PRICE $8.99 AUG. 8 & 15, 2016

AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016

4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 19 THE TA L K OF THE TOWN Steve Coll on Russia’s election games; Gloria Allred; Morgan Freeman; pub rock; James Surowiecki on executive action. ANNALS OF POLITICS Jill Lepore 24 The War and the Roses The lessons of the party Conventions. SHOUTS & MURMURS Ian Frazier 33 Outdone THE SPORTING SCENE Sam Knight 34 Prance Master The star rider who is transforming dressage. A REPORTER AT LARGE Jon Lee Anderson 40 The Distant Shore What made an isolated Peruvian tribe kill? PERSONAL HISTORY Lauren Collins 52 Love in Translation Marriage to a Frenchman. SKETCHBOOK Barry Blitt 59 “Behind the Scenes at the D.N.C.” FICTION Te s s a Ha d l ey 62 “Dido’s Lament” THE CRITICS POP MUSIC Kelefa Sanneh 68 ’s “.” BOOKS Adelle Waldman 72 Jay McInerney’s “Bright, Precious Days.” Dan Chiasson 75 Jana Prikryl’s “The After Party.” 77 Briefly Noted ON TELEVISION Emily Nussbaum 78 “BoJack Horseman.” THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 80 “Jason Bourne,” “Little Men.” POEMS Nicole Sealey 31 “A Violence” James Richardson 47 “How I Became a Saint” COVER Mark Ulriksen “Something in the Air”

DRAWINGS Paul Noth, Edward Steed, Jason Adam Katzenstein, Avi Steinberg, Sam Marlow, Roz Chast, Amy Hwang, Will McPhail, Darrin Bell, Liam Francis Walsh SPOTS Ben Wiseman

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 1 CONTRIBUTORS

Jill Lepore (“The War and the Roses,” Jon Lee Anderson (“The Distant Shore,” p. 24), a professor of history at Harvard, p. 40) is a staf writer who has reported is writing a history of the . for the magazine from various parts of the world, including Africa, the Mid- Steve Coll (Comment, p. 19) is the dean dle East, and South America. of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, and a staf Ian Frazier (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 33), writer. He has published seven books, a longtime contributor, recently pub- including “Ghost Wars.” lished “Hogs Wild: Selected Reporting Pieces.” Sheelah Kolhatkar (The Talk of the Town, p. 20) recently joined the magazine as Lauren Collins (“Love in Translation,” a staf writer. p. 52) is a staf writer living in Paris. Her book, “When in French: Love in Nicole Sealey (Poem, p. 31), the programs a Second Language,” will be out in director for the Cave Canem Founda- September. tion, is the author of “The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named,” Te s s a Ha d l ey (Fiction, p. 62) has pub- her début poetry collection. lished six novels, including “Clever Girl” and, most recently, “The Past.” Sam Knight (“Prance Master,” p. 34) is a journalist living in London. Adelle Waldman (Books, p. 72) is the au- thor of “The Love Afairs of Nathan- Mark Ulriksen (Cover) has contributed iel P.,” her first novel. to since 1994. A retro- spective exhibition of his work will be Emily Nussbaum (On Television, p. 78), on view at the Galerie Oblique, in Paris, the magazine’s television critic, won in September. this year’s Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more.

PODCASTS VIDEO New fction from the magazine. In the latest flm in our Screening This week, Tessa Hadley reads her Room series, Lucy meets an amorous short story “Dido’s Lament.” cosmonaut on Chatroulette.

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2 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 THE MAIL

UNEARTHING THE TRUTH Berger’s claims about his discover- ies, though not impossible, might be Paige Williams’s Profile of the con- called premature. troversial paleoanthropologist Lee Joseph A. Reveles Ber ger reveals the discrepancies 1La Mirada, Calif. between the claims that Berger makes about his discoveries and his ROBBING THE SYSTEM actual accomplishments (“Digging for Glory,” June 27th). Numerous Patrick Radden Keefe’s article on scientists have questioned Berger’s bank secrecy at H.S.B.C. mentions assertion that the fossils he found a controversial tax law that requires in the Rising Star cave system, in overseas banks to give the I.R.S. the South Africa, displayed “ritual- names and account information of ized behaviors directed toward the American clients (“The Bank Rob- dead”—a claim that, if true, would ber,” May 30th). Keefe characterizes mean Homo sapiens is not the only the law, called the Foreign Account species with funerary practices. Sci- Tax Compliance Act, as a long-over- ence is supposed to provide a mea- due move against banking secrecy. sure of certainty, but, increasingly, But, as a longtime American resi- we are blurring the distinction be- dent of the Geneva area, where so tween speculation, supported hy- much of the financial mischief took pothesis, and well-proven theory. As place, I feel the law’s other efects the standards of scientific certainty should be noted. The act often re- decline, the public loses faith in sci- quires Americans with overseas bank entific claims, and in scientists. As accounts to fill out reams of paper- a result, even established science, work, exacting stif penalties for those such as climate change or Darwin- who fail to do so, even inadvertently. ian evolution, which we know to Law-abiding citizens struggle to find be beyond debate, is now being banks willing to shoulder the cost of questioned, especially when there compliance, which pushes us toward are political, economic, or cultural a few large banks. This reduces ac- implications. cess to basic banking services for Michael Mallary the millions of Americans who live Sterling, Mass. abroad while exacerbating the “too big to fail” phenomenon. Given the Williams sheds light on the sig- costs, one would hope that the ben- nificant challenges researchers face efits of the law would be consider- when gathering hard-to-find data able, but it seems unlikely that the and publishing those findings. She act deters tax evasion. By some esti- also illustrates one of the main de- mates, less than one-eighth of the bates in the scientific community American citizens who live overseas today: how to discern the diferences file the forms. The burden of the law between scientific theory and sci- falls not on tax-dodging million- ence fiction. This has always been a aires but on ordinary Americans liv- challenge—particularly in anthro- ing abroad. pology and its subdisciplines, be- Andrus Hatem cause the field is so broad—but has Ferney-Voltaire, France only become more difcult as more and more fossils are found. If pa- • leoanthropology is to have any suc- Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to cess explaining the stages of human [email protected]. Letters may be edited evolution, it must rely more heavily for length and clarity, and may be published in on universally accepted methodol- any medium. We regret that owing to the volume ogies. It is easy to see why some of of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 3 AUGUST 3 – 16, 2016 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

This summer, the U.S. will send a sixteen-year-old, Kanak Jha, to Rio—Jha may be the youngest male to qualify for table tennis in Olympic history, but the sport remains graciously ageless. At Riis Park Beach Bazaar, in Queens, Jared Sochinsky has opened the Push, a pop-up for games, installing beachside tables that have attracted ringers like the seven-year-old Cole Weiner, above. It will be open weekends through Labor Day, along with Fletcher’s BBQ, Ample Hills Creamery, and a bar, which won’t serve as indiscriminately.

PHOTOGRAPH BY THOMAS PRIOR en’s Shakespeare Company became a form of sal- vation. The show (which Wolpe performs in rep- ertory with a three-person “Macbeth”) has its trite THE side, but it’s hard not to credit Wolpe for fearless- ness, sincerity, and good humor. (HERE, 145 Sixth 1 Ave., near Spring St. 212-352-3101. Through Aug. 14.) roles) are fortysomething Norwegian professionals, OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS charming, erudite, full of talk. Mona is an official in Small Mouth Sounds the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, and Terje is a so- Bess Wohl’s play, directed by Rachel Chavkin, is The Layover cial scientist. After a while, we learn that, through about six characters who try to connect to them- Trip Cullman directs a drama by Leslye Headland some trick of faith and will, Terje and Mona were selves, their guru, and one another during a silent (“Bachelorette”), about two strangers who meet on largely responsible, behind the scenes, for the dis- retreat in upstate New York. Wohl uses the retreat a plane when their flight is delayed. (Second Stage, cussions that led to the 1993 Oslo Accord, between to reveal how social convention cracks when real 305 W. 43rd St. 212-246-4422. Previews begin Aug. 9.) the Israelis and the Palestine Liberation Organi- intimacy is required. The flighty Alicia (the phe- zation. Although Rogers mixes fact and fiction, he nomenal Zoë Winters) eats potato chips noisily, The New York International Fringe Festival uses reality not to buoy his imagination but to shore while Rodney (Babak Tafti, free and humorous), The wide-ranging festival returns for its twenti- up a “Family of Man”-type plea to end war and the most self-consciously enlightened member of eth year, offering experiments, oddities, and ab- hate. (Reviewed in our issue of 8/1/16.) (Mitzi E. the group, does yoga and burns incense. Naturally, surdities (sample title: “The Secret Life of Your Newhouse, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200.) the two hook up, though Rodney is married and Third Grade Teacher”). For the complete list of Alicia is trying to get over an unrequited love. A shows—some two hundred in all—visit fringenyc. Paradiso: Chapter 1 fiction about lies, the play feels like a shadow ver- org. (Various locations. Opens Aug. 12.) Created and directed by Michael Counts and per- sion of Annie Baker’s magnificent 2009 work, “Cir- 1 formed inside an apartment in Koreatown, this pro- cle Mirror Transformation,” which followed ama- duction is a hybrid between an escape-room game, teur performers in an acting class in Vermont. Stuff NOW PLAYING in which audience members must work together to happens in “Small Mouth Sounds,” but nothing and solve a puzzle whose solution will allow them to exit no one is transformed. (8/1/16) (Pershing Square Butler a locked set, and immersive theatre, in which actors Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200.) At the outset of the Civil War, a compulsively quar- shepherd the audience through a highly participatory 1 relsome slave named Shepard Mallory (John G. on-site story. The plot involves a sinister behavioral- Williams) seeks asylum at a Union fort com- research laboratory called the Virgil Corporation, OUT OF TOWN manded by a newly installed and equally argumen- which has been . . . well, it’s never clear, because tative major general named Benjamin Franklin every crumb of narrative is quickly abandoned. The Barrington Stage Company Butler (Ames Adamson). This comedy, by Rich- puzzles, too, feel desultory; once it becomes obvi- On the Boyd-Quinson Mainstage, Will Swen- ard Strand, provides sly insight into the absurd ous how each one is meant to be solved, reaching the son is the star swashbuckler in John Rando’s pro- logic of slavery and a Wodehouse-like knack for solution is mostly tedious. The one level on which duction of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of subverting the conventions of master-subordinate the show works is as a haunted house: amid the as- Penzance” (through Aug. 13). On the St. Ger- relations, but the production can’t seem to keep semblage of action-movie and mystery-novel clichés main Stage, Louisa Proske directs “Peerless,” Jie- pace with his impulsive creations. Joseph Discher’s are a handful of genuinely startling and amusingly hae Park’s dark comedy about two sisters trying direction feels insufficient in urgency and zani- macabre moments. (Ticket buyers will be contacted to get into their dream college (through Aug. 6); ness, like it’s being played a notch too slow, leav- concerning the meeting location. paradisoescape.com.) and in “Broadway Bounty Hunter,” with music ing the play merely amusing where it could have and lyrics by Joe Iconis, Annie Golden plays an been uproarious. The supporting characters seem Quietly actress who is hired to capture a South American especially ill directed, almost never taking full The Irish Rep has imported a cracking produc- drug lord (Aug. 12-Sept. 4). (30 Union St., Pitts- advantage of that most Wodehousian tool of all: tion from Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. Jimmy (Pat- field, Mass. 413-236-8888. barringtonstageco.org.) deadpan. (59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200.) rick O’Kane) is the only customer in a Belfast bar, where he’s come to have a pint or two of Harp and Williamstown Theatre Festival Men on Boats watch the soccer match between Northern Ireland The summer’s final mainstage production is Wendy In the summer of 1869, ten cisgender white males and Poland with the barman, Robert (Robert Za- Wasserstein’s 1997 play, “An American Daughter,” set off on the U.S. government’s first sanctioned wadzki), a Polish immigrant. Their macho ban- directed by Evan Cabnet and featuring Diane expedition of the Green and Colorado Rivers. In tering might have been enough to carry the play, Davis as a doctor who is nominated to be Surgeon Jaclyn Backhaus’s stylized retelling, directed by but when Ian (Declan Conlon) enters the focus General (Aug. 3-21). On the Nikos Stage, Staf- Will Davis, the intrepid explorers are racially di- shifts, abruptly and dangerously. He and Jimmy ford Arima directs “Poster Boy,” Craig Carnelia verse, gender-bending sendups of masculine bra- have never met, but their lives were inextricably and Joe Tracz’s musical inspired by the story of the vado. “I almost fell to my death on the moun- and tragically fused when they were both sixteen, cyber-bullying victim Tyler Clementi (through tain ridge,” the crew’s one-armed captain boasts. in 1974, during the dark heart of the Troubles. Aug. 7); and Tom Holloway’s drama “And No “Very exciting stuff.” The energetic hundred-min- Owen McCafferty’s tense, taut one-act play cov- More Shall We Part,” directed by Anne Kauffman, ute performance, presented by Playwrights Hori- ers some predictable ground, but it explores unex- stars Jane Kaczmarek and Alfred Molina as a cou- zons and Clubbed Thumb, features a gusty ode to pected emotional corners as well, and the director, ple grappling with terminal illness (Aug. 10-21). whiskey, cleverly choreographed near-drownings, Jimmy Fay, guides the three superb actors through (Williamstown, Mass. 413-597-3400. wtfestival.org.) and a steady stream of droll one-liners delivered in an evening that is both harrowing and hearten- 1 present-day vernacular (“Party boat!”). The best ing. (Irish Repertory, 132 W. 22nd St. 212-727-2737.) lines, though, may be those penned by the real sci- ALSO NOTABLE entist-adventurer John Wesley Powell, on whose Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender journal entries the play is loosely based. “What a Lisa Wolpe’s solo show brings wry humor and An Act of God Booth. • Cats Neil Simon. • Cirque du chamber for a resting place is this,” Powell (the Shakespearean insight to a range of wrenchingly Soleil—Paramour Lyric. • The Color Purple Jacobs. • A pitch-perfect Kelly McAndrew) observes upon difficult subject matters, including sexism, do- Day by the Sea Beckett. • The Effect Barrow Street reaching, finally, the “Big Canyon.” (Peter Jay Sharp, mestic abuse, suicide, and the Holocaust. Weaving Theatre. • Engagements McGinn/Cazale. • Fiddler 416 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200. Through Aug. 14.) monologues from her favorite male Shakespeare on the Roof Broadway Theatre. • Fun Home Circle in roles—Lear, Hamlet, Shylock—with reflections the Square. • The Golden Bride Museum of Jewish Oslo on her family history, Wolpe explores her fascina- Heritage. • Hamilton Richard Rodgers. • Himself and J. T. Rogers’s drama is a good, if overlong, piece of tion with upending gender conventions as a way Nora Minetta Lane Theatre. Through Aug. 6. • The journalism-theatre, but it has moments of strange- to reclaim power in the face of a traumatic past. Humans Schoenfeld. • Ice Factory 2016 New Ohio. ness which suggest what might have been had the Many of her family members died in the Holo- Through Aug. 13. • Privacy Public. • PTP/NYC Atlan- playwright and his director, Bartlett Sher, been caust; her father, who confronted Nazis in bat- tic Stage 2. Through Aug. 7. • School of Rock Winter more interested in taking risks. Mona Juul and tle, committed suicide when she was four. Sev- Garden. • Sense & Sensibility Gym at Judson. • Sum- Terje Rød-Larsen (played by Jennifer Ehle and eral surviving relatives similarly self-destructed, mer Shorts 2016 59E59. • Troilus and Cressida Dela- Jefferson Mays, both of whom are killer in their while, for Wolpe, founding the Los Angeles Wom- corte. Through Aug. 14. • Waitress Brooks Atkinson.

