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Thank you for being a reader and SEPTEMBER 3, 2018

supporting 6 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

15 THE TALK OF THE TOWN independent Jill Lepore on Presidential misconduct; Michael Cohen’s city; shaming fashion’s copycats; journalism. voter registration in Rikers; compo columns.

LETTER FROM NICARAGUA Jon Lee Anderson 20 The Playbook How the Ortega regime is quelling an uprising.

SHOUTS & MURMURS Jack Handey 27 It’s in My Book

ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS Simon Schama 28 Blue as Can Be A color archive’s exotic treasures.

PROFILES Ian Parker 34 The Bane of Their Resistance Glenn Greenwald’s war on the Democratic élite.

ANNALS OF THE MIND Judith Thurman 48 Maltese for Beginners How linguistically talented people learn.

FICTION Haruki Murakami 56 “The Wind Cave”

THE CRITICS POP MUSIC Carrie Battan 61 Nicki Minaj and her fans. Read even more BOOKS 63 Briefly Noted original stories Louis Menand 64 Francis Fukuyama’s “Identity.” from your favorite ON TELEVISION writers on Emily Nussbaum 70 “Succession.” THE CURRENT CINEMA newyorker.com. Anthony Lane 72 “McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection,” “Andrei Rublev.”

POEMS Maya Ribault 43 “Bees” Katie Condon 52 “Origin”

COVER Barry Blitt “Closing In”

DRAWINGS Carolita Johnson, David Sipress, Paul Noth, Amy Hwang, Julia Suits, P.C. Vey, Liana Finck, Seth Fleishman, Roz Chast, Kaamran Hafeez, Farley Katz, Harry Bliss, Julia Bernhard, Teresa Burns Parkhurst SPOTS Hanna Barczyk

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Introducing CONTRIBUTORS The New Yorker Crossword Puzzle Ian Parker (“The Bane of Their Resis- Judith Thurman (“Maltese for Begin- tance,” p. 34) contributed his first piece ners,” p. 48) began writing for the mag- to the magazine in 1994 and became a azine in 1987 and became a staff writer staff writer in 2000. in 2000. She is the author of “Cleo- patra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire,” a Emily Nussbaum (On Television, p. 70), collection of her New Yorker essays. The New Yorker’s television critic, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Jon Lee Anderson (“The Playbook,” p. 20), a staff writer, began contribut- Simon Schama (“Blue as Can Be,” p. 28), ing to The New Yorker in 1998. His many a University Professor of Art History books include “The Fall of Baghdad.” and History at Columbia, has written for the magazine since 1994. His most Katie Condon (Poem, p. 52) is a doc- recent book is “The Story of the Jews, toral candidate in English at the Uni- Volume Two: Belonging, 1492-1900.” versity of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Tyler Foggatt (The Talk of the Town, Jack Handey (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 27) p. 16) joined the magazine’s editorial has contributed to the magazine since staff last year. 1987. His latest humor book is “Please Stop the Deep Thoughts.” Barry Blitt (Cover) is a cartoonist and an illustrator. His latest book, “Blitt,” Elizabeth Barber (The Talk of the Town, is a collection of his illustrations for p. 18), a member of the magazine’s ed- The New Yorker, the Times, Vanity Fair, itorial staff, has written for Reuters and and other publications. published work in Time and Wired.

Maya Ribault (Poem, p. 43) recently Haruki Murakami (Fiction, p. 56) will graduated from the M.F.A. program publish his fifteenth novel in English, at Bennington College. “Killing Commendatore,” in October.

1. Stack for a publisher’s THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM assistant. 2. Dulce et (Horatian maxim). 3. Flavoring used in biscotti. 4. Landmark 1973 court case, familiarly.

Do the rest of the puzzle, and find a new one every week, CULTURE DESK PODCAST at newyorker.com/crossword On the twenty-fifth anniversary of Dorothy Wickenden and Adam Magic: The Gathering, Neima Jahromi Davidson discuss what Allen examines the game’s popularity. Weisselberg knows about Trump.

Download the New Yorker Today app for the latest news, commentary, criticism,

and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008. STEED EDWARD LEFT:

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THE MAIL

HOMEWARD BOUND gaining momentum, and every citizen should be involved. This is not the time An International Beer, Music & Food Celebration I was moved by Rebecca Mead’s essay to abdicate one’s civic responsibility. Presented by and on her decision to move back to her William P. Alkire birthplace, England, after spending de- San Jose, Calif. cades in the United States and having become a citizen (“The Return of the While I am not yet eligible to apply Native,” August 20th). Her story echoes for citizenship, I am a Brit living in mine. As both a Swiss and an Ameri- New York, as Mead was. Unlike Mead, can citizen, I can identify with her feel- though, the ghastliness of the Trump ings of no longer being able to go Presidency has only hardened my re- 9/8 “home,” yet I, too, want to go back. It’s solve to stay. I did not realize how fully clear that this was a difficult decision I shared the values of this country until for Mead, and she doesn’t overlook the they were threatened by the current Vince Staples privilege of being able to return to her Administration. Jeff Tweedy native country (nor do I). Like Mead, Dan Abernethy I have been given incredible oppor- 1New York City NAO tunities in the United States that my Saba / Preoccupations home country could never have offered THE LIMITS OF FREE SPEECH me. What, then, makes us want to leave Vagabon / Hatchie a country that has given us so much? I appreciate Steve Coll’s thoughtful Standing on the Corner Mead says that it is not because of examination of the censoring of social Flasher / Madison McFerrin Trump, though it is for me. “I’m get- media, and I agree with his conclu- ting out, but I’m not getting away,” she sion that “it is sometimes necessary to writes, arguing that no one can escape defend the rights of awful speakers, politics in this “shrunken world.” But for the sake of principles that may help 9/9 leaving can also be an act of protest a free and diverse society renew itself ” against the ways that the ideals of this (Comment, August 20th). Still, I have The Flaming Lips country—“hard work and honesty, cour- some questions. What about the issue age and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, of public safety? Is hounding some- Nile Rodgers & CHIC loyalty and patriotism”—are being dam- one on a social-media platform the Yo La Tengo / Girlpool aged beyond repair. It is difficult to equivalent of repeatedly leaving threat- leave, but it is more difficult to see these ening and harassing voice-mail mes- Hop Along / No Age principles being stifled to the point sages on someone’s phone? What if Kamaiyah / Shopping where truth isn’t the truth. the recipient of the messages feels Julie Byrne / The Courtneys Danielle Muller afraid? When should law enforcement Los Angeles, Calif. intervene? Coll writes that “there are other ways to challenge hatemongers— Thomas Paine wrote, in “The Ameri- at the voting booth.” But that’s very can Crisis” (1776), “These are the times idealistic, and victims of hate speech that try men’s souls.” After reading need protection, too. If we don’t have Mead’s article, I’m sure she would mature and honorable political lead- Beer Samples Included agree. The policies put forth by the ers to intervene, then we have to rely with Your Ticket Trump Administration must be ad- on reluctant social-media C.E.O.s to dressed by the electorate, and it is our do it instead. responsibility as citizens to do so. Mead Jill Hinckley September 8 & 9, 2018 is a naturalized citizen, and she makes Kingsland, Texas clear that she plans to keep voting. But Governors Island, NYC does she also have a moral obligation • to stay in this country after enjoying so Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, many benefits of residence over the address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited years? I think so. When she became a for length and clarity, and may be published in citizen, she took the Oath of Allegiance any medium. We regret that owing to the volume to America. Now a political “war” is of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter. Tickets & More Info at OctFest.co РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

AUGUST 29 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2018 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

With Cynthia Nixon’s run against Andrew Cuomo adding some spice to Albany politics, the New Group looks back at another New York power struggle. In Sharr White’s “The True,” starting previews Sept. 4, at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Edie Falco plays Dorothea Noonan, known as Polly, who was the confidante of Albany’s mayor of four decades, Erastus Corning II. Set in 1977, the play finds Cor- ning (Michael McKean) facing a tough primary challenge; Peter Scolari plays Noonan’s husband, Peter.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADAM PAPE 1РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS that she maneuvers with expressive agility, sharpens the producer’s dense bell swirls, NIGHT LIFE Thiroux is as seriously musical as she is darting bass lines, and skeptical vocals to serenely entertaining. Her quartet includes fine points. He spins all night at Nowa- Musicians and night-club proprietors lead the virtuosic clarinettist and saxophonist days.—Michaelangelo Matos (Sept. 1.) complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in Ken Peplowski.—S.F. (Aug. 29-Sept. 1.) advance to confirm engagements. The Sun Ra Arkestra Cyrus Chestnut Trio G. Calvin Weston Union Pool Jazz Standard Honoring its commitment after a June show The Stone at the New School Although his new album, “Kaleidoscope,” in Union Pool’s garden was postponed, the Adventure has been coursing through the blood finds Chestnut reconfiguring compositions spiritual forebears of Afrofuturism cap the of Weston, a drummer of relentless invention, by Mozart, Debussy, and Satie, it’s safe to summer season with a free concert. Sun ever since his sojourn with Ornette Coleman say that this passionate pianist will dip into Ra, the innovative composer-pianist whose when Weston was still a teen-ager. This resi- the roomy jazz repertoire at this engage- ideals live on in this collective, claimed to dency unites him with, among others, the key- ment. He’ll play alongside two partners be from Saturn (by way of Birmingham, boardist John Medeski and his fellow-drummer long familiar from his recordings and live Alabama), which explains his outfit’s many Billy Martin.—Steve Futterman (Aug. 28-31.) performances: the bassist Buster Williams name changes (Sun Ra and His Intergalactic and the drummer Lenny White.—S.F. (Aug. Research Arkestra; the Solar Myth Arkes- 30-Sept. 2.) Released by Laoji tra). They still perform clad in elaborate Joe Lovano costumes—sparkly tunics and headdresses— and bring the requisite riotousness. Mar- Village Vanguard Galcher Lustwerk shall Allen, a saxophonist and a founding Too young at age sixty-five to be considered an member, is ninety-four—and shows no signs elder statesman, but with enough experience Nowadays of retiring.—K.L.W. (Sept. 1.) and wisdom to have secured a position in the House music tends to be either murky or jazz firmament, Lovano can safely be called a frisky, but not often concurrently. Pull- master, a saxophonist and bandleader of rare ing off both at once is the defining trait of Warm Up inspiration. For this engagement, he steers Galcher Lustwerk’s music. The Brooklyn an intergenerational quartet that includes producer and vocalist (he raps in a laconic, MOMA PS1 Marc Johnson (the last bassist to work with offhanded fashion) came to the fore with During the summer months, MOMA PS1 Bill Evans) and the septuagenarian drummer “100% Galcher,” a showcase set for the pod- throws weekly parties with heavy-hitting Andrew Cyrille (a valued associate of Cecil cast “Blowing Up the Workshop,” which the lineups that are worth braving the heat for Taylor).—S.F. (Aug. 28-Sept. 2.) dance-music site Resident Advisor named week after week. For the final event of the the top mix of 2013. In June, Lustwerk re- season, the museum is hosting a blowout leased “200% Galcher,” a proper album; it featuring the exceptional d.j.s Riobamba, Darcy James Argue Jazz Standard AVANT, ELECTRONIC, AND IMPROV The innovative composer, arranger, and big-band leader Argue may be no more para- noid than the average guy in these uncertain times, but at least he knows how to channel his anxieties into opulent art. In Argue’s 2016 extended work, “Real Enemies,” he wove re- corded statements touching on conspiracy theory throughout his characteristically eclec- tic soundscapes, producing an atmosphere of dread. These two sets by his long-running orchestra, the Secret Society, may avoid the Sturm und Drang in favor of more condensed, if equally vivid, scores.—S.F. (Aug. 29.)

Mint Field Baby’s All Right Estrella Sanchez and Amor Amezcua are the guitar-and-drums duo at the center of this drone-rich amalgam, which formed four years ago in Tijuana. They’re still settling on their identity. As teen-agers, they were dreamy and ambient; now, with skills honed from being on the road and mixing it up with other mu- sicians, they’ve become well acquainted with sludgy textures and a guitar sound that has a clamorous ring to it. The through line The guitarist Bill Frisell relishes strong, creative melodies, and to witness is Sanchez’s angelic soprano. “Pasar de las Luces,” their début album, is a cohesive him deconstruct one is to be in the presence of someone who can chart the document of what’s in store at this date in most daringly charming paths from point A to point B. The sound sculptor Brooklyn.—K. Leander Williams (Aug. 29.) Ikue Mori launched her music career as a drummer in the post-punk band DNA, back when the term “downtown” was a catchall for myriad forms of Katie Thiroux expressionism; they were artsy antiheroes spearheading a style called No Birdland Theatre Wave. In the meantime, Mori’s laptop-enabled sonic palette has expanded A bassist with a sound as massive as a cruise tenfold. The beauty of this one-off duet at National Sawdust, on Aug. 29, lies —K. Leander Williams ILLUSTRATION BY ARIEL DAVIS BY ILLUSTRATION ship and a singer with a pocket-size voice in its pairing of masterly, freewheeling improvisers.

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the quartet explores Beethoven’s various RECITALS moods, from appeasing to yearningly pen- sive (the String Quartets Op. 18, No. 2, and Op. 131, respectively), and Wunsch joins them again for Pierre Jalbert’s intense Piano Quintet.—Oussama Zahr (Aug. 30-31 at 8.)

Escher String Quartet South Mountain Concerts OUT OF TOWN This series, which turns one hundred this year, has quite a pedigree. Founded in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, by the noted music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, it occupies a concert hall cus- tom-built for chamber music, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places. (The Colonial-style structure retains its porte cochère, should you wish to pull up in a horse-drawn carriage.) The Escher String The week surrounding Labor Day can seem like a classical-music desert, Quartet kicks off the early-fall schedule with a dynamic program of pieces by Mozart, with summer festivals ending and the new fall season yet to arrive. Happily, Shostakovich, and Brahms. Subsequent Bargemusic, that reliably unconventional floating concert hall moored in concerts feature performances by the Saint the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, addresses the drought head on, with Lawrence, Juilliard, and Emerson String Quartets, as well as by Wu Han and David an annual series that celebrates living composers. Instead of emphasizing Finckel, the much admired artistic directors marquee names, the opening salvo of the Here and Now Festival, Aug. 31- of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Sept. 2, showcases friends and neighbors, with companionable works by Center.—O.Z. (Beginning Sept. 2 at 3, with Daron Hagen, Yoriaki Matsudaira, Peri Mauer, Daniel Schnyder, Gerard performances most Sundays through Oct. 7.) Schwarz, and David Taylor, laid out in a smorgasbord of world and local premières (and a few repeats) that changes daily.—Steve Smith Trio Solisti Maverick Concerts OUT OF TOWN In 1881, when Ernest Chausson Juana, Serena Jara, and MIN2, of the local an entrancing experimental-salsa band, La wrote his Piano Trio, he was still a student collective Discwoman, which aims to am- Mecánica Popular. Somehow, he also finds in Paris, but, whether inspired by youthful plify underrepresented voices in music. The time to construct and program musical ro- passion, the political tremors of the Third esteemed rapper and musician Lizzo will bots. At this cavernous converted factory Republic, or the composition classes of César also showcase her talents, along with the space in Queens, he navigates a heady con- Franck, he produced a mature expression experimental pop innovators Gang Gang fluence of technology, culture, and cognition, of French Romanticism. This year, the Dance and Yaeji, a d.j. and producer who accompanied by a machine of his own design piece—which these avid explorers of the crafts compelling, unpredictable house that reacts to human motion with percussive Belle Époque recorded in 2015—is the last gems.—Paula Mejia (Sept. 1.) patterns.—Steve Smith (Aug. 30 at 8.) music programmed at Maverick’s sylvan home, outside of Woodstock, New York. Trios by Dvořák (the vigorous Piano Trio Claude Young Hans H. Suh No. 1 in B-Flat Major) and Haydn (No. 27 in C Major) begin the concert.—Fergus McIntosh Good Room San Damiano Mission (Sept. 2 at 4.) This Detroit native once said, “I’m just a A classical piano recital in a church that tech geek who does music,” and even for ministers to millennials, sponsored by a com- 1 a techno d.j. Young’s sets are heavy on munity radio station housed in a reclaimed new-machine gleam. They’re also built shipping container: what could be more THE THEATRE to excite—among his Motor City peers, Brooklyn? The Lot Radio, an online broad- only Derrick May and Jeff Mills approach caster, presents the young South Korean Young’s skill at generating a hurtling mo- pianist Hans H. Suh, who offers impassioned Be More Chill mentum while on the decks. Young doesn’t works by Schumann (Arabeske in C Major), cultivate much personal mystique; he’s taken Liszt (Sonata in B Minor), and Ravel (“La Pershing Square Signature Center long breaks from the d.j. world. But his Valse”).—S.S. (Aug. 30 at 8.) Dynamic, jouncy, and emo to the max, this sets—try “Transmission 01,” from 2015—are musical by Joe Iconis and Joe Tracz tells thrillingly engaging. He headlines Good the story of Jeremy (Will Roland), a loser- Room, with Vince Watson and Henry Chow Jupiter String Quartet geek-whatever trying to make it through in support.—M.M. (Sept. 2.) high school with minimal injury. His status, Skaneateles Festival if not his fashion sense, improves once he 1 OUT OF TOWN The Boston-based ensemble, a downs a SQUIP—a Super Quantum Unit regular at this Finger Lakes music festival, Intel Processor (think Ritalin with a cir- CLASSICAL MUSIC collaborates with the composer and steel- cuit board)—which programs him for cool. pan virtuoso Andy Akiho for the first of two Soon he’s hanging with the in-crowd and concerts this week. Meditative yet sono- on the outs with Michael (a show-stealing, “Robot, Teach Us to Pray” rous nineteenth-century works—Debussy’s utterly adorbs George Salazar), his former String Quartet in G Minor and Schumann’s best friend. If you fed “Dear Evan Hansen” Knockdown Center Piano Quartet, Op. 47, with the pianist and “Mean Girls” to the “Little Shop of The Peruvian composer Efraín Rozas Aaron Wunsch—frame a pair of pieces com- Horrors” plant, with a few Xbox games as teaches at New York University, curates posed and played by Akiho: the bright and a digestif, “Be More Chill” is probably what the award-winning online radio program dreamy “Murasaki (Purple)” and the more you would get. Though its plot (minus the

“La Vuelta al Día en 80 Mundos,” and leads driving “In/Exchange.” The next evening, sci-fi element) and characters are ultimately PETE GAMLEN BY ILLUSTRATION

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generic, its angsty power-pop numbers are into Julia Roberts’s leather boots, Samantha oven, just some rolls on my waist.” The show as infectious as malware.—Alexis Soloski Barks is agreeable as Vivian, the upwardly thinks it’s risqué—with its sex jokes and its (Through Sept. 30.) mobile Hollywood call girl, with Andy Karl many exhortations to be freckled and mul- as Edward, the corporate shark whose heart tiply—but its satire is as edgy as a blunted she melts. “I want the fairy tale,” Vivian crayon.—A.S. (Through Oct. 21.) Days to Come famously declares, and “Pretty Woman” is unquestionably a Cinderella story, with Beckett all the dated gender politics that implies. Straight White Men This 1936 play was Lillian Hellman’s first More striking, though, is its gospel of con- dramatic offering after the éclat of “The spicuous consumption. (The moral: Shop Helen Hayes Children’s Hour,” her impressive Broadway your way to self-worth.) The bright spot in Young Jean Lee’s play, directed by Anna D. début of two years earlier. “Days to Come” Jerry Mitchell’s production is Orfeh, who, as Shapiro, is framed by two trans people, bombed, closing after seven performances, Vivian’s gal pal, actually seems to be having known as Person in Charge 1 and Person in and this worthy Mint production is the first fun.—Michael Schulman (Open run.) Charge 2 (the attractive Ty Defoe and the major revival of the work in forty years. The performance artist and author Kate Born- play concerns a strike at an Ohio brush fac- stein, respectively). After they break down tory and the complicated tensions within the R.R.R.E.D.: A Secret Musical some definitions—what constitutes “trans” Rodman family, the owners of the business. and so on—this choral duo ushers us into a Hellman would explore family monetary DR2 family room in the Midwest. It’s Christmas- dynamics more fully in her next play, “The A musical comedy that isn’t, this nonsensical time, and Jake (the expert and funny Josh Little Foxes,” where, among other fascinating show, directed by Andy Sandberg, recruits Charles) is messing around with his brother refinements, she split the character of this its audience into a clandestine league de- Drew (the sensitive and charismatic Armie play’s bothersome, bossy Cora Rodman into fending the rights of redheads. That title? Hammer); soon they’re joined by their dad, the opposing feminine personae of Birdie It’s the faction’s overwrought acronym: Real Ed (Stephen Payne), and brother Matt (Paul and Regina. But, as directed by J. R. Sullivan Redheaded Revolutionary Evolutionary Schneider), who once wrote inflammatory and played by the fine cast of eleven, “Days Defiance. In the future or possibly now, gin- lyrics to the tune of “Oklahoma!”—lyrics to Come” stands on its own. It’s a gripping, gers are under threat, which the insurgents that, if you replay them in your mind, hint lucid examination of the dangerous inter- Victoria (Katie Thompson, who also wrote at Matt’s difference from his brothers, who section of economic, social, and personal the music) and G.J. (Matt Loehr) explain never stop horsing around. Lee has scripted forces, even though, with the entrance of the via song and dance and unusually terrible a simplistic morality play whose thrust is strikebreakers, the action turns pulpy for a PowerPoint. (They’re joined onstage by a Them bad, Us—audience members, Per- stretch, like a Jimmy Cagney movie.—Ken pianist, Rodney Bush, an obvious brunet.) sons in Charge—good. By trying to lam- Marks (Through Oct. 6.) Most of the lyrics don’t rhyme, and most poon whiteness, she’s made a “white” play: of the jokes are aggressively unfunny, as in shallow, soporific, and all about itself. (Re- the song “Pregnant”: “I’m not with child, viewed in our issue of 8/6 & 13/18.)—Hilton Henry VI I’m with ham and eggs / not a bun in my Als (Through Sept. 9.) A.R.T./New York Theatres The National Asian American Theatre IN THE PARK Company aimed high: when it came to tackling Shakespeare, the troupe did not pick a popular hit like, say, “Twelfth Night”; instead, it opted for a deep cut, the “Henry VI” trilogy, here presented in two installments totalling just under six hours. Alas, the adapter-director Stephen Brown- Fried (NAATCO’s well-received “Awake and Sing!”) did not find a way to tame this sprawling, unwieldy epic of political machi- nations, which culminates with the Wars of the Roses. Brown-Fried opted for spare styl- ization—the set, lighting, and costumes are superb—at the expense of visceral impact. Despite the endless scheming and escalat- ing violence, the production is strangely uninvolving. There’s a lack of distinctive performances from the sixteen-strong en- semble, some to the point of being distract- ingly subpar—so much shouting!—which makes it difficult to tell the feuding factions apart. Only the NAATCO co-founder Mia Katigbak makes any kind of impression, confidently underplaying her role as the Superlatives are increasingly difficult to back up, since most of the world Duke of Gloucester.—Elisabeth Vincentelli (Through Sept. 8.) speaks and tweets in exclamation points by now, but I think it’s safe to say that the director Lee Breuer’s “The Gospel at Colonus” is a masterpiece. I first saw it at BAM in 1983, when it premièred, and I left the theatre Pretty Woman with my shirtfront drenched with tears and the perspiration of relief: Nederlander here was a portrait of black life—of black music, joy, and pain—that I In adapting their 1990 megahit for the stage, could understand. Brilliantly recasting Sophocles’ tragedy “Oedipus at J. F. Lawton and the late Garry Marshall took the “Don’t mess with success” route, Colonus” as a Pentecostal sermon, Breuer and his incredible composer, preserving every outfit reveal and iconic Bob Telson, got at the heart of difference and history and how the two line (“Big mistake. Big. Huge.”). So what’s helped create America. A limited run of free shows at the Public’s Dela- new? Pop-rock anthems by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance, stuffed with platitudes corte Theatre, Sept. 4-9, features the legendary groups the Blind Boys —Hilton Als ILLUSTRATION BY JUN CEN BY ILLUSTRATION about how everyone has a dream. Stepping of Alabama and the Original Soul Stirrers.

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 9 1РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS “Chaim Soutine: Flesh” “Eckhaus Latta: Possessed” A RT Jewish Museum Whitney Museum The centerpiece of this small, potent, and Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta, who founded “Canova’s George Washington” timely retrospective of the Russian-French their bicoastal fashion label in 2011, embrace painter is “Carcass of Beef,” made circa gender’s infinitude with millennial ease; the Frick Collection 1925. Painted in reds and blues as lumi- fact that they cast models in a range of sizes “I wasn’t aware that was something a person nous as those of Gothic stained glass, it and ages lends their beautiful, edgy clothes a could do,” trills King George III, in “Ham- crackles with formal improvisations (one humane sophistication. Their takeover of the ilton,” on learning that George Washington swift white line rescues a large blue zone museum’s ground-floor gallery is dominated by will give up the helm of the United States. In from incoherence) and wild emotion. It’s an a pop-up boutique, with display elements de- 1816, North Carolina commissioned Europe’s event—an emergence, an emergency—that signed by interesting artists with disappointing leading sculptor, Antonio Canova, to memori- transpires ceaselessly while you look. Clem- results. (Susan Cianciolo’s hand-sewn mirror alize the event. The marble carving perished ent Greenberg, in 1951, adjudged Soutine’s frame and Annabeth Mark’s flappy painting in a fire in 1831; the Frick has borrowed the work “exotic” and “futile,” owing to its lack fare the best.) The fashion and art worlds’ artist’s full-scale plaster version from Italy of “reassuring unity” and “decorative or- shared trade in luxury objects is needlessly for this richly detailed historical show. The dering.” But today the painter feels of the emphasized—or perhaps unconvincingly cri- President sits in imperial Roman garb—at the moment, amid quite enough reassurance tiqued—by tags that read “Special Museum suggestion of Thomas Jefferson—and gazes and decorativeness in recent art. Soutine Exhibition Product” hanging from the couture into space, like a poet seeking inspiration, as was once cited as a major forebear of Ab- garments, such as a bulky tunic woven from he starts to compose his Farewell Address. The stract Expressionism; Willem de Kooning plastic bags, and the comparatively afford- rendering, by a neoclassical master overdue called him his favorite painter. But being able T-shirts, socks, and shifts, all of which for reappraisal, is a tad daffily idealized, but favored by fashion incurred a cost when Pop are for sale. A bank of monitors showing live also beautiful and, perhaps, stirring. As on and Minimalism conquered the art world, feeds of viewers browsing at the Whitney and Broadway, we remember a man who earned in the early sixties. Ever since, the painter surveillance footage from the label’s store in immense authority and gave it away for the has occupied a blind spot in contemporary L.A. contributes to the sense of conceptual sake of a newfangled nation.—Peter Schjeldahl tastes. That should end now.—P.S. (Through flailing.—Johanna Fateman (Through Oct. 8.) (Through Sept. 23.) Sept. 16.) “Giacometti” EN PLEIN AIR Guggenheim Museum The Swiss master of the skinny sublime is the subject of a majestic, exhausting retrospective— pace yourself when you go. The standard story of Giacometti, as a Surrealist who became a par- agon of existentialism for his ravaged response to the Second World War, was well established by 1966, when he died, at the age of sixty-four. He hasn’t changed. The world has, though. What is he to 2018 and 2018 to him? Since 2010, three bronze figures by Giacometti have become the first, second, and third most expensive sculptures ever sold. Auction antics hardly amount to his- torical verdicts, but, these days, trying to ignore the market when discussing artistic values is like trying to communicate by whisper at a Trump rally. Giacometti’s work surely deserves its price tags, if anything of strictly subjective worth ever does. The bad effect is a suppressed acknowledg- ment of his strangeness.—P.S. (Through Sept. 12.)

“History Refused to Die” Metropolitan Museum This two-room trove of twenty-seven magnifi- cent paintings, sculptures, drawings, and textiles by a constellation of black artists working across the Deep South is at once an invaluable intro- duction and a missed opportunity. (The works Mark di Suvero, the American sculptor who founded Socrates Sculpture highlight a groundbreaking gift to the museum Park, in Long Island City, in 1987, resists the term “Abstract Expression- from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.) The exhibition is titled after a piece by Thornton ist.” “I’m a corrupted Constructivist,” he once said. The Tennessee-born Dial, an Alabama-born artist of such expressive sculptor Virginia Overton, now based in New York, defies labels, too. finesse and audacity that critics have compared It’s tempting to describe her ten sinewy sculptures, occupying the him to both Robert Rauschenberg and Willem de Kooning. But it’s precisely this kind of equiv- park’s five riverfront acres through Sept. 3, as assisted readymades, à la alence—validating “outsider” black artists by Marcel Duchamp. The primary material of “Untitled (Late Bloomer)” comparing them to “insider” white ones—that is a pickup truck, whose flatbed is now a water feature with a fountain creates a sticking point before the show is given enough room to breathe. The decision to install and a lotus pond. But the piece also puts a green spin on the machine Dial’s 2004 piece “Victory in Iraq”—a coruscat- dreams of Minimalism. The thirty-eight-foot-long “Untitled (Gem),” a ing eleven-foot-long panel, optically anchored latticelike structure of salvaged steel trusses, suggests Vladimir Tatlin’s by an ironic red-white-and-blue “V”—adjacent to Jackson Pollock’s “Autumn Rhythm,” from “Monument to the Third International” (from 1912) lying down on 1950—one of the jewels of its modern collec- —Andrea K. Scott the job, another corrupted Constructivist. tion—feels like an unnecessary legitimatizing HUCHETTE ANTONY BY ILLUSTRATION

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strategy for a work of art that soars on its own 1merits.—Andrea K. Scott (Through Sept. 23.) ON THE BOARDS At the end of a summer preview series, MOVIES Lumberyard is holding a grand open- ing for its new performing-arts space Behemoth in Catskill, New York, on Sept. 1- As befits its title, the director Zhao Liang’s 2016 2. The place is state-of-the-art, de- documentary is colossal in scope. Its subject is signed for technical rehearsals and the human toll of the environmental catastro- phe of large-scale Chinese industrialization. A out-of-town tryouts, and it’s also big descent into a deep subterranean mine and a enough to be a soundstage, another series of blindingly fiery eruptions in a steel mill are matched by Zhao’s calmly furious closeups of its functions. Appropriately, the of workers whose faces and bodies are marked site is being inaugurated with a bang. by these dangerous labors. Punctuated with ter- With many bangs, actually—not just rifying (albeit controlled) explosions, choking smoke storms, and impressionistic images of the loquacious feet of the tap master fractured landscapes, the film seems to shudder Savion Glover, but those feet in what’s with the destructive power of invisible, ubiqui- tous, and cruelly indifferent authority. In Chi- likely to be a fascinating conversation nese.—Richard Brody (Museum of the Moving with the innovative drummer Marcus Image, Sept. 2, and streaming.) Gilmore. Leave it to Glover, who likes to turn up the volume, to give a good BlacKkKlansman test of the building’s soundproofing. Believe it or not, the story told by Spike Lee’s latest film is true. The setting is the late nine- The charming Alan Cumming is the teen-seventies, but it’s the present day and its host on opening night.—Brian Seibert lingering injustices that lie within the movie’s sights. John David Washington plays Ron Stall- worth, the first black policeman in Colorado Springs, who hatches a scheme to infiltrate the destructive behavior: the pathos of fandom, won progress, a passionate form of political Ku Klux Klan by making friendly contact with the chaos of musicians’ lives, and the exces- action.—R.B. (In limited release and on Hulu.) Klansmen—including their Grand Wizard, sive devotion to duty. Annie (Rose Byrne), David Duke (Topher Grace)—over the phone. an art historian, toils in boredom at a seaside For face-to-face meetings, Ron is imperson- museum. She’s in a relationship with Duncan Operation Finale ated by a fellow-cop, Flip Zimmerman (Adam (Chris O’Dowd), a pop-culture scholar who This historical drama, directed by Chris Weitz, Driver). Lee, as nimble as he’s ever been, remains runs a fan site for a reclusive singer-songwriter absorbingly unfolds the complex maneuvers alert to the absurdist comedy of this setup as well named Tucker Crowe (Ethan Hawke). Coinci- behind the Mossad’s capture, in 1960, of the as its nastiness and risk. The result is a switch- dences following the emergence of an unheard Nazi official Adolf Eichmann (Ben Kingsley) in back ride that by the end veers into documentary Crowe demo lead Annie and Tucker into e-mail Buenos Aires, where he was protected by sym- outrage, but that wildness feels both pertinent correspondence; differences of musical opinion pathizers, and his conveyance to Israel, where and true. With Laura Harrier, cool and collected, drive a wedge between Annie and Duncan; and he stood trial. Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac), one as a student leader.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in a birth in the family brings Tucker to London, of the half-dozen agents involved in the plan, our issue of 8/20/18.) (In wide release.) where he and Annie meet. The comedic drama, seeks to redeem himself for a failed earlier directed by Jesse Peretz, looks fliply at Tuck- mission; so does a colleague, Dr. Hanna Regev er’s self-imposed exile. The movie is buoyed (Mélanie Laurent), who is also Peter’s ex. The The Furies throughout by Byrne’s rendering of Annie’s movie focusses mainly on Peter’s daring efforts The frontier comes off as positively Elizabethan graceful wit under constrained circumstances, to get Eichmann to agree to his deportation (as in this roiling, hard-edged Western melodrama but the playfully convenient plot twists and the required by the Argentinean government); it from 1950. Walter Huston plays T. C. Jeffords, a impersonally constructed characters empty offers a welcome corrective to Hannah Arendt’s swaggering self-made rancher whose pride leads the story of emotion.—R.B. (In wide release.) description of Eichmann as a tongue-tied fool. to financial imprudence. He’s readying his tough, Despite clichéd depictions of Nazi atrocities, smart daughter, Vance (Barbara Stanwyck), to the movie persuasively evokes, with its wealth take his place, but the two men in her life get Minding the Gap of details, the slender threads on which his- in the way. Juan Herrera (Gilbert Roland), a Growing up in Rockford, Illinois, Bing Liu torical events—and historical truth—depend. squatter on the land, is Vance’s devoted friend filmed his friends’ wondrous skateboarding Lior Raz brings controlled fury to the role of and the obstacle to a bank loan that T.C. needs; adventures, as well as his own. A decade later, Isser Harel, the Mossad chief who directs the Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey) is the gambler she he returned, as a documentary filmmaker, to plan.—R.B. (In wide release.) loves—and T.C.’s sworn enemy. Meanwhile, Flo film his friends’ current lives, but the main Burnett (Judith Anderson), the new woman in subject of his empathetic, wide-ranging, and T.C.’s life, has designs on the ranch. The director, urgent inquiry is the past. Zack and Keire, A Paris Education Anthony Mann, stages the action as a series of high-school dropouts, struggle to get by; both In this blinkered and nostalgia-steeped drama, clangorous confrontations; the movie’s jarring of them, as they tell Liu, endured beatings as directed by Jean Paul Civeyrac, an aspiring film- violence pales beside the clashes of egos and children—as did Liu. Zack, a new father, is in maker named Étienne (Andranic Manet) leaves the disputes between new banking interests and a troubled relationship with Nina, his child’s his native Lyon to attend film school in Paris. He age-old claims on the land. His stark images mother, who tells Liu that Zack has beaten finds it to be a snake pit of ambitious competi- provide a fitting stage for the splendid actors’ her. Liu interviews his own mother, Mengyue, tors, including the brilliant, arrogant Mathias brazen rhetorical battles.—R.B. (Anthology Film about his late stepfather, his abuser. Liu trans- (Corentin Fila), the self-doubting Jean-Noël Archives, Aug. 31, and streaming.) forms the documentary into a form of cinema (Gonzague Van Bervesseles), and the audacious therapy, bringing long-silenced traumas to Héloïse (Charlotte Van Bervesseles). Étienne the fore while reconsidering skateboarding gets a sentimental education from his room- Juliet, Naked as a response to intimate agony. His own eth- mate Valentina (Jenna Thiam) and a political This artificially hearty adaptation of a novel ical risk in discussing private lives is central education from another roommate, Annabelle

ILLUSTRATION BY GIACOMO BAGNARA GIACOMO BY ILLUSTRATION by Nick Hornby dramatizes three modes of to the film, too; Liu offers a vision of hard- (Sophie Verbeeck). The tale of youthful ardor

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 11 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS meeting hard practicalities is punctuated by (Shayna McHayle) and the energetic, imag- Tony Roberts, Doris Roberts, and Jerry Stiller, undergraduate disquisitions on art and life and inative Maci (Haley Lu Richardson)—and is who cracks that the hijackers are going to fly stuffed with literary and cinematic references. quietly anguished by the torrent of details on the subway to Cuba.—Michael Sragow (Film The shaded black-and-white cinematography which the whole enterprise, and each woman’s Forum, Aug. 30, and streaming.) and the dialectical romances mimic the styles life, depends. Bujalski builds the insightful and moods of nineteen-seventies French classics analysis of management and entertainment on without their intimacy, rage, or historical scope. a volcano of passion.—R.B. (In limited release.) The Wife Civeyrac’s film students spend most of their The Nobel Prize in Literature is the MacGuffin time reading and writing; their script-bound of this contrived and flimsy yet affecting drama, academicism is mirrored in his own film. In The Taking of Pelham set mainly in 1992. The elderly American novelist French.—R.B. (In limited release.) Joseph Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) wins it that One Two Three year; his wife, Joan Castleman (Glenn Close), Once just a solid thriller, now a time capsule celebrates ambivalently, and when they head to Support the Girls spiked with amphetamines, Joseph Sargent’s Stockholm for the ceremony their troubles are In this exuberant yet intricate comedy-drama, subway-hijack picture from 1974 taps into teased out. Unbeknownst to the world, Joan— the writer and director Andrew Bujalski goes viewers’ paranoia over a decrepit, vulnerable who was Joseph’s student in the nineteen-fifties behind the scenes of a Texas sports bar—where infrastructure and then provides bitter laughs and married him soon thereafter—is the better young waitresses in crop tops and hot pants and a harrowing catharsis. Four armed men writer, though she has never published. Joan has serve up good clean flirtation to the largely male (Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Eli- long given Joseph far more than moral support; a clientele—and unfolds the relationships, laws, zondo, and Earl Hindman) in dapper disguise brazenly insistent scholar (Christian Slater) has and mores on which it runs. The result is a thrill- commandeer a car, take eighteen hostages, and uncovered their story and plans to reveal it, and ing whirl of vital and spirited performances. demand a million-dollar ransom. They’ve got a the festivities provide an opulent backdrop for Regina Hall commands the screen as Lisa, the clever plan, but they don’t count on the sly ru- the secretive clashes. The director Björn Runge, bar’s compassionate and all-seeing manager, minations of the Transit Authority lieutenant working with the screenwriter Jane Anderson’s who bends the rules and defies her boss (James played by Walter Matthau. This offbeat star’s adaptation of a novel by Meg Wolitzer, sticks to Le Gros) to help several employees with legal ironic air sends jolts of iconoclastic mirth into surfaces that only Close’s performance ever deep- problems while competing with a glitzier pub the fetid atmosphere, yet his irresistible low ens; the stepwise reduction of the pain-seared nearby. Despite her own romantic troubles, key depends on the rest of the cast’s operating story to a mystery plot dispels its psychological Lisa is mainly devoted to the bar’s waitresses, at full steam. And what a cast! It includes James power.—R.B. (In wide release.) especially the discerning and sarcastic Danyelle Broderick, Kenneth McMillan, Julius Harris, 1 READINGS AND TALKS IN REVIVAL “Race in America’s Courts” 92nd Street Y Catherine (Kitty) Payne, the subject of “Char- iot on the Mountain,” the legal journalist Jack Ford’s new work of historical fiction, was a freed slave who was abducted along with her four children, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and returned to the South by slave catchers, in 1845. Astonishingly, she filed a court case and won back both her and her family’s freedom a year later. (Her kidnappers were jailed.) In a talk subtitled “Peering Through the Murky Present into a Dark Past,” Ford and Jami Floyd, a host of WNYC’s “All Things Con- sidered,” use the Payne case as a jumping-off point for an examination of racial justice then and now.—K. Leander Williams (Aug. 30 at 7.)

