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PRICE $8.99 NOV. 13, 2017 NOVEMBER 13, 2017 7 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 25 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Steve Coll on the President’s turbulent year; Stuyvesant reflects; a write-in move; Souza’s Obama; atop the Panorama. THE POLITICAL SCENE Jeffrey Toobin 32 Trump’s Inheritor Tom Cotton and the future of the G.O.P. SKETCHBOOK Roz Chast 39 “Wine Review” ANNALS OF LAW Ken Armstrong 40 Conflicting Convictions When prosecutors use contradictory evidence. OUR LOCAL CORRESPONDENTS Ian Frazier 46 Clear Passage Making space for ships by saving a bridge. SHOWCASE Richard Avedon 53 “Nothing Personal” A REPORTER AT LARGE Larissa MacFarquhar 56 Our Town What makes a rural community thrive? FICTION Thomas McGuane 66 “Riddle” THE CRITICS THE THEATRE Hilton Als 70 “People, Places & Things.” BOOKS Adam Gopnik 74 Philip Roth’s collected nonfiction. 77 Briefly Noted POP MUSIC Carrie Battan 78 The hip-hop-infused R. & B. of Ty Dolla $ign. DANCING Joan Acocella 80 Mark Morris’s “Layla and Majnun.” MUSICAL EVENTS Alex Ross 82 John Eliot Gardiner conducts Monteverdi. THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 84 “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” POEMS Rebecca Hazelton 50 “Generic Husband” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 63 “Above the Mountaintops” COVER Jenny Kroik “At the Strand” DRAWINGS Benjamin Schwartz, Emily Flake, Amy Hwang, Harry Bliss, Liana Finck, Maddie Dai, Glen Le Lievre, Frank Cotham SPOTS Hugo Guinness CONTRIBUTORS Larissa MacFarquhar (“Our Town,” Ken Armstrong (“Conflicting Convic- p. 56), a staff writer, is the author of tions,” p. 40) is a co-author of “A False “Strangers Drowning.” Report: A True Story of Rape in Amer- ica,” coming out in February. The ar- Ian Frazier (“Clear Passage,” p. 46) most ticle in this issue was published in part- recently published “Hogs Wild: Se- nership with the Marshall Project, a lected Reporting Pieces” and is work- nonprofit news organization covering ing on a book about the Bronx. the U.S. criminal-justice system. Rebecca Hazelton (Poem, p. 50) is the Roz Chast (Sketchbook, p. 39), a New author of the poetry collections “Fair Yorker cartoonist since 1978, is the au- Copy” and “Vow” and a co-editor of the thor of, most recently, “Going Into anthology “The Manifesto Project.” Town: A Love Letter to New York.” Thomas McGuane (Fiction, p. 66) began Alex Ross (Musical Events, p. 82), a staff regularly contributing short fiction to writer, is the author of “The Rest Is the magazine in 1994. His latest book, Noise” and “Listen to This.” “Cloudbursts: Collected and New Sto- ries,” comes out in March. Jenny Kroik (Cover) is an illustrator. This is her first cover for the magazine. Joan Acocella (Dancing, p. 80) became the magazine’s dance critic in 1998. Her Steve Coll (Comment, p. 25), a staff latest book is “Twenty-eight Artists writer, is the dean of Columbia Uni- and Two Saints,” a collection of essays. versity’s School of Journalism. Jeffrey Toobin (“Trump’s Inheritor,” Carrie Battan (Pop Music, p. 78) is a con- p. 32) is the author of “American Heir- tributor to newyorker.com. She has also ess: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, written for the Times Magazine, GQ, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst.” and Bloomberg Businessweek. NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more. PHOTO BOOTH PODCAST Hilton Als on Richard Avedon John Cassidy discusses Robert and James Baldwin’s joint Mueller’s indictments and the exploration of American identity. Republican tax plan. SUBSCRIBERS: Get access to our magazine app for tablets and smartphones at the THE RICHARD AVEDON FOUNDATION AVEDON THE RICHARD App Store, Amazon.com, or Google Play. (Access varies by location and device.) AVEDON/ RICHARD BY PHOTOGRAPH LEFT: © 4 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 13, 2017 THE MAIL WHEN THE ROBOTS TAKE OVER Kolhatkar’s article mentions the steady decrease in job opportunities for people Having worked as a manufacturing en- without a college degree. This points to gineer for forty-five years, and having a greater problem: the ever-growing installed fifteen robotic manufacturing achievement gap in high schools. Here systems, I was impressed by Sheelah in Atlanta, as in many other metro areas, Kolhatkar’s comprehensive piece on standardized-test results reveal that stu- how robotics and artificial intelligence dents at magnet tech schools in the sub- are replacing human workers (“Dark urbs have been outperforming their urban Factory,” October 23rd). The world of counterparts for years. The latter group manufacturing is undergoing rapid will not be able to participate as fully in changes, and the number of highly the workforce in the future, and that will skilled people who are needed to de- seriously limit the nation’s economic sign, program, test, install, and service growth. If more factories are employing the robots and the manufacturing