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 5 years later, he founded the School of Design, still part of the Illinois Institute of Technology, which the art historian Elizabeth Siegel writes in the ART catalogue was “his overarching work of art.” It was in America, after Moholy-Nagy was diag- 1 nosed with leukemia (he died in 1946, at the age cellany of the works in “Unfinished” is exactly of fifty-one) that he began to abandon rigor in MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES the right tenor for the Met Breuer. Let the big favor of delight, exposing the heart that had al- house on mount, as it does with ways pulsed within the technocratic genius. To Met Breuer wonderful consistency, rigorous historical and be a student of his then must have been heaven. “Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible” monographic shows. This one fulfills a yen to Through Sept. 7. Most critical responses to this inaugural show at experience, one at a time, works whose cyno- the Metropolitan Museum’s annex for modern sure is their uniqueness, with no big rationale Whitney Museum and contemporary art (in the former home of the for hanging together beyond being individually “Stuart Davis: In Full Swing” Whitney) have quibbled with its theme, which very, very good. Through Sept. 4. Davis’s ebullient paintings rank either at the tracks changing notions of “finished” through peak of American modern art or a bit to the side almost seven centuries of Western art, from Guggenheim Museum of it, depending on how you construe “Amer- Jan van Eyck to Elizabeth Peyton. Its critics “Moholy-Nagy: Present” ican” and “modern.” Davis, who died in 1964, find it a gauzy sort of curatorial idea, which it The high point of this powerful retrospective of at the age of seventy-one, laid heavy stress on is, but with one overriding, tremendous virtue: the Hungarian-born painter, sculptor, photogra- both terms. In the exhibition catalogue, the it calls attention to visual facts. This is a great pher, filmmaker, designer, writer, teacher, and art historian Harry Cooper, the show’s co- show. Mining the Met’s own matchless collec- all-around modernizing visionary is a replica of curator, quotes a list of self-exhortations that tion and applying its muscle to extract major his “Light Prop for an Electric Stage” (1930). the painter wrote in 1938. The first item: “Be loans, the show convenes works of genius and It’s a sleek, motorized medley of rods, screens, liked by French artists.” The second: “Be dis- items of charm and surprise. Aside from pieces perforated disks, and springs, set in a box with tinctly American.” Davis is best known, and obviously abandoned by artists while still in a circular cut in one side—a sort of industri- rightly esteemed, for his later work (begun in progress, the exhibits pique interest with vari- alized synthesis of Cubist and Constructivist the forties), tightly composed, hyperactive, ant senses of what constitutes a stopping point. styles. Moholy-Nagy took the original with him flag-bright pictures, with crisp planes and em- But if you ignore the theme the show will still in 1934, when, after the Nazis’ ascent to power, phatic lines, loops, and curlicues, often featur- be a non-stop sequence of arousals and exhila- he moved from Berlin to the Netherlands, and ing gnomic words (“champion,” “pad,” “else”) rations. (No need for examples. Almost every- then to London, and, finally, in 1937, to Chicago, and almost always incorporating his signature thing on view is exemplary.) The blowsy mis- where he directed the New Bauhaus school. Two as a dashing pictorial element. Their musical

Bruce Davidson’s 1966 photograph of a campground at Yosemite National Park, on view in “A Cool Breeze,” at the Howard Greenberg gallery. GREENBERG AND HOWARD COURTESYBRUCEGALLERY DAVIDSON/MAGNUM

6 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016

ART 1 rhythms and buttery textures appeal at a glance. ing the city’s streets taking these pictures. In GALLERIES—CHELSEA If the works had a smell, it would be like that those years, the El still ran above Third Avenue, of a factory-fresh car. But in this beautifully Oscar Niemeyer’s U.N. building went up, and The Family Acid paced show, hung by the Whitney curator Bar- Penn Station had not been torn down. But to Sil- In the nineteen-seventies, the versatile Roger bara Haskell, Davis’s earlier phases prove most ver such sights were simply backdrops for people, Steffens—an actor, a writer, and a musicologist— absorbing. They detail stages of a personal am- whether they were the children he found hors- took thousands of atmospheric photographs, bition in step with large ideals. Through Sept. 25. ing around in the dappled light of Grand Cen- which his wife, son, and daughter later helped tral Terminal or the pair of dishevelled women organize (together, they make up the Family Morgan Library and Museum he caught quarreling with operatic fury. Sil- Acid). The locales range from Big Sur to Mar- “Rembrandt’s First Masterpiece” ver’s women may recall Lisette Model and his rakech to Jamaica; the mood is endless Summer Seeing an unfamiliar painting by Rembrandt children may call to mind Helen Levitt, but his of Love. Sometimes that manifests as trippy dou- is a life event: fresh data on what it’s like to be approach is more formal, with an eye to Bau- ble exposures, and the stoner aesthetic can get human. A remarkable case in point is “Judas Re- haus-style skewed perspectives and an appreci- a bit cloying. But, over all, the project is as se- turning the Thirty Pieces of Silver” (1629), now ation for the way grand architecture frames the ductive and happy-go-lucky as Steffens’s image on rare loan to the museum from a private col- passing throng. Through Dec. 4. of a yellow balloon floating in front of the sun lection in England. The artist completed the 1 above ’s Golden Gate Park. Through smallish picture when he was twenty-three, still Aug. 26. (Benrubi, 521 W. 26th St. 212-888-6007.) living in his native Leiden. Is it a masterpiece? GALLERIES—UPTOWN 1 The overused honorific distracts. Never mind congratulating the painting. Look at it. Rem- Martin Creed GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN brandt embarked not only on an art career but Hats off to the co-curators Tom Eccles and on an extended plumbing of souls, including his Hans Ulrich Obrist: their large, painstaking William Helburn own. Has anyone in the annals of human experi- retrospective of the deadpan British artist and Helburn, now eighty-two, was one of Madison ence been more alone than Judas at the pictured is a demented joy. The Aestheticist in- Avenue’s go-to photographers in the late fif- moment? How did the young Rembrandt know teriors of the Armory are almost too perfect a ties and the sixties, thanks to these slick, sexy so much about existential extremes of emotion? backdrop for Creed’s brilliant one-liners. His pictures, which could have come straight from The answer is that he didn’t. Rather, whenever notorious, Turner Prize-netting “Work No. 160: a Don Draper pitch. In a sublimely ridiculous he put brush to canvas, pen to paper, or burin to The Lights Going On and Off” is installed in a ad for Supima cotton, from 1957, a woman in metal, he posed some puzzle to himself about parlor that’s chock-full of outmoded portraits, Gramercy Park throws her arms up in delight the meaning of a particular story, social order, adding an element of surprise. The Board of as her chauffeur secures a huge red canoe to or person. As he worked, a solution would come Officer’s Room is filled with white balloons, the roof of her Rolls-Royce. To hawk salad to him, but without finality. It pended comple- and has become a hot spot for selfies. The cav- dressing, in 1964, Helburn posed the model tion in other eyes, minds, and hearts: our own, ernous drill hall is almost empty, save for a se- Jean Shrimpton with a round radish between now. Through Sept. 18. quence of gross-out videos and the modest— her lips, like a ball gag. Sex sells in this fantasy and strangely moving—opening and closing of world—sexism does, too, but Helburn offsets New-York Historical Society a loading-dock door, which transforms the side- it with a sly sense of humor that makes every- “Photographs by Larry Silver, 1949-1955” walk of Lexington Avenue into a readymade. one, the models included, seem in on the joke. New York’s urban landscape was in transition Through Aug. 7. ( Armory, Park Ave. Through Aug. 26. (Staley-Wise, 100 Crosby St. when Silver, who is now eighty-one, was prowl- at 66th St. 212-933-5812.) 212-966-6223.)

to Indian dance, on Aug. 15, co-sponsored by the Erasing Borders Festival (see above). (Robert F. Wagner, Jr., Park, 20 Battery Park Pl. 212-219-3910. DANCE Aug. 14-20.) 1 Out of Doors dance scene. The first night, at Pace Universi- OUT OF TOWN Noche Flamenca, New York’s most beloved fla- ty’s Schimmel Center (3 Spruce St., Aug. 13; menco troupe, returns to the free festival. The pro- for tickets, call 866-811-4111), includes five solo- Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival gram—featuring, as always, first-rate live music— ists and one ensemble, performing kathak (from In “What the Day Owes to the Night” (at the Ted includes a new commissioned piece, but the the north), bharatanatyam (from the south), Shawn, Aug. 3-7), the bare-chested men of Compa- highlight is bound to be the culminating “Soleá,” and various contemporary twists on both. The gnie Hervé Koubi, from Algeria and Burkina Faso, by the incomparable Soledad Barrio. (Lincoln Cen- star of the evening is Rama Vaidyanathan, a skim the ground and revolve like tumbleweeds, spin ter, Broadway at 64th St. lcoutofdoors.org. Aug. 3.) refined and intensely musical dancer who also on their heads, launch one another into the air, and excels at abhinaya, or mime, an integral part of run up backs to fall precipitously. The feats are dar- Indian dance. The second night, at the Rob- ing but the tone is meditative; the dance is beautiful Who would have imagined that a Florida re- ert F. Wagner, Jr., Park (20 Battery Park Pl., but obscure. • New York Theatre Ballet (at the Doris sort town on the Gulf of Mexico could become Aug. 15), is open to the public and presented Duke, Aug. 3-7), the polite and loveable chamber the country’s main purveyor of ballets by the in conjunction with the Battery Dance Festi- troupe, brings two ensemble works, old and new: British choreographer ? Sara- val (see below). The performers include Avi- “Dark Elegies,” Antony Tudor’s severe evocation of sota Ballet’s artistic director, the Yorkshire-born jit Das, who performs kuchipudi, a light, quick- grief, is a classic from 1937; “Song Before Spring” is Iain Webb, is an Ashton enthusiast, and he has silver dance style, which originated in Andhra a bright romp, created earlier this year, by the com- made it his life’s work to bring the choreogra- Pradesh, and Carolina Prada, a specialist in Ma- pany standout Steven Melendez (with Zhong-Jing pher’s back catalogue—clever, stylish, and al- yurbhanj Chhau, a dance that combines acrobat- Fang). • Dorrance Dance, the hottest troupe in tap, ways musical—to the stage. At the Joyce, the ics and martial arts. returns (at the Ted Shawn, Aug. 10-14), with “ETM: troupe will perform “Façade,” a jazzy frolic set Double Down,” an innovative combination of vir- to period tunes by William Walton; “Valses No- Battery Dance Festival tuosic hoofing and electronics. The show, though a bles et Sentimentales,” a dreamy ballroom bal- This free weeklong festival boasts the most gob- bit scattershot, is excitingly fresh. • In recent years, let with music by Ravel; and a medley of short smacking backdrop in New York: the rippling Adam H. Weinert has dedicated himself to recon- works, including the sweet and funny “Tweedle- waves of New York Harbor. Participants include structing the neglected choreography of the Pil- dum and Tweedledee.” (175 Eighth Ave., at 19th the contemporary ballet choreographer Joshua low’s founder, Ted Shawn. The “Monument” pro- St. 212-242-0800. Aug. 8-13.) Beamish and his troupe, Move: The Company; gram (at the Doris Duke, Aug. 10-14) juxtaposes Lori Belilove’s ensemble of Isadora Duncan-esque nineteen-thirties solos by Shawn and Doris Hum- Erasing Borders Festival of Indian Dance dancers; and the hosts, the socially conscious phrey with a new group work that builds on the mo- A highlight of the summer, this yearly event modern-dance practitioners Battery Dance Com- tifs and styles of the historical pieces. (Becket, Mass. offers an intriguing glimpse of India’s rich pany. Not to be missed is the evening devoted 413-243-0745. Through Aug. 28.)

8 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 as a frat house with a music-industry budget and a liberal treasurer. Def Jam first struck gold blending rap and rock with Run D.M.C., and then found an NIGHT LIFE outsized rock star in Earl Simmons, known to fans as DMX, the snarling Yonkers hit-maker who, in 1 1998, released two No. 1 —the first rapper is a songwriter of considerable talent, although to ever accomplish this feat. For a night in Har- ROCK AND POP his group tends to get shelved among derivative lem, he revives these hedonistic days and the an- post-Nirvana fare. In spite of the success of its thems that came with them, with fellow Def Jam and night-club proprietors lead début , “Sixteen Stone,” from 1994, Bush alumni Nore, Jim Jones, and . (Apollo The- complicated lives; it’s advisable to check was polarizing in its early days, denounced by atre, 253 W. 125th St. 800-745-3000. Aug. 5.) in advance to confrm engagements. record- store élitists even as it sold out arena tours and topped charts worldwide. If you’ve got the Sam Gellaitry Belly stomach for it (and can tolerate Rossdale’s vocal It can be hard to keep your synths straight with so A new parent in western Massachusetts couldn’t ask style), the music is ripe for reappraisal. Anthems many aspiring artists flooding servers with home- for a hipper postpartum doula than Tanya Donelly, like “Comedown,” “Swallowed,” and the brood- made music. But Gellaitry’s gentle keyboard touch the enchanting front woman of this nineties rock ing “Glycerine” sound even better today. (Webster and far-swung bass lines grip fans in a way that act. (Since her group disbanded, in 1996, she’s set- Hall, 125 E. 11th St. 212-353-1600. Aug. 6.) music by few nineteen-year-olds can. He started tled in Arlington, where she works with young fam- tinkering with beats at the age of twelve, and left ilies.) Considering the soothing magical realism of Deftones high school at sixteen to commit to music full time. her solo output, having Donnelly around the house This Sacramento group has long been a critical The Scottish producer, whose father made bag- would presumably have a calming effect. Recently, darling, though it is often lumped together (in pipes in his spare time, encapsulates the blend of she decided to re-form the band for a series of per- topic or on tour) with peers such as Korn and other lusty low-end R. & B. and jittery electronica that formances, the first in twenty years, and has plans bands from the late-nineties Nu Metal onslaught. has catapulted labels like Soulection to notoriety, for a new album. (Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. But Deftones preceded this trend, and, in 1995, in if not quite fame. A release with the taste-making 212-260-4700. Aug. 11.) a concerted effort to separate itself from the pack, XL Recordings clinched Gellaitry’s status as one the group signed to Madonna’s Maverick imprint. of dance music’s safest new bets, and he’s since Boris In recent years, the band has found a touring part- toured his riotous sound around the globe; catch This adventurous Japanese avant-metal trio cele- ner in the reunited Swedish outfit Refused, whose this pit stop in . (Music Hall of Williams- brates the tenth anniversary of its breakthrough incendiary 1998 album, “The Shape of Punk to burg, 66 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. 718-486-5400. Aug. 6.) album, “Pink,” with a worldwide tour and an ex- Come,” blended jazz, hardcore, and electronic pansive reissue, which includes an extra album’s music, while boldly declaring, in the midst of an PJ Harvey worth of previously unreleased material. The economic boom that most people thought would The presciently titled “Let England Shake,” from group formed in Tokyo, in 1992, inspired by a never end, “Capitalism is in fact organized crime, 2011, earned Harvey her second Mercury Award, but shared love of the Melvins and Motörhead, as and we are all the victims.” (The Amphitheatre at the album is proving to be a hard act to follow. The well as of experimental noise artists like Merzbow, Coney Island Boardwalk, 3052 W. 21st St., Brooklyn. iconoclastic English singer-songwriter has drawn with whom Boris later collaborated. “Pink” was the fordamphitheaterconeyisland.com. Aug. 5.) some criticism for her most recent effort, “The Hope band’s seventh album, and it remains remarkable Six Demolition Project.” Residents of the Seventh for both its array of diverse styles—shoegaze, De- DMX Ward, in Washington, D.C., scoffed at lyrics, like troit proto-punk, sludge—and its powerful, over- The former office of Def Jam Records, at 160 “Just drug town, just zombies,” that Harvey wrote arching musical unity. Opening will be the drone- Varick Street, once served as a creative clubhouse after a brief trip to the neighborhood. Good inten- metal pioneers Earth, who share Boris’s love of (or madhouse) for generations of hip-hop’s big- tions aside, weighing in on the politics of another down-tuned guitars and slow tempos. (Warsaw, gest stars and their associates who were privileged country is rarely done to great effect (especially in 261 Driggs Ave., Brooklyn. 718-385-0505. Aug. 5.) enough to tag along. The wistful stories that are song). Harvey’s live show, however, remains stel- told on the rapper Nore’s new podcast, “Drink lar, and she has announced only two Stateside dates Bush Champs,” recount ego-fuelled parking-space con- so far, one in New York and one in Los Angeles. Gavin Rossdale, the ex-husband of Gwen Ste- flicts and you-had-to-be-there chance meetings. (Terminal 5, 610 W. 56th St. 212-582-6600. Aug. 16.) fani and lead singer of this alt-rock powerhouse, Nore’s clan of early-aughts peers describe the space Hiatus Kaiyote This Melbourne cosmic-soul quartet’s reverence for Stevie Wonder shines through its buoyant chord changes. The lead singer, guitarist, and flower-child-in-residence, Naomi (Nai Palm) Saalfield, is confident and affecting on songs like the Grammy-nominated “Breathing Under- water.” The lyrics can drift a bit far into space, but Saalfield always lands her precise stacca- tos and vocal flourishes. Like many of the fu- ture-funk bands catching traction with plug-in- fatigued youths, Hiatus Kaiyote is an act to be experienced live: the watertight rhythm section of the drummer, Perrin Moss, and the bassist, Paul Blender, keeps bodies moving, and Simon Mavin’s keyboards help Saalfield expand minds. (Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. 212-777-6800. Aug. 4.)

Pitbull In the nineties, Courtney Love dubbed her- self “Miss World.” These days, she shares the title with Pitbull, the rollicking, Miami-based entertainer known as “Mr. Worldwide,” who draws from Cuban rap, crunk, reggaeton, and other sounds in his bouncy bilingual numbers. Pitbull’s stated mission is to bring positivity to the global masses—his characteristic mid-song Naomi (Nai Palm) Saalfeld and her Melbourne mates form Hiatus Kaiyote, a psychedelic-soul catchphrase is the affirmative dale, meaning “go

ILLUSTRATION BY CUN SHIILLUSTRATIONBY four-piece.The band stops at Irving Plaza to perform astral funk numbers from its sophomore album. ahead.” The son of first-generation Cuban im-

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 9 NIGHT LIFE migrants who required him to memorize the po- etry of José Martí, Pitbull once claimed that he chose his moniker because pitbulls are “too stu- pid to lose” in dogfights. He has since evolved CLASSICAL MUSIC into a debonair mogul, grinning through aspira- tional songs about meeting love interests in taxis and lamenting those who mess around. (Pruden- tial Center, 25 Lafayette St., Newark, N.J. 973-757- 6464.1 Aug. 13.) JAZZ AND STANDARDS

Tony Danza Resistance is futile: this spark-plug performer is out to sing, dance, and regale you with show- biz stories until you surrender to his outsized charms. From “Who’s the Boss?” and “The Ice- man Cometh” to “Broad City,” Danza has been there and back, and he’s more than willing to share the long, strange trip. (54 Below, 254 W. 54th St. 646-476-3551. Aug. 9-10.)

