PRICE $8.99 OCT. 30, 2017

OCTOBER 30, 2017

4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 15 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Jia Tolentino on powerful men behaving badly; a cartoon Weinstein; the would-be kleptocrat’s app; Bill Murray’s classical turn; Andy Serkis spotted. OUR LOCAL CORRESPONDENTS Jiayang Fan 20 The Ghost Scam A confidence trick on Chinatown’s elderly. SHOUTS & MURMURS Broti Broti Gupta Gupta and and Rebecca Rebecca Caplan Caplan 27 Trump I.Q. Test ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS Peter Schjeldahl 28 Think Big Laura Owens’s new perspective on painting. A REPORTER AT LARGE Patrick Radden Keefe 34 Empire of Pain The philanthropic family that profited from OxyContin. PORTFOLIO Philip Montgomery 50 Faces of an Epidemic with Margaret Talbot Images of the lives overtaken by the opioid crisis. FICTION Joseph O’Neill 60 “The Sinking of the Houston” THE CRITICS THE THEATRE Hilton Als 65 “Springsteen on Broadway.” A CRITIC AT LARGE Joan Acocella 67 Martin Luther’s theses at five hundred. BOOKS 70 Briefly Noted MUSICAL EVENTS Alex Ross 74 The unearthly sounds of Ashley Fure. ON TELEVISION Amanda Petrusich 76 Viceland’s foodies with attitude. THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 78 “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” “The Square.” POEMS Sophie Klahr 31 “From ‘Like Nebraska’ ” Nick Laird 44 “La Méditerranée” COVER Carter Goodrich “October Surprise”

DRAWINGS Zachary Kanin, Roz Chast, Amy Hwang, Will McPhail, William Haefeli, Julia Suits, Joe Dator, Seth Fleishman, Drew Panckeri, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Liana Finck, Paul Noth SPOTS Jeffrey Fisher CONTRIBUTORS

Jiayang Fan (“The Ghost Scam,” p. 20) Peter Schjeldahl (“Think Big” p. 28), the became a staff writer in 2016. Her re- magazine’s art critic, is the author of porting on China, American politics, “Let’s See: Writings on Art from The and culture has appeared in the mag- New Yorker.” azine and on newyorker.com since 2010. Rebecca Caplan (Shouts & Murmurs, Broti Gupta (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 27) p. 27) is a writer at CollegeHumor and has written for the Times, the Wash- has contributed to newyorker.com ington Post online, and newyorker.com. since 2015.

Joseph O’Neill (Fiction, p. 60) will pub- Patrick Radden Keefe (“Empire of Pain,” lish the story collection “Good Trou- p. 34) is a staff writer. ble” in June. Joan Acocella (A Critic at Large, p. 67) Amanda Petrusich (On Television, p. 76), a has written for The New Yorker, mostly staff writer, is the author of “Do Not Sell on books and dance, since 1992, and at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt became the magazine’s dance critic in for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records.” 1998. Her most recent book is “Twenty- eight Artists and Two Saints,” a col- Carter Goodrich (Cover) is a writer, an lection of essays. illustrator, and a character designer for feature animation. He is at work on his Philip Montgomery (Portfolio, p. 50), a pho- seventh children’s book, “Nobody Hugs tographer, has been a regular contributor a Cactus.” since 2015, and covered the 2016 U.S. Pres- idential election for the magazine. Jia Tolentino (Comment, p. 15) is a staff writer. Previously, she was the deputy Sophie Klahr (Poem, p. 31) is the author editor at Jezebel and a contributing ed- of the poetry collection “Meet Me Here itor at the Hairpin. at Dawn.”

NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more.

DAILY SHOUTS VIDEO A guide to dressing up as your The photographer Philip Montgomery favorite member of the Trump on covering the opioid epidemic in Administration for Halloween. Montgomery County, Ohio. SUBSCRIBERS: Get access to our magazine app for tablets and smartphones at the App Store, Amazon.com, or Google Play. (Access varies by location and device.) MAP) (NEEDLE, ALAMY SOURCE: COUCEIRO; CRISTIANA BY ILLUSTRATION RIGHT: 2 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 THE MAIL

BEYOND THE BOUNDS We talk about assault as if it were a new phenomenon, as if it weren’t I’ve been sad for days since reading the people in positions of authority Ronan Farrow’s story on Harvey who are so often responsible: lawyers, Weinstein’s decades of sexual abuse judges, priests, teachers, police officers, and assault (“Abuses of Power,” Oc- doctors, C.E.O.s. Why do we act so tober 23rd). My eighty-six-year-old shocked? The subject of sexual abuse mother has always said that every is treated like global warming—we woman is forced to prostitute her- think that if we pretend it’s not hap- self at some time in her life, and hear- pening, then maybe it will go away. ing that never fails to make me sick. Natarsha Douglas And yet I know of so many women Toronto, Ont. who have had bad experiences with people they work with, including Sexual harassment and assault is an myself and my daughter. I never told issue that crosses all boundaries, po- anyone what happened to me, but litical or otherwise. It’s about preda- when women like the ones in Far- tors in power who know that they are row’s article tell their stories it helps untouchable, and the people who en- everyone to speak up, especially those able them. My experience of sexual with lower incomes, who can’t risk harassment, like that of so many other losing their jobs because of a boss women, ranges from mild to extreme. who tries to force sex on them. When I worked in industrial- chemical Connie Sundquist sales, in the nineteen-eighties, a se- Tallahassee, Fla. nior person at my company started pursuing me. He harassed and as- He was influential and well loved, a saulted me, and on a work trip one church elder. He was seen as smart, night he even got the key to my hotel disciplined, and generous. He started room without my permission. This grooming me when I was eight years behavior continued after I reported old. He raped me for the first time him, and I believe I was not the only when I was ten, and every weekend woman subjected to his unwanted for four years. I saw how easy it was advances. When I refused to have an for him to hide what he was doing, affair with him, he berated me and and it later became clear that he had claimed that my work was suffering. help. That’s what makes the Harvey I was assigned to a new sales terri- Weinstein sexual-assault allegations tory, in an area known for its gang so horrible: it wasn’t a secret. People violence. He was willing to put my knew that Weinstein was dangerous, life in danger as punishment. I re- but they turned away—they allowed member standing in a bathroom at it. My abuser was raping women be- the restaurant where he first made a fore I was born. People knew and did pass at me, looking at myself in the nothing to protect the victims. When mirror and trying to figure out how he got to me, no one believed he to rebuff this person without losing would “go that young.” I was called the job I loved. In the end I couldn’t. a liar. I was told that it was my fault, After months of abuse, I quit. because I should have said something Lesley Barton sooner. I was called crazy. Punta Gorda, Fla. These are the reasons we don’t speak. When we finally do, we get asked, • “Why now?” As if there’s a time limit Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to on trauma. I’m forty-four years old, [email protected]. Letters may be edited and therapy didn’t prepare me for what for length and clarity, and may be published in raising a daughter would trigger. Her any medium. We regret that owing to the volume tenth birthday was two weeks ago. of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter. THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 3 OCTOBER 25 – 31, 2017 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Metropolitan Opera audiences know the British composer Thomas Adès for “The Tempest,” a svelte Shake- speare adaptation that opened here in 2012. But in his acclaimed new opera, “The Exterminating Angel” (which premières on Oct. 26), inspired by the scabrous film by Luis Buñuel, he returns to the territory he marked out in his first opera, “Powder Her Face”: skewering the sexual and political assumptions of the upper class. The baritone David Adam Moore and the soprano Amanda Echalaz, above, are featured in the cast.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDRES SERRANO tracked with fresh music. The program, directed by Michael Counts, incorporates scenic and pro- duction design by Deborah Johnson (who works CLASSICAL MUSIC under the name CandyStations). Oct. 27-28 at 7:30. (BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette 1 Ave., Brooklyn. bam.org.) composer-conductor. The first of three consecutive OPERA subscription programs brings Alan Gilbert, until Daniil Trifonov recently the Philharmonic’s music director, to- This thrilling but thoughtful Russian pianist is Metropolitan Opera gether with the violinist Joshua Bell and the mezzo- boldly marking his own path within largely tra- There is a coterie of contemporary composers—in- soprano Kelley O’Connor, in a celebration of two ditional guidelines. His upcoming Carnegie Hall cluding John Adams and Philip Glass—who can say Leonard Bernstein masterworks, the “Serenade” program, “Hommage à Chopin,” expands the usual that the Met has performed more than one of their and the Symphony No. 1, “Jeremiah”; “Boundless,” repertory choices (including the Franco-Polish operas; their number now includes Thomas Adès. a Bernstein tribute by the young Dutch composer master’s Piano Sonata No. 2) with works by Grieg, Five years after the company première of his opera Joey Roukens, begins the concerts. Oct. 25-26 and Tchaikovsky, Barber (the “Nocturne”), Rachmani- “The Tempest,” Adès himself conducts the first New Oct. 31 at 7:30 and Oct. 27-28 at 8. (David Geffen noff, and Mompou (Variations on a Theme of Cho- York performances of his pungent new stage work, Hall. 212-875-5656.) pin). Oct. 28 at 8. (212-247-7800.) “The Exterminating Angel,” after the film by Luis Buñuel. A first-rate ensemble cast—including Au- Gerard Schwarz and the Juilliard Orchestra George London Foundation Recital Series drey Luna, Alice Coote, Iestyn Davies, Joseph Kai- This week, the conservatory’s flagship ensemble The season-opening concert of the foundation’s re- ser, and John Tomlinson—appears in a production is led by Schwarz, a distinguished maestro and an cital series follows its usual formula, pairing two by Tom Cairns, the librettist who adapted the film all too lonely advocate for the masterpieces of the singers for a joint concert of crowd-pleasing rep- for the stage. Oct. 26 at 8 and Oct. 30 at 7:30. • Franco mid-century American symphonic school. The fea- ertoire. The soprano Leah Crocetto (performing Zeffirelli’s luxe, over-the-top style defined the Met tured works are by three composers with close Juil- Liszt’s operatic “Three Petrarch Sonnets” and songs in the eighties and nineties, but now the famed Ital- liard ties: David Diamond (the Symphony No. 4), by Rachmaninoff) and the baritone Zachary Nelson ian director has only one production—besides “La Jacob Druckman (the Viola Concerto, with Jordan (offering selections from Schubert’s “Schwanenge- Bohème,” of course—left in the company’s rep- Bak), and William Schuman (the Symphony No. 6). sang” and Vaughan Williams’s “Songs of Travel”) ertory, a traditionalist pageant of glittering chi- Oct. 26 at 7:30. (Alice Tully Hall. events.juilliard.edu.) come together at the end of the program for duets noiserie that he devised for Puccini’s “Turandot,” from “Il Trovatore” and “Carousel”; Mark Markham thirty years ago. Oksana Dyka, Aleksandrs An- St. Thomas Choir accompanies them. Oct. 29 at 4. (Morgan Library & tonenko, and Maria Agresta star in the revival; the Daniel Hyde, the director of the nation’s premier Museum, Madison Ave. at 36th St. themorgan.org.) deft Carlo Rizzi conducts. Oct. 25 and Oct. 31 at 7:30 Anglican choir of men and boys, leads his forces in and Oct. 28 at 8. • The current revival of Zeffirelli’s their first public concert of the season, an evening Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center crowd-pleasing production of “La Bohème” offers that embraces music both vocal and instrumental, An intriguing program places continental and the house début of the soprano Angel Blue, a for- and classic and contemporary: works by Arvo Pärt American composers in a musical face-off. The mer Miss Hollywood and an Operalia finalist who (“Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten”), John categories are early-career string quartets (Charles has worked as a presenter for the BBC Proms. Her Rutter, and Vaughan Williams (including the ora- Ives’s String Quartet No. 1 and Anton Webern’s castmates include Brigitta Kele, Russell Thomas, torio “Dona Nobis Pacem”). With the Orchestra of surprisingly romantic “Langsamer Satz”) and di- and Lucas Meacham; Alexander Soddy. Oct. 27 at St. Luke’s. Oct. 26 at 7:30. (St. Thomas Church, Fifth alogues on love (Johannes Brahms’s lilting “Lie- 8. • Bartlett Sher’s production of Offenbach’s “Les Ave. at 53rd St. saintthomaschurch.org.) beslieder Walzer” and Leonard Bernstein’s expan- Contes d’Hoffmann” often feels disjointed in per- sive “Arias and Barcarolles”), and the performers formance. But this season’s revival coalesces around Orpheus Chamber Orchestra include Susanna Phillips, Tamara Mumford, Nich- Vittorio Grigolo’s thrilling turn in the title role, with The beloved veteran pianist André Watts is the olas Phan, Nathan Gunn, and the Escher String each act emerging as a fever dream of frustrated featured guest in the conductorless chamber or- Quartet. Oct. 29 at 5. (Alice Tully Hall. 212-875-5788.) longing. The bass Laurent Naouri, as the Four Vil- chestra’s latest concert, but the emphasis is other- lains, is a wonderfully arch antagonist; other stand- wise on youth. His vehicle is the prodigy Mozart’s Diamanda Galás outs include Anita Hartig’s sensitively sung Anto- charming Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-Flat Major, This prodigious vocalist and pianist, an artist of har- nia and Erin Morley’s dazzling Olympia. Offenbach “Jeunehomme”; the program concludes with the rowing power, knows how to use a cathedral’s sanc- was primarily a composer of operettas, and Johannes First Symphony by the young firebrand Beethoven, tified atmosphere and lingering echoes to haunt- Debus, appropriately, conducts with rhythms that and opens with a New York première (“Asunder”) ing effect. These Brooklyn performances, presented dance and melodies that gently waft through the by the contemporary jazz-classical innovator Vijay by Le Poisson Rouge, come in the wake of Galás’s air. (This is the final performance.) Oct. 28 at noon. Iyer. Oct. 26 at 8. (Carnegie Hall. 212-247-7800.) first new albums in almost a decade: “All the Way,” (Metropolitan Opera House. 212-362-6000.) a collection of transmuted jazz, blues, and folk stan- 1 dards, and “At Saint Thomas the Apostle Harlem,” Heartbeat Opera: “All the World’s a Drag!” RECITALS a live recording of what she terms “death songs.” With its extravagant gowns, wigs, and stage Oct. 29 and Oct. 31 at 8. (Murmrr Theatre, 17 East- makeup, opera operates at a close remove from Miller Theatre: Mahan Esfahani / ern Pkwy., near Grand Army Plaza. murmrr.com.) drag, and the three-year-old company has turned Orlando Consort that likeness into a good excuse for an annual Hal- Columbia University’s performance hub advocates Charmaine Lee and Conrad Tao: “Ceremony” loween show. This year, Heartbeat throws Shake- just as vigorously for early music as it does for con- Tao, a pianist of sterling technique and refreshingly speare and his cross-dressing players into the equa- temporary work. Esfahani, an acclaimed young diverse interests, abandons his customary keyboard tion, with a program of excerpts from “Roméo et Iranian-born harpsichordist, will perform Bach’s in favor of electronics for a collaborative exploration Juliette,” “Otello,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Goldberg Variations at Miller’s home venue; later of tactile sound and space with Lee, an Australian and “West Side Story.” The chamber ensemble Can- in the week, the gentlemen singers of the Orlando improvising vocalist. Beforehand, Lee will impro- tata Profana accompanies a quartet of singers in a Consort, longtime Miller favorites, will take to the vise spontaneously with Nate Wooley, an estimable production directed by Ethan Heard. Oct. 30 at Church of St. Mary the Virgin, near Times Square, trumpeter and composer. Oct. 30 at 8. (Roulette, 509 7:30 and Oct. 31 at 7:30 and 10. (National Sawdust, 80 to offer “Loire Valley in Song,” a showcase of entic- Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn. roulette.org.) N. 6th St., Brooklyn. nationalsawdust.org.) ing music by Binchois, Dufay, and other fifteenth- century masters. Oct. 26 at 8; Oct. 28 at 8. (For tick- White Light Festival: “Gazing at the Divine” 1 ets and venue information, visit millertheatre.com.) For decades now, the explosively colorful music of Oli- ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES vier Messiaen, an ardent Roman Catholic, has been a Bang on a Can: “Road Trip” touchstone of spirituality for largely secularized clas- New York Philharmonic Celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of their revo- sical audiences. Steven Osborne, an admired Scottish With “Bernstein’s Philharmonic,” the orchestra that lutionary collective and all that it has wrought, the pianist, offers the latest concert in this trend, an eve- Lenny once ruled and loved is returning the favor, composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia ning devoted entirely to a sprawling keyboard mas- with an autumn festival that’s part of the music Wolfe dispatch their versatile house band, the Bang terwork, “Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus.” Oct. 31 at world’s season-long commemoration of the iconic on a Can All-Stars, on a virtual excursion sound- 7:30. (Kaplan Penthouse, Lincoln Center. lincolncenter.org.)

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 5 DANCE

chopped off, and neither is anything else. This is Bourne’s first ballet in four years, and he didn’t hold back. The company that Vicky dances for is based on Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and, as is not the case in the movie, we get versions of just about every kind of piece that the troupe performed: “Les Sylphides,” “The Afternoon of a Faun,” “Le Train Bleu” (the beach bal- let). We get lots of other kinds of dance, too: a German Expressionist thing, a Fred-and-Ginger-ish routine, a hilariously bad music-hall number with poor Vicky in a bunchy satin cos- tume that looks as though the dog slept on it. (She and Julian are ban- ished to music hall when Lermontov discovers their romance.) But we don’t just get every kind of dance. We get every kind of everything: Cocteau drawings, a statue of Vicky’s foot, a bunch of bare-chested guys blow- ing through what seems to be an Irish mist. The score is a collage of excerpts from early Bernard Herrmann movie scores. The stagecraft is wild. Powell and Pressburger had a beautiful set, ready- made: Monte Carlo. Bourne and his brilliant designer, Lez Brotherson, didn’t have anything like that, so, as Bourne told the Washington Post, “We decided to do something almost the opposite, go stark, and almost shock the audience with the set.” Walls move. Films float through. The proscenium swivels, giving Footlights story, basically, is that of the famous 1948 you the ballets from the front and movie by Michael Powell and Emeric then—swoosh!—showing you the goings Matthew Bourne choreographs a new Pressburger. Once again, we have a on backstage, with the dancers mopping version of “The Red Shoes.” beautiful young ballet dancer, Victoria their heads and kissing their boyfriends The English choreographer Matthew Page, torn between art, represented by and giving their rivals poisonous looks. Bourne is known for ballets that are her imperious Russian ballet director, Some of this is a little confusing. It based on popular tales or movies; that Lermontov, and love, in the person of would be a good idea to screen the pulsate with crime and passion; that her composer boyfriend, Julian. At the Powell-Pressburger movie for yourself transpire on shifting planes of reality; end, unable to choose, she either falls before you go to the show. At City Cen- that incorporate big, crazy dance par- or throws herself (people fight over this) ter, your leading lady, in a red wig wor- ties and small, nastily observed man- in front of a train—an untidy way to thy of Moira Shearer, the original Vicky, ners; and that generally end with the die, but not as bad as what happens in will be either Ashley Shaw, from the boy’s not getting the girl, or the boy. the original Hans Christian Andersen Bourne company, or, on alternate nights, Now Bourne has done it again, God story, in which the local executioner has Sara Mearns, of New York City Ballet. bless him! to chop off the girl’s feet so that she’ll Mearns isn’t my idea of an ingénue— His new ballet is “The Red Shoes” stop dancing. Shaw is—but they are both wonderful.

(at City Center, Oct. 26-Nov. 5), and the In Bourne’s ballet, the feet aren’t —Joan Acocella ELENI KALORKOTI BY ILLUSTRATION

6 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 DANCE

American Ballet Theatre men-are-beasts pieces. This time, what goes on Azerbaijani instrumentalists, are from the Silk Week two of the company’s short fall season in- and on, until death, is the hand-in-hand folk Road Ensemble. (Rose Theatre, 60th St. at Broad- cludes Jessica Lang’s pretty but innocuous “Her dancing of the farandole, done to techno, up way. 212-721-6500. Oct. 26-29.) Notes,” from last year, set to music by Fanny and down ramps. The tone is playful, until the Mendelssohn Hensel, and Alexei Ratmansky’s lights dim and the unhappy simulated sex starts. “The Red Shoes” / Matthew Bourne piercing meditation on Socratic dialogue, “Sere- Monks gang-rape what might be a corpse, but The British choreographer Matthew Bourne, who nade After Plato’s Symposium.” There are older it’s all less shocking than daft. (Joyce Theatre, 175 previously adapted “Edward Scissorhands” into works as well, most notably Jerome Robbins’s Eighth Ave., at 19th St. 212-242-0800. Oct. 25-29.) a ballet, has made a stage version of this tale of suite to Chopin, “Other Dances” (originally cre- a dancer who must choose between love and art, ated for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Ma- Simone Forti, Steve Paxton, and based on the film from 1948. New York City Bal- karova), and Frederick Ashton’s pristinely geo- Yvonne Rainer let’s Sara Mearns will alternate with the long- metric “Symphonic Variations.” • Oct. 24 at 7:30: Simone Forti, Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer time Bourne dancer Ashley Shaw in the role of the “Her Notes,” “Symphonic Variations,” “Elegy” met, as students, in the early sixties. Before protagonist; American Ballet Theatre’s Marcelo pas de deux, and “Thirteen Diversions.” • long, they were each enormously influential Gomes takes turns with Dominic North as the man Oct. 25 at 7:30: “Souvenir d’un Lieu Cher,” “I in the creation of what became known as post- whom she loves but must sacrifice for fame. (City Feel the Earth Move,” and “Daphnis and Chloe” • modern dance. But it was only last year that Center, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. Oct. 26-29 and Oct. 26 at 7:30: “Souvenir d’un Lieu Cher,” they first performed together as a trio. “Tea Oct. 31. Through Nov. 5.) “Other Dances,” and “Daphnis and Chloe.” • for Three” is what they’re calling this largely Oct. 27 at 7:30: “Songs of Bukovina,” “Other improvised evening, a meeting of three master Armitage Gone! Dance Dances,” “I Feel the Earth Move,” and “Serenade improvisers with decades of experience both Inspired by the 1929 Walt Disney animated short After Plato’s Symposium.” • Oct. 28 at 2: “Her shared and not. (Danspace Project, St. Mark’s “The Skeleton Dance,” and by how surreal life in Notes,” “Elegy” pas de deux, “I Feel the Earth Church In-the-Bowery, Second Ave. at 10th St. America can seem these days, the erstwhile punk Move,” and “Thirteen Diversions.” • Oct. 28 866-811-4111. Oct. 26-28.) ballerina Karole Armitage has created a Halloween at 8: “Souvenir d’un Lieu Cher,” “Elegy” pas show for adults and cool kids. With costumes by de deux, “I Feel the Earth Move,” and “Daph- White Light Festival / “Layla and Majnun” Peter Speliopoulos and Jon Can Coskunses, “Hal- nis and Chloe.” • Oct. 29 at 2: “Serenade After In the Middle East, the epic, and tragic, love loween Unleashed” has cats, bats, owls, witches, Plato’s Symposium” and “Daphnis and Chloe.” story of Layla and Majnun is as ubiquitous as and, of course, skeletons. Armitage’s hyper-flexi- (David H. Koch, Lincoln Center. 212-721-6500.) “Romeo and Juliet” is in the West. In 1908, it ble dancers move in screwball fashion to the sounds was turned into an opera by the Azerbaijani of punk, Wyclef Jean, and Marilyn Manson. (La BalletCollective composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov, combining West- Mama, 74A E. 4th St. 646-430-5374. Oct. 27-29.) The founder of this group, the young chore- ern and Azerbaijani musical styles—Verdi-like ographer Troy Schumacher, is also a soloist at choruses mixed with freestyle mugham sing- Andrea Miller / Gallim Dance New York City Ballet. The inspiration for his ing. This staging, by the choreographer Mark The first choreographer to serve as an artist- in- newest work, “Translation,” which takes place Morris, is an abridged, sixty-minute version of residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Miller within an immersive projection installation, is that work, in which the two lead singers (Alim inaugurates her one-year tenure with “Stone Skip- the science-fiction writing of Ken Liu; the music Qasimov, a huge star, and his daughter Fargana ping,” a site-specific piece for one of the museum’s is by the indie singer-songwriter Julianna Bar- Qasimova) sit in the center of the stage while most dramatic spaces, the Temple of Dendur. Her wick. The season also includes a work by Ga- Morris’s dancers depict the roles of the lovers company of youthful daredevils is augmented by stu- brielle Lamb, BalletCollective’s first guest cho- at various stages of their lives, from their meet- dent dancers from Juilliard, and the viola quartet Fire- reographer. (N.Y.U. Skirball, 566 LaGuardia Pl. ing, in grade school, to their death, from heart- wood plays Phil Kline’s score live. (Metropolitan Mu- 212-998-4941. Oct. 25-27.) ache. The musicians, who include Western and seum, Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. 212-570-3949. Oct. 28-29.)

ODC/Dance A major institution in San Francisco dance for decades, this troupe is only now making its début at BAM. And although its artistic direc- tors, Brenda Way and KT Nelson, have made hundreds of works, “boulders and bones” is only A RT their second collaboration. The hour-long piece opens with time-lapse footage of the stacking 1 and carving of stones for an outdoor sculpture brown, and gray scene, amplified by a yellow by the landscape artist Andy Goldsworthy. The MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES turban and a turquoise shirt, which is echoed ensuing dance, with live accompaniment by the by a faded blue bench in the background. It’s cellist Zoë Keating, aspires to a similarly mon- Met Breuer a succinct epic, a dual portrait of ancient ways umental meditation on permanence and decay, “Raghubir Singh: Modernism on the and modernization. Through Jan. 2. with weight-sharing duets and dancers kicking Ganges” up dust. (BAM Harvey Theatre, 651 Fulton St., In April of 1999, a month before he died unex- Institute for the Study of the Ancient Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. Oct. 25-28.) pectedly, of a heart attack, at the age of fifty- World six, Singh gave his last lecture, at the Inter- “Restoring the Minoans: Elizabeth Price Cynthia Oliver national Center of Photography, in New York. and Sir Arthur Evans” The stereotypes of black masculinity are all too By way of introduction, his friend and fellow- The British archeologist Sir Arthur Evans familiar and narrow. In “Virago-Man Dem,” photographer Thomas Roma told the audi- began excavating at Knossos, in Crete, in 1900. Oliver wants to reveal a broader and more nu- ence, “To call Raghubir Singh a photogra- Based on what he found, he “reconstituted” anced spectrum of possibilities. The work stars pher of India is to call Robert Frost a poet of what he believed to be the labyrinthine palace four African-American and Afro-Caribbean New York, which is to say, it is a grossly inad- that Daedalus built to house the Minotaur, em- performers and draws on their life experiences, equate description.” As evidenced by this qui- ploying hundreds of artisans to rebuild a lost acknowledging some gender expectations and etly magnificent show, Singh had an eye for the world whose aesthetic bore a surprising resem- pushing against others. In front of projected complex visual rhythms of life on the streets blance to Art Deco. A beautiful large drawing images by the Afrofuturist visual-art collec- of his native country, which rivalled that of by the Swiss draftsman Émile Gilliéron (made tive Black Kirby, the dancers move beautifully. Henri Cartier-Bresson. Above all, though, before 1914), one of some sixty Minoan and (BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Pl., Brooklyn. 718-636- Singh was a master of color, as the eighty-five Evansian artifacts in this fascinating show, ex- 4100. Oct. 25-28.) small images on view make startlingly clear. emplifies the audacity, and also the imagination, Consider “Villagers Visiting Jodhpur Enjoy- of Evans’s project. Gilliéron painted the surviv- Compagnie Maguy Marin ing Ice Sweets, Rajasthan,” from 1978. Five ing fragments of a fresco known as “the Lady After an absence of nearly a decade, the veteran men hunker down in the dirt, staring straight in Red” in watercolor (part of a forearm, an French provocateur returns to New York, with at Singh’s lens while holding orange popsi- exposed breast, and a scrap of dress) and drew “BiT.” It’s another of Marin’s nothing-changes, cles—eruptions of color in the mostly white, around them, in pencil, the “reconstruction”

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 7 A RT

(a woman with an elaborate hair style, al- in New York, brazen a roll call of influences: descend against a dark background. Anchor- mond eyes, and stylized fingers). Evans was definitely late Philip Guston, glancingly Peter ing the half-dozen prints is Kendrick’s jaggedly also a keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, at Saul, and distantly the Picasso of beach-ball energetic “Black-Oil Sculpture No. 4,” a pop- Oxford; when the 2012 Turner Prize-winning Surrealism. Bulbous female figures, often sea- lar construction darkened with lampblack—a artist Elizabeth Price was invited to use ma- side, sport creamy folds of flesh, colossal feet, dramatic drawing in three dimensions. Through terials from the Ashmolean and the Pitt Riv- alert nipples, and noses so protuberant as to Nov. 4. (Nolan, 527 W. 29th St. 212-925-6190.) ers to create a new piece, it was Evans’s ar- suggest carnal speech balloons. Helmetlike chive that caught her eye. In her two-channel masses of hair conceal their faces (if they can 1 video “A Restoration,” on view here, Evans’s be thought to have faces). A palette given to GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN quixotic construction of an ancient utopia be- pleasant pinks and blues forestalls unease, but comes a dystopic metaphor for encyclopedic or- only somewhat. Through Nov. 10. (Half Gallery, Susan Cianciolo ganizations of knowledge and human identity. 43 E. 78th St. 212-744-0151.) Once better known as a fashion designer fa- Through Jan. 7. mous for her grunge-era makeshift collections, Paulo Nazareth Cianciolo now applies her exacting scaven- Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and The Brazilian artist, who is of African and in- ger aesthetic to life-as-art environments and Lesbian Art digenous descent, takes long-distance walks, events. (During the recent Whitney Bien- “Barbara Hammer: Evidentiary Bodies” including a three-year journey from Brazil to nial, she took over the museum’s restaurant The American artist is best known for her New York. This airy arrangement of found- for a three-day stint, dressing her waitstaff groundbreaking films, which are joyful stud- object sculptures, small works on paper, and a in patchwork couture.) She presents three ies in female subjectivity and formal experi- projection of three videotaped performances “houses” here—a café, a library, and a prayer mentation. A selection plays on a loop in this is just a small portion of his ongoing project room—each mapped out by graceful wooden concise survey, notably “Dyketactics,” from “Cadernos de Africa” (“African Notebooks”), frames. At the opening, there were margari- 1974, a now iconic slice-of-life snapshot set to based on a series of shorter walks in Africa and tas, quesadillas, and a women’s meditation cir- a Moog-synthesized score, and several strik- the Americas. Four elegant sculptures, dis- cle; the next day, visitors were sipping tea, eat- ingly erotic Super-8 shorts. Also on view are played on pedestals of stacked wooden ship- ing homemade chocolates, and browsing the archival materials, which convey a playful ap- ping pallets, command the gallery’s floor. They library. Furnished with doll-size tea sets, fab- proach to art and activism, as well as early di- pair rough-hewn building stones, which evoke ric collages, mismatched chairs, and children’s aristic and psychedelic works on paper. A grid ancient structures, with everyday items. In art work, the semi-functional installation is an of photographs documents performances that “Chinatown,” a rock rests on a pair of red enchanting oasis, whose future programs in- Hammer organized, including “Homage to plastic supermarket bags; in “Nice,” another clude an afternoon fabric-painting and embroi- Sappho” (1978), in which a group of women rock smashes the toes of a pair of Nikes, a dery workshop (on Nov. 4; R.S.V.P. essential), gathered outside the San Francisco Museum concise metaphor for displacement. Through and an evening talk about Hannah Höch’s gar- of Modern Art and released balloons carry- Nov. 11. (Mendes Wood DM, 60 E. 66th St. den (on Nov. 16). Through Dec. 3. (Donahue, 99 ing slips of paper inscribed with lesbian art- 212-220-9943.) Bowery. 646-896-1368.) ists’ names. In the dreamlike “Pond and Water- fall” (1982), visitors are encouraged to remove a 1 Robert Moskowitz stethoscope from a hook on the wall and listen GALLERIES—CHELSEA A star, four decades ago, of “new image” paint- to their own heartbeat while watching Ham- ing—formalist representation—Moskowitz mer’s aquatic footage—a beautiful moment in Mel Kendrick persists, at his studios, in Nova Scotia and a revelatory show. Through Jan. 28. The New York sculptor’s memorable black- New York, with results that merit rediscov- and-white woodblock prints, which he made ery after a long exile from fashion. New slim 1 in the early nineties, suggest pages of closely rectangular paintings, six and a half feet high GALLERIES—UPTOWN set type—if those pages were nine feet tall and or long, present crisp negative silhouettes— seventeen feet wide. The interplay of chalky bright white latex against, and in balance with, Louise Bonnet woodgrain patterns and speckled blacks is en- midnight-black oil—that either suggest archi- Fetchingly grotesque paintings by the Swiss- livened by sharp white lines, notably in “10 tectural masses or, with contours of the Empire born Los Angeles artist, in her first solo show Loops 3,” in which two long, serrated shapes State and Flatiron Buildings, declare them. All the shapes on the imposing, unframed canvases tilt, making a viewer feel nudged off balance. The style holds up as a turning point in paint- ing history. Through Dec. 3. (Schuss, 34 Orchard St.1 212-219-9918.) GALLERIES—BROOKLYN

Graham Collins A slender tower of corroding bronzed tooth- brushes with one perpendicular phallic pro- trusion looks like a joke on Giacometti in par- ticular, and on the self-important weight of art-historical references in general. Busy, ab- stract paintings sewn together from scraps of found canvases invoke Internet image searches and cottage artisans. Collins has also bronzed and soldered together Cheetos, Fritos, Funyuns, and Doritos into surprisingly elegant sculptures. But just because Collins’s work is funny doesn’t mean the Brooklyn-based painter is kidding. One six-foot-high, largely brown- and-black painting is a romantic mood study, its two identifiable pictorial elements a droop- ing white flower and a bit of sunlight breaking through storm clouds. Another, titled “Unmelt- In 1999, Lauren Greenfield photographed a cheerleading rehearsal of the Sun City Poms, who ranged able Antebellum,” makes an electric impres- in age from sixty-three to eighty-one, in Arizona. The picture is on view in Greenfield’s exhibition sion with tiny slivers of color. Through Nov. 4. “Generation Wealth,” at the International Center of Photography, through Jan. 7. (Journal Gallery, 106 N. 1st St. 718-218-7148.) COURTESY THE ARTIST AND INSTITUTE THE ARTIST COURTESY

8 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 on the Lower East Side. Riffle’s soft-focus slow jams are therapeutic in their spaciousness, creating an atmosphere that harkens back to his Washing- NIGHT LIFE ton State upbringing. But it’s his elegant vocals— hushed and introspective, whispering gently dissolv- 1 ing melodies over muted arrangements of mellow an age-old inversion lapped up by critics and fans indie-folk—that will grab you. This week, he per- ROCK AND POP alike, even if the band drove upstate to lay down forms on Allen Street with a trio that includes the the songs. Digging into the Halloween spirit, the upright bassist Rob Jost, who has played with Björk Musicians and night-club proprietors lead group headlines “A NYC Horror Show,” with Al- and Feist, and the talented producer Jimi Zhivago, complicated lives; it’s advisable to check exander F, Fruit & Flowers, and Chorizo. (Mercury a longtime collaborator. (Rockwood Music Hall, 185 in advance to confirm engagements. Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. 212-260-4700. Oct. 27.) Orchard St. 212-477-4155. Oct. 28.)

