hurt I feel,” bled by her virtuosity. She left after a a job in the garment district. (She she wrote. “You know I have never few months, when the dazzled French- claimed to have started her new busi- sought publicity but I would prefer to man acknowledged that there was ness with twenty thousand dollars in be referred to as a ‘noted negro de- nothing he could teach her. seed capital, although that figure, more signer,’ which in every sense I am. .. . Lowe spent the next decade in than ten times the average family’s Any reference to the contrary hurts Tampa. In 1919, she married a hotel annual income at the time, should me more deeply than I can perhaps bellman named Caleb West, and probably be adjusted for exaggera- make you realise.” launched her own business in a work- tion.) According to the census of 1930, Letitia Baldrige, Jackie’s social sec- room behind their house. She trained Lowe was sharing her two-bedroom retary, called a few days later to as- a staff in her exacting techniques of apartment on Manhattan Avenue with sure Lowe that the reference to “a col- hand beading and trapunto (a style of her husband, her son, her assistants, ored woman dressmaker” hadn’t been quilting that creates an intricate raised and “a roomer.” The marriage didn’t approved by Mrs. Kennedy, and to design), and some of her protégées endure. Lowe told Ebony that Caleb convey an apology for her distress— went on to prosper independently. West “wanted a real wife,” so he di- without, however, taking responsibil- Lowe’s most treasured creations from vorced her. ity for it. Lowe then engaged an at- that era were her fancy-dress costumes When no one hired Lowe, she torney and sought “tangible” redress for Gasparilla, a local festival with par- offered to make gowns on spec. Her from the Ladies’ Home Journal, in the ties and parades akin to Mardi Gras. work, as usual, found appreciative form of a story about her career. The The revels included a themed ball; buyers. For the next decade, she free- magazine never obliged, but Jackie they were dogged by charges of rac- lanced anonymously for carriage-trade may have tried to make amends. A ism until the nineties. houses such as Sonia Gowns and Hat- year later, one of Lowe’s eyes was re- One of the earliest Lowes to have tie Carnegie. Eventually, she said, she moved—it had been irreparably dam- survived, a short flapper-style dress met “the right people.” By then, she aged by glaucoma. While she was in from 1926, is the costume for a Gas- was using her maiden name. One of the hospital, someone paid off her parilla courtier that might have come the earliest garments with an “Ann debts to the I.R.S. Lowe always be- from les petites mains of Lesage. “The Lowe” label is now at the Met Cos- lieved that the First Lady was her asymmetrical neckline has one jew- tume Institute: a sublime wedding anonymous benefactor. eled shoulder strap,” Powell writes. “A dress from 1941, with the silhouette Lowe’s misfortunes of the early six- large jeweled medallion in the upper of an Erté Tanagra. Embroidered tra- ties nearly crushed her. “I almost gave left of the bodice and a series of small punto lilies, bedewed with seed pearls, up dreaming about beauty and thought

50 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 DRESS FROM COLLECTION OF THE HENRY B. PLANT MUSEUM / TAMPA, FLORIDA TAMPA, / B. PLANT MUSEUM THE HENRY OF DRESS FROM COLLECTION Lowe dressed Tampa society for five decades. This Gasparilla ball gown, circa 1957, features exquisite trompe-l’oeil flowers.

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 51 A trellis of semi-abstract appliquéd roses on an evening dress from 1962.

52 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 Graphic statement: A stately evening ensemble of black lace over aqua silk, for A. F. Chantilly, circa 1966.

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 53 DRESS FROM COLLECTION OF THE HENRY B. PLANT MUSEUM / TAMPA, FLORIDA TAMPA, / B. PLANT MUSEUM THE HENRY OF DRESS FROM COLLECTION This evening shift, circa 1924, is the earliest confirmed example of Lowe’s couture. Every bead was attached individually.

54 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 only of suicide,” she told the Daily years—she was curious to attend the work was overwhelmingly pretty,” Eliz- News. Saks offered her a workroom sort of gala that she had so often sewn abeth Way reflected. “It wasn’t radical, and a title—the head designer of its for. The family brought her as a guest or meant to be. Even in the sixties, she Adam Room, creating bridal and début of honor, and she sat at the front table. was still inspired by the nineteenth cen- gowns. She brought Saks her clients, Lowe’s presence at what Powell tury, and by a nostalgic ideal of femi- and it touted her collaboration. But called a “historically white event” was ninity. Yet I also think it’s important Lowe agreed to a disastrous deal: she an audacious break with tradition. Lowe to appreciate what breathtaking cour- had to buy her own materials and pay had defied exclusion countless times age she had.” her own staff. “I didn’t realize until in her life. But, unlike Keckley, an ac- Lowe’s career flourished, in part, for too late,” she said, “that on dresses I tivist for the impoverished former slaves the same reason it would decline: she was getting $300 for, I had put about who had flocked to Washington in deferred to the proprieties of the women $450 into it.” 1862, and unlike Rosa Parks, a dress- for whom she sewed. They were orig- Overwhelmed by debt, Lowe was maker by trade, she never played a pub- inally Southern belles. Later, they were forced to declare bankruptcy. She went lic role in the civil-rights movement. East Coast patricians, or the daughters to work for a small custom shop, Mad- Nor did she advertise the fact that she of Midwestern industrialists who lived, eleine Couture, until cataracts blinded sewed for distinguished Black clients as Jackie had, in a bubble of gentility. her other eye. In 1964, she underwent like Elizabeth Mance, a classical pia- But by the late nineteen-sixties society a risky operation to remove them. Once nist, or Idella Kohke, a board member girls were interested in shacking up with she could see again, she opened a new of the Negro Actors Guild. I found a rock stars and jetting off to ashrams. salon. When the cataracts grew back, picture of Kohke in the New York Age, Coming out was a charade of purity she dictated her designs to a sketcher a venerable Black newspaper. She was that many endured to placate their and her assistants realized them. featured in an article on Easter finery, mothers. Lowe made a late effort to dated April 20, 1957. A caption describes evolve: she skimmed her froth; she fter Kennedy’s assassination, Lowe her “fabulous ensemble—a gown of trimmed her sails; she spiced up her Afinally got credit for Jackie’s wed- imported French black satin created palette. American Beauty—a débutante ding dress, and she liked to claim that by Ann Lowe.” Lowe’s name was un- dress from 1967, smothered in roses— it was exactly what the bride had asked qualified by an epithet. It apparently looks virginal from the front, but it’s for: “a tremendous, typical Ann Lowe needed none. backless to the waist. The Times fash- gown.” (The logo on one of her labels The historically white fashion press ion critic Virginia Lee Warren pre- is the dainty figure of a court lady in a never paid attention to Harlem’s vi- tended to be shocked on behalf of the hoop skirt and panniers.) Her work brant fashion scene. Yet Lowe’s name girl’s mother. No scandal was intended, began to appear in national magazines. had such prestige in the Black com- Lowe told her; she just didn’t want the Vanity Fair featured one of her com- munity that the New York Age sent “hands of the boys” soiling her creation. ing-out dresses in an editorial spread. her to Paris, at exorbitant expense— Lowe’s mantra might have been The Saturday Evening Post ran a pic- an ocean crossing, a stay at the Hôtel an adage attributed to Winston Chur- ture of three insouciant debs, riding the Lutétia—to cover the postwar couture chill: “Success is not final. Failure is Central Park carrousel in their Lowe shows. A story from 1949 reports that not fatal. It is the courage to continue gowns. It accompanied a profile of the Dior, Balenciaga, Paquin, Molyneux, that counts.” But Churchill wasn’t a designer, whose headline became Lowe’s Dessès, and other grandes maisons had self-employed Black octogenarian sobriquet: “Society’s Best-Kept Secret.” received their correspondent graciously. with an eighth-grade education and She played along. “I’m an awful snob,” (At one of the défilés, Lowe said, she no savings. she told Ebony, in 1966. “I love my clothes met Mrs. Post, who introduced her as Lowe soldiered on until 1972. Her and I’m particular about who wears a prominent designer.) One longs to vision outlived her sight. Only com- them. I am not interested in sewing for know what she made of the clothes— plete helplessness forced her to retire. café society or social climbers. I don’t and of Europe. But perhaps the pic- By then, her sister had died, and she cater to Mary and Sue. I sew for the ture that ran with the story—of an couldn’t manage her own care. (Keck- families of the Social Register.” outfit that Lowe had designed for the ley, in a similar predicament—frail and There is no evidence that Lowe’s so- paper—was a form of reportage. Her penniless—took refuge in a home for ciety clients invited her to their affairs “Paris-inspired creation” was a sexy destitute women of color that, in bet- or their débuts. She heard about them black cocktail dress “with the new ter days, she had helped found.) Lowe secondhand: “When someone tells me, sheath skirt which dips very low to moved to Queens, to live with a friend ‘The Ann Lowe dresses were doing all the right side. The overskirt is appli- whom she described as her “adopted of the dancing at the cotillion last night,’ qued with cutwork of large dahlias. daughter,” Ruth Alexander—one of that’s what I like to hear.” But in 1967 The wing collar is highlighted by a the assistants from Tampa who had Josephine Lee’s granddaughter asked deep plunging neckline.” followed her to New York. She died Lowe to contribute a gown to be auc- There is nothing else so daring in there on February 25, 1981. Her obit- tioned at a Junior League fund-raiser the Lowe archives, and it made me uaries were a jumble of misinforma- in Tampa. She was happy to oblige, wonder what she might have created tion. Ann Lowe’s real story is her own though she added that—after fifty had she been freer to innovate. “Her best-kept secret. 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 55 fiction

56 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY KAROLIS STRAUTNIEKAS ome years after we moved to the ing of luxury. The owner was a flam- had been planned to coincide with our city, my husband and I started boyant man in his fifties, whose visit, though they were all so merry, S looking for an apartment to buy. exquisite belongings seemed to have and welcomed us so warmly. The place We were renting a small place past the been bought specifically to fit the was spacious enough that my husband southern boulevard that marked the shelves of his home. After showing us and I could each have a work area and end of the historic neighborhoods. On in, he took his place in a leather arm- even host guests without having to weekends, we’d usually take walks, al- chair and let us walk through the apart- change our routine. Our families lived ways in the direction of the finer quar- ment by ourselves, aware that it needed in other countries, which was why this ters that had first lured us to the city no explanation. Afterward, my hus- seemed an especially important pros- with their Old World charm. We lived band and I sat at a café down the street, pect to consider. on an unremarkable street, without with a red lacquered façade and mar- After the visit, we could find no café cafés or shops. At the corner was a ble tables. If we were to buy the apart- in the neighborhood at which to sit large glass building, on whose steps ment, we said, we’d come here for and talk about our impressions, so we teen-agers congregated at every hour, morning coffee and late-night drinks, took the train back. On the way, we smoking, laughing, playing music. would know the waiters by name. The both said that we’d liked the diversity Those with skateboards rode up and thought was pleasing, though some- of the area, and would be excited to down the boulevard, dodging out of what foreign, as if we’d put on very ex- live there, though it also seemed that the way of old women who frowned pensive clothing that didn’t belong to we might not be able to become part at them. During our first year, we us. Still, I could imagine us in this life of the community, that we’d be living learned that the building was a youth tailored to perfection, like strangers shuttered within the confines of the center, founded by a journalist couple I’d wish to befriend. When we showed splendid loft, travelling all the way to whose own daughter’s suffering had Sami pictures of the apartment, he the city whenever we went out. Over gone unnoticed in the midst of the said it seemed ideal for a couple who drinks the following evening, Sami told parents’ careers. received no guests and had no chil- us he’d take the train to visit us on We’d been happy in our flat. At the dren. That part, he added, was for us weekends. He was such a good friend time we moved in, it presented itself to decide. to us, always offering his support of as a perfect space to play out our still Another place that interested us was our choices. elusive adulthoods. We bought paint- a loft in an old factory building. It was Our parents asked if our creative ings, oil ones from flea markets, dis- on the train line east, past the wealthy work was secure enough for us to take tinguishing our new home from the suburbs. After leaving the station, we on a mortgage, and wondered about studio we’d lived in as graduate stu- had to cross a highway before arriving the schools in the two neighborhoods dents, which we had decorated with at an area of industrial lots, some aban- and the availability of doctors, espe- framed posters. Now we had our sights doned, some converted into chic homes cially pediatricians, even though my set on a real kitchen, made of quality for young families, others occupied by husband and I had never said that we materials, a bathroom without chipped immigrants. There was a mosque, and wanted to have children. We’d never tiles or mold. next to it a basketball court with a denied the possibility, either. It was one Our weekends, once taken up by looming mural of Muhammad Ali. On of the aspects of our lives that we still those long walks, after which we would the evening of our visit, lanky boys needed to bring into focus, so that we meet our friend Sami at a wine bar, were throwing a ball with casual focus, could better picture a future home. The were spent on the metro, going from calling out from time to time to their process was an act of imaginary acro- one end of the city to the other, and friends passing by. At the entrance of batics, trying to launch ourselves for- sometimes out to the suburbs, to look the mosque stood a man the size of a ward with only a guess of where we at apartments. More than the prospect small child, with a thickly furrowed wanted to land. of a home, we were intrigued by all the forehead, greeting those arriving for different lives, the arrangements of evening prayers. round this time, I went to visit my space to work and rest, to store and Inside the gates of the converted Acousin Tara at her university. I took display, the priorities of strangers that factory was another world altogether. an early-morning flight, then caught were so different from our own. We The walls were overgrown with green, the train to her campus, where I ar- still met up with Sami, and reported the communal garden dotted with terra- rived in time for Halloween celebra- our finds to him over drinks that ex- cotta pots and round tables. The own- tions. My cousin had insisted that I tended to dinners of cheeses and cured ers of the loft had three children, whose come on this date, though I was a bit meats. toys were made exclusively of wood. daunted by the idea of being at a party During our first weeks of search- There were bicycles stacked against with students who were more than a ing, we were struck by an eighteenth- one wall, part of a cheerful clutter that decade younger than me. Tara met me century apartment, even smaller than communicated sanity and care. When at the station, in a long, checkered wool our current one. It was impeccably re- we arrived, the family was cooking to- coat that had once been mine. Her hair stored, with an open kitchen fitted gether, the children standing on stools, was bleached at the tips and she was tastefully and resourcefully, and a bath- chopping and peeling with their small wearing makeup, which I’d never seen room that, though tiny, gave the feel- hands. I wondered whether the scene on her before. I noticed her pleasure at

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 57 being autonomous in her new setting. She showed me the main street with its bookshops and cafés, an Italian AT M T. AUBURN CEMETERY restaurant and a bakery, as if the street were playing house. Walking among the graves for exercise Tara had made a dinner reservation, Where do you get your ideas how do I stop them which moved me; I’d always been the Looking for Mike Mazur’s marker I looked one to take her out. When she came Down at the grass and saw Stanislaw Baranczak to visit us in the city—trips for her Our Solidarity poetry reading in Poznan birthday, to celebrate her good grades Years later in Newton now he said I’m a U.S. in school—she’d felt like, if not exactly Liberal with a car like everybody else our child, then something close to it. When I held Bobo dying in my arms After dinner, we headed to her house, His green eyes told me I am not done yet where some students were immersed Then he was gone when he was young he enjoyed in hysterical preparations, putting on Leaping up onto the copy machine to press makeup in the corridor, pouring drinks. A button and hear it hum to life and rustle One guy, trying to pull a tutu up to his A blank page then another out onto its tray waist, turned to give Tara a high five. Sometimes he batted the pages down to the floor “Where’s the gang?” Tara asked. I used to call it his hobby here’s a marble The guy said that everyone was on Wicker bassinet marking a baby’s grave their way. To sever the good fellowship of dust the vet’s We put my bag in Tara’s room, which Needle first a sedative then death now Willie was lit with fairy lights and smelled Paces the house mowling his elegy for Bobo sweetly of incense and weed. They never meow to one another just to people “You’ll sleep here,” she said, though Or to their nursing mother when they’re small I I’d offered to book a hotel in town. Marvel at this massive labelled American elm “And I’ll stay with Mari.” Mari, beautiful and goofy, was part of the “gang,” which had formed the conceded to inviting only two friends, of twenty-year-olds. But I was old previous semester, pulling all-night- because she didn’t want me to pay “an enough to have a direction in life, or so ers together during exams. Another avalanche bill.” it seemed from the vantage point of member was an artistic kid named “We should definitely invite Luis,” Tara and her friends. They asked me Luis. I guessed that Tara had a crush I told her and winked, at which she about the city, and what it had taken on him, because she acted exceedingly smacked my arm. And Mari, I added. for my husband and me to find our cre- sisterly with him. The boy in the tutu Later, as we were waiting to meet up ative footing, to make a living from our and his twin brother had happily ad- with them in front of Tara’s house, we passions. In turn, I asked them where opted the role of comic relief. There saw Simon across the street. He walked they wanted to settle in the future, what was Ellie, soft-spoken, and a guy named over, looking for a moment as if he they’d want to see from their bedroom Simon, who I only later realized was didn’t remember who I was, or, rather, windows. Mari and Tara led the con- part of the gang, after he’d accompa- as if I might not remember him—a versation, discussing the advantages of nied us from party to party, finding look of apology. living on a southern coast, where they the girls’ coats for them amid the piles “What’re you ladies up to this fine could go swimming every morning, or stacked high on beds when it was time evening?” he said, so awkwardly that I on a rough western one where they to leave. I joined the group for a few quickly asked him to join us. We went could watch the crashing waves; per- hours—Tara and I had dressed up as to the Italian restaurant on the main haps they wanted to move to an exotic fortune-tellers—then went back to street. I ordered a bottle of wine and capital. Luis made fun of these options, Tara’s room while the others went to appetizers for us to share before our which he called unpractical. a club downtown. main courses of pasta. “Don’t be so cynical,” Tara said. The following day, I read at a café “Could we just get the garlic bread?” Luis brought his hand to his heart. while Tara was in class. I sent my hus- Tara asked. “‘Tread softly because you tread on my band a photograph of the narrow street, “Sure,” I said. “I’m such an old dreams,’” he quoted. the students in sweatshirts, and texted woman. I don’t know what you young- “He’s just showing off to you,” Mari that I’d been to more than one Hal- sters like to eat.” told me. “We’re reading Yeats in lit loween party the night before. It was self-deprecation, of course. I class.” “Shall we just move into a dorm?” knew I was young enough for them to Simon was sitting at the far end of he wrote back. consider me interesting. Tara had told the table and didn’t speak very much, In the evening, I told Tara that I me as much that morning—that her but he laughed at whatever the others wanted to take her and her friends out friends thought I was cool. I’d been said. From time to time, I asked him to dinner. Tara objected at first, then strangely satisfied by the compliments if there was anything else he wanted