sys- fewer workers, and only workers who are tems does not come close to the num- highly skilled, then the companies that ber of people who have lost their jobs own those factories have a social respon- to these technologies. We should all be sibility to acknowledge this changing en- concerned about where humans will fit vironment, and to prepare our students in in the future, not only in the manu- for it. Perhaps we should explore an facturing sector but also in aviation, incentive-based system of reducing tax finance, medicine, transportation, and rates for corporations that assist in train- construction. Sometime in the next ing our future workforce. twenty-five to two hundred years, A.I. Darwin L. Brown will be capable of writing its own code, Atlanta, Ga. and will do it much faster and better than humans. We need to think very In my career as a foreign-service officer, seriously about that, and take steps to I spent a significant amount of time in avoid the scenario depicted on R. Kikuo places that had tried using one or another Johnson’s cover of the magazine. variant of a universal basic income to fix Robert B. Price problems stemming from economic in- Delanson, N.Y. equality. In my experience, they all ended badly for citizens in every income bracket. While it is true that the world has If we overtax high earners, at some point endured several technological revolu- they will respond by producing less or in- tions reasonably well, it seems naïve vesting less (or both). The result is a down- to suppose that past performance is ward spiral in economic activity and a re- an indicator of future success. Kol- duced capacity to afford social-equity hatkar lays out the frightening pros- programs. It’s true that A.I. and robotics pect of a world free of inefficiency and will create real issues that will need to be want, economically sustained by pro- resolved, but the solutions lie in reducing gressive taxation of the wealthy but the population and in making people less bereft of satisfying employment for consumption-oriented and better edu- low-skilled workers. We are now per- cated. Relying on redistribution alone is haps within reach of the scenario that too simplistic, and is doomed to failure. Kurt Vonnegut prophesied in “Player Rene R. Daugherty Piano” (1952), in which people lack Aztec, N.M. not for resources but for the self- respect that a profession provides. Yes, • we are trying to “eliminate waste.” Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, That “waste” just happens to be the address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited blue-collar worker. for length and clarity, and may be published in Philip Bunn any medium. We regret that owing to the volume Madison, Wis. of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter. THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 13, 2017 5 NOVEMBER 8 – 14, 2017 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN A Caribbean island ravaged by storms: it’s a sadly familiar image from the news, but one that sets the stage for romantic fable in the 1990 musical “Once on This Island,” adapted from Rosa Guy’s novel “My Love, My Love” and featuring a calypso score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. A Broadway revival begins previews on Nov. 9, at the Circle in the Square, starring the eighteen-year-old newcomer Hailey Kilgore (above), as a peasant girl who braves the gods and the elements on her quest for love. PHOTOGRAPH BY PARI DUKOVIC 1 MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES Museum of Modern Art A RT “Max Ernst: Beyond Painting” The founder of Cologne’s branch of Dada and an early Surrealist, Ernst started using the phrase “beyond painting” in the early nineteen-twenties. Sometimes he applied it to technical innovations, as in his arresting 1928 piece “The Sea,” in which a photographic-looking black-and-white moon rises over a colorful ocean of painted stripes and lines in- cised in plaster. But more often he was referring to collage: pieces made from found type, cut-up and reconfigured prints, painted-over medical charts, and scraps of wallpaper. Even if they don’t always succeed, Ernst’s incongruous juxtapositions do re- liably awaken a free-floating strangeness that lin- gers in the mind. In “The Hat Makes the Man,” from 1920, Ernst covered a found millinery adver- tisement with gouache, pencil, oil, ink, and addi- tional elements, joining the shadowy black hats into translucent yellow and green towers. In an il- lustration from “Répétitions,” a 1922 collaboration with the poet Paul Éluard, a headless woman in a leopard-print boat holds a giant sparrow under her The exhibition “Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer” opens at the Met on Nov. 13. arm. The standout in this overstuffed show is the 1926 portfolio “Natural History,” in which Ernst collocated leaves and pieces of bark to make such high school, in the mid-sixties he took monsters as a tabletop rhinoceros (“The Repast Winter Preview pictures at Warhol’s Factory.