Beach Fossils Japandroids 1 A few years back, a young North Carolinian named This stripped-down guitar-and-drums Vancouver JAZZ AND STANDARDS Dustin Payseur moved to Bushwick, got a job at duo has built a respectable career cranking up the Urban Outfitters, and started recording songs in earnestness on their anthemic, punk-tinged clas- Jonny King his room. Since then, his group has grown into one sic rock. They offer a refreshing genuineness, with King, a multitalented pianist and the author of of the more well known indie-rock acts of his gen- a marked loyalty to tradition and a sense of ambi- the valuable primer “What Jazz Is,” has had an on- eration, but he hasn’t held the reins too tightly; for tion that has made it possible for them to fill the again, off-again career, thanks to his stint as a trial his latest album, “Somersault,” he opened up the sprawling industrial venue Brooklyn Steel. The attorney, but it’s worth attending to his trenchant songwriting process to his bandmates. The result band recently wrapped a lengthy tour supporting post-bop playing now that he’s in view again. He is narcotic, downbeat slacker anthems perfect for its latest long-player (its first in five years), “Near has unerring support from the bassist Ira Cole- lazy car trips or bleary-eyed mornings. Just don’t let to the Wild Heart of Life.” Not much has changed: man and the drummer Victor Lewis. (Mezzrow, 163 those dulcet tones fool you into thinking that the all Japandroids albums have eight songs, constitut- W. 10th St. mezzrow.com. Oct. 27-30.) band is a bunch of bookworms. (Brooklyn Steel, 319 ing about thirty-five minutes of David Prowse’s pro- Frost St., Brooklyn. 888-929-7849. Oct. 28.) pulsive, pound-the-pavement drumming and Brian Johnny O’Neal King’s Springsteen-style riffs, capped by hoarse, O’Neal is a survivor, and he’d be the first person to Kim Ann Foxman tour-shredded vocals. (319 Frost St., Brooklyn. 888- tell you so. Obscurity and illness diverted his path Foxman, a Hawaii-born artist and d.j., claims to 929-7849. Oct. 26.) for a good part of the past few decades, but this fine sneeze when she’s full, her version of synesthesia. pianist and singer is a throwback to the long-gone “It’s not too far off from that—crossing wires of the Lee (Scratch) Perry days when performers had to know any song that senses in a way,” she explained to the dance-music In 1973, the reggae musician and producer Lee was thrown at them, and then toss it off with au- outlet Thump. For the deep-club denizen, who runs (Scratch) Perry built the Black Ark recording stu- thority. He has built a coterie of devoted listeners an egalitarian record label out of an old firehouse, dios in the back yard of his house in Kingston, Ja- entranced by his old-school erudition. O’Neal cel- escapism is delivered with a straight face. Foxman maica. Perry worked there with Bob Marley and ebrates the release of his album “In the Moment” has done work for fashion houses looking to sharpen Junior Murvin, and also recorded his own instru- in charge of an agreeably empathic trio. (Smoke, their edge (she’s scored dinners for Gucci and shilled mental dub albums, which, in their studio innova- 2751 Broadway, between 105th and 106th Sts. 212-864- for Adidas Stan Smith), but her hard style shines tions, were as remarkable as the Wall of Sound hits 6662. Oct. 27-29.) most brightly at her various residencies, which in- that Phil Spector had released a decade earlier. Per- clude stints at Berlin’s Panorama Bar and Green- ry’s use of billowing echoes, odd percussive sounds, Terell Stafford Quintet point’s Good Room, where she returns this week, and eclectic miking and vocalizing made albums like Hearing Stafford’s work as a whirlwind trumpeter in to dole out dizzying trance and stuttering Chicago “Africa’s Blood” and “Cloak & Dagger” into reg- decades past, with the bands of Bobby Watson and house in celebration of the venue’s third birthday. gae classics and precious texts for generations of others, you could practically taste his promise. True (98 Meserole Ave., Brooklyn. 718-349-2373. Oct. 28.) young producers and engineers. He mans Output to predictions, Stafford has developed into a distin- with his Subatomic Sound System band. (74 Wythe guished bandleader and composer whose horn play- Grooms Ave., Brooklyn. outputclub.com. Oct. 25.) ing still startles with its verve and conviction. His Travis Johnson is one of the owners of Death by quintet is bolstered by the pianist Bruce Barth and Audio, a guitar-effects-pedal manufacturer that Primus the saxophonist Tim Warfield. (Village Vanguard, 178 also operated a much loved warehouse venue until One of the best factoids from “The Defiant Ones,” Seventh Ave. S., at 11th St. 212-255-4037. Oct. 24-29.) it was taken over by Vice Media, in 2014. He’s also HBO’s recent documentary miniseries about Jimmy the lead singer of this nervy rock group, one of the Iovine and Dr. Dre, is that Interscope Records’ first Lew Tabackin Quartet: “Tribute to Zoot Sims” more imaginative outfits in New York at the mo- two signees were Gerardo, the Latin- American There can never be too many tributes to the late ment, which just released its fifth record, “Exit rapper behind “Rico Suave,” and this unwaver- Zoot Sims, a swinging and lyrical mainstream tenor Index,” on Western Vinyl. To celebrate the album, ingly quirky San Francisco outfit. Primus rose to saxophonist, whose influence may unfortunately be Johnson designed a custom foot switch of the same prominence in the early nineties, with a distinc- receding into the netherworld of musical history. name. The Exit Index pedal has four potentiome- tive sound that injected an absurdist sensibility Tabackin, himself a mighty tenor player, appreciates ters to regulate sound, which Johnson named ro- into funk-metal. The bizarre results, anchored by his own roots and will doff his cap to Sims, fronting mance, fantasy, body, and blood—fair approxima- the deft bassist and lyricist Les Claypool, landed a quartet that includes the pianist Jeb Patton and tions of the new record’s tones. (Brooklyn Bazaar, on the charts a handful of times, thanks to such dit- the bassist Bill Crow, a Sims collaborator. (Jazz at Ki- 150 Greenpoint Ave., Brooklyn. bkbazaar.com. Oct. 25.) ties as “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver,” “My Name Is tano, 66 Park Ave., at 38th St. 212-885-7119. Oct. 28.) Mud,” and the endearingly provocative “Wynona’s Honduras Big Brown Beaver.” The ensuing decades found the Yosvany Terry / Baptiste Trotignon These Brooklyn rockers dish out rattling punk that’s members of the band splintering off; Claypool ex- The recent influx of contemporary Cuban musi- easy to love: quick-hit, warmly juvenile guitar licks perimented with other groups, including Oyster- cians onto the national jazz scene has transformed and jangling drums that stomp up from below. The head (with Stewart Copeland, of the Police, and a phenomenon from a novelty into a near-common- lead singer, Patrick Phillips, performs with a nihil- Trey Anastasio, of Phish), before Primus reunited place occurrence. Terry, an inspired saxophonist istic edge that updates the Sex Pistols, but if you and released “Green Naugahyde,” in late 2011, its energized by the musical traditions of his home- ask the guitarist Tyson Moore about influences he first new album in twelve years. (Capitol Theatre, land, has been heard with his bass-playing brother cites originators like the Saints and Johnny Thun- 149 Westchester Ave., Port Chester. thecapitoltheatre. Yunior (who joins him here) and a host of inquis- ders and the Heartbreakers. The best moments of com. Oct. 29. Brooklyn Steel, 319 Frost St., Brooklyn. itive bandleaders, including Steve Coleman and Honduras’s début, “Rituals,” drag Phillips’s vocals 888-929-7849. Oct. 31.) Jason Lindner. He’s teamed up with the French pi- out front, and fast: “Barricades” cracks open with anist Trotignon, with whom he recorded “Ancestral eight counts of galloping snares, dives through Chris Riffle Memories,” a deeply felt project that delves into some crashing waves of guitar, and then clears the Those looking for respite from the Sturm und Drang the interlocking byways of Caribbean and French room in time for Phillips to casually warn, “Don’t of city life shouldn’t sleep on this young troubadour, Louisiana culture. (Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St. look me in the eye.” It’s beach punk by city kids, one of the more sophisticated singer-songwriters 212-576-2232. Oct. 26-29.)

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 9 devotion to the outfit masks his troubled past. The newest recruit, Brendan McDonough, a.k.a. Donut (Miles Teller), is a recovering drug user and a long- MOVIES time slacker who, after the birth of his daughter, finds a newfound purpose in the hard and danger- 1 ous work. Meanwhile, Eric confronts unresolved is- livers with a comedian’s sense of timing, but the sues with his wife, Amanda (Jennifer Connelly), a NOW PLAYING interviews aren’t copious or probing: controver- horse trainer who has also overcome personal trou- sies and conflicts are averted. Instead, the film of- ble. Though the movie, based on an article in GQ, Blade Runner 2049 fers many voice-over excerpts from Didion’s work; by Sean Flynn, offers fascinating insights into the A sequel to Ridley Scott’s masterwork of 1982. He the result, though loving and celebratory, is closer practical exertions and bureaucratic complications returns as an executive producer, as does Hamp- to an official portrait than an illuminating biogra- of firefighting, it places much greater emphasis on ton Fancher as a screenwriter, this time in collab- phy.—R.B. (Metrograph and Netflix.) the protagonists’ personal lives. The depiction of he- oration with Michael Green. Harrison Ford, at his roic courage is stirring and the acting is uniformly wryest, is also still in the frame, though whether The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) hearty (Jeff Bridges shines as a crusty fire chief), his character is an immortal android or just an old Anybody hoping that Noah Baumbach might stretch but the trenchant dialogue (from a script by Ken growling guy remains a mystery. The new director his wings and make a movie about the Roman Em- Nolan and Eric Warren Singer) is delivered with is Denis Villeneuve, and the new hero is KD6-3.7 pire or intergalactic warfare will have to wait. For familiar histrionics, and the drama is so tightly fo- (Ryan Gosling), a blade runner—a replicant cop now, he stays in his discomfort zone: messed-up cussed that it becomes an implausibly narrow vision who is assigned to shut down any early-model rep- modern families in New York. The patriarch of the of white working-class men keeping the country run- licants who remain. One job leads him on a lengthy Meyerowitzes is Harold (Dustin Hoffman), who ning. Directed by Joseph Kosinski; co-produced by quest, involving such minor matters as his own ori- aimed to be the great sculptor of his generation and Condé Nast Entertainment.—R.B. (In wide release.) gins and the future of the human—and thus the in- missed, though you wouldn’t know it from his man- human—race. The resulting film is doom-struck, ner—lordly, intemperate, and blisteringly quick to The Sacrifice unrushed, and dangerously close, at times, to the take offense. This has not made things easy for his Andrei Tarkovsky’s last film, from 1986, is a grand, brink of the ponderous; the shock of the new, de- sons, Matthew (Ben Stiller), who lives in Los An- unworldly, even antiworldly religious vision. Al- livered by the first movie, is all but impossible to geles and makes good money, and Danny (Adam exander (Erland Josephson), a middle-aged critic, repeat. Jared Leto underwhelms in the role of the Sandler), who does nothing much except fret, or lives in a remote waterfront manor in rural Swe- resident evil genius, but Dave Bautista, in wire- for his desolate daughter, Jean (Elizabeth Marvel). den with his frustrated wife, Adelaide (Susan rimmed spectacles, is a potent hulk, and Ana de Ar- Other characters are tossed into the mix: Harold’s Fleetwood), her grown daughter, Martha (Filippa mas is a dazzling virtual companion to K. There latest wife, the boozy Maureen (Emma Thomp- Franzén), and their young son (Tommy Kjellqvist), is pathos in that dazzle; it can be turned off at the son), and his granddaughter, Eliza (Grace Van called Little Man, who, after a minor operation, can- press of a button.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our Patten), who, alone in the clan, seems lightened not speak. The action is set on Alexander’s birthday. issue of 10/16/17.) (In wide release.) by hope and good sense. Baumbach not only finds He receives presents and visits, but suddenly the time and room for these restless souls but makes house shakes with the thunder of military aircraft, Félicité us believe in them as they clash, make peace, and and a television broadcast announces an imminent The title character of Alain Gomis’s pain-streaked, clash again. The movie is comically intimate with nuclear attack. The members of the household and richly textured drama is a full-voiced and charis- their lives, yet it covers a lot of ground. With Judd their guests are on the verge of a collective break- matic Afropop singer (played by Véro Tshanda Hirsch, as Harold’s rival of old.—A.L. (10/23/17) down as they face the end, but Alexander’s friend Beya Mputu) who works in an alleyway night club (In limited release and on Netflix.) Otto (Allan Edwall), a postman and retired his- in Kinshasa. Her fierce independence is put to the tory teacher, offers him a metaphysical bargain to test when her son, Samo (Gaetan Claudia), is hos- Novitiate save the world. The blend of midlife crisis and ex- pitalized and in danger of losing his leg after a mo- There’s a sharp historical angle built into Mag- istential terror is reminiscent of the films of Ing- torbike accident. Because of the Democratic Repub- gie Betts’s schematic drama, which is centered on mar Bergman, but Tarkovsky makes it a world of lic of the Congo’s cash-on-the-barrelhead medical a seventeen-year-old girl named Cathleen (Mar- his own. His images have a transcendental glow system, Félicité must scrape together a large ad- garet Qualley), who, in 1964, enters a convent as and a hieratic poise; alternating between contem- vance payment in order for Samo to receive treat- a postulant, the first step toward becoming a nun. plative distance and moral confrontation, they as- ment, and she duns creditors, beseeches family and Though raised without religion by her freethinking sert, in the most radical sense, the high cost of liv- friends, and—in the most devastating scene—barges mother (Julianne Nicholson), Cathleen turned de- ing—the unbearable price of earthly delights. In into the gated house of a local grandee, whose help vout while attending parochial school, enthralled by Swedish.—R.B. (Film Society of Lincoln Center, Quad comes at a high price. Meanwhile, Félicité begins a the concept of “love and sacrifice.” The strict con- Cinema, and streaming.) fragile romance with Tabu (Papi Mpaka), a rowdy vent rules are sternly applied by the Mother Supe- but resourceful night-club patron. The movie is rior (Melissa Leo), who, after Cathleen’s arrival, re- Wonderstruck a virtual documentary of city sights and moods, ceives new and liberalized orders, on the basis of the Time and again, the new Todd Haynes film steps and also a bitter exposé of a country without a so- reformist Second Vatican Council, which threaten back and forth between the nineteen-twenties and cial safety net. Blue-toned dream sequences and both her long-standing reign and the rigorous doc- 1977. Two separate tales are told, and we gradually classical-music interludes suggest counter-lives of trinal discipline that Cathleen craves. Meanwhile, understand how they converge. One, shot in nee- idealistic aspirations, private and public. In Lin- Cathleen’s awakening desires threaten her religious dle-sharp black-and-white, stars Millicent Sim- gala and French.—Richard Brody (In limited release.) obedience from within. Betts, who also wrote the monds, as Rose, a deaf girl who flees Hoboken for script, films the young women of the convent with Manhattan to track down a movie star—her idol, Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold ardent attention, catching hints of skepticism and and more—who is appearing onstage. In the second This documentary, directed by Didion’s nephew revolt in small yet unmistakable details. But she story, a motherless kid named Ben (Oakes Fegley, Griffin Dunne, is more of a feast for fans of her undercuts the characters’ passion and transcen- who was excellent as the hero of “Pete’s Dragon”) writing than for fans of documentary filmmaking. dent devotion with audiovisual commonplaces, somehow loses his hearing in a lightning strike, in Dunne chronologically weaves together Didion’s familiar acting styles, and a merely anecdotal nar- Gunflint, Minnesota. He, too, takes off, to search life and work, starting with her Sacramento child- rative. With Rebecca Dayan, as a mysterious new- for his long-lost father in New York. The screen- hood and her début at Vogue, in the nineteen-fifties, comer from another convent, and Denis O’Hare, as play is adapted by Brian Selznick (the author of and continuing with her career as a novelist and an a tart-tongued archbishop.—R.B. (In limited release.) “Hugo”) from his own novel, and the result shows essayist and her relationship with the writer John an unstinting attention to detail, and, in particular, Gregory Dunne, the director’s uncle, whom she Only the Brave to the recurring theme of speechlessness; Haynes married in 1964. (He died in 2003.) The movie is This vigorous melodrama is based on the true story even makes up his own silent movie, with the Grif- filled with evocative photographs and home mov- of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an unheralded fith-like title “Daughter of the Storm.” But the care- ies from Didion’s archive, and also historical clips and underfunded local Arizona wildfire-fighting ful patterning of the narrative is achieved at the ex- and enthusiastic interviews with friends and asso- company that struggled, a decade ago, to gain rec- pense of dramatic verve, and it is left to Julianne ciates. Didion speaks frankly but tersely with the ognition as a first-rank force. The action is cen- Moore, who appears in both parts of the film, to filmmaker, and her gestures seem to sculpt the air tered on the company’s wise and taciturn super- suffuse it with life and warmth.—A.L. (10/23/17) with thoughts that she phrases precisely and de- intendent, Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin), whose fierce (In limited release.)

10 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 1 OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS

Actually THE THEATRE In Anna Ziegler’s play, directed by Lileana Blain- Cruz for Manhattan Theatre Club, two freshmen at Princeton meet at a party and wade into is- sues of sexual consent. (City Center Stage II, at 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. Previews begin Oct. 31.)

The B-Side The Wooster Group presents a theatrical inter- pretation of the 1965 blues album “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,” featuring Eric Berry- man and directed by Kate Valk. (The Performing Garage, 33 Wooster St. thewoostergroup.org. Previews begin Oct. 25. Opens Oct. 27.)

Illyria The Public Theatre tells its own story with this play, written and directed by Richard Nelson, about how the young Joe Papp (John Magaro) founded the New York Shakespeare Festival, in the nineteen-fifties. (425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555. In previews. Opens Oct. 30.)

Steve Martin’s new Broadway play combines marital friction with astronomical calamity. Latin History for Morons John Leguizamo’s newest one-man show, in which he recounts his search for a Latin hero for his son’s Supernova tal production, at the Public Theatre. history project, moves to Broadway. Directed by Jason Bourne is still on the bucket list. Tony Taccone. (Studio 54, at 254 W. 54th St. 212- Keegan-Michael Key makes his 239-6200. In previews.) In the meantime, Key is making his Broadway début, in “Meteor Shower.” Broadway début, in “Meteor Shower” M. Butterfly Clive Owen and Jin Ha star in Julie Taymor’s re- Spare a thought, in these enraging times, (starting previews Nov. 1, at the Booth), vival of David Henry Hwang’s Tony Award-win- for Luther, Barack Obama’s “anger a comedy by Steve Martin that com- ning drama, about the romance between a mar- translator.” As embodied by Keegan- bines marital friction with astronomi- ried French diplomat and a Chinese opera singer. (Cort, 138 W. 48th St. 212-239-6200. In previews. Michael Key, on the Comedy Central cal calamity. Key plays Gerald, a bom- Opens Oct. 26.) sketch show “Key & Peele,” Luther gave bastic know-it-all whom he describes voice to the coolheaded President’s as “a bit of a vocal bull in a china shop.” Marcel + The Art of Laughter Theatre for a New Audience presents a double inner fury over everything from the Tea He stars alongside Amy Schumer, who bill of comic one-acts, featuring the European Party (“Oh, don’t even get me started also made her name in sketch comedy, slapstick performers (and original members of on these motherfuckers”) to birtherism as well as the theatrical ringers Laura the London troupe Complicité) Jos Houben and Marcello Magni. (Polonsky Shakespeare Center, (“I have a hot-diggity-doggity-mamase- Benanti and Jeremy Shamos. They play 262 Ashland Pl., Brooklyn. 866-811-4111. Previews mamasa-mamakusa birth certificate, a pair of couples in Ojai, California, begin Oct. 27.) you dumb-ass crackers!”). One imagines who get together and watch a celestial People, Places & Things him spending the Trump years climbing event, until their “Who’s Afraid of Vir- Denise Gough reprises her Olivier-winning role up walls and foaming at the mouth. ginia Woolf?”-esque squabbling tilts in Duncan Macmillan’s play, as an actress trying Since “Key & Peele” ended, in 2015, into absurdist fantasy. to get her life back together in rehab. (St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water St., Brooklyn. 718-254-8779. Key and his comedy partner, Jordan A veteran of Second City, Key has Opens Oct. 25.) Peele, have both gone on to formidable an improviser’s gift for making things careers of their own. Peele wrote and work on the spot. But Broadway offers Red Roses, Green Gold This new musical uses the music and lyrics of directed the genre-busting satirical something else: time for fine-tuning, Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter to tell the story horror film “Get Out,” while Key, who here under the direction of Jerry Zaks of a family of swindlers in the nineteen-twenties. has an M.F.A. in drama from Penn (“Hello, Dolly!”). “There are moments (Minetta Lane Theatre, 18 Minetta Lane. 800-745- State, has returned to his theatrical where Jerry says things like ‘Sweetheart, 3000. In previews. Opens Oct. 29.) roots. “My girlfriend said one day, ‘If now say the line, then sit down, then turn What We’re Up Against you had no excuses about why you your head’—which we don’t have time WP Theatre stages Theresa Rebeck’s dark com- edy about gender politics at an architecture firm, couldn’t do something, what would you to do on television,” Key said. “In a play, directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt and fea- want to do?’ ” he recalled recently. “And you get to sculpt the moments. The mo- turing Skylar Astin and Krysta Rodriguez. (Mc- I said, ‘I would want to do Jason ments are wrought. And that’s probably Ginn/Cazale, 2162 Broadway, at 76th St. 866-811- Bourne, and I would want to do Shake- the biggest difference, which is some- 4111. Previews begin Oct. 28.) speare.’ ” This past summer, he took care thing that Amy and I both adore. We 1 of the Shakespeare part, playing Hora- get more time to achieve the comedy. NOW PLAYING tio to Oscar Isaac’s Hamlet—speaking It’s not microwaved comedy. It’s nice, Animal Wisdom of someone who could use an anger slow, baked-in-the-oven comedy.” Heather Christian, a prolific composer, pia- nist, and powerhouse vocalist originally from ILLUSTRATION BY BEN KIRCHNER BY ILLUSTRATION translator—in Sam Gold’s experimen- —Michael Schulman

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 11 THE THEATRE

Natchez, Mississippi, offers an intimate “re- relief when it comes to an end, rather than gasp for all it’s worth. The story may be dated, but it’s a quiem” for the ghosts in her life, particularly from the intended dread. (Beckett, 410 W. 42nd pioneering work, well handled by Kaufman. (Sec- her grandmothers: both of them, as she puts it, St. 212-239-6200.) ond Stage, 305 W. 43rd St. 212-246-4422.) “New Orleans Catholics who are also musicians who suffer migraines and talk to dead people.” Torch Song 1 The manic monologue she uses to connect her Harvey Fierstein, a great and storied member of ALSO NOTABLE songs sometimes verges on derangement and the New York theatre scene since the early seven- on the sort of self-indulgence that all art based ties, wrote and originally starred in this trilogy, win- After the Blast Claire Tow. • The Band’s Visit on family history risks. But every moment is so ning the 1983 Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Ethel Barrymore. • The Home Place Irish Reper- deliberate and well orchestrated, and her four Actor. In Moisés Kaufman’s revival, Michael Urie tory. • Jesus Hopped the “A” Train Pershing Square bandmates are so generous and attuned, and plays Arnold, a drag queen who falls in love with Signature Center. • Junk Vivian Beaumont. • The the music itself is so fierce and exhilarating that the emotionally unavailable Ed (Ward Horton). Last Match Laura Pels. • Mary Jane New York she can get away with whatever she wants. An- Despite marrying a woman named Laurel (Rox- Theatre Workshop. Through Oct. 29. • Measure drew Schneider’s lighting design is an equally anna Hope Radja), Ed still longs for Arnold, who for Measure Public. • Oedipus el Rey Public. • Of- expressive feat—including the long stretch of becomes a foster parent to a young gay kid named fice Hour Public. • The Portuguese Kid City Cen- pitch-darkness during the show’s climactic suite David (Jack DiFalco). Enter Ma (Mercedes Ruehl), ter Stage I. • Prince of Broadway Samuel J. Fried- of songs. (The Bushwick Starr, 207 Starr St., Brook- a widow who resents Arnold for remaking his fam- man. Through Oct. 29. • Springsteen on Broadway lyn. 866-811-4111.) ily in his own queer image. Standing tall—and made Walter Kerr. (Reviewed in this issue.) • Strange In- taller by a big wig—Ruehl dominates the produc- terlude Irondale Center. • Time and the Conways Lonely Planet tion. While the talented Urie falls back on shtick to American Airlines Theatre. • Tiny Beautiful Things Steven Dietz’s 1994 two-hander, set in a map see him through, Ruehl mines her characterization Public. • The Treasurer Playwrights Horizons. store (a what?) in the early eighties, receives a funny, feeling revival in this Keen Company production. Arnie Burton plays Jody, the owner- proprietor, and Matt McGrath is Carl, a cus- tomer who came in a few years earlier and never quite left. The two men are each dealing with anxiety and with the AIDS epidemic: Carl by ABOVE & BEYOND filling the shop with chairs from the homes of friends who have died, and Jody by shutting down and holing up there. There are echoes of Beck- ett’s Didi and Gogo, and, naturally, references to Ionesco, as the play reflects the unmoored, theatre- of-the-absurd reality of these characters in this time. Under the direction of Jonathan Sil- verstein, the actors find a heightened, buoyant conversational rhythm, finally creating a touch- ing portrait of friendship. (Clurman, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200.)

Off the Meter, On the Record The New York City taxi-driver and WBAI radio Village Halloween Parade a private collection. One need not be a horticul- host John McDonagh is not a polished performer, Everyone’s invited—and costumes are a must—to turalist to admire the beauty of the illustrations but, in delivering this matter-of-fact memoir of march in this wild parade, one of the city’s more tucked into books like Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s his thirty-five years chasing fares, he’s an unfail- exuberant traditions, now in its forty-fourth year. “Les Roses” (1817-24), based on watercolor stud- ingly affable raconteur. His story has two dis- “It’s a time for people in the most modern city in ies of the roses at Malmaison, Joséphine Bona- tinct parts: in the first, better half, he explains the world to come out and behave in a completely parte’s redoubt, just outside Paris. (York Ave. at how the city works from a cabbie’s perspective, primitive way,” Jeanne Fleming, the event’s long- 72nd St. 212-606-7000.) • This week (Oct. 25-29), with an emphasis on the risks (becoming the time director, told The New Yorker in 1989. This the Javits Center will be filled with prints span- unwitting “wheelman in a robbery” or getting year’s theme is “Cabinet of Curiosities: An Imag- ning a wide range of artistic periods, from Dürer sucked into “the Upper East Side medical vor- inary Menagerie,” celebrating the transformative to Tacita Dean (with an emphasis on contempo- tex”). It’s all fascinating stuff, so the second half, power of the hybrid: the wolfmen, Frankensteins, rary and modern works), all part of the Interna- which has less to do with the hack life and more and Fiji Mermaids that have haunted and bewil- tional Fine Print Dealers Association’s yearly fair, to do with McDonagh’s attempts to break into dered humans for centuries. The parade will fea- now in its twenty-sixth edition. (Park Ave. at 67th television, is disappointing. The connections to ture more than fifty bands, hundreds of giant pup- St. printfair.com.) cab driving become even more tenuous as Mc- pets, and thousands of New Yorkers letting out Donagh delves into his politics: Irish Republi- their inner monsters. (Sixth Ave., heading north from 1 cans are good, American Republicans are bad. Canal St. to 16th St. halloween-nyc.com. Oct. 31 at 7.) READINGS AND TALKS (Irish Repertory, 132 W. 22nd St. 212-727-2737.) 1 92nd Street Y Squeamish AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES In the 1992 black comedy “Death Becomes Her,” After “Another Medea” (the title is a giveaway) Madeline Ashton (played by Meryl Streep) seeks and “Empanada Loca” (inspired by “Sweeney Antiquities come to Christie’s on Oct. 25, in a out a medical treatment that promises immortal- Todd,” so you can guess what’s in those crazy pas- sale that includes Egyptian funerary portraits, ity as a means of one-upping an old Hollywood tries), the writer-director Aaron Mark stays true Greek amphorae decorated with sacrificial rams, rival. It’s a Halloween classic that foresaw today’s to his inclinations with a third horror monologue. and even a Roman bronze eagle (from the sec- reality; scientists across the world have dedicated The story is told by Sharon (Alison Fraser), a psy- ond or third century A.D.). One of the comeli- significant resources to the study of “longevity chotherapist, who sits in a black armchair, meld- est lots is a marble head of Livia, the wife of Au- genes,” and have zeroed in on treatments and ing into the inky murk of a barely lit stage. Sha- gustus; the savvy Livia divorced her first husband cures for terminal illnesses thought incurable be- ron is confiding in her own psychiatrist—and in in order to marry the future emperor, to whom fore last decade. Max Gomez, an in-house medi- us, of course—about her increasingly problem- she became a close and trusted adviser. A model cal correspondent for CBS with special focus on atic addiction. Fraser’s girlish, deceptively sweet of feminine propriety, she was depicted, as in this genomics and aging, speaks to a colleague, the voice has been put to great use in musicals like case, with idealized features, soberly dressed and anchor Maurice DuBois, about the impact that “The Secret Garden” and “First Daughter Suite,” coiffed, and without pompous jewelry. (20 Rocke- breakthrough cellular therapies are having on and here it adds a perverse twist to Mark’s over- feller Plaza, at 49th St. 212-636-2000.) • If plants cancer, autoimmune diseases, organ replacement, the-top hemoglobin grotesque. Alas, Sharon’s are your thing, then Sotheby’s has you covered heart disease, and aging itself. (1395 Lexington Ave. tale is stretched so thin that you may exhale in with its sale of botanical tomes (Oct. 26) from 92y.org. Oct. 25 at 7:15.) ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO AMARGO PABLO BY ILLUSTRATION

12 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 F§D & DRINK

TABLES FOR TWO 1 back smokehouse and grocery in Alpha­ BA R TA B Harry & Ida’s bet City, which opened in 2015. They’re Luncheonette both named after the founders’ great­grandparents—the proprietors of a 11 Park Pl. (917-409-0028) now defunct Harlem deli—who came to By what alchemical process do things in this country from Hungary in the early the United States become frozen at spe­ twentieth century. The pastrami, heftily cific temporal junctions? Who, for exam­ cut and intricately marbled, is something Cafe Erzulie ple, decided that diners up and down the of a specialty, and is utterly delicious. It’s 894 Broadway, Brooklyn (718-450-3255) country should remain locked somewhere coated in a pepper­heavy rub and smoked, Erzulie, the Haitian spirit of love and beauty, holds in the nineteen­fifties? The luncheonette, then served at the luncheonette in sand­ Thursdays sacred. After reading a longer list of her a subspecies of diner, harkens back to the wiches topped with buttermilk­fermented preferences, it may seem that the vodou goddess had a hand in more than just the name of this new interwar period, to Dos Passos’s “Man­ cucumber kraut and cracked rye berries, café-cum-cocktail-lounge in Bushwick. Erzulie hattan Transfer” and men scarfing meaty or as a “deluxe” protein that can be added likes pink and light blue (the color of the floor sandwiches and pickles before loping off to a lunch plate for an extra four dollars. tiles), sweet-smelling flowers and sparkling wine (provided in the form of the bubbly Kir de Jacmel), into the growing metropolis to find hon­ Pastrami aside, this is trendified lun­ and small cakes (sticky buns are sold at the est work. Several originals from this era cheonette fare. (Smoked apricot chicken, counter). The storefront is also home to Flowers remain; the best of them is probably the anyone?) The sandwiches are all tasty. A by Leslie, a fifteen-year-old plant shop that was struggling to make rent. Instead of displacing it, Lexington Candy Shop, which dates from vegetarian chopped liver, made with the Erzulie owners preserved it as a business, and 1925 and serves thick hamburgers and hot mushrooms and walnuts, spread with as a drink. Now patrons can browse the lilies and tuna melts to Upper East Siders in a hurry. lemon­poppy marmalade, and seasoned the basil for sale near the front on their way to grab a Flowers by Leslie cocktail, a pleasantly sour med- The newest opened several weeks ago, with a sliced beet­pickled egg, manages ley of vodka, mint, and St. Germain with crescents and already has a legion of regulars—or, freshness and heartiness at once. The of cucumber. If they move farther along, to the back at least, it thinks it does. “You’re getting lunch­plate options contain a dud or patio, they may chance on an event that would make Erzulie smile: on any given night, there might be the Ida, right?” asked one of the cheeky two—the hot­smoked maple salmon is Afrofuturist lecturers, a Jamaican lobster festival servers at Harry & Ida’s Luncheonette, frigid and disappointing. The décor described as “Kingston meets Kennebunkport,” or which sits snugly in the southeastern reflects the establishment’s clash of con­ live jazz. One evening, a steel-drum player, backed by a snare and an electric bass, performed an in- corner of Tribeca. When the bewildered temporary and iconic. Patrons sit at small, strumental cover of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home customer said that, no, he had not yet stylish marble tables under bright floral to Me.” Around eleven, as the musicians started made up his mind, the server replied that wallpaper, instead of along a counter. But, tapping out the notes to “Signed, Sealed, Deliv- ered,” a listener in red jeans and a blue button-down she must have mistaken him for someone should you get too cozy, the air­condi­ leapt up to become their vocalist, singing through else. As recompense, she offered him a tioning is set to frostbite o’clock, remind­ the chorus about a dozen times. When the song half slice of pastrami, steaming, with a ing you that, like the luncheonette­goers finished, she twirled over to the band and asked if they knew her. They did not. “It’s all good!” the speckled dollop of mustard, on a piece of of yore, you must soon be back at work. mysterious singer said. “I’ll see you next Thursday!” parchment paper. (Plates and sandwiches, $9.50 to $17.45.) Was it the goddess herself? Perhaps. Thursday, after all, is her holy day.—Neima Jahromi PHOTOGRAPH BY WILLIAM MEBANE FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW FOR WILLIAM MEBANE BY PHOTOGRAPH Harry & Ida’s mother ship is a throw­ —Nicolas Niarchos

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 13

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT rassed again, this time comprehensively. at once, shockingly possible, suddenly LIMITS OF POWER For years—for centuries—the eco- mandatory, and unusually frustrating to nomic, physical, and cultural subjugation speak up. n 2015, in a hotel hallway in New York, of women has registered as something We should pay attention to the dy- Ithe movie producer Harvey Weinstein like white noise. Lately, it appears that namics that make this progress irregu- insisted that an Italian model named we’re starting to hear the tune. What lar: not all abusers meet with conse- Ambra Battilana Gutierrez come into had been a backdrop is now in the fore- quences, and not all women can attain his room. Gutierrez protested. The pre- ground; it has become a story with ro- firm ground. Men are still more often vious day, Weinstein had groped her ag- tating protagonists which never seems held to a standard of consistency than gressively, and she had returned to see to leave the news. In the past few years, of morality. The liberal Weinstein, the him wearing an N.Y.P.D. wire. “Now women have accused Bill Cosby, Roger moralizing Cosby, and the family-values- you’re embarrassing me,” Weinstein says Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, and Donald Trump promoting Fox News men were disgraced, impatiently on the recording. Men who of serial sexual misconduct. Thanks to in part, because of their hypocrisy; men routinely humiliate women are easily the advent of mainstream feminism, these who never pretended to see women as embarrassed. When their targets assert women have been supported, to an un- equals or as worthy of respect can gen- even a sliver of personhood, it registers precedented degree, by much of the media erally just keep on as they were. This is as a flustering, impermissible offense. and the public. At the same time, polit- why, a month before the 2016 election, Since the story finally broke—first in ical backlash insures hard limits for this the “Access Hollywood” tape didn’t sink the Times and then in a piece by Ronan support. Cosby’s reputation was ruined, Trump’s candidacy: pussy-grabbing did Farrow, for this magazine—that Wein- and Ailes and O’Reilly were pushed out not conflict with the image of a Presi- stein had buried decades of assault and of Fox News; Trump was elected Presi- dential candidate who stalked his female harassment allegations, with the help of dent. The increasing narrative clarity opponent on the debate stage, and who settlements and legal threats, more than about male power does not always trans- once reportedly said of women, “You fifty women have come forward to ac- late to progress. For women, it feels, all have to treat ’em like shit.” Trump’s for- cuse him of similar acts. In Farrow’s piece, mer adviser Steve Bannon was charged three women allege that they were raped. in 1996 with spousal abuse, and that didn’t (Weinstein has acknowledged misbe- pose much of a problem for him, either; havior but denied allegations of non- anyone drawn to Bannon’s brand of bru- consensual sex.) The once invulnerable tal dominance politics is perhaps unlikely producer has been fired from his own to disown him for grabbing his wife’s company and abandoned by members neck and pulling her into a car, as she of his high-profile legal team; his wife alleged. (The case was later dismissed.) is leaving him; the Academy of Mo- Other forms of recourse may be pos- tion Picture Arts and Sciences has re- sible: after Trump called his accusers liars, scinded his membership. The N.Y.P.D. one of them, Summer Zervos, a former has begun an investigation, and women “Apprentice” contestant, sued him for will continue to come forward: the defamation, with Allred’s help. As part attorney Gloria Allred, who represents of that suit, Zervos’s lawyers recently one of Weinstein’s accusers, recently subpoenaed the Trump campaign for a described receiving a “tsunami” of calls wide range of documents relating to his from women, many of them speaking treatment of women. But there are signifi-

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM BY ILLUSTRATIONS through tears. Weinstein has been embar- cant constituencies in America who are

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 15 not yet interested in holding men ac- brances comes shortly after the Depart- Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, the bur- countable for abusive behavior. And there ment of Education reversed Obama-era geoning Black Lives Matter movement are still huge swaths of women—the guidelines on college sexual-assault in- helped make the long-festering problem poor, the queer, the undocumented— vestigations, and Congress allowed the of police violence against black Ameri- who can’t count on the security that fem- Children’s Health Insurance Program to cans, already highly visible to a part of inism has conferred on its wealthier, expire. On October 3rd, the House passed the population, an urgent matter for many whiter adherents, or trust that their vic- a ban on abortion after twenty weeks. who hadn’t been forced to pay attention timization would even become news. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McCon- before. But the country as a whole di- Nevertheless, the hunger for and pos- nell has said that “virtually all” Republi- vided along predictable lines, and prog- sibility of solidarity among women beck- cans in the Senate support the legislation. ress on the issue is, three years later, diffi- ons. In the past week, women have been Being heard is one kind of power, and cult to discern. On one side, the moral posting their experiences of assault and being free is another. We have underval- weight is crushing, the energy vital and harassment on social media with the ued women’s speech for so long that we sincere. On the other side, there is dis- hashtag #MeToo. We might listen to run the risk of overburdening it. Speech, avowal and retrenchment. Between those and lament the horrific stories being right now, is just the flag that marks the poles are plenty of people who would shared, and also wonder: Whom, exactly, battle. The gains won by women are lim- rather we just talked about something are we reminding that women are treated ited to those who can demand them. In- else. This type of problem always nar- as second class? Meanwhile, symbolic dividual takedowns and #MeToo stories rows to an unavoidable point. The ex- advancement often obscures real losses. will likely affect the workings of circles ploitation of power does not stop once The recent cultural gains of popular fem- that pay lip service to the cause of gen- we consolidate the narrative of exploita- inism were won just when male politi- der equality, but they do not yet threaten tion. A genuine challenge to the hierar- cians were rolling back reproductive rights the structural impunity of powerful men chy of power will have to come from across the country. The overdue rush of as a group. those who have it. sympathy for women’s ordinary encum- In 2014, after the death of Michael —Jia Tolentino

THE PICTURES lowed, with echoes of “Sex and the “Thanks!” Madison responds. CARTOON HARVEY City” and the Gossip Girl books. Par- Nolee groans: “Perfect. Now she’ll ents watched uneasily as their eleven- have an even bigger head.” year-olds grooved to the My Scene Many of the accounts of Weinstein’s theme song: “We’re going out to- predatory behavior have cast him as an night / This scene is outta sight!” After ogre-like beast among a raft of beau- years of stagnation, Mattel’s share price ties. Last week, a parent of a former turned around. My Scene devotee found himself re- n the weeks since the revelations “My Scene Goes Hollywood,” which calling the discomfort he felt about Iabout Harvey Weinstein’s sexual pre- was released on DVD, was My Scene’s Weinstein’s jarring appearance in the dations, stories about the former Mi- cultural apotheosis. It’s a friendship movie. He e-mailed the clip, which is ramax chief have placed him in numer- morality tale (Barbie and pals are cast on YouTube: “This scene creeped me ous shower stalls, a town car, various as extras in a Lindsay Lohan movie; out when my 7-year-old daughter hotel suites, and a restaurant kitchen. Madison falls for the caddish male lead, watched this video incessantly in 2005.” But no one expected to find him lurk- and ditches her friends). Weinstein He wondered whether Weinstein’s ing in a children’s cartoon. In 2005, shows up on set in the film-within-a- Weinstein made a cameo appearance film. As the director yells “Cut,” an im- as himself in an animated feature film, posing show-business dude—Wein- starring Lindsay Lohan, called “My stein—hovers with a proprietary air: Scene Goes Hollywood.” The movie, sunglasses, dark suit, turtleneck, hands part of the Barbie franchise, was dis- in pockets. The dude, in Weinstein’s tributed by Miramax’s family division voice, says, “Picture looks great, Jim. and produced by Mattel, which was I’m really excited about it.” The My trying to lure back the tweens who Scene girls, dressed in school uniforms, were ditching their Barbies for a line recognize him and squeal. of sexy competitor dolls called Bratz. Nolee (gasps): Talking to Jim—that’s Har- To keep up, Mattel produced an vey Weinstein! edgy line of dolls called My Scene. Bar- CHelSeA: Who? bie became a night-clubbing New York Nolee: Don’t you ever watch awards shows? high schooler, with a multiethnic girl He’s, like, the biggest producer in Hollywood. posse named after Manhattan locales: Cartoon Weinstein then approaches Madison, Chelsea, Delancey, Nolee (for Madison. “Good job, young lady!” he Nolita). An animated Web series fol- says, placing a hand on her back. Harvey Weinstein