58 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 We came to realize that we wouldn’t feel at home living in a faraway neigh- borhood. Nor did it seem right to move into a small and beautiful apart- Spreading above a cluster of newer names ment where we would live as if em- Chang, Ohanessian, Kondakis joining Howells, balmed, receiving no visitors, and have Emerson, Parkinson and here’s a six-foot sphere no room for a child, if that was what Of polished granite perfect and inscribed Walker we wanted. I’d found out, after an ul- Should I have let him die his own cat way trasound to investigate some abdom- Bruce Lee spends less on a stone than Schwarzenegger inal pains, that my chances of con- The cemetery official confided what will mark ceiving were somewhat low. It was The markers when like mourners they bow and kneel nothing serious, the doctor assured And topple down flat to kiss the very heaps me, though it might be important for They have in trust under the splendid elm us to start trying, if we wished to have Also marked with its tag a noble survivor a family. I’d always considered the Civilization lifted my cat from the street gave him phrase puzzling—having a family— A name and all his shots and determined his death since we already had a family, indeed Now Willie howls the loss from room to room several. I didn’t understand why our When people say I’m ashamed of being German lives should be deemed lacking. Said Arendt I want to say I’m ashamed of being Tara and her gang had moved into Human sometimes when Bobo made the machine a shared house. On a video call, Tara Shoot copies of nothing I crumpled one he could chase showed me the gray carpeted floors, And combat practicing the game of being himself. the utilitarian kitchen and bathroom. Over text messages that semester, she told me that she and Luis had had a —Robert Pinsky brief thing. I didn’t ask what this meant, feeling that I should respect her privacy, though I would certainly to order, though we’d got more or less hood, when she heard the slightest note have asked a friend about the physi- everything on the menu. of tension at a family gathering. Then cal and emotional aspects of the af- On our way back, we were caught she smiled. “Oh, never mind, it’s so fair. It had petered out, Tara wrote, in a sudden downpour and took shel- silly.” She went on to tell me about the sort of, and now it looked as if Luis ter in a doorway, water crashing down twin brothers, who, she said, were ac- and Mari were going to get together. in front of us. We stood huddled, tually really smart. I assumed that these texts were dis- watching the street of identical three- “What’s the story with Simon?” I tilled from what must have been a story houses, smeared orange by the asked. Tara said he was a really nice constant turmoil in their lives, of street lights. After a while, Luis and guy, perhaps the only balanced one in heartbreaks and misunderstandings, Mari said they would brave the rain, their group of weirdos. He always lis- swapped loyalties, conversations an- because they had to help their house- tened to their dramas without judg- alyzed to shreds with new friends, mates set up for another party. They ment, never took sides in arguments. I turning strangers into family within dashed off, holding their coats above could tell that it pleased her to consider a matter of days. Still, I was happy to their heads. When the rain finally herself weird, the way it had pleased follow the developments in Tara’s life, slowed down, Simon walked home me at her age, providing an identity albeit from a distance. with us then went to join the others. that cloaked the shakier aspects of my- I sent her pictures of different I hadn’t realized that he’d stayed be- self that I didn’t want to confront. apartments, including some we’d de- hind only to accompany us. When my plane landed that eve- cided against but which were more On my last morning, Tara and I had ning, I saw that Tara had posted pho- interesting than the practical ones we breakfast at the station café. I said that tos of the two of us from Halloween, were seriously considering. Tara wrote her friends were all wonderful. “I’m so and from the Italian restaurant, as well back to tell me which window nook happy you think so,” Tara said beam- as a final selfie we’d taken before I or bedroom she would claim and ing. She admitted that she did like Luis, boarded the train. Our faces looked so asked whether she could live with us as I’d guessed, but felt that Mari did similar that they might have been a for a year after graduation to write as well. She and Mari were already so time roll of a single life. her novel. This was something she competitive, and she didn’t want to used to predict for her future—that jeopardize the friendship. I hadn’t t wasn’t until the following year she would live in a romantic city picked up on the competition; perhaps Ithat my husband and I finally made working on a book. At one time, I, I still perceived Tara in her childish in- an offer on an apartment. We’d broad- too, had talked with certainty about nocence. Her eyes clouded for a mo- ened our search all around the city all the things I’d do in the future— ment, the way they used to in her child- and suburbs, then narrowed it again. wildly different projects that would

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 59 somehow all materialize—as if I had in years. I didn’t know the boy very have had many more memories of already attained them without even well, but I used to exchange daily greet- Simon than the single one from which trying. ings with him at the library where he I tried to glean meaning. and I had adjacent research stalls. He’d But it wasn’t so much this I thought he apartment we finally chose was left a party one snowy night and was about for the rest of the afternoon as Tin the opposite direction of our found more than a week later, too late. it was the fact that Tara hadn’t called city walks, though not so far that we No one knew what had happened— to tell me what had happened. I wished lived out of reach of the beautiful neigh- whether he was drunk, or troubled, or she’d asked to come and stay with us borhoods. It was on an unremarkable something else. for a while, or at least turned to me street, in a modern building without for consolation. At the same time, I any flourishes. Inside were straight cor- ithin weeks, we were settled. We chided myself for longing for Tara’s ners and clean countertops, closets that Whired an electrician to install attention at such a moment. As I went were nothing beyond their mere func- wiring in the ceiling so we could hang about my day, I thought uneasily that tion. But there was a spare bedroom, a green lamp, Sami’s housewarming the event would eventually make us which we could use as an office, and, present, above the dining table. We distant; that our intimacy had now later, perhaps for a crib. Sami told us went on walks in our neighborhood, come to an end, as had Tara’s carefree that we’d made a great decision; the always picking a different direction, to youth. Perhaps Tara would grow to de- apartment really suited us. He was identify the places we would frequent, spise that youth, would perceive in it being encouraging, though I found it impatient for the time when we would her own obliviousness. insulting that he thought the bland blend in with our surroundings and I’d always been proud that Tara place matched our tastes. Still, once could claim a history in our new home. looked up to me, wanted to live as I we hung up our paintings and soft- It wasn’t from Tara but from her did, in a beautiful city, with a partner ened corners with plants, the apart- mother that I heard the rest of the story. whose tastes and interests mirrored her ment would come alive, would indeed Tara had come home following Simon’s own, even though I knew that such ad- begin to look more like the image of disappearance, taking time off from miration would inevitably expire. Still, ourselves that we envisioned. school because she wanted to be with I’d delighted in my cousin’s childish es- We sent our parents photos on the her parents. On the phone, my aunt teem. Ridiculous as it may be, I found day of our move, boxes piled all around told me that the housemates had found in it a validation of my own life. the living room. I wrote to Tara that a note in the kitchen several days after When my husband came home that she should come after her midterm he went missing; it had somehow ended evening, I didn’t share any of this with exams for the housewarming party. She up in the recycling box, though it must him; there was nothing tangible in my didn’t respond, which wasn’t unusual; initially have been left in a conspicu- worries. I’d let my mind hurtle ahead she was often busy with school and ous spot. By then, the police had al- to scenarios in which Tara became a overwhelmed by the threads of con- ready searched the local area and weren’t stranger to me. I told my husband only versation on her phone, with friends in hopeful. In his note, Simon said that what had happened to Simon. her immediate life and those far away. he couldn’t see a place for himself in We were sitting at the dining table, A few days later, I sent her a photo of the world. Not the way that others did. our hands almost touching beneath the the desk we’d set up in the spare room. All around him, he wrote, were people warm pool of the light, waiting for the “So lovely,” Tara wrote back. who knew what they wanted, and where water on the stove to boil. I said that “Waiting for someone to write a they belonged. the trajectory of events—from Simon’s novel,” I responded, and asked how One of the terrible shocks, my aunt even keel when we first met, all the things were going. told me, was that no one had even caught way up to the note—felt like some- “All right,” Tara said, adding that a hint of what was happening, at least thing out of a film. Perhaps, though, I she and her housemates were worried not until the aftermath. “God help that had exaggerated Simon’s calm de- about a friend of theirs who hadn’t family,” my aunt said. “God give them meanor in my retelling, having no other come home since the weekend. His patience.” I’d never heard her speak like details to offer from my brief visit. In family hadn’t heard from him, nor had this, and her words chilled me. any case, I was aware that the lives of his classmates. Tara and her house- After we hung up, I thought of the strangers appeared improbable only be- mates were probably his closest friends, dinner at the Italian restaurant, going cause they were seen from a distance. and they had no idea, either. over the questions I’d asked everyone The living-room windows had fogged “Which friend is this?” I asked. about how they wanted their lives to up with steam and my husband rose to “Simon.” turn out. Of course, it was unreason- turn off the stove. There were sounds It took me a moment to remember able for me to feel guilty about the sit- coming from the upstairs flat; our neigh- who he was; his name hadn’t appeared uation, as if I’d been responsible for bors must have been throwing a party. in Tara’s updates in the past months. forcing Simon to confront the impos- It was a constant, lively hum, pierced I told her I was sorry. I hoped Simon sibility of imagining a future that would now and then by a higher pitch.  would get in touch soon. I remembered accommodate him. I wondered whether something that had happened at my Tara had also gone over that conver- NEWYORKER.COM university, which I hadn’t thought about sation in her mind, though she must Ayşegül Savaş on how we shape our lives.

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books WHEN HE WAS GOOD A life of Philip Roth. by david remnick

he Ghost Writer” was pub- nephew and literary executor that his sin- “ lished in 1979. It was the first gular desire in old age was to “frustrate T of nine novels by Philip Roth as utterly as possible the postmortem ex- narrated by Nathan Zuckerman. The ploiter.” In “The Silent Woman,” Janet story begins when Zuckerman, a young Malcolm, confronting a raft of Plath bi- writer who has just published his first ographies, writes that the biographer is short stories, pays a visit to E. I. Lonoff, all too often like a burglar, “breaking into an eminent novelist living in the New a house, rifling through certain drawers England woods. In the course of an over- that he has good reason to think contain night stay, Zuckerman is witness to his the jewelry and money, and triumphantly idol’s domestic implosion. Lonoff has be- bearing his loot away.” John Updike was trayed his wife, Hope, with a former stu- gentler in his appraisal of the form. In dent named Amy Bellette, whom Zuck- his essay “One Cheer for Literary Biog- erman somehow imagines to be none raphy,” he expresses admiration for some other than Anne Frank. Secrets are re- of the modern highlights—Richard Ell- vealed. Tempers flare. Amy drives off into mann’s Joyce, Leon Edel’s James, George the snow. Hope, refusing the self-abne- D. Painter’s Proust—and he allows that gating existence of Tolstoy’s wife, walks an expert biographer, by marshalling ar- out. The acolyte takes it all in. “When chival material to guide us through the you admire a writer you become curious,” geography of a writer’s life and times, can Zuckerman admits. “You look for his se- help us in “reëxperiencing” a literary work, cret. The clues to his puzzle.” The clues with greater intimacy. But he was hardly become another writer’s material. welcoming to prospective biographers. “There’s paper on my desk,” Lonoff “A fiction writer’s life is his treasure, his tells Zuckerman once they are left alone ore, his savings account, his jungle gym,” in the house. he wrote. “As long as I am alive, I don’t “Paper for what?” want somebody else playing on my jun- “Your feverish notes,” Lonoff says. gle gym—disturbing my children, quiz- The predatory dimension of one per- zing my ex-wife, bugging my present son telling the story of another: Roth wife, seeking for Judases among my wrangled with the theme throughout his friends, rummaging through yellowing career. And until he died, in 2018, he spent old clippings, quoting in extenso bad re- a great deal of energy courting biogra- views I would rather forget, and getting phers, hoping that they would tell his everything slightly wrong.” story in a way that wouldn’t undermine When Updike, in the eighties, felt the his art or his legacy. sour breath of potential biographers on Many literary figures have dreaded his neck, he tried to preëmpt his pursu- the spectre of the biographer. Charles ers by writing a series of autobiograph- Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Walt Whitman, ical essays about such topics as the Penn- Henry James, and Sylvia Plath are but a sylvania town where he grew up, his few who put their letters and journals stutter, and his skin condition. The re- SHOPSIN TAMARA ABOVE: into the fire. James admitted to his sulting collection, “Self-Consciousness,” In the years before his death, in