Deborah Baker Greenlight Bookstore In “The Last Englishmen: Love, War and the End of Empire,” the author Deborah Baker fashions an epic from the lives of the geologist The British director Terence Davies channels vast currents of experience— John Auden and the surveyor Michael Spender, and a large swath of history—into his pain-filled, lyrical first feature, “Distant whose efforts to map the Himalayas and reach the summit of Mt. Everest are set against the Voices, Still Lives,” from 1988. (It opens Aug. 31 at Metrograph, in a new backdrop of the Second World War and wan- restoration.) The drama follows the fictionalized Davies family in a hard- ing British rule in India. While researching working neighborhood in his native Liverpool, from the Second World War journals, correspondence, and municipal doc- uments from Calcutta, Baker also discovered a to the threshold of the sixties. It’s sparked by a monstrous husband (Pete romantic triangle: Auden and Spender ended Postlethwaite), who beats and humiliates his wife (Freda Dowie) and their up competing for the attentions of a painter three children, Eileen, Maisie, and Tony; when the sisters marry, they also named Nancy Sharp. Baker discusses the im- plications of the rivalry, as well as geopolitical endure the wrath of tyrannical husbands. Davies’s evocation of domestic concerns, with the journalist Kanishk Tha- horror is matched by the women’s imaginative and emotional power; their roor.—K.L.W. (Aug. 30 at 7:30.) hearty and passionate singing of pop tunes and sentimental ballads provides 1 a soaring vision of solidarity, creativity, and humanity. Davies’s film is both For more reviews, visit

a great cinematic memory piece and a profound musical.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town UNITED ARCHIVES GMBH/ALAMY

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1 nut jam; or soft-boiled eggs made brothy TABLES FOR TWO with soy sauce. For Malaysian “white coffee,” beans that have been roasted in Kopitiam olive oil, butter, and sugar are ground fine Lower East Side and mixed with hot water and condensed Anyone who feels, as I do, stifled by the milk, then “hand-pulled,” or poured from categories of food considered suitable for a great height with dramatic flair be- BA R TA B breakfast in the Western world will find tween two pitchers, until a sweet, frothy freedom at Kopitiam, which means drink emerges. Ghost Donkey “coffee shop” in Hokkien, a southern- The chef, Kyo Pang, who is from Pe- NoHo Chinese dialect spoken in Malaysia. Here, nang, cooks the food she ate growing Amid the grays and browns of a lively stretch of Bleecker Street near the Bowery, a lacy curtain you can eat nasi lemak, a national dish of up in a family of Baba-Nyonya heritage, glows red. Ghost Donkey, a mezcalería from the Malaysia, at any time of day, but it’s es- meaning that her ancestors immigrated collective behind Saxon + Parole, has served the pecially satisfying in the morning, both to Malaysia from China centuries ago. swanky downtown masses a dizzying array of potent drinks for the past year and a half; on comfortingly simple and thrillingly elec- When she first opened Kopitiam, in Saturdays, lines snake around the block. Red tric, a transitional wake-up call for the 2017, it was in a tiny, dingy storefront on Christmas lights hang from the wood-slatted palate. A scoop of soft coconut rice, Canal Street with barely any seating, but ceiling, like a festive, agreeable rain of blood. A throb of Mexican music plays steadily, though ringed with crunchy half-moons of cu- it didn’t matter: she earned fans so de- there is no room to swing your hips because the cumber and topped with a boiled egg voted that when her rent spiked, forcing place is so crowded with young fashionistas tak- (slightly overcooked, a forgivable offense), her to close, one of them—Moonlynn ing selfies against the red brick walls. In case the effort of edgy self-regard makes you thirsty, provides the comfort. The jolt comes Tsai, who also happens to be a restaura- cocktails abound; the El Diablo Swizzle (Altos from a mound of salty, chewy dried an- teur—swept in to be her business partner. Blanco, crème de cassis, ginger beer) is a sweet, chovies, so tiny you might not realize In June, Kopitiam reopened in a much smoky muddle garnished with mint, while the Mezcal Sun-Risa (tequila, bitter orange, hibis- they’re fish but for the silvery twinkle of larger, better-appointed space. There cus) is a burgundy-and-orange ode to brightness their eyes, studded with soy-roasted pea- are proper tables now, which are often anchored by floral savor. A drink of prosecco and nuts. To punch it up even further, add a covered in as many of the small, inex- paletitas—little fruit-flavored popsicles—makes for a heady pair, sweet, dry, chilled, lip-tickling. dollop of jammy sambal, a paste of chilies pensive dishes on Pang’s expanded lunch Mezcals traced from Querétaro and the Tlacolula and fermented shrimp. To really thumb and dinner menu as can fit. There are Valley are sold by the ounce for the discerning your nose at yogurt and granola, order keropok chips, like deep-fried fish jerky, drinker. There’s a mycological bent to the menu— the Mushroom Margarita, made with huit- the delicate, fragrant fish-ball soup, too. to dip in spicy, salted egg-yolk paste; a lacoche-infused mezcal, is a rather unfortunate Who decided you shouldn’t you have silky-stranded fin of stingray, steamed shade of greenish-gray, and there are truffle fish-ball soup for breakfast? You should! with sambal and string beans in a tinfoil nachos, whose dense umami taste is abetted by slick white Cheddar. But perhaps the most im- For more of a side step into break- packet; and duck tongues, stir-fried in portant thing to do at Ghost Donkey is to see fast liberation, there is French toast, seafood sauce, each a delicate framework and be seen, in a blue dress that fits like a second fat, squishy squares of it, marbled with of cartilage containing surprisingly lus- skin, or a flapperesque black bob, or a sharp linen suit. One recent night, a man clutching a Hura- a nutty chocolate malt powder called cious pockets of rendered fat. Who de- cán Ramírez—an elegant tall rum drink topped Milo—an Australian equivalent of Oval- cided you shouldn’t have duck tongues with an edible flower—and wearing a conspicu- tine, popular in Malaysia—and drizzled for dinner? You should! (151 East Broad- ous “Eat the Rich” T-shirt, scanned the crowd. “I wonder,” he said, “how many people here are with condensed milk; or regular toast, way. 646-609-3785. Dishes $2-$15.) Instagram stars?” (4 Bleecker St. 212-254-0350.)

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY LIEBMAN FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW JEREMY LIEBMAN FOR BY PHOTOGRAPH slathered with thick, eggy pandan-coco- —Hannah Goldfield —Talia Lavin

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THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT George Washington to Lyndon B. John- appointing him Inspector of Lighthouses. I T WAS N EV E R T H US son, Woodward divided the work among The Post Office (for a long time the fourteen historians. They were to exclude largest part of the federal government) n May, 1974, John Doar, the special from consideration any allegations that was quite often involved. James Mon- Icounsel to the House Judiciary Com- appeared to be merely partisan or ideo- roe was twice embroiled in congressional mittee, called the Yale historian C. Vann logical, and confine themselves, as Wood- investigations relating to the White Woodward into his office and asked him ward explained, to the “responses of the House furniture. Andrew Jackson once to figure out just how badly Presidents President, on his part or on the part of accepted the gift of a lion from the had behaved in the past, and how they his subordinates, to charges of miscon- Emperor of Morocco. (He sold it and had answered accusations against them. duct that was alleged to be illegal and gave the money to charity.) More griev- A sense of scale seemed needed, a sense for which offenders would be culpable.” ously, James Buchanan appears to have of magnitude. Doar gave Woodward They found rather a lot. Every Pres- had a hand in Democrats’ attempts to until July to pull together a report, a cat- ident except William Henry Harrison, rig the elections of 1856 and 1858; in 1860, alogue of every charge of Presidential who died in office after only a month, after Republicans gained control of the misconduct from 1789 to 1969. Was Rich- had been accused of some form of mis- House, they launched an investigation, ard Nixon worse than the worst? Or conduct. Most of it was petty, bumbling, and leaked its findings to the press, maybe not that bad? Historically speak- and shabby: favoritism and graft, wheel- whereupon Buchanan called his accus- ing, what is “politics as usual,” anyway? ing and dealing, mainly done not by the ers “parasites,” said the testimony against It would be good to know the answers, President but by the men around him, him was “nothing but falsehoods,” and with regard to the current occupant of not least the notorious Grant staffer and complained that he was unable to fight the White House. The conviction of Paul Whiskey Ring swindler Orville Bab- back, since it was unbefitting of the Pres- Manafort, Donald Trump’s former cam- cock, whom Grant could never bring ident to divulge the nature of private paign manager, tars him, and the guilty himself to fire but instead rusticated by conversations: “His lips are sealed.” plea of Michael Cohen, his former at- It gets worse, if not by much. (And, torney, implicates him. Cohen has pleaded of course, the historians didn’t catch ev- guilty to violating federal law at Trump’s erything.) Three men appointed by War- direction, making the President an un- ren G. Harding went to jail, and his At- indicted co-conspirator. If Trump were torney General, Harry M. Daugherty, not President, he would very likely be who was also his former campaign man- charged with a crime. What else he has ager, nearly did, and probably should done, and what can be proved, and what have. Daugherty lived with a man named Republicans are willing to do about it Jesse W. Smith, and gave him an office remain to be seen; meanwhile, Trump’s in the Justice Department, where, pos- entire Presidency, from his Cabinet ap- ing as a federal-government employee, pointments to his foreign policy, lies in he made business deals. Smith eventu- a muddle of money-grubbing, kowtow- ally killed himself. ing, and influence-peddling. The historians who undertook the Is Trump more of a crook than Nixon project dropped everything to do it. was? That’s not the right question, but “Found not much to tell on F.D.R.; quite it’s the inevitable one. Asked to measure a lot under Truman,” James Boylan now

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA JOÃO BY ILLUSTRATIONS Nixon against every President from recalls. James Banner, who as a young

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 15 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS professor at Princeton wrote the reports be the chief coordinator of the crime investigation for more. William Leuch- on Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, said and misdemeanor charged against his tenburg, ninety-five, supervised the that he worked on them out of a sense own administration as a deliberate course work from T.R. to L.B.J. “However of the “civic office of the historian.” He of conduct or plan. Heretofore, no pres- much Richard Nixon deserved im- came to see a pattern. Serious malfea- ident has been held to be the chief per- peachment and the end of his Presi- sance really began with Jackson, reached sonal beneficiary of misconduct in his dency,” he says, “what he did does not a pitch with Buchanan, then quieted administration or of measures taken to match the Trump Presidency in its down until the Presidencies of Grant destroy or cover up evidence of it. Here- malfeasance, and in the depth of his and Harding, but all these shenanigans, tofore, the malfeasance and misde- failure as President.” he thought, seemed quaint compared meanor have had no confessed ideo- Woodward submitted the study on with what Nixon stood accused of. logical purposes, no constitutionally time, but, weeks later, Nixon resigned, These days, even Nixon’s underhand- subversive ends. Heretofore, no presi- and it was never printed. Woodward edness begins to look upstanding. Wil- dent has been accused of extensively decided to have it published. “A whole liam McFeely, now eighty-seven, and subverting and secretly using established book devoted exclusively to the miscon- retired from the University of Georgia, government agencies to defame or dis- duct of American presidents and their covered Andrew Johnson and Grant. “I credit political opponents and critics, to responses to charges of misconduct is think Nixon was pretty bad, but I think obstruct justice, to conceal misconduct without precedent,” he wrote in the in- that even he had a respect for the Con- and protect criminals, or to deprive cit- troduction. Almost no one reviewed the stitution, and for a constitutional sense izens of their rights and liberties.” book, or read it. It has hardly ever been of the value of the Presidency,” McFeely Those never-befores ought to have cited. A copy in Harvard’s Widener Li- says. “Trump trounces on those.” become never-agains. But they haven’t. brary has been checked out only twice Woodward, reviewing the 1974 find- Trump has already done some of them— since 1974. Banner says, “It might be ings, made a list of never-befores: “Here- not secretly but publicly, gleefully, and time to bring it back into print.” tofore, no president has been proved to without consequence—and is under —Jill Lepore

WALKING TOUR windows, and a bright-red door with a ing. Blondie. Russian. Jewish.” He was LEGEND shiny gold handle. The side yard con- less keen on Trump: “I love America. I tains a jungle gym and a trampoline. Over don’t love Trump. But he’s not Amer- the course of twenty minutes, eight low- ica.” He’d never heard of Cohen. flying planes roared overhead: Delta, Fin- “Michael Cohen,” another driver said. nair, Etihad Airways, more Delta. “He’s in trouble, right?” Next stop: Yellow Cab SLSJET Man- From Queens, the tour might pro- agement Corp., in Long Island City, ceed to the Pierre hotel, in Manhattan, ast week, “an adviser close to” Mi- Queens, the headquarters of a Ukrainian where Cohen was married to Laura Shus- Lchael Cohen told the Washington émigré named Simon Garber, who is terman, the Ukrainian-born daughter of Post that Cohen’s guilty plea (to eight known as the Taxi King. Cohen met a taxi entrepreneur, or to Freds, the restau- counts of campaign-finance violations, Garber in the nineteen-nineties, after rant at Barneys, where the Niçoise salad tax evasion, and bank fraud) represented earning his J.D. from Thomas M. Cooley costs thirty-eight dollars. A frequent pa- a chance to rewrite his legacy. Cohen Law School, in Michigan (recently tron said that he sees Cohen there often, would morph, in the eyes of history, from ranked by a watchdog group as the bit player best known for statements like “least-selective law school in America”). “What I’m going to do to you is going They went into business together, and a to be fucking disgusting” to saviour of report by the podcast Trump, Inc., noted the republic. One imagines future tour- that, for a time, Cohen practiced personal- ists signing up for a tour of Michael Co- injury law out of Garber’s taxi office. hen’s New York, as they do for other city It’s a squat brick building with a legends, like Biggie Smalls and Alexan- yellow awning and a sign advertising der Hamilton. “lease a medallion.” Inside, the walls The other day, a test run was at- are yellow with black-checkered bor- tempted. First stop: the town of Law- ders. A motivational poster reads, “Syn- rence, near J.F.K. Airport, where Cohen ergy.” A middle-aged woman typing in grew up, the son of a nurse and a sur- a cubicle looked up and said, “No Mi- geon who had emigrated from Poland chael Cohen here.” after the Holocaust. His street, Rolling Outside, mechanics and drivers milled Hill Lane, is a lush cul-de-sac with two- around parked yellow taxis. One driver, story houses and the odd McMansion. Nessiem Salem, had very nice things to Cohen’s home, which has been renovated say about Garber. “He treats me exactly since he lived there, has beige siding, white like a brother,” he said. “Very good look- Michael Cohen

16 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 РЕЛИЗ ПОД1ГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS and that the two had an encounter during FASHION POLICE tering. “I love what they’re doing with Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign. “He TAG TEAM the logos,” Liu said. The pair generally came in and sat down at the next table,” approve of Prada’s references to the past, the man recalled. “I said, ‘Well, Michael, arguing that the lead designer, Miuccia what are you looking for out of this?’ Prada, has a savvy way of drawing on the And he said, ‘Oh, I’m going to be chief company’s archive. “She’s never tried to of staff if Donald wins.’” keep any of that a secret,” Schuyler said. A few blocks away, the Friars Club, At the Zara store, a few blocks away, where Cohen has been a member for at ony Liu and Lindsey Schuyler, the they grew more skeptical. Schuyler stud- least four years, was quiet. Alan Zweibel, Tfashion fanatics behind the Insta- ied a mannequin in vampy boots and a longtime member, said, of Cohen, “I’ve gram account Diet Prada, are both loved a chocolate-brown ruched minidress. never seen him at the club. But I pray he and feared for their cheeky takedowns “Some old Y.S.L. boots,” she said. isn’t on the finance committee.”Around of designers who rip off other people’s They passed rows of sock-like calf- the corner, the entrance of Trump Tower concepts. In a recent post, they placed an high sneakers with thick white soles—a was swarming with tourists taking selfies. image of a winged Lacoste windbreaker nod to a Balenciaga design that went Cohen went to work there in 2006, pick- next to a similar piece by Jean Paul Gaul- viral. Liu noted that, as trends have be- ing fights with media outlets that crossed tier. “Not only is @lacoste super boring, come more outlandish, knockoffs have his patron. (In 2013, he demanded that they’re super lazy lmao,” they wrote to become more obvious. “They have their the Onion remove an “absolutely dis- their seven hundred thousand followers. Céline section, their Jacquemus section,” gusting” article about Trump, entitled Diet Prada has a mission: to re-stig- he said. He gestured toward a group of “When You’re Feeling Low, Just Re- matize stealing for an audience be- member I’ll Be Dead in About 15 or 20 numbed by streetwear “remixes” and Years.”) fast-fashion knockoffs. “People are, like, Next stop: the Loews Regency hotel, ‘Well, that’s their business model!’” on Park Avenue. F.B.I. agents raided Schuyler, who is thirty, said the other Cohen’s room there on April 6th. (Cohen day. “But that doesn’t mean it’s right.” was staying at the hotel while his apart- She said that young people seem espe- ment was under renovation.) The lobby cially indifferent to idea theft. “I don’t was full of men in suits with pocket think they appreciate it, or know what squares. it means to create something.” “I’m not asking you for charity. I have The pair were paying a visit to the sixty-five thousand dollars already,” a beating heart of New York retail—SoHo. man in a navy suit said to the man be- First stop: the Prada store. They are su- side him. “I’m not a fool.” perfans, as their name suggests. Liu wore “I didn’t call you a fool,” the other a tiny cross-body Prada bag over a vin- man, who was wearing a purple tie, said. tage floral button-up, and Schuyler wore “You called yourself a fool.” a large brown Prada fanny pack. “We A bellhop said, “I haven’t seen Mi- went into Opening Ceremony recently, Lindsey Schuyler and Tony Liu chael Cohen here in a while. I saw him and a guy there was, like, ‘Do you guys walking down the street last week, with work at Prada?’” Liu said. Liu and Schuy- faux-luxe Italian prints. “For the longest his wife or girlfriend or whatever. You ler launched Diet Prada in 2014, while time, they were holding back on having see him around this neighborhood.” working at the small apparel company a Gucci section.” He attributed this to The tour of Cohen’s New York ends Eugenia Kim. They remained anony- the fact that the label has a new designer, back in the outer boroughs: in Mill Basin, mous until this spring, when they re- Alessandro Michele. “It was, like, how Brooklyn, at the El Caribe country club, vealed their identities to a reporter from do you process this new era of Gucci?” which is reportedly owned by Cohen’s the Business of Fashion. The pair spend hours combing uncle, Morton Levine. (Cohen sold his In the Prada store, nobody recog- through tips from fans, who call them- stake in the business after Trump won nized them. A sound system played “Born selves Dieters, and from designers claim- the Presidency.) In the early eighties, the to Be Wild.” Liu stopped to examine a ing that they’ve been ripped off. Schuy- club was known as a meeting spot for flame-printed bowling shirt. He turned ler spotted a one-piece striped bathing Evsei Agron, the mafia boss of Brigh- to Schuyler and said, in a low voice, “I suit that resembled items by both Mara ton Beach. Nowadays, it mostly hosts have to tell you about my dream last Hoffman and Solid & Striped. “They weddings. Last Thursday night, blue night. I took this shirt to the dry cleaner, were both D.M.’ing us about the other spotlights on the building’s exterior and they washed it. All the colors bled, this summer, and it was, like, Guys, created a casino effect. Inside the main and they undid the hem. I think it was they’re striped bathing suits! Sorry.” banquet hall, a wedding was under way. the most stressful dream ever.” She nodded toward a set of clear- The guests gave the couple a standing In the women’s section, Schuyler ad- plastic tote bags, popularized by design- ovation. mired a calf-length black cardigan with ers such as Helmut Lang and Céline. —Tyler Foggatt “Prada” embroidered on it, in bubble let- “This reminds me of when schools asked

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 17 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS kids to wear clear backpacks because of bles in a dayroom. Anthony Posada, a rated, Grossman was a commercial liti­ school shooters,” she said. She remarked slight thirty­three­year­old attorney with gator, handling a lawsuit for a liquor dis­ on the fetish for camouflage and mil­ the Legal Aid Society, addressed the tributor. “Meanwhile, the apocalypse was itary gear: “You’re doing, like, haute room. “How many people here know occurring,” he said. “I just kind of lost it, Trump supporter. If irony is dead in that if you’re on Rikers Island, you can and I was, like, I should be doing some­ politics, I guess it’s still alive in fashion.” vote?” he asked. thing.” He quit his job and joined the They passed a T­shirt with an In­ The inmates had been in the middle New York Civil Liberties Union, where stagram­friendly platitude: “Do what of a reëntry­program meeting (one man he runs the Voting Rights Project. “Ev­ you have to do with love & passion.” had written his goals in a notebook: “1) eryone is naturally skeptical of the chubby “Yeah, says the person who got paid, no ass kissing 2) no passing gas 3) no ass white guy standing next to a C.O. with like, thirty­eight cents to embroider grabbing”). Posada continued: did the a stack of papers,” he said. “But,” he went that,” Schuyler said. group know that many of the people on, “what we have here at Rikers is a very Both Schuyler and Liu have left controlling their cases—the judges and large population of people who are un­ their day jobs to focus on Diet Prada. the District Attorneys—occupy elected registered but eligible. When you look Monetizing can be tricky. They’ve part­ positions? “We have forms,” he said, plac­ at margins of error in a lot of close elec­ nered with brands—including a paid ing a stack of voter­registration and ab­ tions, we’re talking about a number of social­ media gig for Gucci last year— sentee­ballot applications on a table. “We people who could swing a race.” but are hesitant to get too close to their can start helping people get registered.” An inmate with a teardrop tattoo targets. They’ve started selling their own In New York State, prisoners can’t beneath one eye, Jenar Ortiz, said that merchandise: T­shirts that say “Diet vote if they’re serving time for a felony, he’d hoped the volunteers had come to Prada” ($38), socks that say “Call It Out!” but that doesn’t apply to those who hear inmates’ grievances: “We’re being ($18). Last year, after Diet Prada scolded are waiting for a decision in their court treated like animals, and nothing is Dolce & Gabbana for a graffiti print cases—most of the six thousand and being done.” that was suspiciously similar to one twenty­five inmates at Rikers. Each Mon­ “Are you registered to vote?” Gross­ of Gucci’s, the label’s designer, Stefano day in August, volunteers have canvassed man asked. Gabbana, left an angry message in the the city’s jails, making people aware that, “No,” Ortiz said, and accepted a reg­ post’s comments section: “Please say as Posada put it, “your voices do matter.” istration form. He lives in Fort Greene sorry to me!!” Schuyler and Liu began Posada approached a tall marine who and, until recently, sold cleaning sup­ selling T­shirts with the phrase on it. In said that he’d last voted in 2008, for plies to landlords and worked for Fresh­ response, Dolce & Gabbana created a Barack Obama. “I didn’t think it im­ Direct. copycat version. pacted me until I got in here,” he said. “What are you pretrial for?” Gross­ In SoHo, the pair wandered into the “I never thought about the legal sys­ man asked. Dolce & Gabbana store. Schuyler sifted tem, because I was never really a part “Sale of drugs,” Ortiz said. He checked through a T­shirt rack until she found of it. Once I became part of it, I figured, the box to enroll as a Democrat. “I’ve a shirt bearing the slogan “Please say how bad can it be?” He took an absen­ just never voted in my life,” he contin­ sorry 2 me.” tee­ballot application. “Turns out, it’s ued. “But I do care, you know, and I can “How much is it?” Liu asked, dig­ really—” He censored himself. “You remember joking in the hallway of where ging for a price tag. Four hundred and know,” he said. I lived about Trump becoming President. forty­nine dollars. Volunteers walked around the room, And then, when he got elected, it wasn’t The pair were aghast. “We should handing out forms. An inmate waved funny no more. It wasn’t a joke anymore.” raise our prices,” Schuyler said. off an absentee ballot. “I don’t want to Ortiz said he supports Cuomo in the 1—Carrie Battan think that I’m going to be here,” he said. governor’s race. “He speaks up a lot for After fifteen minutes, the group got in the poor and the disadvantaged.” As for LOCKUP DEPT. a van and drove to another razor­wire­ Nixon, he said, “I just don’t think celeb­ REGISTRATION DAY ringed facility, one for general­popula­ rities should be involved in politics.” tion male inmates. A graying inmate collected an absen­ This unit was crowded. A Plexiglas tee­ballot form and sat down near a wall wall separated the dayroom from sixty stencilled with the words “Reading Area.” cots. A television was tuned to “The He said he was interested in Nixon’s can­ Jerry Springer Show”; several inmates didacy. “Women power is very strong watched in silence, wearing earbuds at­ right now,” he added. n a damp Monday morning at tached to transmitters. Perry Gross­ Someone suggested that Michelle Onine o’clock, as Governor Andrew man, a cheerful, ruddy­cheeked volun­ Obama should run for President. “With Cuomo and Cynthia Nixon barnstormed teer in a polo shirt, addressed the room. Beyoncé as V.P.!” New York City before the Democratic “When you’re a voter, people ask you “When Kanye West runs, I’ll sign up,” primaries, a small group of volunteers what you think,” he said. “People ask an inmate said. entered the veterans’ unit on Rikers Is­ you what you want. It’s just a way to “You might want to register now,” land, representing another campaign. In­ be more powerful.” Grossman told him. “So you’re prepared.” side, about a dozen men sat at metal ta­ When President Trump was inaugu­ —Elizabeth Barber

18 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 1РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS LOST ART DEPT. COMPO

homas Lupo’s office—on the sec- Tond floor of a former stable on Grand Street in Brooklyn—was once used in a commercial for Post Raisin Bran. “They said it was because it’s one of the few that still look like an old-time office,” Lupo said recently. He himself is sixty-five. There’s a computer on his desk, but the desk is plenty old, and the venetian blinds on the window next to it look as though they could have been “Please—if my wife still loved me, would she made by Venetians. Standing on the have let me buy this motorcycle?” floor near the desk, between a drafts- man’s table and a wood-panelled wall, •• is a large framed drawing, which sun- light has bleached to near-invisibility. umns. At some point, they realized that made new molds. Everyone thinks that “That’s the set designer’s sketch for the markup on columns was bigger than stuff was hand-carved, but, come on. Vito Corleone’s grave, in ‘The Godfa- the markup on ornaments, so they started Even in those days, even if you brought ther,’” Lupo said. “And the note on it making those, too. in five hundred Italians, that would have says, ‘Marble finishes as per detail.’” Lu- “We worked on Bob Hope’s seventy- been too expensive.” Interior embellish- po’s company, American Wood Col- fifth-birthday cake,” Lupo said. “It had ment has been out of fashion for a long umn Corp., made the gravestone out nine tiers, and we made the little col- time. “Nowadays, when we do this of wood and “compo,” a nineteenth-cen- umns that held them up.” He opened kind of work it’s usually for set design- tury precursor of plastic that, in Lupo’s a desk drawer and, without looking into ers—‘Madame Secretary,’ ‘Sex and the recipe, consists of sawdust, hide glue, it, grabbed a handful of snapshots, taken City,’ ‘Saturday Night Live.’” and whiting. “We steam it, we mix it, in multiple eras. He spread the pictures Another customer is the artist Ellen we beat it up like pizza dough, and we out on his desk. “That’s my father and Harvey, who met Lupo in 2012. “I press it into molds,” he explained. “It’s one of the big wooden toy soldiers we wanted a big column for a piece I was soft and pliable, and then, after it hard- used to make for Macy’s,” he said, point- working on,” she said. “I ended up doing ens, we can stain it or paint it, like wood.” ing. “Column pediment. Huge old- something else, because I ran out of The fake monument appears only fleet- fashioned telephone, for a guy who was money, but I just couldn’t stop think- ingly in the movie, in a scene that was retiring from A.T. & T.” Another hand- ing about it.” A recent exhibition of shot in Calvary Cemetery, in Queens, ful. “Casino. Casino. Wall panel. Dow- hers—“Ornaments and Other Refrig- but it looks totally real. els. What’s sad is that most of this stuff erator Magnets,” at the Children’s Mu- American Wood Column was co- goes into the garbage, because nobody seum of the Arts, in SoHo—featured, founded by Lupo’s grandfather, a dia- has a use for it.” Another handful. among other things, more than two mond cutter. “I don’t know how true “Wooden bombs, from World War Two. hundred wall-mounted compo pieces this is, but my father used to say that They were made out of wood because made by Lupo’s craftsmen. “I had someone owed my grandfather money all the metal was going into the tanks, wanted to do one of each, from all six but couldn’t pay,” Lupo said. “So the guy the guns, the bullets.” Another hand- thousand molds, but that turned out to said, ‘Look, I’ve got this business.’” They ful. “St. Francis Hotel, in San Francisco. be beyond my financial means,” she said. started on Mott Street, in lower Man- The workshop downstairs.” He stud- She photographed the entire collection, hattan, then moved to Brooklyn, around ied a group portrait. “That’s my uncle though, and four dozen poster-size 1216. Their principal asset was thou- and, let’s see: dead, dead, dead.” prints hung, in rows, on another wall, sands of hardwood molds, carved in En- Lupo’s ornament makers worked on like pages from a catalogue of the past. gland in the mid-eighteen-hundreds, the recent ninety-five-million-dollar “People don’t know about this kind of from which they made compo orna- restoration of Kings Theatre, a daz- ornamentation anymore,” she contin- ments: flowers, leaves, wreaths, mold- zlingly ornate eighty-nine-year-old for- ued. “But think about what a big part ings, medallions, and the like, mainly mer movie palace on Flatbush Avenue. of any interior or exterior it used to be. for walls and ceilings, and the tricky “We did all the new compo work,” he What happened to it all?” stuff on the tops of imitation Greek col- said. “They brought us pieces, and we —David Owen

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 19 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

Ortega, insisting that they were terror- LETTER FROM NICARAGUA ists, began trying to dislodge them. The assault was led not by soldiers but by paramilitary fighters—masked, heavily THE PLAYBOOK armed men—who took up positions, alongside police, on the edge of town. Suppressing an uprising, a regime denounces foreign influence and fake news. Masaya, which is flanked by an active volcano and a crater lake, has few roads BY JON LEE ANDERSON in and out, and before long the para- militaries had effectively sealed off the o tourists in Nicaragua, Masaya is nounced cuts to social-security benefits, city. Nearly every day there were bat- Tknown as the City of Flowers, the along with increases in worker contri- tles, between rebels armed with home- site of an artisans’ market where people butions. Tensions had been building for made mortars and slingshots and Or- come down from the capital to buy rock- years, over Ortega’s tenacious hold on tega supporters with military weapons. ing chairs, hammocks, and folkloric power, his occasionally arbitrary decrees, For eleven years, Ortega had sus- masks. To locals, it is also a bastion of and a widespread sense that his family tained his power through shrewd deal- rebellion. In 1912, when the United States and a few cronies had enriched them- making and accommodation. Although intervened in Nicaragua, Masaya’s de- selves at the country’s expense. Nicara- he began his career, four decades ago, fenders fired on a contingent of ma- gua is among the Western Hemisphere’s as a Marxist revolutionary, he has aligned rines, and though the town was quickly poorest countries, and the prospect of himself with business leaders and cul- captured, the members of the resistance greater privation inspired outrage. Stu- tivated the Catholic Church by impos- became heroes. In 1978, rebels fighting dents joined elderly pensioners on the ing a total ban on abortion. He still ful- a repressive government erected barri- streets to protest, and Ortega’s police minates about Yankee imperialism, but cades against the National Guard, and opened fire. Within a few days, twenty- he has courted the International Mon- held out until they were overwhelmed six people had been killed. As the lines etary Fund and allowed a wave of Amer- by airplanes and tanks. This spring, as of confrontation hardened, young par- ican retirees to settle in Nicaragua, to a new uprising began, the narrow back- tisans across the country blocked streets take advantage of the good beaches and streets of the city’s indigenous neigh- with barricades of paving stones to hold the cheap real estate. In recent months, borhood, Monimbó, were again a cen- back government forces. though, as Ortega has tried to regain ter of resistance. In June, the protesters in Masaya de- control, he has adopted a strategy em- The strife in Nicaragua began in clared the city “territorio libre del dicta- ployed by autocrats in Turkey, Egypt, April, after President Daniel Ortega an- dor”—territory freed from the dictator. Venezuela, and elsewhere: condemn OSWALDO RIVAS/REUTERS OSWALDO A man holds a homemade mortar in one of the protests against Daniel Ortega’s government that began in April.