16 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 cameo happened on his own initiative. going to do something that people behaviors of real kleptocrats around the Reached by telephone, Nancy Ben- would associate with the brand. I never world, including those laid out in Where nett, one of the film’s producers, said, in a million years imagined it would the Bribes Are, a Mintz Group database. “Oh, yes. I did that little movie once be Harvey.” Rendered as a map of the world, the da- upon a time.” Her career has included 1—Lizzie Widdicombe tabase depicts, to scale and in deepening chapters at Lifetime, ABC, and Dis- shades of red, the bribe-susceptibility of ney, where a thirteen-year-old Lind- MOONLIGHTING industries within a given country, as well say Lohan starred in a film Bennett GAME OVER as details of successful prosecutions under helped produce, called “Life-Size,” the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. “Our about a doll, played by Tyra Banks, who expertise boils down to following dirty comes to life. The filmmakers had made money,” Mintz said the other day, in a a Tyra Banks doll as a prop. boardroom on lower Fifth Avenue. In “Lindsay was always, like, ‘When 2015, Where the Bribes Are was nomi- do I get my doll?’ ” Bennett recalled. nated for an Honesty Oscar from the “Fast-forward a few years. Now I’m ou’ve been named chairman of Accountability Lab, an international or- working at Mattel. We were looking Ya major-party candidate’s Presi- ganization dedicated to curbing corrup- to do things with the My Scene brand. dential campaign. And it turns out that tion in the developing world. We thought, Wouldn’t it be cool and you can work for free, because, through Mintz got his private investigator’s aspirational if the girls got to be in a a series of dubious transactions and license in 1980, a segue from investiga- movie starring Lindsay Lohan?” nimble maneuvers, you’re able to keep tive journalism. In the late seventies, he Bennett mused about My Scene. thirty or sixty million dollars peregri- was part of a team in Washington, D.C., “It was for girls who’ve grown out of nating through various overseas bank that somehow avoided blindness while princesses.” The emphasis was on accounts. Cool! piecing together shredded documents fashion (“The wardrobe on these girls Or maybe you’re the leader of one of salvaged from a dumpster in the alley was freaking awesome”) and life the hundred and ninety-five countries behind the office of a corrupt K Street style—“Girls would look at it and go, in the world. Never mind how you landed lobbyist. Since 2007, he’s taught investi- Oh my gosh, I want to go to that that gig (free election? rigged election? gative reporting at Columbia’s School of club!” The producers decided to ask dynastic inheritance? super-super-high Journalism. His habitual aversion to pub- Weinstein to do a cameo; Bennett I.Q.?), it comes with a jumbo helping of licity was tested in the nineteen-nine- said they thought it would be “fun entitlement. Being human, before long ties, when he wound up in the tabloids and kitschy.” Weinstein’s cartoon av- you start to take the perks for granted, for suing Ivana Trump in a fee dispute, atar has a defined waist and a chis- until one day up pops this thought: I after she allegedly stiffed him for work elled chin; the animators drew a ge- need more. Conveniently, you’ve discov- he did during her divorce from Donald neric Hollywood type. “Without—well, ered a back door to your country’s trea- of the same last name. I won’t say any more,” Bennett said. sury, or a slick method for friction- The archetypal kleptocrat, Mintz “You want to be complimentary to less bribery, and . . . moneymoneymoney! says, “may be good at running a coun- everybody. This is Mattel. If I were There for the taking, which is nice, but try or a business, but he’s terrible at doing ‘Family Guy’ with Seth Mac- also the source of an ancillary urgency: hiding money.” One recent weekend, Farlane, it would be different.” where to hide it. Opulent homes on a reporter in late middle age spent sev- In retrospect, Lohan’s presence in many continents, each with a private eral hours validating that dictum on the film sets off alarm bells, too—after zoo? Patek Philippe watches for every his iPhone, playing Kleptocrat over the Weinstein story broke, the actress day of the month? and over without coming close to beat- posted an Instagram video, filmed in To guide you through the do’s and ing the Investigator. the bathroom of her Dubai residence, don’ts, Jim Mintz and Irwin Chen have Each game begins with a bribe (keep- woozily defending the producer. Ben- created Kleptocrat, a new free game avail- ing a casino open in exchange for free nett insisted that Weinstein and Lohan able in the Apple App Store. Kleptocrat chips; arranging a government contract never interacted during the My Scene operates on the premise that the Player “for the mobile phone company that just project. “It had nothing to do with Bar- is a bad guy trying to launder ill-gotten hired your 16-year-old daughter as a ‘con- bie and Mattel,” she said. “Leave Bar- riches while evading the Investigator, a sultant’ ”; a kickback on a contract to de- bie out of it!” But she’d been unnerved relentless exemplar of all the anti-cor- liver defibrillators to Army hospitals). by Lohan’s defense: “It’s, like, Say noth- ruption killjoys out there. Mintz is the Hiding and laundering the money often ing. Shhh.” She sighed. “There’s a part founder of the Mintz Group, an inter- requires a network of devious offshore of me, because I’ve known Lindsay for national private-investigation firm (“Clar- lawyers (“expert in exotic island banks, so long, I feel protective.” ity in a complex world”), many of whose sleazy accountants, pirate tax-havens, Bennett said she was horrified by clients are law firms pursuing civil cases, fake charities, backdated registrations”), the Weinstein revelations, and “morti- and Chen is a designer and an adjunct corrupt military officers, well-connected fied” that she’d put him in a Barbie professor in interaction design at the New mistresses, oblivious front men, or the film. Over the years, she continued, “I School. The hide-and-seek scenarios in occasional Liechtenstein foundation. was more worried that Lindsay was Kleptocrat are extrapolated from the Eventually, the money is meant to be

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 17 enjoyed—a private fleet of jets and he- ting ready to perform songs from an album “Was that you? What a great time!” licopters; a Hong Kong shopping spree they’ve just released, called “New Worlds.” Murray said. with sequentially numbered credit cards On the album and at concerts, Murray “In the hospital scene, like a suicide for each of your in-laws; a rare-game sa- reads selections from Hemingway, Thurber, scene, you put me on your shoulders on fari; Elvis Presley’s starburst jumpsuit. Whitman, Twain, and others; the musi- a rolly chair,” Meyerson said. “Wes An- The fun lasts as long as you can evade cians—all renowned international so- derson started freaking out.” the Investigator—that is, until your bud- loists—play everything from Foster to “That was close to being dangerous,” dy’s coked-up girlfriend flips on you, or Gersh win to Shostakovich. Last Monday, Murray said, looking pleased. “Real your wife’s gym-rat cousins get clipped at Carnegie Hall, Murray sang, danced, upside-downy-fally stuff.” Then he moving suitcases of cash through cus- read, announced the score of the Yankees asked Meyerson for a favor. “Don’t screw toms. You win if you accumulate a cer- game, and chucked roses into the balco- us up tonight,” he said. “These classical tain amount of swag before getting nies from the stage. At “Late Night,” things people, this is their one shot.” busted. In the event of the latter, it’s game were shaggier: the band had been on the Murray and Vogler met in an airport over and you, a prisoner of your raven- road. As the musicians napped, Murray security line. “It was one of those morn- ous avarice, tap Play and try again. darted around the dressing rooms, trying ings,” Vogler said. “I was on tour in Ger- “Some people are sending us their on outfits. He experimented with a gold many. Somebody starts talking: ‘Hey, badges showing that they’ve won eigh- velvet-brocade jacket, rhinestone earrings, how are you going to fit that cello in the teen times in a row, but I knew my de- a plaid vest, and a black cap bearing an overhead?’ ” It was Murray. They chat- mographic would be a bit challenged by insignia of a crossed golf club and fork, ted, neither knowing who the other was. it,” Mintz, who is sixty-three, said. “The which he had finagled from Jack Nick- On the plane, Murray happened to be game developers we worked with told laus’s Golden Bear Grill. “I had to work seated next to Vogler and his cello. “We us that we had to strike a balance. We really hard to get one of these off the became friends,” Vogler said. “For two think it’s real. Sometimes you get away cooks in that place,” Murray said. years, we had no thought of collaborat- with shit and sometimes you don’t.” Vogler, emerging from his nap, ad- ing. It started as a fun project during a 1—Mark Singer mired the hat. “It has a little bit between dinner at home.” Vogler and Wang are priest and fun,” he said. He is German married, and they live in New York with DEPT. OF COLLABORATION and speaks with an accent. their children. “Bill was whistling and MAN OF THE PEOPLE “It’s a bit of a Greek Orthodox look,” singing. I thought, Boy, he knows so Murray said. “It says, ‘It’s O.K., I’m a many tunes! Pop music, I didn’t know. I priest—you can trust me.’ ” Later, he wore gave him a recording of Bach solo suites.” it on the air, as the group performed a Vogler put on a pair of spiked Louboutins. medley from “West Side Story.” “I have always longed for a friend to cross A production assistant, Jonah Mey- arts,” he said. “What really made me in- erson, approached Murray tentatively. spired was Bill singing as Baloo the bear,” n a recent Thursday, in a suite of “We worked together on ‘The Royal in a remake of “The Jungle Book.” He’d Odressing rooms at “The Late Show Tenenbaums’?” he said. “I was one of told Murray, “I think we can do a show with Stephen Colbert,” Bill Murray, the the kids?” Meyerson had played Uzi and go around the world.” cellist Jan Vogler, the violinist Mira Wang, Tenenbaum, one of Ben Stiller’s young Vogler says that the rise of the far and the pianist Vanessa Perez were get- tracksuit-wearing sons. right influenced the album’s content. “We adored the visionaries who had these early ideas, like Mark Twain, that your heart can tell you the right thing even when your time is brutal to human rights,” he said. “Or Bernstein—the Sondheim texts are incredibly clever. ‘Industry boom in America / twelve in a room in Amer- ica.’ ” The album traces the influences that European and American artists have had on one another. Vogler said, “And then we talk about how immigration is a new world. In our group, we have a Venezuelan, a Chinese, an East German, and an American of Irish descent. So you make the math.” He took his 1707 Stradivarius cello out of its case and began playing “Some- where.” A young woman came in and asked Vogler if he would be willing to “We want two pizzas, in small, nonconsecutive slices.” do a shot of rum on the air with Murray and Colbert, when he joined them on- tally unenhanced, he resembled any other was trapped in his throat, so that’s why stage. “Yes!” he said. On a monitor, Mur- tourist—an amiable, bearded fifty-three- he spoke like a cat coughing up fur balls. ray, in an Uncle Sam hat, was firing a year-old Brit with a camera hanging from I approached Caesar as a human in an T-shirt cannon into the crowd. his neck. But his fans weren’t fooled. As ape’s skin, and by the third movie I was Later, in his dressing room, Murray soon as Serkis entered Gulliver’s Gate, wearing more and more weights on my reminisced about listening to Bernstein’s a miniature-world exhibit, the requests arms and around my waist”—he began radio programs for kids: “He sounded for selfies began. to stoop and labor—“to represent the so official—he was New York, the guy “The digital masks I wear have not burden he feels of trying to preserve his leading the show. Hearing it now, you prevented me from being recognizable,” species.” Serkis said. “The Marvel generation have “For ‘Breathe,’ ” he went on, “we looked seen the behind-the-scenes footage of at home movies of Robin, and, being a performance capture, and they get dig- rag doll from the chin down”—he bulged ital avatars.” He bent to admire the HO- his eyes and stiffened—“he had to ex- scale subway cars running below Grand press everything with his face. Andrew Central Terminal, then pointed to the was amazing at showing how Robin’s Empire State Building and said, “I’ve al- laugh became extreme, his smile became ready been on top of that as King Kong, enormously wide, and his eyes were al- of course”—in the 2005 film. The exhib- most trying to look around the corner, it’s head of marketing trotted over, in- behind him.” troduced himself, and said, “My entire Serkis poked his head into the model- model-making team is going bonkers! making room, and several women with We’d love to scan you and put a tiny you nose rings dropped their tiny paint- in one of our exhibits!” Serkis bowed his brushes. “It’s my birthday today, so this head, consenting. is fucking incredible!” one said, as she Serkis’s new feature, “Breathe,” is his placed a trembling hand around Serkis’s first as a director. It’s based on the life of shoulders for a photo. The actor mur- Robin Cavendish (Andrew Garfield), mured that the adulation probably Bill Murray and Jan Vogler who contracted polio and became para- stemmed from the fact that Peter Jack- lyzed from the neck down, seemingly son, the director of the “Lord of the Rings” realize he was really a man of the peo- doomed to live out his days in a hospi- movies, “was one of the last filmmakers ple. He didn’t leave anyone out. He knew tal bed. But his wife (Claire Foy) brought to use scale models. Now it’s all digital.” that his music was going to live longer, him home, and soon, with the help of When Serkis entered the scanning and that it had to include everybody.” an inventor friend, Robin devised the room, John Segalla, an energetic “navi- On “The Late Show” and at Carne- Cavendish chair, a cozy wheelchair/ven- gator” in a navy lab coat, escorted him gie Hall, the performance ended with tilator, and began to explore the world. into the pod-shaped apparatus. “Keep Murray singing “I Feel Pretty,” and then Serkis strolled through Europe and your camera on—that’ll be like your ac- “America.” The group closes the song stopped to examine London—Big Ben, cessory,” Segalla said. “Now place your with a Sondheim lyric that provokes Tower Bridge, a Thames bordered by grass feet in the center circle.” raucous cheering. “Immigrant goes to and trees. “There’s a lot more greenery “I’ve actually been scanned before,” America, / many hellos in America,” than I remember,” he said. “Perhaps it’s Serkis said. He struck a heroic pose, peer- Murray sings. “Nobody knows in Amer- how British people imagine it will look ing down through his Leica, as if to doc- ica / Puerto Rico’s in America.” after Brexit—a return to the good old ument the Lilliputians below. 1—Sarah Larson days.” That’s also how “Breathe,” set largely Segalla said, “I’m worried the camera in the sixties and seventies, feels. The lark- strap will break when we make the figure,” THE PICTURES some film, shot on location in England’s which would be made from gypsum poly- PERFORMANCE CAPTURE Chiltern Hills, is surprisingly reminiscent mer and be one-eighty-seventh the ac- of another movie shot in the region: tor’s size. “Let’s shoot one more.” “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” When they were both satisfied, Se- He was drawn to the material because galla asked, “Where would you like him his business partner in the Imaginarium, to go?” The mini Serkis would be a kind his performance-capture studio in Lon- of hidden Easter egg, a companion to don, is Robin Cavendish’s son, Jonathan. the Yoda secreted near the airport. ndy Serkis has played two of the Another attraction, he said, “was the “Can you put me on the Eiffel Tower?” Amost kinetically captivating crea- whole notion of physicality. Climbing is Serkis said. “I actually climbed it to the tures in recent film: the bounding ape one of my hobbies, and my route into a second level, twenty-five years ago.” Caesar, in the “Planet of the Apes” se- character is physical: the weight place- “We can put you underneath it,” Se- ries, and the skulking hobbit Gollum, in ment, the gait, where they trap emotion galla replied. He noticed Serkis’s lack of the “Lord of the Rings” saga. Standing in their body. I thought of Gollum as an expression. “All right, as high as we can!” near Times Square the other day, digi- addict, addicted to the ring. All the pain —Tad Friend

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 19 to her. “I’m looking for a doctor called OUR LOCAL CORRESPONDENTS Xu,” the woman said, in rapid-fire Can- tonese. “It’s urgent—for my daughter.” Wang had been to plenty of tradi- THE GHOST SCAM tional Chinese-medicine practitioners in the neighborhood, but she’d never The Chinese immigrants whose life savings are spirited away. heard of a Dr. Xu. “He is very well known here,” the woman went on. “I think he’s BY JIAYANG FAN my daughter’s only hope.” She said that the girl had begun her first menstrual bleeding two weeks earlier and noth- ing would staunch the flow. Friends spoke of Dr. Xu as a miracle worker, but no one knew where to find him. A woman passing by overheard and interjected, “Are you talking about the Dr. Xu? He’s a treasure. I have him to thank for my mother-in-law’s incred- ible recovery.” When the first woman asked for more details, the newcomer shrugged. “He’s become a real recluse in recent years,” she said. “I don’t even know if he sees patients anymore.” Wang was curious. She’d had her own share of ailments. A decade ago, she had surgery to remove a tumor in one of her ovaries, and, a dozen or so years before that, her husband had suffered a back injury that left him un- able to work. She became responsible for supporting their two young chil- dren. “I would tell the kids, ‘Mama is not hungry today—you guys hurry up and eat,’ ” she told me. At the time, she made around a hundred and thirty dol- lars a week, at a garment factory on Grand Street, and the physical demands of the work had ravaged her body. As Wang and her new acquaintances Traditional beliefs and cultural isolation create perfect conditions for fraud. talked, it turned out that the woman who’d met Dr. Xu was from a village ang Jing was so ashamed of what impassive but watchful, accustomed, not far from where Wang had grown Whad happened to her that, for like many children of immigrants, to up. She introduced herself as Liu, asked the first hour of our conversation, in making sure that his mother wasn’t about Wang’s husband and children, June, at the Brooklyn District Attor- taken advantage of. and extended an open invitation to ney’s office, she made no eye contact, Wang, who works as a health aide have tea at a bakery she owned with as if doing so would break some spell for elderly Chinese, is sixty-one and her husband. Wang was touched by her and prevent her from finishing her careworn, with drooping eyelids so thin solicitude. It reminded her of life back story. She spoke haltingly in Manda- that I could see the wine-colored veins in Taishan, where you’d constantly cross rin, the only language we shared; she’d that threaded through them. Since com- paths with acquaintances and there was have been more comfortable in Can- ing to the United States, thirty-two years a web of trust, woven over generations, tonese or Taishanese, the dialect of the ago, she has been outside New York just from the reciprocal exchange of favors. small city in Guangdong Province on once, and the only places she has lived If you had an unfamiliar problem, you’d whose rural outskirts she was born. in are the Manhattan Chinatown and seek out a shu ren, a “familiar person,” But, more than that, she seemed un- the Brooklyn one, in Bensonhurst. to help. In the U.S., however, Chinese used to being listened to in any lan- One afternoon in late April of last people shared less about themselves. guage. She asked me not to use her year, she was leaving the Bensonhurst “Everything is business,” Wang said. real name and had brought along her branch of Marshalls when an agitated Wang was talking about her children son, who is in his late twenties. He sat woman in her early forties rushed up when Liu called out to a woman with

20 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY ANNA PARINI large sunglasses and a backpack who age and was plagued with ill health for days or the blessing would be undone. was walking toward them. “We were years, until a local shaman found a suit- Liu took Wang’s hands. “It’s fate just looking for your grandfather!” Liu able wife in the underworld, a girl in that we met,” she said, by way of fare- exclaimed. Dr. Xu’s granddaughter said the village who had died in infancy. well. As Wang walked home, she felt that he had been very sick and had Now Wang listened, as Dr. Xu’s grand- that the bag had become oddly lighter stopped taking patients. He now de- daughter told her that, to avoid the than she remembered. She broke into voted himself to good deeds, in order curse, her valuables must be blessed a run, clutching the bag, and tore it to build Karma as his end approached. immediately. She added a caveat: “You open as soon as she was home. Inside, Liu begged the granddaughter to can’t contact anyone. You will spook all she found was boxes of cornstarch make an exception, and she agreed to the spirit into taking action faster.” and laundry detergent. That evening, try to talk him round. “He will refuse “It was my son’s life,” Wang told me. her son took her to the police. your money,” she warned, as she left. “How could I have taken a chance?” “If he agrees to see you, it will be strictly Liu accompanied Wang to her apart- he first reports of what have be- as friends.” ment, to fetch her valuables. “Every- Tcome known as blessing scams “I’ve never had terribly good for- thing will be O.K., sister,” she said. She’d appeared in the Chinese media around tune,” Wang told me. “It’s always been endured difficulties herself, she confided, the turn of the century. In 2002, there endurance—life lived on a boiling ket- and Dr. Xu had always seen her through were more than eight hundred incidents tle.” But for the first time in a long them. “He doesn’t take a cent,” she said. in Hong Kong, leading the police to while she felt as if her luck were turn- “And, of course, no funny business with establish a dedicated task force. Inves- ing. She had heard about doctors who your valuables.” She held up her hand tigators determined that the suspects had amazing powers, but she’d never to show Wang a gold band set with were middle-aged women, working in encountered one. Now it seemed that carved jade. “How else would I still have crews of three or four, and that almost she might get a free consultation. this ring?” As they reached Wang’s all of them came from southern coastal The women waited on the street, apartment building, Liu offered a last provinces, whose proximity to the wealth and when the granddaughter returned admonition: “Just be careful. Dr. Xu’s of Hong Kong and Taiwan creates her face had darkened. She addressed eyes are omnipresent. If you try to col- tempting opportunities for criminals. Wang by name, although Wang didn’t lect only a portion of your valuables, The scammers travelled first to Taiwan recall having given her name. “It’s about the blessings won’t work and your son and other cities across Asia, and then your unmarried son,” the granddaugh- will remain in danger.” to Chinese communities in the United ter said. Wang hadn’t told her about her Like many immigrants, Wang had States, Canada, and Australia. In the son, either. The granddaughter said that never had much use for banks. Her life summer of 2012, in San Francisco, there Dr. Xu had lit three sticks of incense at savings—around a hundred and fifty thou- were more than fifty incidents, which an altar, one for each woman. Liu’s stick sand dollars—were hidden in a box and netted an estimated $1.5 million in cash burned brightly, because of the good in other places around her bedroom. Not and goods. Nine people have since stood deed she had done by referring the oth- even her family knew how much was in trial, and received prison sentences of ers, but the other two sticks immedi- it. She took the money and some wed- up to four years. The prosecution said ately blew out. The mother of the girl ding jewelry she almost never wore, put that the defendants were professionals with menstrual problems was told that everything into plastic bags, and placed who had been conning elderly Chinese an offended spirit in the underworld the bundle in a zippered shopping bag. women around the globe. The coun- was responsible. The news for Wang The granddaughter was waiting for tries stamped on their passports in- was even more dire: her son was in mor- them on the street corner where they’d cluded Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Bru- tal danger. Because she had recently met. She held out a large bag and told nei, and Cambodia. crossed a street in the exact spot where Wang to put her package inside. Then In New York currently, there are a pregnant woman had been killed she spun Wang around and told her to around ten reported cases each year. two decades earlier, the spirit of the join her palms together in prayer, bow, Kevin Hui, a detective in the New York unborn child, a girl, had latched on to and recite a chant: “Peace and safety to Police Department’s organized-crime Wang, intent upon claiming her son for my child, may the bodhisattva protect unit who worked on Wang’s case, told a husband. “My grandfather sees a great him.” Wang vaguely remembers the me that, after a spike in the number white tiger, a very ill omen,” the woman granddaughter tracing her fingers of cases in 2012, he and his colleagues warned. Wang asked if she couldn’t just through the air, as if drawing calligra- contacted police in Hong Kong in an keep her son safe at home. The woman phy, and at one point holding both hands effort to better understand the phe- shook her head. “If the spirit wants him, up to the mute gray sky. But, almost as nomenon. In 2014, after tracking the she can make the most harmless actions soon as the ceremony had begun, it was scammers intensively, the N.Y.P.D. fatal,” she said. “Your son might choke over. The bag was returned to Wang, lodged sealed indictments against a on his next sip of water.” along with two bottles of spring water. number of suspects, but, before arrests Wang was terrified. Everyone in One was to be used to cook rice, and could be made, they all disappeared, China knew about ming hun, or ghost the other was for drinking: everyone in presumably escaping to China. In early marriages. The mother of one of Wang’s the family must take a sip. The bag 2016, police managed to arrest three classmates had lost a son at a young should not be opened for forty-nine scammers, who took felony pleas and

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 21 served prison time. Hui said that his the woman who had introduced her- as he recalled, when he was a child, department was in the process of fol- self to Wang as Liu. Her real name seeing his parents get swindled by a lowing two gangs at work in New York. was Su Xuekun. Chinese car salesman. “You speak the Policing blessing scams is made At the District Attorney’s office, I language, and you feel like you have harder by the fact that victims are fre- met two prosecutors who had been an instant understanding and bond. quently too scared or humiliated to re- assigned to the case—Kin Ng, who Scammers prey upon that.” port the crime. Earlier this year, I spoke was born in Hong Kong and speaks Interiano and Ng, like the police, to the late Eddie Chiu, a Hong Kong Cantonese, and José Interiano, who is think that the scammers were part of native who for many years headed the Honduran-American. They told me a well-organized crime ring. Different Lin Sing Association, one of the old- that although Su had been in the crews all used the same stories, and, est Chinatown community organiza- country for only a few months, she whereas most Chinese immigrants de- tions, and often advised elderly victims had been extremely active. Two months pend on family connections to estab- who were reluctant to involve the au- after defrauding Wang, Su—this time lish themselves, the suspects arrived thorities. Some feared that doing so playing the part of the mother with knowing no one, but had no problem would expose irregularities in their im- the menstruating daughter—was part instantly finding accommodations and migration or tax status. “They are also of a group that conned a fifty-four- employment. afraid of losing face,” he said. “They year-old woman in Sunset Park out Interiano said that he didn’t con- are saving that money for their burial of nineteen thousand dollars. Su had sider the victims to be unusually gull- arrangements or to give to their grand- also been implicated in operations in ible. Rather, the scam was perfectly de- children, but sometimes their own chil- Manhattan and in Flushing, Queens, vised to take advantage of people who dren don’t even know about it.” The which netted more than four hundred had few sources of information. The victims worried that their children thousand dollars. Ng told me, “We initial conversation with the victim was would berate them for being credulous have video footage of her in the act, a way of harvesting personal informa- and for having kept the money secret and lineup identification.” tion. Using a cell phone, the first two in the first place. “They are fearful and Su was indicted on four counts of scammers could have the third listen embarrassed,” he said. “The scammers grand larceny, relating to two separate in, or they could send texts of the per- know it, and they exploit it.” incidents. Because there was more than tinent points. The third scammer would In 2014, the vulnerability of such com- one offense, prosecutors were able to then seem to have supernatural insight munities led Kenneth P. Thompson, indict her under a hate-crime statute into the victim’s life, making the warn- Brooklyn’s District Attorney at the time, and seek a stiffer sentence. It is rare for ing about the family member in dan- to set up the Immigrant Fraud Unit. Its someone to be prosecuted for a hate ger more credible. At every stage, the work has since been expanded by his crime against people of her own eth- gang would hurry things along, to successor, Eric Gonzalez. “One-third of nicity, but Interiano said that he be- heighten panic. Interiano said, “By the population here in Brooklyn are im- lieved the case warranted it. “The term the time that the victim is given a migrants, and the Chinese community ‘hate crime’ is poorly worded,” he said, way of solving all these problems, they is the fastest-growing one,” Gonzalez and suggested that “bias crime” better just want to get out of it: ‘O.K., fine, told me one afternoon in his office. Gon- I’ll do whatever it takes to save my zalez, who is a second-generation Puerto family member.’ ” Rican, spoke of witnessing the process of assimilation within his own family. met Su Xuekun on a bright Decem- “There are many factors at work—cul- I ber morning at Kings County Su- tural barriers, social isolation—that make preme Court. Her court-appointed these immigrants easy targets.” lawyer, Morris Shamuil, a gentle, har- ried man in his forties, greeted me on n the months after Wang was de- the benches outside the courtroom Ifrauded, the police received reports where she was being arraigned. He had of several similar incidents across the represented the intent of the statute. seen his client only twice since her ar- city, and they closed in on eight sus- “If you look at the statute itself, the rest, both times in court, and couldn’t pects. One day, Hui, driving through word ‘hate’ is actually omitted. The fact communicate with her unless a trans- Chinatown while off duty, saw a group is, all our victims shared several char- lator was present. of scammers in action. He called for acteristics: they were all female, they Su, handcuffed and wearing a khaki backup, and another officer filmed ev- were older, they were all Chinese.” sweatsuit, was led into the courtroom. erything and then made arrests. Officers All but one of the cases that the During the arraignment, she bowed caught four of the eight people they’d Immigrant Fraud Unit has handled and smiled deferentially at the judge, been tracking. involved perpetrators who share the Danny Chun. Su pleaded not guilty, As the police and prosecutors re- ethnic background of their victims. and, to Shamuil’s disappointment, Chun viewed the evidence, it became clear Ng said, “It’s only natural, whether it’s upheld the hate-crime charges. that one of the scammers had been in- the West Indian or the Latino or the Afterward, Shamuil took me down- volved in a number of incidents. It was East Asian community.” He laughed stairs to a visiting area where Su was

22 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 waiting for a van to take her back to Rikers Island. She was tanned, with thick brown hair that was frizzy and blond at the edges—the vestiges of a dye-and-perm job. We sat down to talk, separated by a plexiglass window. She apologized for her poor Mandarin and, whenever a word or a phrase eluded her, repeated the Cantonese equivalent to herself in increasingly agitated tones, sighing with frustration. Su told me that she had grown up in the Guangdong countryside, and began working in the fields at the age of ten. She longed to move to the city, a place where she imagined she “would not be sharing the same bed with three other siblings.” She saw how hard her parents worked, and how the work would always leave you poor, “no matter how much sweat it wrung out of you.” Even- tually, she made her way to a town, about a hundred and fifty miles down the coast from where Wang grew up, and got married. She and her husband had three teen-age children and both worked in her in-laws’ family business, a glove ¥¥ factory. She said that it had been nearly ten months since she had spoken to her countered outside China. The arrange- in China would be ignorant of what family. She didn’t want people at home ment was that Ping would charge three she was doing. to know what had happened to her, or thousand dollars, which Su could pay Still, I wondered if Su’s fabrications for her children to be ashamed. once she was earning money. They might contain at least some fragments Some nine months earlier, Su had drove in a station wagon from Toronto of truth. Shen Anqi, a legal scholar at travelled to Toronto on a tourist visa, to New York, but the cleaning job didn’t Teesside University, in the U.K., who her first time outside China. She’d re- materialize. “Sister Ping said that I has made a study of female Chinese cently discovered that her husband owed her this sum and there was only criminals, told me that the upbringing was having an affair with one of her one way to pay it back,” Su said. Su described was typical of the women colleagues, and felt that she had to get She was evasive when I asked about she’d encountered. For her recent book, away. She also thought that, if she the scam. “They just told us it would “Offending Women in Contemporary could find out about Western univer- be O.K.,” she kept saying. I asked why China,” Shen interviewed dozens of sities, her children might be able to she didn’t turn in Sister Ping in ex- child-traffickers and leaders of prosti- study at one. change for a lighter sentence, and she tution rings. The vast majority of them For a week, she stayed at a hostel said that she didn’t know Ping’s true were born in the countryside to large in Toronto’s Chinatown. At a local identity or those of the other accom- families—China’s one-child policy never bakery, she met a well-dressed, “rich- plices. It seemed that no one—neither penetrated the rural hinterland. With looking” woman, her hair in “a fancy, the victims nor the perpetrators—re- only poor education, which left them movie-star bun,” who turned out to be ally knew one another. She went on, unqualified for anything beyond man- from her home province of Guang- “I know, I know, it’s a terrible thing ual labor, they were confronted with dong. The woman, who called herself that I did to those aunties. I have el- China’s rapid social change, rising in- Sister Ping—coincidentally, the name derly folks back at home, too, so I know equality, and burgeoning materialism. of a famous human trafficker—said their pain. I wish I could take it back.” “The criminal market is easy to enter, that there would be better opportuni- When I ran the details by Kevin requires no diploma, and provides a quick ties for Su’s children in America. She Hui, of the N.Y.P.D., he said that the way for them to aspire to something offered to help her get there, set her entire story was a fabrication, and that much more than what they currently up with a cleaning job, and sort out Su had arrived in Canada with a group have,” she said. “I’m not justifying it, but her accommodations and her immi- of scammers. “We knew they were look- the incentives are certainly there.” gration status. It seemed that Su had ing for hits,” he said. “It’s a crew. That’s Shen noted that criminals like Su stumbled on the ideal shu ren—the what they do.” The D.A.’s office, like- tend to prey on people like them- kind of familiar person you rarely en- wise, doubted that any family Su had selves. “They know what it’s like to be

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 23 desperate and to fervently want some- is an ill omen—everyone knows this,” ing Japanese invaders in Manchuria. thing more through a quick fix, like a she said. The exact significance of the In the early twentieth century, after blessing,” she said. “It’s desperation symbols was less clear to her than the the fall of the last imperial dynasty, chasing desperation.” It occurred to fact that they carried significance. Jon- traditional Chinese religion came me that, when Su told Wang that athan H. X. Lee, an associate profes- under attack from patriotic intellec- they’d been fated to meet, she was sor of Asian-American Studies at San tuals like Sun Yat-sen, who thought it right, although not in the sense that Francisco State University, told me that had impeded the country’s progress she intended. The country’s vertigi- this is common among contemporary toward modernity. Temples were de- nous change, incomprehensible to Chinese. “It’s the ritual and symbol molished and statues smashed. In 1949, both, had sparked in each a kind of that have been passed down,” he said. the Communists established an athe- magical thinking, a frantic hope that “They carry import, even if their his- ist state and sought to purge the coun- life could be transformed by a lucky torical origins have been lost.” He said try of its superstitious ways. “It is as if break, and it was this that had brought that this was due, in part, to the syn- a raging tidal wave has swept away all them together. cretism of Chinese belief—the way the demons and ghosts,” Chairman Su told me that she was almost re- that the indigenous religion of prehis- Mao said in 1955. By this time, “ghost” lieved to have been caught: “I don’t toric China gradually blended with had been repurposed as a word for any have to lie anymore. The pressure’s off.” later traditions. malign influence, especially a counter- And, to an indigent Chinese immi- Traditional Chinese religion revolved revolutionary one. grant, the facilities at Rikers didn’t seem around veneration of the spirits of one’s Nonetheless, in rural areas private such a hardship. “We live fifty women ancestors. Daoism, which originated in domestic rituals to venerate ancestors to a room,” she said. “There’s time and China around the fourth century B.C., or ward off ghosts were often toler- space to exercise. Life is orderly. The introduced practices of occult medi- ated. And, in 1982, Deng Xiaoping’s food is not bad at all.” There was one cine and exorcism. Buddhism, which liberal reforms permitted religious officer in particular, a white woman, was brought to China by Indian mis- gatherings to take place again. “The who checked in on her regularly. sionaries around the first century A.D., idea was that it was just for old peo- “In all my months here, the lady added the idea of continuous rebirth ple, and, with time, it would die out,” prison guard, she was the first real and the retributive effects of Karma. Ian Johnson, the author of “The Souls American I get to know who’s almost Meanwhile, Confucianism’s emphasis of China,” a recent book on the resur- like a friend,” Su said. She raised her on filial piety formalized ancestor wor- gence of religious belief in the coun- hand to brush a stray hair out of her ship as part of everyday life: ancestors try, told me. Religion didn’t die out, eyes. On her middle finger, she wore who did not receive offerings of food but, as Johnson explained, the decades a ring of gold and jade. and incense would become hungry and of prohibition had eroded most peo- irritated in the netherworld. “Gods, ple’s understanding of spiritual tradi- became curious about the elements ghosts, and ancestors are all connected tions. “If you are of a certain genera- I of the story that the scammers told in this world view,” Lee told me. “Gods tion and grew up in the Communist Wang, and of the ritual that they per- are exceptional historical human be- state, you don’t really know what real formed. A little research revealed that ings or ancestors who have become religion is in China,” he said. they had been patched together from deified. Hungry ghosts are ancestors Lee, however, cautioned against various strands of traditional Chinese who have not been properly venerated.” viewing Chinese religion as inherently belief. The white tiger has been a staple (Many Chinese communities annually vulnerable to blessing scams. He cited of Chinese astrology since antiquity; celebrate the Hungry Ghost Festival, scandals involving Christian tele van - it represents a thirst for blood and is in order to feed and placate these dis- gelists and mentioned a case, ear lier thought to bring mortal danger to in- ruptive spirits.) this year, in which a Jamaican- American fants and pregnant women. The forty- In China, ghosts have been partic- retiree was defrauded of her life sav- nine days that Wang was told to wait ularly integrated into social and ad- ings by two people at a church in East before opening the package echoed ministrative life. By the early twelfth Flatbush, one of whom had posed as the forty-nine days that spirits of the century, Daoist exorcism rites used ju- a pastor. Ultimately, it seems, it was recently dead must wait to be allocated dicial language to interrogate and sen- faith itself, rather than a specific cos- their place in the afterlife—a belief tence troublesome ghosts. The founder mology, that made people susceptible that entered Chinese tradition, from of the Ming dynasty, the Hongwu em- to fraud. India, in the fourth century B.C. The peror, issued a proclamation, in 1375, I spoke to Barend Ter Haar, a scholar chant that she was told to recite was stipulating that “every county and vil- of Chinese religion at Oxford Univer- plausibly Buddhist, and the grand- lage” must have an altar for appeasing sity, who made a further point: al- daughter’s gesture during the blessing, wandering ghosts, and that there should though, from a Western perspective, arms raised heavenward, evoked Dao- be one for every hundred households. some of these religious practices might ist ritual. As late as 1896, in a town in Fujian, seem exotic, they often fulfill functions When I asked Wang about the sym- city bureaucrats presided over a ritual that are easily recognizable. Bereaved bols, she was vague about their mean- to drive out the hungry ghosts of peo- parents visiting a village shaman to ar- ing and their origins. “The white tiger ple who had been killed while fight- range a ghost marriage for a deceased

24 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017

child might well experience a relief Eventually, she said that the prison I was to marry a man who could take similar to that provided by grief coun- doctor had diagnosed a thyroid con- me to America was a rare piece of selling or psychoanalysis. Ter Haar told dition that required surgery. She had good fortune, which everyone en- me, “The point is that it gives the hoped to return to China for the op- vied.” She smiled wryly and said, “I sufferer a sense of agency and an ex- eration. I told her that when many rich had this sense that coming to the planation that can be empowering.” Chinese people need surgery they pay Beautiful Country”—the literal trans- to come to America. “I would be too lation of “America” in Chinese—“was arly this year, Su returned to court scared,” she said. “To be lying immo- my blessing. I had no idea how I got Ea number of times, and aston- bilized in a bed at a hospital deaf and so lucky.” ished everyone by refusing to take a mute, without knowing a single per- Once she’d arrived, however, Wang plea deal, of between two and a half son?” She used Wang’s term for a help- learned that she would see her hus- and four years in prison, that the pros- ful contact: shu ren. Su was now expe- band only once a week. “There weren’t ecutors were offering. Interiano, who riencing the same immigrant loneliness so many restaurant jobs back then, so was acting as counsel for the prose- that had made Wang susceptible to he had to go out of state to work,” she cution, wondered if she realized how the scam. said. “There were no options. For men, slim her chances would be if she in- it was the back kitchen of restaurants. sisted on fighting her case. “We’ve n a warm Sunday morning in For women, it was the garment facto- got video recordings, pictures,” he OJune, I met Wang and her son at ries.” She’d hoped to learn English, said. “This would be pretty close to a Cantonese restaurant in Benson- but had never had the time. “Living a slam dunk.” hurst. The spacious dining hall, a pop- and working around East Broadway, Shamuil was exasperated with his ular venue for Chinese wedding ban- it wasn’t so different from living in client. “This is the best deal she’s going quets, was bustling with families, China. You heard no English and you to get from the judge,” he said. He strollers and walkers wedged against spoke no English.” speculated that Su thought she could the tables. Wang’s son asked me to act Her husband had advised her to get less jail time by driving a hard bar- like a friend of the family rather than avoid dwelling on her loss. “He tells gain. “Probably in prison she heard like a journalist, explaining that his me to think of myself as a newly ar- about other Chinese people in simi- mother had kept her loss secret from rived immigrant, fresh off the plane, lar circumstances who got less time,” all her friends. with just the clothes on my back and he said, shrugging. “Rikers is a small Steaming dim-sum carts rolled by, without a cent in my pocket,” she place. All the Chinese people know but Wang was anxious that we not order said. “But how can I erase thirty each other and talk.” too much. “Enough, enough,” she said, years?” Talking to Su, I’d got the impres- as soon as there were half a dozen items I asked if she had any kind of sion that she didn’t fully understand on the table. “We won’t be able to finish belief that would sustain her. She the severity of her situation. It was as it all.” She turned to me and smiled. shook her head vigorously, and for if the American judicial system were “The food here is authentic, not like the first time I saw anger in her face. merely a nuisance that could be worked in Manhattan, where they are just cheat- “Nothing,” she said. “I refuse to be- around, given enough perseverance. At ing the foreigners,” she said. lieve in anything anymore—no gods, one point, she said that, once her case I asked Wang how she had man- no ghosts.” was resolved, she wanted to return to aged since losing her money, and she As the lunch crowd began to disperse, the States to resume the college search shook her head. She’d continued work a family stopped by to say hello. Wang’s for her children. as a health aide, but she hadn’t in- face rearranged itself into a sunny smile, Finally, in mid-May, Judge Chun creased her hours. “If you work more, and she exchanged pleasantries. After told Shamuil, “If the defendant doesn’t you risk losing Medicaid benefits,” she her friends had gone, she told me that, take the plea, her sentence will cer- said. “And there are not many employ- even with her closest family, she no tainly go up. I will be withdrawing the ment options for someone my age.” longer discussed what had happened; offer after today.” After consulting She didn’t mind the work, finding it it unleashed too much pain. “But it sits, with an interpreter, Su took the deal, almost leisurely compared with the every second, like a cold stone in my brows furrowed and eyes downcast. twelve-hour shifts she had once en- chest, so much so that I can’t breathe,” “Do you have anything to say?” the dured in the garment factory. she told me. Wang smoothed a wrin- judge asked her. “I’m sorry,” she said She put down her chopsticks and kle in the tablecloth and didn’t look up. softly through the interpreter. “I won’t reminisced about her early years in After some moments, she spoke again: do it again.” New York. She’d met her husband in “In the evenings sometimes, I take a I went downstairs to talk to Su, in Guangdong; he was already working walk. There is a park not too far from the visiting area. She looked tired, with in the U.S., but had returned to find my home.” She said that there was a faintly bloodshot eyes and hair hast- a wife. “You don’t know how poor particular bench, under a leafy oak, ily tied in a ponytail. I asked her why China was then, especially in the where she liked to sit. “I scream, just it had taken her so long to plead. She countryside,” she said. “America was open my lungs and scream,” she said, didn’t answer, but massaged her throat this golden dream. Everyone wanted in a whisper. “People stare, but in the and swallowed with some difficulty. to go, but very few people could. That dark everyone is a stranger.” 