62 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 2018, Roth courted biographers, hoping that his story would be told in a way that wouldn’t undermine his literary legacy.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIGITTE LACOMBE THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 63 is a dazzlingly intimate book, but his size—to displace the fiction with the real about the ostensible sameness of Roth’s imagination and industry did more to story. And this Zuckerman cannot bear. books, their narcissism and narrowness— draw biographical attention than to repel Naturally, his concerns go beyond the or, as he himself put it, comparing his it. In the weeks before his death, of lung reputation of his mentor. He will visit his own work to his father’s conversation, cancer, in early 2009, he continued to doctors; he will swim his laps and take “Family, family, family, Newark, Newark, write, including an admiring review of his pills. But he knows what awaits: “Once Newark, Jew, Jew, Jew.” The critic Irving Blake Bailey’s biography of John Cheever. I was dead, who could protect the story Howe cracked that the “cruelest thing And five years later there it was: “Up- of my life from Richard Kliman?” anyone can do with ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ dike,” a biography by Adam Begley. is to read it twice.” Howe had it all wrong. In Roth’s “Exit Ghost” (2007), the last hilip Roth’s efforts to control the shape Roth turned self-obsession into art. Over of the Zuckerman books, half a century Pof his biography are, inevitably, a part time, he took on vast themes—love, lust, has elapsed since the visit with Lonoff. of his biography—especially of one as loneliness, marriage, masculinity, ambi- Zuckerman, suffering from prostate can- comprehensive as Blake Bailey’s eight- tion, community, solitude, loyalty, be- cer, has been sapped of his physical and hundred-page opus, “Philip Roth: The trayal, patriotism, rebellion, piety, disgrace, creative vitality. Yet his greatest anxiety Biography” (Norton). The book is autho- the body, the imagination, American his- does not concern his impotence and in- rized—Roth appointed Bailey to the tory, mortality, the relentless mistakes of continence, or his deteriorating short- role—but Bailey was guaranteed edito- life—and he did so in a variety of forms: term memory. He fears, above all, the rial independence as well as full access. comedy, parody, romance, conventional tyranny of the biographer. Growing up in North Jersey, I dis- narrative, postmodernism, autofiction. In In New York for medical treatment, covered on my parents’ shelf a mauve each performance of a self, Roth cap- Zuckerman encounters a young hustler paperback of “Goodbye, Columbus” right tured a distinct sound and consciousness. named Richard Kliman, who has declared next to Harry Golden’s “For 2 Cents The tonal and stylistic road travelled from himself Lonoff’s biographer and who in- Plain.” My father was brought up in the Roth’s “Goodbye, Columbus” to his “Sab- sists on interviewing Zuckerman. He is Jewish precincts of Paterson, not far from bath’s Theater” is as long as that from also eager to share a great discovery, Lon- Roth; he went to school with Allen Gins- Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” to his “Inter- off’s “secret”—an incestuous affair with berg. And so, for me, reading about Roth’s stellar Space.” There are books among his older half sister. Zuckerman is out- Newark was hardly a journey to Man- Roth’s thirty-one that I have no plans to raged at Kliman’s presumption. During dalay; it was as familiar as Sunday at Ta- revisit—“Letting Go,” “Deception,” “The a heated conversation in Central Park, batchnick’s. After I moved beyond the Humbling”—but in nearly fifty years of Zuckerman refuses to coöperate with the more immediate appeal of Roth’s early reading him I’ve never been bored. “rampaging” young man, and denounces books—the antic sex and impious hu- I got to know Roth in the nineteen- his project: “So you’re going to redeem mor—I settled into a lifetime of search- nineties, when I interviewed him for this Lonoff’s reputation as a writer by ruin- ing out his inimitable voice, its head- magazine around the time he published ing it as a man. Replace the genius of the long drive and deepening complexities. “The Human Stain.” To be in his pres- genius with the secret of the genius.” When a new volume was released, I’d ence was an exhilarating, though hardly Zuckerman considers the biographer no sooner think of waiting to read it relaxing, experience. He was unnervingly a ruthless seducer, out to cut the artist than I would to hear the new Dylan. present, a condor on a branch, unblink- down to comprehensible and assailable From the start, critics complained ing, alive to everything: the best detail in your story, the slackest points in your ar- gument. His intelligence was immense, his performances and imitations wildly funny. But, as Bailey’s book makes plain, he could no more outwit life than the rest of us can. He was often undone—by depression, by his two marriages, by the loneliness and intensity of his commit- ment to the work. He could be tender and manipulative, generous and insis- tently selfish. As Roth’s rages, resent- ments, and cruelties appear through the pages, it’s natural to wonder why he pro- vided Bailey so much access. At the same time, no biographer could surpass the un- stinting self-indictments of Roth’s fic- tional alter egos. Bailey barely wrestles with this. In fact, he scarcely engages with the novels at all—a curious oversight in “Well, if I’d known it was going to be like this, a literary biography. He summarizes them I would have worn different shoes.” as they come along, and quotes the re- views, but he plainly feels that his job is Happy Loman in “Death of a Salesman,” community leaders accused Roth of cul- elsewhere, researching and assembling the shepherd in “Oedipus Rex,” and the tural treason. “What is being done to si- the life away from the desk and the page. ragpicker in “The Madwoman of Chail- lence this man?” Emanuel Rackman, the Nobody will tackle an eight-hundred- lot.” After reading Thomas Mann’s no- president of the Rabbinical Council of page biography of a novelist without hav- vella “Mario and the Magician” and get- America, wrote. “Medieval Jews would ing read at least some of the novels. And ting a chance to lecture in a lit-crit course, have known what to do with him.” readers will know that Roth did not lead Roth decided that he’d become a profes- Later that year, Roth’s first book ap- a mythopoetic life. He fought no wars, sor. Maybe he’d write, too. peared, the collection “Goodbye, Colum- led no political movements. While two- After Bucknell, he spent a year as a bus.” The narrator’s love interest in the thirds of European Jewry was being de- graduate student in English at the Uni- title novella, Brenda Patimkin, was based stroyed in the camps, Roth, who was versity of Chicago, where he was fired on Maxine Groffsky, a girlfriend of Roth’s born in 1933, grew up safe, loved, and up by a course about America’s Lost Gen- from Maplewood, New Jersey, and later lucky in Essex County. Still, Bailey’s re- eration. Like any novice, Roth learned to a well-known editor and literary agent. search is often revealing and vivid. His write through imitation. His first pub- The Patimkin family is portrayed as com- description of mid-century Jewish New- lished story, “The Day It Snowed,” was ically assimilated, living a prosperous ark echoes with the sounds of the cafete- so thoroughly Truman Capote that, he Short Hills existence of country clubs rias and the butcher shops, women play- later remarked, he made “Capote look and rhinoplasty. The Groffsky family was ing mah-jongg at picnics in the park, like a longshoreman.” In 1955, Roth en- unamused, and grumbled about taking weary fathers heading off to theshvitz listed in the Army rather than wait for legal action. Twenty-five years later, Roth on Mercer Street, where they gossiped the draft. He was sent to Fort Dix, where attended a talk given by the Israeli states- and drank amid a “concerto of farts.” life had its downsides—he ruined his man Abba Eban, who had supported ne- “He who is loved by his parents is a back lugging a kettle of potatoes. The gotiations with the Palestinians. After- conquistador,” Roth used to say, and he upside was that he found time to write ward, Roth ran into Irene Groffsky, was adored by his parents, though both and to discover his subject and his voice. Maxine’s sister, who angrily told Roth could be daunting to the young Philip. After a medical discharge from the that he had ruined her family’s life. Roth Herman Roth sold insurance; Bess ruled Army, Roth turned down a job as a fact told her, “Irene, if you can find it in your the family’s modest house, on Summit checker at The New Yorker and accepted heart to forgive Yasir Arafat, surely you Avenue, in a neighborhood of European one as an instructor at the University of can find it in your heart to forgive me.” Jewish immigrants, their children and Chicago, where, as he later recounted, he grandchildren. There was little money, “proceeded almost immediately to fuck “ ife is very short, and freedom is very few books. What religious instruction up my life for the next ten years.” In Chi- Lvery precious,” Roth wrote from Philip and his brother, Sandy, received cago, Roth met Margaret (Maggie) Mar- Fort Dix to a friend. “When I get out had scant meaning to them. “I didn’t know tinson, a divorcée with two children who I’m going to live right up to the hilt, and what we were reading or hearing: Abra- came from a small Midwestern town and make these brief years extravagant as ham, Isaac—what is this stuff?,” Roth, whose tumultuous life (an alcoholic fa- hell. I’m going to go where I want and an ardent secularist, recounted to Bailey, ther, a brute of an ex-husband) fascinated do what I want to do—if I can ever fig- in one of their many interviews. “They him with its “goyish chaos” and provided ure out what that is—and BE, thoroughly lived in tents. I couldn’t figure this out; material for his fiction. BE.” He was already determined to live Jews in the Weequahic section, they didn’t Roth mined his life for his characters unfettered by excessive obligations. His live in tents.” The community’s aspira- from the beginning. He also found him- relationship with Martinson, stormy tions were conventional. Bailey reports self liberated, as the fifties wore on, by from the start, was formalized by mar- that Weequahic High at the time grad- the example of two older Jewish-Amer- riage only in 1959, when she told him that uated more doctors, lawyers, dentists, and ican writers. Saul Bellow’s “The Adven- she was pregnant, and that if he married accountants than practically any other tures of Augie March” helped “close the her she would agree to an abortion. They school in the country. gap between Thomas Mann and Damon were living in New York at the time, and Roth was not an academic prodigy; Runyon,” Roth recalled. Bernard Mala- she later confessed that she had gone to his teachers sensed his intelligence but mud’s “The Assistant” showed him that Tompkins Square Park, in the East Vil- they were not overawed by his classroom “you can write about the Jewish poor, you lage, paid a pregnant woman to urinate performance. Yet he had nascent literary can write about the Jewish inarticulate, in a cup, and then taken the sample to interests. Early on, Roth enjoyed Nor- you can describe things near at hand.” a pharmacist. As Roth said in a divorce man Corwin’s “On a Note of Triumph,” Describing things near at hand with affidavit, “I was completely stunned on Howard Fast’s “Citizen Tom Paine,” and unsparing candor was always the proj- learning of her deception. Our marriage Thomas Wolfe’s “Look Homeward, ect, but it could arouse parochial furies. had been three years of constant nag- Angel.” At Bucknell, a liberal-arts col- In March, 1959, The New Yorker pub- ging and irritation, and now I learned lege in Pennsylvania, he moved on to lished Roth’s story “Defender of the that the marriage itself was based on a Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Ander- Faith,” in which a Jewish enlisted man grotesque lie.” son, Sinclair Lewis, Ring Lardner, and tries to manipulate a Jewish sergeant into These marital miseries are duly cata- Erskine Caldwell. Roth was always a giving him special treatment out of eth- logued in Bailey’s biography. During a performer. As a student actor, he played nic kinship. Various rabbis and Jewish trip to Italy, Martinson gets behind the

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 65 sies. These same masturbatory fantasies he both acted out and channeled into his writing.” Roth, who was obviously Klein- schmidt’s “playwright,” saw the article just after finishing the novel. He spent multiple sessions berating Kleinschmidt for this “psychoanalytic cartoon” and yet continued his analysis with him for years. Which isn’t to say that he developed a conventional temperament. When Roth learned, in 1968, that Martinson had been killed in a car crash, his grief was less than crippling. (The damaged, vengeful protag- onist of his novel “When She Was Good,” published the previous year, was based on her.) In the taxi on the way to the ser- vice at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel, on Madison Avenue, the driver turned to him and said, “Got the good “This neighborhood still attracts the occasional exile.” news early, huh?” Roth, Bailey writes, “re- alized he’d been whistling the entire ride.” The publication of “Portnoy’s Com- •• plaint,” the following year, made him wealthy, celebrated, and notorious. Peo- wheel of a Renault and speeds along a bare, Mr. Roth appears with nails, hair, ple stopped him in the streets and said, mountainside road outside of Siena. Sud- and teeth, speaking coherently.” Most “Hey, Portnoy, leave it alone!” The liver denly, like Nicole in “Tender Is the Night,” important, he counselled Roth to ignore jokes were funny the first five thousand she declares, “I’m going to kill both of pious critics who would have him write times, he used to say. “Let Nathan see us!” Roth grabs the wheel, and they con- the Jewish equivalent of “socialist real- what it is to be lifted from obscurity,” tinue on to the Rhône Valley. Roth started ism” and “public-relations releases”; in- Lonoff had told his wife. “Let him not seeing Hans Kleinschmidt, an eccentric stead, he urged Roth “to ignore all ob- come hammering at our door to tell us name-dropping psychoanalyst, three or jections and to continue on his present that he wasn’t warned.” Roth could not four days a week. Asked later how he course.” “Goodbye, Columbus” received stand this lurid brand of notoriety. Years could justify the expense ($27.50 a ses- the National Book Award when Roth later, he told friends that he wished he’d sion), Roth said, “It kept me from kill- had just turned twenty-seven. And yet, never published “Portnoy’s Complaint.” ing my first wife.” He told Kleinschmidt despite the approbation, Roth wavered. He escaped the city and eventually bought that he fantasized about dropping into His first, and longest, novel, “Letting an eighteenth-century farmhouse in the the Hoffritz store on Madison Avenue Go,” published in 1962, lacked the vi- town of Warren, Connecticut, named it and buying a knife. “Philip, you didn’t brancy of those early stories, and he strug- the Fiction Factory, and, for decades to like the Army that much,” Kleinschmidt gled for the next several years to free come, set about his daily labors in a stu- told him. “How will you enjoy prison?” himself from its slightly ponderous, al- dio he had built overlooking a meadow. Bailey also tots up Roth’s extramar- most Jamesian style. (“Her head was car- His habits were those of a monk: spar- ital forays. They are numerous. Roth has ried forward on her neck, and the result tan diet and furnishings, regular exercise, a fling with Alice Denham, Playboy’s was that her large sculpted nose sailed crew-neck sweaters, sensible shoes, and Miss July, 1956, who, as her cheerfully into the wind a little too defiantly— strict hours. If he was not in his studio unapologetic memoir “Sleeping with which compromised the pride of the ap- by nine, he would think, “Malamud has Bad Boys” revealed, also slept with Nel- pendage, though not its fanciness.”) already been at it for two hours.” son Algren, James Jones, Joseph Heller, By 1967, Roth started publishing sec- At his desk, Roth doubled down. Just and William Gaddis. “Manhattan was tions of what would become “Portnoy’s as he had refused to bend to the rabbis a river of men flowing past my door, and Complaint” in Esquire, Partisan Review, after “Defender of the Faith,” he refused when I was thirsty I drank,” she wrote. and New American Review. Farcical and all demands to sanitize his work after So did Roth. Roth and Martinson fi- unbound, Roth seemed revived. As those “Portnoy.” He told Bellow of his early nally split up in 1963. pieces were appearing, Kleinschmidt pub- work, “I kept being virtuous, and virtu- Roth’s domestic dramas ran parallel lished a journal article in which he de- ous in ways that were destroying me. And to his early creative achievements and scribes the case of a “successful Southern when I let the repellent in, I found that struggles. Bellow greeted “Goodbye, Co- playwright” with an overbearing mother: I was alive on my own terms.” lumbus” with an uncharacteristically rap- “His rebellion was sexualized, leading to In 1976, Roth starting seeing the Brit- turous review: “Unlike those of us who compulsive masturbation which provided ish actress Claire Bloom, who had been came howling into the world, blind and an outlet for a myriad of hostile fanta- a star since she made her début, at twenty-

66 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 one, in Charlie Chaplin’s “Limelight” ies borrowed from my leg.” After the op­ it in “Here We Are,” a loving, yet know­ (1952). At least for a while, this seemed eration, he and Bloom formalized their ing, memoir, “The appetite for vengeance a happy union. But the decade following relationship by getting married, and he was insatiable. Philip could not get enough “Portnoy” was a struggle for Roth, cre­ embarked on one of the great late­career of getting even.” atively. He certainly didn’t revert to being outbursts of creativity in the history of Roth’s mental health, like his physi­ a nice Jewish boy, but it took some false American literature, announced by “Op­ cal health, proved less than stable. There starts to reach a state of mastery. In “The eration Shylock” (1993) and “Sabbath’s were harrowing periods of depression; a Breast” and “The Professor of Desire,” Theater” (1995). The latter is probably Halcion­induced breakdown; stays at a he devised a needy, highly sexed alter ego the most profane of Roth’s novels; it was psychiatric hospital. Fortunately, Roth named David Kepesh, a professor of lit­ also his favorite, the book in which he was blessed with many loyal friends. For erature, but there could be something felt himself to be utterly free and at his a while, one was Ross Miller, an English forced about Kepesh’s transgressions. It best. “Céline is my Proust,” he used to professor at the University of Connecti­ wasn’t until “The Ghost Writer,” in 1979, say; “Sabbath’s Theater” combines the cut. Roth had received a letter about his that Roth regained his footing. Zuckerman, transgressive and the elegiac, and both writing from Miller, and was so taken Roth’s most Roth­like surrogate, was a registers have the depth of love. with its intelligence that he sent the perfectly pitched instrument. The costs Roth and Bloom divorced, miserably, scholar a work in progress and invited of radical freedom—the challenge of grap­ in 1995. A year later, Bloom published a him to his house to discuss it. They started pling openly, outrageously, with even the memoir, “Leaving a Doll’s House,” in seeing each other frequently. They talked ugliest impulses of life—became a subject which Roth was depicted as brilliant and about literature, women, sports, and pol­ of his work. Both piety and impiety were initially attentive to the demands of her itics. One day, while walking along the interrogated, damn the cost. In “Zucker­ career, but also as unpredictable, unfaith­ street in Chicago, Roth told Miller to man Unbound” (1981), Nathan condemns ful, remote, and, at times, horribly un­ go on without him; he was headed to a himself with these words: “Cold­hearted kind, not least about Bloom’s devotion high­rise on Lake Shore Drive. His betrayer of the most intimate confessions, to her grown daughter. The book quoted brother, Sandy, lived there, and Roth was cutthroat caricaturist of your own loving incensed faxes that Roth sent Bloom at going to jump off the roof. Miller told parents, graphic reporter of encounters the end of their union, demanding that Roth that, if he intended to kill himself, with women to whom you have been she pay sixty­two billion dollars for fail­ he’d have to do it in front of him. The deeply bound by trust, by sex, by love— ing to honor their prenuptial agreement, crisis passed. The friendship deepened. no, the virtue racket ill becomes you.” and another bill for the “five or six hun­ Living alone and on his own terms, If Roth exposed other people’s stories, dred hours” that he had spent going over Roth took on increasingly political and he also exposed his own. In 1988, he pub­ her lines with her. historical themes. “American Pastoral” lished his first memoir, “The Facts,” about Roth was flattened by “Leaving a Doll’s (1997) was a book about the way his­ his upbringing in Newark, his disastrous House” and the bad publicity that came tory, in this case, the chaos of the six­ first marriage, and his early years as a with it. He never got over it. “You know ties and the Vietnam War, descends writer, when he was being attacked as a what Chekhov said when without notice on an up­ self­hating Jew. “Patrimony,” three years someone said to him ‘This standing citizen of a small later, was an exquisite and unsparing ac­ too shall pass?’” Roth told New Jersey town. The book count of his father’s decline. To charac­ Bailey. “ ‘Nothing passes.’ Put launched a series of nov­ terize these books as defensive fortifica­ that in the fucking book.” els—“I Married a Commu­ tions, moats dug to keep the biographers In his fury and his hun­ nist,” “The Human Stain,” at bay, is to trivialize them. And yet it ger for retribution, Roth pro­ “The Plot Against Amer­ was at about this time that the biograph­ duced “Notes for My Biog­ ica”—set in specifically ical anxiety began to worm its way into rapher,” an obsessive, almost imagined twentieth­century Roth’s concerns. page­by­page rebuttal of American moments, and, An early sense of mortality was surely Bloom’s memoir: “Adultery taken together, they deep­ a part of it. Roth spent much of his life makes numerous bad mar­ ened Roth’s already im­ in pain. Many spinal surgeries followed riages bearable and holds them together mense reputation. (Commercially, he his mishap in the Army. Diagnosed with and in some cases can make the adul­ would never come close to equalling the heart disease before he was fifty, Roth terer a far more decent husband or wife sales of “Portnoy’s Complaint.”) lived with an acute sense of imminent than ... the domestic situation warrants. Roth’s morbid fascination with biog­ catastrophe. In 1989, when he was fifty­ (See Madame Bovary for a pitiless cri­ raphy intensified when, in 2000, James six, he was swimming laps in his pool tique of this phenomenon.)” Only at the Atlas’s biography of Bellow appeared. It and was overwhelmed by chest pain. The last minute was Roth persuaded by friends was a book that Roth had urged Atlas next day, he had quintuple­bypass sur­ and advisers not to publish the diatribe, to write, but Bellow hated it, and so, in gery. “I would smile to myself in the hos­ but he could never put either of his mar­ the end, did Roth. An acidic trickle of pital bed at night,” he wrote, “envision­ riages behind him for good. He was sim­ disenchantment, especially regarding ing my heart as a tiny infant suckling ilarly incapable of setting aside much Bellow’s inconstancy with women and itself on this blood coursing unobstructed smaller grievances. As Benjamin Taylor, family, runs through it. In the hope of now through the newly attached arter­ one of his closest late­in­life friends, put avoiding a similar disaster, Roth asked