Herbie Hancock– Experiment Hancock probably sees more than a little of his omnivorous, adventurous younger self in the pi- anist Glasper, who joins the keyboard icon at this outdoor event, part of BRIC Celebrate Brook- lyn! Hancock will be unveiling a new ensemble, which includes the guitarist Lionel Loueke, while Glasper fronts his eclectic Experiment band. (Prospect Park Bandshell, Prospect Park W. at 9th St. bricartsmedia.org. Aug. 11.) Several hundred volunteer singers will celebrate fve decades of Mostly Mozart.

Mulgrew Miller Tribute With Mulgrew Miller’s untimely death, in 2013, the world lost one of the most proficient and All for One versary of Mostly Mozart, which will be performed as a free event on Lincoln Cen- adaptable jazz pianists. Miller may have been David Lang’s “The Public Domain” even better known for his work with a wide swath ter’s Josie Robertson Plaza, on Aug. 13. A of other bandleaders than for the fine record- seeks common ground. ings under his own name. Four former associ- collaboration with the choral conductor ates—Steve Nelson, Peter Washington, Terell Staf- For classical composers, a consistent Simon Halsey and the choreographer ford, and Lewis Nash—come together with the style, along with the musicianship to sup- Annie-B Parson, it is an optimistic piece pianist Danny Grissett to pay tribute to this once ubiquitous figure. (Smoke, 2751 Broadway, between port it, is the guarantor of a sustained ca- that summons the spirit which prevailed 105th and 106th Sts. 212-864-6662. Aug. 12-14.) reer. But the mastery of David Lang, in American arts at the time when Lin- whose style blends elements of postmin- coln Center was built, in the sixties. Lang Tierney Sutton Joni Mitchell loves jazz, and jazz musicians seem imalism, modernism, and conceptualism, recently said of the era, “Leonard Bern- to love Joni. Here, Sutton revisits “After Blue,” is of an unusual sort. Making his music stein was on TV all the time, telling all her 2013 musical mash note to this modern-day from tenderly spun-out fragments of America that democracy and culture went genius of popular song, transforming ballads like “Woodstock,” “Little Green,” and the not-a-dry- scales, he sometimes invites inanity (as in together. I believed that! So I thought I eye-in-the-house anthem “Blue.” (Jazz Standard, “Simple Song #3,” written for the Paolo could make a more democratic piece . . . 116 E. 27th St. 212-576-2232. Aug. 4-7.) Sorrentino movie “Youth”). When the that invited in amateurs and took as its Voxfest conditions are right, however, the poverty topic things we all might share.” (Groups You may not recognize all the singers in this in- of his material can bloom into an austere of volunteer singers have been rehearsing triguing festival—curated by the gifted and nur- kind of sonic, and expressive, richness: he for several weeks.) turing singer and teacher Deborah Latz—but each brings a compelling presence to the stage has a genius for maximizing the potential As with “Crowd Out,” Lang looked while reminding us that New York remains a hot- of negative space. to the Internet for his texts, selecting house for jazz vocal talent. (Cornelia Street Café, Two years ago, Lang wrote “Crowd phrases from search-engine auto-com- 29 Cornelia St. 212-989-9319. Aug. 2-4.) Out,” a composition for, as his Web site pletions of the sentence “One thing we states, “1000 people yelling.” The raucous all have is . . .” The results included Fifteen ensembles are on hand to present selec- piece, which was premièred by England’s “music,” “favorite sandwich,” and “time, tions from the composer John Zorn’s bagatelles, a series of three hundred compact pieces open to Birmingham Contemporary Music until it stops.” Lang hopes that some fu- adaptation by any instrumentation. Among the Group (with a little help from their ture performance might involve “hun- swarm of musicians will be the guitarists Mary friends), had a trace of violence to it, partly dreds of thousands of people.” It is a Halvorson, Marc Ribot, and Julian Lage; the pia- nists Kris Davis, Uri Caine, and Craig Taborn; and inspired by the scream-songs chanted at vision more Whitmanesque, more “am- the drummers Dave King, Tyshawn Sorey, and Jim English soccer games. Now comes “The ateur,” than the proudly cultivated Bern- Black. (Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Ave. S., at Public Domain,” a work for “1000 sing- stein might ever have imagined. 11th St. 212-255-4037. Aug. 9-14.) ers,” commissioned for the fiftieth anni- —Russell Platt BRAZIER CELYN ILLUSTRATIONBY

10 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 1 CLASSICAL MUSIC

CONCERTS IN TOWN ances by the Brooklyn cult pianist Beth Levin Caramoor (performing Schubert’s Sonata No. 20 in A Major, Two concerts stand out during the final week of Mostly Mozart Brahms’s “Handel Variations,” and music by the gracious Westchester festival. At the Span- Aug. 5 at 6:30: The festival shows off its cutting David del Tredici) and the compelling husband- ish Courtyard, on Friday night, Jonathan Biss, edge by bringing back the pathbreaking Interna- and-wife, cello-and-piano team of Edward Arron this summer’s artist-in-residence, brings his keen tional Contemporary Ensemble, which, in addition and Jeewon Park (interpreting works by Bach, intellect and fine technique to four piano sona- to marquee events, is presenting a series of free, Mendelssohn, Hindemith, and Dvořák, in ad- tas by Beethoven (including the “Tempest” and alfresco “micro-concerts” during the festival’s open- dition to Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres”). (Fulton Ferry “Appassionata”). On Sunday afternoon, the Or- ing fortnight. The next performance will be one of Landing, Brooklyn. Aug. 7 at 4 and Aug. 12 at 8. chestra of St. Luke’s, under the sure command the most closely watched: a world première (“Shiver For tickets and full schedule, see bargemusic.org.) of Pablo Heras-Casado, offers the grand finale, Lung 2”) by the fast-rising composer Ashley Fure, 1 a concert devoted to music by Brahms: the Vio- whose work mixes elements of installation art and lin Concerto (with Gil Shaham) and the Second Parisian high modernism. (Hearst Plaza, Lincoln OUT OF TOWN Symphony. (Katonah, N.Y. caramoor.org. Aug. 5 at Center.) • Aug. 5-6 at 7:30: Mozart’s Clarinet Con- 8 and Aug. 7 at 4:30.) certo, with its combination of intimate lyricism and Glimmerglass Festival poignant melancholy, crystallizes an aspect of the This season, the preëminent summer festival Marlboro Music composer’s personality during the last months of of the Northeast hews to a reliable formula in its The legendary summer festival and school, where his life. The dynamic Swedish clarinettist Martin lineup, presenting one warhorse, one relative rar- the world’s leading musicians gather with their Fröst will be out front in the Mostly Mozart Festi- ity, one musical, and one twentieth-century opera. promising protégés to make chamber music val Orchestra’s upcoming concert; the conductor is E. Loren Meeker directs a Belle Époque- themed on the loftiest level, wraps up its season of in- Paavo Järvi, who also conducts music by Arvo Pärt production of Puccini’s beloved “La Bohème”; Peter tensively prepared concerts; programs are an- (“La Sindone”) and Beethoven (the Fourth Sym- Kazaras’s fairy-tale staging of Rossini’s “The Thiev- nounced a week in advance on the festival’s Web phony). (Note: After the Saturday-night concert, ing Magpie” (best known, in the modern era, for site. (Marlboro, Vt. marlboromusic.org. Aug. 5-6 Fröst will retire to the Kaplan Penthouse to per- its sparkling overture) features Rachele Gil more and Aug. 12-13 at 8 and Aug. 7 and Aug. 14 at 2:30.) form chamber works by Brahms, Bartók, and Falla, as Ninetta and Michele Angelini, a bel-canto spe- with the pianist Roland Pöntinen.) (David Geffen cialist on the rise, as Giannetto; Christopher Alden Bard Music Festival: Hall.) • Aug. 9-10 at 7:30: Louis Langrée returns sets Stephen Sondheim’s devilish “Sweeney Todd” “Puccini and His World” to the podium and to the festival orchestra, lead- in a village hall in postwar England, in perfor- Leon Botstein, the magus (musical and other- ing an all-Mozart program that offers the first and mances conducted by John DeMain; and Francesca wise) of Bard College, turns his ship into the final symphonies (in C Major, “Jupiter”) as well Zambello, the company’s director, places Robert heady winds of late-nineteenth- and early-twen- as the Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major; Richard Ward’s “The Crucible” (inspired by Arthur Mill- tieth-century Italian music, a turbulent mix of Goode is the distinguished soloist. (David Geffen er’s play, an allegory of McCarthyism) where it was modernism, Futurism, and late Romanticism. A Hall.) • Aug. 12-13 at 7:30: Jeffrey Kahane—a su- meant to be set—seventeenth-century Salem, Mas- plethora of concerts (many featuring Botstein perb pianist, a capable conductor, and an entertain- sachusetts. (Cooperstown, N.Y. Aug. 4-16. For tick- conducting the American Symphony Orches- ing compère—is classical music’s triple threat. He ets and for a schedule of dates and times, visit glimmer- tra) and symposia are offered across two three- conducts the festival orchestra from the keyboard glass.org. Through Aug. 27.) day weekends. Among the highlights are perfor- in another all-Mozart evening: the Piano Concer- mances of Puccini’s one-act “Il Tabarro” tos Nos. 21, 22, and 24 (in C Minor, K. 491). (David Tanglewood and “Le Villi”; a concert of arias by Leonca- Geffen Hall.) • Aug. 13 at 10: Inon Barnatan brings ’s musical duchy is in full swing; here are vallo, Cilea, and other little masters of the ve- his powerful pianism to the “Little Night Music” some mid-month highlights. Aug. 5 at 8: Yefim rismo school; a program exploring the influence series, performing a slate of piquant brevities by Bronfman, the thinking man’s powerhouse pia- of Fascism; and, the grand finale, an afternoon Handel, Bach, Couperin (“L’Atalante”), Barber (the nist, will keep some of his technical dazzle in re- pairing Berio’s completion of Act III of Puccini’s fugue-finale from the Sonata for Piano), and Ligeti, serve as he forays into Liszt’s meditative Piano “Turandot” with a complete performance of Bu- along with a New York première by Thomas Adès Concerto No. 2 in A Major. Giancarlo Guerrero soni’s rarely heard opera of the same name. (Rich- (“Blanca Variations”). (Kaplan Penthouse.) (For tickets conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which ard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Annan- and a complete listing of concerts, visit mostlymozart.org.) also performs a miniature by Mahler (“What the dale-on-Hudson, N.Y. Aug. 5-7 and Aug. 12-14. For Wild Flowers Tell Me”) as well as serenades by tickets and full schedule, visit fishercenter.bard.edu.) Mostly Mozart: “Così Fan Tutte” the comrades Dvořák (for Winds, Op. 44) and The festival’s fiftieth-anniversary season would not Brahms (No. 2 in A Major). • Aug. 6 at 8: Guer- Philadelphia Orchestra at SPAC be complete without at least one of the three operatic rero returns (with the Russian phenom Daniil For fifty summers, the Philadelphians have been masterpieces that Mozart wrote with the librettist Trifonov) for a concert with the B.S.O. that fea- bringing their gorgeous sounds to the Saratoga Lorenzo Da Ponte. This concert employs the same tures a modern classic by John Adams (“Harmo- Performing Arts Center. Two programs, of many, cast—Lenneke Ruiten, Kate Lindsey, Sandrine nielehre”) as well as chestnuts by Chopin (the are of special note. A Friday-evening concert fea- Piau, Joel Prieto, Nahuel di Pierro, and Rod Gil- Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor) and Strauss turing dancers from Ballet finds fry—as the Aix-en-Provence Festival’s production (“Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks”). • Aug. 12 Stéphane Denève conducting popular works by from June and July, but without the racially charged at 8: Two favorite veteran artists, the conductor Tchaikovsky (excerpts from “”) and staging by the director Christophe Honoré; Louis Charles Dutoit and the pianist Emanuel Ax, are Ravel, along with a world première by a leading Langrée conducts the Freiburg Baroque Orches- out front with the B.S.O. for a populist program American composer profoundly influenced by tra. (Alice Tully Hall. 212-721-6500. Aug. 15 at 7:30.) offering music by Mozart (the Piano Concerto both of them: Michael Torke (“Unconquered”). No. 22 in E-Flat Major), Debussy (“La Mer”) The following weekend, Cristian Măcelaru con- Bang on a Can at the Noguchi Museum and Ravel (“Boléro”). • Aug. 14 at 2:30 and 8: Two ducts Stravinsky’s complete ballet score “The B.O.A.C., the biggest brand on the downtown scene, major concerts tempt audiences on Sunday. The Firebird” (among other works), with the fan- has for several years fostered a summer outlet at B.S.O. reigns in its customary afternoon glory at tastical accompaniment of puppets made and the museum, itself an enduring emblem of artistic the Shed, with David Afkham conducting music directed by Janni Younge Productions (of “War innovation. The American Contemporary Music by Beethoven (including the Piano Concerto No. 3 Horse” fame). (Saratoga, N.Y. spac.org. Aug. 5 at Ensemble, which has a string quartet at its heart, in C Minor, with the fascinating young soloist Igor 8; Aug. 11 at 3 and Aug. 12 at 8.) presents an afternoon program featuring quartets Levit) and Schumann (the Fourth Symphony). by Philip Glass (No. 5, from 1991) and Meredith At night, the action moves to Ozawa Hall, where Maverick Concerts Monk (“Stringsongs”) as well as a new work by Barry Humphries—a.k.a. Dame Edna Everage— Among the classical artists appearing mid-month one of the group’s members, Caleb Burhans. (9-01 will appear as himself in an unprecedented Tan- at the Maverick’s idyllic music barn are the qui- 33rd Rd., Long Island City, Queens. noguchi.org. Aug. glewood collaboration with the Australian Cham- etly persuasive pianist Simone Dinnerstein (per- 14 at 3. The concert is free with museum admission.) ber Orchestra (directed by Richard Tognetti) and forming works by Bach, Schubert, and Philip the cabaret artist Meow Meow: a musical jour- Glass) and the brilliant and invigorating Trio Bargemusic ney through the Weimar Republic which features Solisti (a longtime favorite, playing piano trios The heat is on, but so is the music at the air-con- “degenerate” works by Weill (“Pirate Jenny” and by Beethoven, Arensky, and Brahms). (Wood- ditioned floating chamber-music series. Among other songs), Krenek, Schulhoff, and Toch; pa- stock, N.Y. maverickconcerts.org. Aug. 6 at 6 and the concerts on offer in mid-August are appear- rental discretion is advised. (Lenox, Mass. bso.org.) Aug. 14 at 4.)

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 11 MOVIES

Donna Pescow plays a young woman with a crush on the ambitious disco star (John Travolta) at the center of John Badham’s “Saturday Night Fever.”