26 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 (c) Wisconsin is technically the most SHOUTS & MURMURS populous state. (d) Mexico shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

Answer: Will accept (b), (c), or (d), but “bazillion” is not a number.

8. John McCain is to dumb captured idiot as Donald Trump is to: (a) Lazy (no) (b) Dumb (no) (c) Never captured! (d) THE FLAG!!!!!!

Answer: Donald Trump owns a lot of casinos.

9. One of the following sentences means approximately the same thing as “I have tremendous respect for TRUMP I.Q. TEST women and the many roles they serve that are vital to the fabric of BY BROTI GUPTA AND REBECCA CAPLAN our society and our economy.” Choose the one: Welcome to the TRUMP™ I.Q. Test. 4. Police brutality is to very good be- (a) “And when you’re a star, they let It’s the hardest test in the entire world, havior as kneeling is to: you do it. You can do anything. Grab and Barack Obama couldn’t take it ’cuz (a) Very good behavior them by the pussy.” he was too scared, and because you (b) Pretty bad behavior (b) “A person who is very flat-chested have to be American to take it. Please (c) Really great behavior is very hard to be a ten.” answer the questions below to the best (d) Spitting on a veteran’s widow (c) “You could see there was blood of your ability or Lady ability. coming out of her eyes, blood com- Answer: (d) ing out of her wherever.” 1. Which of these five is unlike the (d) “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, other four? 5. Complete the lyric: “This land is my perhaps I’d be dating her.” (a) Nazis land ______” (e) All of the above (b) White supremacists (a) “this land is your land.” (c) Very bad people (b) “the monkey chased the weasel.” Answer: The locker room! (d) Very good people (c) [A full 3 Doors Down song] (e) Misunderstood Nazis (d) “.” 10. Nine years ago, a Kenyan illegal was elected President. One year ago, Answer: (c) Answer: (d) a very smart white (technically speak- ing) man was elected President. Who 2. Unscramble this word: MAGA 6. Obama golfing is to taxpayer fraud will be elected President in three years? (a) GAMA as Trump golfing is to: (a) A white man (b) MAGA (a) Good for taxpayers (b) A white woman (c) AAGM (b) Good at golf (c) A black woman (d) GAAM (c) Donald Trump owns many golfs! (d) Ha, “elections” (d) All of the above Answer: (b). The A’s were switched. Answer: (d), but (b) and (c) were very Answer: (d) funny jokes. 3. If Ivanka is 35 and Melania is 47, what is the oldest that a woman can be? 7. Donald lost the popular vote by 3 11. Which of the following does not (a) 40 million ballots. Hillary won the pop- belong? (b) 48 ular vote by 3 million ballots. How (a) 1 (c) 35 many votes did Donald win by if you (b) 5 (d) 50 don’t count those people who voted (c) 9 illegally? (d) Brown people Answer: Would accept (b) or (d); there (a) 1 bazillion

LUCI GUTIÉRREZ LUCI is no way to know yet. (b) 69 million Answer: (d) 

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 27 pratfalls. I recognized one of the turns ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS of mind that characterize Owens’s in- fluential inventions of new things for the old medium of painting to do. I couldn’t THINK BIG match it when a fifth-grade girl asked me, as a drop-in careerist, how to become Laura Owens explores what painting can do. a writer. I said that she was one already, if she was writing. With a thought to BY PETER SCHJELDAHL Owens, I added that she should carry a notebook around, so that people would see that she is a writer. Owens has grounded her life, since childhood, on being, and being regarded as, an artist. The Whitney Museum’s description of an upcoming show of her work there as “a midcareer retrospective” seems su- perfluous for someone who has never not been in midcareer. The first slide that she had shown the children was of a drawing she said she had made when she was a teen-ager. It will be included in the Whitney show. Dark and smudgy and heavily worked, it depicts a silhouetted figure in a jail cell, reaching forward through the bars, which cast long shadows, toward a dog dan- gling a key from its mouth. The dog ap- pears uncoöperative. She told me that the image may have come to her in a dream, which she has no wish to ana- lyze. The second slide documented a civic-poster contest that she had won when she was fifteen—promoting a county foster-care program for children— in her home town of Norwalk, Ohio. Third, from four years later, came a pains- taking pencil copy of a photograph of the Beatles. She demurred when I remarked on her evident early giftedness. “I don’t believe there’s such a thing as innate tal- ent,” she said. “It’s about desires and pas- sions that lead to a focus on certain things and seeing the world in a certain way.” For the retrospective, Owens and the Whitney curator Scott Rothkopf have Owens in her studio in Los Angeles: “How do you keep things moving along?” created an astonishing catalogue, both epic and intimate: six hundred and sixty- erious but friendly, a woman who ing from a low scaffold and being splat- three pages of reproduced works, criti- Srarely jokes but readily laughs, the tered with blue paint from a pail that cal essays, literary texts, photographs, Los Angeles artist Laura Owens, for- had followed her down—a studio mis- clippings, memoirs by friends, journals, ty-seven years old, was pleasantly dishev- hap, in 2013, that an assistant had paused correspondence, exhibition plans, and elled in mom attire: shirt, baggy shorts, to snap before helping her up. The next ephemera. (Each of the eight thousand sneakers, big glasses. “Don’t be afraid to slide showed her paint-smudged face, copies comes with a unique silk-screen make mistakes,” she said to the children smiling—no harm. The kids seemed fas- cover, handmade in Owens’s studio.) The in each of the five classes she spoke to cinated but perplexed, as well they might first major item in the catalogue is a mem- on Career Day, in June, at her nine-year- have been. An essay could be written on oir by her mother, Carol Hendrickson, a old daughter Nova’s public elementary the semantic distinctions, which Owens public-health nurse, who recalls once school. She accompanied the advice with had just elided, between mistakes and having casually suggested to Owens, then a PowerPoint slide of herself after fall- accidents, and between accidents and a teen-ager, that she consider pursuing

28 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY commercial art or teaching art to chil- Owens’s soft-spoken earnestness They had an aura redolent of the dren. Hendrickson writes that her daugh- held the kids’ attention even when she Owens. I became so wildly enthusias- ter “was very upset with me, and tearful, flashed images of complicated abstrac- tic that the guy backed away from me. and said, ‘Don’t you think you’ll ever see tions, such as a series, “Pavement Ka- I believe that his qualm crept in when my art in a museum?’ And I thought, ‘An raoke” (2012), that congregates thick I reviewed the group show for the Vil- art museum? Wow!’ So I stopped short impasto, crisp grid designs, effulgent lage Voice. I wrote that Owens’s work, for a second and said, ‘Well, yes, of course stains, silk-screen newsprint (from a although charismatic, was perhaps I think that.’ ” In a journal that Owens nineteen-sixties underground paper, clever to a fault: “an advancing weather kept in her early twenties, she wrote a the Berkeley Barb), collaged gingham, front of tacit quotation marks” and “not fourteen-point list entitled “How to Be and fragments of lava rock. But the beautiful, but ‘about’ beauty.” the Best Artist in the World.” Among figurative ones went over best. One, I wasn’t ready to accept that Owens the dictates: “Think big,” “Contradict from 2004, was of a cartoonish, gangly had hit on a necessarily willful new di- yourself constantly,” “No Guilt,” “Do not horse that appears scrunched to fit onto rection—not exactly forward, but fruit- be afraid of anything,” “Say very little,” the canvas. “How do you make horses?” fully sideways—for painting, my fa- and “Know that if you didn’t choose to a girl in a class of hearing-impaired vorite art form. She knew the critical be an artist— You would have certainly first graders asked. Owens said, “I look challenges, from Draconianly avant- entertained world domination or mass at a lot of pictures of horses.” A teacher gardist CalArts, and was taking them murder or sainthood.” suggested a demonstration. On a large head on, with crackling wit and a Owens showed the children a slide sheet of paper, Owens drew three rect- haunted heart. Was new art supposed of an effortful drawing from a life class angles. In one, she swiftly limned a to enforce awareness of its physical and that she had taken while still in high more straightforward equine. In the institutional environs? Owens envi- school. She followed it with mostly ab- others, she rendered a rudimentary sioned an exhibition space, such as the stract works from her years at the Rhode mountain range and an owl. “See?” she one that you stood in to view her Island School of Design, where she said. “You can do anything!” The re- picture. A painting about looking at graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sults looked simple and guileless in the paintings, from an alienated distance, fine arts, in 1992, and at the California way of art by children, but fluent and this “Untitled” is itself a painting to be Institute of the Arts, where she earned decisive. (Not easy for an adult to do.) looked at, as closely as you like. The a master’s, in 1994. At RISD, she said, “I A small boy lit up when, on the spot, dinky abstractions, fictively remote, are was so happy to be among people who the teacher taught him the binocu- smack on the surface. Funny, faintly like to make things”; and, at CalArts, lars-like hand sign for “owl.” A girl de- melancholy, and fantastically intelli- “I learned philosophies and ideas of art manded a mermaid, which Owens drew gent, the work somewhat recalls the right now.” She displayed one work that beside the horse. The drawings stayed philosophical cartooning of Saul Stein- wasn’t hers: “The Blue Window” (1911), with the class when we left. berg, but vigorously brushed at a com- by Matisse, a still-life set against a land- manding scale. I think that there is a scape. She said, “I love that because it first became aware of Owens in 1996, figure in the picture, albeit an invisi- is so very beautiful.” But mostly she I when one of her paintings in a SoHo ble one. It’s the viewer: you, or, in my stuck to themes of enterprise—“Send group show invaded my sleep. The case, me. I came to see that what I had your poems out into the world,” she strongest young artists of that time, taken for arch skepticism was strate- told a girl who said that she wrote po- drilled in critical theory and wielding gic sincerity. etry—and resilience. “When you make newer mediums, disdained painting as Unusually for Owens, the painting a mistake, see what’s good about it,” she weak-minded and archaic. Most of the was inspired by a specific work of a said. “Mistakes are little windows into picture “Untitled” (1995), about six feet past artist—“Studio Interior” (circa what is possible.” She told me that her high by seven feet wide, is taken up by 1882), a sumptuous piece by William most productive time for working has a few red diagonal lines on a pinkish Merritt Chase, in the Los Angeles always been between ten at night and ground. They indicate a floor seen in County Museum of Art—while not three in the morning, nowadays often perspective—or half of one, because much resembling it. She never imi- after a multitasking day at her studio the lines converge toward the right tates a style or, really, has one of her in Boyle Heights, just across the Hol- edge of the canvas—topped by a tri- own. Rather, she has adopted craft lywood Freeway from downtown—a angular slice of mottled green wall spot- techniques and teased out iconographic low-income neighborhood where she ted with some four dozen tiny abstract and formal ideas from whole fields and also runs a celebrated art-and-perfor- paintings-within-the-painting. (Artist genres of the pictorial. Gestural and mance space, 356 Mission Road, which friends of Owens had daubed in some color-field abstraction, digital imag- has lately found itself a target of anti- of those, at her invitation.) A couple ing, American folk art, Japanese land- gentrification protests. In the hours of nights after viewing the work, I scape, children’s-book illustration, around midnight, she said, “I get down dreamed that an annoying young man dropped shadows, greeting-card and focussed. Making mistakes, wip- was pestering me to tell him if paint- whimsy, clip art, wallpaper design, silk ing them off. Really communing. At ings by an old woman, perhaps his screen, tapestry, typography, stencils, night, it’s a matter of hearing the work, grandmother, were worth anything. To recorded-sound elements, and me- after walking past it all day.” get rid of him, I gave them a glance. chanical moving parts (in one series

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 29 of paintings, shapes with hidden mo- ite painters?” For example? By making kitsch.” But, as with me, her initial re- tors function like clock hands) take a “painting for Cézanne to see,” Owens sistance gave way as the seriousness of turns or combine. Slam-bang visual said. What would she and Cézanne Owens’s intentions sank in; Smith be- impact co-occurs with whispering sub- discuss? “Definitely paying attention came one of the artist’s most discern- tlety. Owens’s art imparts a sense, from to what each mark is doing.” She said ing observers. Meanwhile, certain art- first to last, of being in the middle of of Cézanne, “He is the god of paying- ists caught Owens’s drift immediately. a process that doesn’t evolve but that attention-ness.” Owens’s marks have a Rachel Harrison, the daring and in- spreads, deltalike, from a mysterious secondhand feel—indeed, with ghostly fluential sculptor, recalled for me the headwater. However strenuous tech- quotation marks, the echt Gen-X finger Gavin Brown show, with its “thick paint nically, her work is reliably feather-light gesture—but they breathe liberty. (“You and comical flat shadows”: “I found it in feeling, even at architectural scale. can do anything!”) The effect has noth- exceedingly deft formally, while demon- “Ambitious” seems both too heavy and ing to do with virtuosity. She said, “I strating that although painting was too petty a word for her. Her drive don’t like somebody fetishizing their pretty unfashionable at the time, it was seems impersonal: a daemon, which skill level. Painting is one of the few still possible to throw a bomb.” she hosts. Recently, I posed that no- mediums—I don’t know, maybe cine- Owens’s idea of suiting paintings tion to her. It seemed to strike her as matography is another—where the skill to sites, in a sort of conceptually self- over the top. She said, “I think about level can just take over and really se- conscious new baroque, has paid off in what is required of me.” duce people. It’s not that I don’t ap- such dizzyingly complex recent works preciate pieces of art that are done as a one-off installation, “Ten Paint- wens was a contrarian at RISD, well. But how do you keep things ings,” last year at the Wattis Institute Ochafing at male painting teach- moving along?” for Contemporary Arts, in San Fran- ers who pushed latter-day variants of Owens told me of her first visit, cisco. The paintings didn’t exist yet, macho Abstract Expressionism and when she was a young girl, to the su- except in the potential form of con- condescended to their female students. perb Cleveland Museum of Art. She cealed panels that shared a continu- One of them suggested that the women saw at a distance an immense color-field ous surface of room-girdling hand- in his class paint from life, encourag- painting by Morris Louis and walked made wallpaper: in effect, a single ing abstraction among the men. Owens, toward it. As she approached, “the painting, more than fourteen feet high painting abstractly, organized a club painting got bigger and bigger and I and more than a hundred and seventy- with other dissatisfied students to pur- got smaller and smaller.” Add that three feet long, executed in acrylic, oil, sue a curriculum of their own. At Cal- memory to CalArts smarts and you vinyl paint, silk-screen inks, charcoal, Arts, she imbibed intellectual rigor, in- have a take on Owens’s first New York pastel, graphite, and sand. Non-repeat- cluding from the late conceptual art- solo show, at Gavin Brown’s Enter- ing bitmap patterns, derived from a ist and legendary teacher Michael prise, in 1997, and her first in London, scanned piece of crumpled paper, un- Asher, who intended his site-specific, at Sadie Coles, the following year. derlay passages of newsprint reproduc- temporary works to under- The former featured a vast tions, fugitive brushwork, a micro- mine the conventions of art painting of a blurry sea- graphic version of Picasso’s “Guernica,” institutions. (One whole scape with two curly “W” and attached whatnots, including a show of his consisted in re- shapes, representing sea- watercolor of a sailing ship by Owens’s moving a wall in a gallery gulls in flight, which ap- grandfather, patterns of embroidery by to expose the business peared to cast shadows her grandmother, and a drawing by office.) He discounted onto the sky behind them. her younger brother Lincoln, who is a painting. Yet Owens took A landscape at Coles was chef in New Orleans. Prevailing blacks, to “using house paint and similarly large and custom- whites, and pale blues, with purple ac- making a lot of big can- ized for the space. (Owens cents, imposed a gently rhythmic unity. vases,” she told me, with has stayed stubbornly loyal At intervals on the walls, phone num- “giant shapes and then to those two middle-range bers were printed, with invitations to small, concentrated moments of things,” dealers, and to Galerie Gisela Capi- text any question that a viewer might such as bits of still-life. You know at a tain, in Cologne, despite wooing from have. The nearest of eight concealed glance that they are by Owens, not richer and more prestigious galleries.) loudspeakers would deliver an answer from their looks, which are miscella- The work at Coles was installed fac- in a male, female, or robotic voice, to neous, but from how they feel: vaguely ing a window across a room that had spooky or daffy effect, from a com- familiar and acutely strange. a pillar in the middle. Owens painted puter that Owens, with technical help, Owens took a keen interest in what- a shadow of the pillar onto her canvas. had programmed to recognize a hun- ever her peers were up to, eschewing Both paintings felt as much like places dred key words. (Imagine an ultra- competitiveness. “It’s debilitating to as like pictures, anticipating Owens’s high-tech Magic 8 Ball.) To the query think that this person is above me and engulfing installations of recent years. “Where are the paintings?,” all the this person is below me. I want to be Critics were wary. Roberta Smith, speakers replied, “Here!” in a conversation with someone. Why in the Times, detected “cynicism” in the When the show closed—with can’t I think I’m talking to my favor- seagulls painting: “monochrome meets no prospect, Owens said, of ever being

30 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 ard, that I now associate with Owens. In company, she is cordial and volu- FROM “LIKE NEBRASKA” ble—nice, in a word—but with what often seems a fraction of a mind that He drinks like the faithful, is occultly busy elsewhere. The first the way they fold their hands thing that you notice about her is her In church, like two owls roosting in an elm. gaze, wide-eyed and fixed on you, as if Karaoke night at the Don’t Care Bar: you had dropped from the sky. It takes A worker staggers, following the lyric a moment to realize that you are not To a lit-up song, and outside obliged to be commensurately inter- A stranger chews their ears off esting. She consumes so little social ox- About the Green Desert: fields of soy and corn ygen that people around her tend to And soy and corn and soy, get a bit high, laughing at anything. Devoid of flowers,and the bees going damn drunk She submits to being interviewed as with hunger. you might to being treated by a trusted She leans into him like a stray cat against a fence. dentist: it’s endurable and over with A hundred species of insects, the stranger tells them, in a space soon enough. I found myself repeat- where there should have been a thousand. edly apologizing to her for the impo- A truck leaving backfires. sition. She seemed not to hear. She was Beneath the only street light, a possum answering questions. Practices its death. Owens’s father died of complica- His hand at the small of her back, tions following knee surgery this year, On the depthless roses painted in July. He was a flamboyant attorney, On her old black dress. who strutted around Norwalk in a Stet- —Sophie Klahr son. Her parents divorced when she was seventeen. She credits her father with having instilled in her a fervent repeated—the supports were cut out. I how “dry” a place it is, the climate and liberalism, which has prompted her to saw the results hanging at her studio, architecture “so jarring.” “But after two engage in feminist causes and in cam- each nine feet high by seven feet wide, years I felt very differently. Felt easy paigns for Democratic candidates, but and terrific: arbitrary fragments of the and familiar.” Oak, deodar, citron, and which is only rarely and obliquely ex- wallpaper which, owing to the formal- pepper trees and capricious gardens pressed in her art. Raised Catholic, she izing power of rectangles, feel discretely crowd up to the stairs and patios around left the church in rebellion against its composed. Cropped, the installation’s Owens’s house. A sleek building below anti-abortion doctrine. I was startled ambient energies become compressed contains a studio and room for guests. when, in her car one day, as she drove dynamisms. The works’ derivation I was invited for dinner one sum- us between gallery shows, her usual makes them highly original aesthetic mer evening. Owens’s mother—who mildness gave way to flaming rage. We objects. On the model of Duchampian moved from Ohio to Los Angeles eight had seen a policeman hassle a young readymades, perhaps call them “made- years ago, and, last year, into a house guy whose offense, it appeared, had alreadies”: created by being revealed. In next door with her second husband, been to cross a street so lackadaisically the studio, heaps of the surplus wall- Richard Hendrickson, a retired small- as to impede the cop’s car for a few paper, like outtakes on a cutting-room city-newspaper reporter and editor— seconds. “That is so like them!” she said floor, awaited possible roles in works brought salad. Pasta and sauce mate- of uniformed authority. She told me a to come. rialized amid the comings and goings maxim imparted to her by her father: and breezy chat, in the open kitchen, “Never tell the police anything.” n a vertiginously hilly part of Echo of Owens and of friends from her ca- But Owens adores rules, even, or IPark, near Dodger Stadium, Owens pacious circle of artists, musicians, writ- perhaps especially, trivial ones. In an shares a tidy two-story house, clinging ers, filmmakers, and other creative An- interview with one of her close friends, to a steep slope, with her second hus- gelenos. (“I would be nowhere without the novelist Rachel Kushner, in 2003, band, Sohrab Mohebbi—an Iranian- them,” she told me.) Two or three times, she described a summer job that she born writer and curator who works at the frenetic family dog, a rescue mutt had had when she was seventeen: Redcat, a CalArts-affiliated art center named Molly, escaped the house and checking trucks hauling trash and in downtown Los Angeles—and her had to be recaptured. Downstairs, garbage into a landfill. She recalled, two children, Nova and Henry (who Henry and Nova took turns practicing “I had the power to say, in a logical is twelve), from her previous marriage, the piano. and non-emotional way, ‘You can’t to the painter Edgar Bryan, who lives At twilight, we all took a walk—or deliver that without a tarp over it.’ nearby. She told me by e-mail that when a hike, what with the hills—a half mile People would get frustrated and re- she moved to Los Angeles to attend or so to a park and back, in a sort of spond, ‘What do you mean? You want CalArts, in 1992, she was put off by mood, at once energized and haphaz- me to just pull out of here, put a tarp

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 31 on, and then come right back?’ I in form,” she explained. “Against the dent, that what she says, it could be would look at them and say, ‘Yes, that’s different paradigm of the Gestalt ob- anything and I’d believe she meant it what you’ll have to do if you want ject, like a Jackson Pollock painting—a but on an even deeper level than the to dump your trash—it’s the law.’ It single image that jolts you. Now art is words could convey.” That’s the very had its appeal.” An anarchic stickler: all about being constructed out of re- tenor of the borrowed images that that’s Owens. lationships between parts.” Owens paints: not appropriations but “Say very little,” Owens told her- vicarious embodiments. wens can be certain that her Echo self in her early-nineties journal. And, OPark house was built in 1942, be- in a way, she maintains that policy, n 2003, Owens became the young- cause a renovation, in 2013, discovered even when going on at length about Iest artist ever to be given a retro- paper stereotype plates (used to cast her art. Her public talks, delivered with spective at Los Angeles’s Museum of lead cylinders for printing) of the Los an air of professional duty, tend to be Contemporary Art. By that time, she Angeles Times from that year. They remarkably boring. But get her on the had begun to gravitate from abstrac- had been employed as flashing beneath subject of another artist and she bright- tion toward fanciful figurative imag- the shingled exterior. Transferred to ens. She and I discussed by e-mail the ery, loosely brushed. “I decided I needed silk screens in a complex procedure in- country-music paragon Patsy Cline. to bring in the human figure, because volving monoprint molds, the antique I commented on Cline’s way with it was something that I was leaving reports of distant war and of local the 1952 chestnut “You Belong to out, and to break the habit of working events, and the commercial and Me,” rather a high-class number for a for sites. To push myself.” In 2006, she classified ads, now do double duty as country girl: “Fly the ocean in a silver returned to Ohio for a year. She helped text and texture in some of Owens’s plane . . . Just remember till you’re her mother buy a new house with a paintings. The source and content of home again / You belong to me.” Cline four-car garage, which became her stu- the plates both do and don’t matter to sings it with wondering respect for its dio, and painted her baby Henry, Edenic her, it seems. What counts is their decorum, such that the song is no lon- landscapes, flowers, and wacky animals, specificity, as things distinct from other ger about a fancy girl remonstrating such as the horse that she showed to things that are like them. “All art now with her fancy guy, but about Cline’s the schoolchildren. The works often is collage,” she said to me, with refer- imagining of what it’s like to be such suggest to me the state of mind of a ence not just to cutting and pasting but a girl, with such a guy. Owens com- new mother too tired to think while to the incorporation of methods and mented, “She has a way of singing that too dedicated not to work. Owens images with prior uses. “Heterogeneous feels like she is so relaxed and confi- confirmed the impression in an e-mail: “Being a mom and still making art in- volves absolutely opposite parts of your brain. One is really selfish and the other is absolutely selfless.” The domestic turn in Owens’s life and subject mat- ter dismayed friends when she returned to L.A. “It was uncool. I was told by many people, ‘Well, that’s the end of your art career.’ ” How did that make her feel? “Angered,” she said. I think that the gawky pictures were a way for Owens to reconnect with the soul of the girl who had tried to get just right the vision of a figure in jail and a sassy dog. She wasn’t going to be embar- rassed about it. Owens was asked, in 2003, to contrib- ute to a feature, in Vogue, of self-portraits of women artists. She says in the Whit- ney catalogue, “I said no several times because my work doesn’t really deal with self-representation.” Finally, she made an insouciant watercolor of herself, seen from the back, standing in a small boat and talking to the sun. A bird perches on a wave, and Owens’s dog bobs past on a piece of driftwood. “I sent the image off to Vogue and Anna Wintour rejected it.” Such occasional offenses to elegant taste may explain a wobbliness in the coed-brick hulk, built in 1926, that was community members, done research market for Owens’s paintings. Her works once a printing plant and then a piano and do not believe we have found any sell briskly to devoted collectors but less warehouse. It sports a stately corner evidence this will result in the rever- well on the investment-minded second- entrance on a dusty, all but untrafficked sal of gentrification.” It’s a fact of ex- ary market, which favors reliable prod- stretch of blocks, zoned for light in- perience that the appearance of art- uct lines. Her peak at auction—three dustry, that are quiescent by day and ists and galleries in low-income areas hundred and sixty thousand dollars, at deserted at night. It was vacant when reliably portends rising real-estate Sotheby’s, a year ago—is hardly peanuts, Owens found it, in 2012, while in search values, with dire consequences for but it lags the millions for works by some of a space as a studio that could also many residents. What’s rare in the case of her contemporaries, all stylistically house an exhibition—her first in L.A. of 356, which owns no property and consistent and nearly all male. Even after since 2003—of works that she would has no monetary investment in Boyle two decades of growing fame and es- make there. She rented it with support Heights, is the sensitivity of its leader, teem, her art’s values retard transposi- from her longtime dealer Gavin Brown on the horns of an irremediable di- tion into prices. and her friend Wendy Yao, the owner lemma. An adage about the inevitable of an avant-gardish Chinatown book- fate of good deeds springs to mind. So ne day, I met with Owens in her store, Ooga Booga. The show, “12 Paint- does an unlucky resonance of Owens’s Omain studio. Consumed by prepa- ings,” installed on a dramatic scale with creative disposition. rations for the Whitney show, she had the austere immensity of the building’s “A painting seems to never not be no special work in progress. She was ground-floor space, proved to be more art . . . even whether it is sitting on wearing an off-the-shoulder cashmere than the sum of its parts. The effect the shelf in the art-supply store or in sweater, but over a white T-shirt that gave Owens the idea, in partnership the dumpster,” Owens said in a sym- rather sabotaged the chic. As usual, her with Brown and Yao, to make 356 Mis- posium, earlier this year, at the Mu- long brown hair was pulled up in a knot sion Road a Kunsthalle—a non-collect- seum of Modern Art, on the hero- with no evident advice from a mirror. ing museum for exhibitions, perfor- ically perverse French Dadaist Francis I watched while she and an assistant, mances, community workshops (there’s Picabia. (Why bother vying to win at David Berezin, huddled at a computer a weekly one in animation, for chil- a game that can’t be lost?) Analogously, to color-correct pages for the Whitney dren), lectures, a branch of Ooga Booga, an art space can never not stand for catalogue—difficult by computer, she and fund-raisers for liberal causes (never art, whether up your street or on the said. “Digital color shoots out. Real for itself and never taking a commis- moon. “Making mistakes is part of the color is reflective.” Getting the right sion). The venue has hosted hundreds work,” Owens told the children at her blue for the sky in a photograph of of events. Subsisting on sales from daughter’s school. Will 356 Mission Owens and a friend on an outing in shows and, whenever needed, on con- turn out to have been a mistake for Death Valley took most of a minute. tributions from Owens, it amounts to her? It will be an illuminating one, if Other assistants worked at other com- a work of art in itself—and, lately, a so. Conceived in the hope of opening puters. Phone calls were frequent. bull’s-eye for controversy. a window of social possibility, 356 may Owens Skyped at one point, also about A shadowy group, the Boyle Heights instead have hit a stone wall of polit- the catalogue, with Scott Rothkopf, in Alliance Against Artwashing and Dis- ical rancor. New York, in editorial detail so granu- placement, has picketed and otherwise Owens said to me, “I really believe lar that I almost fell asleep. The studio publicly opposed 356 Mission as a sym- in art, that art can do things that other is like a cross between a factory and bol of the increasing gentrification of things don’t do. It’s important to try, a laboratory. One colossal space is the largely Latino neighborhood. This and fail, and to believe that things can equipped with worktables and contains agonizes Owens. She wrote to me, “I do things.” She is a genius of revela- leaning stacks of big, well-used silk have conducted myself and lived my tions, along the lines of that premise. screens on heavy metal frames. Another life as an engaged citizen in my city She revealed twenty years ago, and has room, merely vast, is hung with un- and my various communities,” and she kept doing it, that what seemed a ter- finished paintings in what seemed a has empathy for victims of displace- minally exhausted state of painting tentative simulacrum of a museum or ments that are “tragic and very real.” could be a garden of unlimited, fresh- gallery show. She said, “I want to see Last spring, she sought and got a meet- ening delights. Now she confronts a how they look with each other. What ing to discuss the situation with mem- larger imbroglio. Does art still, if it ever works, what doesn’t.” The mismatched bers of the activist group, who proved did, matter beyond the commercial and paintings on the day of my visit felt like unbending. “Their single and inflexi- institutional bubbles of the art world? actors at an audition. If someone looked ble demand is that we hand over the Can aesthetic pleasures have ethical at me the way Owens was looking at keys of the space to them and end 356. payoffs, imparting lessons for life? Or them, I’d be scared. Crowded book- It is also very important to them that does life overrule rationales for art al- shelves, a couch, a large coffee table, I ‘leave graciously’ by signing a docu- together? These are not abstract ques- chairs, and kitchen accessories furnish ment saying I agree with all their ideas tions for Owens. They spur her to prop- rough amenity. and I have learned from them.” Sub- ositions that, availing or not, solicit The studio is in a building next door sequently: “All of the staff and our dead-honest responses of eye, mind, to 356 Mission Road, a two-story stuc- friends have talked this over, asked and heart. 

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 33 A REPORTER AT LARGE EMPIRE OF PAIN

The Sackler family’s ruthless promotion of opioids generated billions of dollars—and millions of addicts.