20 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS your political opponents as traitors, in- ond term in office, Murillo was named Civic Alliance for Justice and Democ- cite mobs to violence, and then deny the Presidential spokesperson, and early racy—a coalition of students, business responsibility. Across the country, hun- last year she became Vice-President. groups, farmers’ organizations, and hu- dreds of protesters have been killed, and “She does all the day-to-day running man-rights activists, united mostly by many more put in prison. of the government,” a Western diplo- anger at the government’s abuses. They Not long after I arrived in Nicara- mat told me. “She’s a fruitcake, but a wanted Ortega and Murillo out of office, gua, in July, I met a few of Ortega’s men. brilliant fruitcake.” and justice for their friends who had Off the main square in Monimbó, three The Ortega-Murillos control a port- been killed. By May 16th, when a “na- of them were resting in the shade next folio that includes several television and tional dialogue” was finally convened, to a pickup truck, after a clash with pro- radio stations, an advertising agency, with the two sides meeting in a confer- testers. They wore balaclavas and car- and much of the country’s oil industry; ence room at a Catholic seminary in ried automatic rifles. Their leader intro- they have seven children, and many are Managua, nearly sixty people had died. duced himself as Chispa—Sparky. He involved in managing these businesses. The talks, broadcast live on national was burly, and in the midday heat he One of their sons, Laureano, is a key television, provided an unexpected boost was sweating through his blue T-shirt. adviser for ProNicaragua, an agency for the opposition. Lesther Alemán, a I asked who they were: soldiers? police- that promotes foreign investment. A twenty-year-old with stylish hair and men? “We’re just ordinary citizens who few years ago, he was at the center of nerdy glasses, stood and told Ortega want to defend the government, and our an ambitious deal in which a Chinese and Murillo that it was time for them country, from terrorists,” he said. When company was given rights to build a to step down. Alemán made for an effec- I pointed out that they seemed awfully canal across the country; the project has tive front man: a trucker’s son and a well organized and well supplied, Chispa faltered, and has been criticized for a straight-A student, draped in the blue- shook his head. The terrorists had been lack of transparency. Laureano, who is and-white national flag. “This is not a better armed, he insisted, and gestured also an operatic tenor, recently oversaw dialogue,” he said. “It is a forum for ne- at a paltry stash of confiscated weapons a lavish production of Verdi’s “Rigo- gotiating your departure.” Murillo stared in the bed of the pickup: a pair of home- letto,” in which he played the Duke of at him and his comrades, as if memo- made mortars and strings of nails. The Mantua, supported by a cast brought rizing their faces. Ortega looked be- international media had distorted what in from Italy. His sister Camila runs a wildered. When he rose to speak, he was going on, he told me. There had fashion business, which was hired to ignored the protesters’ petitions and in- been a lot of “noticias falsas”—fake news. supply the costumes. stead rambled about death, war, and the But I should believe him, he said through The First Couple’s influence is evi- Israeli-Palestinian conflict. his mask. He was telling the truth. dent across Nicaragua. Public buildings Ortega’s current term is due to end have been repainted in Murillo’s favored in 2021, and he had reportedly expressed rtega was silent on the first day of colors. On her orders, the main avenues willingness to hold elections early. But, Othe protests. On the second day, of Managua, the capital, were lined with after the embarrassment of the talks, he his wife, Rosario Murillo, broadcast a a hundred and forty “Trees of Life”: and Murillo became more implacable, statement denouncing the demonstra- fifty-five-foot metal structures that re- decrying a coup attempt. On Mother’s tors as “tiny, petty, mediocre beings.” semble gigantic carpet beaters, studded Day, hundreds of thousands of people They were not activists, she suggested, with electric lights. As the protests grew marched in honor of mothers who had but “vampires demanding blood,” who fiercer, the Trees of Life became a fa- lost children in the unrest. At least six- were inventing stories about the deaths vorite target. Demonstrators cut through teen people were killed in clashes with of protesters. their bases with hacksaws and pushed police, and more than two hundred oth- The aristocratic tone did not sur- them over, cheering. Like the Iraqi cel- ers were wounded. On June 15th, the prise Nicaraguans. Ortega and Murillo ebrants who attacked Saddam Hussein’s government and opposition representa- dominate the country, with a husband- toppled statue in Firdos Square, in 2003, tives briefly agreed to a ceasefire. But and-wife co-Presidency that is unique the Nicaraguan protesters scrambled hours later, in Managua, Ortega sup- in the modern world. Ortega is the more onto the fallen trees to jump up and porters threw Molotov cocktails into the recessive of the two; he is a wily nego- down in momentary triumph. house of a family that had refused to tiator, with a street fighter’s swagger, but allow police snipers onto their roof. (The he is a clumsy speaker and avoids pub- few days after the uprising began, government denied involvement.) Six lic appearances. Murillo, a thin woman A Ortega reappeared in public. He members of the family, including two with long, wavy hair, appears on the seemed uncertain what to do, at first young children, were burned to death. radio nearly every day and expounds at insisting on the social-security reforms By midsummer, masked vigilantes length on the news and on her personal and then agreeing to cancel them. He had begun systematically attacking the philosophy. A self-described poet who asked business leaders and the arch- barricades, and the death toll rose to professes a variety of religious faiths, bishop of Managua to help resolve the three hundred. Ortega denied responsi- she wears dozens of rings and vivid “dramatic situation.” But by then the bility, saying that the paramilitaries were clothes in blue, yellow, fuchsia, and pur- protests were no longer about social- an invention of the media, or were aligned ple—colors that she believes give off security reforms. The demonstrators with his enemies, or were merely local “good vibrations.” During Ortega’s sec- had formed an opposition group, the people defending themselves. It was hard

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 21 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS to miss the echo of Russia’s incursion twenties had become a nationalist hero United States’ actions had an impact. in Crimea, in 2014, when “little green for fighting the invading U.S. Marines. By 1990, the death toll from the Con­ men”—soldiers in unmarked uniforms— Their uprising cost the lives of as many tra war and the withering e9ects of U.S. began appearing near the border. Vla­ as fifty thousand Nicaraguans, but, by sanctions had eroded the government’s dimir Putin at first denied that they were July, 1979, Somoza was gone. popularity. That year, Ortega ran for Russians, and argued that they were Ortega had been a fighter since his reëlection and lost, to Violeta Chamorro, “local self­defense units.” youth. In 1967, wielding a machine gun, a former ally in the fight against So­ Ortega’s denials were similarly im­ he had tried to rob a branch of the Bank moza who was now aligned with the possible to believe. Videos circulating of America, in order to raise funds for center­right. on social media captured paramilitar­ the revolution, and he subsequently spent For the next sixteen years, Ortega ies working in concert with uniformed seven years in jail. After Somoza’s oust­ was a perennial candidate for the Pres­ police; one showed Ortega, in a crowd ing, he emerged as a national leader. In idency, but he never managed to win. of officers in riot gear, embracing a 1984, the Sandinistas—formally the San­ There were other humiliations, too. masked man. Then the bodies of ac­ dinista National Liberation Front, or In 1998, one of Murillo’s daughters tivists started turning up, with gun­ F.S.L.N.—held elections, and Ortega from a previous marriage, Zoilamérica shot wounds in the backs of their became President, with Ramírez as his Narváez, publicly announced that Or­ heads—a sign of summary executions. Vice­President. tega had sexually abused her since she A senior U.S. official whom I spoke to The fight against Somoza had was eleven. Ortega denied the allega­ feared that Ortega was using death brought together disparate factions, in­ tions, and Murillo accused her of be­ squads to silence his opposition. “We’ve cluding Marxist guerrillas (like Ortega) trayal; in the end, she was forced to moved from a climate of fear to one and middle­class intellectuals (like leave the country. But Ortega hung of terror,” the official said. Ramírez). But, as Ortega aligned him­ on. He sustained his links with the self with Cuba and the Soviet Union, party’s base, and kept up his friend­ mid the unrest, the Nicaraguan his more conservative associates aban­ ships in Cuba and in Venezuela, where Awriter Sergio Ramírez travelled to doned the coalition. The Reagan Admin­ the anti­imperialist Hugo Chávez had the ancient Spanish town of Alcalá de istration, perceiving a threat to Amer­ taken power. Henares, to receive the Miguel de Cer­ ican interests, authorized the C.I.A. to In 2006, Ortega found a way back vantes Prize, the most prestigious lit­ organize a violent uprising against Or­ to the Presidency, by combining sup­ erary award in the Spanish­speaking tega; the insurgents, led by former So­ port from the left and the right. He had world. Standing in a wooden pulpit, moza National Guardsmen, became struck deals with old conservative en­ flanked by guards in royal livery, known as the Contras. To avoid con­ emies, including the Catholic cardinal Ramírez, the seventy­six­year­old au­ gressional strictures on aid, Reagan ap­ Miguel Obando y Bravo and members thor of a dozen acclaimed volumes of proved a convoluted plot, in which mis­ of the country’s powerful private sec­ fiction, spoke about the repression and siles were sold to Iran and the proceeds tor. Though he still called himself a violence at home. “Let me dedicate this sent to the “freedom fighters” in Nica­ Sandinista, he now claimed to have been prize to the memory of the Nicara­ ragua. The scheme verged on farce: funds born again as a Catholic; the official guans who in recent days have been donated by the Sultan of Brunei were motto of his government is “Christian, murdered on the streets after demand­ Socialist, and Caring.” Once he was in ing justice and democracy,” he said. office, his deals paid o9. Chávez began “And to the thousands of youths who sending subsidized petroleum, report­ continue to fight with no weapons other edly worth half a billion dollars a year; than their ideals to make Nicaragua a Ortega created a company called Al­ republic again.” banisa to manage the proceeds, which Ramírez didn’t have an official role he used as a personal source of patron­ in the opposition, but he hurried back age funds. With the private sector un­ to Managua after receiving the prize, to restrained, the G.D.P. rose steadily, and “accompany” his fellow­citizens. I met an aspirational middle class grew. Or­ him at his house, and we spoke in a two­ deposited in the wrong Swiss bank ac­ tega governed with little resistance. story library filled with his collection of count; a key­shaped cake was delivered After Chávez’s death, in 2013, Ven­ books. “Ortega has won the battle, but to the Ayatollah as a good­will gift. Col­ ezuela drastically cut back the oil ship­ he’s lost the war,” Ramírez said. For him, onel Oliver North, a National Security ments. But corruption only grew worse. the experience was especially bitter. In Council sta9 member who helped or­ Young Nicaraguans became increas­ the nineteen­seventies, he and Ortega ganize the conspiracy, shredded evidence ingly frustrated by inequality; though were comrades, leaders of the insurrec­ and then explained his behavior by say­ the years of growth had helped improve tion against the dictator Anastasio So­ ing, “If the Commander­in­Chief tells access to higher education, the only moza Debayle, whose family had run this lieutenant colonel to go stand in people who succeeded were those with the country for four decades. The reb­ the corner and sit on his head, I will do money or with connections to Ortega els called themselves Sandinistas, after so.” (North is now the president of the and his cronies. Dora María Téllez, a Augusto César Sandino, who in the National Rifle Association.) But the legendary Sandinista who once helped

22 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS lead a raid in which all the country’s parliamentarians were held hostage, told me, “The Ortega-Murillos don’t have an ideology, only interests. And they act accordingly.” During the recent violence, the busi- ness class and the Catholic clergy aban- doned Ortega. “Civil society isn’t with him, either,” Ramírez told me. He showed me a video that was circulat- ing online, in which a leading Sandi- nista congressman was heckled out of a Managua supermarket by shoppers shouting “Murderer!” Ortega and his loyalists had become pariahs, Ramírez said: “They can no longer live with the rest of us, within society.” As the vio- lence grew, protesters on the street took to chanting, “Ortega y Somoza, son la misma cosa”—Ortega and Somoza are the same thing. Ortega retains support from the po- lice and other government employees, who depend on his good will for an income, and he is also popular among working-class people who still believe in the inclusive revolutionary message. But the bloodshed has forced a reck- oning; the civic opposition includes many former Sandinistas whose chil- dren were among those killed. “He has attacked his own base,” Ramírez said. “It will be extremely difficult for the “Don’t be such a martyr—at least let me carry the groceries.” pendulum to swing back his way.” The Sandinista experiment had ended a long time ago, he added. All that re- •• mained was Ortega, and his desire for power. “The revolution was always more tance before retreating. Many scram- eye contact. One or two peered out about idealism than it was about ide- bled down the jungly slopes toward the from half-open doors, then closed them ology,” he said. “But with Daniel Or- lake. Some made their way to a moun- as I approached. tega what ideals are there?” Ramírez tain on its far shore; others doubled In front of a repair shop, a middle- paused. “This is a killing machine, and back to the Masaya-Managua road, aged man sat filing a piece of metal. we are all oiling it.” and accomplices drove them to safe Nodding toward a truckload of para- houses in the capital. militaries across the street, the man in- n mid-July, word went out to Orte- In Monimbó the next day, I found troduced himself as Jairo, and told me Iga’s supporters. July 19th was a na- masked paramilitaries everywhere: that he was happy about the “cleansing tional holiday, the thirty-ninth anni- standing guard in the main square or of Monimbó.” The youths at the barri- versary of the Sandinista revolution, careering around in pickups, flashing cades had been holding the locals hos- and Ortega wanted the barricades victory signs and waving weapons in tage for months, he said: “If you weren’t cleared. Three days before the dead- the air. A man in a black balaclava ap- in agreement with them, they burned line, several hundred paramilitary peared to be in charge. He explained your house or threatened you.” fighters gathered in Masaya in Toyota to me that, after hours of fighting, he A few blocks away, a funeral proces- HiLux pickups, like those used by Tal- and his men had cleared out “the ter- sion had gathered for Josué Rafael Pa- iban raiders in Afghanistan. Before rorists,” and the population was now lacios Aguilera, one of several local dawn the next morning, they pushed “free.” He invited me to talk to whom- protesters who had been killed the day through town, using bulldozers to ever I wanted, gesturing toward graffiti- before. A hundred or so people walked knock down barricades and firing from covered walls and grimy streets. No one silently behind a group of pallbearers the backs of their trucks. The rebels, wanted to talk. The few civilians in the with a casket on their shoulders. They outgunned, put up only a token resis- area were expressionless and avoided were moving toward the Monimbó

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journalists—two Mexicans, a Spaniard, and two Nicaraguans—and, in a crowd with few outsiders, we were easy to spot. Some people smiled and waved, evidently assuming that we were there in support of Ortega. Others glowered. One of my companions, a young re­ porter named Carlos Salinas Maldo­ nado, had particular reason to be wary. Salinas, who works for El Confiden­ cial, one of Nicaragua’s few indepen­ dent media outlets, has written criti­ cally of Ortega. In a recent column titled “State Terrorism,” he had accused Ortega and Murillo of Big Brother­ style oppression, writing that, for them, “peace means war and love means ha­ tred.” In front of the bleachers, we found ourselves surrounded by a cheering crowd of Sandinista Youth militants. One of them, spotting Salinas, caught him in a forceful embrace and took out his phone for a selfie. Salinas looked “Well, there I go again, telling stories that make anxious but didn’t resist. As a succes­ you an accessory after the fact.” sion of other Sandinista Youth sup­ porters pinned Salinas in place and snapped photographs, their leader •• clapped me on the shoulder and shouted in my ear, “I hope you’re able to see for cemetery, on a hillside at the edge of was a hero. She looked at me through yourself the love Nicaraguans have for town. In the front of the procession was tears and nodded. Then, crumpling, their leader.” the dead man’s father, his face anguished. she said, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” There was a ripple in the crowd: the He told me that Josué Rafael had been Presidential motorcade was advancing helping the young men at the tranques— n July 19th, the anniversary cele­ slowly toward the V.I.P. stand. Ortega, the barricades—when the paramilitar­ Obration was held at Plaza de la Fe, wearing a white shirt and a baseball cap, ies shot him in the stomach. The mourn­ Managua’s lakeside parade grounds, smiled and waved to his supporters, who ers said nothing as they walked past two where workers had set up V.I.P. bleach­ swarmed the car and shouted his name. of Ortega’s masked gunmen, keeping ers against a backdrop of Trees of Life. We retreated to the back of the crowd, watch with assault rifles at the ready. Several hundred thousand people turned but soon a thickset man in fatigues and As they passed a statue erected in honor out, and, as they waited for the First a balaclava began jostling Salinas and of Monimbó’s “martyrs”—a crudely Couple, the remembrance turned into a calling to his comrades. In a few seconds, sculpted concrete figure holding a rifle raucous open­air party, with people drink­ we were surrounded by an angry tur- aloft—no one even glanced at it. ing rum and dancing to cumbia and reg­ ba—a kind of political mob. (Turbas have Under a shade tree at the cemetery, gaeton. Surprisingly, given the country’s a long history in Nicaragua. The San­ a grave had been dug. People stood and traditional Catholic leanings, there was dinistas employed “divine mobs” against wept as three musicians—on trumpet, a contingent of trans people, one of whom dissidents in the early years, and Somoza tuba, and cymbals—played the national strode through the crowd on stilts. But mobilized gangs of tough market women anthem, and then the pop ballads “Amor the atmosphere was charged. Many of to harass opponents.) A woman and a Eterno” and “La Vida Sigue Igual”— the attendees had covered their faces in man began screaming at Salinas, beat­ “Life Goes On.” Josué Rafael’s widow red­and­black F.S.L.N. kerchiefs, and ing him to the ground and kicking him bent over the casket and pressed her wore T­shirts with party slogans (“San­ fiercely. Several policemen appeared and forehead against a glass window that dino Lives—the Fight Continues!”). formed a protective barrier around us. showed his face. He wore a fighter’s Since the beginning of the crackdown, They led us out of the crowd and across bandanna. She wept disconsolately. Af­ the Sandinista Youth had launched a the road, into the gated compound of ter a few strangled words from his fa­ campaign in support of the government, the Rubén Darío National Theatre, where ther—“Tomorrow will be better, my son. with countermarches and rallies; some Laureano Ortega had recently held his We love you. Nicaragua will be free”— of its members were also suspected of performance of “Rigoletto.” the coffin was lowered into the ground. violence against the opposition. As we sat in the compound, sur­ I asked the widow if her husband I was there with a small group of rounded by police, the foreign ministers

24 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS of Cuba and Venezuela gave speeches. line, with celebratory messages about by pro-government thugs; the bishop They told Ortega’s supporters that they exposing an enemy. The photos ran was punched in the stomach and stabbed were united in the old battle against alongside videos accusing El Confiden- in one arm. Ortega, in his anniversary imperialism. When Ortega stood to cial of complicity in an international speech, blamed the clergy for coöper- speak, he boasted that the people had conspiracy to overthrow Ortega. One ating with protesters. “As Christians,” prevailed over a “diabolical force,” but noted that the news outlet receives fund- he said, “we are obliged to ask the bish- warned of the need to remain strong in ing from U.S.A.I.D. and from George ops to change course, please, and not defense of the Fatherland. For the first Soros’s Open Society Foundation. The fuel the satanic, coup-mongering sects.” time, he openly aligned himself with video presented “the magnate Soros” as In Managua, gunmen attacked the the paramilitaries: “We need to fight the mastermind of the 2014 uprising Divina Misericordia church, where for peace, strengthening the mechanism against the Russian-backed regime in student activists and clergy, along with of the autodefensa, so that Sandinista Ukraine. Along with violent images of a Washington Post reporter, had fled families are not murdered again.” the Ukrainian uprising, supplied by the paramilitaries, who were shooting into pro-Putin television network Russia the campus of the national university. onald Trump has made no public Today, it issued a stark warning: “After The siege lasted fifteen hours, and two Dstatements about the unrest in Nic- the coup, the U.S. government installed students were killed. A week later, the aragua, but the Florida senator Marco a puppet government to defend its geo- church held a Mass for the victims, Rubio, who often influences the Admin- political interests in the region.” This which attracted hundreds of people. The istration’s policy on Latin America, has was a situation, the video said, “that it priest began his sermon by announc- referred to Ortega as a “dying man,” and wants to repeat in Nicaragua.” ing, “There is a devil to be exorcised in chided him and his allies for electing to After a number of priests gave ref- Nicaragua,” and the congregation ap- “soak their hands in blood.” On July 5th, uge to demonstrators who had been plauded loudly. Everyone understood the U.S. levied economic sanctions against attacked, the government-controlled that the devil was Daniel Ortega. three officials connected to “the Nicara- media accused the Church of helping In public, though, Church leaders guan government’s ongoing violence and the opposition hide weapons. In July, have largely been discreet, in the hope intimidation campaign.” The sanctions a succession of clergymen were attacked, of continuing talks. A senior cleric ex- seemed focussed on Ortega’s sources of their churches ransacked. During a plained, “Any comment I might make money and manpower: Francisco López, visit to a church where protesters were could bring an end to dialogue, which is the treasurer of the F.S.L.N. and the trapped inside, Cardinal Leopoldo already practically broken.” Pope Francis president of a state-owned oil company; Brenes, travelling with a bishop and an had ordered Nicaragua’s clergymen “to Francisco Díaz, a son-in-law of Orte- envoy from the Vatican, was roughed up persist on the path of dialogue,” the ga’s who is the deputy chief of the na- tional police; and Fidel Antonio Moreno Briones, the secretary of the Managua mayor’s office and the leader of the San- dinista Youth. As Ortega and his supporters re- sponded to criticism, they called to mind Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, who said, “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” On July 18th, the Organization of American States convened an emergency meeting and overwhelmingly passed a resolution de- nouncing the violence in Nicaragua. Or- tega’s foreign minister, Denis Moncada, rejected the measure as “illegal.” In his telling, the unrest was caused by a global conspiracy. “We are victims of an inter- national plot by small political groups, combined with transnational organized criminal groups,” he has said. On social media, Ortega supporters amplified the message, with pro-govern- ment tweets marked #BastadeMentiras (Enough Lies). The Sandinista Youth activists who had taken forced selfies “I like everything about this neighborhood except the with Carlos Salinas shared them on- people who can afford to live here.” РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS cleric told me. “Isn’t it best to talk now, ness school, but his earlier career—which see him going to Venezuela. Russia is a instead of waiting a few years until this included a brief stint as a C.I.A.-backed bit cold.” Without an appealing escape has turned into a river of blood?” he said. Contra official; a well-publicized affair route, Ortega might decide that his best with Oliver North’s assistant, Fawn Hall; option is to stay and fight for control of rtega had named his crackdown and a more recent posting as Ortega’s the country. “Ortega has completely lost OOperación Limpieza, or “cleanup”— Ambassador to the U.S.—attests to his legitimacy in the eyes of his people,” the the same term that Somoza had used to survival instincts.) Cruz had met with official said. “But that doesn’t mean he describe his effort to eliminate the San- student protesters. “They are very intel- won’t rule at the point of a gun.” dinistas. After the anniversary celebra- ligent, even valiant,” he told me. “But tion, pro-government militants led a huge they are not going to take up arms.” everal days after the paramilitaries march in the capital, ending at El Chi- The question, he said, was how to Stook Monimbó, I returned there, to pote, a Somoza-era hilltop prison where apply leverage: “How do we get Daniel look into reports of more unacknowl- Ortega’s political opponents were report- off the horse without killing the horse?” edged deaths. At the house of Bayardo edly being raped and tortured. One uni- In his view, Ortega’s worst liability was José Jarquín Gunera, a young man who versity student, Marco Novoa, who fled the economy. Foreign investment was had been killed, his widow had gathered the country after being held there for a stalled, tourism had collapsed, and many with his mother, his brother, and his sis- week, gave a television interview in which businesses were closed or barely opera- ter. In the family room, they showed me he described being subjected to electric tional. But he believed that Ortega wasn’t a small altar, with a framed photograph shocks and sodomized with a mortar. thinking past day-to-day survival. “If I’m of Bayardo, a baker. His widow, Mar- “These aren’t people,” he said of his tor- Ortega, I look at the gas stations, which garita Castillo, wearing a faded pink turers. “They are monsters.” still have fuel, and the supermarkets, T-shirt and leopard-print stockings, wept Lesther Alemán, the student who which still have food, and I say, O.K., as she recalled how the paramilitaries denounced Ortega on television, had sure, the international community and had taken him away. “Bayardo didn’t say begun receiving death threats. Together the O.A.S. are problems,” he said. “But anything. He lowered his head, and when with a few friends, he had taken refuge as long as they’re not sending planes to he left I saw that he was crying.” As they in a safe house outside Managua. Or- bomb me, what’s the problem?” hustled him out, she stayed behind with tega knew where they were, and his se- Cruz was wary of broad sanctions. their two young children. “I didn’t go curity officers had been spotted nearby, “I’m really tired of seeing sanctions that out, because I was afraid they would burn but they hadn’t yet entered. end up fucking the whole nation,” he me and my children, like they did that I found Alemán sitting by a swim- said. A more focussed application could family in Managua,” she said. ming pool. He waved at his surround- encourage the Army to put pressure on Several days later, Bayardo’s body ings, saying that he hoped I didn’t get Ortega. But, even if Ortega was per- turned up in the morgue. He had been the wrong idea about his “life style.” He suaded to step down, it was unclear what found, shot execution style, in a vacant had a book open on the chair next to would happen next. “If Daniel goes, lot near Monimbó’s main plaza. His body him, a history of the Sandinista revolu- who do they put there instead?” Cruz was badly deteriorated, but Margarita tion, and, when I asked if he was trying asked. No one seemed to have an an- had been able to identify him by his shoes to pick up pointers from his adversaries, swer; the opposition showed signs of and his fingers. “I felt as if my soul had he laughed. He acknowledged that he greater coördination, but it still had no gone to another world,” she said. and his friends needed help preparing to viable candidates to offer. I asked if the family had made an face this kind of violent conflict: “We The senior U.S. official, asked for an official complaint. They shook their have learned from history that sometimes assessment of Nicaragua’s future, made heads silently, and then one of the sib- it is necessary to make tactical retreats.” a gesture like an airplane crashing to lings said, “We’re afraid to. We have a When I asked who was in charge of earth. Although the opposition had lot of young brothers.” the Civic Alliance, Alemán said, “There mostly abandoned the barricades, the As we spoke, there was a commotion isn’t a leader, out of fear of succumbing prospect of renewed violence lingered; outside. Two jeeps full of paramilitaries to caudillismo”—rule by strongman. “We a destabilized country could attract crim- came roaring up the street. One came don’t want to repeat what has happened inal organizations. The U.S. is support- to a halt outside the house, and several in this country.” Alemán was stubborn ing the Church’s efforts at dialogue. But, men carrying weapons clambered down. in his demands. He and his comrades the official said, “the bloodshed makes As they fanned out, Bayardo’s mother, wanted Ortega to agree to early elec- it harder for a negotiated solution. There’s sister, and widow began crying and tions, disband the paramilitaries, purge deep, seething indignation here. The moaning in terror. For several minutes, the judiciary, and amend a constitutional Nicaraguans are not going to forget what they fought to keep quiet, but it was clause that permits indefinite reëlection. Ortega has done.” Some analysts argue difficult for them to stifle their sobs. He said, “We expect him to cede, but we that the solution is to tragar el sapo— Through the window, I caught glimpses don’t yet know what he wants in return.” swallow the toad—and allow him to of the men. One of them was aiming a Arturo Cruz, a prominent Nicara- step down without facing prosecution. gun down a side street, his head cloaked guan political analyst, wasn’t convinced Failing that, the official said, “what are in a balaclava, like an executioner’s hood. that Ortega had much incentive to leave. his options? You might be able to get After half an hour, they moved on, but (Cruz teaches at INCAE, an élite busi- your gold bars and go to Cuba. I don’t it seemed clear that they’d be back. 

26 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

tells you how to play tricks on them SHOUTS & MURMURS when they’re asleep and awake. When you trip and roll down the side of a hill, what things keep you from rolling forever? (Hint: weeds is one.) Have you ever seen a flashing light in the evening sky and wondered if it’s a lightning bug or an airplane? There’s a simple way to tell. Have you ever been hornswoggled? My book warns you when it’s about to happen. My book tells you how to make a decision quickly and easily, then tells you how to rethink your decision. It also explains how to make yourself sound smarter by putting “oid” at the end of common, everyday words. My book is not just dry facts and informatoids. There’s humor, too. But it’s a gentle humor that gently mocks the weakest members of society. And, if you get tired of reading, there are several chapters of blank pages. When you make a phone call to a IT’S IN MY BOOK stranger, there are certain words to avoid so that the call is not considered “ob- BY JACK HANDEY scene.” My book tells you which words. Want to know how to open a door hen you drink out of a drinking • How to install a moving wall of spikes in without having the door hit you in the Wfountain, is there any way to your living room, and the main reason it forehead? It’s in my book. (Hint: it in- avoid getting your shirt all wet? Yes, gets stuck: cat toys. volves your shoe.) there is, and it’s in my book. • How to flip a coin. (It’s not as complicated Keep it brief! Chapter 113 tells you Have you ever wondered why peo- as it looks.) how to do that. ple always seem to be talking when you • How to declutter your pornography collec- Should you inform your boss you’re want to talk? My book teaches you tion by throwing some of it out or donating quitting, or just not show up anymore? it to charity. how to shut them up. My book lays out the advantages of How do you tell a kid that there’s • Why talking with a fake Swedish accent each approach. may not get you that promotion. no God? My book explains. Have you ever wanted to pretend When you see a frog in a pond, and • Why old age doesn’t have to be a death sen- to read a book while spying on other tence, except at the very end of it. a few days later you see another frog, people? My book has a hole in the is it the same frog? My book helps you There were people who said I would middle. figure it out. never be able to get this book published I admit, there are some things that Have you ever wondered why the by a major publisher. Those people my book can’t tell you, like the mean- sky is blue? Me neither. My book turned out to be right. There were oth- ing of life. (Just kidding—it’s in there.) tells you how to avoid questions like ers who said that I couldn’t afford to As hard as it is to believe, there are that. self-publish it. Those people were also those who won’t like my book. Some- Chapter 7 explains what to do if right. And then there were some who one whose head has been severed by a you’re accidentally shot by hunters. said that I wouldn’t be able to sneak mad scientist and placed in an aquar- (Hint: it involves shooting back.) into my company’s offices at night and ium, and is being kept alive by some Have you ever finished a short story copy it on the copy machines and sta- sort of artificial blood being pumped or a novel and wanted it to continue? ple the pages together using company into his jugular vein, is probably not My book tells you why you’re stupid staplers. Those people are eating their going to . . . Wait, you know, I’m going to want that. words right now. to say that even that person would like My book doesn’t bore you with “re- Which of our Presidents wore a tall my book. search.” Instead, it’s based on my per- stovepipe hat and was known as Mis- When I began work on my book, sonal experience and/or fantasies, and on ter Sarcasm? It’s in my book. little did I know that I would still be good old-fashioned guesswork. In ele- Do you like to play tricks on old working on it nearly three weeks later.

LUCI GUTIÉRREZ LUCI gant prose, my book walks you through: people when they’re asleep? My book But, obviously, it has been worth it. 

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 27 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

emerged was a new inorganic pigment, ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS one that absorbed red and green light waves, leaving as reflected light the blu- est blue to date. Subramanian sent a BLUE AS CAN BE sample to the Forbes Collection in the Straus Center for Conservation and A color archive’s treasures reveal a history of pigment. Technical Studies, at Harvard Univer- sity, where it sits with twenty-five hun- BY SIMON SCHAMA dred other specimens that document the history of our craving for color. Among the other blues on the Forbes’s shelves is Egyptian Blue, a modern ap- proximation of the first synthetic pig- ment, engineered five millennia ago, probably from the rare mineral cup- rorivaite, a soft mid-blue used for the decoration of royal tomb sculpture and the wall paintings of temples. Later, blues strong enough to render sea and sky were made from weathered copper- carbonate azurite—crystalline bright but sometimes darkening in an oil binder. In 1271, Marco Polo saw lapis lazuli quar- ried from a mountain at Badakhshan, in what is now Afghanistan. Labori- ously prepared by removing impure specks of glinting iron pyrite, it became ultramarine—as expensive, ounce for ounce, as gold, and so precious that it was initially reserved for depictions of the costume of the Virgin. In addition to these, the Forbes Collection has a poor man’s blue—smalt made from crushed cobalt containing potassium glass, which weakens, eventually, to a thin greeny-brown gray. The Forbes Collection owes its ex- istence to a belief in the interdepen- dence of art and science, but it is also an exhaustive archive of cultural pas- ow blue can it get? How deep can I’d thought Klein a bit of a monoma- sion. A display features Vantablack, Hit be? Some years ago, at the Gug- niacal bore, but Klein International which absorbs 99.96 per cent of light, genheim Bilbao, I thought I’d hit on Blue, as he named the pigment—rolled and has to be grown on surfaces as a the ultimate blue, displayed on the out flat or pimpled, with saturated crop of microscopic nanorods. In 2016, gallery floor. Yves Klein, who died at sponges embedded in the paint sur- the sculptor Anish Kapoor saw the pig- thirty-four, was obsessed with purging face—turned my eyeballs inside out, ment’s potential for collapsing light, color of any external associations. Ges- rods and cones jiving with joy. This is turning any surface into what appears tural abstraction, he felt, was clotted it, I thought. It can’t get any bluer. to be a fathomless black hole, and he with sentimental extraneousness. But, Until YInMn came along: the for- acquired the exclusive rights to it. An in search of chromatic purity, Klein re- tuitous product of an experiment in outcry from artists, who objected to the alized that even the purest pigments’ the materials chemistry lab at Oregon copyright, prompted the Massachusetts intensity dulled when combined with State University in 2009. Intending manufacturer NanoLab to release Sin- a binder such as oil, egg, or acrylic. In to discover something useful for the gularity Black, created as part of the 1960, he commissioned a synthetic electronics industry, Mas Subramanian company’s ongoing research with NASA, binder that would resist the absorption and his team heated together oxides of to the public, and the artist Stuart of light waves, delivering maximum manganese, yttrium, and indium at two Semple to make the World’s Pinkest reflectiveness. Until that day in Bilbao, thousand degrees Fahrenheit. What Pink available to any online buyer will- ing to declare himself “not Anish Ka- The hues in the Forbes Collection include the esoteric, the expensive, and the toxic. poor.” But Kapoor obtained a sample

28 THE NEW YORKER, SETPEMBER 3, 2018 PHOTOGRAPH BY JASON FULFORD РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS of the pink pigment, and used it to coat a constitution to do you much credit.” The pigment’s vogue was short- his middle digit, which he photo- Better to stick to madder root, red ochre, lived, however. At the middle of the graphed and posted online for Semple. or the red-lead minium that had been nineteenth century, Laughton Osborn Narayan Khandekar, the head of the in use since classical antiquity. advised, in his “Handbook of Young Straus Center for Conservation and Other Forbes specimens have bet- Artists and Amateurs in Oil Painting,” Technical Studies, takes pleasure in such ter preserved the poetic mystique of “There is nothing to be gained by skirmishes, secure in the knowledge that their origins. There is a murex shell smearing our canvas with a part per- he presides over something weightier: a from the Eastern Mediterranean, a haps of the wife of Potiphar.” When priceless resource for understanding how quarter million of which were needed the painter of historical scenes Law- works of art are made, and how they to make a single ounce of Tyrian Pur- rence Alma Tadema told the Pre- should be preserved. The Department ple, the color used in the Roman Re- Raphaelite painter Edward Burne- of Conservation and Technical Research public to edge the togas of the power- Jones that he was going to see pieces was founded, in 1928, by Edward Waldo ful. There is a loaf of toxic tawny-red of mummy before they were turned Forbes, the director of Harvard’s Fogg cinnabar. (Buy it in solid cakes, Cen- into pigment, Burne-Jones, according Museum from 1909 to 1944. Today, the nini advises, lest some scoundrel has to his wife, Georgina, snorted that the Forbes’s vast library of color and its tech- adulterated the stuff with brick dust.) name of the pigment was just a child- nical laboratories are housed in the mu- There is the copper-arsenite Scheele’s ish fancy. On being assured that the seum’s steel-and-filtered-glass rebuild, Green, synthesized at the beginning of mummy was real enough, Burne-Jones designed by Renzo Piano. Rows of pig- the nineteenth century and more daz- insisted on giving his own tubes of ments in tubes, jars, and bowls are visi- zling than traditional verdigris, the paint a burial in the garden. In fact, as ble through the doors of floor-to-ceil- green-blue patina given off by corroded Alison Cariens, the conservation coör- ing cabinets. Khandekar had the winning copper. A later variant of Scheele’s, Paris dinator for the Straus Center, explained, idea of displaying them as if unspooled Green, equally toxic and even brighter, scientists have found no DNA in the from a color wheel: reds at one end, blues was so cheap to produce that it coated Forbes’s samples of Mummy to sug- at the other. There are the products of Victorian wallpapers, children’s toys, gest that it contained human bones, nineteenth-century chemical innova- and—despite early evidence of its tox- but the biological material may have tion—viridian green, cadmium orange, icity—even confectionery. Following degraded beyond reliable analysis over and the chrome yellow with which van Napoleon’s death, in 1821, some Bona- the millennia. In any case, she added, Gogh was infatuated but which, over partists put it about that the British humans were often accompanied by time, has begun to darken his sunflow- had poisoned their hero by having him mummified animals on their journey ers. But at the heart of the Forbes Col- sleep in a green room, the paper releas- to the afterworld, so that a tube of lection are the natural pigments that ing arsenic vapors in the damp sea air. Mummy Brown might well contain were the staples of painters’ inventories Also on display are two tubes of the remains of crocodiles or cats. before chemically synthesized paints re- Mummy Brown, made from the ren- placed the impossibly esoteric, the dan- dered gunk of the Egyptian dead, he shelves of the Forbes Collec- gerously toxic, the prohibitively expen- thought to be rich in the bituminous Ttion also hold a plethora of pig- sive, and the perilously fugitive. asphalt used in embalming and as pro- ment sources, including cuttings of Among those relics is Dragon’s tection against fungal decay. By the six- red-madder root and minute silvery Blood, reputed in antiquity and in the teenth century, Mummy was believed bugs heaped in a glass bowl like a Middle Ages to have got its vividness to cure illnesses as various as gastric crunchy bar snack: Mexican cochineal, from the wounds of dragons and ele- pain and epileptic fits, and the flour- scale insects that swarmed on prickly- phants locked in mortal combat. The ishing trade in Mummy led to count- pear cacti, and whose crushed bodies pigment actually owed its intense red- less tombs being sacked and broken-up produced the lustrous carmine crim- ness to the resin secreted from trees mummies sold to suppliers. Druggists son that so excited Caravaggio, El growing on the islands of Socotra and and colormen—as preparers and venders Greco, and Rubens. I stuck my head Sumatra, especially the rattan palm and of artists’ materials were known—often inside a cabinet to get a close look at the Dracaena draco. The Forbes’s sam- shared the same inventory and the same the rocks of the arsenic sulfides real- ple is now a dusty rose—not so unlike occult reputation for possessing exotic gar and orpiment, blazes of flame or- the nineteenth-century pigment called secrets. Bitumen, a cover-all term, was ange locked within the crystals. “Don’t la cuisse de nymphe emue (“the blushing prized for its tawny glow, but the pop- breathe, don’t touch,” Cariens warned. thigh of an aroused nymph”)—having ularity of the pigment had much to do (Cennini, who wrote that orpiment faded, most likely, from exposure to high with the nineteenth-century taste for was “very good for painting on shields light levels. Even in the early fifteenth the Oriental macabre. History paintings and lances,” also cautioned against “soil- century, the Italian painter Cennino of the kind fashionable in the eighteen- ing your mouth with it, lest you suffer Cennini warned in his practical man- thirties and forties were gravy-brown, personal injury.”) Farther along the row ual, “Il Libro dell’Arte,” that artists as if conferring period authenticity. was a grayish-greenish wrinkled base- beguiled by the pigment’s reputation There was cuttlefish sepia and burnt ball, sliced open to reveal a yolk-bright should “leave it alone, and do not have umber, but if Turner needed a loamy Indian Yellow. In Christian iconogra- too much respect for it; for it is not of richness he reached for Mummy. phy, it was gold that signified the aura