Dance Revolution group’s unofcial philosopher, a fledg- men, one of whom murders her in her ling prosecutor named Josh (Matt bed. The night spots that she frequents The politics of disco, caught on film. Keeslar). Disco, he says, replaced the throb with songs by Thelma Houston, The heyday of disco, in the nineteen- formless rock scene with “cocktails, Donna Summer, and the Commodores, seventies, was defined by conflicts that dancing, conversation, exchange of and the drama links this new wave of have recently come to the fore again. ideas and points of view,” and his ap- dance music to women’s sexual freedom. The cultural advances of black people, parent naïve irony is utterly straight- Despite the tragic—and apparently homosexuals, women, and urban élites forward. In the disco, talking is a meet- cautionary—ending, Brooks films which challenged the mainstream pre- ing of the minds, and dancing is a women’s fight for sexual freedom as a sumptions of middle-class white men meeting of the bodies—sex without sex, brave defiance of traditional constraints are the focus of some of the major an egalitarian indicator of erotic com- and hypocritical distortions. oferings in Metrograph’s series “Dim patibility. Stillman highlights the po- The iconic movie of the era, “Satur- All the Lights: Disco and the Movies” litical stakes of personal pleasures with day Night Fever,” from 1977, is a won- (Aug. 5-11). archival clips showing the infamous drous paradox. It’s set in an Italian In “The Last Days of Disco,” from 1979 Disco Demolition Night at Chi- neighborhood in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, 1998, Whit Stillman unfolds disco’s cago’s Comiskey Park, a record-burning and stars John Travolta as the nineteen- lines of power with a historian’s insight that devolved into a riot mainly by year-old Tony Manero, who works in a and a novelist’s eye for satirical nuance. white men. hardware store by day and is the dance- Set in Manhattan in the early eighties, Disco music fills the soundtrack of floor king of a local disco by night. Tony the film stars Chloë Sevigny and Kate Richard Brooks’s 1977 film “Looking and his friends spatter the movie with Beckinsale as recent college graduates for Mr. Goodbar,” starring Diane Kea- racist and sexist epithets and behavior, and editorial assistants whose social life ton. Like the novel by Judith Rossner but, as in “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” is centered on a flashy and exclusive from which it’s adapted, the movie is the plot involves the battle over abor- club. Their circle of men includes an loosely based on the true story of a tion, and the arc of the story is the environmental lawyer (Robert Sean teacher of hearing-impaired children breakdown of religious values and fam- Leonard), an ad man (Mackenzie who is oppressed by her conservative ily authority; the discothèque is the Astin), a colleague (Matt Ross), a club Catholic parents, moves to her own chrysalis of a new modernity. employee (Chris Eigeman), and the apartment, frequents bars, and picks up —Richard Brody EVERETT

12 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016

1 MOVIES

OPENING vert) who tries to buy Antoinette’s affections likely to succeed, is miserable as a mid-level ac- even as he extorts sexual favors from an em- countant. On the eve of the class reunion, Bob Florence Foster Jenkins Meryl Streep stars in this ployee (Paulette Jan). But Becker, whose cam- recruits Calvin for a high-risk mission to re- comic drama, based on the true story of an heiress era ranges breezily from Métro-station ticket cover stolen top-secret files. Meanwhile, Cal- who insists on singing opera despite her terrible booths to romantic rooftops, is a sophisticate vin is struggling to save his marriage to his high- voice. Directed by Stephen Frears; co-starring Re- with a populist lilt: the adultery of working peo- school sweetheart, Maggie (Danielle Nicolet), a becca Ferguson and Hugh Grant. Opening Aug. 12. ple has a ruddy vigor absent from the merchant’s successful lawyer, and Bob has to face up to the (In wide release.) • Hell or High Water Chris Pine cadaverous clutches. A clattery plot involving a enduring trauma of his adolescence. This action and Ben Foster star in this drama, as brothers on lost lottery ticket tells an ironic tale of impos- comedy, directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, a crime spree in rural Texas. Directed by David sible dreams, but Becker’s ecstatic, overwhelm- builds a sentimental strain into its violent stunts; Mackenzie; co-starring Jeff Bridges. Opening Aug. ingly intimate closeups of the couple burn away the window-smashing and car-crashing offer 12. (In limited release.) • Little Men Reviewed this daily cares with the blinding heat of erotic pas- some giddy surprises, but the ridiculous yet week in The Current Cinema. Opening Aug. 5. (In sion. In French.—Richard Brody (MOMA; Aug. bland gunplay is as generic as the setup. None- limited release.) • Pete’s Dragon David Lowery di- 5 and Aug. 14.) theless, Johnson commands the screen with his rected this remake of the 1977 fantasy, about a boy odd hesitations and deadpan line readings, and (Oakes Fegley) who is befriended by a dragon. The BFG the script gives him some wildly eccentric sit- Co-starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Robert Steven Spielberg lavishes extraordinary care uations in which to shine; against all odds, he Redford. Opening Aug. 12. (In wide release.) • Rich- and skill on this live-action adaptation of a story lends real emotion to the flimsy artifice. With ard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny A documentary by Roald Dahl, about an orphan named Sophie Amy Ryan, as another C.I.A. agent in grimly about the filmmaker, directed by Louis Black (Ruby Barnhill) who is plucked from a London antic pursuit.—R.B. (In wide release.) and Karen Bernstein. • Sausage Party An ani- orphanage by a giant named Runt (Mark Ry- mated comedy, about foodstuffs rebelling at the lance) and brought to his home in Giant Country, Don’t Think Twice prospect of being eaten. Directed by Greg Tier- somewhere to the north of north. There, Runt is The comedian Mike Birbiglia wrote, directed, nan and Conrad Vernon; with the voices of Seth bullied by nine even bigger giants, child-eating and co-stars in this amiable, lovingly detailed Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, cannibals who mock him for being a vegetarian comedy about comedy—specifically, about the Craig Robinson, and Paul Rudd. Opening Aug. 12. and try to hunt Sophie, whom he valiantly de- life and possible death of an admired but strug- (In wide release.) • Suicide Squad An action fantasy, fends. Meanwhile, Runt plies his gentle trade as gling New York improv troupe called the Com- about imprisoned evildoers who are recruited for the world’s dream-catcher and dream-brewer. mune. Birbiglia plays Miles, who founded the a crime-fighting supergroup. Directed by David The early scenes offer a sort of magic realism in troupe a decade ago but is struggling to find a Ayer; starring Margot Robbie, Cara Delevingne, which Runt struggles with the practical details of place in the business at large. He and the five Will Smith, and Jared Leto. Opening Aug. 5. (In the modern city with a cleverly grounded whimsy other members hold down day jobs (one’s a wait- wide release.) that the movie’s far more fanciful later conceits ress, another works in a store, and Miles teaches 1 can’t match for simple astonishment. Rylance improv) while awaiting their big break. When a brings an arch literary rusticity to Runt’s bril- producer invites several of the members to au- NOW PLAYING liantly bungled language, and the gifted Barnhill dition for “Weekend Live,” the Saturday-night isn’t given much with the role of Sophie, who’s broadcast that makes comedians instantly fa- : The Movie written to be spunky, endearing, and blank. The mous, the resulting turmoil of resentments and Decades after “Absolutely Fabulous” began as film’s technical achievements may be complex, frustrations turns the Commune into a buzz- a sitcom on the BBC, it lands at last on the big but its emotions are facile. With Penelope Wil- ing hive of individualists and threatens to pull screen. The principal couple, though rusting at ton as the Queen, who summons the British it apart. Birbiglia films what he knows, offering the edges, remains in place: the hapless Eddy Army and keeps the American President, Ron- ample and intricate scenes of improvisations per- (), who works in P.R., and the ald Reagan, informed.—R.B. (In wide release.) formed onstage, along with an insider’s view of indestructible Patsy Stone (), who the industry, and he pushes his colleagues to the is allegedly employed by a fashion magazine. Café Society fore—especially Keegan-Michael Key, who has a The movie, written by Saunders and directed The new Woody Allen film, set in the nine- drolly ambiguous turn as a self-anointed star, and by Mandie Fletcher, finds the two women in de- teen-thirties, tells the tale of Bobby Dorfman Gillian Jacobs, playing a powerhouse performer cline, with dwindling reserves of cash and joie (Jesse Eisenberg), from the Bronx. Bobby goes tormented by self-doubt, who is the film’s mov- de vivre; indeed, there are moments when the to Los Angeles and hooks up with his Uncle Phil ingly dramatic center.—R.B. (In limited release.) comedy itself appears to be running dry, and the (Steve Carell), an agent to the stars. Phil is al- terror of aging, never far away on the TV series, ways busy (nobody is better than Carell at that Equity is now on open display. The plot, such as it is, kind of busyness), and so his assistant, Vonnie This methodical but cleverly plotted drama, di- betrays an ominous dependence on celebrities; (Kristen Stewart), gets to show the rube around rected by Meera Menon, shows female executives Eddy and Patsy, prime suspects in the disappear- town. They duly fall in love, as they would in any coping with bosses, clients, lovers, lawyers, and ance of Kate Moss, flee London and make for the Hollywood romance of that period, except that each other in a big New York financial firm. It South of France. Such idle expansiveness doesn’t there’s a hitch: Vonnie is already having an affair stars Anna Gunn as Naomi Bishop, a high-level suit the small, fractious, yet resilient world that with Phil. Allen is an old hand at teasing out such investment banker whose hopes of running the Saunders dreamed up, with its generational tiffs tangles, and, just for fun, he even ties on other firm depend on her leading an I.P.O. for a major and its flood of Bollinger champagne; for that, strands of plot—perhaps too many. Bobby’s en- tech startup. Naomi’s subordinate, Erin Man- you should still consult the original show. With counter with a prostitute, played by Anna Camp, ning (Sarah Megan Thomas), is denied a raise Julia Sawalha, as Eddy’s long-suffering daughter, is even more awkward for the viewer than it is and a promotion, and blames Naomi. Naomi’s and Jane Horrocks, as Bubble, the assistant who for the protagonists, and the figure of his brother lover, Michael Connor (James Purefoy), a bro- doesn’t really help.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in (Corey Stoll), a gangster, is rarely more than a ker at the firm, wants insider’s secrets about our issue of 7/25/16.) (In wide release.) sketch. The fine cast includes Parker Posey, Blake Naomi’s deal, and a prosecutor named Saman- Lively, and a rubicund Ken Stott as Bobby’s fa- tha Ryan (Alysia Reiner) is sniffing around. The Antoine and Antoinette ther, but it’s Stewart who takes the honors, al- clash of their ambitions and desires is a volatile The director Jacques Becker builds this snappy, lowing Vonnie’s shyness to shade into mystery. brew that eventually blows up. Menon’s direc- sentimental comic melodrama, from 1947, out The cinematography, by Vittorio Storaro, is al- tion is merely efficient, but the script, by Amy of streetwise details, from the stress and dan- most illicitly beautiful; who better to pay trib- Fox (who co-wrote the story with Thomas and ger of factory work to the wiles of philandering ute to a gilded age?—A.L. (7/11 & 18/16) (In Reiner), gives the women’s personal lives equal housewives. The protagonists are a young mar- limited release.) weight, as they struggle to balance family and ried couple, Antoine (Roger Pigaut), an earnest work and face male clients whose interests aren’t technician, and Antoinette (Claire Mafféi), a Central Intelligence all business. The story fits together too neatly spirited shopgirl, who live in a cramped walkup Twenty years out of high school, the formerly fat and the characters remain ciphers, but scenes in a rough-and-tumble Paris neighborhood. As and bullied Robby Wierdich (Dwayne Johnson), of news reports of the high-profile deals—in they struggle with daily needs and pleasures, they now known as Bob Stone, is a body-sculpted mar- which the protagonists see themselves—evoke face the pressure of businessmen and bosses—in- tial artist and a C.I.A. agent, and Calvin Joyner an eerie air of plausibility and alienation.—R.B. cluding a Mephistophelian grocer (Noël Roque- (Kevin Hart), the class president, voted most (In limited release.)

14 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 MOVIES

Ghostbusters seizes up; and yet there are outbursts and dec- and viewers, of American imperialist and racist Paul Feig’s new movie revisits Ivan Reitman’s larations that, true to Roth, bring the period— depredations of the era. Jane, no mere victim, comedy, from 1984. The ghosts are souped-up and the hero’s predicament—to life. Most fear- is an accomplished fighter, but Tarzan inescap- versions of the old frighteners, including the some of these is the proud and possessive speech ably plays the great white savior, and his African Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, but the busters delivered by Marcus’s mother (Linda Emond), counterparts are depicted favorably but emptily. are brand new. Three of them—Abby (Melissa as she fights to save her boy.—A.L. (8/1/16) (In Directed by David Yates.—R.B. (In wide release.) McCarthy), Jillian (Kate McKinnon), and Erin limited release.) (Kristen Wiig)—are scientists, and the fourth is The Marrying Kind an M.T.A. worker named Patty (Leslie Jones). Life, Animated Despite its buoyant tone and comic energy, Together, they take on a series of malign phan- This documentary follows the story of Owen George Cukor’s drama of scenes from a mar- toms, which are being released into the com- Suskind, who as a young child, in the early nine- riage, as viewed in flashback by a couple in di- munity by a disaffected, if rather dreary, villain teen-nineties, was diagnosed with autism. Just as vorce court, is a scathing work of New York neo- (Neil Casey). The whole thing seems unable to his parents, Ron and Cornelia, were starting to realism. Judy Holliday—tall, squawky, and full decide whether it should worship or refresh the fear that their son was lost to them, an unlikely of purpose—and the muscular, raspy-voiced, im- original, and the action concludes, as you would connection was made. Owen frequently repeated pulsive Aldo Ray (in his first lead role) play Flo expect, in a fusillade of special effects; a lineup phrases that he knew from Disney cartoons, and and Chet, two hardworking city people who meet of nothing but women, fronting a blockbuster, it became clear that Disney was his principal con- cute in Central Park, marry amid a gaggle of rel- certainly counts as a progressive move, but they duit to the world, helping him to make sense of atives, move into a clean but soulless apartment are no more or less vulnerable than male actors his experience. The film, directed by Roger Ross in Peter Cooper Village, and find that minor ir- to the smothering demands of the form. McKin- Williams, introduces us to the adult Owen, who ritations quickly become open wounds. Money non comes off best, happily lost in the workings is graduating from high school and setting up worries are constant and get worse when chil- of her own wackiness. There is also amiable sup- home on his own: a near-miraculous achieve- dren arrive; when family tragedy strikes, the port from Chris Hemsworth, as the office hunk, ment, even if many viewers will be left want- fragile couple breaks down. The screenwriters, plus a cameo for Bill Murray, showing a touch ing to learn more about his case. (At one point, Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, offer sharply of the grumpy cool with which he adorned the Owen and his classmates are visited by two ac- nuanced scenes of tight bonds at work and at original film.—A.L. (7/25/16) (In wide release.) tors from “Aladdin.” It’s hardly the typical school home, and Cukor’s agitated direction mixes emo- activity, and one would like to know what the ac- tions hard until they overheat. The courtroom Hunt for the Wilderpeople tors made of it.) Interspersed with all this is a framework, which turns the pain of memory into Gentle and appealing performances can’t res- series of animated sequences, designed by the a therapeutic obligation, evokes a new era of cul- cue this facile and cloying comedy, about a ne- French visual-effects company MacGuff, that tural modernism—of the private realm exposed glected New Zealand boy who flourishes in an trace the progress of the growing boy—charm- in glaring clinical light. Released in 1952.—R.B. idiosyncratically rustic household. Julian Den- ing enough, but no match for the clips from Dis- (MOMA; Aug. 4.) nison plays Ricky Baker, a twelve-year-old fos- ney movies, so beloved by Owen, which are also ter child who has bounced from family to family, scattered throughout.—A.L. (7/11 & 18/16) (In Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates leaving behind a trail of trouble. He’s adopted limited release.) A fine cast goes to waste in this risk-free and by Bella (Rima Te Wiata), a cheerful and open- cliché-riddled comedy. The brothers Stangle, hearted woman who lives with her gruff, taci- Lights Out Mike (Adam DeVine) and Dave (Zac Efron), turn husband, Hector (Sam Neill), a skilled out- David F. Sandberg directed this trim, tightly twentysomething liquor salesmen and room- doorsman. Bella, who kills wild boars with her wound horror film, which is based on his 2013 mates, have messed up too many family gather- bare hands, shows Ricky the love he never had short. This version, written by Eric Heisserer, ings with their antics, and when their younger (her improvised song for his thirteenth birth- opens up the minimalist story to focus on a sleep- sister, Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard), plans a desti- day is the movie’s high point). When she dies less boy (Gabriel Bateman) who, along with his nation wedding in Hawaii, their parents demand suddenly, Hector—a convict considered unfit to disturbed mom (Maria Bello), is haunted by a that the young men bring proper young women adopt—prepares to send Ricky back to the au- vicious, shadowy female figure that materializes to keep them on their best behavior. Mike and thorities and heads for the woods. Ricky follows when the lights go out. Essentially, the movie Dave place an ad on Craigslist and get scammed him there, and the unlikely pair try to stay a step is one big “Boo!” reel, punctuated by bursts of by the hard-partying Alice (Anna Kendrick) and ahead of a punctilious child-services agent (Ra- music that provide a helpful lift to the scares. Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza), who present themselves chel House) and her police posse. Ricky and Hec- Sandberg’s tense, inky camera style draws the as sedate and then, in Hawaii, cut loose. Ken- tor lurch from adventure to adventure in a series eye to the film’s dark corners. Although the movie drick plays the slightly more sentimental Alice of mechanical plot twists with a calculated blend doesn’t offer much in the way of characterization, with puckish intelligence, and Plaza, as the un- of laughter and tears, and only a final showdown its cheap thrills are manufactured effectively, like inhibited Tatiana, lets fly with quietly blazing with a streak of earnest danger grounds the plas- an amusement-park ride designed to rattle the profanities. Alice Wetterlund co-stars as the tic sentiment in strong emotion. Directed by nerves. With Teresa Palmer, as the boy’s big sister, brothers’ cousin Terry, a sharp and free-spir- Taika Waititi.—R.B. (In limited release.) and Alexander DiPersia, as her boyfriend.—Bruce ited lesbian, and Kumail Nanjiani plays a mas- Diones (In wide release.) seur with cool manners and hot methods, but the Indignation frivolities are tame and stereotyped. The result- The filming of late-period Philip Roth contin- The Legend of Tarzan ing chaos threatens to drive Jeanie and her fi- ues apace. In 2014 we had “The Humbling,” star- The classic adventure tale has been admirably re- ancé, Eric (Sam Richardson), apart, but they’re ring Al Pacino as an actor with failing powers, configured to meet modern sensibilities, but the so thinly characterized that there’s no reason to and now we have James Schamus’s adaptation of resulting film is simplistic, condescending, and care. Directed, with scant comedic flair, by Jake Roth’s blistering short novel, first published in inert. The action is set in the eighteen-eighties, Szymanski.—R.B. (In wide release.) 2008. (When will somebody bring “Nemesis,” when Belgian colonists, led by Leon Rom (Chris- his heartbreaking account of a wartime polio toph Waltz), sought to conquer the Congo and On the Silver Globe epidemic, to the screen?) Logan Lerman plays a enslave its inhabitants. Great Britain’s envoy, Space travel and pagan rituals converge with the bright Jewish boy named Marcus Messner, who John Clayton III, Lord Greystoke, formerly ruins of modern warfare and the dawn of civiliza- goes to college in Ohio, in 1951, thus avoiding known as Tarzan (Alexander Skarsgård), is in- tion in Andrzej Zulawski’s ecstatic, image-drunk the draft; friends of his have already been killed formed of the Belgian plot by an American dip- science-fiction fantasy, which he filmed in the in Korea. He is a loner, toiling hard and making lomat, George Washington Williams (Samuel L. mid-nineteen-seventies and completed in 1987. few friends, and that air of isolation brings him Jackson), and they travel together to thwart it. It’s among the most visually extravagant films to the attention of the Dean (Tracy Letts), who John’s wife, Jane (Margot Robbie), the daugh- ever made. Based on a novel by his great-uncle, calls him in for a talk; their long conversation, ter of an American teacher in the Congo, joins Jerzy, the surrealistic and allusive story involves spiced with prejudice and resentment, becomes them and is captured by Rom. Forced to fight two astronauts falling in love on a distant planet, the core of the tale. Marcus also has a brief en- once more as Tarzan, the man raised by apes dis- where they propitiate the natives with psyche- counter with a fellow-student, Olivia (Sarah plays his deep roots in Congolese society as well delic drugs and get trapped in gory battles of Gadon), a troubled soul, who bewitches and baf- as his ability to talk to animals (who end up en- warring tribes, delivering incantatory dialogue fles him with her forwardness. There are times gaging in the movie’s most photogenic combat). in prophetic howls. Zulawski films it all with when the movie, patient and decorous, all but Meanwhile, the urbane George reminds John, a wildly gyrating camera that scampers across