BY PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE

he north wing of the Metropol- nonprofit “incubator” that supports or- chemical cousin of heroin which is up itan Museum of Art is a vast, ganizations like the Malala Fund. Sack- to twice as powerful as morphine. In the Tairy enclosure featuring a banked ler recently told W that she finds the past, doctors had been reluctant to pre- wall of glass and the Temple of Den- word “philanthropy” old-fashioned. She scribe strong opioids—as synthetic drugs dur, a sandstone monument that was considers herself a “social entrepreneur.” derived from opium are known—except constructed beside the Nile two millen- When the Met was originally built, for acute cancer pain and end-of-life pal- nia ago and transported to the Met, in 1880, one of its trustees, the lawyer Jo- liative care, because of a long-standing, brick by brick, as a gift from the Egyp- seph Choate, gave a speech to Gilded and well-founded, fear about the addic- tian government. The space, which Age industrialists who had gathered to tive properties of these drugs. “Few drugs opened in 1978 and is known as the celebrate its dedication, and, in a bid for are as dangerous as the opioids,” David Sackler Wing, is also itself a monument, their support, offered the sly observation Kessler, the former commissioner of the to one of America’s great philanthropic that what philanthropy really buys is im- Food and Drug Administration, told me. dynasties. The Brooklyn-born brothers mortality: “Think of it, ye millionaires Purdue launched OxyContin with a Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond Sack- of many markets, what glory may yet be marketing campaign that attempted to ler, all physicians, donated lavishly during yours, if you only listen to our advice, to counter this attitude and change the pre- their lifetimes to an astounding range convert pork into porcelain, grain and scribing habits of doctors. The company of institutions, many of which today produce into priceless pottery, the rude funded research and paid doctors to make bear the family name: the Sackler Gal- ores of commerce into sculptured mar- the case that concerns about opioid ad- lery, in Washington; the Sackler Mu- ble.” Through such transubstantiation, diction were overblown, and that Oxy- seum, at Harvard; the Sackler Center many fortunes have passed into endur- Contin could safely treat an ever-wider for Arts Education, at the Guggenheim; ing civic institutions. Over time, the or- range of maladies. Sales representatives the Sackler Wing at the Louvre; and igins of a clan’s largesse are largely for- marketed OxyContin as a product “to Sackler institutes and facilities at Co- gotten, and we recall only the philanthropic start with and to stay with.” Millions of lumbia, Oxford, and a dozen other uni- legacy, prompted by the name on the patients found the drug to be a vital salve versities. The Sacklers have endowed building. According to Forbes, the Sack- for excruciating pain. But many others professorships and underwritten med- lers are now one of America’s richest grew so hooked on it that, between doses, ical research. The art scholar Thomas families, with a collective net worth of they experienced debilitating withdrawal. Lawton once likened the eldest brother, thirteen billion dollars—more than the Since 1999, two hundred thousand Arthur, to “a modern Medici.” Before Rockefellers or the Mellons. The bulk Americans have died from overdoses re- Arthur’s death, in 1987, he advised his of the Sacklers’ fortune has been accu- lated to OxyContin and other prescrip- children, “Leave the world a better place mulated only in recent decades, yet the tion opioids. Many addicts, finding pre- than when you entered it.” source of their wealth is to most people scription painkillers too expensive or too Mortimer died in 2010, and Raymond as obscure as that of the robber barons. difficult to obtain, have turned to her- died earlier this year. The brothers be- While the Sacklers are interviewed reg- oin. According to the American Society queathed to their heirs a laudable tradi- ularly on the subject of their generosity, of Addiction Medicine, four out of five tion of benevolence, and an immense they almost never speak publicly about people who try heroin today started with fortune with which to indulge it. Ar- the family business, Purdue Pharma—a prescription painkillers. The most recent thur’s daughter Elizabeth is on the board privately held company, based in Stam- figures from the Centers for Disease of the Brooklyn Museum, where she en- ford, Connecticut, that developed the Control and Prevention suggest that a dowed the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center prescription painkiller OxyContin. Upon hundred and forty-five Americans now for Feminist Art. Raymond’s sons, Rich- its release, in 1995, OxyContin was hailed die every day from opioid overdoses. ard and Jonathan, established a profes- as a medical breakthrough, a long-last- Andrew Kolodny, the co-director of sorship at Yale Cancer Center. “My fa- ing narcotic that could help patients the Opioid Policy Research Collabora- ther raised Jon and me to believe that suffering from moderate to severe pain. tive, at Brandeis University, has worked philanthropy is an important part of how The drug became a blockbuster, and has with hundreds of patients addicted to we should fill our lives,” Richard has said. reportedly generated some thirty-five opioids. He told me that, though many Marissa Sackler, the thirty-six-year-old billion dollars in revenue for Purdue. fatal overdoses have resulted from opi- daughter of Mortimer and his third wife, But OxyContin is a controversial drug. oids other than OxyContin, the crisis Theresa Rowling, founded Beespace, a Its sole active ingredient is oxycodone, a was initially precipitated by a shift in

34 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 An addiction specialist said that the Sacklers’ firm, Purdue Pharma, bears the “lion’s share” of the blame for the opioid crisis.

ILLUSTRATION BY BEN WISEMAN THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 35 the culture of prescribing—a shift care- in commerce, rather than from medical and promotion to pharmaceutical mar- fully engineered by Purdue. “If you practice. They shared an entrepreneur- keting.” Allen Frances put it differently: look at the prescribing trends for all ial bent. As a teen-ager, Mortimer be- “Most of the questionable practices that the different opioids, it’s in 1996 that came the advertising manager of his high- propelled the pharmaceutical industry prescribing really takes off,” Kolodny school newspaper, and after persuading into the scourge it is today can be at- said. “It’s not a coincidence. That was Chesterfield to place a cigarette ad he tributed to Arthur Sackler.” the year Purdue launched a multifac- got a five-dollar commission—a lot of Advertising has always entailed some eted campaign that misinformed the money at a time when, he later said, “even degree of persuasive license, and Arthur’s medical community about the risks.” doctors were selling apples in the streets.” techniques were sometimes blatantly de- When I asked Kolodny how much of In 1942, Arthur helped pay his medi- ceptive. In the nineteen-fifties, he pro- the blame Purdue bears for the current cal-school tuition by taking a copywrit- duced an ad for a new Pfizer antibiotic, public-health crisis, he responded, “The ing job at William Douglas McAdams, Sigmamycin: an array of doctors’ busi- lion’s share.” a small ad agency that specialized in the ness cards, alongside the words “More Although the Sackler name can be medical field. He proved so adept at this and more physicians find Sigmamycin found on dozens of buildings, Purdue’s work that he eventually bought the the antibiotic therapy of choice.” It was Web site scarcely mentions the family, agency—and revolutionized the indus- the medical equivalent of putting Mickey and a list of the company’s board of di- try. Until then, pharmaceutical compa- Mantle on a box of Wheaties. In 1959, rectors fails to include eight family mem- nies had not availed themselves of Mad- an investigative reporter for The Satur- bers, from three generations, who serve ison Avenue pizzazz and trickery. As day Review tried to contact some of the in that capacity. “I don’t know how many both a doctor and an adman, Arthur dis- doctors whose names were on the cards. rooms in different parts of the world I’ve played a Don Draper-style intuition for They did not exist. given talks in that were named after the the alchemy of marketing. He recog- During the sixties, Arthur got rich Sacklers,” Allen Frances, the former chair nized that selling new drugs requires a marketing the tranquillizers Librium and of psychiatry at Duke University School seduction of not just the patient but the Valium. One Librium ad depicted a young of Medicine, told me. “Their name has doctor who writes the prescription. woman carrying an armload of books, been pushed forward as the epitome of Sackler saw doctors as unimpeach- and suggested that even the quotidian good works and of the fruits of the cap- able stewards of public health. “I would anxiety a college freshman feels upon italist system. But, when it comes down rather place myself and my family at the leaving home might be best handled with to it, they’ve earned this fortune at the judgment and mercy of a fellow-physician tranquillizers. Such students “may be expense of millions of people who are than that of the state,” he liked to say. afflicted by a sense of lost identity,” the addicted. It’s shocking how they have So in selling new drugs he devised cam- copy read, adding that university life pre- gotten away with it.” paigns that appealed directly to clini- sented “a whole new world . . . of anxi- cians, placing splashy ads in medical jour- ety.” The ad ran in a medical journal. “ r. Sackler considered himself and nals and distributing literature to doctors’ Sackler promoted Valium for such a wide Dwas considered to be the patriarch offices. Seeing that physicians were most range of uses that, in 1965, a physician of the Sackler family,” a lawyer repre- heavily influenced by their own peers, he writing in the journal Psychosomatics senting Arthur Sackler’s children once enlisted prominent ones to endorse his asked, “When do we not use this drug?” observed. Arthur was a gap-toothed, One campaign encouraged doctors to commanding polymath who trained prescribe Valium to people with no psy- under the Dutch psychoanalyst Johan chiatric symptoms whatsoever: “For this H. W. van Ophuijsen, whom Sackler kind of patient—with no demonstrable proudly described as “Freud’s favorite pathology—consider the usefulness of disciple.” Arthur and his brothers, the Valium.” Roche, the maker of Valium, children of Jewish immigrants from Gali- had conducted no studies of its addic- cia and Poland, grew up in Brooklyn tive potential. Win Gerson, who worked during the Depression. All three attended with Sackler at the agency, told the jour- medical school, and worked together at nalist Sam Quinones years later that the the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, in products, and cited scientific studies Valium campaign was a great success, in Queens, collectively publishing some (which were often underwritten by the part because the drug was so effective. hundred and fifty scholarly papers. Ar- pharmaceutical companies themselves). “It kind of made junkies of people, but thur became fascinated, he later explained, John Kallir, who worked under Sackler that drug worked,” Gerson said. By 1973, by the ways that “nature and disease can for ten years at McAdams, recalled, “Sack- American doctors were writing more reveal their secrets.” The Sacklers were ler’s ads had a very serious, clinical than a hundred million tranquillizer pre- especially interested in the biological as- look—a physician talking to a physician. scriptions a year, and countless patients pects of psychiatric disorders, and in phar- But it was advertising.” In 1997, Arthur became hooked. The Senate held hear- maceutical alternatives to mid-century was posthumously inducted into the ings on what Edward Kennedy called “a methods such as electroshock therapy Medical Advertising Hall of Fame, and nightmare of dependence and addiction.” and psychoanalysis. a citation praised his achievement in While running his advertising com- But the brothers made their fortunes “bringing the full power of advertising pany, Arthur Sackler became a publisher,

36 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 starting a biweekly newspaper, the Med- ical Tribune, which eventually reached six hundred thousand physicians. He scoffed at suggestions that there was a conflict of interest between his roles as the head of a pharmaceutical-advertising company and the publisher of a periodical for doc- tors. But in 1959 it emerged that a com- pany he owned, MD Publications, had paid the chief of the antibiotics division of the F.D.A., Henry Welch, nearly three hundred thousand dollars in exchange for Welch’s help in promoting certain drugs. Sometimes, when Welch was giv- ing a speech, he inserted a drug’s adver- tising slogan into his remarks. (After the payments were discovered, he resigned.) When I asked John Kallir about the Welch scandal, he chuckled, and said, “He got co-opted by Artie.” In 1952, the Sackler brothers bought “Actually, it all makes me feel statistically a small patent-medicine company, Pur- average-sized and I resent the tone.” due Frederick, which was based in Green- wich Village and made such unglamorous staples as laxatives and earwax remover. •• According to court documents, each brother would control a third of the com- Washington to testify before Kefauver’s ered for a fond memorial service at the pany, but Arthur, who was occupied with subcommittee. A panel of senators as- Met, but Arthur’s children fought bit- his publishing and advertising ventures, sailed him with pointed questions, but terly with Gillian, and sparred with Mor- would play a passive role. The journalist he was a formidable interlocutor—slip- timer and Raymond, over the estate. They Barry Meier, in his 2003 book, “Pain Killer: pery, aloof, and impeccably prepared— accused Gillian of trying to steal their A ‘Wonder’ Drug’s Trail of Addiction and no senator landed a blow. At one inheritance, and of being “inspired var- and Death,” remarks that Arthur treated point, Sackler caught Kefauver in an error iously by greed, malice, or vindictiveness his brothers “not as siblings but more like and said, “If you personally had taken toward her stepchildren.” According to his progeny and understudies.” Now Ray- the training that a physician requires to the minutes of a family meeting, Arthur’s mond and Mortimer, who became joint get a degree, you would never have made daughter Elizabeth suggested that he C.E.O.s, had a company of their own. that mistake.” Quizzed about his pro- had hidden the true worth of some fam- In the early sixties, Estes Kefauver, a motion of a cholesterol drug that had ily investments, “because he didn’t want Tennessee senator, chaired a subcommit- many side effects, including hair loss, Morty and Ray to think they were more tee that looked into the pharmaceutical Sackler deadpanned, “I would prefer to valuable.” A family lawyer told the chil- industry, which was growing rapidly. Ke- have thin hair to thick coronaries.” dren, “There were no absolutely white fauver, who had previously investigated As the Sacklers grew wealthy, they lilies here on either side.” the Mafia, was especially intrigued by became patrons of the arts. In 1974, the Arthur’s descendants still owned a the Sackler brothers. A memo prepared brothers gave the Met three and a half third of Purdue Frederick, and Mortimer by Kefauver’s staff noted, “The Sackler million dollars, enabling the construc- and Raymond were interested in buying empire is a completely integrated oper- tion of the wing housing the Temple of the stake. The company, which had moved ation in that it can devise a new drug in Dendur. Mortimer used the space for a to Connecticut and would eventually its drug development enterprise, have lavish birthday party. The cake was in change its name to Purdue Pharma, had the drug clinically tested and secure fa- the shape of the Great Sphinx, but its made a great deal of money under their vorable reports on the drug from the var- face had been replaced with Mortimer’s. stewardship. But such riches were about ious hospitals with which they have In April, 1987, when Arthur Sackler to seem paltry. By the time the brothers connections, conceive the advertising ap- was seventy-three, he demanded that his made their bid, Purdue was already de- proach and prepare the actual advertis- third wife, Gillian, account for all their veloping a new drug: OxyContin. ing copy with which to promote the drug, household expenditures. He dictated a have the clinical articles as well as ad- terse memo: “I am determined to take umans have cultivated the opium vertising copy published in their own command of all situations for which I Hpoppy for five thousand years. The medical journals, [and] prepare and plant personally and my estate bear the ulti- father of medicine, Hippocrates, recog- articles in newspapers and magazines.” mate obligation.” A month later, he had nized the therapeutic properties of the In January, 1962, Arthur travelled to a heart attack, and died. The family gath- plant. But even in the ancient world

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 37 people understood that the benevolent and several other colleagues, pointing the drug was ingrained concern regard- powers of this narcotic were offset by the out that MS Contin could “face such ing the “abuse potential” of opioids. But, perils of addiction. In his 1996 book, serious generic competition that other fortuitously, while the company was de- “Opium: A History,” Martin Booth notes controlled-release opioids must be con- veloping OxyContin, some physicians that, for the Romans, the poppy was a sidered.” The memo described ongo- began arguing that American medicine symbol of both sleep and death. During ing efforts to create a product contain- should reëxamine this bias. Highly re- the nineteen-eighties, Raymond and ing oxycodone, an opioid that had been garded doctors, like Russell Portenoy, Mortimer Sackler had a great success at developed by German scientists in 1916. then a pain specialist at Memorial Sloan Purdue with an innovative painkiller Oxycodone, which was inexpensive Kettering Cancer Center, in New York, called MS Contin, a morphine pill with to produce, was already used in other spoke out about the problem of un- a patented “controlled release” formula: drugs, such as Percodan (in which it is treated chronic pain—and the wisdom the drug dissolved gradually into the blended with aspirin) and Percocet (in of using opioids to treat it. “There is a bloodstream over several hours. (“Con- which it is blended with Tylenol). Pur- growing literature showing that these tin” was short for “continuous.”) MS Con- due developed a pill of pure oxycodone, drugs can be used for a long time, with tin became the biggest seller in Purdue’s with a time-release formula similar to few side effects,” Portenoy told the history. But, by the late eighties, its patent that of MS Contin. The company de- Times, in 1993. Describing opioids as a was about to expire, and Purdue execu- cided to produce doses as low as ten mil- “gift from nature,” he said that they tives started looking for a drug to replace it. ligrams, but also jumbo pills—eighty needed to be destigmatized. Portenoy, One executive who was centrally in- milligrams and a hundred and sixty mil- who received funding from Purdue, volved in this effort was Raymond’s son ligrams—whose potency far exceeded decried the reticence among clinicians Richard, an enigmatic, slightly awk- that of any prescription opioid on the to administer such narcotics for chronic ward man who, in the family tradition, market. As Barry Meier writes, in “Pain pain, claiming that it was indicative had trained as a doctor. Richard had Killer,” “In terms of narcotic firepower, of “opiophobia,” and suggesting that joined Purdue in 1971 as an assistant to OxyContin was a nuclear weapon.” concerns about addiction and abuse his father, and worked his way up. His Before releasing OxyContin, Purdue amounted to a “medical myth.” In 1997, name appears on numerous medical conducted focus groups with doctors the American Academy of Pain Med- patents. In the summer of 1990, a Pur- and learned that the “biggest negative” icine and the American Pain Society due scientist sent a memo to Richard that might prevent widespread use of published a statement regarding the use of opioids to treat chronic pain. The statement was written by a com- mittee chaired by Dr. J. David Had- dox, a paid speaker for Purdue. Richard Sackler worked tirelessly to make OxyContin a blockbuster, telling colleagues how devoted he was to the drug’s success. The F.D.A. approved OxyContin in 1995, for use in treating moderate to severe pain. Purdue had conducted no clinical studies on how addictive or prone to abuse the drug might be. But the F.D.A., in an unusual step, approved a package insert for Oxy- Contin which announced that the drug was safer than rival painkillers, because the patented delayed-absorption mech- anism “is believed to reduce the abuse liability.” David Kessler, who ran the F.D.A. at the time, told me that he was “not involved in the approval.” The F.D.A. examiner who oversaw the pro- cess, Dr. Curtis Wright, left the agency shortly afterward. Within two years, he had taken a job at Purdue. Mortimer, Raymond, and Richard Sackler launched OxyContin with one of the biggest pharmaceutical market- ing campaigns in history, deploying many persuasive techniques pioneered by Ar- “I’m not saying he’s perfect. I’m just saying deal with it.” thur. Steven May, who joined Purdue as an OxyContin sales representative in recited to me, with a rueful laugh. “Those drug-policy adviser to the Obama Ad- 1999, recalled, “At the time, we felt like were the specific words. I can still re- ministration, said, “That’s the real Greek we were doing a righteous thing.” He member, all these years later.” He went tragedy of this—that so many well-mean- used to tell himself, “There’s millions of on, “I found out pretty fast that it wasn’t ing doctors got co-opted. The level of people in pain, and we have the solu- true.” In 2002, a sales manager from the influence is just mind-boggling. Pur- tion.” (May is no longer working for Pur- company, William Gergely, told a state due gave money to continuing medical due.) The company assembled a sales investigator in Florida that Purdue ex- education, to state medical boards, to force of as many as a thousand represen- ecutives “told us to say things like it is faux grassroots organizations.” Accord- tatives and armed them with charts show- ‘virtually’ non-addicting.” ing to training materials, Purdue in- ing OxyContin’s benefits. May attended May didn’t ask doctors simply to take structed sales representatives to assure a three-week training session at Purdue’s his word on OxyContin; he presented doctors—repeatedly and without evi- headquarters. At a celebratory dinner them with studies and literature pro- dence—that “fewer than one per cent” following the training, he was seated at vided by other physicians. Purdue had a of patients who took OxyContin be- a table with Richard Sackler. “I was blown speakers’ bureau, and it paid several thou- came addicted. (In 1999, a Purdue-funded away,” he recalled. “My first impression sand clinicians to attend medical con- study of patients who used OxyContin of him was ‘This is the dude that made ferences and deliver presentations about for headaches found that the addiction it happen. He has a company that his the merits of the drug. Doctors were rate was thirteen per cent.) family owns. I want to be him one day.’ ” offered all- expenses-paid trips to pain - Within five years of its introduction, A major thrust of the sales campaign management seminars in places like Boca OxyContin was generating a billion dol- was that OxyContin should be prescribed Raton. Such spending was worth the in- lars a year. “There is no sign of it slow- not merely for the kind of severe short- vestment: internal Purdue records indi- ing down,” Richard Sackler told a team term pain associated with surgery or can- cate that doctors who attended these of company representatives in 2000. The cer but also for less acute, longer- lasting seminars in 1996 wrote OxyContin pre- sales force was heavily incentivized to pain: arthritis, back pain, sports injuries, scriptions more than twice as often as those push the drug. In a memo, a sales man- fibromyalgia. The number of conditions who didn’t. The company advertised in ager in Tennessee wrote, “$$$$$$$$$$$$$ that OxyContin could treat seemed al- medical journals, sponsored Web sites It’s Bonus Time in the Neighborhood!” most unlimited. According to internal about chronic pain, and distributed a diz- May, who was assigned to the Virginia documents, Purdue officials discovered zying variety of OxyContin swag: fish- area, was astonished to learn that espe- that many doctors wrongly assumed ing hats, plush toys, luggage tags. Pur- cially skillful colleagues were earning that oxycodone was less potent than due also produced promotional videos hundreds of thousands of dollars in com- morphine—a misconception that the featuring satisfied patients—like a con- missions. One year, May’s own sales company exploited. struction worker who talked about how were so brisk that Purdue rewarded him A 1995 memo sent to the launch team OxyContin had eased his chronic back with a trip to Hawaii. As prescriptions emphasized that the company did “not pain, allowing him to return to work. multiplied, Purdue executives—and the want to niche” OxyContin just for can- The videos, which also included testi- Sackler family members on the compa- cer pain. A primary objective in Purdue’s monials from pain specialists, were sent ny’s board—appeared happy to fund 2002 budget plan was to “broaden” the to tens of thousands of doctors. The mar- such blandishments. Internal budget use of OxyContin for pain management. keting of OxyContin relied on an em- plans described the company’s sales force As May put it, “What Purdue did really pirical circularity: the company convinced as its “most valuable resource.” In 2001, well was target physicians, like general doctors of the drug’s safety with litera- Purdue Pharma paid forty million dol- practitioners, who were not pain special- ture that had been produced by doctors lars in bonuses. ists.” In its internal literature, Purdue who were paid, or funded, by the company. One day, May drove with a colleague similarly spoke of reaching patients who David Juurlink, who runs the divi- to Lewisburg, a small city in West Vir- were “opioid naïve.” Because OxyCon- sion of clinical pharmacology and tox- ginia. They were there to visit a doctor tin was so powerful and potentially ad- icology at the University of Toronto, who had been one of May’s top pre- dictive, David Kessler told me, from a told me that OxyContin’s success can scribers. When they arrived, the doctor public-health standpoint “the goal should be attributed partly to the fact that so was ashen. A relative had just died, she have been to sell the least dose of the many doctors wanted to believe in the explained. The girl had overdosed on drug to the smallest number of patients.” therapeutic benefits of opioids. “The OxyContin. But this approach was at odds with the primary goal of medical practice is the competitive imperatives of a pharmaceu- relief of suffering, and one of the most rthur and Mortimer Sackler each tical company, he continued. So Purdue common types that doctors see is pain,” Amarried three times, and Raymond set out to do exactly the opposite. he said. “You’ve got a patient in pain, married once. There are fifteen Sackler Sales reps, May told me, received train- you’ve got a doctor who genuinely wants children in the second generation, most ing in “overcoming objections” from cli- to help, and now suddenly you have an of whom have children of their own. The nicians. If a doctor inquired about ad- intervention that—we are told—is safe Sackler clan has pursued a variety of diction, May had a talking point ready. and effective.” causes and interests. In 2011, Mortimer’s “ ‘The delivery system is believed to re- Keith Humphreys, a professor of psy- widow, Theresa, who sits on the board duce the abuse liability of the drug,’ ” he chiatry at Stanford, who served as a of Purdue, was awarded the Prince of

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 39 Wales Medal for Art Philanthropy. When life in Europe, shuttling among resi- abusing the medication, not patients the medal was conferred, Ian Dejardin, dences in England, the Swiss Alps, and with legitimate medical needs.” the Sackler Director of the Dulwich Pic- Cap d’Antibes. (In 1999, Queen Eliz- In 2002, a twenty-nine-year-old ture Gallery, remarked, “It’s going to be abeth conferred an honorary knight- woman from New Jersey, Jill Skolek, difficult not to make her sound utterly hood on him, in recognition of his was prescribed OxyContin for a back saintly.” Theresa’s daughter, Sophie, is philanthropy.) Raymond Sackler, who injury. One night, after four months on married to the English cricket player lived in Connecticut, had a more mod- the drug, she died in her sleep, from re- Jamie Dalrymple, and lives in a forty- est temperament and came to his office spiratory arrest, leaving behind a six- million-dollar house in London. Ray- at Purdue—where he was respectfully year-old son. Her mother, Marianne mond’s thirty-seven-year-old grandson, known as Dr. Raymond—every day. Skolek Perez, was a nurse. Distraught David Sackler, runs a family investment John Kallir, Arthur’s former advertis- and bewildered, she became convinced fund, and is the only member of the third ing colleague, recalled, “Ray was quiet, that OxyContin was dangerous. Perez generation who sits on Purdue’s board. reasonably honest, always married to wrote to F.D.A. officials, urging them The fact that Purdue is privately held is the same woman. The least interesting to append to OxyContin packaging a a major reason that the Sacklers’ connec- of the three brothers.” warning about the risk of addiction. tion to OxyContin has remained ob- The following year, Perez attended scure. A publicly traded company makes lmost immediately after OxyCon- a conference on addiction at Colum- periodic disclosures to its shareholders. Atin’s release, there were signs that bia University. A sandy-haired man But Purdue, Barry Meier writes, “was people were abusing it in rural areas named Robin Hogen, wearing a pin- the Sackler family’s private domain.” like Maine and Appalachia. If you striped suit and a bow tie, was there, On occasion, press accounts about ground the pills up and snorted them, too. He was a communications special- OxyContin note that profits from the or dissolved them in liquid and injected ist for Purdue, and had launched a vig- drug flow to the Sacklers, but these sto- them, you could override the time- orous campaign to defend the drug, ries tend to depict the family as a mono- release mechanism and deliver a huge warning newspapers to be careful about lith. As with any large clan, however, narcotic payload all at once. Perversely, their coverage. “We’re going to be there are fissures of discord. In the eight- users could learn about such methods watching them,” he had promised. He ies, Mortimer sued his ex-wife Ger- by reading a warning label that came had also enlisted Rudolph Giuliani, the traud, claiming that she had illegally with each prescription, which said, former mayor of New York, and his as- taken possession of an apartment that “Taking broken, chewed or crushed sociate Bernard Kerik to preëmpt any he owned on Fifth Avenue and had OxyContin tablets could lead to the government crackdown. “We have to loaned it out to a contingent of mod- rapid release and absorption of a po- be politically Machiavellian, often, to els and photographers. None of Ar- tentially toxic dose.” As more and more win the day,” Hogen once said. At the thur’s descendants sit on the compa- doctors prescribed OxyContin for an Columbia event, he was asked about ny’s board. At a courthouse in Long ever-greater range of symptoms, some Perez’s daughter. He cautioned that Island, in files stemming from the fam- patients began selling their pills on the one should not read into the tragedy ily fight over Arthur’s fortune, I came black market, where the street price any liability on Purdue’s part. The real across a document indicating that, after was a dollar a milligram. Doctors who problem, he said, was Jill Skolek: “We a “protracted negotiation,” Arthur’s es- were easily manipulated by their pa- think she abused drugs.” (Hogen sub- tate “sold its one third interest in Pur- tients—or corrupted by the money in sequently apologized for his remark. due” to Raymond and Mortimer. play—set up so-called pill mills, pain He no longer works for Purdue.) “I have never owned any shares in clinics that thrived on a wholesale busi- Another speaker at the event was Purdue,” Michael Sackler-Berner, a ness of issuing OxyContin prescriptions. Purdue’s senior medical adviser, J. David Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter who The company did not pull the drug Haddox, who insisted that OxyCon- is a grandson of Arthur Sackler, told from shelves, however, or acknowledge tin was not addictive. He once likened me, in an e-mail. “None of the descen- that it was addictive. Instead, Purdue the drug to a vegetable, saying, “If I dants of Arthur M. Sackler have ever insisted that the only problem was that gave you a stalk of celery and you ate had anything to do with, or benefited recreational drug users were not taking that, it would be healthy. But if you put from, the sale of OxyContin.” Sackler- OxyContin as directed. “Their rap has it in a blender and tried to shoot it into Berner made no mention of Librium, always been that a bunch of junkies ru- your veins, it would not be good.” When Valium, or MS Contin, but he added, ined their product,” Keith Humphreys, Haddox was walking out of the event, “Given the current controversy sur- the Stanford professor, said. In 2001, Perez, who is petite and rail thin, de- rounding OxyContin, I appreciate your Michael Friedman, Purdue’s executive liberately bumped into him. Caught clarifying the matter.” vice-president, testified before a con- off guard, Haddox staggered backward Even though Mortimer Sackler had gressional hearing convened to look and fell, with a clatter, into a row of a large stake in the company, he was into the alarming increase in opioid folding chairs. “It was one of those only an occasional presence at the Con- abuse. The marketing of OxyContin Kodak moments,” Perez recalled. “It necticut headquarters. He renounced had been “conservative by any stan- was probably the wrong thing to do. his U.S. citizenship in 1974, reportedly dard,” he maintained. “Virtually all of But I loved it.” for tax reasons, and lived a flamboyant these reports involve people who are Arthur Sackler once wrote that “all

40 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 health problems devolve upon the in- dividual,” and it was Purdue’s position that OxyContin overdoses were a mat- ter of individual responsibility, rather than the drug’s addictive properties. In addition to people like Hogen and Had- dox, the company put forward several top executives to mount a defense, in- cluding Howard Udell, Purdue’s gen- eral counsel, who had been a longtime legal adviser to the Sacklers. Udell “was like Tom Hagen in ‘The Godfather,’ ” an attorney who dealt with him told me. “Very loyal to the family.” Udell was clearly aware, however, of the abuse po- tential of OxyContin. According to court documents, his own secretary be- came addicted to the drug, and was subsequently fired by Purdue. By 2003, the Drug Enforcement Administration had found that Pur- due’s “aggressive methods” had “very much exacerbated OxyContin’s wide- “Of all the wet cement, in all the towns, in spread abuse.” Rogelio Guevara, a se- all the world, she walks into mine.” nior official at the D.E.A., concluded that Purdue had “deliberately mini- mized” the risks associated with the •• drug. But the company continued shift- ing the blame to drug abusers, creat- dox, who still works for Purdue, de- sults was clear: the claim of twelve-hour ing a public-service announcement clined to comment.) relief was an invaluable marketing tool. that showed a teen-ager raiding his The truth was that the dangers of But prescribing a pill on a twelve-hour parents’ medicine cabinet. OxyContin were intrinsic to the drug— schedule when, for many patients, it works In a phone interview, Hogen told me and Purdue knew it. The time-release for only eight is a recipe for withdrawal, that, for Purdue and the Sacklers, “there formula meant that, in principle, patients addiction, and abuse. Notwithstanding was a sense almost of betrayal—how could safely ingest one giant dose every Purdue’s claims, many people who were could people put the availability of that twelve hours. They could sleep through not drug abusers—and who took Oxy- product in jeopardy by abusing it for the night—a crucial improvement over Contin exactly as their doctors in- pleasure?” Hogen said that the company conventional painkillers, such as mor- structed—began experiencing withdrawal received many letters from grateful pain phine, which require more frequent dos- symptoms between doses. In March, patients, thanking Purdue for “giving ing. One of Purdue’s initial advertising 2001, a Purdue employee e-mailed a su- them their lives back.” Asked about his campaigns featured a photograph of two pervisor, describing some internal data on reticence to acknowledge that OxyCon- little dosage cups, one marked “8 a.m.” withdrawal and wondering whether or not tin might be addictive, Hogen said, and the other “8 p.m.,” and the words to write up the results, even though doing “Today, addiction is broadly seen as a “Remember, Effective Relief Just Takes so would only “add to the current neg- disease. Then, it was not. I think our un- Two.” But internal Purdue documents, ative press.” The supervisor responded, derstanding of addiction has grown enor- which have emerged through litigation, “I would not write it up at this point.” mously in the last fifteen years.” show that even before the company re- Doctors who prescribed OxyContin People have known for thousands ceived F.D.A. approval it was aware that were beginning to report that patients of years that opium derivatives are ad- not all patients who took OxyContin were coming to them with symptoms dictive, I said. were achieving twelve-hour relief. A re- of withdrawal (itching, nausea, the “You really need to talk to a clinician,” cent exposé by the Los Angeles Times shakes) and asking for more medica- Hogen replied. “I’m not a doctor.” revealed that the first patients to use tion. Haddox had an answer. In a 1989 J. David Haddox is a doctor. In 2001, OxyContin, in a study conducted by Pur- paper, he had coined the term “pseudo- he told an Associated Press reporter, due, were ninety women recovering from addiction.” As a pain- management “A lot of these people say, ‘Well, I was surgery in Puerto Rico. Roughly half the pamphlet distributed by Purdue ex- taking the medicine like my doctor told women required more medication be- plained, pseudo-addiction “seems sim- me to,’ and then they start taking more fore the twelve-hour mark. The study ilar to addiction, but is due to unrelieved and more and more.” He added, “I don’t was never published. For Purdue, the pain.” The pamphlet continued, “Mis- see where that’s my problem.” (Had- business reason for obscuring such re- understanding of this phenomenon

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 41 may lead the clinician to inappropri- the-record interview about the drug. “I’ve dia’s help to know that something was ately stigmatize the patient with the had a lot of experience with Purdue over seriously off with the distribution of Oxy- label ‘addict.’ ” Pseudo-addiction gen- the years, in different settings, but I’ve Contin. For years, it had maintained a erally stopped once the pain was re- never even seen Richard Sackler,” the ad- contract with I.M.S., a little-known com- lieved—“often through an increase in diction specialist Andrew Kolodny, who pany, co-founded by Arthur Sackler, that opioid dose.” is a frequent Purdue critic, told me. “I furnished its clients with fine-grained “When you promote these very mas- don’t think I’d know him if he was stand- information about the prescribing hab- sive doses of opioids, the more of it ing in front of me.” its of individual doctors. Purdue’s sales that is out there the more abuse there Even after it became clear that Oxy- representatives used the data to figure will be,” David Kessler said. “It’s al- Contin was being widely abused, Pur- out which doctors to target. most linear.” U.S. sales of OxyContin due refused to concede that it posed risks. Such data could also be used to track soon exceeded those of Viagra. Every- Company leaders worried mainly that patterns of abuse. “They know exactly where the drug spread, addiction fol- attempts to stem overdoses might de- what people are prescribing,” Kolodny lowed. To Steven May, the sales rep- prive pain patients of access to the drug. said. “They know when a doctor is run- resentative in Virginia, it seemed as if “They said, ‘We need to make sure that ning a pill mill.” At the 2001 hearing, the problems associated with OxyCon- these products are available for patients,’ ” James Greenwood, a Pennsylvania con- tin were metastasizing, “like a cancer.” Hogen said. “That was their sole focus.” gressman, asked Friedman whether Pur- According to Robin Hogen, the mem- According to Steven May, the sales force due would take any action if, say, I.M.S. bers of the Sackler family “were unified was instructed to ride out the contro- data revealed that a rural osteopath was in their shock that this was happening versy, ignore abuse reports, and “sell writing thousands of prescriptions. to a product they were very proud of.” through it.” As late as 2003, the F.D.A. Friedman replied that it was not up The Sacklers did not have an arm’s-length sent Purdue a warning letter about ads to Purdue to assess “how well a physi- relationship with Purdue, Hogen said: that “grossly overstate the safety profile cian practices medicine.” “This was an active family and an active of OxyContin by not referring in the “Why do you want that informa- board.” In 1999, Richard Sackler became body of the advertisements to serious, tion, then?” Greenwood pressed, be- Purdue’s president. As the head of a pri- potentially fatal risks.” fore answering his own question: “To vately held company, however, he felt no In his congressional testimony, Mi- see how successful your marketing tech- pressure to be the public face of the busi- chael Friedman, Richard Sackler’s dep- niques are.” ness, and he never appeared at forums uty, said that Purdue first became aware Greenwood then observed that, in a where people like Haddox defended Pur- of problems with OxyContin only in recent case involving a Pennsylvania doc- due. Indeed, though Sackler presided April, 2000, after a series of press reports tor, Richard Paolino, who was wantonly over the tremendously successful launch about people abusing it recreationally in overprescribing OxyContin, a local of OxyContin, he has never given an on- Maine. But Purdue didn’t need the me- pharmacist had alerted the authorities. “He looked at this data and he said, generic morphine, and insurers could the prosecution, and doing everything ‘Holy God, there is some guy in Ben- start refusing to cover the costs. As early she could to inform the public about the salem called Paolino, and he’s writing as 1997, some benefit plans had begun dangers of OxyContin. Before the sen- prescriptions out the wazoo,’ ” Green- citing abuse of OxyContin as an excuse tence was handed down, Perez delivered wood said. “Now, he had that data and not to pay. In a 1997 e-mail, Richard a victim-impact statement. “I want to he blew the whistle. And you had that Sackler urged colleagues to counter this know why the Sackler brothers have not data. What did you do?” resistance, warning that, for insurance been held accountable,” she said. (Rich- Purdue had not alerted the authori- companies, “ ‘addiction’ may be a conve- ard Sackler, despite his leadership role at ties. Clinicians like Paolino were break- nient way to just say ‘NO.’ ” Purdue, had not been charged.) ing the law—he was sentenced to a min- Purdue has been sued thousands of During a break in the proceedings, imum of thirty years in prison. But times over OxyContin since its release. Perez looked over at Friedman, Gold- overprescribing generated tremendous (Steven May, the sales rep, initiated a enheim, and Udell, and told herself, “I revenue for the company. According to could reach over, at ninety- eight pounds, four people I spoke with, at Purdue such and smack one of them.” This time, she prescribers were given a name that Las restrained herself. Instead, she told them, Vegas casinos reserve for their most “You are sheer evil. You are bastards.” prized gamblers: whales. The executives reddened, but said noth- ing. They all received probation, and n July, 2001, Richard Blumenthal, who were ordered, collectively, to pay nearly Iwas then the attorney general of Con- thirty-five million dollars in fines. Pur- necticut, wrote to Richard Sackler. “I due agreed to pay an additional six hun- have been increasingly dismayed and dred million. Given the billions of dol- alarmed about the problems and esca- whistle-blower suit years after leaving lars that the Sacklers and Purdue had lating abuse of OxyContin,” he began, the company; it was dismissed, on pro- reaped from OxyContin, some observ- citing overdose deaths, addiction, phar- cedural grounds.) In 2002, Howard Udell ers felt that the company had got off macy robberies, and “the astonishing said that the firm would defend itself “to easy. Arlen Specter, the Republican sen- growth in state funding” that was being the hilt.” The next year, a New York trial ator from Pennsylvania, remarked that used to pay for OxyContin prescriptions lawyer named Paul Hanly assembled a such fines amounted to “expensive li- through Medicaid and Medicare. Blu- lawsuit, signing up five thousand patients censes for criminal misconduct.” menthal acknowledged that other pre- who said that they’d become addicted to scription drugs were also abused. “But OxyContin after receiving a doctor’s pre- rthur Sackler wrote a regular col- OxyContin is different,” he wrote. “It is scription. In discovery, Hanly obtained Aumn for the Medical Tribune, and more powerful, more addictive, more thousands of documents. “They demon- one of his fixations was the unethical widely sold, more illicitly available, and strated that this company had set out to behavior of tobacco companies. In 1979, more publicized.” He urged Purdue to perpetrate a fraud on the entire medical he critiqued the “weasel-worded warn- “overhaul and reform” its marketing of community,” he told me. “These pro- ing” on cigarette packages as insuffici- OxyContin. nouncements about how safe the drug ent, arguing that the “hazard to health The Sacklers disregarded his recom- was emanated from the marketing de- should be more specific.” He also con- mendation, and so in 2004 Blumenthal partment, not the scientific department. demned newspapers and magazines for filed a complaint against Purdue, on be- It was pretty shocking. They just made accepting “misleading” advertising about half of the State of Connecticut. It cited this stuff up.” cigarettes, and contended that the pub- data indicating that a fifth of OxyCon- In 2006, Purdue settled with Hanly’s lishers must “square with their own con- tin prescriptions were now for dosing clients, for seventy-five million dollars. sciences their contribution to our na- intervals shorter than twelve hours. In Shortly afterward, the company pleaded tional mortality.” fact, Blumenthal obtained Purdue re- guilty, in a case brought by federal pros- In 1998, the tobacco industry, which cords indicating that company officials ecutors in Virginia, to criminal charges had been sued by dozens of states, en- knew by 1998 that prescriptions for of misbranding, and acknowledged that tered into the largest civil-litigation set- eight-hour intervals were becoming Purdue had marketed OxyContin “with tlement in history, agreeing to pay two more and more frequent. In one docu- the intent to defraud or mislead.” (Ru- hundred and forty-six billion dollars. To- ment, a Purdue employee called the dolph Giuliani had tried, on Purdue’s bacco and opioids are different in signifi- numbers “very scary.” behalf, to get the lead prosecutor to scut- cant ways. The F.D.A. approved Oxy- Such alarm over off-label dosing may tle the case.) Michael Friedman, the ex- Contin as a medicine, and, whereas have been prompted less by concern about ecutive vice-president, pleaded guilty to tobacco can kill you even when used as public health than by considerations of a criminal misdemeanor, as did Howard directed, Purdue would argue that this profit. If OxyContin was being widely Udell and the company’s chief medical isn’t the case with OxyContin. Mike prescribed at intervals of fewer than officer, Paul Goldenheim. Moore, who, as Mississippi’s attorney twelve hours, the company might lose Marianne Perez attended the sen- general, played a key role in the tobacco its “two pills a day” marketplace advan- tencing, in Virginia. “I was on cloud nine,” litigation, noted another difference: the tage against cheaper alternatives, like she recalled. She had been working with tobacco companies had more money to