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 67 Ross Miller to write his biography. (His rangement and the friendship were over. on W. E. B. Du Bois or Hermione Lee friends Hermione Lee and Judith Thur- That year, Roth retired from writing. on Virginia Woolf, but, when it comes man declined his invitations.) He prom- He had seen others, including his hero to the life, Bailey is industrious, rigor- ised Miller complete access to his papers Bellow, go on a book or two too long. ous, and uncowed. We learn of Roth’s and to his friends and family, and even And so he walked away from it all, quot- generosity; of his remarkable service in coached him on lines of questioning. He ing Joe Louis: “I did the best I could getting Milan Kundera, Danilo Kiš, was particularly anxious for Miller to with what I had.” Roth learned to take Bruno Schulz, and other Eastern Euro- rebut what he knew would be the deep- it easy. He listened to music, reread old pean writers published in English. Bai- est objection to the way he had lived his favorites, visited museums, took after- ley describes, too, Roth’s many close and life: “This whole mad fucking misogy- noon naps, and watched baseball in the enduring friendships with women, some nistic bullshit!” evening. He was less competitive now. of them former lovers. But he doesn’t “It wasn’t just ‘Fucked this one fucked He publicly praised, among others, Nell hold back on the sorts of anecdote that that one fucked this one,’” he told Miller Irvin Painter, Sean Wilentz, Louise Er- his subject feared most, including “this in one of their interviews. “If you’re writ- drich, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nicole Krauss, whole mad fucking misogynistic bull- ing the biography of Henry Miller, or Zadie Smith, and Teju Cole. He took shit.” Roth was a dedicated teacher at Norman Mailer, or any man who hasn’t victory laps at birthday celebrations and various universities, but he also availed kept his sex hidden—or D. H. Lawrence, symposiums on his work. He accepted himself of what he viewed as the per- for God’s sake. Or Colette! Why shouldn’t a medal from Barack Obama. In 2014, quisites. At the University of Pennsyl- I be treated as seriously as Colette on he was even awarded an honorary de- vania, a friend and colleague—acting, this? She gave a blow job to this guy in gree from the Jewish Theological Sem- the friend admits, almost as a “pimp”— the railway station. Who gives a fuck inary. The headline the next day in The helped Roth fill the last seats in his over- about that? ...That doesn’t tell me any- Forward read “Philip Roth, Once Out- subscribed classes with particularly at- thing. What did hand jobs mean to her? cast, Joins Jewish Fold.” There were, tractive undergraduates. Roth’s treatment Why did she like that?” He thought sex for a while, love affairs with much younger of a young woman named Felicity (a should be sutured to significance. women, even talk of having a child. Then pseudonym), a friend and house guest For years, Roth and Miller were boon he retired from sex, too. of Claire Bloom’s daughter, is particu- companions; the conflicts of interest be- There was just the one serious occu- larly disturbing. Roth made a sexual tween biographer and subject were, as pational matter left to resolve. In 2012, overture to Felicity, which she rebuffed; Bailey outlines them, almost comically Roth invited Blake Bailey to his apart- the next morning, he left her an irate outsized. Miller became Roth’s health-care ment, on West Seventy-ninth Street, for note accusing her of “sexual hysteria.” proxy. One year, Roth wrote him a check a kind of job interview. After quizzing When Bloom wrote about the incident for ten thousand dollars, telling him, “I Bailey on how a Gentile from Oklahoma in her memoir, Roth answered in his want you to share in the general prosperity.” could possibly write the life of a Jew from unpublished “Notes” with a sense of af- Writing a long novel, carrying in your Newark, the deal was made. “I don’t want front rather than penitence: “This is mind an extended imaginative text, is you to rehabilitate me,” Roth told him. what people are. This is what people a feat of memory and concentration for “Just make me interesting.” do. ... Hate me for what I am, not for any creative soul. It is especially taxing As he had with Miller, Roth went to what I’m not.” as one ages. As Roth reached his mid-sev- great lengths for Bailey, providing him enties, he recalibrated the dimensions letters, drafts, a photo album featuring s Bailey’s biography is scavenged of his work as well as its concerns. “Ev- his girlfriends. He wrote a lengthy mem- Afor its more scandalous takeaways, eryman,” published in 2006, is a com- orandum for Bailey on a long-term af- some readers may find reason to shun pact, Chekhovian tour de force on mor- fair with a local Norwegian-born phys- the work, whatever its depth, energy, tality, and Roth, with varying success, ical therapist—the model for Drenka in and variousness. And yet the exposure stayed in that wintry mode until the end “Sabbath’s Theater.” Roth said he now here is the same self-exposure that Roth of his career. “worked for Blake Bailey.” In the ac- always practiced: he revealed himself to The biographical project, meanwhile, knowledgments, Bailey describes his Bos- his biographer as he once revealed him- went off the rails. Miller seemed intent wellian access: self to the page. It is worth thinking on relying almost solely on his own obser- about why he did so. For Roth, outrage That first summer I spent a week in Connecti- vations and relationship with Roth. Over cut, interviewing him six hours a day in his stu- was part of art. He would hold back nei- the years, he conducted very few inter- dio. Now and then we had to take bathroom breaks, ther the pure nor the perverse. His de- views. Important sources—friends, teach- and we could hear each other’s muffled streams cision, just twenty years after the Ho- ers, classmates, rivals—were dying off. through the door. One lovely sun-dappled after- locaust, to portray Jews in all their human Roth also began to hear that Miller was noon I sat on his studio couch, listening to our variety, without sanctimony or hesita- greatest living novelist empty his bladder, and re- describing him as “manic-depressive.” flected that this was about as good as it gets for tion, proved gravely offensive to many. The theatre critic and producer Robert an American literary biographer. The reaction to “Portnoy’s Complaint,” Brustein, an old friend of Roth’s, reported a decade later, was of another order. back that Miller had told him, “He knows The result is hardly a subtle engage- “This is the book for which all anti- he’s writing shit now. It just lies there ment with a writer’s mind and work on Semites have been praying,” Gershom like a lox.” By the end of 2009, the ar- the level of, say, David Levering Lewis Scholem, the eminent scholar of Jew-

68 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 ish history and mysticism, wrote. “I dare- say that with the next turn of history, which will not be long delayed, this book BRIEFLY NOTED will make all of us defendants at court.” Such chastisement did not discourage New Yorkers, by Craig Taylor (Norton). The joys and agonies Roth from finding literary sustenance of New York City—what this British author unabashedly in sin. His work was not about rectitude calls “the greatest ongoing flicker of human life I’ve ever en- or virtue. He looked away from noth- countered”—are the subject of a teeming oral history. Over ing, least of all in himself. six years, Taylor interviewed a profusion of residents, includ- In “Sabbath’s Theater,” the protago- ing a window washer, a private chef, a bodega worker, a sex nist, Mickey Sabbath, is told by his wife, worker and Occupy protester, and a lice consultant. The ka- “You’re as sick as your secrets.” It doesn’t leidoscopic portrait captures the city’s thrilling lexical diver- sit well with him: sity, as well as moments of grace, compassion, cruelty, and It was not for the first time that he was hear- racism. “I do have like a sort of philosophical thing about ing this pointless, shallow, idiotic maxim. “Wrong,” New York,” one of his interviewees—an artist and former he told her. .. . “You’re as adventurous as your se- inmate of Rikers Island—confesses; the obsessions, alle- crets, as abhorrent as your secrets, as lonely as giances, habits, desires, and serendipities on display here sug- your secrets, as alluring as your secrets, as coura- gest why anyone might. geous as your secrets, as vacuous as your secrets, as lost as your secrets.” Speak, Okinawa, by Elizabeth Miki Brina (Knopf ). In 1973, To the end, this was something of a the author’s parents met at a night club on Okinawa—her mantra for Roth, even as he arranged, father a well-off American soldier, her mother a poor wait- with his sedulous biographer, to have so ress who grew up during the U.S. occupation after the Second few secrets left. On Memorial Day, 2018, World War. In this searingly candid memoir, Brina explores I watched as Roth was buried in a small how the complex dynamics of her parents’ relationship fol- graveyard on the campus of Bard Col- lowed them to America and influenced her own self-percep- lege, in upstate New York. Roth, who tion. As a child, Brina favored her white, American heritage, thought of religion as fairy tales and il- viewing her mother with contempt. But, in adulthood, two lusion, left strict instructions: no Kad- poignant trips to Japan fostered empathy for her mother and dish, no God, no speeches. Roth had her Okinawan family. The book concludes with a powerful asked a range of friends to read passages indictment of the continued American presence on Okinawa. from his novels. The mourners heard only the language of Roth and then shov- The Rain Heron, by Robbie Arnott (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). elled dirt into his grave until it was full. Set in an indeterminate country in the years following a mil- In the small crowd, I saw Bailey. He itary coup and a climate crisis, this novel focusses on an aging must have been in the thick of writing woman, Ren, who has fled to the mountains and lives off the at the time. In his book, he, too, has let land as a recluse. She is tracked down by Zoe Harker, a young the repellent in. Although Roth would lieutenant in the Army, who is on assignment to snare a myth- not have enjoyed some of the tumult ical rain heron—a “bird made of water” with the ability to alter that will now attend its publication, he the weather. Ren, who knows where to find the creature, re- might have admired his biographer’s fuses to help. During the ensuing power struggle, each woman industry, even his refusal to fall under seeks to escape the shadows of her past. Arnott’s writing is his subject’s sway. The man who emerges clear and compelling, particularly in descriptions of the folk- is a literary genius, constantly getting loric bird, with its “rain-smeared transparency.” it wrong, loving others, then hurting them, wrestling with himself and with Poetics of Work, by Noémi Lefebvre, translated from the French language, devoted to an almost unfath- by Sophie Lewis (Transit). This experimental novel is partly omable degree to the art of fiction. Roth a tongue-in-cheek manifesto for poets and partly a Socratic is never as alive, as funny, as compli- dialogue with a superego called Papa, who thinks poetry is cated, as enraging, or as intelligent as pointless. An unnamed, genderless narrator wanders around he is in the books of his own devising. Lyon, smoking joints and questioning society’s ideas of use- But here we know him better, even if fulness. “I don’t know how to defend a person who’s being the biographical form cannot quite con- crushed and dragged along the ground and kicked to a pulp tain this author’s life and works. Roth, with complete impunity,” they lament, “nor do I know how a constant reader of Henry James, would to get a job or write a CV or any biography, nor even po- take no issue with the opening line of etry.” They read obsessively about the Third Reich and see James’s story “Louisa Pallant”: “Never echoes in the xenophobic tenor of contemporary France, say you know the last words about any hinting that capitalism and fascism share a disregard for any- human heart!”  thing considered unproductive.

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 69 8 A.M. and stick it out on hold. Before the incentives had been established, doc- tors couldn’t give appointments soon enough; afterward, they wouldn’t give appointments late enough. “Is this news to you?” the presenter asked. “That is news to me,” Blair replied. “Anybody else had this experience?” the presenter asked, turning to the audience. Chaos descended. People started shout- ing, Blair started stammering, and a na- tion watched its leader come undone over a classic case of counting gone wrong. Blair and his advisers are far from the first people to fall afoul of their own well-intentioned targets. Whenever you try to force the real world to do some- thing that can be counted, unintended consequences abound. That’s the subject of two new books about data and sta- tistics: “Counting: How We Use Num- bers to Decide What Matters” (Live- right), by Deborah Stone, which warns of the risks of relying too heavily on numbers, and “The Data Detective” (Riv- erhead), by Tim Harford, which shows ways of avoiding the pitfalls of a world driven by data. Both books come at a time when the books phenomenal power of data has never been more evident. The COVID-19 pan- demic demonstrated just how vulnera- WHAT REALLY COUNTS ble the world can be when you don’t have good statistics, and the Presidential elec- When it comes to people—and policy—numbers are both powerful and perilous. tion filled our newspapers with polls and projections, all meant to slake our thirst by hannah fry for insight. In a year of uncertainty, num- bers have even come to serve as a source of comfort. Seduced by their seeming ony Blair was usually relaxed and bright technocrats, decided to address precision and objectivity, we can feel be- T charismatic in front of a crowd. But this issue by setting a target: doctors trayed when the numbers fail to capture an encounter with a woman in the au- would be given a financial incentive to the unruliness of reality. dience of a London television studio in see patients within forty-eight hours. The particular mistake that Tony Blair April, 2005, left him visibly flustered. It seemed like a sensible plan. But au- and his policy mavens made is common Blair, eight years into his tenure as Brit- dience members knew of a problem that enough to warrant its own adage: once ain’s Prime Minister, had been on a mis- Blair and his government did not. Live a useful number becomes a measure of sion to improve the National Health on national television, Diana Church success, it ceases to be a useful number. Service. The N.H.S. is a much loved, calmly explained to the Prime Minister This is known as Goodhart’s law, and it much mocked, and much neglected Brit- that her son’s doctor had asked to see reminds us that the human world can ish institution, with all kinds of quirks him in a week’s time, and yet the clinic move once you start to measure it. Deb- and inefficiencies. At the time, it was had refused to take any appointments orah Stone writes about Soviet factories notoriously difficult to get a doctor’s ap- more than forty-eight hours in advance. and farms that were given production pointment within a reasonable period; Otherwise, physicians would lose out on quotas, on which jobs and livelihoods de- ailing people were often told they’d have bonuses. If Church wanted her son to pended. Textile factories were required to wait weeks for the next available open- see the doctor in a week, she would have to produce quantities of fabric that were ing. Blair’s government, bustling with to wait until the day before, then call at specified by length, and so looms were adjusted to make long, narrow strips. We can feel betrayed when statistics fail to capture the unruliness of reality. Uzbek cotton pickers, judged on the