THE NEW YORKER, SETPEMBER 3, 2018 29 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS of sanctity, but, as Baroque masters ex- forties found no nitrous traces in the ilization was the conversion of raw wealth perimented with the effects of extreme pigment, some argued that the dye into beauty and humanism. Guided by light and dark, the hunt for a deep, probably originated in a plant such as this principle, Forbes read English at light-fast yellow became urgent. The the Mycelium tinctorium, which is no- Oxford for two years, and travelled cheapest, most widely available yellow torious for its pissy odor. through Europe, spending time in Italy. glaze was made from unripe buckthorn To get to the truth of the matter, Jo- Still, he resented the condescending Eu- berries and wasn’t sufficiently long-last- seph Hooker, the director of Kew Gar- ropean assumption that the New World ing for the likes of Rembrandt, who dens, sent T. N. Mukharji, an expert in would never really rise above breathless turned to the pale Lead-Tin Yellow, or the materials of Indian arts, to the vil- cultural tourism. Serious art history was massicot, for the luxurious costume of lage of Mirzapur, in the Bihar region. supposed to change that, and in 1900 Lieutenant van Ruytenburch, in “The There, as Mukharji wrote in an account Wellesley College became the first in Night Watch.” In the early eighteenth published in 1883, he discovered a sect America to offer a degree in the sub- century, antimony, combined with lead, of gwalas, or milkmen, who fed their ject. But teachers at Wellesley and Har- known as Naples Yellow, became the cattle mango leaves; the cattle’s urine, vard had to make do, for the most part, most popular version of the hue. when evaporated in earthenware pots with plaster-cast reproductions and lan- Around the same time, Europeans set over a fire and then baked in the sun, tern slides. in India noticed the rich, glowing yel- produced the precious yellow powder. In Rome, the twenty-six-year-old low used for wall paintings and Mu- Cows are sacred in Hindu culture, and Forbes bought his first Italian paint- ghal book illustrations. Botanical pig- the ones Mukharji had seen were, he ing: a half-ruined, flaking altarpiece at- ments like saffron and turmeric had wrote, “very unhealthy.” Mukharji’s ac- tributed to Girolamo di Benvenuto di been used in Persian and Turkish art count apparently led the British-Indian Giovanni del Guasta—the first of many for centuries, but this was more vibrant. government in Bengal to ban produc- acquisitions that he made with the in- The first samples of Indian Yellow, tion of the pigment at the turn of the tention of lending them to his alma available in Bengal, Bihar, and centers century. Doubts about Mukharji’s story mater. Aware that Yankee buyers in Eu- of Rajput painting like Jaipur, were remain. Victoria Finlay, the author of rope were being treated as easy marks, known by many Indian names: piuri, “Color: A Natural History of the Pal- Forbes saw that, if he was to avoid being purrée, or gogili—a corruption of the ette,” found no record of the pigment’s swindled, he needed to educate him- Persian term gaugil, meaning “cow- ban in the archives, nor did she find, self in the material construction of Old earth.” The amateur artist Roger Dew- when she travelled to Mirzapur around Master paintings. The claims of art and hurst recorded using it in 1286, and, by 2002, any local memory of cows being science that had shaped Forbes’s edu- the early nineteenth century, Indian fed on mango leaves. Was this yet an- cation seemed to converge. To experi- Yellow had become a crucial compo- other fable in the great treasury of color ence the power of great painting and nent of the Romantic palette. Turner lore? In her book, Finlay writes, “When the romance of the original art work, used watercolor washes of it to convey I think of Indian Yellow, I will always as Ruskin passionately argued, the the limpid radiance of Venetian dawns wonder whether the explanation that I viewer must be able to recover, even to and sunsets. His infatuation occasion- have heard is reality or merely a reflec- imaginatively reënact, the artist’s mo- ally led him astray. In his portrait of tion of reality, and whether this story is ment of creation. For Forbes, the var- Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, which was simply an example of somebody gently, nish intended to preserve works of art bought by the Earl of Egremont, she and literally, taking the piss.” had trapped them beneath a yellowing stands in front of a wall so screamingly skin. But what lay beneath, exactly? yellow that one facetious critic described or Edward Waldo Forbes, pigment And how to recover a painting’s inno- the subject as “a lady getting out of a Fhunting and gathering was not just cence without corrupting it further? large mustard pot.” a matter of creating an archive of lost Modern archeology, with its fastid- The ingredients of Indian Yellow, or languishing color. It was about the ious excavations, seemed to offer a prom- which arrived in little parcels at the union of art and science. His pedigree ising model. There were also Victorian London docks, apparently from Cal- embodied the paradox: one of his grand- manuals on the material composition cutta, were a mystery. The smell, either fathers was the railway magnate John of pigments—including “The Chem- interestingly pungent or rank depend- Murray Forbes; the other, the transcen- istry of Paints and Painting,” by Ar- ing on the sensitivity of your nostrils, dentalist philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo thur Herbert Church, one of the first seemed to offer a few clues. To some, Emerson. With a Massachusetts school- scientists to hold a position at the Royal it had a distinct whiff of castoreum, ing, culminating, inevitably, at Harvard, Academy of Arts, in London. In 1928, the secretion from a gland close to the Forbes was a typical product of the gen- as the director of the Fogg, Forbes in- anus of beavers, which is still some- eration who believed that Gilded Age vited a Harvard chemistry professor, times used in commercial ice cream as materialism could be redeemed by the Rutherford John Gettens, to create and a substitute for vanilla and raspberry. “Western civilization” that the social run a lab in its new building. Gettens’s Others were sure that the origin of In- critic and art professor Charles Eliot legacy is a cabinet, near the pigment dian Yellow was to be found in the Norton eulogized in the art-history lec- collection, that contains thousands of urine of camels, or water buffalo. After tures that Forbes attended as an under- slides, each showing how the shade of a chemical analysis in the eighteen- graduate. The moral purpose of that civ- a paint might age naturally depending

30 THE NEW YORKER, SETPEMBER 3, 2018 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS on its binding medium: egg yolk, egg white, the whole egg, oils. For Forbes, the precondition for un- derstanding an art work lay in identi- fying and analyzing the materials from which it was created. In addition to col- lecting pigments, Forbes planted mad- der in his garden at Gerry’s Landing, on the Charles River, and taught the lab section of his courses at home, where students could brush gesso and lime on an assigned patch of wall or, using pig- ments ground at M.I.T., take a stab at Boston fresco. In pursuit of the authen- tic, he had resins sent from Singapore and Indonesia, and Japanese woodblock colors from his brother William, the American Ambassador to Japan in the early nineteen-thirties. Forbes set aside a small collection of these pigments in “As if your first clapping faux pas wasn’t egregious enough.” a cabinet for his students to inspect. Khandekar allows the public to ex- amine a small vitrine of pigments, but •• the main collection can be glimpsed only from across an atrium courtyard. damage, took them down. The murals ance of the original colors, had to be Many of the pigments inside are still were next exhibited in 1988, and Har- absolutely precise, but the result, shown used for research. In 2007, Khandekar vard received a barrage of criticism for in 2014, was a revelation. and his colleagues analyzed the paint their neglect. Some conservators have This is just the kind of project that in three works previously thought to blamed the paintings’ discoloration on gives Khandekar and his associates at have been by the Abstract Expression- Rothko’s use of rabbit-skin glue as a the Straus Center the greatest satisfac- ist Jackson Pollock, who died in 1956, binder; others, on his choice of Lithol tion. Khandekar, who was born in Syd- revealing a yellow pigment, PY 151, that Red, a low-cost powder pigment. ney, is a modern personification of the was developed in 1969, as well as a red Khandekar, who oversaw the research Forbesian mission: a hard-core scien- pigment mixed in a brown paint that on the Harvard murals, suspects that tist converted almost mystically to the was not developed until 1974, and also their extreme fading was due to Roth- imperatives of art. His first degree was other media and binding not available ko’s mixing of a calcium-salt red with in organic chemistry. But, after a visit until the nineteen-sixties and seven- synthetic ultramarine to make the pur- to the National Gallery of Victoria, ties. Analysis of a life-size portrait of plish indigo that he so loved in his sat- Khandekar told me, “I asked myself, King Philip III, of Spain, from the urnine years. ‘How can a scientist spend his life with workshop of the court painter Juan Physical restoration using those col- art?’” The conservation course at the Pantoja de la Cruz, circa 1605, which ors would have made matters worse, Courtauld Institute, in London, offered was acquired by the Fogg a century Khandekar explained, not least because an answer. Khandekar went on to prac- ago, revealed traces of cochineal car- the pigments would have bled directly tice conservation at the Hamilton Kerr mine and quite possibly Mummy onto the raw canvas. Therefore, he and Institute at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Brown, much darkened and deterio- a team of scientists and conservation- in Cambridge, England, then at the rated—the palette thus encompassing ists devised a new approach to con- Getty Conservation Institute, in Los an empire of pigments from Egypt to servation, involving the projection of Angeles, before, in 2001, going to the Oaxaca. colored light over the paintings. When Straus Center. Khandekar was also part of the team illuminated, the paintings appeared in Khandekar and his lab colleagues behind the famous restoration of the their undamaged condition. To achieve talk about pigments in a way that is at Rothko murals commissioned by Har- this effect, the Straus Center’s conser- once technically sophisticated and dis- vard in 1962. Installed in the Holyoke vation scientist Jens Stenger designed armingly naïve. Like Ruskin, they live Center, a modernist tower, the paint- a digital “color map” of both the orig- in pursuit of the innocent romance of ings were subjected to an unfiltered inal paintings and the damaged mu- creation—that moment when the col- flow of light and the kind of casual rals, taking into account the fact that ors were fresh, everything dried as it abuse inflicted by chair backs and col- the various parts of the murals had de- was meant to, and there was no thought lege catering until 1979, when conser- graded at different rates, according to of the hostile work of time. As Khandekar vators, curators, and university admin- their exposure to light. Stenger’s light rightly observed, while many artists are istrators, recognizing the extent of the projections, which restored the appear- reluctant to enter the interpretive fray

THE NEW YORKER, SETPEMBER 3, 2018 31 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS when discussing their own art works, toxic pigments like cinnabar and orpi- poisoned teal, his jacket edged with the most are eager to discuss materials and ment. He inveighed against the poison- bright-blue trim of his imagination, I the physical execution of their ideas. ous horrors of Scheele’s, Paris, and Em- thought of the laborers behind all those Khandekar’s comment brought to erald Green, and championed viridian Forbes pigments: the women who rinsed, mind the contemporary artist Michael as a substitute, as if the ethical integrity kneaded, sieved, and dried the pulver- Craig-Martin, whose drolly indirect of contemporary society were at stake; ized lapis lazuli that Giovanni Bellini meditations on art’s capacity to make and, whenever science and industry sup- used for the Virgin’s ultramarine robe; you believe what you don’t see included plied a new and safe color, he took it as who stood waist-deep in horse manure, “An Oak Tree” (actually a glass of water providential. In 1856, William Perkin the vapors of which hastened the flak- sitting on a high shelf), but who went discovered the synthetic dye mauveine ing of lead that produced the “lead white” on to develop a radical, almost violent (Perkin’s Mauve), a purple that came used by Frans Hals and Rembrandt to chromophilia. At a time from the residue of coal tar. capture folds of linen and lace. I thought when conceptual art ruled, Field responded in joyful of van Gogh claiming to recognize more it took guts to claim that, terms to the transformation than twenty black pigments in the por- in fact, color is concept, of the “black evil-smelling traiture of Frans Hals, the best of them and perhaps the irreduc- substance.” “At the touch of created from charred bones. And of the ible core of painting. For the fairy wand of science the bright pigments made in grim captiv- such theorists as Leon waste land became a garden ity: the North African slaves and the Battista Alberti, it was of tropic tints,” he wrote. forzado convicts condemned to work in disegno (drawing), espe- “The world rubbed its eyes the mercury mines of Almaden so that cially from classical ex- with astonishment and truly the Spanish crown could sell cinnabar; empla, rather than colore, it seemed as wonderful to the Caribbean slaves who grew and har- that elevated art from ar- produce the colours of rain- vested indigo; the inmates of the Am- tisanal craftsmanship to the noble vi- bow from a lump of coal, as to extract sterdam House of Correction, rasping sualization of humanist ideals. Such sunshine from cucumbers.” away at brazilwood. thinking persisted. Even the Cubists In the late nineteenth century, the And those gwalas in Mirzapur with saw the emerging Henri Matisse, who failed lay preacher Vincent van Gogh their cattle fed on mango leaves—if in- had dissolved plane and line in a bath took the redemptive power of color- deed they existed at all. Toward the end of flat color in such works as “The Red driven painting to a new extreme. Aided of my visit to the Forbes, Khandekar, Studio,” as somehow disengaged from by the revelations of Japanese prints, his who has been following the ongoing de- radical ideas. ecstatic illuminations were the result of bates surrounding Indian Yellow, waved It is precisely the instinctive, demotic chromatic calculations and inspirations, a paper before me. “Guess what?” he said. appeal of color that has sometimes led many of which are documented in his According to two scholars at SUNY to its being discounted as mere show- letters. Sadly, such experiments may Buffalo State, in 1883 T. N. Mukharji sent manship. And the attempt to replicate have damaged his health. His “Self- samples of both purified and unrefined optical vision with painterly practice in Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin,” Indian Yellow to Kew Gardens, along the name of being true to nature—the from 1888, which hangs in the Fogg, has with one of the earthenware collecting kind of advice Leonardo gave when he him posing against a turquoise-and- pots and a specimen of the cloths used urged painters working in the open air celadon-green background, which the to strain the urine before evaporation. In to match paint samples to what they artist described as “Veronese,” but which 2016, some of those samples, in addition saw—has often been criticized as fu- was, in fact, lethally toxic emerald green to the balls of Indian Yellow from the tile literalism. mixed with white. Forbes Collection, were subjected to rig- But, throughout the history of art, Van Gogh—like William Morris and orous analysis using an array of novel and most evidently outside the West, Kandinsky—believed that color acted techniques, including ultraviolet fluo- color has carried with it a heavy freight directly on the soul. His Bible paint- rescence and Raman spectroscopy. They of non-naturalistic value. Think of the ings, such as “The Good Samaritan,” were found to contain traces of the hip- iconic power of Byzantine mosaics, or from 1890, a variant on Delacroix’s com- puric acid associated with animal, par- the Gothic stained-glass and polychrome position, are usually regarded as senti- ticularly ungulate, urine, and euxanthic statuary that was offered as a vision of mental embarrassments. But they argu- acid—a possible by-product of the met- the heavenly Jerusalem. Color is social ably lie at the heart of his late œuvre, in abolic processing of mango leaves. and moral, too. The colorman George which cypresses shake from some pri- I have no idea why, on leaving Har- Field, who opened the first of many fac- mordial upheaval and the firmament vard’s palace of color, the vindication of tories of artists’ materials in 1808, near boils in the night skies of Provence. Van Mukharji’s account should have made Bristol, England, considered his voca- Gogh’s muscular stabs and dense ponds me cheerful. But I do know that you tion to be the redemption of color from of paint were the antidote to academic can order a synthetic version of Indian the murk of industrial obscurity—what art, requiring no need for visual tutori- Yellow from the line launched by Bob he called “foul air.” He thought of him- als: a rush of radiance for the masses Ross, the friendly TV painting tutor, for self as a reformer—manufacturing fresh toiling in their umbrous slog. $7.29 a tube. Ross used it, just as Turner reds, greens, and yellows to replace older, Gazing at Vincent posed against his did, to “paint the sun in the sky.” 

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PROFILES THE BANE OF THEIR RESISTANCE The journalist Glenn Greenwald scorns establishment Democrats—and their Russia obsession.

BY IAN PARKER

ike a man in the first draft of a and at the Intercept, the news Web site tle use for agree-to-disagree courtesies, limerick, Tennys Sandgren is a that he co-founded five years ago, and or humor: he presses on. More than one L tennis player from Tennessee. as a frequent guest on “Democracy Now!,” tweet has started with “No, you idiot.” Last winter, after scraping his way onto the daily progressive radio and TV broad- He’ll tweet “Go fuck yourself ” to a user the list of the top hundred professional cast, Greenwald has argued that the avail- with twenty or so followers. A few years players, he secured a spot at the Austra- able evidence concerning Russian activ- ago, Greenwald had a Twitter disagree- lian Open. He advanced to the quarter- ity has indicated nothing especially ment with Imani Gandy, a legal jour- finals. At a press conference, he re- untoward; he has declared that those nalist, who tweets as @AngryBlack- sponded happily to questions about his who claim otherwise are in denial about Lady; another Twitter user, in support unexpected achievement. Then some- the ineptitude of the Democrats and of of Greenwald, proposed to Gandy that one asked him about his Twitter feed. Hillary Clinton, and are sometimes prone “Obama could rape a nun live on NBC Sandgren had tweeted, retweeted, or to McCarthyite hysteria. These argu- and you’d say we weren’t seeing what “liked” disparaging remarks about Mus- ments, underpinned by a distaste for we were seeing.” Greenwald replied, lims and gays; he had highlighted an banal political opinions and a profound “No—she’d say it was justified & noble— article suggesting that recent migration distrust of American institutions—in- that he only did it to teach us about the into Europe could be described as “Op- cluding the C.I.A., the F.B.I., and Ra- evils of rape.” eration European Population Replace- chel Maddow—have put an end to his Sandgren thanked Greenwald for his ment”; he had called Marx’s ideas worse appearances on MSNBC, where he con- message, and the next day tweeted an than Hitler’s. He had also promoted the siders himself now banned, but they have apology for an old post in which he’d Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which ac- given him a place on Tucker Carlson’s described his “eyes bleeding” after visit- cuses Hillary Clinton of human traffick- show, on Fox News, and in Tennys Sand- ing a gay club. A month later, in Febru- ing. Sandgren told reporters that, though gren’s Twitter feed. Greenwald is also a ary, Sandgren played in Brazil, at the he didn’t support the alt-right, he did tennis fan—and a regular, sweary player. Rio Open. Greenwald lives in Rio de find “some of the content interesting.” He recently began working on a docu- Janeiro with his husband, David Mi- This became a small news story. Sand- mentary about his adolescent fascina- randa, their two sons, and two dozen gren then lost his quarter-final, and, at tion with Martina Navratilova. dogs, former strays; Sandgren offered the subsequent press conference, he read Sandgren told me that Greenwald’s Greenwald and his children tickets, and a statement condemning the media’s will- message had celebrated his success in they all met at the venue. Video of one ingness to “turn neighbor against neigh- the tournament, adding, “He knows quite match shows Greenwald, in the front bor.” Later that day, he was surprised to a lot about tennis—enough to know it row, applauding every point with dad- receive a supportive message from Glenn was the result of my lifetime. And he outing gusto. He and Sandgren subse- Greenwald, the journalist, whom he fol- wanted to encourage me in that partic- quently formed what Greenwald called lowed on Twitter. (Sandgren also fol- ular moment to continue to learn, to con- a “very intense” friendship. lowed Roger Federer, Peter Thiel, and tinue to grow, and to remember to be Sandgren described their trade in Paul Joseph Watson, of Infowars.) kind—to yourself and to your critics.” tennis and politics. “Glenn asks me what Greenwald, a former lawyer who, in Greenwald has experienced his own it’s like to return Ivo Karlović’s serve—a 2013, was one of the reporters for a Pu- share of criticism, but is not known for six-foot-eleven guy—and then I ask him litzer Prize-winning series in the Guard- showing kindness to critics. Michael what’s going on in the political world,” ian on Edward Snowden’s disclosures Hayden, the former director of the C.I.A. he said. “Maybe he respects the fact that about the National Security Agency, is and the N.S.A., has written that debat- I’m very interested in learning.” Green- a longtime critic, from the left, of cen- ing him was like looking “the devil in wald has sent him YouTube links to trist and liberal policymakers and pun- the eye.” Leading American progres- speeches he has made. Since meeting dits. During the past two years, he has sives—speaking off the record, and apol- Greenwald, Sandgren has also watched further exiled himself from the main- ogizing for what they describe as cow- Oliver Stone’s film “Snowden,” in which stream American left by responding with ardice—call Greenwald a bully and Greenwald is played by Zachary Quinto, skepticism and disdain to reports of a troll. One told me that “he makes the actor best known for his role in the Russian government interference in the everything war.” The spouse of one of “Star Trek” movies. Sandgren recalled 2016 Presidential election. On Twitter, Greenwald’s friends visualizes him as thinking, “They got Spock to play Glenn? where he has nearly a million followers, the angry emoji. On Twitter, he has lit- That’s fitting: very interested in factual

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Greenwald’s focus on “deep state” depredations has exiled him from MSNBC but has given him a place on Fox News.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PARI DUKOVIC THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 35 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

ter for him.” Greenwald no longer car- ries a phone; he does all his tweeting from a laptop, and aims to finish before lunch. He told me this at the end of a day that included an afternoon tweet calling a Clinton-campaign official a “drooling partisan hack.” Reminded of this, Green- wald said, “I’m still a work in progress,” and laughed. Several weeks later, he an- nounced to colleagues, on Slack, that he was further disengaging from Twitter; he also deleted twenty-seven thousand old tweets, saying that there was a risk that their meaning could be distorted. This was two weeks after he had criticized Matt Yglesias, a journalist at Vox, for reg- ularly deleting recent tweets, “like a cow- ard,” so that “you have no accountability for what you say.” Greenwald told me that he and Tennys Sandgren had been communicating every day. “He was pilloried in a way that I just found so ugly,” he said. “I could tell •• he wasn’t a bad person. He worked his whole life to get to this point, and the information, truth and reason and logic. ness that he employs online and on TV. moment he gets there they turn him And, if he does get a little frustrated or (On cable news shows, Greenwald into Hitler.” When I later disputed this angry, then look out.” draws his lower lip over his bottom description, Greenwald pointed to un- teeth, blinks slowly, and seems able to friendly reactions from Serena Williams reenwald told me about his friend- state his position on the Espionage Act and from John McEnroe; McEnroe had Gship with Sandgren during one of of 1917 while inhaling.) Greenwald, responded by making what Greenwald several recent conversations at his home. though untroubled about being thought called a “revolting” video about tennis We sat in a high-ceilinged room with a relentless, told me that he was “actu- players contending with prejudice. Green- baby grand piano; the space echoed with ally trying to become less acerbic, less wald then acknowledged that, having the sound of dogs barking—and with gratuitously combative” in public de- perceived Sandgren as vulnerable—as the sound of Greenwald responding to bates. He recently became attached to someone suddenly exposed to intense the barking by shouting, “The fuck?” the idea of mindfulness, and he keeps public scrutiny—he might have misread Greenwald, who is fifty-one, and was a Buddha and a metal infinity loop on the dominant tone. (The most forceful brought up in Florida, has lived largely a shelf behind the sofa; a room upstairs mainstream headline was on Deadspin: in Rio for thirteen years. For most of is used only for meditation. He has “What Does Pizzagate Truther Tennys that time, he and Miranda, a city-coun- turned to religious and mystical read- Sandgren Find ‘Interesting’ About the cil member, rented a home on a hillside ing, and has reflected that, in middle Alt-Right?”) above the city, surrounded by forest and age, one’s mood “is more about inte- Greenwald was particularly struck by monkeys. Last year, they moved to a grating with the world.” Sandgren’s “brave and defiant” second more residential neighborhood. The Greenwald has tried to cut back on press conference. In response to the me- house is in a baronial-modernist style, social media. “My No. 1 therapeutic goal dia’s “bullying groupthink,” he hadn’t and built around a forty-foot-tall boul- is to reduce my Twitter usage,” he said. apologized. This perception of Sandgren’s der that feels like the work of a sculp- He gave a glimpse of his relationship with circumstances helps illuminate Green- tor tackling Freudian themes: it exists that site when, half seriously, he recalled wald’s political writing, which focusses partly indoors and partly out. Green- his reaction to a difficult moment of par- on dramas of strength and weakness, and wald has a pool, and his street is gated. enting: “I went to pick a bunch of fights on the corruptions of empires. Green- A thousand feet away is the crush of on Twitter to get it out of my system.” wald writes aggressively about perceived Rocinha, Brazil’s largest favela, from Miranda used to encourage Twitter breaks aggression. His instinct is to identify, in which Greenwald often hears gunfire. by unplugging the Wi-Fi router; a few any conflict, the side that is claiming au- He seemed happy. He was wearing months ago, he took away Greenwald’s thority or incumbency, and then to throw shorts and flip-flops; he has a soft hand- phone. Miranda said that “Glenn receives his weight against that claim, in favor shake and an easy, teasing manner that so much hate” on Twitter. He went on, of the unauthorized or the unlicensed— he knows will likely confound people “Subconsciously, that goes somewhere. the intruder. Invariably, the body with who expect the sustained contentious- To not be exposed to that energy, it’s bet- authority is malign and corrupt; any

36 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS criticisms of the intruder are vilifications me and others like me of being Krem- on their shirt.” Maddow and other lib- or “smears.” He rarely weighs counter- lin agents.”) After the election, he scorned erals may show respect to the former arguments in public, and his policy goals those “screaming ‘Putin,’ over and over.” C.I.A. director John Brennan when he are more often implied than spoken. Later, on an Intercept podcast, he said accuses Trump of colluding with Rus- Greenwald’s model will satisfy read- that Democrats had embraced, without sia, but Greenwald’s view is that Bren- ers, on Twitter and elsewhere, to the ex- evidence, various “conspiracy theories” nan, who sanctioned extraordinary ren- tent that they recognize the same malig- about collusion; American liberals were dition, should be shunned. nancy, or agent of oppression. Many might caught up in an “insane, insidious, xeno- These critiques have changed Green- find this kind of framing appropriate, and phobic, jingoistic kind of craziness.” wald’s place in American political life. inspiringly forthright, in a discussion of In the period since then—these “My reach has actually expanded,” he policing in Ferguson, Missouri, or of the months of Guccifer 2.0 and Natalia Ve- told me. “A lot of Democrats have un- American meat industry’s efforts to thwart selnitskaya and Carter Page—Green- followed me and a lot of conservatives animal-rights activists—a current inter- wald has continued to portray the Trump- or independent people have replaced est of Greenwald’s. Many readers, though Russia story as, essentially, one of rotten them, which has made my readership certainly not all, could also agree that Ed- American élites and unruly insurgents. more diverse, and more trans-ideologi- ward Snowden had engaged in a coura- Although he has acknowledged the fail- cal, in a way that’s actually increased my geous insurgency. (In Laura Poitras’s 2014 ings (not to mention the indictments) influence.” His audience now ranges from documentary, “Citizenfour,” Greenwald of some people in the insurgent cate- leftist opponents of Hillary Clinton, such tells Snowden that, once Snowden’s iden- gory, he has focussed his editorial energy as Susan Sarandon and Max Blumen- tity becomes known, “the fearlessness and on documenting the past infractions and thal, to right-wing figures such as Se- the ‘fuck you’ to the bullying tactics has continuing misjudgments of people— bastian Gorka and Donald Trump, Jr. got to be completely pervading every- in the intelligence agencies, the De- To liberals grateful for institutional thing we do.”) Fewer people, though, partment of Justice, Congress, and the counterweights to the Trump Adminis- would interpret Sandgren’s story this way, media—who have provided apparent tration’s crookedness, cruelty, and men- if showing sympathy for him must be ac- evidence of Russian interference and dacity, Greenwald has been discourag- companied by disparagement of every- Trump-campaign collusion. Greenwald ing: U.S. institutions have long been one else—if one must agree that the re- has questioned their reliability, and has broken, he maintains, and can offer only porters covering Sandgren were bullying disputed their evidence, to a degree that illusory comfort. To protest the flouting when they noted that a public figure, has frustrated even some colleagues at of American norms is to disregard Amer- however naïvely, had promoted conspir- the Intercept. On Twitter, Greenwald ica’s perdition—from drone strikes and acy-minded and white-supremacist ideas. recently described the self-identified “re- unwarranted surveillance to the Demo- In the buildup to the 2016 election, sistance” to Trump as “the first #Resis- cratic Party’s indebtedness to Wall Street Greenwald detected a conflict between tance in history that venerates security and Silicon Valley. Shortly before Trump’s actors defiantly contemptuous of Amer- state agencies.” He has denounced the Inauguration, Greenwald wrote an arti- ican norms—the Republican Presiden- congressman Adam Schiff, the ranking cle for the Intercept titled “The Deep tial nominee, WikiLeaks, Vladimir member of the House Intelligence Com- State Goes to War with President-Elect, Putin—and the establishment forces that mittee, who has sought to investigate Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats he hates, including the U.S. intelligence Cheer.” The Drudge Report promoted services, “warmonger” neoconservatives the article, and it went viral. This had the like William Kristol, and big-money effect of offering the phrase “deep state”— Democrats. That August, in an Inter- which, until then, had been a murmur cept article that used the word “smear” among political scientists and fringe blog- a dozen times, and ended with an image gers—as a gift to Trump defenders. Roger of Senator Joseph McCarthy, Greenwald Stone referred to the article in an inter- argued that “those who question, criti- view with Alex Jones, on Infowars; Green- cize or are perceived to impede Hillary wald spoke of “deep-state overlords” on Clinton’s smooth, entitled path to the “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” According to White House are vilified as stooges, sym- Trump-Russia in the face of Republican data from the GDELT Project, the phrase pathizers and/or agents of Russia: Trump, obstruction, as “one of the most hawk- “deep state” then took off—first on Fox, WikiLeaks, Sanders, The Intercept, Jill ish, pro-militarism, pro-spying members then on other networks, and then in the Stein.” He wrote that both Trump and of the Democratic Party.” He has tweeted, tweets of the President and his family. Stein, the Green Party’s Presidential can- “I don’t regard the F.B.I. as an upholder Betsy Reed, the editor-in-chief of the didate, were being “vilified for advo- of the rule of law. I regard it as a sub- Intercept, recently told me that “Glenn cating ways to reduce U.S./Russian verter of it.” Greenwald told me, “Rob- has a core of incredibly passionate and tensions.” (Even though this article in- ert Mueller was the fucking F.B.I. chief dedicated followers.” But, she added, she cluded Trump on the list of those being who rounded up Muslims for George is wary of “a kind of pale imitation of “smeared,” Greenwald told me that he Bush after 9/11, and now, if you go to Glenn—people who may be partly in- had only ever invoked McCarthyism in hacker conferences, there are people who spired by him, but don’t have the nuance reference to “Democrats who accused wear his image, like he’s Che Guevara, or intelligence that he has.” She was