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 15 MOVIES fields, vaults over hilltops, thrusts through pha- tunes of Bones (Karl Urban), Uhura (Zoe Sal- at 8:45: Short films, including “Conversations lanxes of warriors, and pivots to reveal soldiers dana), Sulu (John Cho), and Chekov (the late in Vermont” (1969). • Aug. 11 at 7 and 9: “Me dancing on the beach in front of orange flames. Anton Yelchin), as they come together to de- and My Brother” (1968). • “Joe Dante at the One astronaut leaves a video diary, and another, feat the dastardly Krall (Idris Elba) and thereby Movies.” Aug. 5 at 2 and 7 and Aug. 8 at 4:30 and finding it, is mistaken for the Messiah and cruci- thwart his cosmic plans. The director is Justin 9:30: “Gremlins” (1984). • Aug. 5 at 4:15 and fied, but the extreme obscurity of the plot con- Lin, who knows a thing or two about warp speed 9:45: “Small Soldiers” (1998). • Aug. 7 at 2: “The ceals the over-all point—the quest for freedom from his work on the “Fast & Furious” franchise, Movie Orgy” (1968). Film Forum In revival. Aug. and the role of religion in that quest. Polish au- and who seldom allows the pace of events, in 3-11 at 12:30, 2:20, 4:10, 6, 7:50, and 9:45: “Eleva- thorities stopped the shoot before it was done; the interstellar void, to slacken or to dip into tor to the Gallows” (1957, Louis Malle). Metro- they must have got the message.—R.B. (Film So- sententiousness—no small feat, given that this graph “Dim All the Lights: Disco and the Mov- ciety of Lincoln Center; Aug. 3-4.) is the thirteenth film in the series. The happi- ies.” Aug. 6 at 1:30 and 9:30: “Saturday Night est innovation is the presence of Jaylah (Sofia Fever” (1977, John Badham). • Aug. 6 at 3:15 Phffft! Boutella), who tinkers with an old spacecraft as and 7:15: “Nighthawks” (1978, Ron Peck). • Aug. In this comedy of remarriage, from 1954, Judy if it were a bicycle, and whose black-and-white 8 at 2 and 6:15: “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” Holliday and Jack Lemmon star as a success- makeup is a jagged work of art.—A.L. (8/1/16) (1977, Richard Brooks). • Aug. 11 at 2:30 and ful suburban couple who find that the magic (In wide release.) 7: “The Last Days of Disco” (1998, Whit Still- has gone out of their eight-year union. After 1 man). • Aug. 8 at 4:30 and 9: “Maestro” (2003, quickly divorcing, both try to savor the single Josell Ramos). Museum of Modern Art The films life in Manhattan but find themselves unable to REVIVALS AND FESTIVALS of Judy Holliday. Aug. 3 at 1:30: “It Should Hap- escape each other’s attentions. Holliday, famous pen to You” (1954, George Cukor). • Aug. 4 at for portraying ditzes of accidental genius, here Titles with a dagger are reviewed. 1:30: “The Marrying Kind.” F • Aug. 5 at 1:30: plays someone like herself—a smart and worldly “Phffft!” F • Films Produced by Gaumont. woman whose professional life requires her to Anthology Film Archives Films by Sergei Ei- Aug. 3 at 4: “The Earrings of Madame de . . .” dumb down. Portraying a soap-opera writer, she senstein. Aug. 5 at 7: “Ivan the Terrible,” parts (1953, Max Ophüls). • Aug. 4 at 6: “The Tender shines in sharply satirical scenes of live radio 1 and 2 (1942-46). • Aug. 6 at 7:30: “Strike” Enemy” (1936, Ophüls). • Aug. 5 at 6: “The Lov- and TV drama. Lemmon, as a nerdy attorney at- (1925). • Aug. 7 at 4:30: “October” (1928). • Aug. ers of Montparnasse” (1958, Ophüls and Jacques tempting to swing, offers frenzy tinged with pa- 7 at 7:30: “Old and New” (1929). BAM Cinématek Becker). • Aug. 5 at 8:30 and Aug. 14 at 2: “An- thos, though the grisly humor written for Kim The films of Robert Frank. Aug. 4 at 7: Short toine and Antoinette.” F • Aug. 7 at 2 and Aug. 9 Novak, as a desperate good-time girl, is entirely films, including “Pull My Daisy.” F • Aug. 4 at 7: “The Mouth Agape” (1974, Maurice Pialat). superfluous. The director, Mark Robson, fum- bles the script’s late-screwball complications (ex- cept for a gleefully pugnacious night-club dance number) but makes much of the real-life mi- lieu where they take place, a nouveau-bourgeois postwar New York, in which the makeup and the schmooze made for impenetrable masks and the ABOVE & BEYOND Martini was the solvent of preference.—R.B. (MOMA; Aug. 5.)

Pull My Daisy This short film from 1959 is a neat Beat picker- upper set in the slaphappy bohemian pad of a railroad conductor whose pals include Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso— all of whom carry on, naturally enough, like poets in their youth. Jack Kerouac based the script on the third act of his play “The Beat Gener- ation,” which in turn was based on the real-life visit of a progressive clergyman to his pal Neal Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival chival institutions. Between 1863 and 1985, the Cassady’s house. But there’s no story to speak This decorated-boat race and cultural festival B.H.S. was known as the Long Island Histor- of, and, in fact, there’s no dialogue: the hilar- returns to Flushing, for its twenty-sixth year. ical Society, and it has preserved years’ worth ity emerges from the way Kerouac’s non-stop The tradition is said to have been inspired by of rare atlases, family histories, and maps, and voice-over narration gives breezy comic ripples the ancient poet Qu Yuan, who spent years in miles of newspaper microfiche—it’s no surprise to seemingly spontaneous shenanigans. “Their exile and then jumped to his death, in the Ni that some strange tales find shadowy support secret, naked doodlings do show secret, scato- Lo River, after learning that his home state had in the building’s dustiest wings. Lamaida and logical thought,” he says in a verbal deadpan. been invaded. (Fishermen sped onto the river Schwartz will bust myths about meteors, am- “That’s why everybody wants to see it.” Under but could not save him.) Today, teams in more ulets, and runaway librarians, and showcase at the co-direction of Alfred Leslie and the pho- than thirty dragon boats race along the Meadow least one skeleton. (128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn. tographer Robert Frank—who wields his cam- Lake to cap off days full of food, folk art, and 718-222-4111. Aug. 3 at 6:30.) era with a tipsy intimacy—the mostly amateur crafts as well as a performance by the Chinese cast conjures an infectious, arrested-adolescent Music Ensemble of New York and a showcase PowerHouse Arena joie de vivre. The artist Larry Rivers plays the of fifty years of photography from the newspa- Pseudocide has been an irresistible concept conductor, and Delphine Seyrig is his long-suf- per Sing Tao. (Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, and plot twist in Western culture for decades, fering wife; the painter Alice Neel plays the Grand Central Pkwy., Whitestone Exwy., between but in our increasingly networked environ- clergyman’s mother.—Michael Sragow (BAM 111 St. and College Point Blvd., Queens. hkdbf-ny. ment everyone is present and accounted for— Cinématek; Aug. 4.) org. Aug. 6-7.) the preëmptive announcement of a celebrity 1 death, often fuelled by viral tweets, may have Star Trek Beyond usurped the intentional faked death. In “Playing Bad news for the Starship Enterprise. On the READINGS AND TALKS Dead: A Journey Through Death Fraud,” Eliz- far side of a distant nebula, an unprovoked as- abeth Greenwood investigates the feasibility, sault leaves the vessel in shreds, and her crew— Brooklyn Historical Society and the financial considerations, of the mod- headed, as custom demands, by Kirk (Chris Pine) In “Tales from the Vault: The Skeletons in Our ern faked death—whether dodging six figures and Spock (Zachary Quinto)—beached on a Closets,” the B.H.S. reference librarian Joanna of student debt is worth hiring a thirty-thou- mountainous planet. Thank heavens the air is Lamaida and the exhibition coördinator and sand-dollar pseudocide consultant remains to breathable. The nimble screenplay, by Doug registrar, Anna Schwartz, exhibit a trove of be seen. Greenwood launches the book at this Jung and Simon Pegg (who returns in the role odd artifacts connected to the urban legends Dumbo engagement. (37 Main St., Brooklyn.

of Scotty), hops neatly between the varying for- that surround one of the city’s most storied ar- 718-666-3049. Aug. 9 at 7.) AMARGO PABLO ILLUSTRATIONBY

16 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 FßD & DRINK

1 TABLES FOR TWO actors line one wall, and fresh flowers in BAR TA B The Pandering Pig tiny vases (orchids, calla lilies) adorn each table. 209 Pinehurst Ave. (212-781-3124) There is the occasional misplaced Until recently, There was no pork trotter in the Pig’s progression through on the menu of the Pandering Pig. Pre- an evening. One of these is a tian d’au- sumably, this is because said pig has been bergine (like a deconstructed eggplant too busy doling out gratification to even parm in a ceramic pot), which is disap- Cubbyhole consider being cut up, cooked, and served pointingly soapy and best avoided. Per- 281 W. 12th St. (212-243-9041) alongside Nicole O’Brien’s excellent, fectly roasted Brussels sprouts, however, Sixteen years before Edie Windsor sued the U.S. simple fare, at this new restaurant in ooze with blue cheese and are quickly government, in 2010, to claim legal rights as the spouse of her same-sex partner, this clamorous, Washington Heights. Or perhaps the pig devoured, while thyme renders a chicken dime-size dive in the heart of Greenwich Village has been out-pandered by the considerate sipping broth sprightly. For best results, opened, becoming not only a beloved lesbian and multifaceted waitstaf; the other day, pair these with one of the Pig’s delicious hangout but also, in the words of one longtime patron, “both temple and U.N. of the L.G.B.T. one of them, a tousle-haired young man wines, a chilled Pouilly-Fumé, say, or the community.” What Cubbyhole lacks in size, it with a breezy afect, explained that he efervescing tingle of a Kelso Pilsner, makes up for in mirth and unapologetic spunk. occasionally cooks, makes pastries, and from the ample list of artisanal beers. An unsuspecting newcomer looking for the bath- room might find herself staring, instead, at the even d.j.’s at the restaurant. “This is the Specials keep the main courses at the ceiling: a phantasmagoria of tchotchkes, from Donovan ‘Sunshine Superman’ selection Pig lively: a recent rainbow trout lay shin- piñatas to Venetian masks and Chinese paper on Spotify,” he said. “You can’t go wrong ing and squamous in a silver pan, as crisp lanterns, evoking an indiscriminate matrimony of the world’s various festivals. Recently, the with that.” as a river nymph’s laugh. Among the only time the bar was close to quiet was the week The Pig occupies a slender space in regular dishes, the lamb is particularly after the annual pride parade, which had evi- what’s known as Hudson Heights, a pretty good. It’s braised and sloughs from the dently done a number on a good many would-be Cubby faithfuls. “How you feelin’, hon?” a blond little enclave of shops, bars, and restau- bone. The boeuf bourguignon has requisite bartender with a Belfastian brogue inquired rants perched on the western shore of heft but is suspiciously porcine. After all sympathetically of a regular. A slow shake of the Upper Manhattan. The other day, a local those, there is really only one way to end head from the respondent: “Still shattered.” At the other end of the bar, a woman waited for her resident described how the area had re- dinner, and that’s with a nuage au choco- date and decided to ease her nerves by ordering cently been threatened by plans to replace lat—a chocolate cloud—which comes the Pink Lemonade, a saccharine vodka drink a much loved local supermarket with a in a scalding pot, with fresh berries. It’s with cherries which, at four dollars, did the job splendidly. Next to her, an old-timer reminisced Walgreens—“That would have been the surprisingly light, so much so that, on a about her most memorable moments at the pa- Brexit of Hudson Heights”—and how summer evening, it risks being blown rade over a Light & Stormy (tequila, ginger community activism had prevented di- away by the zephyrs that have risen from beer). She had seen Edie at the bar only once during the past year, but celebrities weren’t the saster at the last minute. The restaurant the river, crested the Heights, and reason she came. “I can’t really say why,” she said, mirrors the delicate ethos of the neigh- swished in through the Pig’s open front explaining that she’d moved away from the Vil- borhood. Cards, collected by O’Brien’s window. (Dishes $13-$21.) lage six years ago. “But I end up back here at PHOTOGRAPH BY SAMANTHAPHOTOGRAPH BY CASOLARI FORTHE JOOSTNEWSWARTE YORKER; ILLUSTRATIONBY great-aunt, bearing images of silent-movie —Nicolas Niarchos least once a week, like clockwork.”—Jiayang Fan

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 17

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT DEFYING CONVENTIONS

n August 20, 1978, in East Jerusalem, a K.G.B. agent estly. The D.N.C. chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned, slipped a document into an American diplomat’s empty but she was already in trouble: Bernie Sanders supporters be- Oparked car. The paper contained false claims about Zbigniew lieved that her bias toward Clinton had cost their candidate Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser and an the nomination, even though Clinton won nearly four million irritant to the Soviet Union. Operation muren failed to dis- more primary and caucus votes. In any event, Bernie-or-Bust credit Brzezinski, yet the Soviets persisted with “active mea- delegates streaming into Philadelphia did not require foreign sures” to influence American politics until the Cold War’s inspiration to agitate against Clinton. Sanders, for his part, end, according to archives smuggled out by Vasili Mitrokhin, made clear that he was over the imbroglio and was commit- a K.G.B. defector. During the nineteen-seventies, Soviet spies ted to unity in order to defeat Trump. “It is easy to boo,” he dug for dirt on Senator Henry (Scoop) Jackson, a Democrat scolded a catcalling delegation from California on the second who twice ran for President. (They didn’t find anything.) day. “It is harder to look your kids in the face who would be For a 1984 operation to thwart Ronald Reagan’s reëlec- living under a Donald Trump Presidency.” tion, the K.G.B. warned its residencies worldwide, “Reagan The next afternoon, Trump clarified further what a cat- Means War!” aclysm such a Presidency would be. At a press conference Last week, according to the Times, U.S. intelligence agen- at his Doral golf resort, in Florida, he encouraged the Rus- cies advised the White House that they had “high confidence” sian government to carry out a cyber crime against the that Russian intelligence services had hacked into the Dem- U.S., by illegally acquiring and publishing e-mails that Clin- ocratic National Committee’s computers and stolen thou- ton wrote as Secretary of State and later deleted after her sands of its e-mails, possibly to interfere in the Presidential lawyers concluded that they were personal in nature. “Rus- election. As the country has learned painfully, just because sia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the thirty spy agencies are sure of something doesn’t mean it’s true. Yet thousand e-mails that are missing,” Trump said. “I think what is known beyond doubt about the episode is disturbing you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” enough. On the eve of last week’s The comments illustrated an in- Democratic Convention, in Phila- sidious challenge of Trump’s rise. He delphia, WikiLeaks published the has made proposals that are plainly D.N.C. files. Julian Assange, the unconstitutional, such as a ban on group’s founder, had previously al- Muslims. He has made proposals that lowed, in an interview with a Brit- are plainly preposterous, such as build- ish journalist, that the publication ing a wall on the Mexican border, would harm Hillary Clinton’s cam- which Mexico would finance. The paign. Donald Trump might be media often contextualize Trump’s “completely unpredictable,” Assange comments by merely pointing out explained, but Clinton was known that they are “unprecedented” or that and objectionable, because, as Sec- they “shock experts,” but this prac- retary of State, she had supported tice, rooted in otherwise admirable U.S. military action in Libya and had professional norms, so understates criticized WikiLeaks. Assange did matters that it misleads the public. not say how the organization had If Trump, in private, over vodka obtained the e-mails. and cigars, had said to a Russian in- ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM ILLUSTRATIONS BY The scheme succeeded only mod- telligence ofcer what he declared at