70 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD MCGUIRE weight of their harvest, would soak their answer using data, with a well-known Harford explains, arose from the word- cotton in water to make it heavier. Sim- example concerning schools. We might ing of the labor-force survey. In previous ilarly, when America’s first transconti- be interested in whether our children are years, people had been asked to list their nental railroad was built, in the eighteen- getting a good education, but it’s very primary activity or job, but a new version sixties, companies were paid per mile of hard to pin down exactly what we mean of the survey asked individuals to include track. So a section outside Omaha, Ne- by “good.” Instead, we tend to ask a re- their secondary roles, too. Suddenly, hun- braska, was laid down in a wide arc, rather lated and easier question: How well do dreds of thousands of Ugandan women, than a straight line, adding several un- students perform when examined on who worked primarily as housewives but necessary (yet profitable) miles to the rails. some corpus of fact? And so we get the also worked long hours doing additional The trouble arises whenever we use nu- much lamented “teach to the test” syn- jobs, counted toward the total. merical proxies for the thing we care drome. For that matter, think about our To simplify the world enough that it about. Stone quotes the environmental use of G.D.P. to indicate a country’s can be captured with numbers means economist James Gustave Speth: “We economic well-being. By that metric, a throwing away a lot of detail. The inev- tend to get what we measure, so we should schoolteacher could contribute more to itable omissions can bias the data against measure what we want.” a nation’s economic success by assaulting certain groups. Stone describes an at- The problem isn’t easily resolved, a student and being sent to a high-secu- tempt by the United Nations to develop though. The issues around Goodhart’s rity prison than by educating the student, guidelines for measuring levels of vio- law have come to haunt artificial-intel- owing to all the labor that the teacher’s lence against women. Representatives ligence design: just how do you com- incarceration would create. from Europe, North America, Australia, municate an objective to your algorithm One of the most controversial uses and New Zealand put forward ideas about when the only language you have in of algorithms in recent years, as it hap- types of violence to be included, based common is numbers? The computer sci- pens, involves recommendations for the on victim surveys in their own countries. entist Robert Feldt once created an al- release of incarcerated people awaiting These included hitting, kicking, biting, gorithm charged with landing a plane trial. In courts across America, when slapping, shoving, beating, and choking. on an aircraft carrier. The objective was defendants stand accused of a crime, an Meanwhile, some Bangladeshi women to bring a simulated plane to a gentle algorithm crunches through their crim- proposed counting other forms of vio- stop, thus registering as little force as inal history and spits out a risk score, lence—acts that are not uncommon on possible on the body of the aircraft. Un- meant to help judges decide whether or the Indian subcontinent—such as burn- fortunately, during the training, the al- not they should be kept behind bars ing women, throwing acid on them, drop- gorithm spotted a loophole. If, instead until they can be tried. Using data about ping them from high places, and forcing of bringing the simulated plane down previous defendants, the algorithm tries them to sleep in animal pens. None of smoothly, it deliberately slammed the to calculate the probability that an in- these acts were included in the final list. aircraft to a halt, the force would over- dividual will re-offend. But, once again, When surveys based on the U.N. guide- whelm the system and register as a per- there’s an insidious Kahnemanian swap lines are conducted, they’ll reveal little fect zero. Feldt realized that, in his vir- between what we care about and what about the women who have experienced tual trial, the algorithm was repeatedly we can count. The algorithm cannot these forms of violence. As Stone ob- destroying plane after plane after plane, predict who will re-offend. It can pre- serves, in order to count, one must first but earning top marks every time. dict only who will be rearrested. decide what should be counted. Numbers can be at their most dan- Arrest rates, of course, are not the Those who do the counting have gerous when they are used to control same for everyone. For example, Black power. Our perspectives are hard-coded things rather than to understand them. and white Americans use marijuana at into what we consider worth consider- Yet Goodhart’s law is really just hint- around the same levels, but the former ing. As a result, omissions can arise in ing at a much more basic limitation of are almost four times as likely to be ar- even the best-intentioned data-gather- a data-driven view of the world. As Tim rested for possession. When an algo- ing exercises. And, alas, there are times Harford writes, data “may be a pretty rithm is built out of bias-inflected data, when bias slips under the radar by de- decent proxy for something that really it will perpetuate bias-inflected practices. liberate design. In 2020, a paper appeared matters,” but there’s a critical gap be- (Brian Christian’s latest book, “The Align- in the journal Psychological Science that tween even the best proxies and the real ment Problem,” offers a superb overview examined how I.Q. was related to a range thing—between what we’re able to mea- of such quandaries.) That doesn’t mean of socioeconomic measures for countries sure and what we actually care about. a human judge will do better, but the around the world. Unfortunately, the bias-in, bias-out problem can sharply paper was based on a data set of national arford quotes the great psycholo- limit the value of these gleaming, data- I.Q. estimates co-published by the En- Hgist Daniel Kahneman, who, in his driven recommendations. glish psychologist Richard Lynn, an out- book “Thinking Fast and Slow,” explained Shift a question on a survey, even sub- spoken white supremacist. Although that, when faced with a difficult ques- tly, and everything can change. Around we should be able to assess Lynn’s sci- tion, we have a habit of swapping it for twenty-five years ago in Uganda, the ac- entific contributions independently of an easy one, often without noticing that tive labor force appeared to surge by more his personal views, his data set of I.Q. we’ve done so. There are echoes of this than ten per cent, from 6.5 million indi- estimates contains some suspiciously un- in the questions that society aims to viduals to 7.2 million. The increase, as representative samples for non-European

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 71 populations. For instance, the estimate many sheep again?” Questions like this control group. All they had to do, to for Somalia is based on one sample of aren’t just the stuff of thought experi- start, was amass a small army of genet- child refugees stationed in a camp in ments. A friend of mine, the author and ically identical marmorkreb juveniles Kenya. The estimate for Haiti is based psychologist Suzi Gage, married her hus- and raise them in identical surround- on a sample of a hundred and thirty-three band during the covid-19 pandemic, ings—give each the same amount of rural six-year-olds. And the estimate for when she was thirty-nine weeks preg- water at the same temperature, the same Botswana is based on a sample of high- nant. Owing to the restrictions in place amount of food, the same amount of school students tested in South Africa at the time, the number of people who light—and they should grow to be iden- in a language that was not their own. In- could attend her wedding was limited to tical adults. Then the scientists could deed, the psychologist Jelte Wicherts ten. Newborn babies would count as peo- vary the environmental conditions and demonstrated that the best predictor for ple for such purposes. Had she gone into study the results. whether an I.Q. sample for an African labor before the big day, she and the groom Yet, as these genetically identical mar- country would be included in Lynn’s data would have had to disinvite a member of morkrebs grew in identical environments, set was, in fact, whether that sample was their immediate families or leave the new- striking variations emerged. There were below the global average. Psychological born at home. substantial size differences, with one Science has since retracted the paper, but The world doesn’t always fit into easy growing to be twenty times the weight numerous other papers and books have categories. There are times when hard of another. Their behavior differed as used Lynn’s data set. judgments must be made about what to well: some became more aggressive than And, of course, I.Q. poses the famil- count, and how to count it. Hence the others, some preferred solitude, and so iar problems of the statistical proxy; it’s appeal of the immaculately controlled on. Some lived twice as long as their sib- a number that hopelessly fails at offer- laboratory experiment, where all perti- lings. No two of these marmorkrebs had ing anything like a definitive, absolute, nent data can be specified and accounted the same marbled patterning on their immutable measure of “intelligence.” for. The dream is that you’d end up with shell; there were even differences in the Such limitations don’t mean that it’s a truly nuanced description of reality. shape of their internal organs. without value, though. It has enormous An aquarium in Germany, though, may The scientists had gone to great predictive power for many things: in- pour cold water on such hopes. lengths to fix every data point; theirs was come, longevity, and professional suc- an exhaustive attempt to capture and con- cess. Our proxies can still serve as a met- he marmorkreb is a type of crayfish. trol everything that could possibly be ric of something, even if we find it hard TIt looks like many other types of measured. And still they found them- to define what that something is. crayfish—with spindly legs and a mot- selves perplexed by variations that they It’s impossible to count everything; tled body—but its appearance masks an could neither explain nor predict. Even we have to draw the line somewhere. But, exceptional difference: the marmorkreb the tiniest fluctuations, invisible to sci- when we’re dealing with fuzzier concepts reproduces asexually. A marmorkreb is ence, can magnify over time to yield a than the timing of medical appointments genetically identical to its offspring. world of difference. Nature is built on and the length of railroad tracks, line- Michael Blastland, in “The Hidden unavoidable randomness, limiting what drawing itself can create trouble. Har- Half: How the World Conceals Its Se- a data-driven view of reality can offer. ford gives the example of two sheep in a crets” (Atlantic Books), explains that, Around the turn of the millennium, field: “Except that one of the sheep isn’t when scientists first discovered this a group of researchers began recruiting a sheep, it’s a lamb. And the other sheep strange creature, they spied an opportu- people for a study of what they called is heavily pregnant—in fact, she’s in labor, nity to settle the age-old debate of na- “fragile families.” The researchers were about to give birth at any moment. How ture versus nurture. Here was the ideal looking for families with newborn ba- bies, in order to track the progress of the children and their parents over the years. They recruited more than four thousand families, and, after an initial visit, the team saw the families again when the children were ages one, three, five, nine, and fifteen. Each time, they collected data on the children’s development, fam- ily situation, and surroundings. They re- corded details about health, demograph- ics, the father-mother relationship, the kind of neighborhood the children lived in, and what time they went to bed. By the end of the study, the researchers had close to thirteen thousand data points on each child. And then the team did something rather clever. Instead of releasing the data in one go, they decided to hold Perhaps there’s another conclusion to tion, violence, limited access to health back some of the final block of data and be drawn. When polls have faltered in care. In that single number, we have a invite researchers around the world to predicting the outcome of elections, we vivid picture of all that it takes to keep see if they could predict certain find- hear calls for more and better data. But, a child alive. ings. Using everything that was known if more data isn’t always the answer, maybe Harford’s book takes us even further about these children up to that point, we need instead to reassess our relationship with similar statistics. Harford asks us could the world’s most sophisticated with predictions—to accept that there to consider a newspaper that is released machine-learning algorithms and math- are inevitable limits on what numbers once every hundred years: surely, he ematical models figure out how the chil- can offer, and to stop expecting mathe- argues, if such a paper were released dren’s lives would unfold by the time matical models on their own now, the front-page news they were fifteen? to carry us through times would be the striking fall in To focus the challenge, researchers of uncertainty. child mortality in the past were asked to predict six key metrics, century. “Imagine a school such as the educational performance of umbers are a poor sub- set up to receive a hundred the children at fifteen. To offer every- Nstitute for the richness five-year-olds, randomly one a baseline, the team also set up an and color of the real world. chosen from birth from almost laughably simple model for mak- It might seem odd that a around the world,” he writes. ing predictions. The model used only professional mathematician In 1918, thirty-two of those four data points, three of which were (like me) or economist (like children would have died be- recorded when the child was born: the Harford) would work to fore their first day of school. mother’s education level, marital sta- convince you of this fact. By 2018, only four would tus, and ethnicity. But to recognize the limitations of a data- have. This, Harford notes, is remarkable As you might expect, the baseline driven view of reality is not to downplay progress, and nothing other than num- model wasn’t very good at saying what its might. It’s possible for two things to bers could make that big-picture prog- would happen. In its best-performing be true: for numbers to come up short ress clear. category, it managed to explain only before the nuances of reality, while also Yet statistical vagaries can attend even around twenty per cent of the variance being the most powerful instrument we birth itself. Harford tells the story of a in the data. More surprising, however, have when it comes to understanding puzzling discrepancy in infant-mortal- was the performance of the sophisti- that reality. ity rates, which appeared to be consid- cated algorithms. In every single cate- The events of the pandemic offer a erably higher in the English Midlands gory, the models based on the full, phe- trenchant illustration. The statistics can’t than in London. Were Leicester obste- nomenally rich data set improved on capture the true toll of the virus. They tricians doing something wrong? Not ex- the baseline model by only a couple of can’t tell us what it’s like to work in an actly. In the U.K., any pregnancy that percentage points. Not one managed to intensive-care unit, or how it feels to lose ends after twenty-four weeks is legally push past six-per-cent accuracy in four a loved one to the disease. They can’t counted as a birth, whereas a pregnancy of the six categories. Even the best-per- even tell us the total number of lives that ends before twelve weeks tends to forming algorithm over all could predict that have been lost (as opposed to the be described as a miscarriage. For a preg- only twenty-three per cent of the vari- number of deaths that fit into a neat cat- nancy that ends somewhere between these ance in the children’s grade-point aver- egory, such as those occurring within two fixed points—perhaps at fifteen or ages. In fact, across the board, the gap twenty-eight days of a positive test). They twenty-three weeks of gestation—the between the best- and worst-perform- can’t tell us with certainty when normal- language used to describe the loss of a ing models was always smaller than the ity will return. But they are, nonetheless, baby matters deeply to the grieving par- gap between the best models and the the only means we have to understand ents, but there’s no legally established ter- reality. Which means, as the team noted, just how deadly the virus is, figure out minology. Doctors in the Midlands had such models are “better at predicting what works, and explore, however ten- developed the custom of recording that each other” than at predicting the path tatively, the possible futures that lie ahead. a baby had died; doctors in London that of a human life. Numbers can contain within them a miscarriage had occurred. The differ- It’s not that these models are bad. an entire story of human existence. In ence came down to what we called what They’re a sizable step up from gut in- Kenya, forty-three children out of every we counted. stinct and guesswork; we’ve known since thousand die before their fifth birthday. Numbers don’t lie, except when they the nineteen-fifties that even simple al- In Malaysia, only nine do. Stone quotes do. Harford is right to say that statis- gorithms outperform human predic- the Swedish public-health expert Hans tics can be used to illuminate the world tions. But the “fragile families” challenge Rosling on the point: “This measure with clarity and precision. They can help cautions against the temptation to be- takes the temperature of a whole society. remedy our human fallibilities. What’s lieve that numbers hold all the answers. Because children are very fragile. There easy to forget is that statistics can am- If complex models offer only incremen- are so many things that can kill them.” plify these fallibilities, too. As Stone re- tal improvement on simple ones, we’re The other nine hundred and ninety- minds us, “To count well, we need hu- back to the familiar question of what to one Malaysian children are protected mility to know what can’t or shouldn’t count, and how to count it. from dangers posed by germs, starva- be counted.” 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 73 grew more upset. Eventually, as Mor- genstern later recalled, “he rather excit- edly told me that in looking at the Con- stitution, to his distress, he had found some inner contradictions and that he could show how in a perfectly legal man- ner it would be possible for somebody to become a dictator and set up a Fas- cist regime, never intended by those who drew up the Constitution.” He’d found a logical flaw. Morgenstern told Einstein about Gödel’s theory; both of them told Gödel not to bring it up during the exam. When they got to the courtroom, the three men sat before a judge, who asked Gödel about the Austrian government. “It was a republic, but the constitu- tion was such that it finally was changed into a dictatorship,” Gödel said. “That is very bad,” the judge replied. “This could not happen in this country.” Morgenstern and Einstein must have exchanged anxious glances. Gödel could not be stopped. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I can prove it.” “Oh, God, let’s not go into this,” the judge said, and ended the examination. Neither Gödel nor his friends ever explained what the theory, which has a critic at large since come to be called Gödel’s Loop- hole, was. For some people, conjectur- ing about Gödel’s Loophole is as al- THE AGE OF CONSENT luring as conjecturing about Fermat’s Last Theorem. Writing, and rewriting, constitutions. In 1949, the year after Kurt Gödel became a U.S. citizen, Linda Colley was by jill lepore born in the United Kingdom, a country without a written constitution. Colley, one of the world’s most acclaimed his- n 1947, Kurt Gödel, Albert Einstein, genstern, turned around and said, teas- torians, is a British citizen and a C.B.E., Iand Oskar Morgenstern drove from ing, “Now, Gödel, are you really well a Commander of the Order of the Brit- Princeton to Trenton in Morgenstern’s prepared for this examination?” Gödel ish Empire. (If there were a Nobel Prize car. The three men, who’d fled Nazi Eu- looked stricken. in History, Colley would be my nomi- rope and become close friends at the In- To prepare for his citizenship test, nee.) She lives in the United States. For stitute for Advanced Study, were on their knowing that he’d be asked questions the past twenty years or so, she’s been way to a courthouse where Gödel, an about the U.S. Constitution, Gödel had teaching at Princeton, walking the same Austrian exile, was scheduled to take the dedicated himself to the study of Amer- grounds and haunting the same library U.S.-citizenship exam, something his ican history and constitutional law. Time stacks that Gödel once did, by turns puz- two friends had done already. Morgen- and again, he’d phoned Morgenstern zled and fascinated, as he was, by the stern had founded game theory, Ein- with rising panic about the exam. (Gödel, nature of constitutions. “I came to this stein had founded the theory of relativ- a paranoid recluse who later died of star- subject very much as an outsider,” she ity, and Gödel, the greatest logician since vation, used the telephone to speak with writes in an incandescent, paradigm- Aristotle, had revolutionized mathemat- people even when they were in the same shifting new book, “The Gun, the Ship, ics and philosophy with his incompleteness room.) Morgenstern reassured him that and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and theorems. Morgenstern drove. Gödel sat “at most they might ask what sort of the Making of the Modern World” (Live- in the back. Einstein, up front with Mor- government we have.” But Gödel only right). “Moving in the late twentieth century to live and work in the United

Early constitutions could be instruments of tyranny or platforms for populism. States, a country which makes a cult out GETTY IMAGES:

74 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE MCQUADE of its own written constitution, was there- that my only consolation is to be that I constitutionalism, she maintains, was the fore for me an arresting experience.” Col- live not to weep over it.” Still, as the usual growing lethality, frequency, and scale of ley has upended much of what histori- story has it, American constitutionalism war. This began in the mid-eighteenth ans believe about the origins of written served as a model for what can be called century, when rulers from China to Per- constitutions. Gödel’s Loophole is all the age of constitution-making, an era sia to Spain found themselves commit- over the Internet; you can find it on ev- also characterized by the spread of de- ted to long-distance wars that involved erything from Reddit to GitHub. The mocracy; by 1914, governments on every vast armies and navies and cost stagger- graver the American constitutional cri- continent had adopted written constitu- ing sums. Early on, Spain paid for these sis, the greater the interest in the idea tions, driven by the force of the idea that wars with the gold and silver it had that there’s a bug in the constitutional the nature of rule, the structure of gov- plundered from the Americas, on lands code. But, for genuine illumination about ernment, and the guarantee of rights are stolen from indigenous peoples. The slave the promise and the limits of constitu- the sorts of things that have got to be trade itself was a feature of the increas- tionalism, consider, instead, Colley’s Rule: written down, printed, and made public. ing violence and widening scope of early- Follow the violence. Colley doesn’t see it this way. First, modern warfare. The Yoruba Oyo Em- she finds the origins of constitution-writ- pire conscripted more than fifty thousand “ or the preservation of peace and ing elsewhere—all over the place, really, soldiers. During a period when the King- Fgood order, and for the security of and often very far from Philadelphia. dom of Dahomey was invaded seven the lives and properties of the inhabi- Second, she thinks it’s important to sep- times, soldiers from Dahomey seized, in tants of this colony, we conceive our- arate the spread of constitutionalism from a single year, 1724, more than eight thou- selves reduced to the necessity of estab- the rise of democracy, not least because sand captives. The Dutch, the Portu- lishing A FORM OF GOVERNMENT,” New many nations that adopted written con- guese, and the English offset the cost of Hampshire’s congress pronounced in stitutions rejected democracy, and still arms and men by buying and selling and January, 1776, months before the colo- do. Third, she isn’t convinced that the exploiting the labor of—stealing the lives nies declared their independence from writing of constitutions was simply driven of—African men, women, and children. Britain, in one of the first written con- by the force of an idea; instead, she thinks Most of the rest of the world paid for stitutions in the history of the modern that the writing of constitutions was its sprawling, devastating wars by rais- world. After New Hampshire, every other driven, in large part, by the exigencies of ing taxes. former colony devised its own constitution, war. States make war and wars make Those taxes changed the course of and each new constitution, along with states, the sociologist Charles Tilly once history. The magnitude of the sacrifice the Articles of Confederation, offered argued. Colley offers this corollary: Wars that rulers demanded of ordinary peo- another lesson in what worked and what make states make constitutions. ple—the raiding of their scant savings; didn’t. Eleven years later, James Madi- Laws govern people; constitutions the lives, limbs, and livelihoods of sons, son, having dedicated himself to the study govern governments. Written (or carved) fathers, and husbands—gave the peo- of history ever since his years as an un- constitutions, like Hammurabi’s Code, ple a newly keen and anguished appre- dergraduate at Princeton, prepared for a date to antiquity, but hardly anyone read ciation for the immense powers of those national constitutional convention by them (hardly anyone could read), and, rulers, and for their ruthlessness, too. writing an essay titled “Vices of the Po- generally, they were locked away and Increasingly, rulers convinced their peo- litical System of the United States,” and eventually lost. Even the Magna Carta ple to consent to the terrible costs of then drafting a constitution. Madison’s all but disappeared after King John af- years-long, worldwide wars by promis- constitution, much tinkered with during fixed his seal to it, in 1215. For a written ing them rights (sometimes even the the convention, was signed in Septem- constitution to restrain a government, right to elect their rulers) and agreeing ber, 1787, and ratified in June, 1788. people living under that government to limits on their own powers. Consti- Many of the founders later had grave must be able to get a copy of the consti- tutionalism didn’t burst from the head doubts about the government they’d tution, easily and cheaply, and they must of James Madison, like Athena from erected, as Dennis Rasmussen argues in be able to read it. That wasn’t possible Zeus, simply on account of all the books “Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusion- before the invention of the printing press he’d read. Sure, constitutionalism flew ment of America’s Founders” (Prince- and rising rates of literacy. The U.S. Con- from the pages of those books, but it ton). Washington regretted partisanship, stitution was printed in Philadelphia two was also shot out of the barrel of a gun. Hamilton thought the federal govern- days after it was signed, in the Pennsyl- This argument also explains the U.K.’s ment too weak, Adams damned the vices vania Packet and Daily Advertiser, a news- lack of a written constitution. Long after of the people, and Jefferson expected the paper that cost four pence. it lost thirteen of its American colonies, divide over slavery to doom the Union, Kurt Gödel pored over the four thou- in 1781, and long after it abolished slav- writing, a few years before his death, “I sand-odd words of the U.S. Constitu- ery, in 1833, Britain continued to support regret that I am now to die in the belief tion and spotted a logical flaw; Linda its foreign wars and its formidable mil- that the useless sacrifice of themselves, Colley has made a meticulous study of itary by taxing its remaining colonies, by the generation of ’76, to acquire self constitutions written the world over and and by recruiting soldiers from those government and happiness by their coun- discovered patterns in the circumstances colonies. Nineteenth-century Britons try, is to be thrown away by the unwise in which each was written, distributed, celebrated their unwritten constitution. and unworthy passions of their sons, and and read. Crucial to the emergence of “Our constitution is the air we breathe,

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 75 the restless blood that circulates in our plaining the nature of rule over newly informed legislators might intervene veins, the food that we eat, the soil that acquired territories. In the seventeen- so as to bind up society’s wounds, re- nourishes us,” one British journalist fifties, the Qianlong Emperor tasked establish order, remodel their respective gushed in 1832. “Constitutions are not more than a hundred scholars with pre- states, and in the process burnish their made of paper, nor are they to be de- paring a compendium called “Compre- own reputations.” stroyed by paper.” That was a luxury only hensive Treatises of Our August Dy- That, as Colley makes clear, was Cath- the British Empire could enjoy. nasty,” laying out how the Qing would erine’s plan. Faced with unceasing chal- rule over its new Dzungar dominion. lenges to her authority—as a foreigner he precept that wars make states During the brutal world wars of the who had seized the throne and as a Tmake constitutions held elsewhere. eighteenth century, millions of men woman—she nevertheless intended to Colley starts her account in 1755, during carried millions of weapons, sailed pursue wide-scale warfare against the Ot- the very beginnings of a transcontinen- hundreds of thousands of ships, and toman Empire and its allies in an effort tal conflict that would come to be called marched with thousands of armies. If to extend Russia’s borders. To that end, the Seven Years’ War, when most of those men de- she insisted on her sovereignty while Pasquale Paoli, the thirty- manded political rights, and guaranteeing her subjects liberty and year-old capo generale polit- political equality, in ex- equality. “The equality of citizens consists ico e economico of Corsica, change for their sacrifices, in their being all subject to the same laws,” wrote a ten-page costituzi- they didn’t always get them. she wrote in the Nakaz. She called taxes one. Leading a rebellion Some constitutions writ- “the tribute which each citizen pays for against the island’s rule by ten in the great age of con- the preservation of his own well-being.” the Republic of Genoa, stitution-writing were, like Catherine arranged for a multieth- Paoli proposed to erect a many constitutions written nic legislative body, composed of five state. “The General Diet of more recently, instruments hundred and sixty-four elected repre- the People of Corsica, le- of tyranny. But, when con- sentatives, to meet in Moscow, in 1767, gitimate masters of them- stitutions did grant rights, in order to consider the Nakaz. Women selves,” he wrote, “having reconquered it was because people, in wartime, had were able to vote for the representa- its liberty,” wished “to give a durable and their governments by the throat. tives. Peasants were able to serve; serfs permanent form to its government by Constitutions and constitution-like were not. Muslims were allotted fifty- transforming it into a constitution suited compacts, Colley argues, are one kind of four seats. Although its work consisted to assure the well-being of the nation.” paperwork that wars generate. In 1765, in the main of honoring rather than Though Corsica’s constitution didn’t ten years after Paoli drafted Corsica’s cos- debating or ratifying the Nakaz, it was last, it nevertheless quite explicitly bears tituzione, and at the close of the Seven still an extraordinary gathering. out Colley’s Rule. “Every Corsican must Years’ War, Catherine the Great, the Em- The Nakaz circulated well beyond have some political rights,” Paoli wrote, press of Russia, began drafting the Nakaz, Catherine’s realm. By 1770, it had been because “if the franchise of which he is or Grand Instruction. Having seized the translated into German, Latin, French, so jealous is, in the end, but a laughable throne in a coup d’état in 1762, and there- and English; editions in Greek, Italian, fiction, what interest would he take in fore insecure in her rule even as she Latvian, Romanian, Swiss, and Dutch defending the country?” worked to expand her realm through re- soon followed. The translator of the En- The Seven Years’ War, a so-called peated military campaigns, she sought to glish edition called it a “constitution.” umbrella war, putatively between Brit- provide a framework for government. She Colley hints at its influence. In 1772, ain and France, stretched from Prussia relied, in particular, on Montesquieu’s 1748 Gustaf III, the King of Sweden, and to Florida, from Newfoundland to “Spirit of the Laws,” which also greatly Catherine’s cousin, had drawn up and India. It became entangled with a se- influenced James Madison. (Catherine printed a new constitution of “fixed and ries of military campaigns waged by called it “the prayerbook of all mon- sacred fundamental law.” If American the Persian ruler Nadir Shah Afshar, archs with any common sense.”) Mon- scholars interested in the history of con- and, after his death, by his generals, in tesquieu had denounced the militariza- stitutionalism have taken very little no- Turkey, Afghanistan, Punjab, Kash- tion of modern life, surveying kingdoms tice of the Nakaz, it’s not so much be- mir, and Lahore, even as, in Asia, the and empires from Spain and France to cause the document failed to shore up Qianlong Emperor, the fifth member China, Japan, and India. “Each monarch Catherine’s regime as because Ameri- of the Qing dynasty, sent a hundred keeps as many armies on foot as if his cans are provincial—instead of looking and fifty thousand troops to crush the people were in danger of being extermi- to Moscow, all eyes turn, worshipfully, Dzungar-Mongolian Empire. Wars nated,” Montesquieu wrote. “The con- to Philadelphia—and because it was cre- generate misery. “We drain ourselves sequence of such a situation is a perpet- ated by a woman. of men and money,” Voltaire wrote in ual augmentation of taxes.” He and his 1751, “to destroy one another in the far- intellectual kin had a solution, which ars ravaged the Americas, ruin- ther parts of Asia and America.” And Colley describes as an irresistible lure to Wing lives, razing settlements, and wars generate all sorts of paperwork, sovereigns: “that in an age of rampant, halting trade. In the Declaration of In- not least maps, for making new terri- expensive and disruptive military vio- dependence, Thomas Jefferson blamed torial claims, and law books, for ex- lence on land and sea, innovatory and George III for having “plundered our

76 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, a matter of days after the convention of an invasion by Sweden, borrowed and destroyed the lives of our people.” had adjourned. passages, verbatim, from the printed Independence movements in the Amer- Wars make states make constitutions; constitutions of the United States (1787), icas—beginning with the revolution in states print constitutions; constitutions France (1791, 1793, and 1795), Poland thirteen of Britain’s North American guarantee freedom of the press. In the (1791), Batavia (1798), Sweden (1809), colonies and that first written consti- nearly six hundred constitutions writ- and Spain (1812). The new constitution tution, from New Hampshire in 1776, ten between 1776 and about 1850, the was then printed and made available in and continuing through Venezuela’s right most frequently asserted—more post offices, and, as Colley reports, the first constitution, in 1811—involved re- often than freedom of religion, freedom government encouraged people to paste jecting rulers’ demands for war-sup- of speech, or freedom of assembly—was copies on the walls of their houses. In porting taxes and erecting new govern- freedom of the press. Colley argues, the eighteen-twenties, keen to stir up ments with checks on those powers, “Print was deemed indispensable if this interest in constitution-making in India, with mixed success. Haiti’s 1805 con- new technology was to function effec- Ram Mohan Roy and James Silk Buck- stitution, drafted for Jean-Jacques Des- tively and do its work, both at home ingham, editors of the Calcutta Journal, salines, a former slave, declared the po- and abroad.” published translations of proposed con- litical equality of Africans and their As more states adopted constitutions, stitutions for Peru, Mexico, and Gran descendants, who, according to the con- the number of published constitutions Colombia—each of which allowed for stitution’s preamble, had been “so un- and collections of constitutions grew. equal citizenship of people of different justly and for so long a time considered Edmund Burke wrote, in 1796, that a races—while ignoring the U.S. Consti- as outcast children.” chief architect of the 1791 French con- tution and all the new constitutions The King of France convened the stitution had “whole nests of pigeon- being drafted by American states en- Estates General in 1789—nearly two holes full of constitutions readymade, tering the Union. In the United States, centuries after it had last been called— ticketed, sorted, and numbered; suited in those years, Americans read the au- for the purpose of levying new taxes, to every season and every fancy.” A news- tobiography of William Grimes, a fu- because all those wars had left France paper in Strasbourg even printed a tem- gitive slave, who’d written, “If it were bankrupt. The constitution that the rev- plate for anyone wishing to write a new not for the stripes on my back which olutionary National Assembly adopted constitution; all you had to do was fill were made while I was a slave, I would two years later guaranteed, among in the blanks. Norway’s 1814 constitu- in my will, leave my skin as a legacy to other things, the equal assessment of tion, hastily written in Oslo under threat the government, desiring that it might all taxes upon all citizens, the right to vote for every man who paid a mini- mum sum of taxes, “public instruction for all citizens,” and “liberty to every man to speak, write, print, and publish his opinions.” Placed in this global context, the constitution drafted in Philadelphia in 1787 looks both less and more orig- inal. Colley points out that nine of the first ten Federalist Papers concern the dangers of war and two more concern insurrection. Thirty of the fifty-five del- egates had fought in the war for inde- pendence. The Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman said that there were four reasons to adopt a new constitu- tion: defense against foreign powers, defense against domestic insurrections, treaties with foreign nations, and the regulation of foreign commerce. One overlooked factor that distinguished the constitution debated in Philadel- phia from the Nakaz, Colley suggests, is how quickly, easily, and successfully the American document was circulated. There were no newspapers in Russia, and no provincial presses. By contrast, anyone who wanted a copy of the U.S. “Good night—don’t forget to lock up and make way more Constitution could have one, within noise than is required when you come up to bed.” be taken off and made into parchment over boundaries that extended to in- mon: an absence of any reference to and then bind the Constitution of glo- clude “all the islands, harbors, and bays, God; a concern with the social, espe- rious happy and free America.” along adjacent to the Pacific Coast.” cially in socialist constitutions. Their The following year, a Scottish settler in authors often consulted collections, like onstitutions grant rights; they can Sydney said, “Look for example at what “Select Constitutions of the World,” Calso take rights away. In 1794, Mary has recently been going on in Califor- published by the Irish Free State (along- Wollstonecraft celebrated the promise nia,” and declared that the people there side its own new constitution) in 1922. of constitutionalism: “A constitution is had “framed a constitution for them- After the Second World War, newly in- a standard for the people to rally around. selves, that might serve as a model for dependent nations in Asia and Africa, It is the pillar of a government, the bond any nation upon the face of the earth.” and civil wars all over the world, added of all social unity and order. The inves- Yet this cut the other way as well. to the growing heap of often short-lived tigation of its principles make it a foun- California’s 1849 constitution, which pro- constitutions. Many constitutions prom- tain of light; from which issue the rays hibited slavery, participated in a global ise much and deliver little. Colley asks, of reason, that gradually bring forward movement to end human bondage which “Why, in the light of the limited lon- the mental powers of the whole com- also included the constitutions, in the gevity of so many constitutions over the munity.” But constitutions, Colley says, eighteen-forties and eighteen-fifties, of centuries, and the limited effectiveness have nearly always made things worse Tunisia, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Ven- in many cases of these texts as guaran- for women. Before constitutions were ezuela, and Hawaii. Sometimes indige- tors of responsible rule and durable written, women had informal rights in nous leaders—especially monarchs, like rights, have multiple societies and peo- all sorts of places; constitutions explic- Chief Pomare of Tahiti and Hawaii’s ples kept on investing time, imagina- itly excluded them, not least because a King Kamehameha II—could stave off tion, thought and hope so insistently in constitution, in Colley’s formulation, is colonization by adopting constitutions. this kind of paper and parchment po- a bargain struck between a state and its And constitutions could challenge white litical and legal device?” Because, she men, who made sacrifices to the state as supremacy. At Liberia’s constitutional argues, “in a deeply uncertain, shifting, taxpayers and soldiers, which were dif- convention in 1847, one delegate declared, unequal and violent world,” imperfect ferent from the sacrifices women made “The people of Liberia do not require constitutions “may be the best that we in wartime. Then, too, all that constitu- the assistance of ‘white people’ to enable can hope for.” tional printing and copycatting spread them to make a Constitution for the Western notions of women’s very limited government of themselves.” Wars make r maybe we can hope for more. sphere around the world. In 1846, a third states make constitutions: the rule ap- O“No part of a constitution is more of the members of Hawaii’s House of plies equally to the American Civil War. important than the procedures we use Nobles were female chiefs; Hawaii’s 1850 With the Fourteenth and Fifteenth to change it,” Richard Albert writes in constitution restricted suffrage to men. Amendments, Americans rewrote their “Constitutional Amendments: Making, Before the Meiji constitution of 1889— constitution, adopting revisions to the Breaking, and Changing Constitutions” the first constitution implemented in East Constitution that altered its fundamen- (Oxford). Writing a constitution is its Asia, greatly influenced by Germany’s tal principles. own kind of expression. So is amend- 1871 constitution—prohibited Japanese The Meiji constitution of 1889 brought ing a constitution, a form of constitu- women from voting, they had, to some constitution-writing to Asia, which was tional writing (and printing) that Col- degree, participated in politics. As Col- followed by an acceleration of constitu- ley does not consider, even though ley points out, “Once written into law ninety-six out of every hundred of the and put into print, female disadvantages world’s codified constitutions contain became harder to change.” an amendment provision. Constitutions The U.S. Constitution denied polit- set the rules; amendment provisions set ical rights to indigenous and enslaved the rules for changing the rules. people. And state constitutions adopted The U.S. was the first nation whose in the nineteenth century declared sov- constitution provided for its own revi- ereignty over native lands and barred sion. Article V, the amendment clause, women, Black people, and Chinese im- reads, “The Congress, whenever two migrants from voting, making it all but thirds of both houses shall deem it nec- impossible for any of these people to tion-writing throughout Latin America. essary, shall propose amendments to this use the usual mechanisms of electoral In 1906, China began to study constitu- Constitution, or, on the application of politics to change their status. Colley tions of the West and of Japan in prepa- the legislatures of two thirds of the sev- says that these constitutions inspired ration for writing its own. Constitution- eral states, shall call a convention for constitutions in places like Australia, making took a turn after the Great War, proposing amendments, which, in ei- where invaders had seized the lands of which claimed some forty million lives. ther case, shall be valid to all intents and peoples like the Maori. In 1849, Cali- That was a turn to the arrangement not purposes, as part of this Constitution, fornia adopted a constitution that guar- only of government but of society. Post- when ratified by the legislatures of three anteed the right to vote to “every white war constitutions, many of which didn’t fourths of the several states, or by con- male citizen” and asserted sovereignty last long, have some features in com- ventions in three fourths thereof, as the