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 43 spare than Purdue does. “To resolve the opioid problem, you’re going to need bil- lions,” he said. “Treatment alone could LA MÉDITERRANÉE be fifty billion dollars or more. And you need prevention and education programs In the midst of our lifelike life on top of that.” I come to this fork in your hand— Moore is now working with Paul stainless silver, of appreciable weight— Hanly and other attorneys to bring a fresh wave of lawsuits against Purdue and I fully understand its pronginess, and other pharmaceutical companies. the bent of want, an expressive head Ten states have filed suits, and private and narrow neck spreading attorneys are working in partnership with dozens of cities and counties to like a delta out to three strict parallels. bring others. Many public officials are You, the children, me. furious at the makers of powerful pain- At some point the waiter brought killers. Prescriptions are expensive, and taxpayers often foot the bill, through your sea bass and the fork hovers over programs like Medicaid. Then, as the its seared arrangement of chain mail, ruinous consequences of opioid addic- its lips parted in surprise. tion take hold, the public must pay again—this time for emergency services, Against the stiff table linen addiction treatment, and the like. Moore and sunlight on the fork feels that the Sackler family, as the ini- your skin is caramel and scuffed tial author and a prime beneficiary of the epidemic, should be publicly shamed. a little whitely at the knuckles. “I don’t call it Purdue. I call it the Sack- A few veins give the skin ler Company,” he said. “They are the its dark ridges and where each hair main culprit. They duped the F.D.A., saying it lasted twelve hours. They lied about the addictive properties. And they lustration of potential bias in the jury tucky attorney general’s office, also at- did all this to grow the opioid market, pool. The report was revealing in ways tended the deposition. “It was surreal,” to make it O.K. to jump in the water. that Purdue may not have intended: ac- he recalled. “We were face to face with Then some of these other companies, cording to the filing, twenty-nine per the guy whose company had helped to they saw that the water was warm, and cent of the county’s residents said that create the opioid epidemic.” Denham they said, ‘O.K., we can jump in, too.’ ” they or their family members knew some- told me that, in preparing for trial, he There may be significant legal distinc- one who had died from using OxyCon- discovered a photograph of the 1997 tions between a tobacco company and tin. Seven out of ten respondents de- Pikeville High School football team. an opioid producer, but to Moore the scribed OxyContin’s effect on their “Nearly half the players had died of over- ethical parallel is unmistakable: “They’re community as “devastating.” doses, or were addicted,” he said. “It was both profiting by killing people.” A judge ruled that Purdue could not going to be a pretty good visual.” One day in August, 2015, a plane shift the venue for the trial, and so Rich- But Denham never presented the pho- landed in Louisville, Kentucky, and Rich- ard Sackler flew to Louisville. He gave tograph to a jury, because before the case ard Sackler stepped out, surrounded by a deposition at a law firm. Four lawyers could go to trial Purdue settled, for attorneys. Eight years earlier, the State questioned him about his role in the de- twenty-four million dollars. This was a of Kentucky had sued Purdue, charging velopment and the marketing of Oxy- coup for the Sacklers. The settlement the company with deceptive marketing. Contin. Tyler Thompson, the lead at- was more than Purdue’s original offer— Greg Stumbo, the state attorney general torney, told me that Sackler’s demeanor half a million dollars—but still totally at the time, initiated the suit; the son of during the session reminded him of Jer- incommensurate with Pike County’s a cousin of his had fatally overdosed on emy Irons’s portrayal of Claus von Bülow, needs; Purdue admitted no liability; and, OxyContin. Purdue fought the suit with the aristocrat accused of murdering his in settling, the company sealed from pub- its customary rigor, pushing to move the wife, in the 1990 bio-pic “Reversal of lic view both Richard Sackler’s deposi- proceedings elsewhere, on the ground Fortune.” “A smirk and a so-what atti- tion and internal documents obtained that the company could not get a fair tude—an absolute lack of remorse,” through discovery. Purdue has some- trial in Pike County, Kentucky—the rural Thompson said. “It reminded me of times claimed to have never “lost a case” stretch of coal country where the state these mining companies that come in related to OxyContin, but it’s more ac- intended to try the case. In support of here and do mountaintop removal, and curate to say that the company has never this motion, the company commissioned leave a mess and just move on: ‘It’s not allowed a case to go to trial, often set- a demographic study of Pike County my back yard, so I don’t care.’ ” Mitchel tling rather than litigating the culpability and submitted it to the court, as an il- Denham, a former litigator in the Ken- of the company—and the Sacklers—in

44 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 Kolodny had told me. Someone who knows Mortimer, Jr., socially told me, “I plants itself there is a small dent think for him, most of the time, he’s just and crinkle in the flesh. saying, ‘Wow, we’re really rich. It’s fuck- If the situation is not stable ing cool. I don’t really want to think that much about the other side of things.’ ” or sustainable, Paul Hanly, the lawyer, said that the what I want to mention is Sacklers’ steadfast refusal to address the if we did continue farther in— legacy of OxyContin may just be a legal tactic—and a shrewd one. “The more into an atom of the flesh interviews you give, the more targets you or the metallic fabric of the fork, create for lawyers like me, and for gov- the micro-weft of the tablecloth, ernment investigators,” he said. I won- dered whether philanthropy might rep- it would be more or less the same resent, for at least some of the Sacklers, kind of utter emptiness— a form of atonement. But, when you con- as at the heart of any restaurant sider the breadth of the family’s dona- tions, one field is conspicuously lacking: there is this dead eye addiction treatment, or any other mea- of the sea bass on your plate, sures that might serve to counter the its aureole lens, its lightless pupil opioid epidemic.

sunk flush as a thumbtack holding n August, 2010, Purdue quietly re- the universe itself in place Iplaced OxyContin with a drug that and I stare at it, and it stares back. was subtly different. The company had been granted patents for a reformulated —Nick Laird version of OxyContin. If you crushed these new pills, they became not a fine, dissolvable powder but an unwieldy open court. “That’s the main reason these nation in 2015 was a hundred- thousand- gummy substance. Purdue had received folks don’t go to trial,” Denham said. dollar gift to a neoconservative think F.D.A. approval for the reformulation, “Because all these documents could end tank, the Foundation for Defense of De- in part, by touting the ostensible safety up in the public record.” The Kentucky mocracies. Through a representative, of the new product. The F.D.A. had ap- prosecutors were required to destroy mil- Sackler declined to speak with me. I con- proved a label, the first of its kind, that lions of documents, or return them to tacted a dozen other members of the included a claim about the drug’s “abuse Purdue. The medical-news Web site Sackler family, but none of them would deterrent” properties. STAT subsequently sued to unseal Rich- answer questions about OxyContin. Jo In an interview, Craig Landau, Pur- ard Sackler’s deposition. A state judge Sheldon, a London-based media adviser, due’s C.E.O., told me, “A very large pro- ruled in its favor, but Purdue appealed. called me, and said that she works with portion of Purdue’s R. & D. efforts post- I spent several months trying to obtain some of the Sacklers. (She would not 2001 was dedicated toward addressing a copy of the deposition, but, because it identify which ones.) When I told her the specific vulnerability of the original remains under a protective order while that I had questions for the Sacklers, she OxyContin product.” To a casual ob- Purdue appeals the matter, no lawyer said that my inquiries would be better server, it might have seemed that the would share it with me. Mike Moore directed to Purdue. She said of the Sack- makers of OxyContin, after years of ob- said, “The idea that they’re fighting so lers, “Some of them are still quite in- structing efforts to curb the disastrous hard to keep this deposition hidden volved in Purdue, but some have abso- impacts of their painkiller, had finally should tell you something.” lutely nothing to do with it,” apart from seen the error of their ways. But Purdue Richard Sackler stepped down as Pur- depositing checks. was almost certainly motivated by an- due’s president in 2003, but stayed on as Given the sometimes fractious nature other consideration: it needed to block co-chairman of the company’s board. of the Sackler family, it was striking that competition from generic drugs. Arthur After spending several years as an ad- they were united in their silence on the Sackler had often used the pages of the junct professor of genetics at Rockefel- subject of OxyContin. These were ur- Medical Tribune to criticize generics. In ler University, he moved to Austin, Texas, bane, expensively educated, presumably 1985, the paper had published a story, in 2013. He lives in a modern hilltop well-informed people. Could they con- “Schizophrenics ‘Wild’ on Weak Ge- mansion on the outskirts of the city, in ceivably be unaware of the accumulated neric,” describing how “all hell broke an area favored by tech entrepreneurs. evidence about the tainted origins of loose” at a veterans’ hospital after the psy- According to tax disclosures from his their fortune? Did they simply put it out chiatric unit switched from a brand-name personal foundation, he has continued of mind? “Greed can get people to ra- antipsychotic to a generic. (According giving money to Yale, but his largest do- tionalize pretty bad behavior,” Andrew to the Times, the F.D.A. investigated and

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 45 found that the story was bogus, because market of people who had been primed the company has been trying to develop “the generic had been introduced six by pill addiction. This is one dreadful “non-opioid pain products.” Purdue likes months before the purported problems paradox of the history of OxyContin: to emphasize that there are many other began.”) I spoke with a leading patent the original formulation created a gen- powerful painkillers, and that OxyCon- lawyer who frequently represents man- eration addicted to pills; the reformula- tin never had more than two per cent of ufacturers of generic drugs, and she said tion, by forcing younger users off the the market for opioids. This is true in that companies often make a minor tweak drug, helped create a generation addicted terms of the number of prescriptions. to a branded product shortly before the to heroin. A recent paper by a team of But most painkillers are prescribed for patent expires, in order to obtain a new economists, citing a dramatic uptick in very short periods—following surgery, patent and reset the clock on their ex- heroin overdoses since 2010, is titled for instance—and in relatively small clusive right to produce the drug. The “How the Reformulation of OxyCon- doses, whereas OxyContin’s sales have patent for the original OxyContin was tin Ignited the Heroin Epidemic.” A been driven by long-term, high-dose set to expire in 2013. survey of two hundred and forty-four prescriptions. If one measured market Purdue had long denied that the people who entered treatment for Oxy- share by the actual volume of narcotics original OxyContin was especially Contin abuse after the reformulation administered, OxyContin’s would be con- prone to abuse. But, upon receiving its found that a third had switched to other siderably higher. Some doctors I spoke patents for the reformulated drug, the drugs. Seventy per cent of that group with estimated that it could be as high company filed papers with the F.D.A., had turned to heroin. as thirty per cent. asking the agency to refuse to accept Perhaps the most surprising aspect of The United States accounts for generic versions of the original formu- Quinones’s investigation is the similar- roughly a third of the global market for lation—because they were unsafe. The ities he finds between the tactics of the opioid painkillers. But, as politicians F.D.A., ever obliging, agreed, blocking unassuming, business-minded Mexican and journalists have raised alarms over any low-cost generic competition for heroin peddlers, the so-called Xalisco the addiction crisis, many American Purdue. For more than a year, Purdue boys, and the slick corporate sales force doctors have grown leery, again, of pre- continued to sell the original formu- of Purdue. When the Xalisco boys ar- scribing these drugs. In a statement, lation of OxyContin in Canada. Ac- rived in a new town, they identified their Purdue acknowledged that even pa- cording to a recent study, OxyContin market by seeking out the local metha- tients “who take OxyContin in accor- sales in Windsor, Ontario—just across done clinic. Purdue, using I.M.S. data, dance with its F.D.A.-approved label- the border from Detroit—suddenly similarly targeted populations that were ing instructions will likely develop quadrupled, a clear indication that the susceptible to its product. Mitchel Den- physical dependence.” The company pills were being purchased for the U.S. ham, the Kentucky lawyer, told me that maintains that physical dependence is black market. Through I.M.S. track- Purdue pinpointed “communities where different from addiction, but Jane Bal- ing data, Purdue would have been able there is a lot of poverty and a lack of ed- lantyne, the president of Physicians for to monitor the Canadian surge, and to ucation and opportunity,” adding, “They Responsible Opioid Prescribing, said deduce the reason for it. (The com- were looking at numbers that showed that, for patients, this can be a mean- pany acknowledges that it was aware these people have work-related injuries, ingless distinction: if they find them- of the spike in sales, and maintains that they go to the doctor more often, they selves unable to stop taking a drug, for it alerted authorities, but will not say get treatment for pain.” The Xalisco fear of crippling withdrawal, “at a cer- when it did so.) boys offered potential customers free tain point that might as well be addic- By the time Purdue reformulated samples of their product. So did Pur- tion.” The drugstore chain CVS, which OxyContin, the country was in the mid- due. When it first introduced OxyCon- has been accused of profiteering from dle of a full-blown epidemic. Andrew tin, the company created a program that opioids, recently announced that it plans Kolodny, the addiction specialist, told encouraged doctors to issue coupons for to limit prescriptions for powerful doses me that many older people remain ad- a free initial prescription. By the time to one week’s worth, a change that could dicted to the reformulated OxyContin, Purdue discontinued the program, four have a major impact on the abuse of and continue to obtain the drug through years later, thirty-four thousand coupons these drugs. It may also be that Oxy- prescriptions. These people purchase the had been redeemed. Contin has achieved market saturation. drug legally, and swallow the pills whole, In recent years, American clinicians have as instructed. “That’s Purdue’s market urdue Pharma now acknowledges issued about a quarter of a billion opi- now,” Kolodny said. Younger people, who Pthat there is an opioid crisis, but oid prescriptions annually. Last year, in can less readily secure prescriptions for maintains that it has taken every avail- Ohio, a state particularly hard hit by the pain—and for whom OxyContin may able step to address it, from sponsoring epidemic, 2.3 million residents—roughly be too expensive—have increasingly “prescription monitoring” programs in one in five people in the state—received turned to black-market substitutes, in- some states to underwriting drug-abuse a prescription for opioids. In 2012, the cluding heroin. As Sam Quinones de- education. Craig Landau, the C.E.O., Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a tails in his 2015 book, “Dreamland: The told me, “If the Holy Grail is a pain med- story about pain patients who had offered True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic,” icine that is safe and effective for patients testimonials about the wonders of Oxy- heroin dealers from Mexico fanned out with severe pain but carries no abuse risk, Contin in Purdue promotional videos. across the U.S. to supply a burgeoning we haven’t found it yet.” He added that Johnny Sullivan, the construction worker

46 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 who had talked about OxyContin eas- ing his back pain, became addicted to the drug. In 2008, while driving home from a hunting trip, he apparently blacked out; he flipped his truck, and died instantly. In a Purdue brochure, Sullivan is quoted as saying that Oxy- Contin pills “don’t put me in a stupor or make me groggy.” David Juurlink, the Toronto doctor, told me that opioids are problematic even for users who don’t succumb to addic- tion. “Opioids really do afford pain re- lief—initially,” he said. “But that relief tends to diminish over time. That’s, in part, why people increase the dose. They are chasing pain relief from a drug that has failed. I see all these people who are convinced they are one of the ‘legitimate’ pain patients. They’re on a massive dose of opioids, and they’re telling me they need this medication, which is clearly ¥¥ doing them harm. For many of them, the primary benefit of therapy, at this point, deny law-abiding pain patients access to tions—eight times what the gun lobby is not going into withdrawal.” medicine they desperately need. Mark spent during that period. Even Russell Portenoy, the Purdue- Sullivan, a psychiatrist at the University Since Purdue made it more difficult funded doctor who advocated for wider of Washington, distilled the argument to grind OxyContin pills, prescriptions long-term use of opioids, has reas- of Purdue: “Our product isn’t danger- have reportedly plummeted by forty per sessed his views. “Did I teach about ous—it’s people who are dangerous.” cent. This suggests that nearly half of pain management, specifically about Last year, the C.D.C., which formally the original drug’s consumers may have opioid therapy, in a way that reflects declared an opioid epidemic in 2011, in- been crushing it to get high. As David misinformation?” he said to the Wall troduced the first set of guidelines to Juurlink pointed out to me, it is a mis- Street Journal in 2012. “I guess I did.” help reduce the prescribing of strong nomer to call the reformulation an “abuse (In a statement, Portenoy told me that painkillers like OxyContin. “Opioids deterrent.” It can still be abused—and is, he has “refocussed” his approach to should not be considered first-line or widely, by people who become addicted pain management, adding, “No funder routine therapy for chronic pain,” the by swallowing the pills, just as the bot- has had any undue influence over my guidelines said, recommending that doc- tle instructs. But Purdue, facing a shrink- thinking.”) tors first consider “non-pharmacologic” ing market and rising opprobrium, has In his defense, Portenoy has pointed approaches, such as physical therapy, and not given up the search for new users. out that, two decades ago, doctors did “non-opioid pharmacologic” treatments. In August, 2015, over objections from not know what they know now about Purdue and other pharmaceutical critics, the company received F.D.A. ap- opioids and addiction. The Sackler fam- companies have long funded ostensibly proval to market OxyContin to children ily and Purdue Pharma could have taken neutral nonprofit groups that advocate as young as eleven. responsibility in a similar spirit: apolo- for pain patients. The C.D.C. guidelines gizing for their role in unleashing a na- were nonbinding, yet many of these or- orbes estimates that the Sacklers tional catastrophe while noting that, ganizations fought to prevent the agency Fcontinue to receive some seven hun- during the nineties, they had relied on a from releasing them. This kind of ob- dred million dollars a year from the series of mistaken assumptions about the struction is typical at both the state and family companies, and, as the Sacklers safety of OxyContin. But Purdue has the federal level. A recent series by the are surely aware, the real future of Oxy- continued to fight aggressively against Associated Press and the Center for Pub- Contin may be global. Many big com- any measures that might limit the dis- lic Integrity revealed that, after Purdue panies, once their sales plateau in Amer- tribution of OxyContin, in a way that made its guilty plea, in 2007, it assem- ica, look abroad. After introducing calls to mind the gun lobby’s resistance bled an army of lobbyists to fight any OxyContin in the U.S., Purdue moved to firearm regulations. Confronted with legislative actions that might encroach into Canada and England. At the Uni- the prospect of modest, commonsense on its business. Between 2006 and 2015, versity of Toronto, the company spon- measures that might in any way impinge Purdue and other painkiller producers, sored a class on pain management for on the prescribing of painkillers, Purdue along with their associated nonprofits, medical and dental students. The in- and its various allies have responded with spent nearly nine hundred million dol- structor was a member of Purdue’s alarm, suggesting that such steps will lars on lobbying and political contribu- speakers’ bureau. Students received a

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 47 complimentary textbook, produced by dipharma commissioned studies show- industry did,” Mike Moore told me. Purdue, that described oxycodone as a ing that millions of people in these coun- “They got caught in America, they saw “moderate” opioid. The course was dis- tries suffered from chronic pain. The their market share decline, so they ex- continued after students and doctors company has organized junkets, and port it to places with even fewer regu- criticized it; one of the critics was Rick paid doctors to give presentations ex- lations than we have.” He added, “You Glazier, a physician at the university, tolling OxyContin’s virtues. In fact, cer- know what’s going to happen. You’re whose son, Daniel, had fatally over- tain doctors who are currently flogging going to see lots and lots of death.” In dosed on OxyContin in 2009. OxyContin abroad—“pain ambassa- May, several members of Congress wrote As OxyContin spread outside the dors,” they are called—used to be on to the World Health Organization, urg- U.S., the pattern of dysfunction repeated Purdue’s payroll as advocates for the ing it to help stop the spread of Oxy- itself: to map the geographic distribu- drug in the U.S. Contin, and mentioning the Sackler tion of the drug was also to map a rash The Times report described Joseph family by name. “The international of addiction, abuse, and death. But the Pergolizzi, Jr.—a Florida doctor who health community has a rare opportu- Sackler family has only increased its runs a pain-management clinic and nity to see the future,” they wrote. “Do efforts abroad, and is now pushing the hawks a pain-relieving cream of his not allow Purdue to walk away from drug, through a Purdue-related com- own invention on cable TV—giving the tragedy they have inflicted on count- pany called Mundipharma, into Asia, paid talks in places like Brazil about less American families simply to find Latin America, and the Middle East. the merits of OxyContin. In Mexico, new markets and new victims elsewhere.” Part of Purdue’s strategy from the be- Mundipharma has asserted that twenty- David Kessler, the former F.D.A. com- ginning has been to create a market for eight million people—a quarter of the missioner, believes that the destigmati- OxyContin—to instill a perceived need population—suffer from chronic pain. zation of opioids in the U.S. represents by making bold claims about the exis- In China, the company has distributed one of the “great mistakes” of modern tence of large numbers of people suffer- cartoon videos about using opioids for medicine. When I asked for his thoughts ing from untreated chronic pain. As pain relief; other promotional litera- on Mundipharma’s efforts to market Purdue moves into countries like China ture cites the erroneous claim that rates OxyContin abroad, he said, “It gives me and Brazil, where opioids may still re- of addiction are negligible. In a 2014 a sick feeling. It makes me ill.” tain the kind of stigma that the com- interview, Raman Singh, a Mundi- pany so assiduously broke down in the pharma executive, said, “Every single arlier this year, Peter Salovey, the United States, its marketing approach patient that is in emerging markets Epresident of Yale, announced that has not changed. According to a Los should have access to our medicines.” the university will rename a residential Angeles Times report from 2016—well The term “opiophobia” has largely fallen college that was named for John C. Cal- after the Sacklers’ playbook for Oxy- into disuse in America, for obvious rea- houn, because Calhoun’s “legacy as a Contin had been repudiated by the med- sons. Mundipharma executives still use white supremacist and a national leader ical establishment as possibly the main it abroad. who passionately promoted slavery as a driver of the opioid epidemic—Mun- “It’s a parallel to what the tobacco ‘positive good’ fundamentally conflicts with Yale’s mission and values.” This move, which was not without its crit- ics, was emblematic of a broader trend to look back skeptically at individuals who were venerated in earlier epochs, and ask how they should be judged by the moral standards of today. At Ox- ford, a Rhodes Scholar from South Af- rica recently led a campaign to take down a statue of Cecil Rhodes. One great fortune—and reputation— that has evaded such scrutiny is that of the Sacklers, a family whose dubious business practices are not an artifact of previous centuries but an ongoing real- ity. If present statistics are any indica- tion, in the time it likely took you to read this article six Americans have fatally overdosed on opioids. Yet Yale appears to be in no hurry to rename its Raymond and Beverly Sackler Institute for Bio- logical, Physical and Engineering Sci- ences, or its Richard Sackler and Jona- “No, you dismantle your nuclear arsenal first.” than Sackler Professorship of Internal Medicine. Perhaps it’s because the Sack- Virginia, ten per cent of newborns are crushed the rest with the edge of a cig- lers, unlike the Calhoun family, still have dependent on opioids. A district attor- arette lighter, then snorted it. He didn’t a fortune to give away. ney in eastern Tennessee recently filed a inject it. “When I was growing up, I al- “It’s amazing how they are left out of lawsuit against Purdue, and other com- ways told myself, ‘I’ll never stick a nee- the debate about causation, but also about panies, on behalf of “Baby Doe”—an in- dle in my arm,’ ” he said. solutions,” Allen Frances, the Duke psy- fant addict. In a soft, unflinching tone, Jeff re- chiatrist, said of the Sacklers. “A truly Purdue executives won’t be able to set- counted the next decade of his life: he philanthropic family, looking at the last tle every case against them, Moore be- kept abusing painkillers, met a woman, twenty years, would say, ‘You know, there’s lieves. “There’s going to be a jury some- fell in love, and introduced her to opi- several million Americans who are ad- where, someplace, that’s going to hit them oids. One day, his dealer was out of pills dicted, directly or indirectly, because of with the largest judgment in the nation’s and said, “I’ll sell you a bag of heroin for us.’ Real philanthropy would be to con- history,” he said. Paul Hanly twenty bucks.” Jeff was re- tribute money to taking care of them. At noted that, in the face of a luctant, but when with- this point, adding their name to a build- crippling judgment, Purdue drawal set in he acquiesced. ing—it rings hollow. It’s not philanthropy. may have to declare bank- At first, he and his girlfriend It’s just a glorification of the Sackler fam- ruptcy. “But I’m certainly not snorted heroin. “But you ily.” According to the American Society going to walk away if they build up a tolerance, just like of Addiction Medicine, more than two do,” he said. “At that point, with the pills,” he said, and and a half million Americans have an I would start looking closely eventually they started in- opioid-use disorder. Frances continued, at individual liability on jecting it. They were high “If the Sacklers wanted to clear their the part of the Sacklers.” when they got married. name, they could take a very substantial Robin Hogen, the for- Jeff ’s wife gave birth to a fraction of that fortune and create a mer Purdue communica- boy, who was addicted to mechanism for providing free treatment tions executive, said, “I don’t want to opioids. “The doctors weaned him off for everyone who’s become addicted.” be portrayed as an apologist for what with droplets of morphine,” he said. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, is clearly a public-health crisis. But I After a long stretch in rehab, Jeff has created the Nobel Peace Prize. In recent wanted to make sure you spoke to some- been sober for more than a year. His years, several philanthropic organizations one who had very high regard for the baby is healthy, and his wife is clean, run by the descendants of John D. Rocke- Sackler family. The Sacklers were first too. Looking back, he said, he feels that feller have devoted resources to address- class in everything they did.” I asked an impulsive youthful decision to snort ing climate change and critiquing the him what he would say to the doctors pills set him on a path from which he environmental record of the oil company and the public-health officials who be- could not deviate. “It was all about the he founded, now called ExxonMobil. lieve that the heirs of Raymond and drug,” he said. “I just created a hurri- Last year, Valerie Rockefeller Wayne told Mortimer Sackler bear some moral re- cane of destruction.” CBS, “Because the source of the family sponsibility for the epidemic. “I’m not We left the restaurant and strolled wealth is fossil fuels, we feel an enor- a doctor,” Hogen demurred. “I really along a leafy side street flanked by grand mous moral responsibility.” can’t comment.” houses. During the worst years of his Mike Moore, the former Mississippi The Sacklers have always excelled at addiction, Jeff worked as a tradesman attorney general, believes that the Sack- the confidence game of marketing, and in the area. I had asked him to show lers will feel no pressure to emulate this it struck me that the greatest trick they me a property that he had serviced, and gesture until more of the public becomes ever pulled was to write the family out we stopped outside a sprawling estate aware that their fortune is derived from of the history of the family business. I that was mostly hidden behind dense the opioid crisis. Moore recalled his ini- was reminded of Arthur Sackler’s admo- shrubbery. It was the home of Mor- tial settlement conference with tobacco- nition that you should endeavor to leave timer Sackler, Jr. Jeff, who knew about company C.E.O.s: “We asked them, the world a better place than it was when the family, appreciated the irony. “I ‘What do you want?’ And they said, ‘We you came into it, and I wondered about couldn’t tell you how many times I was want to be able to go to cocktail parties the moral arithmetic of the Sacklers’ on that property, sitting in a work truck, and not have people come up and ask us deeds. But the family, through a Purdue snorting a pill,” he said. why we’re killing people.’ That’s an exact representative, declined to comment. We reached an ornamental wooden quote.” Moore is puzzled that museums gate, beyond which was a yard dominated and universities are able to continue ac- recently went to Amagansett, on Long by a stately weeping willow. As I was ad- cepting money from the Sacklers with- I Island, to meet a man I’ll call Jeff. At miring the tree, Jeff said that, for the peo- out questions or controversy. He won- a restaurant, he told me about his strug- ple who maintained the grounds, it was “a dered, “What would happen if some of gles with addiction. A decade ago, when pain in the ass.” Whenever the wind picks these foundations, medical schools, and he was a teen-ager, he started abusing up, he explained, branches break and scat- hospitals started to say, ‘How many ba- opioids. They were “everywhere,” he re- ter all over the lawn. “But the place has bies have become addicted to opioids?’ ” called. He particularly liked OxyContin, to be flawless,” he said. “There can’t be a An addicted baby is now born every half for the “clean high” it provided. After leaf on the ground.” So a crew comes by hour. In places like Huntington, West sucking the pill’s red coating off, he regularly, to clear away the mess. 

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 49 PORTFOLIO FACES OF AN EPIDEMIC

In Montgomery County, Ohio, opioid addiction permeates everyday life. PHOTOGRAPHS BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY

A family mourns the death of their son, Brian Malmsbury, who overdosed on heroin in the basement of their home. From left to right: Br om left to right: Brian’s half sister, Brittany Neff; Brian’s stepfather, Damian Neff; and Brian’s mother, Patty Neff. his week, President Trump plans to de- ing at least one opioid—has climbed from a hun- clare the opioid epidemic a national emer- dred and twenty-seven, in 2010, to three hundred T gency. It’s a welcome, but belated, response and forty-nine, in 2016. The trend shows no sign to a problem that has been growing inexorably of abating, not least because the opioid that is for nearly two decades. For all the coverage the now most commonly detected in postmortems is opioid epidemic has received, the reaction to it fentanyl, which is nearly forty times more potent has been consistently muted. No group of activ- than heroin. In January, 2017, alone, there were ists quite as angry and eloquent as act up has sixty-five overdose deaths in Montgomery County. emerged to make the crisis an urgent priority. But At times, there has not been enough room at the opioids, in fact, now kill more than fifty thousand morgue for all the bodies, and the county coro- Americans a year, ten thousand more than aids ner has been obliged to rent space from local did at the peak of that epidemic—more, too, than funeral homes. gun homicides and motor-vehicle accidents. Opi- Brian Malmsbury’s death was an especially quiet oid overdoses are now the leading cause of death one. He was thirty-three and had been living at for Americans under the age of fifty. home, in Miamisburg, Ohio, trying to get clean Something about the nature of this epidemic after years of addiction. His mother, Patty Neff, said delayed the sense of calamity. As the coroner of that he often fantasized about becoming a long- Montgomery County, Ohio, has said, it’s a distance truck driver—being out on the road, just “mass-casualty event,” but one played out in slow him and his dog. But his history with drugs made motion. First, in the nineteen-nineties, came that an unlikely path forward. He had dealt with mounting overdose deaths from prescription drugs depression for many years—“He’d always just been such as OxyContin; then, around 2000, many users a sad kid,” Patty told Philip Montgomery, the pho- switched to heroin, a cheaper alternative; in the tographer who shot these images. On the afternoon past few years, people increasingly have been dying that Brian died, he had been talking to his mother from potent synthetic painkillers such as fentanyl about meeting a friend, and she and his stepfather and carfentanil. The quietness of the tragedy is thought that he’d gone out. But he’d headed down also connected to the effects of opioids them- to the basement, where he overdosed on heroin and selves: people hooked on them numb their pain, died. His stepfather, Damian Neff, found him there whatever its causes, rather than raging against it. a day and a half later. In recent years, Brian’s girl- Yet in places hit hard by the epidemic—in Mid- friend had died of an overdose, and so had his younger western and New England towns where heroin sister’s boyfriend. “I didn’t think it could get any used to seem like somebody else’s problem—over- closer to our family after it took those two,” Patty dose deaths now permeate everyday life, and have Neff said. “And it does get closer. The boys would become impossible to ignore. In Montgomery tell me every day about somebody they went to high County, where most of the photographs on the school with who died that day. That whole gener- following pages were taken, the number of ation’s getting wiped out.” drug-overdose deaths—the vast majority involv- —Margaret Talbot

Overdose victims are treated with Narcan, a medication that blocks the effects of opioids. After a dose of Narcan has been administered, first responders inject normal saline. Here, a young man is given saline after receiving twenty-two milligrams, or eleven hits, of Narcan.

Above: A sample of carfentanil, which is ten thousand times more potent than morphine. Its official use is for sedating large zoo animals; just two milligrams of the drug can tranquillize a two-thousand‐pound elephant. Right: A homeless, heroin- addicted woman in Montgomery County. At the time the photograph was taken, she had been clean for nineteen days.