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 19 his press conference, and the F.B.I. happened to record the her party’s historic nomination with a long, less than trans- conversation, Trump might well be hauled before a grand jury porting speech that featured the sorts of checklists that cam- on conspiracy charges. His remarks were not only novel as paign tacticians favor: a nod to Sanders, pandering to diverse campaign speech; they invited a semi-hostile power to ille- television viewers, and anodyne slogans (“America is great gally obtain a former Cabinet member’s correspondence. Ac- because America is good”). She did emphasize, efectively, cording to Title 18, Section 2, of the U.S. criminal code, who- that the election presents “a moment of reckoning.” She ever “aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures” added, “Many people made the mistake of laughing of Don- the commission of an ofense against the United States “is ald Trump’s comments.” She herself had initially done so. punishable as a principal.” Yet, she said, “Here’s the sad truth: there is no other Donald Russia’s summer plot, if that’s what it was, turned out to Trump. This is it.” be ham-handed. By far the greater danger lies with us. The American Presidential elections reduce the country’s com- American electorate’s record of judgment in electing a Pres- plexity to a binary choice. This year’s is admittedly not the ident is not unblemished. Trump continues to poll respect- happiest one. The revival, on the big screens at the Conven- ably. In Hillary Clinton, the Democrats have nominated an tion hall, of the Clinton family’s political “narrative” was at unpopular candidate, and she must now drag along a recal- times exhausting, evocative of Argentina. Still, there can be citrant Democratic Party faction still caught up in the vani- no doubt that Hillary Clinton is deeply qualified to serve as ties and the disillusionments of its “political revolution.” Mi- President, whereas Donald Trump has proved himself a trans- chelle and Barack Obama, in their Philadelphia speeches, parently serious threat to the Constitution. Attached to Clin- spoke of hope and inclusion stirringly enough to counter the ton’s candidacy are the futures of Supreme Court jurispru- dark infomercials about fear and nativism that the Republi- dence, European and Asian security, the health of American cans broadcast from Cleveland. Yet preventing Donald Trump pluralism, and the rule of law. “It truly is up to us,” Clinton from taking power will likely require many additional infu- observed. The worry is whether, in this hot summer of dis- sions of Obama charisma, among other elixirs. equilibrium, her country is adequate to the task. On the Convention’s final night, Hillary Clinton accepted —Steve Coll

PHILADELPHIA POSTCARD As Allred made her way through Allred,” the woman said. She was Rita THE CALIFORNIANS the lobby of the Marriott Hotel, she Robinzine, a teacher from Atlanta and gestured toward a young man in a former candidate for Georgia’s school pointy green felt cap. “You see those? superintendent. She and Allred smiled They’re Robin Hood hats,” she said. for the camera while a man with a They were being worn by Bernie San- placard ranted about Jesus a few feet ders followers. A group of men and away. women wearing Sanders T-shirts Allred took note of a button that loria Allred, the crusading floated up the escalator. Allred gave Robinzine was wearing. “You’re a Ber- women’s-rights lawyer, was racing them a plastic smile. “They’re Bernie nie supporter?” Allred asked. Gthrough the Pennsylvania Convention supporters from our delegation,” she “I’m waiting till Thursday. Then I’ll Center last week when someone said, rolling her eyes. They comprised be with her,” Robinzine said. “Until screamed, “Gloria! Can we take a pic- two hundred and twenty-one out of then, I’m holding on to my Bernie.” ture?” It was another lawyer, Brenda the state’s five hundred and fifty-one On the bus, Allred talked about Bergis. “You are my hero,” Bergis said, delegates, and some had booed during Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman and described her work defending their delegation breakfast, the previous who was recently forced to resign after victims of domestic violence. She said morning, whenever a speaker men- he was charged with sexual harassment. that Allred—who typically represents tioned Clinton. Allred tried to be em- women, from exploited porn stars and pathetic. “Eight years ago, I was a Hil- ex-girlfriends of N.F.L. players to sex- lary delegate, and we felt grief and ually harassed workers—had inspired disappointment when she lost.” her. “I want you to run for ofce!” Allred In line for a shuttle bus to the Wells told her. Bergis held out her phone for Fargo Center, a woman leaned over. a selfie. “Miss Pelosi?” she asked. Allred was an elected delegate from “I’m not Nancy Pelosi, but thank California, where she’s been a Hillary you for the compliment,” Allred said. Clinton supporter since 2008. She was “I’m Gloria Allred.” looking forward to casting her vote while The woman gasped. “Now I’m em- staying on top of her various cases— barrassed!” she said. “Can I have a pic- she represents thirty-two of Bill Cos- ture with you?” by’s accusers, among other clients. She “Even though I’m not Nancy Pe- had a long day ahead, scheduled to end losi?” Allred said. with a 2:30 a.m. appearance on CNN. “It’s even better that you’re Gloria Gloria Allred

20 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 The story had all the signifiers of an of his long career has played every- In Wyler’s “Ben-Hur,” Sheik Ilderim Allred case: gender warfare, sex, and thing from a chaufeur, a pimp, and was a secondary character, and an es- shock value. “I did get a lot of calls God (twice) to the voice of history, sentially comic one. He was played by about it,” Allred said. “It never surprises narrating Hillary Clinton’s introduc- Hugh Grifth, a Welshman who be- me when there are allegations of sex- tion film at the D.N.C. None of these came Middle Eastern under several ual harassment against a man who’s in roles have involved more elaborate cos- layers of burned cork. Sheik Ilderim power.” She went on, “Did they try to tumes—or, at least, more elaborate rolled his eyes, belched loudly, and joked settle it prior to filing a lawsuit? As a hair—than that of Ilderim, a rich Nu- about his many wives. Charlton Hes- lawyer, that would be a question I would bian, circa 30 A.D. Ilderim’s dreads ton, playing Judah Ben-Hur, towered have.” She added, “I do so many ‘cast- reach practically to his elbows. Free- over his Arab sidekick. (For his cheer- ing couch’ cases.” man shook them to show how they fully hammy performance, Grifth re- Three hours later, Allred was on the dance around in a breeze. ceived an Academy Award.) floor of the convention hall, shoulder It was lunchtime, and Freeman was In the 2016 version, Ilderim has to shoulder in the California section sitting in his trailer at Cinecittà, the been reconceived. Gone are the eruc- with Kamala Harris, the state’s attor- storied studio on the edge of Rome, tations and the casual racism. Ilderim ney general; Governor Jerry Brown; taking a break from filming the latest now seems to be the biggest figure Representative Maxine Waters; and version of “Ben-Hur,” which opens in the movie—Freeman towers over Gray Davis, the former governor. It this month. The trailer’s TV was tuned Jack Huston, the British actor playing was time for the roll-call vote. Just as to RAI 1, Italy’s most popular station, Ben-Hur. Representative John Lewis, the Geor- even though Freeman doesn’t speak “There’s no humor in him at all,” gia congressman and civil-rights hero, Italian. “It’s all we can get,” he said, Freeman said. “This character has quite appeared onstage to begin the process, shrugging. In addition to the wig, he a bit of power in the story. And I like the real Nancy Pelosi, wearing a shiny was wearing a long flowing robe, a playing power. It’s something about my white suit, arrived to take her place for wide leather belt, and felt shoes with own personal ego.” the vote. A mob of security agents, pointed toes. He had just taken of an- Freeman added, “I have my own angry Sanders supporters (“Count more other, more ornate robe, covered in chariots and horses. I gamble on them votes!”), and other factions (“Remove embroidery, which was draped over a and I make a lot of money, because all staf exposed on WikiLeaks”) hanger. Freeman said that part of the the Romans are so idiotic. One line I watched along with Allred and her appeal of playing Ilderim had been the have, I say, ‘Was there ever a kind doppelgänger as Brown announced that extravagant getups. more obsessed with the obscene?’ three hundred and thirty delegate votes “The period costumes, all of that— Nice line.” for California were going to Clinton. it’s sort of a come-on,” he said. Since the beginning, “Ben-Hur” By 6:39 P.m., it was ofcial: Hillary The “Ben-Hur” franchise is, by now, has claimed to strive for a higher moral Rodham Clinton was the first woman pushing a hundred and forty. It began purpose. President James Garfield, to be nominated by one of the major with a wildly successful book, Lew Wal- after finishing the novel, wrote to political parties for President of the lace’s “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ,” Wallace, “With this beautiful and rev- United States. published in 1880. Next came a stage erent book you have lightened the When it was over, Allred collapsed adaptation, which ran on Broadway burden of my daily life.” (Shortly into a chair, still holding her Rosie the and used real horses trotting on tread- thereafter, he appointed Wallace am- Riveter “Elect Hillary Clinton” sign. mills to stage the chariot scene. (When bassador to the Ottoman Empire.) “To finally be able to cast a vote for her,” Wallace saw the display, he is supposed But, of course, distracting spectacle she said, choking up. “This is history. I to have exclaimed, “My God! Did I set has always been crucial to the story’s wish Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth all of this in motion?”) appeal: in “Ben-Hur,” the chariot race Cady Stanton were here to see this.” The play was followed by two is more memorable than the Crucifix- 1—Sheelah Kolhatkar silent-film “Ben-Hur”s, an animated- ion. This time around, something like movie “Ben-Hur,” a Ben-Hur TV mini- a full-scale Roman circus was con- THE PICTURES series, and, most famous of all, Wil- structed for the race, ten miles south SWORDS, SANDALS liam Wyler’s three-hour-and-thirty- of the ruins of the Circus Maximus. seven-minute wide-screen epic—one Though the filming of the chariot of the most over-the-top movies ever race hadn’t yet begun, the lot at Cine- produced. Wyler employed a hundred città was filled with horses, which had costume-makers and some fif teen been trucked in from all over Europe. thousand extras. The chariot scene Freeman had spent the morning with alone took three months to film, and one that had refused to play its part. organ Freeman was surprised so gruelling was the shooting sched- After lunch, the plan was to try again. that his dreadlocks kept hit- ule that a doctor was hired to admin- “We will go back and go through the Mting him in the face. Freeman, who’s ister Vitamin B injections. (Some sus- entire scene, and hope that the horse seventy-nine, has been acting since he pected that the syringes actually con- will coöperate,” he said. An assistant was in grade school, and in the course tained amphetamines.) stuck his head in the trailer to say that

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 21 it was time for another take. Someone compilation coming out (“Good ’n’ For music-business-y reasons, that grabbed the heavy embroidered robe, Cheap: The Eggs Over Easy Story”) and album never got released. Broke and and Freeman made his way down the a reunion gig (Rockwood Music Hall). antsy, they found a pub, called the Tally steps, his dreadlocks bobbing. That afternoon, they had to move some Ho, in Kentish Town, that paid them a 1—Elizabeth Kolbert equipment by ferry to O’Hara’s house, few quid to perform on dead nights. “By on Staten Island, in order to rehearse. the end of the year, we were playing there SECOND ACTS DEPT. At the southwest corner of Washing- four nights a week,” O’Hara said. They HARDBOILED EGGS ton Square Park, de Lone, a native of packed the place. Among their regulars Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, who were the BBC d.j. John Peel and the for the past several decades has lived in members of Brinsley Schwarz, Nick Mill Valley, California, said, “The first Lowe’s band. “We were also big with place I stayed in New York was . . . that the roadies, the guys on the crews for bench right there.” O’Hara said he had Procol Harum and Ten Years After,” an unfinished song about Mill Valley. O’Hara said. Their stage manner was couple of guys in their late six- He crooned, “ ‘She died in a hot tub / No laid-back, yet they played crisp three-min- ties, strolling around Macdougal time for a back rub / Three lines on a ute songs that were an antidote to the andA Bleecker, pointing out old haunts: polished stone / Black book and a tele- bombastic, aimless rock then in fashion. it’s as familiar a part of a Village morn- phone.’ That’s all I’ve got.” Still, their mark was more socioeco- ing as the beer trucks delivering kegs of O’Hara, who also grew up in Penn- nomic than musical. “The pubs weren’t Stella or the bleachy reek of industrial sylvania, first visited New York with his a real career opportunity before we were floor cleanser. The pair poking around mother in 1960, when he was twelve. He there,” de Lone said. Previously, the only one recent morning was the band Eggs wandered into the Café Wha?. A guitar things you heard in pubs were jazz and Over Easy, or two-thirds of it—Jack player there (not Jimi Hendrix, though folk. No one played original music. Once O’Hara and Austin de Lone. That Chi- O’Hara later played with him) taught the Eggs had established the model, and nese bakery on Sixth? It used to be a him a few tricks. As soon as he gradu- returned to the States, it became a cofee shop. They often unwound there ated from high school, he moved to the thing—“pub rock.” “So that’s another after performing at a nearby club (Café Village and tried to make it as a musi- missed opportunity,” O’Hara said. Be- Feenjon, long gone), and, one night in cian. “Richie Havens was like an uncle cause punk emerged out of the pub-rock 1969, after a glance at the menu, the third to me,” he said. In 1967, he headed to scene, Eggs Over Easy, despite sound- member (Brien Hopkins, now deceased) the Bay Area, where he met de Lone, ing more like the Lovin’ Spoonful than, came up with the name for the band. who had dropped out of Harvard and say, the Clash, has somehow been de- The choice was perhaps one of many gone to California to be a songwriter. In picted, in many histories, as punk’s un- that doomed them to pop purgatory. 1969, they moved back to New York, likely patient zero. “We could fill a notebook with missed met Hopkins, formed the band, gave it Back in the States, they kept trying. opportunities,” O’Hara said. a goofy name, and then, in 1970, went They released an album, opened for O’Hara and de Lone had recently re- to London to record a début album, other acts, and even played CBGB. “It united. They had a career-encompassing since it was cheap to do so there. wasn’t yet a punk palace,” de Lone said. They moved to Marin County, recorded another album, and, for a time, backed Dan Hicks, as the Loose Shoes, named after an infamous racist remark at- tributed to the Nixon ofcial Earl Butz. Eventually, O’Hara came back to New York and found work as a sound engi- neer. And that was pretty much it for Eggs Over Easy. Twelve years ago, Matt Hanks, a music publicist and record geek, who had heard about the band from Nick Lowe, came across a Japanese import of their first album. He learned that O’Hara had a regular solo gig at a club in New York. Hanks and a friend went to see him play and asked him to sign a rec ord. “Where the fuck did you get this?” O’Hara said. This put in motion the efort to produce a compilation album, and perhaps to take a better-late-than-never bow. —Nick Paumgarten THE FINANCIAL PAGE has promised to use his power to restrict entry to the U.S. THE PERILS OF EXECUTIVE ACTION in order to curb immigration from any country “compro- mised by terrorism.” In Trump’s view, that includes Germany and France. He’s also likely to step up deportation of un- documented immigrants, resurrect the Keystone XL pipe- line, declare China a currency manipulator, and reopen coal n January of 2014, Barack Obama, speaking to the press leases on federal land. before a Cabinet meeting, said something that has come to Not everything Obama has done with his executive power Idefine his Presidency: “We are not just going to be waiting for will be as easy for Trump to overturn. Regulations that have legislation. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone, and I can use gone through a formal rulemaking process, such as the Clean that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions Power Plan, typically can’t just be discarded by a new in- and administrative actions.” In the thirty-one months since, cumbent. That’s why Obama’s executive agencies, like those in the face of congressional intransigence, he has used execu- of his predecessors, spent the final year of the Administra- tive power to commit the U.S. to the Paris Agreement on cli- tion hurriedly initiating a host of regulatory proposals—so mate change, to institute the Clean Power Plan to reduce that the proposals could make it through the rulemaking emissions, to restrict new energy exploration in the Arctic process before Obama leaves ofce. Ocean and new coal leases on government land, to cap many Still, were Trump to win, many of Obama’s accomplish- student-loan payments, and to tighten rules on gun sales. In ments would be under threat. Even rules that can’t be re- just the past few months, the Adminis- scinded can be left unenforced. Trump, tration has made it harder for corpora- who says that global warming is “bull- tions to use so-called inversions to lower shit,” has vowed to cancel the Paris their taxes, required retirement-invest- Agreement. Technically, he can’t, but the ment advisers to eliminate conflicts of deal has no enforcement mechanism, so interest, and made more than four mil- he’d be free to just ignore the Paris goals lion workers eligible for overtime pay. and do nothing about greenhouse-gas While Obama may be a lame-duck emissions. And what Trump can’t re- President, he’s acted like anything but. verse with his pen he can mitigate with Not surprisingly, conservatives have executive-branch appointments, as Ron- decried Obama’s “despotic lawless- ald Reagan did when he named the rabid ness,” arguing that his use of executive anti-environmentalist James Watt to power is unprecedented. It would be head the Department of the Interior. more accurate to see his Administra- This is the downside of executive ac- tion as the latest stage of a long-term tion: policies implemented via executive trend—what political scientists call the order are more vulnerable to reversal rise of the “administrative presidency.” than ones that Congress writes into law. Historically, Presidents have had more Some critics have argued that Obama control over foreign and military pol- should therefore have worked with Con- icy than over domestic policy. But during the past eighty gress more, instead of relying on the power of the pen. But years the executive branch has come to exert far more con- many such attempts failed. Given the obstructionism of con- trol than it once did over areas like working conditions, the gressional Republicans, and the inherent inertia of the leg- environment, and the financial sector, responsibility for which islative process, not using pen and phone would simply have Congress has largely delegated to agencies and departments meant fewer achievements. The choice was not between such as the E.P.A. and the Department of Labor. temporary actions and permanent ones but between poten- A President’s ability to make policies with the stroke of tially temporary actions and no action at all. a pen is a good thing if you support those policies. But it Executive power isn’t unlimited: the courts can often stop means that a new President can change them overnight. it (the Clean Power Plan has been suspended, pending ju- When Obama took ofce, he immediately restored funding dicial review), and in principle Congress can override most for overseas family-planning clinics that provided abortion Presidential decisions on domestic policy. But the old idea services. The funding had been taken away by George W. that Presidents can’t do much on their own is outdated: as Bush after it had been restored by , who was Obama has shown, they have plenty of unilateral control on reversing a previous action by Ronald Reagan. domestic issues. As a result, a radical, authoritarian Presi- Donald Trump has made it clear that he sees Obama as dent could do a great deal to remake economic and regula- having “led the way” in using executive action aggressively tory policy before ever running into legal opposition (to say and that, if elected, he intends to do the same. “I’m going to nothing of executive control of foreign policy). The power NIEMANN do a lot of right things,” he has said, and he’s pledged to re- of the President is greater than ever. The choice of a Presi- verse many of Obama’s executive orders and memorandums dent matters more than ever, too. “within two minutes” of taking ofce. Most concretely, he —James Surowiecki CHRISTOPH