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 37 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS referring to Russia skeptics of the left, course.” Reed told me that Greenwald sleazy K Street practices, and their money on Twitter and elsewhere, “who are so would surely have been “more comfort- laundering and all of that.” He talks fast, convinced that they are being lied to all able being part of the #Resistance” had and often at a volume suited to a poor the time that anything that the intelli- Clinton become President. Skype connection. “But I really don’t gence community says can’t possibly be think it’s about justice. I think the peo- true.” Reed’s view is that, at this point, n 2011, Greenwald published a book ple who are doing this are genuinely “it’s not helpful to the left and to all the Iwhose title—“With Liberty and Jus- offended by the entire Trump circle, in candidates and causes we favor to con- tice for Some: How the Law Is Used to part for political and ideological reasons, tinue to doubt the existence of some kind Destroy Equality and Protect the Pow- and in part because he has broken all of of relationship between Russia and the erful”—could serve as a headline for much the rules of their world, in terms of who Trump campaign. We know some basic of what he had written in the previous gets to be in power, and what you have contours of it now, thanks to Mueller, six years. He had given up a career as a to do to get it.” He went on, “They’re but I think we may learn more. And we litigator in New York, moved to Brazil, just using the law as a political weapon can’t refuse to see what’s in front of us.” and started to write, first as a blogger against Trump, just as Brazilian élites Joan Walsh, the national-affairs cor- and then as a columnist for Salon. In the are using it against Lula.” He was refer- respondent of The Nation, and Green- book’s first chapter, he wrote, “It has be- ring to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the wald’s former editor at Salon, recently come a virtual consensus among the elites leftist former President, who had just said that left-wing Trump-Russia skep- that their members are so indispensable begun a prison term for corruption and ticism contains “real disdain for what the to the running of American society that money laundering. Democratic Party has become.” She went vesting them with immunity from pros- Greenwald told me, “I don’t think on, “That would mean its closeness to ecution—even for the most egregious that, once Trump leaves office, we’re going finance, and Wall Street.” But she thinks crimes—is not only in their interest but to have a revolution in law where rich that it also means “the ascendance of in our interest, too.” and powerful people are going to be held women and people of color in the Party, When Greenwald and I first met in accountable in the way that poor people and the fact that that coalition defeated Rio, we sat at a dining table made of are.” Trump is a criminal, he said, sur- Bernie Sanders.” (After the election, in dark, heavy wood, and he served extraor- rounded by “fifth-tier grifters” who, under an e-mail to the Intercept staff, Green- dinarily strong coffee. I asked him whether, normal circumstances, would be “gener- wald, a Sanders admirer, defended him- despite his wariness about the discourse ating PowerPoints to defraud pension- self vigorously against internal sugges- surrounding Trump and Russia, he took ers.” But most public expressions of dis- tions that the site’s coverage of Clinton any satisfaction from the discomforts of tress about corruption in Trump’s circle had been “anti-woman.”) A former In- élites, such as Michael Cohen and Paul struck him as a “pretense.” He said, “The tercept staff member told me, “I feel bad Manafort, who were losing layers of im- people who hate Trump the most are the for Glenn. I feel that Trump winning is munity each day. people who have been running Wash- the worst possible thing that could have “On one level, I agree,” he said. “It’s ington for decades. It’s not so much that happened to him, and it sort of ruined great that people like Paul Manafort are they’re bothered by his corruption— him as a valuable voice in American dis- finally being held accountable for their they’re bothered by his inability to pret- tify and mask it.” Greenwald then made an analogy that placed a Trump associ- ate like Manafort in the unexpected role of a racial-bias victim: “Let’s say there’s a city where drivers are driving recklessly, and lots of people are being killed be- cause of it. And the police department decides that, from now on, if we see any black drivers speeding, we’re going to give them a ticket, but we’re going to let white drivers continue to speed with impunity.” To Greenwald, an agonized response to Trump carries with it the delusional proposition that previous Presidents were upstanding. He said, extravagantly, “When Trump invited President Sisi”— the Egyptian strongman—“to the White House, everybody acted like this is the first time an American President ever embraced a dictator.” I asked him if anti-Trump sentiment “I did it!” implies that America, absent Trump, is РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS virtuous. “It does, yes,” Greenwald said. wald’s sons saw a friend playing soccer still, he said, “I fought with everybody, I “What was the campaign slogan of Hil- on the sand, and while we were stopped argued with everybody.” At school, he lary Clinton? She said, ‘America is al- at a traffic light they repeatedly yelled said, he “felt smarter than my teachers,” ready great.’ This was the platform that his name, laughing after they failed to adding, “Things came very easy to me, Democrats ran on.” get his attention. so I felt like I could get away with a lot.” Greenwald speaks Portuguese, but He identified as poor, in part because his ecoming an expatriate served Green- the boys have only begun to learn house was uncared for: roaches, holes in Bwald’s reputation. However pleasant English, so he was speaking privately the couch. And, when he began to un- (and, in the end, moneyed) his life be- when he complained to me about how, derstand that he was gay, he felt that oth- came, he remained apart from despised a few days earlier, they’d woken him at ers judged him to be “radically broken American élites—and felt able to tweet dawn. “They were fighting and diseased and evil.” that Katie Couric’s purchase of a twelve- over a video game,” he said. Greenwald’s planned million-dollar Manhattan condo had un- “I almost murdered them. documentary, produced by derscored her remove from “the politi- I almost drowned them in Reese Witherspoon’s com- cal impulses & circumstances of ordinary the pool.” (He was laugh- pany, will trace the per- Americans.” There was also a hint of ing—he uses the same lan- sonal and cultural impact of martyred exile. The Defense of Marriage guage when describing Navratilova’s coming out, in Act, passed in 1996, denied Miranda the spousal disharmony.) “I 1981, when he was fourteen. immigration opportunities of a spouse, called my mother later that In a proposal for the film, and, over the years, Greenwald reminded day, and I said, ‘They’re Greenwald frames his re- people who questioned his long absence fighting so much, and I just gard for Navratilova in his from America that he was a victim of hate their fighting.’ And preferred way, with reference discrimination. “I could throw that back she’s, like, ‘This is proof there’s karmic to her “radical defiance,” “vulnerability,” in people’s faces,” he said. “And then, for- justice, because all you did was fight and “incredible strength.” (He presents tunately for the whole world but unfor- with your brother, all day and night. I’m her as someone who never described tunately for that excuse, in 2013 the Su- so happy that you’re getting this.’ And herself as “bisexual”—a hedge used by preme Court struck down that law. So I I’d completely forgotten. I was, ‘Oh, my some gay celebrities of the era. This lost my excuse, and now I just admit I’m God, that’s so true, I hated my brother.’ is wrong: Navratilova did sometimes here because I love the country.” We love each other, but . . .” call herself bisexual, notably in her 1985 After it turned dark, we drove across Greenwald was an infant when his autobiography.) the city to a television studio, in order to parents moved from Queens to Lauder- Greenwald noted that some gay teens allow Greenwald to have an argument dale Lakes, Florida, and he was six when respond to persecution by assimilating, with Eli Lake, the Bloomberg colum- they separated. In a later conversation, or by escaping into the arts. He then nist, whom Greenwald has called a “rabid Greenwald said of his father, “He was said, “My strategy was: you have waged cheerleader” for the Iraq War. Miranda fucking the woman next door. They didn’t war on me, and now I’m going to wage had been delayed at work, so Greenwald divorce because of that, but it was a fac- war back on you. I had to hide who I brought the children. They are brothers, tor.” His father, an accountant, moved was, because it was shameful and wrong. now aged nine and ten, from the poor into an apartment, but for a while he And I wanted to make them feel the northeast of Brazil; the couple adopted often stayed with the neighbor. “I would same way—‘No, you’re shameful and them last fall. They sat in the back seat, see him in the morning coming out wrong.’” This force, he said, had pro- looking amused and a little restless, along- of that house,” Greenwald said. “Still pelled his success on debate teams in side a temporary member of the fami- a good father—I had good parents— high school and in college, at George ly’s staff—a security officer hired after but that was the first breach.” His fa- Washington University. Marielle Franco, one of Miranda’s col- ther died in 2016, after a chaotic and The TV studio was in a tower above leagues and closest friends, was mur- drunken decline; he had refused all help, a mall. Leaving the boys to run around dered, in March. Franco, like Miranda, and had not taken medication. When in the stores with the security officer, we was a black, gay, working-class member Glenn told a therapist that he’d found went to the thirty-seventh floor. It was of the city council. In what was likely a this refusal enraging, her response had about 8 p.m. Greenwald disappeared for political crime, Franco’s car was followed a Greenwaldian tint: “She’s, like, ‘I see a minute, and returned wearing self- one evening by men who then shot her this as such a powerful and courageous administered makeup, a jacket, a shirt, and her driver. thing he did—he basically told all of and a tie, as well as his shorts and flip- A jacket and a pressed shirt were you to go fuck yourselves, that he was flops. He contrasted his preparedness hanging by an open back window. We going to live his life, and die, the way with the baggier TV impression made drove down to the beach, then followed he wanted.’” by Noam Chomsky, a friend and a fre- the ocean, eastward, through the neigh- Greenwald’s older son, he told me, has quent ideological ally: “He won’t make borhoods of Ipanema (where Green- frequent bursts of anger, which reminded compromises to have greater access—he wald met Miranda, in 2005, on a gay him of his own emotions at that age. He won’t put on a shirt and tie, he won’t section of the beach, at the start of a va- noted, “What I went through is nothing speak in sound bites. I think you have the cation) and Copacabana. Here, Green- compared to what he’s been through”; obligation, if you believe in what you’re

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 39 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS saying, to maximize your audience.” “His followers are like the flying mon- exaggerating the Russian threat.” One Chomsky and Greenwald have described keys in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ They crush could argue that Carlson and other Fox the Trump Presidency differently. In a you in your mentions.” journalists may have made errors of recent television interview, Chomsky said threat-underestimation by, say, breezing that Trump is an agent of American élites “ ane, shut the fuck up—seriously,” past Trump-Russia revelations or failing more than he is an offense to them. He KGreenwald said. Some of his dogs to pursue investigations. But it might be also recognized a stark moral line be- are allowed inside; others live outdoors, fairer to say that, until we learn all there tween the Democratic Party and the Re- and now and then strike wolflike poses is to know about the Trump Adminis- publican Party, arguing that the G.O.P.’s at the summit of the boulder. Because tration’s involvement in the Russian opposition to addressing climate change there was always someone arriving at or scheme, the seriousness of any journal- has made it “the most dangerous orga- leaving the house—friends, couriers, do- istic neglect is hard to measure. Either nization in human history.” mestic staff—there was always a new way, Greenwald surely can’t be confident Greenwald sat on a stool, and a tech- reason to bark. that he’s witnessed a grievous imbalance nician affixed an earpiece. As he waited During the Presidential transition, the in screwups. for an Al Jazeera studio in Washington Washington Post ran a story with the He sought to clarify his position on to be ready, he put on red-framed glasses headline “russian haikers pene- Russian interference: “I’ve said that of and read from his laptop. Hearing Lake’s trated u.s. eleitriiity grid course it’s possible that Russia and Putin voice in his ear, he said, “Hi, Eli. Do you through a utility in vermont, u.s. might have hacked, because this is the like my glasses?” offiiials say.” This didn’t hold up kind of thing that Russia does to the Greenwald and Lake debated the case well: a computer at Burlington Electric U.S., and that the U.S. has done to Rus- for American bombing in Syria, as a re- had triggered a malware alert, but it may sia, and to everybody else in the world— sponse to a recent chemical attack in have been false, and the computer wasn’t and far worse—for decades.” He’d never Douma, which had killed dozens of peo- connected to the grid. The paper ap- insisted “on the narrative that Russia ple. (The next day, U.S. missiles hit three pended a correction and published a didn’t do it.” When James Risen, the for- targets in Syria.) Lake favored interven- self-admonishing article by its media mer Times investigative reporter, who tion; Greenwald did not. He briefly ac- critic. Greenwald, unsatisfied, went on joined the Intercept last year, recently knowledged the scale of human suffer- Tucker Carlson’s show and called the Post debated Greenwald on a podcast—a pub- ing, calling it “a problem in the world story “the grandest humiliation possible.” lic airing of internal tensions—Green- that’s really horrendous,” but he empha- He also wrote a dozen tweets, and a two- wald bristled at the suggestion that he sized, as Chomsky has done, that a hu- thousand-word article. “The level of had ever considered the idea of Russian manitarian rationale for American armed groupthink, fearmongering, coercive peer interference a hoax. “I never said any- intervention was “generally the excuse pressure, and über-nationalism has not thing like that,” he said, explaining that that’s used” for geopolitical maneuvering. been seen since the halcyon days of 2002 his demand for serious evidence was con- One of Greenwald’s debating assets and 2003,” he argued. A year later, CNN nected to the deceptions propagated be- is charmlessness. He brings scant green- and other outlets published, and then re- fore the Iraq War. room bonhomie onstage, and rarely tracted, the claim that, in the fall of 2016, If Greenwald has never proposed that smiles; he seems content to risk appear- Donald Trump, Jr., had learned about a Russian hacking scheme was incon- ing disagreeable, or wrongheaded. This hacked Democratic National Commit- ceivable, his rhetoric hasn’t always sig- approach works best when it is set against tee e-mails before WikiLeaks posted nalled an open mind on the issue. In the eye-rolling disdain or fear. Lake was them online. Greenwald declared the summer of 2016, he referred to narratives measured and genial. After the segment, error a “humiliation orgy,” and he ap- of Russian malfeasance as smears. That Greenwald felt dissatisfied. “I just know peared on Laura Ingraham’s show, above October, the Department of Homeland Eli too well,” he said. “We’ve just fought a chyron reading “malfeasanie in the Security and the director of National In- and argued on every medium.” Lake’s mainstream media.” He claimed that telligence firmly accused the Russian views were “horrible”—he was a “hard- there had been a “huge series” of media government of hacking; Greenwald char- core neocon and a loyalist to Israel”— mistakes about Russian interference. acterized this as an “assertion” that pre- but he “doesn’t take himself super seri- Greenwald’s other critiques of Trump- sented “no evidence.” (Classified intelli- ously.” He’d also been supportive of the era reporting—of oversold scoops and gence is generally withheld.) Since then, Snowden reporting. neglected non-Trump stories, from Yemen as the accusation has been fleshed out Lake later told me that he thinks to Catalonia—are valuable. But it’s not and gained almost universal acceptance, Greenwald is mistaken in believing “that easy to see that the media has been dis- Greenwald has chosen to highlight the everything that the U.S. government does graced by a handful of mistakes that were commentary of people who sound de- is malevolent.” But he added, “In a weird quickly corrected. To many people, Green- ranged about Russian interference. His way, I’m grateful that there’s somebody wald has looked ravenous and gleeful. work has sought to create the impres- as articulate, unrelenting, and consistent He disputed this characterization. “The sion that the pervasive voice of concern as Glenn making that argument.” He screwups have been quite numerous,” he about the Trump-Russia story is found also described the discomforts of being told me. Errors are inevitable, he allowed, not in articles by national-security re- criticized by Greenwald on Twitter: but “my problem with these mistakes is porters, including those at the Intercept, “There’s a Greenwald Effect,” he said. that they’re all in the same direction of or in congressional questioning of Erik

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Prince, or in Mueller’s indictments, but ideal posture for, say, a 911 dispatcher. interested in reporting this out without in jokes and unhinged theories—in a Greenwald asked me, “What evidence any contradiction of the impulse that led Twitter oddball like Louise Mensch sug- has ever been presented for the central us to report the Snowden story. Some gesting that “Andrew Breitbart was mur- claim that Putin ordered the D.N.C. and people are not.” dered by Putin, just as the founder of John Podesta’s e-mail to be hacked, as Greenwald and I talked about his RT was murdered by Putin,” or in How- opposed to the hacking being done by definition of “evidence.” In the case of ard Dean asking if the Intercept is funded people of Russian nationality?” Did Russia, he seemed to use the word to by Russia. When Preet Bharara, the Greenwald dispute that Guccifer 2.0, mean “proof.” His evidentiary needs in former U.S. Attorney for the Southern the persona responsible for distributing this context could be contrasted with his District of New York, jokingly fanta- hacked D.N.C. e-mails to WikiLeaks swift, easy arrival at certainty in many sized, on Twitter, about Jeff Bezos buy- and other outlets, had come into focus other contexts. Greenwald assured me ing the platform and then deleting as an agent of Russian military intelli- that Tennys Sandgren “didn’t have a rac- Trump’s account, Greenwald described gence? (A month before the 2016 elec- ist bone in his body.” He had recently this as “moronic, plutocratic dreck” and tion, Greenwald co-wrote an article, about tweeted that Jeremy Corbyn, the leader added “#Resist.” He received fourteen the Clinton campaign’s handling of the of Britain’s Labour Party, was not anti- thousand likes. press, that was based on exclusive access Semitic, and that suggestions otherwise Tommy Vietor, Barack Obama’s for- to material supplied by Guccifer 2.0.) We were “guilt-by-association trash.” It would mer National Security Council spokes- were speaking shortly before the indict- be truer to say that Corbyn’s record pro- man and the host of “Pod Save the ments, in July, of twelve Russian intelli- vides some evidence of anti-Semitism, World,” recently said of Greenwald, “He’s gence officers. I mentioned a recent ar- and that supporting him requires a re- rightly pointing out that there are some ticle in the Daily Beast, “‘Lone DNC sponse to that. liberals, some Democrats and activists, Hacker’ Guccifer 2.0 Slipped Up and Re- Shortly before we met, Greenwald who ascribe every problem in the world vealed He Was a Russian Intelligence tweeted a link to an article about the to Russian interference.” (For years, Officer,” which had been co-authored by poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Greenwald mocked Vietor as an em- Spencer Ackerman, a former Guardian in the South of England, using Novi- blem of “imperial Washington,” but the colleague of Greenwald’s who had worked chok, a nerve agent. It was “100% clear,” two men have had a slight rapproche- on the early Snowden stories. “Each story Greenwald wrote, that Boris Johnson, ment, to become “sort of friends,” in you can dissect and pick apart, right?” the British Foreign Secretary, was “lying” Greenwald’s description.) Vietor con- Greenwald said. “They’re based on anon- when he told a reporter that British sci- tinued, “That said, clearly something hap- ymous sources. They’re based on evidence entists had confirmed that the agent pened.” Greenwald’s distaste for #Resis- that you can question.” had originated in Russia. To be precise, tance dreck, and for its reach into the Ackerman told me that he liked and the scientists had merely identified the mainstream, is surely sincere, but his un- respected Greenwald, and that “people chemical, not its origin (though the abated marshalling of it has looked tac- can be interested in what they’re inter- Russians invented it). Johnson’s remarks tical. Even if Greenwald came to accept ested in.” But, he said, “it’s conspicuous were inexact, but he almost surely wasn’t that some kind of intrusion by some Rus- when they’re not interested in a massive being deceitful. To show one’s skepti- sians was likely, he could still continue story for which the simplest explanation cism about an official narrative by pro- to taint the idea by highlighting nuttiness. is that there was a Russian intelligence claiming that one knows the narrative “Ninety per cent of what he’s done operation to elect Donald Trump Pres- to be a lie could be defended as an act on the Trump-Russia story is media crit- ident.” He added, “Some people are of anti-authoritarian pluck. But it doesn’t icism,” Risen told me. He said that interested in reporting this out. Some tell readers “what it is that happened.” Greenwald, through such commentary, people—I would include myself—are Asked about this tweet, Greenwald said, has implied that the Trump-Russia story is bogus, even as he has maintained an official agnosticism. This is disingenu- ous, Risen said, adding, “I wish he was more honest and open in the way he wrote about this.” Greenwald told me that his role was “to evaluate convincing evidence and then report to my readers what it is that hap- pened, based not on my beliefs but on the actual evidence.” Such a stance could never be “disproved.” Betsy Reed recalled Greenwald telling her that it’s never wrong to be skeptical. One could argue that overriding, sustained skepticism, in response to reports of bad acts, could in- deed be a mistake, and wouldn’t be an РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS with good grace, that a British friend “Maybe not totally.” He went on, “I think Glenn Greenwald admits he’s wrong!’ had made the same point to him. Per- the role we end up playing in politics, in I don’t actually think I’ve been wrong haps he had erred. Greenwald’s offline public discourse, in life, is almost always about anything.” openness to rebuttal—in contrast to his a by-product of who we are psycholog- online bloodlust and sarcasm—was al- ically.” Greenwald’s preference, then, is n 1994, not long after Greenwald grad- ways a nice surprise. But he hadn’t cor- to enact the dynamics of an unequal Iuated from N.Y.U. School of Law and rected his remarks, which were retweeted power struggle, even as he describes one. took a job that he quickly came to hate, several hundred times. His choice of journalistic subjects was at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a “We have, all the time, different lev- also pragmatic, he said. Over the years, New York firm, he learned about Town els of evidentiary certainty based on the he could have written more often about Hall, a conservative forum, sponsored by context, based on the role that we’re play- gay rights, or abortion, areas where his National Review and the Heritage Foun- ing,” Greenwald said. To allege Russian views largely conform to progressive or- dation, on Compuserve’s dial-up net- interference in 2016 was to levy a charge thodoxy. But he didn’t feel that his time work. He applied to join, at a cost of against “a longtime adversary of the was “best spent saying things that zillions twenty-five dollars a month. In his teens, United States, one that is still in posses- of other people are already saying.” Greenwald had been close to his pater- sion of thousands of nuclear weapons Upon the release of Mueller’s July in- nal grandfather, a left-wing member of aimed at American cities.” He contin- dictments, which contained detailed the Lauderdale Lakes city council. After ued, “Before we all accuse that country descriptions of Russian methods, Green- his grandfather retired, Greenwald, at of having done something so grave as wald tweeted that “indictments are ex- eighteen and again at twenty-two, ran have its leader order the hacking of these tremely easy to obtain & are proof of for the same council—inspired more by e-mails in order to interfere in an elec- nothing.” He urged “skepticism toward the promise of conflict than by an im- tion, I think the evidence we demand the claims of prosecutors who have turned patience to serve. (“I don’t think I’m a ought to be pretty high.” the U.S. into a penal state, and security politician,” he told me. “My skill is not Was the charge “grave”? He had just state agencies which have turned the U.S. making everybody like me.”) As a stu- called it the stuff of everyday international into a militaristic imperial state.” After dent, Greenwald had paid little atten- relations. “I personally don’t think it’s Michael Tracey, another journalist who tion to politics. “There weren’t big wars, grave,” he said. “But there are millions of is largely dismissive of Trump-Russia re- big causes,” he said. But his career in Americans who believe the election of porting, wrote mockingly about the re- competitive debating had been stellar, Trump is this grave threat. So if you con- spect being paid to “our Lord and sav- and he knew that he disliked Rush Lim- vince them that what has endangered ior Mueller,” Greenwald expressed baugh conservatism. He joined Town them is Putin—you hear Democrats com- fellowship by noting that the act of “ask- Hall “just to start fucking with them,” paring this to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor—that’s ing for evidence, and refusing to believe he said. “I guess it was trolling, before really dangerous rhetoric. I don’t think it’s it until you see it, is literally heretical.” trolling existed.” He posted comments particularly grave at all, even if it’s true. I A few days later, on the phone, Green- as DerWilheim, a name chosen for rea- think it’s a very pedestrian event.” The wald had news. He had “talked to a bunch sons he says he cannot recall. “I often risk, then—one also identified by Presi- of people and figured out what I thought, think about how happy I am that no- dent Trump—was that unfounded Amer- in the most rational way possible,” and body will find those,” he said. “I’m pretty ican hysteria could set off a nuclear war. sure those things are gone.” Put another way: the choice is between He was the forum’s exotic. “They Greenwald and the end of the world. knew I was gay and a lawyer in New He later said, “If there was evidence York,” he said. He found the commu- inside the U.S. government that genu- nity to be “incredibly welcoming.” In inely proved collusion—an intercepted 1996, he flew to Indiana to attend a Town call, an e-mail—it would have been leaked Hall conference. “My friends were, ‘Are by now.” (He seemed to be disregarding you fucking insane?’” the discipline displayed by Mueller’s in- He later added, “That early Internet vestigation.) He added that, even if Putin experience—the Wild West—was really himself had ordered the hacking, “and now regarded the indictments as genu- important to my development. For gay worked with WikiLeaks and Michael ine evidence of Russian hacking—the people, and for anybody who felt any Cohen and Jared Kushner to distribute first he’d seen in two years. To think oth- sense of shame or constraint about their the e-mails,” then this was still just “stan- erwise, he said, “you’d pretty much have sexual identity and their sexual expres- dard shit.” to believe that Mueller and his team fab- sion, the Internet was this incredibly I said that he sometimes seemed to ricated it all out of whole cloth, which I powerful tool. And not just sexually, but be giving argumentative form to a psy- don’t believe is likely.” whatever parts of yourself are there and chological preference: it was perhaps more He hadn’t tweeted about this yet. He you’re not really sure about and you know satisfying to defend a besieged opinion was still pondering the best way to an- you can’t really show most people. I think than to share an agreed one and thereby nounce it. “I want it to be substantive—I that part of my bond with Snowden was become tainted with tribalism. This was don’t want it to be distorted,” he said. that the Internet was so crucial to his “totally accurate,” he said, kindly. Then: “If I did it on Twitter, it would be ‘Oh, own development.” Snowden used to

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shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655, in 1988. When isis filmed a captured Jor- BEES danian pilot being burned alive, in 2015, Greenwald immediately published a post Open up your hives, o bees, cyphers on the fringes on the Intercept about civilian injuries of childhood, honeyed inheritance of self from napalm, during the Vietnam War, among others. and from U.S. drone strikes. His head- My grandfather and godfather carved line was “Burning Victims to Death: Still their pockets of solitude a Common Practice.” by donning white suits. Meticulous, industrious natures, In 2006, he wrote a slim, sharp book, each quietly worshipped a queen, “How Would a Patriot Act?,” which be- came a best-seller. Greenwald wrote fast; each quietly stoked my inheritance. How could I by 2008, he had published two more have known the vastness books. He was an early adopter of Twit- being stored up for me, how it would remain ter, although in 2009 he observed, on long after the bees had flown. C-span, that it might “degrade our dis- The moment I was handed the comb course even further.” (Greenwald told dripping, the stickiness, the wax me, “I was so prescient! I wish I’d lis- in my teeth, the overwhelming sweetness. tened to myself.”) His writing became more polemical and less legalistic, em- It’s over now. The bees, long gone, belong phasizing debate-team reiteration of an to barefoot gardens, deserted. argument’s greatest strength. As Joan Summer no longer sleeps Walsh, then at Salon, recently put it, “He one foot swollen in her ice bucket. Jars of was not interested in convincing peo- honey no longer arrive ple—he was interested in telling the from Lyon, broken in the mail. truth.” His book “Great American Hyp- ocrites,” published in 2008, opens with —Maya Ribault an essay that repeats a single thought— that conservative politicians “talk tough and prance around as wholesome war- post on Ars Technica, about sex and When he wrote that Howard Dean was riors,” like John Wayne, while leading programming, as TheTrueHOOHA. “non-ideological, sensible, solidly main- personal lives that are “the exact oppo- Greenwald said of him, “He grew up in a stream,” he was being nice. Bush Admin- site”—to the point that it reads like a lower-middle-class household in central istration horrors were transgressions, not mechanical malfunction. Maryland—very stultifying, and homog- signs of chronic imperial disorder. In 2005, Before Barack Obama became Pres- enous. When you have a place where you Greenwald censured anti-Americanism, ident, in 2009, Greenwald was opti- can be anything, or do anything, or say which he defined as the inclination “to mistic about the candidate’s likely re- anything, you realize how emancipating vigilantly search for America’s guilt while spect for civil liberties. He recalls telling that is, and to lose that is a huge loss.” downplaying, ignoring, or excusing the himself, “He’s a law professor, it’s em- In “Citizenfour,” Snowden says to Green- guilt of its enemies”—to be driven by the bedded in him the way it is in me.” But wald, “I remember what the Internet was idea that the U.S. “is a uniquely corrupt Obama was unable to close Guantánamo, like before it was being watched.” and evil country.” and, as Greenwald saw it, he failed to In 1996, Greenwald set up his own The younger Greenwald might have stem abuses of executive privilege, and law firm. He didn’t vote in 2000, but after blanched at a question Greenwald asked security-state excesses. Ben Rhodes, a 9/11 he paid closer attention to politics, last summer: “Who has brought more speechwriter and a deputy national- from a position of some confidence in death, and suffering, and tyranny to the security adviser in the Obama Admin- George W. Bush. Greenwald has writ- world over the last six decades than the istration, told me, “I think that anything ten that, in 2003, he trusted Bush about U.S. national security state?” At one point, short of the President attempting to com- Iraq: “I accepted his judgment that Amer- Greenwald told me that he saw no differ- pletely dismantle the national-security ican security would be enhanced by the ence between Putin’s use of Novichok apparatus of the United States was going invasion of this sovereign country.” That against a political antagonist—if such a to leave Greenwald disappointed.” In trust was soon lost. And by 2005, when thing had happened—and Obama’s use Greenwald’s view, the start of the Obama Greenwald started his blog, he wrote as of military drones. “I don’t think the U.S. Presidency revealed “a dichotomy be- a critic of U.S. torture and rendition pol- government is morally superior to the tween the people who were actually se- icies, and of legal theories defending them. Russian government in terms of the role rious in their critiques of the Bush Ad- But the blog’s name, Unclaimed Ter- it plays in the world,” he said. Greenwald ministration and people who were just ritory—a reference to “Deadwood,” the responded to Russia’s shooting down of Democrats. And I became the critic of HBO frontier drama—indicated Green- Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, in 2014, by the Democratic Party from the left.” wald’s self-image as an independent spirit. tweeting a reference to the U.S. Navy’s Walsh recalled that, “for a long time,

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 43 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS we were absolutely on the same side, that he and Miranda had decided to “make can accent.) Miranda told me, “I’m black and then suddenly we weren’t always.” a film in Jacarezinho, the favela where and he’s white, a lawyer from New York. She added, “He’s always had a libertar­ David grew up—huge and very de­ I’m younger and”—shrug, slight hand ian streak, but I thought of him as on prived—and get David’s family with him, movement—“good­looking, and I came the left—in his own lane, but on the and talk about how that formed him.” from the favelas.” He went on, “But here left.” As the divide between Greenwald Miranda, who didn’t know his father and we are, thirteen years together. Two fuck­ and Obama supporters widened, “we whose mother is dead, is lighter­skinned ing kids who we love! Twenty­four fuck­ did have conversations about race and than other family members, “but he is ing dogs! I think we proved we love about gender,” Walsh said. “I thought black,” Greenwald said, “and it’s about each other.” he could persuade people if he occa­ how to claim that identity, not to let peo­ Greenwald brought out some brittle sionally paid more attention to the ple take away that identity.” (Miranda baked pasta. Miranda, who takes cook­ concerns of black people who saw had recently stopped using hair­straight­ ing seriously, looked despairing and said, Obama as being in an impossible ening products.) “You overcooked his pasta, Glenn.” situation, and being held to a different Greenwald, who had earlier compared “Not as much as I overcooked mine,” standard. Those conversations I don’t Miranda’s electoral appeal to Obama’s, Greenwald said, cheerfully. think went anywhere.” acknowledged that, in 2016, after he in­ “Oh, God,” Miranda said. terviewed Dilma Rousseff, in Brasília, in They talked about the day, in May, ne morning at the house in Rio, the Presidential palace, he and Miranda 2013, when Snowden, already in Hong OMiranda met with some of his col­ wondered for a moment how easily the Kong, sent Greenwald some samples of leagues, and with Greenwald, to discuss building could accommodate two dozen the N.S.A. material he had obtained. electoral strategy. Miranda, now thirty­ dogs. When Miranda sat with us, Green­ This included a presentation about three, stopped attending school at thir­ wald used the phrase “if you’re success­ prism, the then unknown program that teen. He later re­started his education, and ful in your congressional race,” and Mi­ facilitated the collection of data from in the summer of 2013, while Greenwald randa laughed. “I will be!” he said. “Be major American Internet companies. was in Hong Kong with Snowden—in positive, dude.” That day, Greenwald and Miranda, a sour­smelling hotel room filled with a Greenwald left the table to get food. stunned, talked for five hours. “We knew week’s worth of room­service trays—Mi­ Miranda said that, for most of Rio’s our lives would change,” Miranda said. randa was taking his final exams for a electorate, his having a foreign partner “We made a promise that the only thing degree in advertising and communica­ wasn’t a liability, but he allowed that his that cannot change is us.” (Greenwald tions. Three years later, he ran for the Rio relationship with Greenwald had drawn has changed a little, Miranda told me: city council, as a member of a small party, some unfriendly local commentary. (A “He was pretty big, but he became this the Socialism and Liberty Party, and won. senior media figure in the city later told monster.” He was referring to the size of This fall, he is running for Congress. As me, with amusement, that Miranda now his reputation.) Later, Miranda showed the meeting broke up, Greenwald said spoke Portuguese with a slight Ameri­ me photographs that he took while sit­ ting with Beyoncé, Jay Z, and Jennifer Lopez at the Vanity Fair Oscar party in 2015, after “Citizenfour” won the award for Best Documentary. “Jay Z was ask­ ing me to sit in his lap,” he said. By then, Greenwald had gone back to their hotel. (“It was suffocating, it was too much,” Greenwald told me.) “Journalists don’t just get sources— journalists create sources,” Snowden told me, speaking on a video line from Rus­ sia during the World Cup. (He had es­ tablished, he said, that in soccer each side has “a maximum of eleven players.”) He recalled first noticing Greenwald during the Bush Administration; he read the blog, and felt a sense of fraternity in their shared disillusionment. “I signed up for the Iraq War when everyone else was protesting it,” Snowden said. Greenwald struck him as unbeholden to official sources, and unencumbered by “a fear of being taken to be unserious, or shrill, if you go over the boundaries of polite con­ versation.” Over the years, Snowden said, РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS reading Greenwald “probably caused me Miranda said, “I wouldn’t let him pub- Snowden, I’ve never, ever known him to become more skeptical.” lish in The Nation.” to lie to me.” In December, 2012, Snowden reached “It’s a step down,” Greenwald said. He went on, “I think the reason Putin out to Greenwald, who had recently “It’s a step down.” accepted Snowden in Russia is because been hired away from Salon by the Guard- Miranda recalled urging Greenwald he just liked the idea of being the pro- ian. (As at Salon, and now at the Inter- to tell the Guardian that, if it didn’t pub- tector of human rights against the cept, Greenwald’s Guardian contract lish the story soon, “we’re going to put United States. So, instead of the United stipulated that, unless he requested an the documents on a Web site.” (He added, States getting to say, ‘You, Russia, are editor’s guidance, his columns would be “That’s when the idea of the Intercept persecuting people who are political dis- published directly to the Internet.) was created, right there.”) The Guard- sidents,’ Putin got to say, ‘We’re giving Snowden e-mailed him, using a pseud- ian published it that evening. him rights, because he’s onymous account, and encouraged him James Risen told me, “I going to be persecuted in to set up encryption that would allow think that Snowden, and that the United States.’” them to communicate safely. Green- story, brought out the best Trolling? “Yes, exactly.” wald didn’t get around to it. Snowden in Glenn.” Rhodes, disagree- Snowden and Green- began to talk with Laura Poitras, and ing, said that, given Green- wald used to talk every day. then with the journalist Barton Gell- wald’s “Chomsky-like” dis- Now a week or two can pass man. In April, Greenwald and Snowden trust of American power, “the without contact. Greenwald finally started an encrypted conversa- core challenge here is trying visited Snowden in the tion. Three days after opening the prism to understand to what extent spring of 2014, and then file, Greenwald flew to New York, and this was a matter of whis- again this summer, when he from there, with Poitras and Ewen Mac- tle-blowing on behalf of a appeared on a panel discus- Askill, a Guardian reporter, to Hong public debate about transparency, and to sion in Moscow, broadcast on RT, the Kong. In the Mira Hotel’s lobby, “this what extent this was just about under- Russia-backed English-language news fucking kid shows up,” Greenwald re- mining U.S. foreign policy.” network, and moderated by RT’s editor- called, laughing. “Honestly, my first re- Greenwald later said that, in Hong in-chief. Greenwald told the audience action was ‘O.K., our source is gay and Kong, he had worried that Snowden that, after Trump’s victory, “the Amer- this is, like, his lover. His little wispy might slip into China, thus creating the ican political system needed an expla- young lover.’” Snowden, for his part, was impression that he was an asset of Chi- nation about why something like that struck by the level of Greenwald’s at- nese intelligence. Had Snowden actually could happen, and why they got it tention: “He had a consuming incan- been one, Greenwald said, it would not wrong.” One explanation, he said, was descence about this story. He was driven. have affected his reporting, but it would that “it was this other foreign country Things weren’t happening fast enough, have changed his opinion of his source. over there that was to blame. And that’s there were always more questions. There Moreover, he said, “what protected me a major reason why fingers continue to was just a carnivorous desperation to legally was the popularity of the story, be pointed at the Russian government.” learn what was going on, and then to and its popularity would certainly have (When Greenwald was criticized on- tell people about it.” been lessened if he’d been revealed as a line for appearing on RT, he claimed, They met on Monday, June 3rd, and Chinese spy.” incorrectly, that the BBC is also “state- by the end of the day Greenwald had But Greenwald said that he had not controlled.”) On Instagram, Greenwald drafted his first Snowden story, about felt unnerved when Snowden eventu- posted a photograph of Snowden eat- the N.S.A.’s access to Verizon phone ally was granted asylum in Russia. He ing an ice-cream cone. Snowden had records. On Wednesday, Spencer Ack- accepted Snowden’s account: that, upon told me, “We’re not like buddy-buddy. erman, in Washington, invited the White leaving Hong Kong, his intention was There’s a distance. We don’t talk about House and the N.S.A. to respond. Ben to reach Latin America, but the plan our personal lives. We don’t call every Rhodes, who was then in the White was thwarted by the revocation of his Wednesday and say, ‘Hey, you want to House, recalled that “it kind of hit us passport, leaving him unable to trans- play bingo online?’” like a freight train.” In Hong Kong, fer flights in Moscow. Snowden has said Greenwald became impatient with what that, before arriving in Russia, he relin- reenwald is not naturally collegial. he perceived to be unnecessary delays. It quished his access to his material. Rhodes GIn Rio, on a conference call about was a “very simple” story, he said, based told me, “It’s impossible for me to be- his Navratilova film, he faced gentle re- on a single document. Greenwald went lieve that the Russians haven’t debriefed sistance to one of his ideas. Smiling, he on, “I was taking sleeping pills and Xanax him on multiple occasions.” When I raised a middle finger to the phone, and and every conceivable narcotic to sleep asked Greenwald if Snowden could then started exchanging back-channel just a little bit—but I couldn’t. I was filled have coöperated in ways other than texts with someone else on the call. Af- with adrenaline and nerves.” He sent a giving up documents, he said, “I can’t terward, he congratulated himself on his draft of his article to Betsy Reed, at the guarantee that he didn’t share informa- restraint, saying, “People come into work- time the editor of The Nation. “She got tion with them.” But Snowden had told ing with me assuming I’m this, like, de- back to me thirty minutes later and said, him that he hadn’t done so; Greenwald manding, abrasive asshole, so I don’t ‘We’re happy to publish this.’” added, “In all the time I talked to want to play into that stereotype right