Left: In Drexel, Deputy Andy Teague arrests a man for possession of heroin and crystal methamphetamine. Above: In Hamilton, a town nestled in the southwestern corner of Ohio, addicts meet at a center run by Sojourner Recovery Services. Outpatient clients attend group therapy up to five times per week. The body of someone who has died from a suspected opioid overdose, housed at the Montgomery County morgue. The morgue has been running morgue has been running out of room lately, and has begun renting refrigerated trailers for more space. FICTION

60 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN CLANG hen I became a parent of who dreams of the bathtubs of La Ro- He calls out, “Do you know who young children I also became chelle. This led me to buy a black leath- Charles Taylor is?” W a purposeful and relentless erette armchair and to designate it as I’m not answering that. opportunist of sleep. In fact, sleep func- my haven. I have to say, it has worked He comes out of the brothers’ room, tioned as that period’s subtle denomi- out pretty well. which is what we call the space in which nator. I found myself capable of taking But of late the fifteen-year-old, the the three boys are cooped up. “He was a a nap just about anywhere, even when middle son, has taken to disturbing me. guerrilla leader. In Liberia. He had an standing in a subway car or riding an I’ll be sitting there, doing stuff on my army made up of children.” escalator. I wasn’t the only one. Out and laptop, when he’ll approach and pull off “Stop right there,” I say. about, I spotted drowsy or dozing peo- my noise-cancelling headphones. My son stops where he is, because he ple everywhere; and I realized that a “What is it?” I ask him. thinks I’m telling him that he should stop kind of mechanized mass somnambu- “Have you heard of the Duvaliers?” advancing toward me. From a distance lism is an essential component of mod- “What?” of about three yards he says, “He made ern life; and I gained a better under- “The Duvaliers. The dictators of the children do some really bad things. standing of the siesta and the snooze Haiti.” Really, really bad things. He made them and the death wish. “What about them?” shoot their own parents. I think Taylor Then the three boys grew big— “There’s two Duvaliers,” he says. may have been the worst of them all.” grew from toddling alarmists into way- “There’s the father and there’s the son. I remove my reading glasses and look ward urban doofuses neurologically un- Do you know that they used rape to pun- him in the eye. “C’est la vie,” I tell him. equipped to perceive the risks inciden- ish their political opponents?” tal to their teen-age lives. Several nights “What?” n my book, this is an undervalued a week I lie awake in bed until the front He says, “They—” Imaxim. It is related to Stoicism—a door has sighed shut behind every last “I don’t want to hear about it. I know too-neglected philosophy nowadays— one of them. Even then, even once they’re all about the Duvaliers. They were hor- and it’s related, emotionally more than all safely home, there are disquieting go- rible. I know all about it.” logically, to the idea of water under the ings on. Objects are put in motion, to “But, Dad, I’ll bet you don’t know. bridge, which reminds us that the past frightening sonic effect. A creaking cup- There was one time—” cannot be rectified. This impossibility board hinge is an S.O.S. A spoon in a “Stop harassing me!” I shout. “Stop applies to the present, too. The present cereal bowl is a tocsin. bothering me with this stuff! Leave me is necessarily beyond rectification. If you The key point is that I no longer have alone! I lived through it! I don’t want to think about it, the very notion of rectifi- the ability to nap at will—to recover, in discuss it!” cation makes almost no sense. You could nickels of unconsciousness, a lost hyp- He answers, in his mild way, “You even contend that one’s future is water notic legacy. A round-the-clock jitteri- didn’t exactly live through it. You just under the bridge. ness prevails. heard about it.” Anyhow, on a Sunday evening the As a consequence, the concept of peace I understand that my son is trying to fifteen-year-old, my second-born, my and quiet has assumed an italicized per- get a precise sense of the world he is Secondo, comes home and announces sonal importance. Who can say, of course, about to enter—the wide world. I un- that he’s been mugged. I’m in my chair what “peace and quiet” means? It cer- derstand that this can be a difficult pro- when this occurs. I inspect him, this kid tainly doesn’t denote the experience pro- cess. I understand that it’s a good thing who is nearly six feet tall and forces me duced by being by oneself. I can offer that he comes to me with these ques- onto my toes when I kiss him, which is only a subjective definition: the state of tions, which do him nothing but credit, something I often do, even though it can affairs in which (1) one finds oneself at and that these are golden moments that embarrass him a little. home; (2) there are people around whom must be savored. I understand all that. He seems composed. But he also looks one wants to have around, not least be- Note that my fifteen-year-old is a dis- as if he’s just been mugged. cause it means that one doesn’t have to tinct case but not a special one. His two “Are you hurt?” I say. worry about where else they might be; brothers are the same. Each, in his own He shakes his head. (3) one sits in one’s armchair; and (4) the way, threatens the peace and the quiet. “Tell me what happened,” I say. people around leave one alone. “Where is East Timor?” this partic- He was skating with friends at L.E.S., The phenomenon of the Dad Chair ular son asks me. the skate park under the Manhattan needs no investigation here. I’ll just state “Look it up,” I say. Bridge. Then three of them took a train that there came a moment when the His voice has arrived from his bed- into Brooklyn. They wanted to skate a whole business of taking care of the room, where he’s lying in his bunk bed, spot where guys like Tyshawn Jones and guys—of their need to be woken up, in a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms and Brandon Westgate and Alex Olson had clothed, fed, transported, coached, skateboarding socks, reading his phone. recently filmed some tricks. They over- cleaned, bedded down, constantly kept Sometimes he’ll come out of the bed- shot their stop. That was when they ran safe and constantly captained—altered room and sit on the arm of my armchair into trouble. me. The alteration made me identify and cast an eye over my screen while he “Which train is this?” I say. with the shipman, working in high and talks. Which is exasperating. What I do “I don’t know. Some train.” howling winds in the Bay of Biscay, online is my business. In the old days, this would have thrown

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 61 me, would have led me to wonder what tells me, as if he or his friends would I don’t mention that I have already kind of knucklehead doesn’t know which have a clue. resolved to find this man and break his train he’s on. But I’ve been a father of The criminal eyed the three phones. fucking legs. boys for quite a while. My son’s phone was brand new; his was He likes tea, this son. I’ve been mak- the one the criminal reached for. The his isn’t a fantasy. My phone has an ing him some while he’s been talking. criminal asked my son for his passcode. Tapp that tracks my children’s phones. He takes the tea. My son told him. The criminal entered Because children are entitled to privacy, To repeat: there were three of them— the passcode and changed it. He didn’t I’ve never used the app before. But this my son plus his two friends. Three young ask the other boys for their phones. is an exceptional situation. males. They were sitting in the back cor- The criminal told my son that he had When I activate the phone tracker, a ner of the subway car. The car was al- all of his personal information now and map of New York City appears. Three most empty, it being a Sunday afternoon. knew where to find him. He said to circles—one blue, one green, one or- There was this dude close by, sitting be- the three boys, I never want to see you ange—correspond to the phones’ respec- tween the boys and the doors. The dude again, understand? tive whereabouts. It’s a thrilling scene, had a bag. The dude said to them, You Here the train came to a stop. The for some reason. want to buy a gun? He opened his bag criminal got out. The stolen phone is the orange one. and showed them the gun. The kids in- “He really knew what he was doing,” It’s in Brooklyn, at the corner of Sara- dicated that they didn’t want to buy a I say. toga and Pitkin. gun. The dude told the kids to get their “Yeah,” my son says. There’s no question of going out there. wallets out and put them in his bag. He I say, “It would have been crazy to That wouldn’t be smart. I’m going to spoke in a low, calm voice. The other take any chances. You did the right thing.” bide my time. I’m going to wait for the passengers, the potential witnesses or in- “Yeah,” my son says. orange circle to come to my turf. My turf terveners or heroes, were quite a ways “Don’t worry about your phone. We’ll is the triangle made by Times Square down the car. They weren’t aware of what get you another one. We may even have and Penn Station and the Port Au- was happening. insurance to cover that. But we’d need thority Bus Terminal. Everyone passes The kids did as they were told. Then to report it.” through here sooner or later, especially the dude told them to show him their “No cops,” my son says; and this is if they’re up to no good. phones. They obeyed. when I see that the criminal has fright- What this means, in practice, is that I ask my son for a description of ened him very much, and figures in his I spend a lot of time in my chair grimly the dude. mind as a person of great powers. chortling at my phone. Orange Circle My son tells me that he was a black “O.K.,” I say. I give him a hug and a Guy, or O.C.G., thinks he’s home free. guy, older, maybe about thirty, hard to kiss. “You did well. You handled yourself He has no idea that I’m watching his say how old, exactly. He wasn’t fat or big well, son.” every move. A lot of the day he’s mo- or small. He wore a Yankees cap. He had I don’t call him “son” very often. tionless in his Brownsville residence—I tattoos on his forearms. These were gang It’s a big word to say out loud. It’s a know exactly which Amboy Street apart- markings or prison markings, my son word I hold back for special occasions. ment building he lives in—and typically it’s not until the midafternoon that he stirs. He doesn’t go very far. He just wan- ders here and there in his neighborhood, like a little doggie being taken out to make a No. 1 and a No. 2. Maybe he owns a doggie. When he catches a subway train, his kinesis assumes a more suspenseful char- acter. The orange circle disappears for a period of minutes and then reappears, usually in downtown Brooklyn or at Fulton Street station, in lower Manhat- tan. This loser is so predictable. Occa- sionally the circle vanishes at Saratoga Avenue station and remains undetect- able for an hour or two, whereupon it rematerializes at Saratoga Avenue sta- tion. In other words, O.C.G. has never surfaced. He has been underground the whole time. From this fact, I de- duce that these outings have a criminal character: he takes an outbound train “I’m getting ready to celebrate the next chapter of the book I’m reading.” in order to rob people on the return journey to Brownsville. It’s what he does. Once, O.C.G. popped up at Penn Station. In a flash, I was out of the apart- ment. I was a mere block from my des- tination when I saw that he’d already boarded a train. (To Albany, it turned out.) That was a near-miss. But my day will come. I can get so caught up in my stake- out that I let my guard down. The son in question says to me, “Do you know what vivisection is?” “Vivisection?” “Operating on live animals. As a sci- entific experiment.” I say, “I don’t like where this is going.” “Have you heard of Unit 731?” “Unit of what?” I say. He tells me—and this is news to me— that, during the Second World War, the Japanese conducted lethal vivisectional experiments on hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, most of them Chinese. This took place in a facil- ity known as Unit 731. At the end of the war, the scientist-murderers were secretly granted immunity from prosecution, and “This person we’re trying to poison—does he even from exposure, by the United States. have any dietary restrictions?” In exchange, the United States received sole possession of the results of the vivi- sections. Evidently the data was valuable •• in the field of biological warfare. “Yeah,” I say. “Not good.” delayed for a few hours. It was night- calculations of relative physical strength. “That actually happened,” the boy time. Volatile colored lights moved in You don’t mess with my children. Not says. the dark of the windows, and the boys when I’m around. I don’t care who you I say, “I don’t know what to tell you.” and I spent quite some time looking at are. You don’t take one fucking step in Which isn’t quite true. I know not to them. After a while, the kids began hors- their direction. tell him, or remind him, that some of ing around. They were being boys—being What I’m getting at is: I have latent the children abducted and militarized by juvenile male humans between the ages paternal powers. It may be said—and in Charles Taylor reportedly learned not of three and six, to be zoological about truth it is said, by a whispering imagi- only to murder their parents but also to it. A certain boisterousness and brou- nary skeptic—that there’s no way a fifty- perform vivisections. On encountering haha characterized their activities. From one-year-old man can take down a a pregnant woman, they were known to my seat, I somnolently kept watch on tattooed career criminal, a hoodlum bet on the gender of the unborn child them, breaking things up as needed and Moriarty, twenty years his junior. To and then, using a machete, to cut open rounding up whichever one went astray. which I respond: Let’s wait and see. the mother’s womb in order to deter- A couple was seated nearby. The man mine the winner of the bet. turned to me and said, “Control your y next-door neighbor is a gentle- There’s a chance, of course, that children.” Mman by the name of Eduardo. Over O.C.G. might not be my guy. O.C.G. Instantly I was a hundred per cent the years, he has kept himself to himself. could be a purchaser of the phone. Given awake. I rose to my feet and went over It’s said he’s of Cuban origin. He com- everything I’ve seen and studied, that to this man. I pointed my finger an inch municates mainly by signifiers of good strikes me as unlikely. No, the bitch has or two from his nose. “I’m going to con- will. For example, sometimes he’ll take got himself a mint phone for his per- trol you,” I said. delivery of a package for me and leave it sonal use—or so he thinks. Like every We didn’t hear from him after that. outside my door. Eduardo’s apartment criminal, he has overlooked a detail. That Now, it’s true that the guy must have shares plumbing with mine, and if there’s kid he threatened and robbed? That kid been close to sixty. He posed no obvi- a pipe blockage we liaise about turning is my son. ous physical threat. It was no big deal to taps on and off. When the boys were little, we found put him in his place. But something I once saw a limousine run him down. ourselves in an airport lounge. We were deeper was going on, something beyond He was in the crosswalk—he’s pushing

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 63 seventy and has a slow, hobbling gait— Eduardo sneaked into the captain’s quar- with an offhand staff. When Eduardo when the limo turned straight into him. ters. “Garcilaso had heard there were sits at the little countertop by the win- I ran over and helped Eduardo get up. M&M’s in there,” Eduardo told me. “We dow, I join him but I don’t get myself There was no sign of an injury. My neigh- look around, and we find the M&M’s. anything to drink. I listen when he tells bor, I understood, is hard as nails. At that exact moment, we see the Cuban me that a small group of them, a hand- On a Friday morning in April, O.C.G. jets. Flying low, coming straight at us.” ful of the survivors of the sinking of pops up at the Port Authority Bus Ter- He laughs. He’s been laughing softly the Houston, walked for a day and a minal. That’s only five blocks away. That the whole time. night through the swamps. On the sec- is squarely in my turf. I ask Eduardo if he and Garcilaso ond day, they surrendered to Castro’s I jump to my feet, put on a baseball got to eat the M&M’s. He tells me they forces and, en route to Havana, they cap and sunglasses, and dash out. I en- did not. ran into Che. counter Eduardo at the elevator. It seems that this is the full extent of “Che Guevara?” We smile at each other. When we exit his anecdote. Only in response to my The prisoner-transport vehicle had the building, I hold open the door and questioning does he disclose that the come to an unexpected halt. Che Gue- wait for him to pass through. Then he bombing sank the ship. Eduardo had to vara and a woman comrade appeared. speaks: “You play baseball?” jump overboard, into the Bay of Pigs, They examined the prisoners and con- He’s referring to the bat I’m holding. and swim to shore. ferred in French, so as not to be under- I’m going to a meeting, I tell him. “Anybody die?” I ask. stood. Finally, Che said to Eduardo, Who “I’ll walk with you,” he says. “That “Sure,” Eduardo says. are you, young man? Eduardo answered, O.K.?” We’ve reached the end of the block. Eduardo Sanchez de Cadenas. Che said, “Sure,” I say. I’m checking my phone. “I’m headed uptown,” I say. Are you a relation of Captain Cadenas? O.C.G. hasn’t gone anywhere. Eduardo indicates that he’s also I have no idea, Eduardo said. To repeat: Eduardo is a steady walker headed that way. We set off. “I was relaxed,” he tells me. “My at- but a deliberate one. As his escort, I have In the morning rush, this bit of titude was, they were going to shoot us no choice but to go at his speed. This is Eighth Avenue is barely manageable or they weren’t.” a first, I should say. We’ve never walked on foot. The problem is that an almost The older prisoners were not so re- together before. impenetrable pedestrian mass, dis- laxed. Unlike Eduardo, they’d recognized In a second first, Eduardo makes an charged by buses from New Jersey and Che. Shut up, kid, they said. important-sounding announcement. the Times Square subway exits, hurries Nobody got shot. The truck drove on. “Today is the anniversary of the Bay of south in a kind of stampede. The sense Eduardo never saw Che Guevara again. Pigs.” of a great flight—of crops put to the “What about your friend?” I ask. “The Bay of Pigs? Huh.” The Bay of torch, of a ruined and shaken hinter- “What about Garcilaso?” Pigs, Bunker Hill, Bull Run, the bridge land—is only heightened by trains Eduardo shakes his head—or, rather, over the River Kwai—who cares, at this booming underfoot, by the bleeping he moves his head in such a way that I point? Who knows how to care? Klaxons of reversing box trucks, by the don’t know what he’s signalling. I’m afraid “I was sixteen,” Eduardo tells me. He disorderly shoving of food carts be- to know. tells me that he was among the troops tween the stopped cars, and, above all, Then Eduardo says, “Garcilaso was on the Houston. His best friend there by the strangely focusless expressions O.K.,” and by God that’s a very beauti- was named Garcilaso. Garcilaso was worn by the oncoming commuters, who ful thing to hear. fifteen years old. are seemingly devoid of ordinary con- For a minute or two, we watch the With that he has my ear, even as I sciousness. It all bodes ill. Either the world go by. keep an eye on my phone. barbarians are at the gates or we our- “You want another coffee?” I say. “I’m Eduardo relates that, after his family selves are the barbarians. getting myself one.” fled Cuba, he enrolled at Georgia Tech. What I’d give for a green and silent “I’m O.K.,” Eduardo says. “You don’t “Wait,” I say. “You enrolled at sixteen?” lane. What I’d give for a woodland’s need to be anywhere?” “Correct,” Eduardo says. “At sixteen.” leopard-skin light. Do I need to be anywhere? What He tells me that it was in Atlanta, at In short, Eduardo and I can go for- kind of question is that? Of course I need the Y.M.C.A., that he was recruited by ward only in starts: we advance a few to be somewhere. There is no end to the the counter-revolutionaries. “Every- yards, wait for a gap in the crowd, and places I need to be. body else was going,” he says. “So I advance again. I notice that he’s trying I buy myself a coffee. Then I regain thought, Why not? Let’s go.” He flew to tell me something. my stool. down to Miami to sign up with the “Say again?” I shout. Tell me more, I want to say to C.I.A. After two weeks of training in An ambulance siren is shrieking. Eduardo but do not say, because he the mountain jungles of Guatemala, Eduardo waits for the shriek to pass. “I’m seems ready to leave. Tell me about Eduardo and Garcilaso boarded the going in there, to get a coffee,” he says. Garcilaso and about how things went Houston. They were given ancient Ga- It feels natural to follow Eduardo— well for him.  rand rifles. In the absence of helmets, even though I’m averse to this partic- they wore cowboy hats. ular deli, which I know to be a busy, NEWYORKER.COM One morning, at dawn, Garcilaso and cavernous, impersonal establishment Joseph O’Neill on his story in this week’s issue.

64 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 THE CRITICS

THE THEATRE THE RECKONING

Bruce Springsteen’s one-man show. BY HILTON ALS “ harisma” has its origin in a Greek steen’s gifts. In the eighties, for example, Northeastern but Midwestern, as if he Cword for a favor or a gift, and after when I looked at that rabble-rouser’s tou- found that particular tone more authen- seeing “Springsteen on Broadway,” Bruce sled black hair, his bandanna, and his long tic or American. By cultivating that in- Springsteen’s new solo show (at the Wal- face and prominent jaw, I saw nothing tonation, was he expressing nostalgia for ter Kerr), I felt I understood the term but danger signals; mostly, they had to do the kind of broken-cowboy-turned- more clearly. Or less complicatedly. For with race and class. First of all, he was mechanic blue-collar whiteness that he years before I saw this production—it’s a from New Jersey, a state with a history of celebrated in his butch persona, his arms substantial one, about two hours, with- racial division, where some schools were raised in triumph from a workingman’s out intermission—I dragged my heels segregated well into the forties. Then sleeveless denim jacket? when it came to appreciating Spring- there was his accent, which sounded not Like many songwriters, the now sixty-

Springsteen isn’t humor-challenged, exactly, but he’s a romantic, and romantic feeling guides this intimate spectacle.

ILLUSTRATION BY BEN WISEMAN THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 65 eight-year-old Springsteen crafts legends away, the song said everything we couldn’t ruefully, in one of many amusing self- from his own life story. From the start— and didn’t want to say: the pain was too disclosures that punctuate the show. on such early masterpieces as his 1975 great. Springsteen understood the AIDS Springsteen isn’t humor-challenged, breakout, “Born to Run,” or mid-career patient’s fears and emotions. He wasn’t exactly—he’s too self-aware not to know explorations like 1995’s “The Ghost of mimicking suffering for effect; he knew when to make fun of himself—but he’s Tom Joad”—he has written narratives in that in order for a song to work it had a romantic, and romantic feeling guides which listeners can recognize themselves, to be authentic, felt. this intimate spectacle. It’s impossible or not. I couldn’t find myself in his epic It was then that I began not only to not to fall in love with his mother, a odes to, presumably, young white men, listen to Springsteen but to see how lim- first-generation Italian-American, as with girls on the back of their motorcy- ited my view of masculinity was. If a Springsteen, seeing her from a child’s cles, racing through or away from sub- straight guy could understand what was, perspective, describes how she never urban towns that couldn’t contain their primarily, a gay male disease, why could missed a day of work in her fifty years grand hopes—hopes that became bro- I not understand him? Springsteen’s ad- as a legal secretary, and how he loved the ken dreams, or just real life, with dead- miration for Clemons was real, and so sound her high heels made as she walked ening factory work, kids on the lawn. I was his understanding of the racial fear him down the hill to school—which he was suspicious, too, about the role of the and prejudice in New Jersey—as his 2016 hated. As an adult, he told us, he tries to saxophonist Clarence Clemons in Spring- memoir, “Born to Run,” makes clear. Equal live up to her cheerfulness and commit- steen’s E Street Band. (Clemons played parts James Agee’s “Let Us Now Praise ment, and if there was a dry eye in the with Springsteen from 1972 until his death, Famous Men” and Dylan Thomas’s “A audience as he spoke, there wasn’t once in 2011.) Why was a fantastic black mu- Child’s Christmas in Wales,” the book is he began to sing the 1982 song “My Fa- sician supporting a white star when there a kind of supplement to his songs. In writ- ther’s House,” a tribute to his Irish-Dutch were black artists who could have benefit- ing, Springsteen tells us as much about father, who worked menial jobs—in a ted from his talent? Had Clemons sold himself as he knows, but the stillness of car factory, as a bus driver—and was crip- out in order to be part of the Boss’s enor- the page confines him in ways that a stage pled by depression: mous commercial success? Was Spring- and lights and a loving audience do not. My father’s house shines hard and bright steen using him to give himself some Performing releases his interiority and his It stands like a beacon calling me in the kind of legitimacy, as Elvis Presley did knowledge of what masculinity is: a con- night with Big Mama Thornton? Or was there struct, but no less real because of that. Calling and calling so cold and alone genuine feeling between the two men? Shining ’cross this dark highway where our My Springsteen problem, ultimately, t the Walter Kerr, Springsteen cribs sins lie unatoned was my problem with white masculin- Afrom his book to take us on what As Springsteen, who was raised Catho- ity in general: was it possible for straight lesser artists would call “a journey.” Walk- lic, sang, it became clear that his com- white men to empathize with anything ing out on a dark stage that holds a piano mitment to his subject matter was a kind other than themselves, in the way that and not much else, Springsteen, in a black of sermon—one that he had written in Joni Mitchell, say, could identify with T-shirt, jeans, and boots, was, from the order to understand not only himself but that black crow, or Laura Nyro with all minute I saw him, just a guy on his way what goes into the making of a self. the inhabitants of her native New York, to work, a guy like one of us—even if that Toward the end of the show, Spring- or Chaka Khan with the confusion and guy wasn’t exactly me. His posture isn’t the steen’s wife of twenty-six years, the singer joy of a genderless world? Listening to greatest, but he’s not a schlub: he’s solid, Patti Scialfa, another Italian Jersey girl, those female powerhouses, I shut out the with a habit of walking with his head joined him onstage for two numbers. Be- sound of Springsteen’s cars and electric down, like a race-car driver looking for his fore we heard Scialfa’s crystal-clear so- guitars and het desire until 1993, when I keys. Men in the balcony started chanting prano—she has an Emmylou Harris pu- saw the movie “Philadelphia.” One of “Bru-u-uce! Bru-u-uce!,” as he stood in rity to her voice, but is more open-mouthed the first mainstream pieces about AIDS, the dim light, bracing himself to tell his and blues-based—Springsteen, a family the film featured Springsteen’s phenom- story. His voice was instantly recognizable: man still puzzling over what makes a enal ballad “Streets of Philadelphia,” slow, rougher than the Nebraska- born family, talked about trust. He had lots of which added so much to the images of Henry Fonda’s and not as high, but sim- issues with it, he said, which meant that illness, hope, and death (and won the ilarly distinctive. (Springsteen’s intonation it had taken him a long time to find it, 1993 Academy Award for Best Original worked brilliantly on the title track of his even with Scialfa. “In this life,” he added, Song). In a simple arrangement, he sang: 1982 album “Nebraska,” in which, in an- “you make your choices, you take your other feat of ventriloquism that transmog- stand, you awaken the youthful spell of I was bruised and battered, I couldn’t tell what I felt rifies into empathy, he tells the story of immortality.” And there it was: the ro- I was unrecognizable to myself the murderer Charles Starkweather.) The mantic’s faith that if you stick with some- Saw my reflection in a window and didn’t words came tumbling out, but at his own thing—with love, work, your parents, know my own face pace: his poor upbringing, how he was skeptical fans, an America that is failing Oh brother are you gonna leave me desperate to leave home, and ended up, as itself with the wrong President—you will wastin’ away we all do, in one way or another, back where make it through, and perhaps what once For those of us who didn’t abandon he started. “Now I live ten minutes away seemed so daunting may just turn out to friends and lovers who were wasting from where I grew up,” he said, somewhat be something good. ♦

66 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 minded universities in our own time. A CRITIC AT LARGE If the Ninety-five Theses sprouted a myth, that is no surprise. Luther was one of those figures who touched off THE HAMMER something much larger than himself; namely, the Reformation—the sunder- How Martin Luther changed the world. ing of the Church and a fundamental revision of its theology. Once he had di- BY JOAN ACOCELLA vided the Church, it could not be healed. His reforms survived to breed other re- forms, many of which he disapproved of. His church splintered and splintered. To tote up the Protestant denomina- tions discussed in Alec Ryrie’s new book, “Protestants” (Viking), is almost comi- cal, there are so many of them. That means a lot of people, though. An eighth of the human race is now Protestant. The Reformation, in turn, reshaped Europe. As German-speaking lands as- serted their independence from Rome, other forces were unleashed. In the Knights’ Revolt of 1522, and the Peas- ants’ War, a couple of years later, minor gentry and impoverished agricultural workers saw Protestantism as a way of redressing social grievances. (More than eighty thousand poorly armed peasants were slaughtered when the latter rebel- lion failed.) Indeed, the horrific Thirty Years’ War, in which, basically, Europe’s Roman Catholics killed all the Protes- tants they could, and vice versa, can in some measure be laid at Luther’s door. Although it did not begin until decades after his death, it arose in part because he had created no institutional structure to replace the one he walked away from. lang! Clang! Down the corridors of bolically—loud, metallic, violent—never Almost as soon as Luther started the Creligious history we hear this sound: occurred. Not only were there no eye- Reformation, alternative Reformations Martin Luther, an energetic thirty-three- witnesses; Luther himself, ordinarily an arose in other localities. From town to year-old Augustinian friar, hammering enthusiastic self-dramatizer, was vague town, preachers told the citizenry what it his Ninety-five Theses to the doors of on what had happened. He remembered should no longer put up with, where- the Castle Church of Wittenberg, in drawing up a list of ninety-five theses upon they stood a good chance of being Saxony, and thus, eventually, splitting the around the date in question, but, as for shoved aside—indeed, strung up—by thousand-year-old Roman Catholic what he did with it, all he was sure of other preachers. Religious houses began Church into two churches—one loyal to was that he sent it to the local archbishop. to close down. Luther led the movement the Pope in Rome, the other protesting Furthermore, the theses were not, as is mostly by his writings. Meanwhile, he did against the Pope’s rule and soon, in fact, often imagined, a set of non- negotiable what he thought was his main job in life, calling itself Protestant. This month demands about how the Church should teaching the Bible at the University of marks the five-hundredth anniversary of reform itself in accordance with Brother Wittenberg. The Reformation wasn’t led, Luther’s famous action. Accordingly, a Martin’s standards. Rather, like all “the- exactly; it just spread, metastasized. number of books have come out, recon- ses” in those days, they were points to And that was because Europe was so sidering the man and his influence. They be thrashed out in public disputations, ready for it. The relationship between differ on many points, but something in the manner of the ecclesiastical schol- the people and the rulers could hardly that most of them agree on is that the ars of the twelfth century or, for that have been worse. Maximilian I, the Holy hammering episode, so satisfying sym- matter, the debate clubs of tradition- Roman Emperor, was dying—he brought his coffin with him wherever he trav- Luther’s reforms succeeded because of his energetic, charismatic personality. elled—but he was taking his time about

ILLUSTRATION BY NICK LITTLE THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 67 it. The presumptive heir, King Charles I ore. The family was not poor. Archeol- one of the best of the new biographers, of Spain, was looked upon with grave ogists have been at work in their base- writes, in “Martin Luther: Renegade and suspicion. He already had Spain and the ment. The Luthers ate suckling pig and Prophet” (Random House), it was a mess Netherlands. Why did he need the Holy owned drinking glasses. They had either of “muddy houses, unclean lanes.” At that Roman Empire as well? Furthermore, seven or eight children, of whom five time, however, the new ruler of Saxony, he was young—only seventeen when survived. The father wanted Martin, the Frederick the Wise, was trying to make Luther wrote the Ninety-five Theses. eldest, to study law, in order to help him a real city of it. He built a castle and a The biggest trouble, though, was money. in his business, but Martin disliked law church—the one on whose door the fa- The Church had incurred enormous ex- school and promptly had one of those mous theses were supposedly nailed— penses. It was warring with the Turks at experiences often undergone in the old and he hired an important artist, Lucas the walls of Vienna. It had also started days by young people who did not Cranach the Elder, as his court painter. an ambitious building campaign, includ- wish to take their parents’ career advice. Most important, he founded a univer- ing the reconstruction of St. Peter’s Ba- Caught in a violent thunderstorm one sity, and staffed it with able scholars, in- silica, in Rome. To pay for these ven- day in 1505—he was twenty-one—he cluding Johann von Staupitz, the vicar- tures, it had borrowed huge sums from vowed to St. Anne, the mother of the general of the Augustinian friars of the Europe’s banks, and to repay the banks Virgin Mary, that if he survived he would German-speaking territories. Staupitz it was strangling the people with taxes. become a monk. He kept his promise, had been Luther’s confessor at Erfurt, It has often been said that, funda- and was ordained two years later. In the and when he found himself overworked mentally, Luther gave us “modernity.” heavily psychoanalytic nineteen-fifties, at Wittenberg he summoned Luther, Among the recent studies, Eric Metax- much was made of the idea that this persuaded him to take a doctorate, and as’s “Martin Luther: The Man Who Re- flouting of his father’s wishes set the handed over many of his duties to him. discovered God and Changed the World” stage for his rebellion against the Holy Luther supervised everything from mon- (Viking) makes this claim in grandiose Father in Rome. Such is the main point asteries (eleven of them) to fish ponds, terms. “The quintessentially modern of Erik Erikson’s 1958 book, “Young Man but most crucial was his succeeding idea of the individual was as unthink- Luther,” which became the basis of a fa- Staupitz as the university’s professor of able before Luther as is color in a world mous play by John Osborne (filmed, in the Bible, a job that he took on at the of black and white,” he writes. “And the 1974, with Stacy Keach in the title role). age of twenty-eight and retained until more recent ideas of pluralism, religious Today, psychoanalytic interpretations his death. In this capacity, he lectured on liberty, self-government, and liberty all tend to be tittered at by Luther biogra- Scripture, held disputations, and preached entered history through the door that phers. But the desire to find some great to the staff of the university. Luther opened.” The other books are psychological source, or even a middle- He was apparently a galvanizing more reserved. As they point out, Lu- sized one, for Luther’s great story is un- speaker, but during his first twelve years ther wanted no part of pluralism—even derstandable, because, for many years, as a monk he published almost nothing. for the time, he was vehemently anti-Se- nothing much happened to him. This This was no doubt due in part to the re- mitic—and not much part of individu- man who changed the world left his sponsibilities heaped on him at Witten- alism. People were to believe and act as German-speaking lands only once in his berg, but at this time, and for a long time, their churches dictated. life. (In 1510, he was part of a mission he also suffered what seems to have been The fact that Luther’s protest, rather a severe psychospiritual crisis. He called than others that preceded it, brought his problem his Anfechtungen—trials, about the Reformation is probably due tribulations—but this feels too slight a in large measure to his outsized person- word to cover the afflictions he describes: ality. He was a charismatic man, and ma- cold sweats, nausea, constipation, crush- niacally energetic. Above all, he was in- ing headaches, ringing in his ears, to- transigent. To oppose was his joy. And gether with depression, anxiety, and a though at times he showed that hanker- general feeling that, as he put it, the angel ing for martyrdom that we detect, with of Satan was beating him with his fists. distaste, in the stories of certain religious Most painful, it seems, for this passion- figures, it seems that, most of the time, sent to Rome to heal a rent in the Au- ately religious young man was to dis- he just got out of bed in the morning gustinian order. It failed.) Most of his cover his anger against God. Years later, and got on with his work. Among other youth was spent in dirty little towns where commenting on his reading of Scripture things, he translated the New Testament men worked long hours each day and as a young friar, Luther spoke of his rage from Greek into German in eleven weeks. then, at night, went to the tavern and at the description of God’s righteous- got into fights. He described his uni- ness, and of his grief that, as he was cer- uther was born in 1483 and grew up versity town, Erfurt, as consisting of “a tain, he would not be judged worthy: “I Lin Mansfeld, a small mining town whorehouse and a beerhouse.” Witten- did not love, yes, I hated the righteous in Saxony. His father started out as a berg, where he lived for the remainder God who punishes sinners.” miner but soon rose to become a mas- of his life, was bigger—with two thou- There were good reasons for an in- ter smelter, a specialist in separating valu- sand inhabitants when he settled there— tense young priest to feel disillusioned. able metal (in this case, copper) from but not much better. As Lyndal Roper, One of the most bitterly resented abuses

68 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 of the Church at that time was the so- found “justified,” or worthy. From this called indulgences, a kind of late- medieval thought, the Ninety-five Theses were get-out-of-jail-free card used by the born. Most of them were challenges to Church to make money. When a Chris- the sale of indulgences. And out of them tian purchased an indulgence from the came what would be the two guiding Church, he obtained—for himself or principles of Luther’s theology: sola fide whomever else he was trying to benefit—a and sola scriptura. reduction in the amount of time the per- son’s soul had to spend in Purgatory, ola fide means “by faith alone”— atoning for his sins, before ascending to faith, as opposed to good works, as Heaven. You might pay to have a spe- Sthe basis for salvation. This was not a cial Mass said for the sinner or, less ex- new idea. St. Augustine, the founder of pensively, you could buy candles or new Luther’s monastic order, laid it out in altar cloths for the church. But, in the the fourth century. Furthermore, it is most common transaction, the purchaser not an idea that fits well with what we simply paid an agreed-upon amount of know of Luther. Pure faith, contem- money and, in return, was given a doc- plation, white light: surely these are the ument saying that the beneficiary—the gifts of the Asian religions, or of me- name was written in on a printed form— dieval Christianity, of St. Francis with was forgiven x amount of time in Pur- his birds. As for Luther, with his rages gatory. The more time off, the more it and sweats, does he seem a good can- cost, but the indulgence-sellers prom- didate? Eventually, however, he discov- ised that whatever you paid for you got. ered (with lapses) that he could be re- Actually, they could change their leased from those torments by the minds about that. In 1515, the Church simple act of accepting God’s love for cancelled the exculpatory powers of al- him. Lest it be thought that this stern ready purchased indulgences for the next man then concluded that we could stop eight years. If you wanted that period worrying about our behavior and do covered, you had to buy a new indul- whatever we wanted, he said that works gence. Realizing that this was hard on issue from faith. In his words, “We can people—essentially, they had wasted their no more separate works from faith than money—the Church declared that pur- heat and light from fire.” But he did chasers of the new indulgences did not believe that the world was irretrievably have to make confession or even exhibit full of sin, and that repairing that sit- contrition. They just had to hand over uation was not the point of our moral the money and the thing was done, be- lives. “Be a sinner, and let your sins be cause this new issue was especially pow- strong, but let your trust in Christ be erful. Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar stronger,” he wrote to a friend. locally famous for his zeal in selling in- The second great principle, sola scrip- dulgences, is said to have boasted that tura, or “by scripture alone,” was the one of the new ones could obtain remis- belief that only the Bible could tell us sion from sin even for someone who had the truth. Like sola fide, this was a re- raped the Virgin Mary. (In the 1974 movie jection of what, to Luther, were the lies “Luther,” Tetzel is played with a won- of the Church—symbolized most of all derful, bug-eyed wickedness by Hugh by the indulgence market. Indulgences Griffith.) Even by the standards of the brought you an abbreviation of your very corrupt sixteenth-century Church, stay in Purgatory, but what was Purga- this was shocking. tory? No such thing is mentioned in In Luther’s mind, the indulgence trade the Bible. Some people think that Dante seems to have crystallized the spiritual made it up; others say Gregory the crisis he was experiencing. It brought Great. In any case, Luther decided that him up against the absurdity of bargain- somebody made it up. ing with God, jockeying for his favor— Guided by those convictions, and fired indeed, paying for his favor. Why had by his new certainty of God’s love for God given his only begotten son? And him, Luther became radicalized. He why had the son died on the cross? Be- preached, he disputed. Above all, he wrote cause that’s how much God loved the pamphlets. He denounced not only the world. And that alone, Luther now rea- indulgence trade but all the other ways soned, was sufficient for a person to be in which the Church made money off THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 69 Christians: the endless pilgrimages, the BRIEFLY NOTED yearly Masses for the dead, the cults of the saints. He questioned the sacraments. His arguments made sense to many peo- Empress of the East, by Leslie Peirce (Basic). This engaging ple, notably Frederick the Wise. Freder- biography reconsiders the legacy of the sixteenth-century ick was pained that Saxony was widely Ottoman empress Roxelana. Kidnapped as a child by slave- considered a backwater. He now saw how traders in present-day Ukraine, she was sold into the harem much attention Luther brought to his of Süleyman I. As a royal concubine, she was expected to pro- state, and how much respect accrued to duce just one son with the sultan—to avoid bloody succession the university that he (Frederick) had struggles between full brothers. But Süleyman freed and mar- founded at Wittenberg. He vowed to ried Roxelana, and had five sons with her, a break from tradi- protect this troublemaker. tion that got her branded a witch and a seductress. Peirce per- Things came to a head in 1520. By suasively recasts Roxelana as a pragmatist adept at navigating then, Luther had taken to calling the both palace politics and international relations, and as a pio- Church a brothel, and Pope Leo X the neer who established a more powerful role for Ottoman women. Antichrist. Leo gave Luther sixty days to appear in Rome and answer charges Young Radicals, by Jeremy McCarter (Random House). The work of heresy. Luther let the sixty days elapse; of five young activists anchors this intellectual history of the the Pope excommunicated him; Luther nineteen-teens: Walter Lippmann’s stint as a government pro- responded by publicly burning the papal pagandist; the journalism of Max Eastman; John Reed’s so- order in the pit where one of Witten- cialist writing; the idealist essays of Randolph Bourne; and the berg’s hospitals burned its used rags. Re- suffragist campaign of Alice Paul. McCarter’s lively narrative formers had been executed for less, but ably captures the personal moments—Lippmann in Paris during Luther was by now a very popular man the First World War, Reed’s trips to Communist Moscow— throughout Europe. The authorities that undergird movements and institutions. Still, as McCarter knew they would have serious trouble if himself writes, “All five of these young radicals attended col- they killed him, and the Church gave lege, all were white, none were poor.” Details such as Paul’s ne- him one more chance to recant, at the glect of black women’s appeals for enfranchisement highlight upcoming diet—or congregation of the scant attention given to some of the group’s contemporaries. officers, sacred and secular—in the ca- thedral city of Worms in 1521. He went, The Seventh Function of Language, by Laurent Binet, trans- and declared that he could not retract lated from the French by Sam Taylor (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). any of the charges he had made against In 1980, the French theorist Roland Barthes died after being the Church, because the Church could hit by a van, but in this mazy, boisterous novel, he is mur- not show him, in Scripture, that any of dered because he possesses a document that holds the key them were false: to persuading anyone of anything. The ensuing investiga- Since then your serene majesties and your tion plunges a curmudgeonly detective and a young semi- lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in ologist into the French intelligentsia’s sordid affairs. Auda- this manner, plain and unvarnished: Unless I cious fictions about real-life luminaries abound: Michel am convinced by the testimony of the scriptures Foucault lectures while receiving a blow job in a bathhouse; or clear reason, for I do not trust in the Pope Julia Kristeva conspires with Bulgarian assassins. Binet jux- or in the councils alone, since it is well known that they often err and contradict themselves, taposes car chases with highbrow in-jokes and ruminations. I am bound to the Scriptures I have quoted and The book is a love letter to the power of language—the most my conscience is captive to the Word of God. dangerous weapon is the tongue. I cannot and will not retract anything.