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 23 tering along the tiled floor, as if it had ANNALS OF POLITICS travelled all the way from 1862, when twenty-one-year-old Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wounded at Antietam and THE WAR AND THE ROSES afraid he was about to die, scratched a note and pinned it to his uniform, Union Fear and loving in the convention hall. blue: “I am Capt. O. W. Holmes,” hop- ing his body would find its way home. BY JILL LEPORE “Has America ever before been so di- vided?” the television hosts asked their Cleveland osprey to the fish: “Is America over?” guests on street-side sets, while the Amer- Americans had been assassinating one ican people, walking by, stopped, watched, hey perched on bar stools, their another, in schools and in churches, in and listened, a tilt of the head, a frown, bodies long and , like eels, the cars and in garages, in bars, parks, and a selfie. “Wash yourselves! Make your- womenT in sleeveless dresses the color of streets, insane with hate—hate whites, selves clean!” evangelicals advised, by flowers or fruit (marigold, tangerine), the hate blacks, hate Christians, hate Mus- megaphone, placard, and pamphlet. men in fitted suits the color of embers lims, hate gays, hate police. A certain “Judgment is coming!” T-shirts stating (charcoal, ash). Makeshift television stu- number of Americans, bearing arms, had the significance of life came in black and dios lined the floor and the balcony of lost their minds, their souls, the feel of blue or pink (for fetuses). Past the chain- the convention hall: CNN, Fox, CBS, the earth beneath their feet. Dread fell, link gate at the entrance to the Quicken Univision, PBS. MSNBC built a pop-up and lingered, like mud after rain. At the Loans Arena, a line of delegates and re- studio on East Fourth Street, a square Republican National Convention, in porters snaked across an empty parking stage raised above the street, like an Cleveland, gas masks were banned, body lot and into security tents—conveyor outdoor boxing ring. “Who won today? armor was allowed. “Write any or all belts, wands, please place your laptop in Who will win tomorrow?” the networks emergency phone numbers somewhere the bin—as if we were about to board asked. The guests slumped against the on your body using a pen,” a security an airplane, take of, and fly to another ropes and sagged in their seats, or straight- memo urged reporters. “Best to write country, a terrible country, a land of war. ened their backs and slammed their your name, too,” came a whisper over a “There are a lot of people who think the fists. The hosts narrowed their eyes, the stall in a women’s room, a Sharpie skit- whole purpose of all this turmoil is to

A delegate stands during a D.N.C. address. Both Conventions were riven and ruled by invocations of “the people.” 24 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 PHOTOGRAPH BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY create martial law,” Hal Wick, a delegate In the sixteen-forties, many of those men, radio hour, “The Chad Adams Show.” from South Dakota, told me, musing a Parliament, wished to challenge the Sitting beside him was Susan Phillips, darkly on the shootings. Wick doesn’t King, who claimed that he was divine and a warm and friendly woman who was believe that the United States will last that his sovereignty came from God. No a guest that day on the show. I told Shull much longer if Hillary Clinton is elected. one really believed that; they only pre- what Wick had said, about the end of “If you do the research and the reading,” tended to believe it. To counter that claim, America. “That’s silly,” he said. Shull he said, “you find out that, if you get to men in Parliament began to argue that had originally supported Rand Paul and a point where more than half the peo- they represented the People, that the Peo- was now a Trump delegate. He thinks ple are on the dole, the country doesn’t ple were sovereign, and that the People America is resilient and will bounce exist. It descends into anarchy.” It won’t had granted them authority to represent back, no matter who wins. Phillips agrees take as long as four years. “I give it two them, in some time immemorial. Royal- with Wick. She loves Trump because or three,” Wick said. “Tops.” ists pointed out that this was absurd. How he says all the things she wants to say A parking garage attached to the arena can “the People” rule when “they which and can’t; because he speaks her thoughts had been converted into a media produc- are the people this minute, are not the about the half of America that’s living tion center, cubbies for radio and televi- people the next minute”? Who even are of the other half, and about the com- sion and Snapchat and Twitter, like cab- they? Also, when, exactly, did they grant ing lawlessness. (Mitt Romney’s “forty- ins on a ship, the floor a tangle of cables Parliament their authority? seven per cent,” which is the same figure like the ropes on deck. Don King stood In 1647, the Levellers, hoping to rem- that the Nixon campaign complained astride its bow, dressed like a Reagan-era edy this small defect, drafted “An Agree- about in 1972, has very lately risen, in Bruce Springsteen (faded jean jacket; ment of the People,” with the idea that the populist imagination, to forty-nine swatches of red, white, and blue). He’d every freeman would assent to it, grant- per cent.) I asked Phillips what hap- wanted to speak at the Convention, but ing to his representatives the power to pens if Trump loses. She said, “Then he’d been snubbed; this was his chance represent him. That never quite came to we’ve got to build our compounds, get to testify. An audience of reporters and pass, but when, between 1649 and 1660, our guns ready, and prepare for the photographers flocked around him, England had no king, and became a com- worst.” Half of the people believe that seagulls to a mast. He drew himself up. monwealth, it got a little easier to pre- they know how the other half lives, and He threw his head back. He roared, as if tend that there existed such a thing as deem them enemies. he were introducing a matchup: “Don- the People, and that they were the sov- ald Trump is for the people!” ereign rulers of . . . themselves. This seed, E THE PEOPLE welcome you to Every tyrant from Mao to Perón rules planted in American soil, under an Amer- “ Cleveland,” banners declared, in the name of the people; his claim does ican sun, sprouted and flourished, fields hangingW from street lamps along the road not lessen their sufering. Every leader of wheat, milled to grain, the daily bread. to the city’s Public Square, a granite- of every democracy rules in the name of (“The fiction that replaced the divine and-steel plaza with fountains and the people, too, but their sufering, if they right of kings is our fiction,” Morgan patches of grass, trough and pasture. Parts sufer, leads to his downfall, by way of wrote, “and it accordingly seems less fic- of Ohio used to belong to Connecticut, their votes (which used to be called their tional to us.”) When Parliament then and the New Englanders who settled “voices”). Still, “the voice of the People” said, “We, the People, have decided to Cleveland, in the eighteenth century, set is a figure of speech. “Government re- tax you,” the colonists, meeting in their aside land for a commons, a place for quires make-believe,” the historian Ed- own assemblies, answered, “No, we’re the grazing sheep and cattle and for argu- mund S. Morgan once gently explained. People.” By 1776, what began as make- ing about politics: the public square, the “Make believe that the king is divine, believe had become self-evident; by 1787, people’s park. make believe that he can do no wrong it had become the American creed. “God hates America!” a wiry man was or make believe that the voice of the peo- We the people are, apparently, griev- shouting from the soundstage. “America ple is the voice of God. Make believe ously vexed. Around the corner from is doomed!” Most of the protesters came that the people have a voice or make be- Don King, NBC News was running a in ones and twos. Oskar Mosco, who told lieve that the representatives of the peo- promotional stunt called Election Con- me that he was a pedicab driver from ple are the people.” fessions (“Tell us what you really think”), California, carried a poster board on Cast back to a time long past. In the asking passersby to write on colored which he’d written, “Why Vote?” He said, thirteenth century, the King of England sticky notes and shove them in a ballot “Democracy, lately, is just a fiction.” Make summoned noblemen to court and de- box; the confessions were displayed, believe the people rule. I sat down on a step manded that they pledge to obey his laws anonymously, on a wall monitor. Blue: next to Amy Thie, a twenty-two-year- and pay his taxes, and this they did. But “I can’t believe it got this far.” Orange: old student at the University of Cincin- then they, along with other men, sent by “I get to vote for the first time, and now nati. She’d made a T-shirt that read, “I counties and towns, began pretending I don’t want to.” Green: “THESE ARE OUR know shirts. I make the best shirts. Mexico that they weren’t making these pledges CHOICES?” I wandered down an aisle will pay for them. It’s terrific. Everyone for themselves alone but that they repre- and sat next to Johnny Shull, a delegate agrees I have baby hands,” to which she’d sented the interests of other people, that from North Carolina who used to teach afxed a pair of pink plastic doll hands, they parleyed, that they spoke for them; economics at the Charles Koch Insti- one clutching a miniature American in 1377, they elected their first “Speaker.” tute and helps run a conservative talk- flag. “Some people really hate Trump,”

26 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 she said. “I don’t hate him. I think he’s nominating candidates for the Presidency Mike McCaul, said. The Milwaukee bringing to light aspects of our society in convention halls. The People must County sherif, David A. Clarke, Jr., said, that need to come to light.” She’s wor- exist: they climbed the rafters. “I call it anarchy.” ried about the world, but she’s not that By the time I got to my seat in the The next day, in Public Square, Vets vs. worried about Trump. “People are too Quicken Loans Arena, the chairman of Hate took the stage. “Please stop using reasonable for this movement to win.” the Republican National Committee, our veterans as props,” Alexander McCoy, Thie’s faith in the people is a faith in Reince Priebus, was ordering delegates an ex-marine, begged the Trump-Pence the future. It dates to the era of Andrew to file out, sending them of to this com- campaign. I went to see a ten-foot-tall Jackson, when the idea of the people got mittee meeting or that: Rules, Platform, American bald eagle, made entirely out hitched to the idea of progress, especially Credentials. When he stepped down of red-white-and-blue Duck Brand duct technological progress—the steam en- from the podium, the jumbo teleprompter tape, on display in a parking lot. (Hope gine, the railroad, the tele- that he’d been reading from is, always, the thing with feathers.) Then graph. Ralph Waldo Emer- flickered, went black, and then I got a ride out to the Cleveland His- son, awed by the force of turned back on. I stared, wide- tory Center, where Lauren R. Welch American ideas, American eyed. “They put that up there gave me a tour of a collection of mem- people, and American ma- whenever the stage is empty,” orabilia from earlier G.O.P. Conventions, chines, called the United a reporter from The Nation the buttons and the bunting. Welch, States “the country of the fu- told me, helpfully. Up there, twenty-eight and African-American, ture.” If the people can be in L.E.D., was the Gettys- has lived in Cleveland nearly all her life. trusted to be reasonable, all burg Address. Four score and She’s an activist, a supporter of Black things are possible, the his- seven years ago our fathers Lives Matter. I asked whether either of torian George Bancroft ar- brought forth on this continent, the two major Presidential candidates gued, in an 1835 speech called “The Ofce a new nation, conceived in liberty, and ded- could bring about a better future. “Even of the People.” Bancroft was writing at icated to the proposition that all men are Obama couldn’t bring people together,” a time when poor men were newly en- created equal. Now we are engaged in a she said, searchingly. No, she said. “Hope franchised, and a lot of his friends thought great civil war, testing whether that na- comes from the people.” that these men were too stupid to vote. tion, or any nation so conceived and so ded- After the Civil War, the idea of the Bancroft ofered reassurance. If you lock icated, can long endure. People and the idea of progress got un- a man in a dark dungeon for his whole Lincoln stopped in Cleveland in 1861, coupled, an engine careering away from life and finally let him out, he may be on the way to his inauguration as the its train. This was the work of the blinded by the light, but that doesn’t first Republican President. Down on the late-nineteenth-century People’s Party, mean he lacks the faculty of sight; one convention floor, George Engelbach, a a left-wing movement of farmers and day, he will see. Let him add his voice: delegate from Missouri, was dressed as workers who found out the hard way Wherever you see men clustering together to Lincoln: top hat and suit, whiskers. I that progress sometimes mows men form a party, you may be sure that however much asked him why he admired Lincoln. “If down; they wanted to use democracy to error may be there truth is there also. Apply this it were not for him, we would have a di- limit certain kinds of technological prog- principle boldly, for it contains a lesson of can- dor and a voice of encouragement. There never vided country,” he said. Engelbach has ress, for the sake of equality. Historians was a school of philosophy nor a clan in the realm been a Trump supporter from the start, have tended to consider Populism mud- of opinion but carried along with it some impor- because “Trump’s the only one who can dleheaded: America looked forward, Pop- tant truth. And therefore every sect that has ever put it back together again.” That night, ulists looked backward. “The utopia of fourished has benefted Humanity, for the errors the speakers at the Convention talked the Populists was in the past, not the fu- of a sect pass away and are forgotten; its truths are received into the common inheritance. about dead bodies: the bodies of Amer- ture,” Richard Hofstadter wrote, disap- icans killed by undocumented immi- provingly. Many historians have said the The voice of the People became a roar grants, of Americans killed by terrorists same thing about conservatism, espe- and a rumpus. Year after year, the Peo- in Benghazi, of Americans killed by men cially the Trump variety, whose follow- ple convened, to write and revise and rat- who supported Black Lives Matter. A ers, like their leftier, Populist forebears, ify state constitutions, to vote on party grieving mother blamed Hillary Clin- have found out the hard way that prog- rules and platforms, to pick candidates. ton for her son’s death. Soldiers described ress mows some men down. I talked to The men who drafted the Constitution the corpses of their fallen comrades. “I Jimmy Sengenberger, a young conserva- had been terrified of an unchecked ma- pulled his body armor of and checked tive who thinks a lot about this question. jority; events in France had hardly qui- for vitals,” one said. “There were no signs “Looking back at the founding princi- eted their concerns. John Adams and of torture or mutilation,” another said. ples of this country is the best way to James Madison, old men, hobbled into We have come to dedicate a portion of that look forward,” he told me. Sengenberger, constitutional conventions in Massachu- field, as a final resting place for those who twenty-five, was an alternate delegate setts and Virginia, where they sat, stify, here gave their lives that that nation might from Colorado. He’s polite and ambi- and endured the declamations of live. But this wasn’t Gettysburg. This tious, a Jimmy Olsen look-alike. He long-whiskered shavers and strivers, the battle isn’t over. “Our own city streets works in a law ofce during the week lovers of the People. Americans had grown have become the battleground,” the and hosts a talk-radio show on Saturday convention-mad. In 1831, they even began Homeland Security Committee chair, nights. “Progressivism is regressive,” he

28 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 said. “Conservatism is the only truly for- out water bottles labelled “Elect Jesus.” ward-looking political philosophy.” The rule inside the Convention was: Newt Gingrich is a historian, so on Incite fear and division in order to call the third day of the Convention, before for safety and union. I decided that the he was due to speak, I figured I’d ask him rule outside the Convention was: No kid- whether he was worried that the right ding, it’s really awfully nice out here, in had ceded all talk of progress to the left. a beautiful city park, on a sunny day in “No. Listen to my speech,” he told me. July, where a bunch of people are argu- “I’m going to talk about safety.” When I ing about politics and nothing could pos- suggested that making America safe again sibly be more interesting, and the Elect isn’t exactly forward-looking, he assured Jesus people are giving out free water, icy me that he was going to talk about the cold, and the police are playing Ping- future. Back inside the convention hall, Pong with the protesters, and you can after yet another speech by yet another take a nap in the grass if you want, and made-for-television Trump child, Ted you will dream that you are on a farm Cruz was doing a mike check, not by because the grass smells kind of horsy, reading the Gettysburg Address from the and like manure, because of all the teleprompter, as others did, but by recit- mounted police from Texas, wearing those ing Dr. Seuss: “I do not like green eggs strangely sexy cowboy hats; and, yes, there and ham, I do not like them, Sam-I-am”; are police from all over the country here, ode to an ornery man. That night, Cruz and if you ask for directions one of them was booed of the stage. Gingrich, who will say to you, “Girl, I’m from Atlanta!” followed him, did talk about the future: and you have to know that, if they weren’t he warned of a coming apocalypse. here, who knows what would happen; there are horrible people shouting mur- n the last day of the G.O.P. Con- derous things and tussling, that’s what vention, I went back to Public they came here for, and anything can OSquare. They came and they came, the blow up in an instant; and, yes, there are protesters, one by one, and two by two. civilians carrying military-style weapons, A mother of nine named Samia Assed but, weirdly, they are less scary here than wandered by. She owns two New York- they are online; they look ridiculous, hon- style delis in Santa Fe. Her family is orig- estly, and this one lefty guy is a particu- inally from Palestine. She had driven to lar creep, don’t get cornered; but, also, Cleveland in a caravan organized by the there’s a little black girl in the fountain Grassroots Global Justice Alliance. I rolling around, getting soaked, next to asked her if she thought that either some white guy who’s sitting there, just Trump or Clinton could bridge the di- sitting there, in the water, his legs kicked vide. She looked at me as if I were out in front of him, holding a cardboard nuts. “They are the divide,” she said. sign that reads “Tired of the Violence.” Erika Husby, another protester, had blond I climbed up the steps of the park’s hair piled in a messy bun and was wear- Civil War Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monu- ing a poncho painted to look like a brick ment, not far from the spot where Lin- wall. It read “Wall Of Trump.” She’s coln’s casket was put on display, in 1865, twenty-four and from Chicago, where on his way home. It was as if he had she teaches English as a second language. pinned a note to his suit: We here highly She liked Sanders but was willing to resolve that these dead shall not have died vote for Clinton. Black Lives Matter is in vain—that this nation, under God, shall “changing the country for the better,” have a new birth of freedom, and that gov- she said. Joshua Kaminski, twenty-eight, ernment of the people, by the people, for the originally from Michigan, was wear- people, shall not perish from the earth. ing a Captain America T-shirt and a I trudged back to the arena for the silver cross on a silver chain. He works final night’s speakers. for Delta Airlines. He and Oskar Mosco “No one has more faith in the Amer- got to talking, each keen, each curious. ican people than my father,” Ivanka “I’ve seen conservatism and Christian- Trump said. She called him “the ity separate,” Kaminski told Mosco. “I’m people’s champion.” She was wear- not going to vote against my morals any- ing a sleeveless dress the color of a more.” He’s pretty sure he’ll vote for grapefruit, the pinkest of peonies. Johnson-Weld. Meanwhile, he was giving Trump took the stage, in a suit as