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cept hired Risen, last September, Green- wald suspected that the move was intended to offset his Trump-Russia opinions. “Peo- ple have denied it, but I disbelieve those denials,” he told me. This skepticism seems to be well founded. Risen told me that his focus on Trump and Russia was “to help change the perception” of the site. (Reed, describing Risen’s hiring, said he needed reassurance that Greenwald would have no editorial influence over him.) Greenwald said, “I don’t think the ma- jority of people who work at the Inter- cept—because they’re good liberals—are supportive of my whole posture with re- gard to Trump and Russia. That’s fine with me. If they want to get someone who sounds like David Gregory to write at the Intercept, it doesn’t really take away “Remain calm and list your goals in order of priority.” from anything I’m doing.” (He later said that this wasn’t a reference to Risen, whom •• he called a journalistic hero.) Risen said of Greenwald, “He looks at stories and away. I want to wait at least a month.” Some of Greenwald’s admirers seem thinks, What are the implications of this Greenwald co-founded the Intercept to register only the fighting spirit, and story for the political positions that I in 2013, with Poitras and Jeremy Scahill; not the actual claims, in this kind of writ- hold? And I try to look at a story and say, the funding came from Pierre Omidyar, ing. Dan Froomkin, who until last year ‘Is this a good story or not?’” He added, the founder of eBay. (The site paid Green- was the Washington editor of the Inter- “I consider him a friend. We have good wald half a million dollars in its first year.) cept, told me that, after someone had conversations.” Greenwald does sometimes consult with criticized this article on Facebook, he Greenwald went on to describe his an editor before posting, but there have had replied, “Do you dispute the accu- frustration with an Intercept story, pub- been times when Reed has regretted that racy of a single thing Glenn wrote?” lished last summer, that was based on an he did not. And it’s clear that there’s a When I asked Froomkin about the claim N.S.A. report leaked by Reality Winner, category of Greenwald article for which of an MSNBC/C.I.A. merger, he laughed, an N.S.A. contractor. The article de- there’s limited appetite in New York. Re- and said, “Oh, God, did he really say scribed an attempt by Russian military minded about a fifteen-hundred-word that?,” before defending it as hyperbole. intelligence to introduce malware into article, in January, animated by the fact Some people at the Intercept have the computers of U.S. election officials that Neera Tanden—the president of the questioned Greenwald’s decision to ap- in 2016. In Greenwald’s view, the story Center for American Progress, a Demo- pear on Fox News. According to Reed, was overblown: the N.S.A. analysis in- cratic think tank—had retweeted a fool- “It’s become so entirely an organ of not cluded no underlying evidence. Before ish remark about Chelsea Manning, Reed even just the Republican Party but the publication, Greenwald vetoed a sugges- smiled, in a “tell me about it” way. Trump Administration, and it has no tion that Snowden be invited to exam- In the Trump era, Greenwald seems compunction about spreading lies, so I ine the leaked material. “I said, ‘I think to be most energized when he discovers think there are real questions about why it’s not a very good idea to send a top- flaws in Democratic messaging, or in the anyone would go on there.” Greenwald secret N.S.A. document that purports to output of an MSNBC contributor; this told me, “I don’t know why it’s O.K. to describe Russia to Russia.’” He laughed. summer, he wrote a piece about a single ally with Bill Kristol but not Tucker Carl- “Not even I would look very kindly on uncorrected error by Malcolm Nance, a son.” I reminded him that he has mocked that, if I were in the Trump Justice De- former intelligence officer, who had mis- MSNBC and CNN for giving Kristol partment.” He was also dismayed, as many takenly said that Jill Stein had a show airtime. “I think there’s a difference be- people were, that the Intercept had not on RT; Greenwald used the words “lie,” tween giving someone a platform—in- properly disguised the document before “fabrication,” and “falsehood,” and their viting Bill Kristol on—and my going and showing it to the government for verifi- variants, twenty times, and proposed that using Tucker Carlson’s audience,” he said. cation, making it easy for Winner to be “NBC News and MSNBC have essen- Greenwald’s position on Trump and identified as its leaker; she was arrested tially merged with the C.I.A. and intel- Russia has come to define the Intercept: shortly after publication. The Intercept ligence community,” and that “anyone recently, when I was in an elevator at the apologized, and supported her legal de- who criticizes the Democratic Party or New York office, an employee made a fense. The site “fucked up,” Greenwald its leaders is instantly accused of being joke about the “Russian-funded” opu- said. He added that, if he didn’t work a Kremlin agent.” lence of the premises. When the Inter- there, he might be wondering aloud why

46 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS nobody was fired. (On August 23rd, Win- After he played with the coach for scribed his fears about the state of Amer- ner was sentenced to five years in prison.) twenty minutes, cursing, it began to rain. ica, does he find it galling when others WikiLeaks offered ten thousand dol- I told Greenwald that, during his lesson, make much of their sudden new fear? lars for the name of whoever at the In- it had been reported that Sean Hannity Embedded in Greenwald’s hostility to tercept was responsible for Winner’s ex- had been named as a client of Michael Trump’s critics seems to be the aggrieved posure. Greenwald and Julian Assange Cohen’s, and that Trump had blocked question “What took you so long?” had become allies during the Bush Ad- sanctions against Russia that Nikki Haley, “Yes, yes!” Greenwald said, emphati- ministration, but their relationship was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Na- cally, as he drove. Years after he began disrupted in 2013, when Snowden chose tions, had announced the previous day. writing critically about expanded Presi- not to work with WikiLeaks. And, after In our conversations, Greenwald had dential powers, “all these powers are now Greenwald was exposed to Snowden and made much of Trump’s willingness, ear- in the hands of Donald Trump,” he said. his trove, he became less supportive of lier that month, to apply sanctions against “He gets to start wars. So I do get a sense the WikiLeaks approach, which typi- twenty-four Russian oligarchs and offi- that, O.K., people are going to finally cally involves publishing data in bulk, cials. And he had tweeted that “the Trump understand that this model of the Amer- without curating or redaction. In our Administration has been more willing ican Presidency—this omnipotence, this conversations, Greenwald noted that to confront Russia & defy Putin than lack of checks and balances—is so dan- among the Podesta e-mails published by the previous president.” gerous. But the problem is they’re being WikiLeaks were remarks about a cam- He began to respond to this news told that the danger is endemic to Trump, paign worker’s serious mental-health while trying to get out of the hotel’s park- and not to this broader systemic abuse problems; publishing that, he said, was ing lot. The machine wouldn’t accept his that’s been created. And that’s why I’m “grotesque and incredibly immoral.” ticket. Looking at the barrier in front of so opposed to the attempt to depict I was told that Greenwald now speaks us, he said, “I’m so tempted to just ride Trump as the singular evil. It’s not just harshly about Assange in private, but in through it, which is a fantasy of mine, partial or incomplete—it’s counterpro- our conversations he described a civil re- from childhood. Look at how weak that ductive, it’s deceitful.” lationship that navigated around “Julian is—I could definitely break that.” He He was acknowledging an ideologi- being Julian.” Greenwald told me that he added, “I want to do something violent.” cal incentive for minimizing criticism of had three visits with Assange late last year. He moved a cone, and drove around. the President. “We all make choices in And he framed the preëlection alliance Greenwald asked me: What was being what we’re going to prioritize,” he said. between WikiLeaks and the Trump cam- suggested by those who found it signifi- “I could go online and denounce Trump paign as a human response to extreme cant that Trump had undermined an ex- all day, and my life would be easier and conditions. Assange was understandably pansion of U.S. sanctions? Even if no- more relaxing.” focussed on escaping from what he has body was quite arguing, he said, “that Greenwald, who didn’t vote in 2016, defined as imprisonment, in the Ecua- Putin called Trump and said, ‘Hey, I’m and who sees Bernie Sanders as the best dorian Embassy in London, and Trump about to release the peepee tape unless likely candidate for 2020, later told me could potentially help him. Moreover, you pull this back,’” it was surely implied. that, compared with current conditions, Greenwald said, Assange “likes to be a big But wasn’t it as likely, he went on, that a Clinton Presidency would have been player—that’s super important to him— “Trump, like Obama, simply believes it “better in some ways, and worse in other and if you’re releasing stuff and Donald makes more sense for the Russians and ways.” He referred to the likelihood that Trump is talking about it every day, that the Americans to coöperate?” Clinton would have pursued military ac- massively increases your importance.” He seemed to be running parallel ar- tion in Syria. Trump’s election, he said, guments: Trump was tough on Russia; had energized public debate about “what reenwald has a daily tennis lesson. Trump, wisely, was not tough. Greenwald kind of country we should be.” GOne afternoon in April, on a ho- said, “You can punish them occasionally tel’s court, his coach asked him how but have an over-all philosophy—that reenwald took me to see a dog shel- he’d performed in a tournament the pre- over-all philosophy of ‘Let’s just get along Gter that he and Miranda opened vious weekend. Greenwald had been with the Russians’ has been turned into last year. Staffed by homeless people, beaten thoroughly, despite intensive something treasonous.” He went on, most of them gay or transgender, it’s in preparation. He’d mentioned this de- “Even if he has weird dealings with Rus- the garden of a once grand house, now feat to me, which was at the hands of a sia, I still think it’s in everybody’s inter- occupied by squatters, on a forested hill- “ridiculously good” young man who had est not to teach an entire new generation side. A dozen abandoned cars surrounded clearly entered the tournament at the of people, becoming interested in poli- a swimming pool half-filled with green wrong level. “I didn’t want to complain, tics for the first time, that the Russians water. He talked with a colleague about because I try not to inject lawyer-jour- are demons.” (Later, shortly before the how to defuse a conflict between two nalist energy into my recreational ac- Helsinki meeting between Trump and factions of homeless people living on the tivities,” Greenwald said, laughing. “But Putin, Greenwald told “Democracy Now!” property. A woman had announced that at the same time I felt it was a bureau- that the meeting was an “excellent idea.” she intended to kill an antagonist. “It’s cratic injustice.” He had “only once” in- Risen wrote that Trump’s decision to a war,” Greenwald told me, matter-of- tentionally served the ball, without a meet Putin alone was “at best reckless.”) factly. He lay on his back with a dog in bounce, directly at his opponent. If, for many years, a writer has de- his arms, and looked serene. 

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ANNALS OF THE MIND MALTESE FOR BEGINNERS Some hyperpolyglots learn to speak dozens of languages. Could you?

BY JUDITH THURMAN

ast May, Luis Miguel Rojas- languages (Spanish, Italian, Piedmon- an Internet search for the world’s great- Berscia, a doctoral candidate at tese, English, Mandarin, French, Espe- est language learner. But the phenom- L the Max Planck Institute for Psy- ranto, Portuguese, Romanian, Quechua, enon and its mystique are ancient. In cholinguistics, in the Dutch city of Nij- Shawi, Aymara, German, Dutch, Cat- Acts 2 of the New Testament, Christ’s megen, flew to Malta for a week to learn alan, Russian, Hakka Chinese, Japanese, disciples receive the Holy Spirit and Maltese. He had a hefty grammar book Korean, Guarani, Farsi, and Serbian), can suddenly “speak in tongues” (glōs- in his backpack, but he didn’t plan to thirteen of which he speaks fluently. He sais lalein, in Greek), preaching in open it unless he had to. “We’ll do this also knows six classical or endangered the languages of “every nation under as I would in the Amazon,” he told me, languages: Latin, Ancient Greek, Bib- heaven.” According to Pliny the Elder, referring to his fieldwork as a linguist. lical Hebrew, Shiwilu, Muniche, and the Greco-Persian king Mithridates VI, Our plan was for me to observe how he Selk’nam, an indigenous tongue of who ruled twenty-two nations in the went about learning a new language, Tierra del Fuego, which was the sub- first century B.C., “administered their starting with “hello” and “thank you.” ject of his master’s thesis. We first made laws in as many languages, and could Rojas-Berscia is a twenty-seven- contact three years ago, when I was writ- harangue in each of them.” Plutarch year-old Peruvian with a baby face and ing about a Chilean youth who called claimed that Cleopatra “very seldom spiky dark hair. A friend had given himself the last surviving speaker of had need of an interpreter,” and was him a new pair of earrings, which he Selk’nam. How could such a claim be the only monarch of her Greek dynasty wore on Malta with funky tank tops verified? Pretty much only, it turned out, fluent in Egyptian. Elizabeth I also al- and a chain necklace. He looked like by Rojas-Berscia. legedly mastered the tongues of her any other laid-back young tourist, ex- Superlative feats have always thrilled realm—Welsh, Cornish, Scottish, and cept for the intense focus—all senses average mortals, in part, perhaps, be- Irish, plus six others. cocked—with which he takes in a new cause they register as a victory for Team With a mere ten languages, Shake- environment. Linguistics is a formida- Homo Sapiens: they redefine the hu- speare’s Queen does not qualify as a bly cerebral discipline. At a conference manly possible. If the ultra-marathoner hyperpolyglot; the accepted threshold in Nijmegen that had preceded our trip Dean Karnazes can run three hundred is eleven. The prowess of Giuseppe to Malta, there were papers on “the an- and fifty miles without sleep, he may Mezzofanti (1774-1849) is more astound- atomical similarities in the phonatory inspire you to jog around the block. If ing and better documented. Mezzo- apparati of humans and harbor seals” Rojas-Berscia can speak twenty-two fanti, an Italian cardinal, was fluent in and “hippocampal-dependent declar- languages, perhaps you can crank up at least thirty languages and studied ative memory,” along with a neuropsy- your high-school Spanish or bat-mitzvah another forty-two, including, he claimed, chological analysis of speech and sound Hebrew, or learn enough of your grand- Algonquin. In the decades that he lived processing in the brains of beatboxers. ma’s Korean to understand her stories. in Rome, as the chief custodian of the Rojas-Berscia’s Ph.D. research, with the Such is the promise of online language- Vatican Library, notables from around Shawi people of the Peruvian rain for- learning programs like Pimsleur, Bab- the world dropped by to interrogate est, doesn’t involve fMRI data or com- bel, Rosetta Stone, and Duolingo: in him in their mother tongues, and he puter modelling, but it is still arcane to the brain of every monolingual, there’s flitted as nimbly among them as a bee a layperson. “I’m developing a theory of a dormant polyglot—a genie—who, in a rose garden. Lord Byron, who is language change called the Flux Ap- with some brisk mental friction, can said to have spoken Greek, French, Ital- proach,” he explained one evening, at be woken up. I tested that presump- ian, German, Latin, and some Arme- a country inn outside the city, over the tion at the start of my research, sign- nian, in addition to his immortal En- delicious pannenkoeken (pancakes) that ing up on Duolingo to learn Vietnam- glish, lost a cursing contest with the are a local specialty. “A flux is a dyna- ese. (The app is free, and I was curious Cardinal and afterward, with admira- mism that involves a social fact and an about the challenges of a tonal lan- tion, called him a “monster.” Other wit- impact, either functionally or formally, guage.) It turns out that I’m good at nesses were less enchanted, comparing in linguistic competence.” hello—chào—but thank you, cảm ơn, him to a parrot. But his gifts were Linguistic competence, as it happens, is harder. certified by an Irish scholar and a Brit- was the subject of my own interest in The word “hyperpolyglot” was coined ish philologist, Charles William Rus- Rojas-Berscia. He is a hyperpolyglot, two decades ago, by a British linguist, sell and Thomas Watts, who set a stan- with a command of twenty-two living Richard Hudson, who was launching dard for fluency that is still useful in

48 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS SOURCE: UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GETTY (FACE) ARCHIVE/GETTY HISTORY UNIVERSAL SOURCE: One researcher of language acquisition describes her basic question as “How do I get a thought from my mind into yours?”

ILLUSTRATION BY OLIVER MUNDAY THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 49 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS vetting the claims of modern Mezzo- ing to boast of in most parts of the world, him to interpret for the two British div- fantis: Can they speak with an unstilted where multilingualism is the norm. Peo- ers who discovered the trapped team. freedom that transcends rote mimicry? ple who live at a crossroads of cultures— Nearly two billion people study En- Melanesians, South Asians, Latin-Amer- glish as a foreign language—about four ezzofanti, the son of a carpenter, icans, Central Europeans, sub-Saharan times the number of native speakers. Mpicked up Latin by standing out- Africans, plus millions of others, includ- And apps like Google Translate make side a seminary, listening to the boys re- ing the Maltese and the Shawi—acquire it possible to communicate, almost any- cite their conjugations. Rojas-Berscia, by languages without considering it a note- where, by typing conversations into a contrast, grew up in an educated trilin- worthy achievement. Leaving New York, smartphone (presuming your interloc- gual household. His father is a Peruvian on the way to the Netherlands, I over- utor can read). Ironically, however, as businessman, and the family lives com- heard a Ghanaian taxi-driver chatting the hegemony of English decreases the fortably in Lima. His mother is a shop on his cell phone in a tonal language need to speak other languages for work manager of Italian origin, and his ma- that I didn’t recognize. “It’s Hausa,” he or for travel, the cachet attached to ac- ternal grandmother, who cared for him told me. “I speak it with my father, whose quiring them seems to be growing. There as a boy, taught him Piedmontese. He family comes from Nigeria. But I speak is a thriving online community of ar- learned English in preschool and speaks Twi with my mom, Ga with my friends, dent linguaphiles who are, or who as- it impeccably, with the same slight Latin some Ewe, and English is our lingua pire to become, polyglots; for inspira- inflection—a trill of otherness, rather franca. If people in Chelsea spoke one tion, they look to Facebook groups, than an accent—that he has in every lan- thing and people in SoHo another, New YouTube videos, chat rooms, and lan- guage I can vouch for. Maltese had been Yorkers would be multilingual, too.” guage gurus like Richard Simcott, a on his wish list for a while, along with Linguistically speaking, that taxi- charismatic British hyperpolyglot who Uighur and Sanskrit. “What happens is driver is a more typical citizen of the orchestrates the annual Polyglot Con- this,” he said, over dinner at a Chinese globe than the average American is. Con- ference. This gathering has been held, restaurant in Nijmegen, where he was sider Adul Sam-on, one of the teen-age on various continents, since 2009, and chatting in Mandarin with the owner soccer players rescued last July from the it attracts hundreds of aficionados. The and in Dutch with a server, while alter- cave in Mae Sai, Thailand. Adul grew talks are mostly in English, though par- nating between French and Spanish with up in dire poverty on the porous Thai ticipants wear nametags listing the lan- a fellow-student at the institute. “I’m an border with Myanmar and Laos, where guages they’re prepared to converse in. amoureux de langues. And, when I fall in diverse populations intersect. His fam- Simcott’s winkingly says “Try Me.” love with a language, I have to learn it. ily belongs to an ethnic minority, the Wa, No one becomes a hyperpolyglot by There’s no practical motive—it’s a form who speak an Austroasiatic language that osmosis, or without sacrifice—it’s a rare, of play.” An amoureux, one might note, is also widespread in parts of China. In herculean feat. Rojas-Berscia, who gave covets his beloved, body and soul. addition to Wa, according to the Times, up a promising tennis career that in- My own modest competence in for- Adul is “proficient” in Thai, Burmese, terfered with his language studies, reck- eign languages (I speak three) is noth- Mandarin, and English—which enabled ons that there are “about twenty of us in Europe, and we all know, or know of, one another.” He put me in touch with a few of his peers, including Coren- tin Bourdeau, a young French linguist whose eleven languages include Wolof, Farsi, and Finnish; and Emanuele Ma- rini, a shy Italian in his forties, who runs an export-import business and speaks almost every Slavic and Romance lan- guage, plus Arabic, Turkish, and Greek, for a total of nearly thirty. Neither will- ingly uses English, resenting its status as a global bully language—its prepo- tenza, as Marini put it to me, in Ital- ian. Ellen Jovin, a dynamic New Yorker who has been described as the “den mother” of the polyglot community, ex- plained that her own avid study of lan- guages—twenty-five, to date—“is al- most an apology for the dominance of English. Polyglottery is an antithesis to linguistic chauvinism.” Much of the data on hyperpolyglots “Unfortunately, a tiny percentage of the drones are opposed to violence.” is still sketchy. But, from a small sample РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS of prodigies who have been tested by A number of hyperpolyglots are re- Mezzofanti’s, in Bologna), and track- neurolinguists, responded to online sur- clusive savants who bank their languages ing down every living language prod- veys, or shared their experience in fo- rather than using them to communicate. igy he had heard from or about. It was rums, a partial profile has emerged. An The more extroverted may work as trans- his online survey, conducted in 2009, extreme language learner has a more- lators or interpreters. Helen Abadzi, a that generated the first systematic over- than-random chance of being a gay, Greek educator who speaks nineteen view of linguistic virtuosity. Some four left-handed male on the autism spec- languages “at least at an intermediate hundred respondents provided infor- trum, with an autoimmune disorder, level” spent decades at the World Bank. mation about their gender and their such as asthma or allergies. (Endocrine Kató Lomb, a Hungarian autodidact, orientation, among other personal de- research, still inconclusive, has inves- learned seventeen tongues—the last, He- tails, including their I.Q.s (which were tigated the hypothesis that these traits brew, in her late eighties— above average). Nearly half may be linked to a spike in testoster- and in middle age became spoke at least seven lan- one during gestation.) “It’s true that one of the world’s first si- guages, and seventeen qual- L.G.B.T. people are well represented multaneous interpreters. ified as hyperpolyglots. The in our community,” Simcott told me, Simcott joined the British distillation of this research, when we spoke in July. “And a lot iden- Foreign Service. On tours “Babel No More,” published tify as being on the spectrum, some of duty in Yemen, Bosnia, in 2012, is an essential refer- mildly, others more so. It was a subject and Moldova, he picked up ence book—in its way, an we explored at the conference last year.” some of the lingo. Every ethnography of what Erard Simcott himself is an ambidextrous, summer, he set himself the calls a “neural tribe.” heterosexual, and notably outgoing forty- challenge of learning a new The awe that tribe mem- one-year-old. He lives in Macedonia tongue more purposefully, bers command has always with his wife and daughter, a budding either by taking a university course—as attracted opportunists. There are, for ex- polyglot of eleven, who was, he told me, he did in Mandarin, Japanese, Czech, ample, “bizglots” and “broglots,” as Erard trilingual at sixteen months. His own Arabic, Finnish, and Georgian—or with calls them. The former hawk tutorials parents were monolingual, though he a grammar book and a tutor. with the dubious promise that anyone was fascinated, as a boy, “by the differ- However they differ, the hyperpoly- can become a prodigy, while the latter ent ways people spoke English.” (Like glots whom I met all winced at the engage in online bragfests, like “post- Henry Higgins, Simcott can nail an ac- question “How many languages do you modern frat boys.” And then there are cent to a precise point on the map, not speak?” As Rojas-Berscia explained it, the the fauxglots. My favorite is “George only in the British Isles but all over Eu- issue is partly semantic: What does the Psalmanazar” (his real name is un- rope.) “I’m mistaken for a native in about verb “to speak” mean? It is also polit- known), a vagabond of mysterious prov- six languages,” he told me, even though ical. Standard accents and grammar are enance and endearing chutzpah who he started slow, learning French in grade usually those of a ruling class. And the wandered through Europe in the late school and Spanish as a teen-ager. At question is further clouded by the “chau- seventeenth century, claiming, by turns, university, he added Italian, Portuguese, vinism” that Ellen Jovin feels obliged to to be Irish, Japanese, and, ultimately, Swedish, and Old Icelandic. His flaw- resist. The test of a spy, in thrillers, is Formosan. Samuel Johnson befriended less German, acquired post-college, as to “pass for a native,” even though the him in London, where Psalmanazar an au pair, made Dutch a cinch. English-speaking natives of Glasgow, published a travelogue about his “na- As Simcott entered late adolescence, Trinidad, Delhi, Lagos, New Orleans, tive” island which included translations he said, “the Internet was starting up,” and Melbourne (not to mention Eliza from its language—an ingenious pas- so he could practice his languages in chat Doolittle’s East End) all sound foreign tiche of his invention. Erard pursued rooms. He also found a sense of iden- to one another. “No one masters all the another much hyped character, Ziad tity that had eluded him. There was, in nuances of a language,” Simcott said. Fazah, a Guinness-record holder until particular, a mysterious polyglot who “It’s a false standard, and one that gets 1997, who claimed to speak fifty-eight haunted the same rooms. “He was the raised, ironically, mostly by monoglots— languages fluently. Fazah flamed out first person who really encouraged me,” Americans in particular. So let’s just say spectacularly on a Chilean television Simcott said. “Everyone else either that I have studied more than fifty, and show, failing to answer even simple ques- warned me that my brain would burst I use about half of them.” tions posed to him by native speakers. or saw me as a talking horse. Eventually, Rojas-Berscia derides such theatrics I made a video using bits and bobs of ichard Hudson’s casual search for as “monkey business,” and dismisses sixteen languages, so I wouldn’t have to Rthe ultimate hyperpolyglot was in- prodigies who monetize their gifts. keep performing.” But the stranger gave conclusive, but it led him to an Amer- “Where do they get the time for it?” he Simcott a validation that he still recalls ican journalist, Michael Erard, who had wonders. Erard, in his survey for “Babel with emotion. He founded the confer- embarked on the same quest more me- No More,” queried his subjects on their ence partly to pay that debt forward, by thodically. Erard, who has a doctorate learning protocols, and, while some were creating a clubhouse for the kind of geeky in English, spent six years reading the vague (“I accept mistakes and uncer- kid he had been, to whom no tongue scientific literature and debriefing its tainty; I listen and read a lot”), others was foreign but no place was home. authors, visiting archives (including gave elaborate accounts of drawing “mind

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 51 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS maps” and of building “memory anchors,” or of creating an architectural model for each new language, to be furnished with ORIGIN vocabulary as they progressed. When I asked Simcott if he had any secrets, he I was born inside a mourning dove. paused to think about it. “Well, I don’t There is wind in all of us. have an amazing memory,” he said. “At many tasks, I’m just average. A neuro- Here I am linguist at the City University of New in a century that has its eyes York, Loraine Obler, ran some tests on me, and I performed highly on recall- shut tight—don’t I know exactly ing lists of nonsense words.” (That abil- why I’m here: in the end ity, Obler’s research suggests, strongly correlates with a gift for languages.) the sun varnishes us all “I was also a standout at reproducing in amber. Undress sounds,” he continued. “But, the more languages you learn, in the more fami- for that light. There is flight lies, the easier it gets. Each one bangs in all of us. Find me more storage hooks into the wall.” Alexander Argüelles, a legendary in the pasture sewing figure in the community, warned Erard bluebonnets into each bend that immodesty is the hallmark of a char- latan. When Erard met him, ten years of our laughter. I was born ago, Argüelles, an American who lives inside the decayed mourning in Singapore, started his day at three in the morning with a “scriptorium” exer- cise: “writing two pages apiece in Ara- as the writer-in-residence, and looking our bags and went to a local bar. It was bic, Sanskrit, and Chinese, the languages forward to moving back to Maine with Saturday night, and the narrow streets he calls the ‘etymological source rivers.’” his family. “I saw only when the book of the quarter were packed with revel- He continued with other languages, from was finished that many of the stories had lers grooving to deafening music. I had different families, until he had filled a common thread,” he told me. We had pictured something a bit different—a twenty-four notebook pages. As dawn been walking through the woods that quaint inn on a quiet square, perhaps, broke, he went for a long run, listening surround the institute, listening to the where a bronze Knight of Malta tilted to audiobooks and practicing what he vibrant May birdsong, a Babel of voices. at the bougainvillea. But Rojas-Berscia calls “shadowing”: as the foreign sounds His subjects, he reflected, had been cut is not easily distracted. He took out his flowed into his headphones, he shouted from the herd of average mortals by their notebook and jotted down the kinship them out at the top of his lungs. Back wiring or by their obsession. They had terms he had just learned. Then he at home, he turned to drills in grammar embraced their otherness, and they had checked his phone. “I texted the lan- and phonetics, logging the time he had cultivated it. Yet, if speech defines us as guage guide I lined up for us,” he ex- devoted to each language on an Excel human, a related faculty had eluded them: plained. “He’s a personal trainer I found spreadsheet. Erard studied logs going the ability to connect. Each new lan- online, and I’ll start working out with back sixteen months, and calculated that guage was a potential conduit—an es- him tomorrow morning. A gym is a good Argüelles had spent forty per cent of his cape route from solitude. “I hadn’t real- place to get the prepositions for direc- waking life studying fifty-two languages, ized that was my story, too,” he said. tion.” The trainer arrived and had a beer in increments that varied from four hun- with us. He was overdressed, with a lac- dred and fifty-six hours (Arabic) to four ojas-Berscia and I took a budget quered mullet, and there was something hours (Vietnamese). “The way I see it, Rflight from Brussels to Malta, ar- shifty about him. Indeed, Rojas-Berscia there are three types of polyglots,” he riving at midnight. The air smelled like prepaid him for the session, but he never told Erard. There were the “ultimate ge- summer. Our taxi-driver presumed we turned up the next day. He had, it trans- niuses . . . who excel at anything they were mother and son. “How do you say pired, a subsidiary line of work. do”; the Mezzofantis, “who are only good ‘mother’ in Maltese?” Rojas-Berscia I didn’t expect Rojas-Berscia to mas- at languages”; and the “people like me.” asked him, in English. By the time we ter Maltese in a week, but I was surprised He refused to consider himself a special had reached the hotel, he knew the at his impromptu approach. He spent case—he was simply a Stakhanovite. whole Maltese family. Two local new- several days raptly eavesdropping on na- Erard is a pensive man of fifty, still lyweds, still in their wedding clothes, tive speakers in markets and cafés and boyish-looking, with a gift for listening were just checking in. “How do you on long bus rides, bathing in the warm that he prizes in others. We met in Nij- say ‘congratulations’?” Rojas-Berscia sea of their voices. If we took a taxi to megen, at the Max Planck Institute, asked. The answer was nifrah. some church or ruin, he would ride shot- where he was finishing a yearlong stint We were both starving, so we dropped gun and ask the driver to teach him a

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nouns, numbers, qualification—‘good,’ ‘bad,’ and such. Some clausal opera- tors—‘but,’ ‘because,’ ‘therefore.’ Copu- dove you found shaded lar verbs like ‘to be’ and ‘to seem.’ Basic in lavender. Call me maggot. survival verbs like ‘need,’ ‘eat,’ ‘see,’ ‘drink,’ ‘want,’ ‘walk,’ ‘buy,’ and ‘get sick.’ Plus a When you die, don’t worry. nice little shopping basket of nouns. I will rise up from you Then I’ll get our guide to give me a par- adigm—‘I eat an apple, you eat an opaque as the angel apple’—and voilà.” I had, I realized, cov- admiring your rotted waist. ered the same ground in Vietnamese— tôi ăn một quả táo—but it had cost me I, too, will die—am six months. dying—though I It wasn’t easy, though, to find the right guide. I suggested we try the uni- am a maggot, though I covet versity. “Only if we have to,” Rojas- fragrance from your breathless Berscia said. “I prefer to avoid intellec- tuals. You want the street talk, not book flowering. I am born Maltese.” How would he do this in the from grieving. I am Amazon? “Monolingual fieldwork on indigenous tongues, without the refer- as afraid as you. ence point of a lingua franca, is harder, but it’s beautiful,” he said. “You start by —Katie Condon making bonds with people, learning to greet them appropriately, and observ- ing their gestures. The rules of behavior few common Maltese phrases, or to tell ceeded by the builders of a temple com- are at least as important in cultural lin- him a joke. He didn’t record these en- plex on Gozo. (Their mysterious mega- guistics as the rules of grammar. It’s not counters, but in the next taxi or shop he liths are still standing.) Around 750 B.C., just a matter of finding the algorithm. would use the new phrases to start a con- Phoenician traders established a colony, The goal is to become part of a society.” versation. Hyperpolyglots, Erard writes, which was conquered by the Romans, After the debacle with the “trainer,” exhibit an imperative “will to plasticity,” who were routed by the Byzantines, who we went looking for volunteers willing by which he means plasticity of the brain. were kicked out by the Aghlabids. A to spend an hour or so over a drink or But I was seeing plasticity of a different community of Arabs from the Muslim a coffee. We auditioned a tattoo artist sort, which I myself had once possessed. Emirate of Sicily landed in the eleventh with blond dreadlocks, a physiology In my early twenties, I had learned two century and dug in so deep that waves of student from Valletta, a waiter on Gozo, languages simultaneously, the first by Christian conquest—Norman, Swabian, and a tiny old lady who sold tickets to “sleeping with my dictionary,” as the Aragonese, Spanish, Sicilian, French, and the catacombs outside Mdina (a loca- French put it, and the other by drinking British—couldn’t efface them. Their lan- tion for King’s Landing in “Game of a lot of wine and being willing to make guage is the source of Maltese gram- Thrones”). Like nearly all Maltese, they a fool of myself jabbering at strangers. mar and a third of the lexicon, making spoke good English, though Rojas- With age, I had lost my gift for aban- Malti the only Semitic language in the Berscia valued their mistakes. “When don. That had been my problem with European Union. Rojas-Berscia’s He- someone says, ‘He is angry for me,’ you Vietnamese. You have to inhabit a lan- brew helped him with plurals, conjuga- learn something about his language— guage, not only speak it, and fluency re- tions, and some roots. As for the rest of it represents a convention in Maltese. quires some dramatic flair. I should have the vocabulary, about half comes from The richness of a language’s conven- been hanging out in New York’s Little Italian, with English and French loan- tions is the highest barrier to sound- Saigon, rather than staring at a screen. words. “We should have done Uighur,” ing like a native in it.” The Maltese were flattered by Rojas- I teased him. “This is too easy for you.” On our third day, Rojas-Berscia con- Berscia’s interest in their language, but Linguistics gave Rojas-Berscia tools tacted a Maltese Facebook friend, who dumbfounded that he would bother that civilians lack. But he was drawn to invited us to dinner in Birgu, a medi- to learn it—what use was it to him? linguistics in part because of his apti- eval city fortified by the Knights of Their own history suggests an answer. tude for systematizing. “I can’t remem- Malta in the sixteenth century. The shel- Malta, an archipelago, is an almost lit- ber names,” he told me, yet his recall for tered port is now a marina for super- eral stepping stone from Africa to Eu- the spoken word is preternatural. “It will yachts, although a wizened ferryman rope. (While we were there, the govern- take me a day to learn the essentials,” shuttles humbler travellers from the ment turned away a boatload of asylum he had reckoned, as we planned the trip. Birgu quays to those of Senglea, di- seekers.) Its earliest known inhabitants The essentials included “predicate for- rectly across from them. The waterfront were Neolithic farmers, who were suc- mation, how to quantify, negation, pro- is lined with old palazzos of coralline

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runs in the family. Argüelles is the child of a polyglot. Kató Lomb was, too. Sim- cott’s daughter might contribute to a science still in its infancy. In the mean- time, Fisher is recruiting outliers like Rojas-Berscia and collecting their sa- liva; when the sample is broad enough, he hopes, it will generate some con- clusions. “We need to establish the right cuto2 point,” he said. “We tend to think it should be twenty languages, rather than the conventional eleven. But there’s a trade-o2: with a lower number, we have a bigger cohort.” I asked Fisher about another cuto2 point: the critical period for acquiring a language without an accent. The com- mon wisdom is that one loses the chance to become a spy after puberty. Fisher explained why that is true for most peo- ple. A brain, he said, sacrifices supple- ness to gain stability as it matures; once you master your mother tongue, you don’t need the phonetic plasticity of childhood, and a typical brain puts that circuitry to another use. But Simcott learned three of the languages in which he is mistaken for a native when he was in his twenties. Corentin Bourdeau, who grew up in the South of France, passes •• for a local as seamlessly in Lima as he does in Tehran. Experiments in extend- limestone, whose façades were glowing ing songbirds, also bear a version of the ing or restoring plasticity, in the hope in the dusk. We ordered some Maltese gene, and most of the researchers I met of treating sensory disabilities, may also wine and took in the scene. But the believe that language is probably, as lead to opportunities for greater acuity. minute Rojas-Berscia opened his note- Fisher put it, a “bio-cultural hybrid”— Takao Hensch, at Harvard, has discov- book his attention lasered in on his task. one whose genesis is more complicated ered that Valproate, a drug used to treat “Please don’t tell me if a verb is regu- than Chomsky would allow. The ques- epilepsy, migraines, and bipolar disor- lar or not,” he chided his friend, who tion inspires bitter controversy. der, can reopen the critical period for was being too helpful. “I want my brain Fisher’s lab at Nijmegen focusses on visual development in mice. “Might it to do the work of classifying.” pathologies that disrupt speech, but he work for speech?” Fisher said. “We don’t has started to search for DNA variants know yet.” ojas-Berscia’s brain is of great in- that may correlate with linguistic vir- Rterest to Simon Fisher, his senior tuosity. One such quirk has already been ojas-Berscia and I parted on the colleague at the institute and a neuro- discovered, by the neuroscientist Sophie Rtrain from Brussels to Nijmegen, geneticist of international renown. In Scott: an extra loop of gray matter, pres- where he got o2 and I continued to the 2001, Fisher, then at Oxford, was part ent from birth, in the auditory cortex Amsterdam airport. He had to finish of a team that discovered the FOXP2 of some phoneticians. “The genetics of his thesis on the Flux Approach before gene and identified a single, heritable talent is unexplored territory,” Fisher leaving for a research job in Australia, mutation of it that is responsible for said. “It’s a hard concept to frame for where he planned to study aboriginal verbal dyspraxia, a severe language dis- an experiment. It’s also a sensitive topic. languages. I asked him to assess our lit- order. In the popular press, FOXP2 has But you can’t deny the fact that your ge- tle experiment. “The grammar was easy,” been mistakenly touted as “the language nome predisposes you in certain ways.” he said. “The orthography is a little gene,” and as the long-sought evidence The genetics of talent may thwart difficult, and the verbs seemed chaotic.” for Noam Chomsky’s famous theory, average linguaphiles who aspire to be- His prowess had dazzled our consul- which posits that a spontaneous muta- come Mezzofantis. Transgenerational tants, but he wasn’t as impressed with tion gave Homo sapiens the ability to studies are the next stage of research, himself. He could read bits of a news- acquire speech and that syntax is hard- and they will seek to establish the de- paper; he could make small talk; he had wired. Other animals, however, includ- gree to which a genius for language learned probably a thousand words.