78 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress.” Without Article V, the Constitution would very likely have failed ratifica- tion. Everyone knew that the Consti- tution was imperfect; Article V left ajar a constitutional door for making it, and the Union, “more perfect.” Federalists cited the amendment provision when arguing for ratification. As James Wil- son, a delegate from Pennsylvania, con- tended, the fact that the people “may change their constitution and govern- ment whenever they please, is not a prin- ciple of discord, rancor, or war: it is a principle of melioration, contentment, and peace.” Without an amendment provision, the only way to change the rules is to overthrow the government, by way of insurrection. The problem, in the United States, is that it is extremely difficult to amend the Constitution. It’s often thought to be structurally impossible these days, but much scholarship suggests that it “Time is an illusion! My life is a lie! Time is, instead, merely culturally impossible, is an illusion! My life is a lie!” because of the very reflexes of venera- tion of the Constitution that inspired Linda Colley to undertake the project •• that became “The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen.” The system of government constitutions. Americans don’t venerate to hear that. Gödel’s Loophole really put in place by the Constitution is bro- all constitutions; in fact, they’re quite isn’t anything like Fermat’s Last The- ken in all sorts of ways, subject to forms keen to amend state constitutions. Al- orem, because constitutional scholars of corruption, political decay, and anti- bert reports, “Historically, American state are pretty sure of what Gödel had in democracy measures that include ger- constitutions have been amended over mind. It’s a constitutional version of the rymandering, the filibuster, campaign 7,500 times, amounting on average to 150 idea that, if a genie wafts out of an oil spending, and the cap on the size of the amendments per state. This paints an lamp and offers you three wishes, you House of Representatives. The law pro- unmistakable contrast with the U.S. Con- should begin by wishing for more wishes. fessor Sanford Levinson has written, stitution, whose average annual amend- In what amounts to a genuine over- “To the extent that we continue thought- ment rate is an exceedingly low 0.07, sight, Article V, the amendment pro- lessly to venerate, and therefore not sub- while the average across all American vision, does not prohibit amending Ar- ject to truly critical examination, our state constitutions is 0.35, higher than ticle V. It’s very hard to ratify a consti- Constitution, we are in the position of the average of 0.21 for national consti- tutional amendment, but if a President the battered wife who continues to pro- tutions around the world.” could amass enough power and accrue fess the ‘essential goodness’ of her abu- Rather than being amended, the Con- enough blindly loyal followers he could sive husband.” Or, as Burke noted, “A stitution has been betrayed, circumvented, get an amendment ratified that revised state without the means of some changes violated, and abandoned, by force of prac- the mechanism of amendment itself. If is without the means of its conservation.” tice. Can a U.S. President compel a for- a revised Article V made it possible for The U.S. Constitution has been re- eign leader to interfere in an American a President to amend the Constitution written three times: in 1791, with the election? Apparently. Can a U.S. Presi- by fiat (e.g., “The President, whenever ratification of the Bill of Rights, the first dent refuse to accept the results of a free he shall deem it necessary, shall make ten amendments; after the Civil War, and fair election and incite a mob to at- amendments to this Constitution, which with the ratification of the Reconstruc- tack Congress in order to prevent the shall be valid to all intents and pur- tion Amendments; and during the Pro- certification of the vote? Apparently. The poses, as part of this Constitution”), he gressive Era, with the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, no less than the U.K.’s could turn a democracy into a dicta- Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and unwritten constitution, is more than the torship without ever having done any- Nineteenth Amendments. It is time for sum of its words; it’s the accretion of thing unconstitutional. What Gödel another reinvention. practices and precedents. did not realize is that it’s actually a lot Other countries regularly amend their Kurt Gödel might have been happy easier than that. 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 79 Novak blubbers. “I’m crying out of the humiliation of being seen as I am.” At first, listening to this meltdown, I wondered what, precisely, was going on. Novak and Berlant are brilliant com- ics, denizens of the alternative-standup scene that bridges the gap between punch lines and performance art. They had to be up to something. And then, after sev- eral incantatory hours of listening to them talk, it became clear: “POOG” is a show about wellness which is, in a daz- zling and purposefully deranged way, ut- terly unwell. Of course Novak can’t pro- cess her desire to have everything and nothing at once; like so much of the lan- guage of being “healthy” in a fractured world, her yearning can never compute. “POOG” is not just “Goop” (as in Gwyn- eth Paltrow’s life-style empire) spelled backward—it’s an attempt to push the wellness industrial complex fully through the looking glass. Each episode begins the same way. “This is our hobby,” Ber- lant says. “This is our hell,” Novak adds. “This is our naked desire for free prod- ucts,” Berlant concludes. What is wellness, exactly? The term encompasses a broad range of activities, including juice cleansing, Transcenden- podcast dept. tal Meditation, snail-serum application, buying a Peloton, napping, switching to oat milk, switching to charcoal water, FEELING BETTER NOW? Kegel exercises, sitz baths, citrus diets, maintaining ketosis, HIIT workouts, halo- “POOG” and our quest for wellness. therapy, aromatherapy, talk therapy, past- life regression therapy, microdosing LSD, by rachel syme megadosing CBD, intuitive fasting, avoid- ing blue light, seeking out red light, re- flexology, cathartic-breathing techniques, bout halfway through a recent ep- no trace of irony. “And it’s loss, because the Alexander Technique, sensory depri- Aisode of “POOG,” a new podcast it’s so beautiful, it’s handed to you, and vation, forest bathing, and gargling with that is essentially one long, unbroken you’re constantly having to reckon with Himalayan salt. One report estimated conversation about “wellness” between the fact that it is dying, and yet you’re that the entire wellness industry is worth the comedians and longtime friends experiencing it.” $4.5 trillion, with a growth rate of 6.4 per Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak, the From here, the conversation begins cent year over year. Paltrow’s Goop— hosts spend several minutes trying— to warp into almost sublime absurdity. which swelled from a quirky newsletter, and failing—to devise a grand theory Novak suggests that what she ultimately in 2008, to a conglomerate that features about the existential sorrow of eating desires is not the cone itself but the emp- a Netflix show, conferences, cookbooks, ice cream. “The pleasure of eating an tiness that comes after the cone has been a digital publication, and a beauty-prod- ice-cream cone for me,” Novak says, consumed, or what she calls “the dead uct line—is worth two hundred and fifty in the blustery tone of a motivational endlessness of infinite possibility.” She million dollars alone. speaker, “involves the attempt to con- makes several attempts to refine this The desire for alternative forms of tain, catch up, stay present to the cone. idea, in a state of increasing agitation. healing is nothing new. Given the bu- Because the cone will not wait.” Ber- And then she begins to cry. “Are you reaucracy of modern medicine, it can even lant, a seasoned improviser, leaps into crying because you are still untangling feel necessary, and many of the wellness the game. “And it’s grief,” she says, with what this theory is?” Berlant asks. “No,” trends that dominated the pastel, high- gloss Instagram campaigns of the past

Modern wellness can seem less about a cure than about a far-off apex state. decade—turmeric lattes, sage burning— GETTY

80 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 22, 2021 PHOTOGRAPH BY ELIZABETH RENSTROM were ripped directly from practices that vice that features dishes like “pecan and creates the show’s high comedy and wry indigenous and non-Western cultures mulberry granola served with maple insight. Recently, the duo appeared on have passed down for centuries. Wellness mylk.” (Paltrow is a noted fan of the “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” and he tourism, too, is an old racket—you see it business.) Each week, Duboise and Tin- asked them for their opinions on crys- in the “lunger” movement of the early gle bring on a guest to discuss such sub- tals. They did not take the bait. “Well, twentieth century, when tubercular pa- jects as “psychiatry, psychedelics, and they are simply not a joke, Seth,” Novak tients racked with malaise travelled to the standing in your truth.” “Sakara Life” said, with a bit of hauteur. “Perhaps you deserts of New Mexico, chasing thin, dry and the many shows like it are clearly think I’m going to mock them, that Kate air and fresh perspectives. (According to trying to chase the success of the Goop will have a little jab here and there. No, the anthropologist Nancy Owen Lewis, podcast, which débuted in 2018 and in- no. We accept and embrace crystals as the Albuquerque Health Department ad- stantly hit No. 1 on the charts. On that a modality like any other. To mock crys- vertised itself as “the heart of well coun- show, which still airs weekly, Paltrow tals is a humiliation in itself.” try.”) Still, previous iterations of health- and Goop’s chief content officer, Elise This approach—a willingness to ac- seeking were largely about finding a public Loehnen, tackle questions that include cept multiple schemas of value at once— cure for discreet problems. “What does healthy narcissism look echoes throughout Berlant’s and No- What distinguishes modern well- like?” and “How dangerous is our drink- vak’s work. Novak’s breakout hit, in 2019, ness, aside from its expansiveness, is its ing water?” The show brazenly recycles was the one-woman Off Broadway show relentless focus on the self as the fount topics (there have been at least three “Get on Your Knees,” a thorny mono- of all improvement. It’s trickle-down episodes on fasting), bringing an unex- logue about fellatio that quotes T. S. wellness—the idea that, if you work hard pected dimension to the idea of sustain- Eliot and dissects her fraught allegiance enough on your body and mind, your ability. The work is never done: we are to femininity. In Berlant’s standup act, inner glow will leak out of your finger- always one goji-berry smoothie away which plays like a self-help seminar, she tips and touch the world. It can be dis- from glory. works through similar tensions between orienting to see so much profit attached This quest-like quality lies at the consumerism and self-image. One of to the notion of “self-care,” which became center of the modern wellness appara- her best bits argues that women should prominent in the feminist and civil-rights tus, and it’s precisely what “POOG” both be allowed to shoplift cosmetics from activism of the nineteen-sixties, and was enshrines and interrogates. (In the first corporate megastores. “The situation is advanced by such radical thinkers as episode, Novak quotes the adage “The women, sometimes upon birth, are forced Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Gloria ego loves to seek and never find,” which into an economy where you have to pay Anzaldúa. Their idea of self-preserva- serves as a subtle mission statement.) for your own subjectivity,” she says, af- tion stressed nurturing one’s body in a The series mimics the formula of most fecting a high-pitched tone dusted with society that both dismisses and endan- wellness podcasts—each episode fea- vocal fry. “So, if you don’t have the right gers it. Today’s wellness movement has, tures a topic such as skin care or sleep, creams, powders, lotions, the state won’t at least in its marketing copy, co-opted and the hosts gab about various prod- recognize you.” The joke kills onstage. that language, severing it from its col- ucts—but the conversation takes sud- What Berlant and Novak do so well, lectivist roots. Now the project is indi- den digressions, plumbing the ways in and what they perfect in “POOG,” is play vidual enhancement: poreless skin, pli- which a mind, addled by the industry, the role of overeducated, understimu- ant limbs, a microfloral garden blooming struggles to know peace. What sets the lated women trying to reconcile the com- inside your wild and precious gut. show apart, and what makes it slightly peting pressures that await them every uncanny, is that Novak and Berlant ar- morning. Often, the only way to survive t makes sense, then, that the wellness en’t trying to sell anything; they’ve al- those pressures—accept your body, but Iindustry has stretched into podcast- ready bought it all. They’ve travelled far fix your body; be smart, but not so smart ing. Despite the village it can take to enough to know that wellness is less that you threaten anyone—is to turn put a great show together, the medium about a fix than about a state that re- everything into a sort of cosmic joke. can also be deeply individualistic. Most cedes before you like a mirage. Which is what “POOG” is: a laugh from people listen alone, sealed away in their Both women are ebullient talkers; inside the house that the wellness indus- car or behind the force field of noise-can- they sound like they’re trying to out-caf- try built. But Berlant and Novak’s quest, celling earbuds. The shows themselves feinate each other at an espresso bar. At for all its solipsism, also yields something often feel like intimate collaborations one point, Novak suggests that certain valuable: their conversation, which func- between host and listener, but, really, health-food products can “taste sweeter tions, for the listener, as a form of expo- the dialogue always goes one way—and when you’ve overpaid.” “Yeah!” Berlant sure therapy. It confirms that we want that way often leads to an ad spot. Well- chimes in. “Overpaying is erotic.” The to have it all, that we want to want less, ness brands, which flourish by convinc- hosts never condescend to the trends or and that, in the meantime, we’ll keep ing people of some essential lack, are products that they discuss; they really trying to puzzle through it. “I could care primed for this dynamic. believe in this stuff, and take sumptu- less if you arrive at some neat conclusion Take “The Sakara Life Podcast,” a ous pleasure in its promise. It is this at the end,” Berlant gently tells Novak, show hosted by Danielle Duboise and commitment to not breaking—to stay- as she grapples with her theory of the Whitney Tingle, the C.E.O.s of Sakara ing in character as people who have in- cone. In context, the sentiment feels not Life, a plant-based meal-delivery ser- tense arguments about nut milks—that unlike a cure. 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 22, 2021 81 Sanders retained a feel for the joy- ful and raucous immediacy of R. & B. The producer Ed Michel later said, “Pharoah would take an R&B lick and shake it until it vibrated to death, into freedom.” But he soon became a star of the new, experimental wave of six- ties jazz, often referred to as the “New Thing” or “free jazz.” At the time, John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Cole- man, Don Cherry, and others were breaking from traditional approaches to rhythm and harmonic structure. Sanders’s compositions were open and atmospheric, and his playing moved restlessly between smooth, serene mel- odies and blaring, hyperactive impro- visations. You didn’t passively listen to someone like Sanders so much as re- ceive a transference of energy or take in a brilliant explosion of light. Not everyone was ready for it. In 1965, Coltrane, struck by Sanders’s fiery, overblown approach, invited him to join his band. The two rarely spoke, and communicated primarily through playing. After Coltrane’s death, two years later, Sanders began releasing a series of albums for Impulse!, a label that was home to some of the genre’s bob music great experimentalists. His best work of this era was euphoric and dense, full of chimes, bells, and percussion, THE NEW THING as though he were leading a caravan of musicians from the world’s various Pharoah Sanders takes on electronic music. forms of folk music. His playing was flecked with blasts of noise, but it was by hua hsu also propulsive. He was trying to get somewhere. The first time I listened to “Jewels of Thought,” a record he errell Sanders was born in Little and jazz groups that came through released in 1970, was one of the most FRock, Arkansas, in 1940. His mother town. After graduating, he briefly lived transcendent experiences of my life. was a school-cafeteria cook, and his fa- in Oakland, and then, in 1962, hitch- Sanders duets with the ecstatic yo- ther worked for the city. When San- hiked to New York, drawn by the jazz delling of the vocalist Leon Thomas. ders was growing up, someone at his greats working there. He was broke The music isn’t cathartic. Instead, it church advertised a metal clarinet for when he arrived, and he picked up odd achieves a blissful, unresolved inten- sale; the previous owner had died in jobs to make a living, sleeping wher- sity that you are meant to carry into his nineties. Sanders couldn’t afford to ever he could. Soon, he met the vision- everyday life. buy it outright, so he paid twenty cents ary bandleader Sun Ra, who offered a week until it was his. He began tak- him a place to stay and a spot in his his month, Sanders returns with ing music seriously in high school, en- cosmic-jazz ensemble, Arkestra. The T“Promises,” his first major album couraged by a teacher, and traded in band’s aesthetic drew equally from an- in nearly two decades. It is a collabo- his clarinet for a saxophone. At the cient Egypt and the year 3000. Accord- ration with the London Symphony time, Little Rock was an important ing to Ra’s biographer, John Szwed, Ra Orchestra and is led by Sam Shepherd, stop for Black musicians touring in the gifted Sanders a pair of green-and-yel- a d.j. who produces electronic music segregated South, and Sanders honed low pants. He also gave him a new under the name Floating Points. Shep- his skills jamming with the R. & B. name: Pharoah. herd, an Englishman in his mid-thirties, emerged in the late two-thousands, mak- Sanders’s style is more subdued than it once was, but his sense of questing endures. ing boogie-influenced dance tracks. His