The Forensic Records Society, by Magnus Mills (Bloomsbury). The Pope often errs! Luther will de- This novel’s eponymous society is founded by two vinyl junk- cide what God wants! By consulting ies, in the hope of contacting the “like-minded,” with a Scripture! No wonder that an institu- charter to listen to records “closely and in detail.” A small posse tion wedded to the idea of its leader’s gathers every Monday at a local pub; members bring three infallibility was profoundly shaken by rec ords each, but comments on the music are forbidden. The this declaration. Once the Diet of rules begin to irk participants, who form splinter groups (the Worms came to an end, Luther headed Confessional Records Society, the Perceptive Records Soci- for home, but he was “kidnapped” on ety) with competing ideologies of consumption. The book thus the way, by a posse of knights sent by becomes a study of political purism, in which the narrator his protector, Frederick the Wise. The doubts that “the challengers would ever find a better system.” knights spirited him off to the Wart- It’s an observant, if simplistic, parable, given resonance by burg, a secluded castle in Eisenach, in Mills’s tight control of tone. order to give the authorities time to cool

70 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 off. Luther was annoyed by the delay, Stecken und Stab” (“thy rod and thy ter MS’s Garden of Eden is full of won- but he didn’t waste time. That’s when staff ”)—and he loved repetition and derful animals—a camel, a crocodile, a he translated the New Testament. forceful rhythms. This made his texts little toad—and in the towns everyone easy and pleasing to read aloud, at home, wears those black shoes like the ones in uring his lifetime, Luther became to the children. The books also featured Brueghel paintings. The volumes lie flat Dprobably the biggest celebrity in a hundred and twenty-eight woodcut on the table when you open them, and the German-speaking lands. When he illustrations, all by one artist from the the letters are big and black and clear. travelled, people flocked to the high Cranach workshop, known to us only Even if you don’t understand German, road to see his cart go by. This was due as Master MS. There they were, all those you can sort of read them. not just to his personal qualities and the wondrous things—the Garden of Eden, importance of his cause but to timing. Abraham and Isaac, Jacob wrestling with mong the supposedly Biblical rules Luther was born only a few decades the angel—which modern people are Athat Luther pointed out could not after the invention of printing, and used to seeing images of and which Lu- be found in the Bible was the require- though it took him a while to start writ- ther’s contemporaries were not. There ment of priestly celibacy. Well before the ing, it was hard to stop him once he got were marginal glosses, as well as short Diet of Worms, Luther began advising going. Among the quincentennial books prefaces for each book, which would priests to marry. He said that he would is an entire volume on his relationship have been useful for the children of the marry, too, if he did not expect, every day, to print, “Brand Luther” (Penguin), by household and probably also for the to be executed for heresy. One wonders. the British historian Andrew Pettegree. family member reading to them. But in 1525 he was called upon to help a Luther’s collected writings come to a These virtues, plus the fact that the group of twelve nuns who had just fled hundred and twenty volumes. In the Bible was probably, in many cases, the a Cistercian convent, an action that was first half of the sixteenth century, a third only book in the house, meant that it related to his reforms. Part of his duty to of all books published in German were was widely used as a primer. More peo- these women, he felt, was to return them written by him. ple learned to read, and the more they to their families or to find husbands for By producing them, he didn’t just cre- knew how to read the more they wanted them. At the end, one was left, a twenty- ate the Reformation; he also created his to own this book, or give it to others. six-year-old girl named Katharina von country’s vernacular, as Dante is said to The three-thousand-copy first edition Bora, the daughter of a poor, albeit noble, have done with Italian. The majority of of the New Testament, though it was country family. Luther didn’t want her, his writings were in Early New High not cheap (it cost about as much as a he said—he found her “proud”—but she German, a form of the language that was calf ), sold out immediately. As many as wanted him. She was the one who pro- starting to gel in southern Germany at half a million Luther Bibles seem to have posed. And though, as he told a friend, that time. Under his influence, it did gel. been printed by the mid-sixteenth cen- he felt no “burning” for her, he formed The crucial text is his Bible: the New tury. In his discussions of sola scriptura, with her a marriage that is probably the Testament, translated from the original Luther had declared that all believers happiest story in any account of his life. Greek and published in 1523, followed were priests: laypeople had as much right One crucial factor was her skill in by the Old Testament, in 1534, trans- as the clergy to determine what Scrip- household management. The Luthers lated from the Hebrew. Had he not cre- ture meant. With his Bible, he gave Ger- lived in the so-called Black Monastery, ated Protestantism, this book would be man speakers the means to do so. which had been Wittenberg’s Augus- the culminating achievement of Lu- In honor of the five-hundredth an- tinian monastery—that is, Luther’s old ther’s life. It was not the first German niversary, the excellent German art-book home as a friar—before the place emp- translation of the Bible—indeed, it had publisher Taschen has produced a fac- tied out as a result of the reformer’s ac- eighteen predecessors—but it was un- simile with spectacular colored wood- tions. (One monk became a cobbler, an- questionably the most beautiful, graced cuts. Pleasingly, the book historian other a baker, and so on.) It was a huge, with the same combination of exalta- Stephan Füssel, in the explanatory pa- filthy, comfortless place. Käthe, as Lu- tion and simplicity, but more so, as the perback that accompanies the two-vol- ther called her, made it livable, and not King James Bible. (William Tyndale, ume facsimile, reports that in 2004, when just for her immediate family. Between whose English version of the Bible, for a fire swept through the Duchess Anna ten and twenty students lodged there, which he was executed, was more or less Amalia Library, in Weimar, where this and the household took in many others the basis of the King James, knew and copy was housed, it was “rescued, un- as well: four children of Luther’s dead admired Luther’s translation.) Luther damaged, with not a second to lose, sister Margarete, plus four more or- very consciously sought a fresh, vigor- thanks to the courageous intervention phaned children from both sides of the ous idiom. For his Bible’s vocabulary, he of library director Dr. Michael Knoche.” family, plus a large family fleeing the said, “we must ask the mother in the I hope that Dr. Knoche himself ran out plague. A friend of the reformer, writ- home, the children on the street,” and, with the two volumes in his arms. I don’t ing to an acquaintance journeying to like other writers with such aims—Wil- know what the price of a calf is these Wittenberg, warned him on no account liam Blake, for example—he ended up days, but the price of this facsimile is to stay with the Luthers if he valued with something songlike. He loved al- sixty dollars. Anyone who wants to give peace and quiet. The refectory table literation—“Der Herr ist mein Hirte” himself a Luther quincentennial pres- seated between thirty-five and fifty, and (“The Lord is my shepherd”); “Dein ent should order it immediately. Mas- Käthe, having acquired a large market

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 71 garden and a considerable amount of presents for the children. In 1536, when “Late medieval Christians generally hated livestock (pigs, goats), and now super­ he went to the Diet of Augsburg, an­ and despised Jews.” But Luther despised vising a staff of up to ten employees other important convocation, he kept a them dementedly, ecstatically. In his 1543 (maids, a cook, a swineherd, et al.), fed picture of his favorite child, Magdalene, treatise “On the Ineffable Name and the them all. She also handled the family’s on the wall of his chamber. Magdalene Generations of Christ,” he imagines the finances, and at times had to economize died at thirteen. Schilling again produces Devil stuffing the Jews’ orifices with filth: carefully. Luther would accept no money a telling scene. Magdalene is nearing the “He stuffs and squirts them so full, that for his writings, on which he could have end; Luther is holding her. He says he it overflows and swims out of every place, profited hugely, and he would not allow knows she would like to stay with her pure Devil’s filth, yes, it tastes so good students to pay to attend his lectures, as father, but, he adds, “Are you also glad to their hearts, and they guzzle it like was the custom. to go to your father in heaven?” She died sows.” Witness the death of Judas Iscar­ Luther appreciated the sheer increase in his arms. How touching that he could iot, he adds: “When Judas Schariot in his physical comfort. When he writes find this common­sense way to comfort hanged himself, so that his guts ripped, to a friend, soon after his marriage, of her, and also that he seems to feel that and as happens to those who are hanged, what it is like to lie in a dry bed after Heaven is right above their heads, with his bladder burst, then the Jews had their years of sleeping on a pile of damp, mil­ one father holding out a hand to take golden cans and silver bowls ready, to dewed straw, and when, elsewhere, he to himself the other’s child. catch the Judas piss . . . and afterwards speaks of the surprise of turning over in One thing that Luther seems espe­ together they ate the shit.” The Jews’ syn­ bed and seeing a pair of pigtails on the cially to have loved about his children agogues should be burned down, he pillow next to his, your heart softens to­ was their corporeality—their fat, noisy wrote; their houses should be destroyed. ward this dyspeptic man. More impor­ little bodies. When Hans finally learned He did not recommend that they be tant, he began to take women seriously. to bend his knees and relieve himself killed, but he did say that Christians had He objects, in a lecture, to coitus inter­ on the floor, Luther rejoiced, reporting no moral responsibilities to them, which ruptus, the most common form of birth to a friend that the child had “crapped amounts to much the same thing. control at the time, on the ground that in every corner of the room.” I wonder This is hair­raising, but what makes it is frustrating for women. When he who cleaned that up—not Luther, I Luther’s anti­Semitism most disturb­ was away from home, he wrote Käthe would guess—but it is hard not to feel ing is not its extremity (which, by sound­ affectionate letters, with such salutations some of his pleasure. Sixteenth­century ing so crazy, diminishes its power). It is as “Most holy Frau Doctor” and “To the Germans were not, in the main, dainty the fact that the country of which he is hands and feet of my dear housewife.” of thought or speech. A representative a national hero did indeed, quite re­ Among Käthe’s virtues was fertility. of the Vatican once claimed that Lu­ cently, exterminate six million Jews. Every year or so for eight years, she pro­ ther was conceived when the Devil Hence the formula “From Luther to duced a child—six in all, of whom four raped his mother in an outhouse. That Hitler,” popularized by William Mont­ survived to adulthood—and detail comes from Eric gomery McGovern’s 1941 book of that Luther loved these children. Metaxas’s book, which is title—the notion that Luther laid the He even allowed them to full of vulgar stories, not that groundwork for the slaughter. Those play in his study while he one has to look far for vul­ who have wished to defend him have was working. Of five­year­ gar stories in Luther’s life. pointed out that his earlier writings, old Hans, his firstborn, he My favorite (reported in such as the 1523 pamphlet “That Jesus wrote, “When I’m writing Erikson’s book) is a com­ Christ Was Born a Jew,” are much more or doing something else, my ment that Luther made at conciliatory in tone. He seemed to re­ Hans sings a little tune for the dinner table while in the gret that, as he put it, Christians had me. If he becomes too noisy grip of a depression. “I am “dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs.” and I rebuke him for it, he continues to like a ripe shit,” he said, “and the world But making excuses for Luther on the sing but does it more privately and with is a gigantic asshole. We will both prob­ basis of his earlier, more temperate writ­ a certain awe and uneasiness.” That scene, ably let go of each other soon.” It takes ings does not really work. As scholars which comes from “Martin Luther: Rebel you a minute to realize that Luther is have been able to show, Luther was gen­ in an Age of Upheaval” (Oxford), by the saying that he feels he is dying. And tler early on because he was hoping to German historian Heinz Schilling, seems then you want to congratulate him on persuade the Jews to convert. When to me impossible to improve upon as a the sheer zest, the proto­surrealist nut­ they failed to do so, he unleashed his portrait of what it must have been like tiness, of his metaphor. He may feel as full fury, more violent now because he for Luther to have a little boy, and for a though he’s dying, but he’s having a believed that the comparative mildness little boy to have Luther as a father. Lu­ good time feeling it. of his earlier writings may have been ther was not a lenient parent—he used partly responsible for their refusal. the whip when he felt he needed to, and he group on which Luther expended Luther’s anti­Semitism would be a poor Hans was sent to the university at This most notorious denunciations moral problem under any circumstances. the age of seven—but when, on his trav­ was not the Roman Catholic clergy but People whom we admire often commit els, the reformer passed through a town the Jews. His sentiments were widely terrible sins, and we have no good way that was having a fair he liked to buy shared. In the words of Heinz Schilling, of explaining this to ourselves. But when

72 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 one adds the historical factor—that, in Luther’s case, the judgment is being made five centuries after the event—we hit a brick wall. At the Nuremberg trials, in 1946, Julius Strei cher, the founder and publisher of the Jew-baiting newspaper Der Stürmer, quoted Luther as the source of his beliefs and said that if he was going to be blamed Luther would have to be blamed as well. But, in the words of Thomas Kaufmann, a professor of church history at the University of Göttingen, “The Nuremberg judges sat in judgment over the mass murderers of the twenti- eth century, not over the delusions of a misguided sixteenth- century theology professor. . . . Another judge must judge Luther.” How fortunate to be able to be- lieve that such a judge will come, and have an answer.

uther lived to what, in the sixteenth Lcentury, was an old age, sixty-two, but the years were not kind to him. Ac- tually, he lived most of his life in tur- moil. When he was young, there were the Anfechtungen. Then, once he issued the theses and began his movement, he •• had to struggle not just with the right, the Roman Church, but with the left— surprise, he added, when you consid- in the hope that this would revive him. the Schwärmer (fanatics), as he called ered that all popes, since the begin- It didn’t. After sermons in Eisleben, the them, the people who felt that he hadn’t nings of the Church, were full of dev- coffin was driven back to Wittenberg, gone far enough. He spent days and ils and vomited and farted and defecated with an honor guard of forty-five men weeks in pamphlet wars over matters devils. This starts to sound like his at- on horseback. Bells tolled in every vil- that, today, have to be patiently explained tacks on the Jews. lage along the way. Luther was buried to us, they seem so remote. Did Com- His health declined. He had dizzy in the Castle Church, on whose door munion involve transubstantiation, or spells, bleeding hemorrhoids, consti- he was said to have nailed his theses. was Jesus physically present from the pation, urine retention, gout, kidney Although his resting place evokes start of the rite? Luther, a “Real Pres- stones. To balance his “humors,” the his most momentous act, it also high- ence” man, said the latter. Should peo- surgeon made a hole, or “fontanelle,” lights the intensely local nature of the ple be baptized soon after they are born, in a vein in his leg, and it was kept life he led. The transformations he set as Luther said, or when they are adults, open. Whatever this did for his hu- in motion were incidental to his strug- as the Anabaptists claimed? mors, it meant that he could no lon- gles, which remained irreducibly per- When Luther was young, he was ger walk to the church or the univer- sonal. His goal was not to usher in mo- good at friendship. He was frank and sity. He had to be taken in a cart. He dernity but simply to make religion warm; he loved jokes; he wanted to suffered disabling depressions. “I have religious again. Heinz Schilling writes, have people and noise around him. lost Christ completely,” he wrote to “Just when the lustre of religion threat- (Hence the fifty-seat dinner table.) As Melanchthon. From a man of his tem- ened to be outdone by the atheistic and he grew older, he changed. He found perament and convictions, this is a ter- political brilliance of the secularized that he could easily discard friends, rible statement. Renaissance papacy, the Wittenberg even old friends, even his once beloved In early 1546, he had to go to the monk defined humankind’s relation- confessor, Staupitz. People who had town of his birth, Eisleben, to settle a ship to God anew and gave back to re- dealings with the movement found dispute. It was January, and the roads ligion its existential plausibility.” Lyn- themselves going around him if they were bad. Tellingly, he took all three of dal Roper thinks much the same. She could, usually to his right-hand man, his sons with him. He said the trip might quotes Luther saying that the Church’s Philip Melanchthon. Always sharp- be the death of him, and he was right. sacraments “are not fulfilled when they tongued, Luther now lost all restraint, He died in mid-February. Appropri- are taking place but when they are being writing in a treatise that Pope Paul III ately, in view of his devotion to the scat- believed.” All he asked for was sincer- was a sodomite and a transvestite—no ological, his corpse was given an enema, ity, but this made a great difference. 

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 73 like garments. Much of the work is eerily MUSICAL EVENTS spare and quiet, with instruments grav- itating toward fragile sustained tones, shivery glissandos, and fractured timbres. TREMORS The vocalists whisper and breathe into megaphones. When the piece builds to The deep sounds of Ashley Fure’s “The Force of Things.” a roar, as it does several times, the impact is all the greater. Fure’s formidable or- BY ALEX ROSS chestral score “Bound to the Bow,” which was heard at last year’s New York Phil- nveloping dread, ambient unease, a mediately grasped. Like the political harmonic Biennial, follows a similar struc- Ekind of sensuous foreboding: the theorist Jane Bennett, from whom the ture: first stillness, then catastrophe. music of the thirty-five-year-old Amer- work’s title is derived, Fure seeks to fos- At performances of “The Force of ican composer Ashley Fure addresses ter empathy for the nonhuman world Things,” listeners are encouraged to feelings that are all too familiar in early- that we have remade in our image. move around and explore what is es- twenty-first-century life. Fure’s experi- “The Force of Things” is set in a dim, sentially a live-action installation. The mental music-theatre piece “The Force cavernous environment designed by the experience is like a reconnaissance mis- of Things,” which was recently staged architect Adam Fure, the composer’s sion into an auditory wilderness: the at Peak Performances, in challenge is to figure out where Montclair, New Jersey, is in sounds are coming from and part a study in infrasound, or how they are being made. sounds below the range of Early on, I heard a brisk flut- human hearing. For most of tering from the sculptures the work’s duration, twenty- above me. My first thought four subwoofers, placed with was that a fan was blowing their cones pointed upward, on them. I then realized that emit electronic tones that vi- pieces of string extended up- brate at a frequency of 10.67 ward from several of the sub- hertz, or around ten oscilla- woofers, and that vibrations tions per second. They are ar- were causing the strings to rayed around the auditorium, strike the material. A little with the audience seated in the later, I heard a soft, rapid tap- middle. Human ears can’t de- ping behind me: this emanated tect sounds much below twenty from a sheet of paper that hertz, but you register their Karre—who doubled as the presence all the same. Urban work’s producer—was hold- legend holds that infrasound ing a few inches away from a can cause people to vomit, be- subwoofer. All manner of un- come disoriented, or lose con- earthly noises ensue when the trol of their bowels. Although performers apply their fingers scientific studies have failed to and palms to the speaker observe such effects, they have cones. At the climax of the noted increased blood pres- first part, the percussionists sure, rapid eye movement, and brush metal chimes against other temporary physiological the subwoofers, triggering an changes. The body is listening apocalyptic jangle. even when the ears tune out. In Fure’s piece, performers apply bows to aircraft cables. Tense silence descends again, That tectonic rumble un- and the musicians disperse to derpins an imposing musical construc- brother, and lit by Nicholas Houfek. Rag- the far end of the auditorium, barely vis- tion, which maintains ritualistic inten- ged sculptural forms, made of silicone, ible in the murk. New sounds arise— sity over a fifty-minute span. Fure calls paper, and plastic, dangle from the ceil- deep, droning tones. You discern that the it an “opera for objects,” yet it is hardly ing, resembling stalactites. Seven mem- performers are applying bows to aircraft an opera in the conventional sense. There bers of the International Contemporary cables that crisscross the space, supported are no words, nor is there a plot. There Ensemble—the vocalists Lucy Dhegrae by hemispheres of Styrofoam that func- is, however, a powerful sense of purpose. and Alice Teyssier; the saxophonist Ryan tion like the bridge on a stringed instru- In a program note, Fure says that she Muncy; the bassoonist Rebekah Heller; ment. The players advance toward the wishes to evoke “the mounting hum of and the percussionists Levy Lorenzo, middle of the room, their tones rising in ecological anxiety around us”—changes Dustin Donahue, and Ross Karre—circu- pitch as they go. It’s like being inside a that are too slow and too vast to be im- late through the space, wearing poncho- gigantic surrealist cello. All this activity

74 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY RUNE FISKER hits a frenzied climax, with the winds The Armory’s version of “Répons,” and the voices sustaining high pitches which had its première in 1981 and un- and the infrasound growing in volume. derwent several revisions, was an audio- (So you surmise from the rumbling of visual wonder. The Ensemble Intercon- your seat.) Then the barrage suddenly temporain, under the direction of the cuts off, and plastic sheets swoosh down composer-conductor Matthias Pintscher, from the ceiling. In a becalmed coda, played the piece twice each night: listen- the musicians manipulate vibrating ers were seated on four sides, and after strings with their hands: you can see the intermission they traded places with those resulting waveforms, textbook diagrams directly opposite. On the periphery were come to life. The patterns also look like six soloists—a harpist, a cimbalomist, double helixes—sound and matter be- two pianists, and two percussionists— coming organic. who make a dramatic entrance in the Peak Performances, possibly the most work’s second section. Pierre Audi, the adventurous presenter in the New York Armory’s artistic director, and the light- area, has devoted its entire season to ing designer Urs Schönebaum provided “women innovators in the performing a coolly gorgeous setting. The chance to arts.” Gender does not play an explicit hear “Répons” twice, and from different role in “The Force of Things,” although perspectives, put a new light on a hyper- Fure’s emphasis on the idea of empa- dense score. When Boulez conducted it thy implies an opposition to the mas- at Carnegie Hall, in 2003, some detail culine megalomania of certain modern- was lost in the resonant auditorium. The ist predecessors. Last year, when ice Armory is even more reverberant, but performed a preliminary version of “The the audience was close enough that the Force of Things” at the Summer Courses sound had tactile impact. A colleague for New Music, in Darmstadt, Germany, rightly identified a certain funkiness in Fure confronted her colleagues with the bleating brass and the pizzicato bass. grim statistics about that illustrious in- The Armory’s programming has be- stitution: from 1946 to 2014, ninety-three come essential to New York life, although per cent of pieces programmed at Darm- it too often indulges in bigness for big- stadt were by male composers. The stag- ness’s sake—the wow factor of filling the gering originality of Fure’s latest work— arena with water or bringing in a flock and of music by Chaya Czernowin, Liza of sheep. What I liked about “Répons” Lim, Clara Iannotta, Kate Soper, Linda was its visceral intimacy: Audi gestured Catlin Smith, and dozens of others— toward the grandeur of the space, espe- makes one think that mostly female sea- cially when Boulez’s satellite instrumen- sons might have to become the norm. tal stations kicked in, but the musical foreground dominated the picture. Inti- or new-music fanatics in the New macy also distinguished Michel van der York region, the first weekend of Aa’s high-tech opera “Blank Out,” which FOctober was problematically rich. While the Armory presented in late September.

“The Force of Things” was running in Tightly staged by the composer, it might William Steig, June 18, 1960 Montclair, the Park Avenue Armory re- as well have been in a small black-box vived Pierre Boulez’s computer-enhanced theatre. Van der Aa is a master of many showpiece “Répons,” and bam offered media: the production incorporated video Matthew Aucoin’s “Crossing,” a keenly projections of his own devising, and in- imagined chamber opera about Walt volved only one live performer, the lumi- Whitman. I also made it down to the nous soprano Miah Persson. At the same New Yorker Barnes Foundation, in Philadelphia, time, its deft, fluid vocal writing conveyed where the newly created Barnes En- a piercing story, of a mother who dies Cover Prints semble introduced Iannotta’s “dead wasps rescuing her boy from drowning. (The Find your favorite cover in the jam-jar (ii),” in which string play- baritone Roderick Williams, on video, on virtually any topic at ers double as percussionists, eliciting portrayed the boy as a grown man.) Rarely sonic dreamscapes from thimbles, paper have modern techniques and ancient mu- newyorkerstore.com clips, electric-guitar strings, birdcalls, sical virtues coexisted more naturally. Van and wineglasses. Happily, attendance der Aa, like Fure, uses technology to get was strong at all these events, showing at something elemental: for him, the long that risk-averse programming is not the reach of memory; for her, the irrevers- only path forward in precarious times. ibility of change. 

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 75 winsome rapper Meyhem Lauren; and ON TELEVISION the lanky producer and d.j. the Alche- mist—judge food exclusively on its vis- ceral delights. Though Bronson has PLENTY MORE worked as a cook, and is familiar with the nuances and language of haute cui- Viceland’s visceral gastronomy. sine, he and his cronies refuse to acknowl- edge a chasm between high and low fare. BY AMANDA PETRUSICH At Conditori La Glace, a renowned pâ- tisserie in Copenhagen, the Alchemist describes a wedge of sportskage—a layer cake with whipped cream and crushed praline—as having “a cereal type of flavor.” (Lauren’s summation is more specific: “Teddy Grahams on steroids.”) At a tasting, Bronson insists upon his own reading of a Georgian wine. “You can taste the wood,” he says to Sune Ros- forth, a natural-wine specialist. “There’s no wood in this,” Rosforth replies. “But I can taste the wood.” Bronson pauses. “There’s no wood, but it’s remi- niscent of wood.” The cast members take most of their meals on the street or standing in a kitchen. Once, for no apparent reason, they dined in a parking lot adjacent to Peter Luger, the Brooklyn steak house. The thought of sitting down at a “tablescape”—a portmanteau favored by Sandra Lee, a Food Network star who arranges seasonally appropriate objets into tabletop meta-narratives on “Semi- Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee”— begins to seem insane. Place settings, starched white linens, and tiny fish forks are irrelevant to a dining experience. Even On Action Bronson’s food shows, there is no chasm between high and low fare. a cloth napkin starts to feel quaint. For Bronson and his cohort, who grew up in he odd pleasure of watching peo- contrarian—a corrective, perhaps, to the cities, all food is street food. Tple cook and eat on television seems self-seriousness of foodie culture, and to Bronson’s most obvious predecessor to transcend generational boundaries. the cozy murmurs of chefs like Ina Gar- is Anthony Bourdain, the writer and for- This year, Viceland, a new, millennial- ten and Martha Stewart. The best of the mer chef, whose latest series, “Parts Un- focussed television network under the bunch is “F*ck, That’s Delicious,” a travel known,” airs on CNN. Bourdain jets off creative direction of Spike Jonze, has be- show hosted by the rapper and bon vi- to exotic or otherwise underexplored sites come an unlikely bastion of food-related vant Action Bronson, which will begin (Libya, Borneo, New Jersey), skulks about programming. Some of its shows are ex- filming its third season next year. (An in a black leather jacket, pounds beers, pressly edifying. But many of them are accompanying book, “F*ck, That’s De- and, as the show ends, delivers shrewd renegade variations on the travel-and- licious: An Annotated Guide to Eating cultural commentary via voice-over. A chow-down theme, in which a tattooed Well,” was released in September.) low-boiling disdain for authority informs chef (like Eddie Huang, the host of Bronson has a scraggly, reddish beard his monologues. He understands cuisine “Huang’s World,” or Frank Pinello, the and eyes the color of a glacier. He weighs as part of a larger narrative about place, host of “The Pizza Show”) goes to a far- around three hundred pounds, and is and is hungry for authentic, revelatory flung locale, and ingests and ruminates usually wearing an oversized Carhartt experiences. Yet this way of thinking be- for the camera. shirt, athletic shorts, and sneakers. Bron- comes its own kind of trap, in which au- The majority of these series began on son and his squad of sauntering, mild- thenticity is inextricably (and confus- Munchies, a Web site launched by Vice mannered colleagues—most often, his ingly) linked to disenfranchisement, and in 2014. The energy is masculine and collaborator Big Body Bes; the cherubic, meals become polemics.

76 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY JOOHEE YOON By contrast, Bronson’s show suggests side and stands on the sidewalk. After- that to think of food as possessing any ward, he meets up with Mario Batali in kind of cultural currency—to interpret Rome. Batali seems vaguely disappointed it as a political choice—is to misunder- by Bronson’s energy level. He has to stand appetite. Much of the humor hinges pound repeatedly on the window of an upon lampooning fussy, toadying con- S.U.V. to wake him up. “Is this how it versations about cuisine. “Why are we rolls, normally?” Batali asks the camera. eating food we don’t like?” the Alche- “This guy shows up stoned, and that’s mist asks his friends, halfway through the TV show?” breakfast at a dim-sum restaurant in Queens, on a special, 420-themed epi- second Viceland series starring Bron- sode. In the next scene, they leave. son, “The Untitled Action Bronson To the casual viewer, it might seem Show,”A premières this week. The thirty- that every episode of “F*ck, That’s De- minute show—a kind of deranged “Emeril licious” is 420-themed. Per stoner lore, Live,” in which Bronson cooks and muses the numbers four and twenty as short- in the Munchies test kitchen, alongside hand for marijuana use originated with special guests—will air Monday through a group of high-school students in San Thursday at 11:30 p.m. Rafael, California: one day in 1971, at I attended a recent taping in Brook- 4:20 p.m., they set out to find an aban- lyn. The mood was chaotic but joyful, as doned cannabis field using a treasure if Bronson were hosting a rowdy dinner map. (Whether they found any mari- party. The cameras seemed nearly inci- juana is unclear.) Bronson appears be- dental. The Alchemist was there. A house fuddled by the term. “420 is such a ri- band, the Special Victims Unit, played diculous fucking thing, is it not?” he asks. funk. The chef Billy Durney, of Home- “What exactly is 420—what happened town Bar-B-Que, a smokehouse in Red on that day, what happened at that time, Hook, prepared chunks of beef brisket, on that day, does anyone know exactly which he served on slices of white bread, what happened?” with chopped onion and pickle chips. He and the Alchemist are huddled The air was sweet with weed and bar- outside. The Alchemist is often portrayed becue sauce. Bronson appeared deeply as the show’s straight man, a rawboned pleased. “It tastes so good I have to step dude who doesn’t much care about food outside,” he said, wandering off the set. beyond its caloric utility. (“No one hates A camera followed. food like me,” he jokes, during a meal in The Haitian-born rapper and musi- Barcelona.) He chews on a toothpick. cian Wyclef Jean arrived. He and Bron- “People get high,” he says. son shared a plate of seasoned mango, as Marijuana is ubiquitous on the show. Jean explained that mangoes are one of “Take this away,” Bronson says, holding Haiti’s biggest exports. “This is a decent a blunt at the start of the 420 episode. mango,” Bronson said. “But you can tell He stares mournfully out a car window, it’s from Queens.” Another natural-wine and sighs. Ducks quack on a nearby river. specialist, Isabelle Legeron—Bronson His eyes close. “This is a very special seems to favor raw and organic wines— ‘F*ck, That’s Delicious’ special,” he an- handed out blindfolds and opened sev- nounces, and cracks up. Later, at Fe- eral bottles. They emptied quickly. By the doroff ’s Roast Pork, in Williamsburg, he end of the taping, Bronson was banging helps the owner, Dave Fedoroff, prepare on a cowbell, still blindfolded, while Jean a mélange of chopped steak, long hots, rolled around on the floor, barefoot, play- fried onions, and cheese sauce, which ing an electric guitar. they ladle atop a cardboard boat of French There was little separation between fries. “This is the best idea you could have cast and crew, between on set and off set; probably thought of,” someone concludes. the process of shooting the show ap- In Season 2, the crew travels to Italy, peared to be an essential component of ostensibly to eat at Osteria Francescana, the show itself. This sort of transparency in Modena, which has three Michelin is fundamental to Viceland’s aesthetic stars. (“Who the fuck is Michelin, to and its ideological mission: no faking it. give a fucking star? What do they make, Wine is swallowed, never dribbled into tires?” Bronson wonders in a later epi- a spittoon. Food is for enjoying. The only sode.) Bronson takes his lasagna out- true sin is affectation. 

THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 77 rush: the family will be paralyzed, and THE CURRENT CINEMA then they will die. Steven’s only option, if he wishes to avert this reckoning, is to execute one of them. The choice of SACRIFICIAL VICTIMS victim is up to him. Cinema is not short of boyish youths “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and “The Square.” who consider it their duty to explode the family unit from within. Alessandro, BY ANTHONY LANE the brutish brother in Marco Belloc- chio’s “Fists in the Pocket” (1965), claims eople who recoil from the films of tance, the choice of strap—and yet we to be “a volcano of ideas” and shoves his PYorgos Lanthimos, such as “Dog- feel like observers of a solemn rite. That mother off a cliff, while the nameless tooth” (2009) and “The Lobster” (2015), feeling intensifies at the dinner table, visitor played by Terence Stamp in Pa- find them chilly and heartless, and even where Steven is eating with his wife, solini’s “Theorem” (1968) seduces pretty some of his fans would tend to agree. Anna (Nicole Kidman), their teen-age much everyone, leaving his conquests in As if to counter that charge, his latest daughter, Kim (Raffey Cassidy), and a state of ruin, catatonia, or ecstasy. Strong work, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” her younger brother, Bob (Sunny Sul- stuff, but the strength is clearly wielded begins with an actual heart—the human jic), who is told to sit up straight. They against the satisfactions of the bourgeoi- organ, pumping lustily in plain sight. A talk about haircuts (“We all have lovely sie and the edicts of the Catholic estab- lishment, whereas Lanthimos, as a di- rector, is not in the business of picking fights. He is calm and sibylline, proph- esying plainly what will come to pass, and his inspiration, in the new film, is far more distant than Marx. If you seek to understand what ails Steven, the per- son to ask is Agamemnon. He it was, according to legend, who entered a grove sacred to Artemis and slew a deer. (Hence the title of this movie.) The offended goddess bid the winds be still, thus becalming Agamemnon’s fleet as it prepared to sail for Troy. He was then instructed by a seer to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, and thereby to break the impasse. Ever politic, and bent on war, he did what he was told, although in one version of the story, laid forth by In Yorgos Lanthimos’s film, Colin Farrell plays a surgeon facing a ghastly choice. Euripides in his final play, “Iphigenia in Aulis,” the girl was spared as her father patient lies on the operating table, with hair,” Anna says), but, as before, the prepared to strike, and was replaced by— an open chest cavity, while the surgeon, talk seems anything but small. Some- yet again—a deer. The story bears more Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell), com- thing larger is mustering, like a storm. than a passing resemblance to that of pletes his task. Once his bloody scrubs It arrives in the unlikely form of a Abraham and Isaac, and the question is: have been removed, we get a proper sixteen-year-old named Martin (Barry How much of the myth survives, if only look at him: a solid and steady figure, Keoghan), whom Steven has befriended, in fragments, in the movie? What trib- in a jacket and tie, with a full beard or vice versa. They meet during off- ute does Lanthimos pay to his compa- turning gray. Here is a man, we sense, hours, stroll beside a river, and sit in triot, two and a half thousand years on? whose life is under control. It would cafés. Martin shows up at the hospital Well, not a single deer strays into view, take a great deal to disconcert him. where Steven works. You wonder if just as “The Lobster” was crustacean- The rest of the movie is filled by the their rapport might be a furtive sexual free. No warships idle at anchor, and great deal. Even the plainest deeds, or pact, perhaps with an edge of black- deities, likewise, are notably thin on the the most innocent exchanges, are mail, whereupon Steven invites Mar- ground, although Martin, in Keoghan’s freighted with inexplicable unease. As tin to his house. He is courteous, bring- unnerving performance, has a touch of Steven and his colleague Matthew (Bill ing gifts and beguiling both Anna and the wicked sprite. Meanwhile, Kim’s Camp) walk down a corridor, the cam- Kim. So what does he want, this lad school principal reveals that she wrote era faces them and pulls smoothly back, with a face both guileless and vulpine? an essay on Iphigenia, and the streak with a faintly processional air. They are What does he portend? Soon enough, of moral cowardice that ran through discussing wristwatches—water resis- he provides the answer, speaking in a the Greek general lingers in the cardiac

78 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY BILL BRAGG surgeon. Farrell is shifty and abrupt, and thetic?,” Anna disports herself on the (Claes Bang), maneuvers his exhibits we learn of a grave mistake in Steven’s marital bed, pretending to be out cold to the forefront of modern art. In his past, though it scarcely warrants the and awaiting her husband’s caress. red spectacles and his slimline suits, he vengeance that is about to be meted out. What this deadpan tone suggests, cuts a smooth figure, and the movie is Above all, what Lanthimos inherits from over time, is a deadness of the spirit, designed to deconstruct him. Near the Euripides—and what loads the film, whether in the domestic arena or in the start, he is relieved of his wallet and his and its modern setting, with intracta- wider world. If “The Lobster” remains phone; two hours later, he is clawing ble problems—is the ancient momen- Lanthimos’s most vital work, that’s be- through bags of garbage in the rain. tum of doom. Most parents today, for cause it tempers the gloom with a mis- The title refers to a work that is in- instance, would not hesitate to offer chievous play of wit. “The Killing of a stalled in the museum’s courtyard: a small their own lives to save their children’s, Sacred Deer,” by contrast, is stubbornly square, set amid the cobblestones, and but that option never crosses Steven’s hard to enjoy; there are jokes, but they intended as a sanctuary where all rights mind, nor is there the slightest prospect make few dents in the programmatic are to be respected. Needless to say, its that Martin’s barbarous decree will be rigor of the plot. No one but Lanthi- mission is spoiled by the cretinous ac- rescinded. Even Fritz Lang at his most mos could adhere so loyally to the clas- tions of Christian’s media advisers. Other fatalistic, in films like “Scarlet Street” sical model of the tragic, yet the result setbacks involve the cones of gravel that (1945) and “Human Desire” (1954), al- treads close to monotony, and even to are carefully arrayed on a gallery floor lowed his heroes some freedom, if only a kind of sorrowful sadism—on the and then accidentally vacuumed by one the freedom to fall for the wrong dame, whole, I’d rather not watch children, of the cleaners. Much of this is uncom- but Lanthimos’s characters are in lock- numb below the waist, crawling help- fortable to behold, as is the joyless car- down from the start. lessly downstairs or being hauled along nal encounter between the hero and a Maybe this is no surprise. To be in by their hair. Strangest of all is the mu- reporter (Elisabeth Moss), during which any Lanthimos movie is to be semi- sical topping and tailing of the film: a condom is used in a tug of war. Öst- zombified. You don’t have to gnaw on the “Jesus Christus” from Schubert’s lund has mastered the business of mak- other people, but they barely react as you “Stabat Mater” in F minor at the be- ing you squirm. But the milieu of con- deliver morsels of awkward or outrageous ginning, and the mighty opening of ceptual art, upheld by wealthy donors, is information. “Our daughter started men- Bach’s “St. John Passion” at the end. not exactly the hardest of targets to hit, struating last week,” Steven mentions to Hang on, are we supposed to regard and any compassionate gestures toward a colleague, at a gala dinner. “Can I take Steven as a loving God, giving up his the lower depths of society, with nicely a closer look at your hands?” he is asked child for the salvation of others? In that composed shots of the homeless on the by Martin’s mother (Alicia Silverstone). case, who the hell is Martin? street, feel too flimsy to carry critical The camera angles are no less clinical: weight. The best reason to see “The when Bob collapses at the foot of an es- f your respect for humanity is not Square” is the remarkable Terry Notary, calator, proving that Martin’s augury is Ientirely crushed by “The Killing of last seen in “War for the Planet of the coming true, we gaze down on the cri- a Sacred Deer,” and you want to finish Apes.” Here he plays a performance art- sis from on high, like Harry Lime mus- the job, try “The Square,” which won ist named Oleg, who brings simian havoc, ing on the antlike Viennese from the the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. way beyond his brief, to a glamorous perch of a Ferris wheel. Emotional dis- The Swedish director Ruben Östlund, event, roaring and thumping among the plays are assessed as if they were symp- who made the earthshaking “Force Ma- tuxedos and the gowns. If only he had toms of disease, and Nicole Kidman’s jeure” (2014), about an avalanche in the done the same at Cannes.  natural hauteur has seldom been better Alps, now shifts his attention closer to deployed. Wait for the creepy scene in home. The tale unfolds in Stockholm, NEWYORKER.COM which, having asked, “General anes- where a museum curator, Christian Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 30, 2017 79 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 Tom Cheney, must be received by Sunday, October 29th. The finalists in the October 16th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the November 13th 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

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THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“The apartment is nice, and I met my neighbor who also works at home.” John Campanella, Santa Barbara, Calif.

“Believe it or not, the constant ringing isn’t the worst part.” “I have a feeling they are going to treat us like dirt.” Greg Hahn, Brooklyn, N.Y. Cary Silverstein, Scottsdale, Ariz.

“Like I would date a guy from Notre Dame.” John Glenn, Tyler, Texas