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When a taxi-driver asked if he’d been The responsive cortex proved to be tions, and Fedorenko plans to add tasks living on Malta for a year, he’d laughed separate from regions involved in other in sign language. with embarrassment. “I was flattered, forms of complex thought. We don’t, for Twelve years on, Fedorenko is con- of course,” he added. “And his excite- example, use the same parts of our brains fident of certain findings. All her sub- ment for my progress excited him to for music and for speech, which seems jects show less brain activity when help us.” “Excitement about your prog- counterintuitive, especially in the case working in their mother tongue; they ress,” I clucked. It was a rare lapse. of a tonal language. But pitch, Fedo- don’t have to sweat it. As the language A week later, I was on a different train, renko explained, has its own neural turf. in the tests grows more challenging, it from New York to Boston. Fisher had And life experience alters the picture. elicits more neural activity, until it be- referred me to his collaborator Evelina “Literate people use one region of their comes gibberish, at which point it elic- Fedorenko. Fedorenko is a cognitive neu- cortex in recognizing letters,” she said. its less—the brain seems to give up, roscientist at Massachusetts General “Illiterate people don’t have that region, quite sensibly, when a task is futile. Hy- Hospital who also runs what her post- though it develops if they learn to read.” perpolyglots, too, work harder in an docs call the EvLab, at M.I.T. My first In order to draw general conclusions, unfamiliar tongue. But their “harder” e-mail to her had bounced back—she Fedorenko needed to study the way is relaxed compared with the efforts of was on maternity leave. But then she that language skills vary among indi- average people. Their advantage seems wrote to say that she would be delighted viduals. They turned out to vary greatly. to be not capacity but efficiency. No to meet me. “Are you claustrophobic?” The intensity of activity in response to matter how difficult the task, they use she added. If not, she said, I could take the localizer tests was idiosyncratic; a smaller area of their brain in process- a spin in her fMRI machine, to see what some brains worked harder than oth- ing language—less tissue, less energy. she does with her hyperpolyglots. ers. But that raised another question: All Fedorenko’s guinea pigs, includ- Fedorenko is small and fair, with del- Did heightened activity correspond to ing me, also took a daunting nonver- icate features. She was born in Volgo- a greater aptitude for language? Or was bal memory test: squares on a grid flash grad in 1980. “When the Soviet Union the opposite true—that the cortex of a on and off as you frantically try to re- fell apart, we were starving, and it wasn’t language prodigy would show less ac- call their location. This trial engages a fun,” she said. Her father was an alco- tivity, because it was more efficient? neural network separate from the lan- holic, but her parents were determined I asked Fedorenko if she had rea- guage cortex—the executive-function to help her fulfill her exceptional prom- son to believe that gay, left-handed system. “Its role is to support general ise in math and science, which meant es- males on the spectrum had some cere- fluid intelligence,” Fedorenko said. caping abroad. At fifteen, she won a place bral advantage in learning languages. What kind of boost might it give to, in an exchange program, sponsored by “I’m not prepared to accept that report- say, a language prodigy? “People claim Senator Bill Bradley, and spent a year in ing as anything more than anecdotal,” that language learning makes you Alabama. Harvard gave her a full schol- she said. “Males, for one thing, get smarter,” she replied. “Sadly, we don’t arship in 1998, and she went on to grad- greater encouragement for intellectual have evidence for it. But, if you play an uate school at M.I.T., in linguistics and achievement.” unfamiliar language to ‘normal’ people, psychology. There, she met the cognitive Fedorenko’s initial subjects had been their executive-function systems don’t scientist Ted Gibson. They married, and English-speaking monolinguals, or show much response. Those of poly- they now have a one-year-old daughter. bilinguals who also spoke Spanish or glots do. Perhaps they’re striving to One afternoon, I visited Fedorenko grasp a linguistic signal.” Or perhaps at her home, in Belmont. (She spends that’s where their genie resides. as much time as she can with her baby, Barring an infusion of Valproate, who was babbling like a songbird.) most of us will never acquire Rojas- “Here is my basic question,” she said. Berscia’s twenty-eight languages. As “How do I get a thought from my mind for my own brain, I reckoned that the into yours? We begin by asking how scan would detect a lumpen mass of language fits into the broader architec- mac and cheese embedded with low- ture of the mind. It’s a late invention, wattage Christmas lights. After the evolutionarily, and a lot of the brain’s memory test, I was sure that it had. machinery was already in place.” Mandarin. But, in 2013, she tested her “Don’t worry,” Matt Siegelman, Fedo- She wondered: Does language share first prodigy. “We heard about a local renko’s technician, reassured me. “Ev- a mechanism with other cognitive func- kid who spoke thirty languages, and eryone fails it—well, almost.” tions? Or is it autonomous? To seek an we recruited him,” she said. He intro- Siegelman’s tactful letdown woke answer, she developed a set of “localizer duced her to other whizzes, and as the me from my adventures in language tasks,” administered in an fMRI ma- study grew Fedorenko needed mate- land. But as I was leaving I noticed a chine. Her first goal was to identify the rial in a range of tongues. Initially, she copy of “Alice” in Vietnamese. I report “language-responsive cortex,” and the used Bible excerpts, but “Alice’s Ad- to you with pride that I could make tasks involved reading or listening to a ventures in Wonderland” came to seem out “white rabbit” (thỏ trắng), “tea party” sequence of sentences, some of them gar- more congenial. The EvLab has ac- (tiệc trà), and ăn tôi, which—you knew bled or composed of nonsense words. quired more than forty “Alice” transla- it!—means “eat me.”  老吉发布，禁止倒卖。

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FICTION

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hen I was fifteen, my off to high school, she to junior high. the mountaineering club at school, younger sister died. It hap- The next time I saw her, she’d stopped which kept me busy, and when I wasn’t W pened very suddenly. She breathing. Her large eyes were closed doing that I started oil painting. My was twelve then, in her first year of ju- forever, her mouth slightly open, as if art teacher recommended that I find a nior high. She had been born with a she were about to say something. good instructor and really study paint- congenital heart problem, but since her And the next time I saw her she was ing. And when I finally did start at- last surgeries, in the upper grades of in a coffin. She was wearing her favor- tending art classes my interest became elementary school, she hadn’t shown ite black velvet dress, with a touch of serious. I think I was trying to keep any more symptoms, and our family makeup and her hair neatly combed; myself busy so I wouldn’t think about had felt reassured, holding on to the she had on black patent-leather shoes my dead sister. faint hope that her life would go on and lay face up in the modestly sized For a long time—I’m not sure how without incident. But, in May of that coffin. The dress had a white lace col- many years—my parents kept her room year, her heartbeat became more irreg- lar, so white it looked unnatural. exactly as it was. Textbooks and study ular. It was especially bad when she lay Lying there, she appeared to be guides, pens, erasers, and paper clips down, and she suffered many sleepless peacefully sleeping. Shake her lightly piled on her desk, sheets, blankets, and nights. She underwent tests at the uni- and she’d wake up, it seemed. But that pillows on her bed, her laundered and versity hospital, but no matter how de- was an illusion. Shake her all you folded pajamas, her junior-high-school tailed the tests the doctors couldn’t want—she would never awaken again. uniform hanging in the closet—all un- pinpoint any changes in her physical I didn’t want my sister’s delicate lit- touched. The calendar on the wall still condition. The basic issue had osten- tle body to be stuffed into that cramped, had her schedule noted in her minute sibly been resolved by the operations, confining box. I felt that her body writing. It was left at the month she and they were baffled. should be laid to rest in a much more died, as if time had frozen solid at that “Avoid strenuous exercise and fol- spacious place. In the middle of a point. It felt as if the door could open low a regular routine, and things should meadow, for instance. We would word- at any moment and she’d come in. settle down soon,” her doctor said. That lessly go to visit her, pushing our way When no one else was at home, I’d was probably all he could say. And he through the lush green grass as we sometimes go into her room, sit down wrote out a few prescriptions for her. went. The wind would slowly rustle gently on the neatly made bed, and But her arrhythmia didn’t settle the grass, and birds and insects would gaze around me. But I never touched down. As I sat across from her at the call out all around her. The raw smell anything. I didn’t want to disturb, even dining table I often looked at her chest of wildflowers would fill the air, pol- a little, any of the silent objects left be- and imagined the heart inside it. Her len swirling. When night fell, the sky hind, signs that my sister had once breasts were beginning to develop no- above her would be dotted with count- been among the living. ticeably. Yet, within that chest, my sis- less silvery stars. In the morning, a new I often tried to imagine what sort ter’s heart was defective. And even a sun would make the dew on the blades of life my sister would have had if she specialist couldn’t locate the defect. of grass sparkle like jewels. But, in re- hadn’t died at twelve. Though there That fact alone had my brain in con- ality, she was packed away in some ri- was no way I could know. I couldn’t stant turmoil. I spent my adolescence diculous coffin. The only decorations even picture how my own life would in a state of anxiety, fearful that, at any around her coffin were ominous white turn out, so I had no idea what her fu- moment, I might lose my little sister. flowers that had been snipped and stuck ture would have held. But I knew that My parents told me to watch over in vases. The narrow room had fluo- if only she hadn’t had a problem with her, since her body was so delicate. rescent lighting and was drained of one of her heart valves she would have While we were attending the same el- color. From a small speaker set into the grown up to be a capable, attractive ementary school, I always kept my eye ceiling came the artificial strains of adult. I’m sure many men would have on her. If need be, I was willing to risk organ music. loved her, and held her in their arms. my life to protect her and her tiny I couldn’t stand to see her be cre- But I couldn’t picture any of that in heart. But the opportunity never pre- mated. When the coffin lid was shut detail. For me, she was forever my lit- sented itself. and locked, I left the room. I didn’t tle sister, three years younger, who She was on her way home from help when my family ritually placed needed my protection. school one day when she collapsed. her bones inside an urn. I went out For a time, after she died, I drew She lost consciousness while climbing into the crematorium courtyard and sketches of her over and over. Repro- the stairs at Seibu Shinjuku Station cried soundlessly by myself. During ducing in my sketchbook, from all and was rushed by ambulance to the her all too short life, I’d never once different angles, my memory of her nearest emergency room. When I heard, helped my little sister, a thought that face, so I wouldn’t forget it. Not that I I raced to the hospital, but by the time hurt me deeply. was about to forget her face. It will re- I got there her heart had already After my sister’s death, our family main etched in my mind until the day stopped. It all happened in the blink changed. My father became even more I die. What I sought was not to for- of an eye. That morning we’d eaten taciturn, my mother even more ner- get the face I remembered at that point breakfast together, said goodbye to vous and jumpy. Basically, I kept on in time. In order to do that, I had to each other at the front door, me going with the same life as always. I joined give form to it by drawing. I was only

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fifteen then, and there was so much I About two and half hours passed had to get up and leave the theatre. didn’t know about memory, drawing, before the door was opened and I was That was why I seldom went to mov- and the flow of time. But one thing I able to crawl out. That whole time I ies with anyone else. did know was that I needed to do some- was locked inside a sealed, totally dark thing in order to hold on to an accu- place. It wasn’t a refrigerated truck or hen I was thirteen and my lit- rate record of my memory. Leave it anything, so there were gaps where air Wtle sister was ten, the two of us alone, and it would disappear some- could get in. If I’d thought about it travelled by ourselves to Yamanashi where. No matter how vivid the mem- calmly, I would have known that I Prefecture during summer vacation. ory, the power of time was stronger. I wouldn’t suffocate. Our mother’s brother worked in a re- knew this instinctively. But, still, a terrible panic had me in search lab at a university in Yamanashi I would sit alone in her room on its grip. There was plenty of oxygen, and we went to stay with him. This was her bed, drawing her. I tried to repro- yet no matter how deeply I breathed the first trip we kids had taken by our- duce on the blank paper how she looked I wasn’t able to absorb it. My breath- selves. My sister was feeling relatively in my mind’s eye. I lacked experience ing got more and more ragged and I good then, so our parents gave us per- then, and the requisite technical skill, started to hyperventilate. I felt dizzy. mission to travel alone. so it wasn’t an easy process. I’d draw, “It’s O.K., calm down,” I told myself. Our uncle was single (and still is sin- rip up my effort, draw and rip up, end- “You’ll be able to get out soon. It’s im- gle, even now), and had just turned thirty, lessly. But now when I look at the draw- possible to suffocate here.” But logic I think. He was doing gene research ings I did keep (I still treasure my didn’t work. The only thing in my mind (and still is), was very quiet and kind sketchbook from back then), I can see was my little sister, crammed into a of unworldly, though an open, straight- that they are filled with a genuine sense tiny coffin and hauled off to the cre- forward person. He loved reading and of grief. They may be technically im- matorium. Terrified, I pounded on the knew everything about nature. He en- mature, but they were the result of a walls of the truck. joyed taking walks in the mountains sincere effort, my soul trying to awaken The truck was in the company more than anything, which, he said, was my sister’s. When I looked at those parking lot, and all the employees, why he had taken a university job in sketches, I couldn’t help crying. I’ve their workday done, had gone home. rural, mountainous Yamanashi. My sis- done countless drawings since, but Nobody noticed that I was missing. ter and I liked our uncle a lot. never again has anything I’ve drawn I pounded like crazy, but no one Backpacks on our backs, we boarded brought me to tears. seemed to hear. I knew that, if I was an express train at Shinjuku Station unlucky, I could be shut inside there bound for Matsumoto, and got off at y sister’s death had one other until morning. At the thought of that, Kofu. Our uncle came to pick us up Meffect on me: it triggered a very I felt as if all my muscles were about at Kofu Station. He was spectacularly severe case of claustrophobia. Since I to disintegrate. tall, and even in the crowded station saw her placed in that cramped little It was the night security guard, mak- we spotted him right away. He was coffin, the lid shut and locked tight, ing his rounds in the parking lot, who renting a small house in Kofu along and taken away to the crematorium, I finally heard the noise I was making with a friend of his, but his roommate haven’t been able to go into tight, en- and unlocked the door. When he saw was abroad so we were given our own closed places. For a long time, I couldn’t how agitated and exhausted I was, he room to sleep in. We stayed in that take elevators. I’d stand in front of an had me lie down on the bed in the house for a week. And almost every elevator and all I could think about was company break room and gave me a day we took walks with our uncle in it automatically shutting down in an cup of hot tea. I don’t know how long the nearby mountains. He taught us earthquake, with me trapped inside I lay there. But finally my breathing the names of all kinds of flowers and that confined space. Just the thought became normal again. Dawn was com- insects. We cherished our memories of it was enough to induce a choking ing, so I thanked the guard and took of that summer. sense of panic. the first train of the day back home. I One day we hiked a bit farther than These symptoms didn’t appear right slipped into my own bed and lay there, usual and visited a wind cave near after my sister’s death. It took nearly shaking like crazy for the longest time. Mt. Fuji. Among the numerous wind three years for them to surface. The Ever since then, riding in elevators caves around Mt. Fuji this one was the first time I had a panic attack was soon has triggered the same panic. The in- largest. Our uncle told us about how after I’d started art school, when I had cident must have awoken a fear that these caves were formed. They were a part-time job with a moving com- had been lurking within me. I have lit- made of basalt, so inside them you heard pany. I was the driver’s assistant in a tle doubt that it was set off by mem- hardly any echoes at all, he said. Even box truck, loading boxes and taking ories of my dead sister. And it wasn’t in the summer the temperature re- them out, and one time I got mistak- only elevators but any enclosed space. mained low; in the past people stored enly locked inside the empty cargo I couldn’t even watch movies with ice they’d cut in the winter inside the compartment. Work was done for the scenes in submarines or tanks. Just caves. He explained the distinction be- day and the driver forgot to check if imagining myself shut inside such tween the two types of caves: fuketsu, anyone was still in the truck. He locked confined spaces—merely imagining it— the larger ones that were big enough the rear door from the outside. made me unable to breathe. Often I for people to go into, and kaza-ana,

58 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS the smaller ones that people couldn’t enter. Both terms were alternate read- ings of the same Chinese characters meaning “wind” and “hole.” Our uncle seemed to know everything. At the large wind cave, you paid an entrance fee and went inside. Our uncle didn’t go with us. He’d been there nu- merous times, plus he was so tall and the ceiling of the cave so low he’d end up with a backache. “It’s not danger- ous,” he said, “so you two go on ahead. I’ll stay by the entrance and read a book.” At the entrance the person in charge handed us each a flashlight and put yellow plastic helmets on us. There were lights on the ceiling of the cave, but it was still pretty dark inside. The deeper into the cave we went, the lower the ceiling got. No wonder our lanky uncle had stayed behind. My kid sister and I shone the flash- lights at our feet as we went. It was midsummer outside—ninety degrees Fahrenheit—but inside the cave it was chilly, below fifty. Following our un- cle’s advice, we were both wearing thick windbreakers we’d brought along. My sister held my hand tightly, either want- ing me to protect her or else hoping to protect me (or maybe she just didn’t want to get separated). The whole time we were inside the cave that small, warm hand was in mine. The only other visitors were a middle-aged couple. But they soon left, and it was just the two of us. My little sister’s name was Komi- chi, but everyone in the family called her Komi. Her friends called her Mic- chi or Micchan. As far as I know, no •• one called her by her full name, Komi- chi. She was a small, slim girl. She had straight black hair, neatly cut just above derland.” I don’t know how many times through it with no trouble. Most of her shoulders. Her eyes were big for she had me read the book to her. Must her was inside, just the bottom half of the size of her face (with large pupils), have been at least a hundred. She had her legs sticking out. She seemed to be which made her resemble a fairy. That been able to read since she was little, shining her flashlight inside the hole. day she was wearing a white T-shirt, but she liked me to read that book Then she slowly edged out backward. faded jeans, and pink sneakers. aloud to her. She’d memorized the story, “It gets really deep in back,” she re- After we’d made our way deeper yet, still, each time I read it she got ex- ported. “The floor drops off sharply. into the cave, my sister discovered a cited. Her favorite part was the Lob- Just like Alice’s rabbit hole. I’m going small side cave a little way off the pre- ster Quadrille. Even now I remember to check out the far end.” scribed path. Its mouth was hidden in that part, word for word. “No, don’t do it. It’s too dangerous,” the shadows of the rocks. She was very “No rabbit, though,” I said. I said. interested in that little cave. “Don’t you “I’m going to peek inside,” she said. “It’s O.K. I’m small and I can get think it looks like Alice’s rabbit hole?” “Be careful,” I said. out O.K.” she asked me. It really was a narrow hole (close to She took off her windbreaker, so My sister was a big fan of Lewis a kaza-ana, in my uncle’s definition), that she was wearing just her T-shirt, Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Won- but my little sister was able to slip and handed the jacket to me along

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 59 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS with her helmet. Before I could get in She grabbed my hand tightly. And, back into the bright real world. There a word of protest, she’d wriggled into in an excited voice, she said, “I man- was a thin layer of clouds in the sky the cave, flashlight in hand. In an in- aged to squeeze through the narrow that afternoon, but I remember how stant she’d vanished. part, and then, deeper in, it suddenly terribly glaring the sunlight seemed. A long time passed, but she didn’t got lower, and down from there it was The screech of the cicadas was over- come out. I couldn’t hear a sound. like a small room. A round room, like powering, like a violent squall drown- “Komi,” I called into the hole. “Komi! a ball. The ceiling was round, the walls ing everything out. My uncle was seated Are you O.K.?” were round, and the floor, too. And it on a bench near the entrance, absorbed There was no answer. With no echo, was so, so silent there, like you could in his book. When he saw us, he grinned my voice was sucked right up into the search the whole world and never find and stood up. darkness. I was starting to get concerned. any place that silent. Like I was at the She might be stuck inside the hole, un- bottom of an ocean, in a crater that wo years later, my sister died. And able to move forward or back. Or maybe went even deeper. I turned off the Twas put in a tiny coffin and cre- she had had a convulsion in there and flashlight and it was pitch dark, but I mated. I was fifteen, and she was twelve. lost consciousness. If that had happened didn’t feel scared or lonely. That room While she was being cremated I went I wouldn’t be able to help her. All kinds was a special place that only I’m al- off, apart from the rest of the family, of terrible scenarios ran through my lowed into. A room just for me. No sat on a bench in the courtyard of the head, and I felt choked by the darkness one else can get there. You can’t go in, crematorium, and remembered what surrounding me. either.” had happened in that wind cave: the If my little sister really did disappear “ ’Cause I’m too big.” weight of time as I waited for my lit- in the hole, never to return to this world, My little sister bobbed her head. tle sister to come out, the thickness of how would I ever explain that to my “Right. You’ve gotten too big to get in. the darkness enveloping me, the pro- parents? Should I run and tell my uncle, And what’s really amazing about that found chill I felt. Her black hair emerg- waiting outside the entrance? Or should place is that it’s darker than anything ing from the hole, then her shoulders. I sit tight and wait for her to emerge? could ever be. So dark that when you All the random dirt and dust stuck to I crouched down and peered into the turn off the flashlight it feels like you her white T-shirt. hole. But the beam from my flashlight can grab the darkness with your hands. At that time, a thought struck me: didn’t reach far. It was a tiny hole, and Like your body is gradually coming that maybe, even before the doctor at the darkness was overwhelming. apart and disappearing. But since it’s the hospital officially pronounced her “Komi,” I called out again. No re- dark you can’t see it happen. You don’t dead two years later, her life had al- sponse. “Komi,” I called more loudly. know if you still have a body or not. ready been snatched from her while Still no answer. A wave of cold air But even if, say, my body completely she was deep inside that cave. I was chilled me to the core. I might lose my disappeared, I’d still be there. Like the actually convinced of it. She’d already sister forever. Perhaps she had been Cheshire Cat’s grin staying on after he been lost inside that hole, and left this sucked into Alice’s hole, into the world vanished. Pretty weird, huh? But when world, but I, mistakenly thinking she of the Mock Turtle, the Cheshire Cat, I was there I didn’t think it was weird was still alive, had put her on the train and the Queen of Hearts. A place where at all. I wanted to stay there forever, with me and taken her back to Tokyo. logic did not apply. We never should but I thought you’d be worried, so I Holding her hand tightly. And we’d have come here, I thought. came out.” lived as brother and sister for two more But finally my sister did return. She “Let’s get out of here,” I said. She years. But that was nothing more than didn’t back out like before but crawled was so worked up it seemed as if she a fleeting grace period. Two years later, out head first. Her black hair emerged were going to go on talking forever, death had crawled out of that cave to from the hole first, then her shoulders and I had to put a stop to that. “I can’t grab hold of my sister’s soul. As if her and arms, and finally her pink sneakers. breathe well in here.” time were up, it was necessary to pay She stood in front of me, without a word, “Are you O.K.?” my sister asked, for what had been lent to us, and the stretched, took a slow, deep breath, and concerned. owner had come to take back what brushed the dirt off her jeans. “I’m O.K. I just want to go outside.” was his. My heart was still pounding. I Holding hands, we headed for the Years later, as an adult, I realized reached out and tidied her dishevelled exit. that what my little sister had confided hair. I couldn’t quite make it out in the “Do you know?” my sister said in a to me in a quiet voice in that wind cave weak light inside the cave, but there small voice as we walked, so no one was indeed true. Alice really does exist seemed to be dirt and dust and other else would hear (though there wasn’t in the world. The March Hare, the debris clinging to her white T-shirt. I anyone else around). “Alice really ex- Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat—they put the windbreaker on her and handed isted. It wasn’t made up. It was real. all really exist.  her the yellow helmet. The March Hare, the Mad Hatter, the (Translated, from the Japanese, “I didn’t think you were coming Cheshire Cat, the Playing Card sol- by Philip Gabriel.) back,” I said, hugging her to me. diers—they all really exist.”

“Were you worried?” “Maybe so,” I said. NEWYORKER.COM 老吉发布，禁止转载倒卖。 “A lot.” We emerged from the wind cave, Haruki Murakami on parallel realities.

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THE CRITICS

POP MUSIC BAD BARGAIN Nicki Minaj and the power of fans.

BY CARRIE BATTAN

n 2014, Billboard launched the “Fan group monikers have become house- not only by jubilation but by fierce IArmy Face-Off,” a bracket-style hold names: Beyoncé has the Bey- defensiveness. Followers pounce on online vote that pitted pop stars’ fans hive, Justin Bieber has Beliebers, anyone—big, small, notorious, anon- against one another. The crowd-sourc- Rihanna has a Navy, Selena Gomez ymous—who criticizes their idols. ing exercise was not exactly original, has Selenators, Taylor Swift has Swift- There is a dark, obsessive energy to but its language—which set fan bases ies. Unlike, say, the way Deadheads such devotion; fittingly, these cru- up in imaginary battles—encapsu- followed their band from city to city, saders are now often referred to as lated the increasingly combative state this modern style of adoration takes “stans”—a reference to a song by Em- of pop-music fandom. Some fan- place chiefly online, where it is driven inem, from 2000, which tells the story

The Barbz offer Minaj support, but they insulate her from reality, influencing her process the way that critics cannot.

ILLUSTRATION BY ALLISON FILICE THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 61 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS of a fictional fan named Stan who Barb told Rolling Stone. “A female lion ilarities—the obsession with winning, writes increasingly unhinged letters with her cubs, you don’t mess with the the instinct to dismiss critics as losers or to the rapper before driving his car babies, and Nicki is our baby.” liars, the paranoia, the rabid fixation on into a river. the initial victory rather than the ensu- Few groups embody the culture of f Minaj is that fragile, she does not ing work—are also too obvious to ignore. music fandom better than the Barbz, Iexplore this quality explicitly in her or the Barbies, the fans of Nicki Minaj, music. Earlier this month, she released inaj’s stylistic modes attract two whom she named herself, a decade her latest studio album, “Queen.” In Msets of followers: more traditional ago, when she was a sparkling new- her lyrics, Minaj positions herself as hip-hop fans and younger, more pop-lean- comer in a hip-hop landscape with a being as dominant as ever in her ca- ing ones. Minaj’s music, since her early notable lack of female stars. As she reer, if a bit tortured in her romantic days of stardom, has reflected the diffi- grew in stature, so did the Barbz, who life. She guards her throne intensely, culty of this tightrope walk. The Barbz launched robust fan accounts on so- though not always convincingly. Her may be offering her support—both psy- cial-media platforms to cheer her on default mode is chest-beating, and chological and financial—but they also and to document her success. Minaj she raps constantly about her reign as insulate her from reality, influencing her went on to become the most cele- though it will last forever, no matter process the way that critics cannot. Minaj brated female rapper of her genera- how many young female insurgents aim may never be able to envisage a path that tion. And she encouraged her fans, to replace her. “They’ll never toe to toe sidesteps these musical categories alto- retweeting them, messaging them, on a track with me/There’ll never be gether unless she tunes out the warring joking around with them, and survey- another one after me/’Cause the skill factions and turns inward. ing them about their desires and pref- level still just a half of me,” she raps on Last year, the radio host Charlamagne erences. In time, however, the fans’ “LLC,” a hard-spitting song on which Tha God criticized Minaj for failing giddy engagement morphed into fury she plays her familiar trick of begin- to respond in a timely fashion to a with- levelled at the growing number of on- ning a verse at a slow, measured pace ering seven-minute diss track from her line commenters—other artists and before suddenly shifting into double fellow New York rapper Remy Ma: their fans, critics, radio d.j.s, and ci- time to drive her point home. “Maybe this is your way of saying ‘You vilians on Twitter—who criticized Anyone who has caught one of Mi- know what? I don’t want to rap any- Minaj. The Barbz also grew para- naj’s many guest verses on various prom- more. I like this pop world. I’ma do noid—both Minaj and her followers inent rap songs of the past decade will songs with Ariana Grande for the rest have accused her detractors, as well be able to anticipate this technique. Early of my life and call it a day.’” Ariana as cheerleaders of other artists, of ac- in her career, Minaj made waves with Grande, the twenty-five-year-old for- cepting payola in an attempt to ruin her elastic vocal capabilities, inhabiting mer Nickelodeon star and pop-vocal her career. a range of styles. Following her guest powerhouse, has become something of While many popular musicians have verse on Kanye West’s “Monster,” in a cudgel for Minaj. The pair first col- stepped away from social media—cul- which she effortlessly alternated between laborated in 2014, on a chintzy Jessie J tivating a strategic distance—Minaj the impish and the demonic, she was pop anthem called “Bang Bang,” at the has leaned into it, often to her detri- widely considered hip-hop’s most excit- height of the battle between Minaj’s ment. She has sent her fans to do her ing new vocalist. Her range made her hip-hop and pop sides. At the time, bidding, and then reeled them back in palatable on many kinds of songs: trap rap-radio d.j.s accused her of betraying when she needed to. Cocooned by un- rap, bubblegum pop, and moody, me- her hip-hop roots with youth-friendly conditional loyalty, she recently began lodic R. & B. It has been nearly four starlets like Grande. (There is, of course, behaving as if she were one of the Barbz years since her previous album, “The a gendered aspect to these criticisms, herself, rather than their leader. When Pinkprint,” but “Queen” does not reflect not only because Minaj is one of the a twenty-six-year-old writer, Wanna the passage of time. It uses the same tem- few prominent female rappers but be- Thompson, a self-described Minaj fan, plate as her first three albums—a lengthy, cause the pop-leaning fans are often tweeted her wish that Minaj would base-covering mix of gymnastic, barbed young women.) Grande and Minaj have abandon the “silly shit” in her music rap verses and introspective lite pop, since formed an alliance that feels as in favor of “mature content,” the rap- studded with playful winks and of-the- strategic as it is artistic, using each other per sent Thompson a private message moment appearances by collaborators. as a bridge to another audience. calling her “ugly” and “jealous,” which History-making stars often fixate on Grande, a seasoned singer with a the- Thompson posted publicly. Some of the momentousness of their rise, which atre background, is trying to move from Minaj’s devotees flooded Thompson’s has the effect of paralyzing them in a the teen-friendly bubblegum R. & B. of social-media accounts with insults and backward-looking gaze. Minaj has fallen her early career to a smoldering, hip- death wishes. into this hole hard, perhaps because it hop-influenced pop. Grande and Minaj This fan-artist dynamic represents connects to the self-mythologizing and have collaborated on five songs, result- an odd inversion of the conventional braggadocio that have characterized so ing in the merger of two hot-blooded distribution of power between a famous much of New York hip-hop. It feels cheap fan bases. (Grande lovers are dubbed, person and the people who follow her. to draw a parallel between Minaj and awkwardly, the Arianators.) Grande “It’s like a lion with their cubs,” one President Trump, but the attitudinal sim- released her new album, “Sweetener,”

62 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS a week after Minaj put out “Queen.” “Sweetener,” in part a response to the suicide bombing at Grande’s show in BRIEFLY NOTED Manchester, England, last year, is more understated than her previous work, less The Third Hotel, by Laura van den Berg (Farrar, Straus & reliant on anthemic choruses and her Giroux). In this uncanny novel, a woman in her late thirties expansive vocal range. Grande and Minaj travels to Havana shortly after her husband’s death for a film appear together on both “Queen” and festival they were to attend together. There she spots the “Sweetener,” and the evolution of their dead man roaming the city’s esplanades and trails him across relationship is stark: Minaj once spiked the island. “You are dead,” she thinks. “How could you have Grande’s girlish work with a risqué en- forgotten?” This is no Hitchcockian tale of a double life but ergy. Now Grande tempers Minaj’s songs an insightful portrait of grief ’s power to create “a dislocation with a more serious sound. of reality.” Mischievous details and winningly bizarre char- There are many stylistic threads on acters—including a professor who teaches a course on “quan- “Queen,” but Minaj is most focussed on tum physics and the afterlife,” clad in only a bra and a tweed rapping. In recent interviews, she has skirt—help the book avoid melodrama and memorably cap- hearkened back to hip-hop’s lyrical golden ture the “thundering mystery” of marriage and heartbreak. days. This can be read, in part, as a frus- trated reaction to untrained newcom- The Occasional Virgin, by Hanan al-Shaykh, translated from ers—such as Cardi B, the only female the Arabic by Catherine Cobham (Pantheon). Showing a lighter rapper to rival her in the past decade— touch than several of al-Shaykh’s previous novels, this com- who prize style and swagger over form. edy of manners follows two thirtysomething Lebanese women Minaj is still a dazzling lyricist, at times. as they work and vacation in Europe. Dissimilar in back- She is at her best as a comedian, an in- ground and temperament but yoked together in friendship, creasingly rare mode for her. On “Bar- they cannot talk of much beyond their quests for a lover, bie Dreams,” a callback to a Biggie Smalls husband, or baby-maker. One woman indulges in a mean- classic, she lists younger male perform- dering fantasy that involves a robot. The other takes theat- ers and the reasons that she wouldn’t rical risks in order to seduce a man “rigid as a steel box” and want to sleep with them. She lands just aggressive in his piety. Such touches verge on the cartoon- shy of vicious, delighting in every line. ish, and the book finds a more natural tone when describ- But the rest of her rapping on the album ing the women’s memories of growing up by the sea. feels overworked, particularly against the current wave of deconstruction in hip- Making Oscar Wilde, by Michèle Mendelssohn (Oxford). At hop, which favors off-the-cuff interjec- the heart of this fascinating account of Wilde’s early career tions rather than metaphors and con- is the hostile reception to his lecture tour of the United ventional rhyme schemes. Listening to States, in 1882, including a series of bizarre illustrations that “Queen” is a bit like watching a figure appeared in American journals. They portray Wilde as a skater obsess over perfecting a triple black dandy, with captions written in the patois of minstrel axel long after the judges have opened shows (“Why Oscar you’s gone wild!”). Mendelssohn anat- up the sport to a host of more interpre- omizes the various components of this strange attack, in tive criteria. It underscores the dullness particular the era’s hostile attitudes toward the Irish, and of purely formal competence. Darwinian ideas about gender, race, and class (all catego- There was a time when the Barbz ries that Wilde challenged). She also shows how Wilde, were blamed for pushing Minaj in a less though initially repulsed by American popular media, learned authentic, more commercial pop direc- from them, eventually incorporating the rapid-fire comic- tion. These complaints overlooked the dialogue style of the Christy Minstrels into his plays. reality of the contemporary music land- scape: pop and hip-hop have never been The Widower’s Notebook, by Jonathan Santlofer (Penguin). more compatible, and artists are not In this memoir, a novelist and artist contends with the sud- forced to choose a single direction in den death of his wife. Santlofer adds new insights to the order to stay relevant. The divide be- familiar genre of the grief memoir by exploring the ways in tween the Barbz and the rest of the world which men are expected to handle loss and sorrow. “‘Men has provided a convenient distraction do not write books about grief ’ was something I heard a lot from the shape of Minaj’s career in re- and even told myself,” he notes. Between tender recollec- cent years, which is characterized by a tions of his wife and attempts to return to a version of his glaring lack of clarity or artistic vision in routine, the author realizes that he has been culturally con- the face of online chaos. It’s a reality that ditioned to divert his energy into pretending to be strong even the most worshipful of Barbz are and moving on quickly, and he struggles to discuss his an- capable of detecting.  guish openly, even with his daughter.