82 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY POLA MANELI sullivan+ associates ARCHITECTS music soon became more ambient and greats of sixties jazz. Given the pace of expansive, as though he were uncoiling musical innovation today, it’s easy to his club­ oriented songs and exploring forget that history remains so close at where the synth squiggles and hazy hand—that Sanders, who was still tour­ textures might go if they were allowed ing until the pandemic, inherited one martha’s vineyard to meander. In 2015, he released “Elae­ of his first instruments from someone nia,” which flitted between squelchy who lived through the last days of slav­ dance music and fusion­inspired ex­ ery, or that he got his start playing in periments in mood. That year, Sanders the Jim Crow South. Shepherd’s com­ was in a car with a representative from position shows an appreciation for San­ Shepherd’s label who began playing ders’s life and legacy, and explores the “Elaenia.” Sanders became transfixed, spiritual undercurrent that links the and the pair sat there until the record saxophonist’s blistering sixties mate­ finished. Afterward, he remarked that rial to the dance producer’s trance­ he hoped to meet the person who had like works. A collaboration like this is ADVERTISEMENT made it. not unheard of. One of Sanders’s con­ In the following years, Sanders and temporaries is the saxophonist Archie Shepherd often discussed a potential Shepp. In 2020, Shepp released an al­ collaboration. They hung out in Shep­ bum called “Ocean Bridges” with the WHAT’S THE herd’s London studio and visited the rapper Raw Poetic (his nephew) and BIG IDEA? British Museum together to see the the producer Damu the Fudgemunk; Small space has big rewards. ancient Egyptian sculptures of Sekh­ last month, he put out “Let My People met. Eventually, they began record­ Go,” a duet with the pianist Jason Moran. ing in Los Angeles. “Promises,” the A playful reverence runs through these TO FIND OUT MORE, CONTACT result of their work, is a single, forty­ collaborations, but, in the end, they feel JILLIAN GENET six­minute composition that show­ like attempts to update Shepp’s sound. 305.520.5159 cases both of their strengths—a rar­ On “Promises,” the two artists create [email protected] ity for an intergenerational conversa­ something new. tion between a jazz great and a much Sanders’s style is more subdued than younger fan. In contrast with the up­ it once was. But his sense of quest­ roarious, conjuring tunes of Sanders’s ing—whether for some kind of spir­ youth, or Shepherd’s floor­packing itual absolution or just for the perfect dance music, it is a remarkably inti­ horn sound—endures. The vastness mate experience. of his lungs and his range of expres­ The composition, written by Shep­ siveness still show in flashes. In De­ herd, begins with orchestral refrains cember, 2019, I saw Sanders play at a that evoke a sense of space, an open jazz club in New York. The set moved Wear our new field. Sanders explores the expanse, between silky ballads and explosive offi cial hat to show testing out riffs and runs. You are carried sixties classics like “The Creator Has along not by a rhythm track but by the a Master Plan.” In between, he often your love. flickers of Sanders’s horn, the distant closed his eyes, or sat impassively, star­ sound of a synthesizer, string crescen­ ing at the ceiling. In the past, when dos suggesting a light just past the hori­ his band settled into a groove, he might zon. There are long, quiet stretches have launched into an overwhelming when you can hear Sanders’s reed vi­ ten­minute solo. But now he looked brating as he blows, the sound of sheet into the bell of his horn, as though it music being shuffled. Over time, the contained some secret, and then blew orchestra takes charge, and, about half­ gently into the mouthpiece, creating way through, a swell of strings washes a muffled sound. He huffed and ­con over everything, calling to mind Alice tinued, whispering into the horn, tap­ Coltrane’s swirling, devotional music. ping the sides, running his fingers When the instrumentals settle, San­ along the keys as though discovering ders returns quietly, fingering the keys, anew all the different sounds that it 100% cotton twill. then blowing again, softly. His playing could produce. Everyone leaned in, Available in white, navy, and black. is twisty and teasing. A synthesizer see­ and the sound he made was so quiet saws in the distance, almost impercep­ that you couldn’t tell whether it was tible, as Shepherd slowly begins to ac­ him humming, or softly laughing to newyorkerstore.com/hats company him. himself—whether the horn was vi­ Sanders is among the last living brating at all. 

THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 83 hood he never had in Geula, the Jeru- salem neighborhood where the show is set. In short, people loved this series, and now there is more of it to love. A third season, produced in response to the passionate reception of the first two, has just been released, and it is as funny, moving, and humane as they were. Traditional Jewish life has been fod- der for popular entertainment before, but, with all due respect to Tevye and company, “Shtisel” is no second coming of “Fiddler on the Roof.” (That would be a different TV tale of a haplessfather who struggles to preserve custom against the encroachment of a rapidly chang- ing society and the demands of his will- ful daughters: “Downton Abbey.”) Ye- honatan Indursky, “Shtisel” ’s co-creator, grew up Haredi, and attended yeshiva before going to film school. Instead of the glossy blur of nostalgia, he and his partner, Ori Elon, give us pointillistic specificity; with its richly worked tex- ture and deft, patient rhythm, the show delivers pleasures similar to those of an expansive nineteenth-century novel, and has similar stakes. In one scene, the spir- ited teen-ager Ruchami (Shira Haas) reads “Anna Karenina” aloud to her on television younger brothers. The book is chosen to strike a chord. Under the pretext of earning money abroad, Ruchami’s fa- IN GOOD FAITH ther, Lippe (Zohar Strauss), has aban- doned the family, shaving off his beard The Israeli series “Shtisel” returns for a third season. and taking up with a shiksa in Argen- tina, while her mother, Giti (the quietly by alexandra schwartz ferocious Neta Riskin), strains to keep the household together. Even after Lippe repents and returns to the fold, Ruchami f all the unlikely runaway hits in the globe covered “ ‘Shtisel’-mania,” and can no more forgive her father than Othe history of television, “Shtisel” members of the tribe not normally in- Karenin can forgive his wife—whom must be near the top of the list. The clined to piety reported that they had she describes to her brothers as a Jewish show, which débuted in Israel in 2013, taken to kissing mezuzahs upon enter- woman named Hannah, lest they let it has no nudity, no violence, and no drag- ing and leaving a room. slip that she has smuggled secular con- ons. Its characters are Haredi Jews, whom Such fans were surely responding, traband into the house. English speakers usually call “ultra- in part, to a bittersweet sense of shared You can see the creators’ commit- Orthodox,” and its raciest moment in- heritage: there but for some ancestor ment to verisimilitude in the show’s set- volves a woman trying to discourage a who threw away his yarmulke go we. tings—the crowded yeshiva halls and suitor by taking off her sheitel and re- Then it was reported that Haredi view- the small, modestly furnished apart- vealing her graying hair. When the se- ers (the very phrase is something of an ments, where bookcases filled with ries came to Netflix, at the end of 2018, oxymoron) were also binge-watching brown volumes of the Talmud get pride secular Jews everywhere went crazy for the show. Observant Muslims said that of place—and you can hear it in the lan- it. My phone lit up with messages from they were glad to see a religious com- guage, a mix of Yiddish and Yiddish-in- “Shtisel”-obsessed friends in Stockholm munity depicted with such sensitivity; flected Hebrew, punctuated with ritual and Paris. On the Upper West Side, my a Norwegian Christian confessed that blessings and original insults. You can parents were hooked. Newspapers around “Shtisel” made him long for the child- almost smell it, too, in the food that the characters eat—omelettes, cholent, soft The hit show about Haredi Jews subtly skirts the clichés of religious life. bricks of kugel, washed down with soda

84 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY DANIELLE PELEG and the occasional tipple of whiskey— local cheder, where he wants Akiva to tween Jews who held to traditional cus- and in the cigarettes that the show’s pa- follow in his footsteps. But Akiva is an toms and those of a new sect, the Mod- triarch and namesake, Shulem Shtisel artist. He sketches; he paints; he takes ern Orthodox, who strove to reconcile (the great Dov Glickman), and his son in the world’s majesty through dazzled, the demands of religion with the mores Akiva (Michael Aloni) smoke by the glass-green eyes. (Aloni is the heart- of secular life. But all contemporary Or- pack. Just as notable, though harder to throb of the show’s superlative cast.) thodoxy is, in some sense, modern; re- notice, is what Indursky and Elon don’t Shulem finds his son’s vocation silly, a sisting the ways of an evolving world show. Matchmaking and marriage, nat- trivial distraction from the pursuit of is just another way of acknowledging urally, are major themes, but the single leading a serious Jewish life. “Art was them. In the show’s current season, such wedding we witness is an unsentimental, invented by the Gentiles because they outside pressures are more intense than bureaucratic affair, sans hora. No char- don’t have the holy Torah,” he says at an ever. A scandal erupts when a student acter flatters viewers’ sense of secular su- award ceremony held in Akiva’s honor. films Shulem, now the cheder princi- periority by leaving the faith for good. As Akiva shrinks in horror, Shulem pal, smacking a young troublemaker, There is an aesthetic ethics to the skirt- strolls over to solicit a donation for his and the legitimacy of surrogacy under ing of clichés about religious life, one school from the wealthy Americans who Jewish law comes into question. Giti, that the show itself subtly comments have sponsored the prize. whose difficulty forgiving Lippe for his on. In the first season, we met Leib Fuchs Still, painting is not forbidden by betrayal is one of the show’s most res- (Uri Hochman), the unscrupulous pro- the Torah. Akiva’s dilemma has to do onant plotlines, finds her patience tried prietor of an art gallery that caters to not with his artistic occupation but with once again when he sets out to make American Jews who want to take a lit- the artist’s imperative—the need to hold money by recruiting Haredi extras for tle bit of the Holy Land back home. oneself apart, to see things differently a television shoot. Unsurprisingly, no Little do Fuchs’s customers know that in a world that considers the communal one signs on, and the couple band to- the cheesy paintings of white-bearded point of view paramount. It is a lonely gether to pass off heavily bearded hip- rabbis that he sells under his own name struggle, and so is finding someone to sters as righteous men. are fraudulent. He hires other men to share it. In the show’s first season, Akiva This is not the first time that the make them, then signs the canvases and disastrously pursues Elisheva (Ayelet show has got meta with its medium. pockets the cash. The tourists get what Zurer), an older widow caught in a web In Season 1, Shulem’s elderly mother, they came to see, without thinking to of private torment. In the second, he Malka (wonderfully played by Hanna look for what’s really there. falls in love with his first cousin Libbi Rieber, and then, after Rieber’s death, (Hadas Yaron), a more compatible by Leah Koenig), insists on having a othing is more central to the show match. He has a gift from God, Libbi TV in her room at an old-age home, Nthan the question of how to tell tells him after seeing his drawings, and much to her son’s chagrin. Why is she the truth about a place and its people, he should use it. (Did it come with a wasting her time with soap operas when and what it costs to turn that truth into gift receipt? Shulem wants to know.) she could be reading the Psalms? After art. Akiva, the youngest of Shulem’s Yet Libbi agrees to marry Akiva only she is hospitalized following a fall, Shu- children—Giti is his older sister—is on the condition that he renounce paint- lem finds, on the list of people she reg- the family dreamer. The other siblings, ing and never show his art in public ularly prays for, the names of her favor- whom the show tracks with affection again. You might as well ask a fish not ite television characters alongside those and sympathy, have long since married to swim. of her grandchildren. As Shulem mar- and built their own nests, but Akiva, The term “ultra-Orthodox,” which vels at this discovery, he shows us all who is in his mid-twenties when the many of the people whom it describes over again how strange and miraculous show begins, still lives at home. Shulem, find to be pejorative, emerged some it is that made-up people should bring a widower, is a beloved teacher at the hundred years ago to distinguish be- real meaning to our lives. 

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THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29, 2021 85 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 P. C. Vey, must be received by Sunday, March 28th. The finalists in the March 15th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the April 12th 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

“We don’t discuss politics, religion, or gravity.” Don Symons, Santa Barbara, Calif.

“I’m always afraid he will drop in unexpectedly.” “I told you we should have salted the roads.” Dan Rose, San Francisco, Calif. Luke Stancil, Orem, Utah

“I just hope they don’t put in a pool.” J. J. Swain, Los Angeles, Calif. Subscribers, take a front-row seat.

Watch the première of The New Yorker Live.

Monday, March 29th, at 6 P.M. E.T. The poet Amanda Gorman and the playwright Jeremy O. Harris, in conversation with the contributing writer Lauren Michele Jackson.

Wednesday, March 31st, at 6 P.M. E.T. Representative Joaquin Castro and the author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, in conversation with the staff writer Sarah Stillman and the editor David Remnick.

Join the conversation at newyorker.com/live

EXCLUSIVE SUBSCRIBER BENEFIT puzzles & games dept. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 THE 14 15 16 17 18

CROSSWORD 19 20

A challenging puzzle. 21 22 23

by patrick berry 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32

ACROSS 33 34 35 36 37

1 Literary character who was once married 38 39 40 41 to Milady de Winter

6 Let go of 42 43 10 Demographic data 44 45 46 14 Pop star who worked on the 1968 Kennedy Presidential campaign 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 16 One going from bank to bank 17 Industry that boomed during the 54 55 Industrial Revolution 56 57 18 Natural

19 Game that slowly reveals its players? 58 59 60 20 Recline indolently 21 Fail to hide one’s surprise, maybe DOWN 39 Emulates Wiley Post 22 In the saddle 1 Fundamentals 41 Casual greeting 24 It’s worth two points 2 Train-station sound 43 Transdermal-dose deliverer 27 Where Michael tells Fredo, “I know it 3 Girder with wide flanges 44 Typical strays was you,” in “The Godfather: Part II” 4 Does a favor for 45 Sound triggered by the photic reflex 29 Discomfit 5 Shares feelings? 46 Witch-costume components 30 They often involve Snellen charts 6 ___ slalom (Olympic sport) 49 “Unforgettable . . . with Love” musician 33 Destroy from the inside out 7 “Black Panther” antagonist ___ Stevens, 50 Hold sway over 34 Tremendous a.k.a. Killmonger 51 Stroller on the Strand? 37 “Ella Minnow ___” (2001 novel in which 8 Take an evening course? the government bans the use of more 9 Deeply impresses 52 Renowned fifty-oared galley and more letters of the alphabet) 10 Mother-of-pearl source 53 Salon selections 38 On the line 11 Drive with no particular destination 40 Like sore losers 12 Certain members of the peerage Solution to the previous puzzle: 42 Convention-program listings 13 Plagiarized C H E A P S H O T R I C H E A R T H T O N E W A L L E 43 Puts a coat on 15 Laughably nonsensical D R I V E R S E D O I L E D 44 Natalie’s portrayer in “In the Bedroom” 23 Viewed with disdain? A R K W I T T E N D B A R 46 Power unit 24 Multivolume story, perhaps R A S H P E T A L S I N E S H O E S L I L A C T E N 47 Academic inst. near Bel Air 25 Be up against S N I T S S K I R T E D 48 26 Writer’s block? Where one’s ancestors are from S A K E S N O W 54 Pointer’s pronoun 27 Gives credence to H O T M E S S E W E R S S I A P I P E D D R U M S 55 Pie fruit rarely eaten raw 28 First name in Objectivism H T T P N O T E D K N I T 31 What a fly is designed to cover 56 Vocal quality A H B L I S S P A S O L E 32 Recites M O R A L I C A N T E V E N 57 Extremely popular 35 Virginia city where two Civil War E M A I L T H R E E P E A T 58 Covers some ground battles were fought S E N D O U T S M A R T S 59 Gets the idea 36 Portrayer of fictional boxer Clubber Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at 60 Presentations at software expos Lang newyorker.com/crossword