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the imminent collapse of the Soviet BOOKS Union, the last ideological alternative to liberalism had been eliminated. Fas- cism had been killed off in the Second WHAT IDENTITY DEMANDS World War, and now Communism was imploding. In states, like China, that Francis Fukuyama explains why the end of history has been postponed. called themselves Communist, politi- cal and economic reforms were head- BY LOUIS MENAND ing in the direction of a liberal order. So, if you imagined history as the process by which liberal institutions— representative government, free mar- kets, and consumerist culture—become universal, it might be possible to say that history had reached its goal. Stuff would still happen, obviously, and smaller states could be expected to ex- perience ethnic and religious tensions and become home to illiberal ideas. But “it matters very little what strange thoughts occur to people in Albania or Burkina Faso,” Fukuyama explained, “for we are interested in what one could in some sense call the common ideo- logical heritage of mankind.” Hegel, Fukuyama said, had written of a moment when a perfectly rational form of society and the state would be- come victorious. Now, with Commu- nism vanquished and the major pow- ers converging on a single political and economic model, Hegel’s prediction had finally been fulfilled. There would be a “Common Marketization” of in- ternational relations and the world would achieve homeostasis. Even among little magazines, The National Interest was little. Launched in 1985 by Irving Kristol, the leading figure in neoconservatism, it had by n February, 1989, Francis Fukuyama would no longer intervene in the affairs 1989 a circulation of six thousand. Igave a talk on international relations of its Eastern European satellite states. Fukuyama himself was virtually un- at the University of Chicago. Fukuyama Those nations could now become dem- known outside the world of profes- was thirty-six years old, and on his way ocratic. It was the beginning of the end sional Sovietologists, people not given from a job at the Rand Corporation, of the Cold War. to eschatological reflection. But the in Santa Monica, where he had worked At Rand, Fukuyama had produced “end of history” claim was picked up as an expert on Soviet foreign policy, focussed analyses of Soviet policy. In in the mainstream press, Fukuyama was to a post as the deputy director of pol- Chicago, he permitted himself to think profiled by James Atlas in the New icy planning at the State Department, big. His talk came to the attention of York Times Magazine, and his article in Washington. Owen Harries, an editor at a Wash- was debated in Britain and in France It was a good moment for talking ington journal called The National In- and translated into many languages, about international relations, and a terest, and Harries offered to publish from Japanese to Icelandic. Some of good moment for Soviet experts espe- it. The article was titled “The End of the responses to “The End of History?” cially, because, two months earlier, on History?” It came out in the summer were dismissive; almost all of them were December 7, 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev of 1989, and it turned the foreign-policy skeptical. But somehow the phrase had announced, in a speech at the world on its ear. found its way into post-Cold War United Nations, that the Soviet Union Fukuyama’s argument was that, with thought, and it stuck. One of the reasons for the sticki- The desire for recognition, Fukuyama argues, is an essential threat to liberalism. ness was that Fukuyama was lucky. He

64 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY AUDE VAN RYN РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS got out about six months ahead of the with his new job title. The office of pol- have published Fukuyama’s article. curve—his article appearing before the icy planning at State had been created Twenty-nine years later, it seems Velvet Revolution, in Czechoslovakia, in 1947 by George Kennan, who was that the realists haven’t gone anywhere, and before the dismantling of the Ber- its first chief. In July of that year, Ken- and that history has a few more tricks lin Wall, in November, 1989. Fukuyama nan published the so-called X article, up its sleeve. It turns out that liberal was betting on present trends continu- “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in democracy and free trade may actually ing, always a high-risk gamble in the Foreign Affairs. It appeared anony- be rather fragile achievements. (Con- international-relations business. mously—signed with an “X”—but once sumerism appears safe for now.) There Any number of things might have the press learned his identity the arti- is something out there that doesn’t like happened for Gorbachev’s promise not cle was received as an official statement liberalism, and is making trouble for to cash out: political resistance within of American Cold War policy. the survival of its institutions. the Soviet Union, the refusal of the “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” Eastern European puppet regimes to defined the containment doctrine, ac- ukuyama thinks he knows what cede power, the United States mis- cording to which the aim of American Fthat something is, and his answer playing its hand. But events in Europe policy was to keep the Soviet Union is summed up in the title of his new unfolded more or less according to Fu- inside its box. The United States did book, “Identity: The Demand for Dig- kuyama’s prediction, and, on Decem- not need to intervene in Soviet affairs, nity and the Politics of Resentment” ber 26, 1991, the Soviet Union voted Kennan believed, because Communism (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The demand itself out of existence. The Cold War was bound to collapse from its own in- for recognition, Fukuyama says, is the really was over. efficiency. Four decades later, when “master concept” that explains all the Events in Asia were not so oblig- “The End of History?” appeared, that contemporary dissatisfactions with the ing. Fukuyama missed completely the is exactly what seemed to be happen- global liberal order: Vladimir Putin, suppression of the pro-democracy ing. That April, Kennan, then eighty- Osama bin Laden, Xi Jinping, Black movement in China. There is no men- five, appeared before the Senate For- Lives Matter, #MeToo, gay marriage, tion of the massacre in Tiananmen eign Relations Committee to declare Isis, Brexit, resurgent European na- Square in “The End of History?,” pre- that the Cold War was over. He re- tionalisms, anti-immigration political sumably because the piece was in pro- ceived a standing ovation. Fukuyama’s movements, campus identity politics, duction when it happened, in June, article could thus be seen as a book- and the election of Donald Trump. It 1989. This does not seem to have made end to Kennan’s. also explains the Protestant Reforma- a difference to the article’s reception, It was not the bookend Kennan tion, the French Revolution, the Rus- however. Almost none of the initial re- would have written. Containment is a sian Revolution, Chinese Communism, sponses to the piece mentioned Tian- realist doctrine. Realists think that a the civil-rights movement, the wom- anmen, either—even though many peo- nation’s foreign policy should be guided en’s movement, multiculturalism, and ple already believed that China, not by dispassionate consideration of its the thought of Luther, Rousseau, Kant, Russia, was the power that liberal de- own interests, not by moral principles, Nietzsche, Freud, and Simone de Beau- mocracies would have to reckon with or by a belief that nations share a “har- voir. Oh, and the whole business be- in the future. “The End of History?” mony of interests.” To Kennan, it was gins with Plato’s Republic. Fukuyama was a little Eurocentric. of no concern to the United States what covers all of this in less than two hun- There was also a seductive twist to the Soviets did inside their own box. dred pages. How does he do it? Fukuyama’s argument. At the end of The only thing that mattered was that Not well. Some of the problem the article, he suggested that life after Communism not be allowed to expand. comes from misunderstanding figures history might be sad. When all polit- The National Interest, as the name like Beauvoir and Freud; some comes ical efforts were committed to “the proclaims, is a realist foreign-policy from reducing the work of complex endless solving of technical problems, journal. But Fukuyama’s premise was writers like Rousseau and Nietzsche environmental concerns, and the sat- that nations do share a harmony of in- to a single philosophical bullet point. isfaction of sophisticated consumer de- terests, and that their convergence on A lot comes from the astonishingly mands” (sounds good to me), we might liberal political and economic models blasé assumption—which was also the feel nostalgia for the “courage, imagi- was mutually beneficial. Realism imag- astonishingly blasé assumption of nation, and idealism” that animated the ines nations to be in perpetual compe- “The End of History?”—that West- old struggles for liberalism and democ- tition with one another; Fukuyama was ern thought is universal thought. But racy. This speculative flourish recalled saying that this was no longer going the whole project, trying to fit Vladimir the famous question that John Stuart to be the case. He offered Cold War Putin into the same analytic paradigm Mill said he asked himself as a young realists a kind of valediction: their mis- as Black Lives Matter and tracing them man: If all the political and social re- sion, though philosophically miscon- both back to Martin Luther, is far- forms you believe in came to pass, would ceived, had been accomplished. Now fetched. It’s a case of Great Booksism: it make you a happier human being? they were out of a job. “Frank thought history as a chain of paper dolls cut out That is always an interesting question. that what was happening spelled the of books that only a tiny fraction of Another reason that Fukuyama’s ar- end of the Realpolitik world,” Harries human beings have even heard of. ticle got noticed may have had to do later said. It must have tickled him to Fukuyama is a smart man, but no one

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 65 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS could have made this argument work. fact, every feeling we experience—lust, every realist novel, from Austen and Why is the desire for recognition— anger, depression, exasperation—has a Balzac to James and Wharton, is about or identity politics, as Fukuyama also corollary in brain chemistry. That’s how people behaving badly around money. calls it—a threat to liberalism? Because consciousness works. To say, as Fukuyama Free markets didn’t change that. They it cannot be satisfied by economic or does, that “the desire for status—meg- arguably made people even crazier. procedural reforms. Having the same alothymia—is rooted in human biol- And as with money so with most amount of wealth as everyone else or ogy” is the academic equivalent of palm- of life. The notion that we have some the same opportunity to acquire it is istry. You’re just making it up. mental faculty called “reason” that func- not a substitute for respect. Fukuyama Fukuyama resorts to this tactic be- tions independently of our needs, de- thinks that political movements that cause he wants to do with the desire sires, anxieties, and superstitions is, well, appear to be about legal and economic for recognition what he did with lib- Platonic. Right now, you are trying to equality—gay marriage, for example, or eralism in “The End of History?” He decide whether to finish this piece or #MeToo—are really about recognition wants to universalize it. This allows turn to the cartoon-caption contest. and respect. Women who are sexually him to argue, for example, that the feel- Which mental faculty are you using to harassed in the workplace feel that their ings that led to the rise of Vladimir make this decision? Which is respon- dignity has been violated, that they are Putin are exactly the same (albeit “on sible for your opinion of Donald Trump? being treated as less than fully human. a larger scale”) as the feelings of a How can you tell? Fukuyama gives this desire for rec- woman who complains that her poten- “Identity” can be read as a correc- ognition a Greek name, taken from Pla- tial is limited by gender discrimination. tive to the position that Fukuyama to’s Republic: thymos. He says that thy- The woman can’t help it. She needs the staked out in “The End of History?” mos is “a universal aspect of human serotonin, just like the Russians. Universal liberalism isn’t impeded by nature that has always existed.” In the Hegel thought that the end of history ideology, like fascism or communism, Republic, thymos is distinct from the two would arrive when humans achieved but by passion. Liberalism remains the other parts of the soul that Socrates perfect self-knowledge and self-mas- ideal political and economic system, names: reason and appetite. Appetites tery, when life was rational and trans- but it needs to find ways to accommo- we share with animals; reason is what parent. Rationality and transparency date and neutralize this pesky desire makes us human. Thymos is in between. are the values of classical liberalism. for recognition. What is odd about The term has been defined in var- Rationality and transparency are sup- Fukuyama’s dilemma is that, in the ious ways. “Passion” is one translation; posed to be what make free markets philosophical source for his original “spirit,” as in “spiritedness,” is another. and democratic elections work. People theory about the end of history, recog- Fukuyama defines thymos as “the seat understand how the system functions, nition was not a problem. Recognition of judgments of worth.” This seems a and that allows them to make rational was, in fact, the means to get there. semantic overreach. In the Republic, choices. Socrates associates thymos with chil- The trouble with thymos is that it is hat source was not Hegel. As dren and dogs, beings whose reactions not rational. People not only sacrifice TFukuyama stated explicitly in “The need to be controlled by reason. The worldly goods for recognition; they die End of History?,” he was adopting an term is generally taken to refer to our for recognition. The choice to die is interpretation of Hegel made in the instinctive response when we feel we’re not rational. “Human psychology is nineteen-thirties by a semi-obscure in- being disrespected. We bristle. We swell tellectual adventurer named Alexandre with amour propre. We honk the horn. Kojève. How, fifty years later, Kojève’s We overreact. ideas got into the pages of a Washing- Plato had Socrates divide the psy- ton policy journal is an unusual story che into three parts in order to assign of intellectual musical chairs. roles to the citizens of his imaginary Kojève was born in 1902 into a republic. Appetite is the principal at- well-off Moscow family, and he was tribute of the plebes, passion of the raised in a cultivated atmosphere. The warriors, and reason of the philosopher painter Wassily Kandinsky was an kings. The Republic is philosophy; it uncle. Kojève was a prodigious intel- is not cognitive science. Yet Fukuyama much more complex than the rather lect; by the time he was eighteen, he adopts Plato’s heuristic and biologizes simpleminded economic model sug- was fluent in Russian, German, French, it. “Today we know that feelings of gests,” Fukuyama concludes. and English, and read Latin. Later, he pride and self-esteem are related to But how was that model of the ratio- learned Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin nal economic actor ever plausible? It’s not in order to study Buddhism. In 1918, in the brain,” he says, and points to just that human beings are neurotic; it’s he went to prison for some sort of studies done with chimps (which Soc- that, on the list of things human beings black-market transaction. After he got rates would have counted as animals, are neurotic about, money is close to the out, he and a friend managed to cross but never mind). top. People hoard money; they squander the closed Soviet border into Poland, But so what? Lots of feelings are re- it; they marry for it; they kill for it. Don’t where they were briefly jailed on sus- lated to changes in serotonin levels. In economists ever read novels? Practically picion of espionage. With the pointed

66 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS encouragement of Polish authorities, Kojève left for Germany. He studied philosophy with Karl Jaspers at Hei- delberg and lived as a bon vivant in Weimar Berlin. In 1926, he moved to Paris, where he continued to live the high life while writing a dissertation that dealt with quantum physics. Kojève had invested his inheritance in the French company that made La Vache Qui Rit cheese, but he lost ev- erything in the stock-market crash. In 1933, in need of income, he accepted a friend’s offer to take over a seminar on Hegel at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. He ended up running the course for six years. People who were around Kojève seem to have regarded him as a kind of ma- gician. In the Hegel seminar, he taught just one text, “The Phenomenology of Spirit,” first published in 1807. He would read a passage aloud in German (the book had not been translated into “Sorry I’m late. I got caught up at home being happy.” French) and then, extemporaneously and in perfect French (with an enchant- ing Slavic accent), provide his own com- •• mentary. People found him eloquent, brilliant, mesmerizing. Enrollment was forms the natural world into a human published as “Introduction to the Read- small, around twenty, but a number of world. But the slave is driven to labor ing of Hegel,” a book that went through future intellectual luminaries, like Han- in the first place because of the mas- many printings in France. By then, he nah Arendt and Jacques Lacan, either ter’s refusal to recognize him. This had stopped teaching and had become took the class or sat in on it. “master-slave dialectic” is the motor of an official in the French Ministry of For Kojève, the key concept in He- human history, and human history Economic Affairs, where he played an gel’s “Phenomenology” was recogni- comes to an end when there are no influential behind-the-scenes role in tion. Human beings want the recog- more masters or slaves, and all are rec- establishing the General Agreement nition of other human beings in order ognized equally. on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the to become self-conscious—to know This is the idea that Marx had ad- European Economic Community, the themselves as autonomous individuals. opted to describe history as the history forerunner of the European Union— As Kojève put it, humans desire, and of class struggle. That struggle also has in other words, Common Marketiza- what they desire is either something winners and losers, and its penultimate tion. He liked to say that he was pre- that other humans desire or the desire phase was the struggle between prop- siding over the end of history. of other humans. “Human history,” he erty owners (the bourgeoisie) and work- In 1953, Allan Bloom, then a grad- said, “is the history of desired desires.” ers (the proletariat). The struggle would uate student at the University of Chi- What makes this complicated is that come to an end with the overthrow of cago, met Kojève in Paris, at his office in the struggle for recognition there capitalism and the arrival of a classless in the ministry. (The connection was are winners and losers. The terms Hegel society—communism. Kojève called presumably made through the émigré used for these can be translated as lords himself, mischievously or not, a Com- political theorist Leo Strauss, who was and servants, but also as masters and munist, and people listening to him in teaching at Chicago and who carried slaves, which are the terms Kojève used. the nineteen-thirties would have un- on a long correspondence with Ko- The master wins the recognition of the derstood this to be the subtext of his jève.) “I was seduced,” Bloom later said. slave, but his satisfaction is empty, since commentary. Equality of recognition He began studying with Kojève, and he does not recognize the slave as was history’s goal, whether that meant their meetings continued until Kojève’s human in turn. The slave, lacking rec- Communist equality or liberal equal- death, in 1968. In 1969, Bloom arranged ognition from the master, must seek it ity. People would stop killing one for the publication of the first English in some other way. another in the name of dignity and translation of the Hegel lectures and Kojève thought that the other way self-respect, and life would probably contributed an introduction. He was was through labor. The slave achieves be boring. then a professor at Cornell. his sense of self by work that trans- After the war, Kojève’s lectures were Fukuyama entered Cornell as a fresh-

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 67 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS man in 1970. He lived in Telluride who invited Fukuyama to give his Feb- has surprisingly few policy suggestions House, a selective academic society for ruary, 1989, talk on international rela- himself. students and faculty, where Bloom was tions. If Fukuyama had not already He has no interest in the solution a resident. Fukuyama enrolled in been thinking about it, it is easy to that liberals typically adopt to accom- Bloom’s freshman course on Greek phi- imagine him deciding that, under the modate diversity: pluralism and multi- losophy, and, according to Atlas, he and circumstances, it might be interesting culturalism. Taylor, for example, has Bloom “shared meals and talked phi- to say something Kojèvean. championed the right of the Québé- losophy until all hours.” cois to pass laws preserving a French- As it happened, that was Bloom’s last hen “The End of History?” ran language culture in their province. year at Cornell. He resigned in disgust Win The National Interest that Fukuyama concedes that people need at the way the administration had han- summer, Bloom had become a star in a sense of national identity, whether dled the occupation of a university build- the neoconservative firmament, and his ethnic or creedal, but otherwise he re- ing by armed students from the Afro- was the first of six responses that the mains an assimilationist and a univer- American Society. Fukuyama graduated magazine printed to accompany the ar- salist. He wants to iron out differences, in 1974 with a degree in classics. Fol- ticle. Bloom called it “bold and bril- not protect them. He suggests measures lowing an excursus into the world of liant.” Possibly seeing the way the wind like a mandatory national-service re- poststructuralist theory at Yale and in was blowing, Glikes offered Fukuyama quirement and a more meaningful path Paris, he switched his field to political six hundred thousand dollars to turn to citizenship for immigrants. science and received his Ph.D. from his article into a book. “The End of It’s unfortunate that Fukuyama has Harvard’s government department. He History and the Last Man” was pub- hung his authorial hat on meta-his- graduated in 1979, and went to Rand. lished by the Free Press in 1992. torical claims. In other books—notably By then, Bloom was back at the Uni- The book was a best-seller, but not “The Great Disruption” (1999) and versity of Chicago, as a professor in the a huge one, maybe because the excite- a two-volume world history, “The Committee on Social Thought. In 1982, ment about the end of the Cold War Origins of Political Order” (2011) and he published an article on the condi- had cooled. Fukuyama had taken his “Political Order and Political Decay” tion of higher education in William F. time writing it. “The End of History (2014)—he distinguishes civilizational Buckley’s National Review. He did not and the Last Man” is not a journal ar- differences and uses empirical data to think the condition was good. Encour- ticle on steroids. It is a thoughtful ex- explain social trends. But thymos is too aged by his friend Saul Bellow, he de- amination of the questions raised by clumsy an instrument to be much help cided to turn the article into a book. the piece in The National Interest, and in understanding contemporary politics. “The Closing of the American Mind,” one of those questions is the problem Wouldn’t it be important to distin- which Simon & Schuster brought out of thymos, which occupies much of the guish people who ultimately don’t want in February, 1987, launched a campaign book. A lot of “Identity” is a recap of differences to matter, like the people of criticism of American higher edu- what Fukuyama had already said there. involved in #MeToo and Black Lives cation that has taken little time off since. The importance of recognition has Matter, from people who ultimately do “The Closing of the American been emphasized by writers other than want them to matter, like Isis mili- Mind” is a Great Booksist attempt to Kojève. The Canadian philosopher tants, Brexit voters, or separatist na- account for the rise of cultural relativ- Charles Taylor, for example, whose book tionalists? And what about people who ism, which Bloom thought was the “The Sources of the Self,” published in are neither Mexican nor immigrants bane of American higher education. 1989, the same year as “The End of His- and who feel indignation at the treat- Almost no one at Simon & Schuster tory?,” argued that the modern idea of ment of Mexican immigrants? Black had great hopes for sales. There is a the self involved a cultural shift from Americans risked their lives for civil story, possibly apocryphal, that when the concept of honor, which is some- rights, but so did white Americans. the editor who signed the book, Erwin thing for the few, to dignity, which is How would Socrates classify that be- Glikes, left the firm to run the Free aspired to by all. In 1992, in the essay havior? Borrowed thymos? Press he was invited to take Bloom’s “The Politics of Recognition,” Tay- It might also be good to replace the book, not yet published, with him, and lor analyzed the advent of multicul- linear “if present trends continue” con- he declined. turalism in terms similar to the ones ception of history as a steady progres- If so, he missed out on one of the Fukuyama uses in “Identity.” (Taylor, sion toward some stable state with the publishing phenomena of the decade. too, is a Hegel expert.) dialectical conception of history that After a slow start, “The Closing of the Fukuyama acknowledges that iden- Hegel and Kojève in fact used. Present American Mind” went to No. 1 on the tity politics has done some good, and trends don’t continue. They produce Times best-seller list and stayed there he says that people on the right exag- backlashes and reshufflings of the so- for two and a half months. By March, gerate the prevalence of political cor- cial deck. The identities that people em- 1988, it had sold a million hardcover rectness and the effects of affirmative brace today are the identities their chil- copies in the United States alone. It action. He also thinks that people on dren will want to escape from tomorrow. made Bloom a rich man. the left have become obsessed with History is somersaults all the way to the It was Bloom, along with another cultural and identitarian politics, and end. That’s why it’s so hard to write, and professor at Chicago, Nathan Tarcov, have abandoned social policy. But he so hard to predict. Unless you’re lucky. 

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a stroke, he won’t step down. Chaos ON TELEVISION erupts. There’s no clear successor: Lo- gan’s on his third marriage, to a tasteful enigma named Marcy (Hiam Abbas), TENDER OFFERS and his four kids are a stunted bunch. Kendall is a drug addict with dreams Family ties on “Succession.” of Zuckerbergian disruption; Roman (Kieran Culkin) is a hedonist slacker; BY EMILY NUSSBAUM Shiv (Sarah Snook) is a cynical politi- cal consultant engaged to a weirdo so- cial climber who works for her dad; and Connor (Alan Ruck), the eldest, is a dippy egotist who has retreated to Santa Fe, to revel in libertarian hau- teur. There’s also a dorky, newly arrived cousin, Greg, a pawn with aspirations. At first, the siblings seem like venal cartoons, not unlike the “Veep” crew: they’re selfish, spoiled insult machines, particularly the brothers, who epito- mize the online slogan “God grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man.” Their basic work ethic is wing- ing it. When Roman gets an office, he walks to the window and masturbates to the Manhattan skyline, an act that he clearly sees less as a metaphor than as a job description. “I just hope the seating plan holds,” Connor announces about a benefit he’s planning. “If it does—look out, Middle East! ’Cause I can fix anything.” The great strength of the show is that it manages to deepen these monstrous characters—to grant them meaningful context, even pathos—without glamor- izing them. They’re ultrapowerful weak- lings, not cathartic fantasy figures. And, At first, the siblings seem like venal cartoons, not unlike the “Veep” crew. for all their Mamet-y rants about screw- ing and getting screwed, they’re para- oward the end of the first season Redstones—families that double as lyzed, passive—unable to close, even at Tof HBO’s “Succession,” some cor- brands, which is to say monarchies, home. Kendall tries to win back his wife porate schemers plot a takeover strat- which is to say Mob families. They’re by stating over and over, in a trance of egy called a bear hug. It’s an offer that’s groups that run the world and to whom wishful thinking, that he’s “the man”; too much, too soon—a bid for a com- rules don’t apply. This makes “Succes- when Roman is alone with his eye-candy pany’s stock that’s so high the board sion” ideally timed for the Trump era; girlfriends, he peevishly bats away com- can’t legally turn it down. Smother your it can also make it off-putting, initially, plaints that he never wants sex; Connor targets with largesse and you own them. for anyone burned out on sympathy- dates a call girl, who is actually a play- That’s the essence of family love in for-the-Devil cable shows. wright, and who stares at him with the “Succession,” a satisfyingly nasty series Brian Cox plays Logan Roy, the fatigued expression of a tech-support that might be described as an explainer Scottish-born founder and C.E.O. of person who can’t get off the line. on the inner life of Jared Kushner. Cre- Waystar Royco, a conglomerate that The only one with a real libido and ated by the British comedy writer Jesse includes a red-meat cable network, workable cunning is Shiv, a canny Armstrong, it’s a story about rich kids movie and music studios, digital hold- mashup of Ivanka Trump and the fiery- clawing for control of their dad’s com- ings, cruise ships, an animation divi- haired Murdoch lieutenant Rebekah pany, a Fox-y media conglomerate. sion, and more. On his eightieth birth- Brooks. Her father’s favorite, Shiv knows Among the series’ many pleasures is day, when everyone expects Logan to how to negotiate; she’s certainly a more how well it functions as a blind item pass the reins to his son Kendall ( Jer- obvious choice than Kendall to run the about the Murdochs, the Mercers, the emy Strong), he balks—and, even after company. “You run towards politics to

70 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY ANGELICA ALZONA РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS prove you’re your own man,” Logan the wheels of conspiracy start to turn; tells her. He seems to see her as virile, when pathos emerges, as the stock drops in a way that, in his competitive eyes, and the stakes rise—does the show gain the boys can never be; her gender is less mythic dimensions, of empires at risk, a barrier than a get-out-of-jail-free card. fathers killing sons, Cordelias question- Yet Shiv has a slovenly, impulsive ing Lears, and so on. perversity of her own. In the season There’s some truth to that. The sec- finale, in one of the series’ more mov- ond half of the season takes more am- ing scenes, she makes a wedding-night bitious leaps, letting characters like the confession to her new husband, Tom (a outrageous Tom—a truly original figure, fantastic Matthew Macfadyen), that who is somehow at once craven and de- she’s been cheating on him with her cent, psycho and naïve—take up the colleague Nate (Ashley Zukerman). It’s space they deserve. The show also nails a brutal comic setup: a bride, all in white, its finale, an accomplishment that, in cuckolding her husband. In one sense, an age of expensive, poorly paced pay- 老吉发布，禁止转载倒卖。 the confession is a gambit. Midway cable letdowns, is its own recommen- through the wedding weekend, Shiv dation. So what does it say that the first brokered a slimy deal between her right- few episodes suited me fine? For me, SUMMER END SALE wing father and the left-wing politician the show had a pleasurable mouthfeel AUG 24 - SEP 34 she hopes to make President, a consum- from the beginning, not in its largeness Find great values, mation that’s more real to her (and more but in its smallness, its glory in the de- including our original exciting) than her own marriage. The tails—the oppressiveness of beige Upper Bistro Chair, designed and Made one person who can block the deal is East Side apartments; the in-laws and in Maine. Nate; her confession motivates Tom outsiders sharing advice; the man at a to step up and rid her of this obstacle. benefit throwing a fit about the butter But the show’s operating principle is being insufficiently warm. that just because a move is strategic A lot of the fun of “Succession” is in chiltons.com 866-883-3366 doesn’t mean that the person making it watching fancy parties go off the rails, feels that it is, or even knows exactly what from Logan’s birthday to that wedding, she’s doing as she does it—and, in the which takes place in a British castle. But remarkable performances of Snook and its most striking motif is games. For the Macfadyen, the conversation swings Roys, business is a game. So is therapy, crazily between cruelty and tenderness, so is sex. Even a Thanksgiving-dinner candor and bullying. As Shiv confesses, round of “What are you grateful for?” to herself as well as to Tom—“I’m just turns competitive. When Roman begs not sure I’m a good fit for monogamous his brothers to confirm a terrible child- marriage”—he watches from the bed, hood memory, of his being treated like crushed but also in awe. The camera lin- a dog, Kendall insists, “It was a game, gers on his face as he absorbs his wife’s you enjoyed it!” Connor tells him, “You terror of “the whole box-set death march.” asked to be put in the cage.” The fami- His voice gets softer, not harder. In a ly’s psychological stability relies on this fever of self-justification, Shiv explains brand of gaslighting: if everything is a that love is ugly—it’s a con, gummed up game, nothing counts. All the money with “fear and jealousy and revenge and can feel like play money, in the end. control.” The wisest move is to burn it “Succession” has its gamelike quality all down. In her way, she’s welcoming as well. It’s a drama that plays as a com- It’s Raining Tom to the family. When she tears off edy, and vice versa, with crises that feel her dress and climbs on top of him, as both real and contrived. It hovers on a Cats and Dogs they renegotiate their deal, it feels, for a beautiful borderline for viewers: real Featuring George Booth’s moment, almost romantic. enough for us to care, but stylized enough irascible cats and dogs, to let us stand, enjoyably, at a distance, the collapsible New Yorker he slam that I’ve heard on “Suc- judging. The season ends with a Chap- umbrella is the perfect Tcession” is that it takes too many paquiddick-like tragedy for Kendall that companion for a rainy day. episodes to get good: the early install- feels weighty and true, a showcase for $49.95 ments are too cynical, too sour, too Strong’s layered performance. But it also claustrophobic. Who wants to hang out starts the game again, making the show with these awful people? Only when a fable about the ugliness of endless sec- To order, please visit the plot kicks in for real—when Logan ond chances—the resource that is a fam- newyorkerstore.com roars back into the boardroom; when ily like this one’s truest wealth. 

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like a wildlife photographer in a blind. THE CURRENT CINEMA No prey was stalked more assiduously than McEnroe, who didn’t always rel- ish the attention. In one excerpt, he GRACE ABOUNDING even objects to the boom microphone wielded by de Kermadec’s sound re- “McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection” and “Andrei Rublev.” cordist, which he treats as an offensive weapon. “Keep that thing away from BY ANTHONY LANE me, you understand?” he says. “See this?” he adds, pointing to the far end of his arlier this year, in a feature film his chin, the real threat—never carried racquet. “In your mouth.” Eentitled “Borg vs. McEnroe,”Shia out, of course—was that he would cry, Much of the footage is decelerated, LaBeouf played John McEnroe, and as a child cries when the world, once with McEnroe’s whippy serve becom- lost. The role was lobbed toward him again, fails to meet the high standards ing a languid, slow-motion dream of and he missed it. Nothing went right. of his desire. power withheld and loosed. Yet there Nobody could blame the actor for not Now, as a corrective to “Borg vs. was nothing dreamy or abstruse about being able to swing a tennis racquet McEnroe,” we have a documentary, him, especially if you were the guy past like McEnroe, but could the hair and “McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection.” whom the ball flew, beyond your grunt- makeup department not have devised The movie is French, which means that ing reach. McEnroe, flayed by his own scowls, and plucking at the speck-free shoulders of his shirt as a raptor pecks at its feathers, was more physically there, in his element, than any of his rivals. ( Jimmy Connors, straining to match so militant a presence, fell comically short.) It took me a while, when McEn- roe first barged onto the Grand Slam circuit, to work out what his serve re- minded me of. Finally, I got it: as he rocked back and forth, both hands on the racquet, pointing it at the ground and then unbending to address his tar- get, he was like an archer—one of the archers, let us say, in Olivier’s “Henry V” (1944), lifting their longbows toward the approaching foe, each with an arm drawn tautly back, ready to unleash the whistling rain. Julien Faraut’s documentary shows John McEnroe battling opponents and himself. “McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfec- tion” rings with echoes of the big screen. a better wig, as opposed to the springy much of it is set on the clay courts of We learn that Tom Hulce’s portrayal clump of curls with which poor LaBeouf Roland Garros, in Paris, and that our of Mozart as a divinely gifted fidget, was topped? I kept wanting to tip him basic—that is, our laziest—assumptions in “Amadeus” (1984), was inspired by upside down and mop the floor. will, like it or not, be turned inside out. McEnroe, and tribute is paid to Serge Other things were wrong, too. The The director is Julien Faraut, and the Daney, who was both a critic for Cahiers voice needed raising half an octave, to narrator is Mathieu Amalric, who played du Cinéma and a tennis aficionado. (Re- the plaintive McEnrovian pitch, and the villain in “Quantum of Solace” ferring to McEnroe, he wrote of “the LaBeouf forgot to screw up his face. (2008), and whose tender tones deliver eternal injustice that afflicts him, and He forgot how McEnroe’s eyes used a stream of gnomic propositions: “When him alone.” Just so.) Rising gently from to narrow as if against the noonday you watch a tennis match, you don’t Faraut’s film is the belief that a pro- glare, even on the cloudiest of days. ever really know what you’re watching,” fessional tennis match is more like a The spectators, a duplicitous mob, would for example, which is not something movie than it is like anything else, not see him pause to ponder a dissatisfy- that one hears too often on ESPN. least in terms of duration. Even ex- ing line call, hands on hips, and would Faraut’s coup is to have unearthed ceptions can be made to fit the rule; bay him onward, into the molten depths the work of another documentarian, we are solemnly informed that the re- of the tantrum that they both craved Gil de Kermadec, who made obsessive morseless duel between John Isner and and affected to deplore. The real threat, studies of tennis players in action, shoot- Nicolas Mahut, which was spread over however, was not that McEnroe would ing from the side of the court, or from three days at Wimbledon, in 2010, and rant and rave. To judge by the tremor of a ground-level pit at one end, boxed in which ended with Isner winning 70-68

72 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY GOLDEN COSMOS РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS in the final set, lasted as long as all rennial demeanor suggested that Lurch, day’s viewers will be startled by his re- three “Godfather” films strung together, from “The Addams Family,” had traded semblance to Viggo Mortensen—the with one-hour breaks between them. domestic servitude for the baseline. Yet sculpted cheekbones and those ardent As if to prolong the Robert De Niro we hardly get a proper look at Lendl, deep-set eyes, with their slow blink. motif, a McEnroe meltdown is naugh- close up, and even when he starts to Both men look as if they were born to tily overlaid with an audio clip from dominate the encounter he seems lit- look.) The movie should not be mis- “Raging Bull” (1980)—Jake LaMotta tle more than a supporting act. What taken, however, for a bio-pic. We fol- asking his brother, “You fuck my wife?” lingers, when this movie is done, are low Rublev’s wanderings, but we never Sadly, there is no mention of McEn- not the regular rallies, during which actually see him paint, and in some parts roe’s scarlet sweatband, which, in my we survey the whole court, but those of the story he fails to appear at all. He fevered youth, I associated with De moments when we focus on McEnroe is more of a witness than a hero, and his Niro’s bandanna on the poster for “The alone—on the dancing shuffle of his one transforming deed, when he kills an Deer Hunter” (1978). feet as he bobs and races for a return. aggressor who is about to rape a young What is it about McEnroe that at- Swap the sneakers for tap shoes and woman, occurs just out of our sight. tracts these movie-colored thoughts? the dusty clay for a mirrored floor, and The film is steeped in bloodshed None of us gazed at the moonfaced Jim we could be watching Fred without and other spillages. One victim of tor- Courier, say, and thought of Travis Ginger, lost in the delirium of his art. ture has dark boiling liquid ladled into Bickle. We thought of Charlie Brown. his mouth. Animals are maltreated, too, And Pete Sampras, for all his genius, or whom the bell tolls, at the start and horse-lovers will find themselves would have retired hurt from “Good- Fof “Andrei Rublev,” is hard to say. neighing with distress. Yet the pan- Fellas” without scoring a point. Mc- Is it a funeral peal, lamenting our com- orama of suffering that Tarkovsky un- Enroe was special, perhaps, because of mon lot, or are we being summoned rolls is far from stolid or stuck. It bus- the Cagney-like cohabitation, within to Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1966 film, which tles with vitality, and the best way to him, of the violent and the deft, which is now being rereleased in a fresh print, prepare for its medley of the pious, the made him so hard to predict; remem- as if to a celebration of the Mass? His brutal, and the buffoonish would be to ber those drop shots with which he admirers verge on the worshipful, with inspect the great landscapes of Pieter softly stunned the fiercest ball and good cause, and to be deluged by his Bruegel the Elder, from the fifteen-six- dinked it over the net. Moreover, he movies—this one in particular—is to be ties—“The Massacre of the Innocents” chose to be embroiled in a multiple initiated into sacred mysteries for which or “The Suicide of Saul,” for instance, fight—with his opponent, with the um- no rational explanation will suffice. All where the central drama is half-hidden pire, but also with himself, somehow of which may be enough to send any amid the human swarm. The effect of driven forward by feelings, including novices, unfamiliar with the director, “Andrei Rublev” is elemental; the cam- frustration and wrath, that would fell and fearful of a three-hour Russian era prowls among earth-clogged roots, or retard the rest of us. Regardless of flick that is mostly (though not en- pursues the flaming torches of pagan his enemy, the main event was McEn- tirely) in black-and-white, scurrying in roisterers as they run, unclothed, into roe vs. McEnroe, in an unresolvable the opposite direction; so how can one the embrace of a river, and hitches a tiebreak of body and soul. There had convince them that they should gird breathless ride into the air, in a prim- been nothing like it, on public view, their loins, down a Stoli for luck, and itive balloon. You may dread being since the heyday of James Dean. give “Andrei Rublev” a chance? ground down by this extraordinary film, The last twenty minutes of Faraut’s It is set in the early fifteenth century. but fear not. It will bear you aloft.  film are consumed by a match: McEn- Rublev is a real historical figure: a monk roe’s battle for the French Open crown, and a painter of icons, who is played NEWYORKER.COM in 1984, against Ivan Lendl, whose pe- onscreen by Anatoliy Solonitsyn. (To- Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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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 Farley Katz, must be received by Sunday, September 2nd. The finalists in the August 20th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the September 17th 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

“Would you care to hear about our tipping policy?” George Forgie, Austin, Texas

“Ignore the screams, sir. I’ll get you a new fork.” “A lot has happened since your last at-bat.” Aliina Hopkins, West Hartford, Conn. John Fistere, El Cajon, Calif.

“If you feel a draft, I can close the window.” Lu Zhu, San Francisco, Calif. РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

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@newyorkerlive #tnyfest РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS “DANIEL RADCLIFFE returns to Broadway in a play about the magic of literary nonfiction. Based on real events, the play stars BOBBY CANNAVALE as a writer, CHERRY JONES as his editor and Radcliffe as a very fastidious fact-checker.” TIME OUT NEW YORK “IMPROBABLY ENTERTAINING! HILARIOUS & PROFOUND.” NPR

BY JEREMY KAREKEN & DAVID MURRELL AND GORDON FARRELL BASED ON THE ESSAY/BOOK BY JOHN D’AGATA & JIM FINGAL DIRECTED BY LEIGH SILVERMAN PREVIEWS BEGIN SEPTEMBER 20 | 16 WEEKS ONLY TELECHARGE.COM | (212) 239-6200 | STUDIO 54, 254 WEST 54 STREET | LIFESPANOFAFACT.COM