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 29 black as cinder. “The American people Sharona” (“When you gonna give me written “SILENCED.” The People, mufed, will come first again,” he thundered. some time, Sharona / Ooh, you make stifled, muzzled, unloved. “I am your voice,” he said. His face my motor run”); the Democrats played Carl Davis, a delegate from Texas, turned as red hot as the last glowing Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” (“Dearly be- works in the mayor’s ofce in Houston. ember of a fire, dying. loved / We are gathered here today / To He’s African-American and a long-stand- get through this thing called ‘life’ ”). Try ing Clinton supporter. He was a Clin- Philadelphia to get through a night at a Democratic ton delegate in 2008, too. “The Demo- Convention, early in the week, with noth- cratic Party brings hope to this nation,” elcome to the city of love. “What ing more than M&M’s and the voice of he told me. “We, we are the ones look- love, what care, what service, and the People to jolt you awake. It’s like ing out for the people of this country.” whatW travail hath there been to bring being at a sleepover and trying to stay Not Trump, not Trump, not Trump. “My thee forth,” William Penn said, in 1684, up until midnight for the candlelit séance, name isn’t Sucker Boone,” Emily Boone, praying for a tiny, frail settlement hud- the conjuring of a spirit: Speak, speak! a Kentucky delegate, snapped, when I dled along the banks of the Delaware Dearly beloved. “There is tension and asked her what she thought of the Re- River. “O that thou mayest be kept from dissension in the land,” Cynthia Hale, of publican nominee. When Democrats on the evil that would overwhelm thee.” In the Ray of Hope Christian Church, in the floor talked about Trump, wincing, the Wells Fargo Center, “Love Trumps Decatur, Georgia, said, leading the invo- shuddering, they tended to talk about a Hate” signs fluttered on the floor of the cation on the Convention’s first day. And political apocalypse possibly even darker convention hall like the pages of a man- there was tension and dissension in the than the one conjured by Trump sup- uscript scattered by a fierce wind. It was hall. “It’s time that the people took the porters when they imagined a Clinton a book of antonyms: the future, not the power back,” Rebecca Davies, a delegate Presidency: Fascism, the launch codes, past; love, not hate. “We are the party from Illinois, told me. I asked her if she the end of days. of tomorrow!” John Lewis hollered supported Clinton. “God, no!” she said, “Donald Trump knows that the Amer- to the crowd. “What the world needs mock-afronted. She was wearing a pointy ican people are angry—a fact so obvious now is love,” the Democrats sang, hold- hat, made of green felt, with a red feather he can see it from the top of Trump ing hands, leaning, listing. And still the tucked in its brim. She’d got the hat at a Tower,” Elizabeth Warren said from the signs fluttered and scattered, the book gathering that morning, when Sanders lectern, undertaking the sober, measured of antonyms ripped up by Sanders del- tried to persuade his followers to support work of arguing that Trump did not speak egates, who tore at its pages and yanked Clinton, and they balked. People all over for the American people, that he had at its binding, its brittle glue. Anne Ham- the arena were wearing Robin Hood hats, misjudged if he thought that he could ilton, a delegate from North Carolina, as if it were 1937 and Warner Bros. was make the American people angry with got out a marker and doctored her “Love holding auditions for an Errol Flynn film. one another. “I’ve got news for Donald Trumps Hate” sign to read “Love Ber- Davies was cheerful, but she was disap- Trump,” Warren said. “The American nie or Trump Wins.” She was deter- pointed; the People, spurned. people are not falling for it!” mined. “They said they were going to The proceedings began. But when The People are easy to invoke but im- replace me with an alternate,” she told Barney Frank got up to speak the crowd possible to curb. A spirit can’t be bottled. me. “And I just kept repeating, ‘Freedom booed him. “Thank you, or not, as the “If you look at our platform, all the way of speech, freedom of speech!’ ” And a case may be,” Frank said, grimly. Frank, through it talks about trying to lift peo- future under Clinton or Trump? “It’s no fan of Bernie Sanders, co-chaired the ple up, people who have been left be- like a windshield after a rock hits it,” she Rules Committee, whose decisions San- hind,” Chris McCurry told me. This was said. “The glass looks like a spider’s web, ders supporters had protested—a pro- McCurry’s first Convention. He was a del- and you can see through it, but not re- test strengthened by the release, the day egate from South Carolina, where he works ally, and then, all at once, in a flash, it before, of hacked Democratic National as an I.T. guy in the state’s Department cracks, and it shatters, and there’s noth- Committee e-mails. (Hacked by Russia? of Transportation. He was wearing a hat ing left.” Slivers of glass and the rush of Hack more! Trump taunted.) The Peo- decorated with red-white-and-blue tinsel an unshielded wind. ple had been betrayed by the Party, cor- and a vest pinned with eleven Hillary but- Philadelphia was to Cleveland the zig rupted. “The D.N.C. thinks it’s better tons. “She’s spent her whole life trying to to its zag, the other half of the zipper. to keep people ignorant,” Robyn Sum- lift up women and children, and when The Democrats recycle. They provide ners told me, angry, astonished. She was we do that we lift up the nation, when compost bins. They speak Spanish in the a precinct inspector in California’s Dis- you do that you get gay rights, you fight security lines. They serve kosher food. trict 29, where Sanders lost by a smid- racism,” he said. “You always progress.” They ofer a “Gluten-Free Section.” They gen. She blames the press and the D.N.C. The Democratic Party’s argument is have blue-curtained breast-feeding and “They don’t want people involved,” she that it is the only party that contains mul- pumping areas. The Democrats run out said. “They don’t trust us. They’re afraid titudes. What happens when the people of cofee. They run out of seats. They of Bernie because you know what Ber- are sovereign? “The dangerous term, as run out of food. They run out of water. nie does? He wakes people up. I learned it turned out, was not sovereignty,” as the They talk for too long; they run out of in this election: They don’t want us to historian Daniel T. Rogers once put it. time. During breaks between speakers, vote.” Some Sanders people covered their “It was the People.” When white men the Republicans played the Knack’s “My mouths with blue tape, on which they’d said, “We are the People and therefore

30 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 and liberals talked about growth, pros- perity, globalization, innovation. A VIOLENCE Dearly beloved. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn’t great,” Mi- You hear the high-pitched yowls of strays chelle Obama said, in an uplifting speech fighting for scraps tossed from a kitchen window. on the first night of the Democratic Con- They sound like children you might have had. vention. But then Sanders got up and Had you wanted children. Had you a maternal bone, said it: “This election is about ending you would wrench it from your belly and fling it the forty-year decline of our middle class, from your fire escape. As if it were the stubborn the reality that forty-seven million men, shard now lodged in your wrist. No, you would hide it. women, and children live in poverty.” A Yes, you would hide it inside a barren nesting doll sea of blue signs waved at him, as if in you’ve had since you were a child. Its smile rebuke: “A future to believe in.” Sanders, reminds you of your father, who does not smile. and only Sanders, talked that way about Nor does he believe you are his. “You look just like decline and sufering. Meanwhile, out- your mother,” he says, “who looks just like a fire side, a sudden summer storm battered of suspicious origin.” A body, I’ve read, can sustain the city, the rain falling like dread. its own sick burning, its own hell, for hours. It’s the mind. It’s the mind that cannot. uture is Bright” was stamped in “ white on hot-pink sunglasses that —Nicole Sealey PlannedF Parenthood gave out to volun- teers. Cecile Richards, the head of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, sat we rule,” how were they to deny anyone Lasch wrote, “but they felt isolated and next to Bill Clinton the night Michelle else the right to rule, except by denying beleaguered in their own country, since Obama addressed the Convention. “Look, their very peoplehood? “We, too, are peo- it was so much less progressive than they it was amazing to be there,” Richards ple!” shouted women, blacks, immigrants, were.” That went on for decades. said, when I talked to her the next morn- the poorest of the poor. And, lo, the Peo- In 1992, the year Bill Clinton was ing. “The passing of the torch, from one ple did say, “No, you are not people!” That elected, a letter to the editor appeared in incredible woman to another incredible worked for only so long. And, when it a small newspaper in upstate New York. woman.” Richards thinks that the Re- failed, the People passed new immigra- “The American Dream of the middle publicans are fighting a kind of progress tion and citizenship laws, and restricted class has all but disappeared, substituted they can’t stop. “If I were trying to lead voting rights, and made corporations with people struggling just to buy next a party that believed in rolling back honorary people, to give themselves more week’s groceries,” the letter writer argued. L.G.B.T.Q. rights and women’s rights, power. And, lo, a lot of Americans got “What is it going to take to open up the and denying climate change, that would to worrying about what viciousness, what eyes of our elected ofcials? AMERICA IS be a very tough agenda to sell to young greed, and what recklessness the People IN SERIOUS DECLINE.” It was written by people in this country,” she said. Down- were capable of. These people called a young Timothy McVeigh. town, a dozen volunteers wearing pink themselves Progressives. And still, after Oklahoma City, and pinnies gathered in front of a Planned In the early decades of the twentieth Waco, and the militia movement, all Parenthood clinic on Locust Street to century, the left lost its faith in the Peo- through the nineteen-nineties, progres- help escort women into the clinic, in- ple but kept its faith in progress. Pro- sive politicians and intellectuals contin- tending to steer them clear of pro-life gressives figured that experts, with the ued to ignore the right-wing narrative protesters, who never turned up. The idea light of their science, ought to guide the of decline, even as it became the hall- that love conquers all entered American government in developing the best solu- mark of conservative talk radio. And they political rhetoric by way of the gay-rights tions to political and economic prob- ignored Sanders’s warnings about de- and the same-sex-marriage movements, lems. In the nineteen-forties, populism cline, too, when he talked about the grow- in which activists, following the model began to move from the left to the right, ing economic divide, the widening gap of the civil-rights and the reproduc- not sneakily or stealthily but in the shad- between the rich and the poor, and the tive-rights movements, largely bypassed ows all the same, unnoticed, ignored, de- stranglehold of corporate interests over the People and took their case, instead, meaned. In Christopher Lasch’s grump- politics. “There is a war going on in this to the Supreme Court. A few blocks iest book, “The True and Only Heaven,” country,” Sanders said, in an eight-and- down Locust Street, hundreds of people from 1991, he argued that a big problem a-half-hour speech from the floor of the had gathered for the Great Wall of Love, with postwar liberalism was liberals’ fail- Senate, in 2010. “I am talking about a a rally for unity in front of the Mazzoni ure to really listen to the continuing pop- war being waged by some of the wealth- Center, an L.G.B.T.Q. clinic. They sang ulist criticism of the idea of progress. iest and most powerful people against “Seasons of Love,” from “Rent.” They “Their confidence in being on the win- working families, against the disappear- waved white placards that read, in rain- ning side of history made progressive ing and shrinking middle class of our bow-colored letters, “Love Wins.” people unbearably smug and superior,” country.” He spoke alone. Progressives That night, Sanders, seated with the

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 31 delegation from Vermont, called for At one end of the park, a very small one, an idea, had always picked him up. Clinton’s nomination by acclamation. audience listened to the Revolution Club; “It’s been you,” he said. “The Ameri- The People shouted, but not with one at the other end, by the main stage, hun- can people.” voice. Hundreds of Sanders delegates dreds of people, including a lot of San- The next morning, Trump’s campaign and supporters rose from their seats ders delegates, had gathered for an Oc- instructed his supporters not to watch and walked out. “We will not yield,” cupy D.N.C. rally. They were young, and Clinton’s speech and, instead, to send Alyssa DeRonne, a delegate from Ashe- they were mad, and they were undaunted. money, heaps of it, promising that Hil- ville, North Carolina, said. “I want to They wore Bernie masks and waved Ber- lary would hear the amount by 8 p.m., see my children philosophizing and in- nie puppets. They chanted, “Hell no, so that “before she steps on stage, she’ll venting new things, not blowing up D.N.C., we won’t vote for Hillary.” They have stuck in the back of her mind ex- another country.” Anne Hamilton were waiting for the Green Party’s Jill actly what’s coming for her this Novem- walked out, too. So did Sanders dele- Stein to come and speak. “Jill not Hill,” ber: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!” gates from Hawaii. Carolyn Golojuch, they cried. A woman in a red-white-and- That night, the Democrats told a love a seventy-year-old Clinton delegate blue cowboy hat raised a sign to the sky: story. “We are reviving the heart of our from Honolulu, was disgusted by the “This Is Not a Riot.” They wanted to democracy,” said the Reverend William walkout. “I have stood on the streets boycott the Democratic Party. They Barber II, a North Carolina minister, by the state capitol for eighteen years, wanted to ban the oligarchy. “I need that while the people climbed to the rafters. working for same-sex-marriage rights, ‘Power to the People’ right now!” Bruce “We must shock this nation with the for my son, for everyone,” she told me. Carter, of Black Men for Bernie, called power of love.” “I have lost jobs. I have fought and I from the Occupy stage. “We ain’t in no Ivanka Trump had introduced her fa- have fought. These Sanders people, dance mode, we in a fighting mode,” he ther; Chelsea Clinton introduced her they haven’t learned how to compro- said. “I don’t want to dance right now. I mother. Daughters are the new political mise. And you know what? They don’t want to be mad as hell.” The music wives. Chelsea wore a red dress with a own the word ‘progressive.’ ” Golojuch’s started. Power to the people, power to the heart-shaped neckline. She introduced husband, Mike, was wearing a rainbow people, power to the people. The people the Presidential nominee as a grand- “All You Need Is Love” button, but nei- began to sway. mother. “I hope that my children will ther of them had any illusions that love Something was slipping away, leach- some day be as proud of me as I am of always wins. ing out, like rainwater. The People had my mom,” she said. Mother-love is the What wins? I asked Elizabeth War- lost their footing, their common ground, corsage pinned to every dress, right or ren. “The last three or four years that muddied. Maybe it was a problem that left. “I’m a mom!” said everyone who was I have been in the Senate, it’s been like the Levellers had never managed to one, at both Conventions, from Laura In- climbing a sheer rock wall,” she said. get everyone in seventeenth-century graham to Kirsten Gillibrand. “We all “And all I do is try to find a finger hole England to sign on to that “Agreement hope for a better tomorrow,” Morgan or a toe hole, somewhere, somewhere.” of the People,” because the people I Freeman intoned, in his voice-over to a People are right to be angry, she said. talked to in Cleveland and Philadel- Clinton-campaign film. “Every parent They should be angry. They’re not phia didn’t quite seem to believe in rep- knows that your dream for the future wrong that the system is rigged. “The resentation anymore. Either they were beats in the heart of your child.” And here, rich and the powerful have all kinds willing to have Trump speak in their at last, was the resolution, shaky and cyn- of money and all kinds of weapons, stead (“I am your voice”), the very defi- ical, of the argument between the people to make the country, and the govern- nition of a dictator, or else they wanted and progress. People + progress = chil- ment, just the way they want it,” she to speak for themselves, because the dren. In an age of atrocity, the unruliness said. “And the rest of us? All we’ve got system was rigged, because the estab- of the people and a fear of the future have are our voices and our votes, and the lishment could not be trusted, or be- combined with terror, naked terror, to only way those have any strength is if cause no one, no one, could understand make the love of children an all-purpose we use them together and aim them them, their true, particular, Instagram proxy for each fraying bond, each aban- perfectly.” selves. They hated and were hated; they doned civic obligation, the last, lingering Two protests were happening by LOVE wanted to love and be loved. They could devotion. Park, across the street from City Hall, in see, even through a broken windshield, Hillary Clinton took the stage in a suit the shadow of a thirty-foot-tall sculp- that the future wasn’t all dark and it of paper white. “I am so proud to be your ture called “Government of the People”: wasn’t all bright; it was as streaked as mother,” she said to her daughter, begin- naked bodies smushed into the shape of a sky at twilight. ning her address to the American people a clenched fist. If you stood in the mid- “Let love rule,” Lenny Kravitz sang, not as citizens but as objects of love. “I dle of the park, you could listen to both a choir behind him, the night before will carry all of your voices and stories protests at the same time: the Democratic Convention ended. “We with me to the White House,” she prom- “We, the people, can solve our ills, if we are not a fragile people,” President ised, the words like lace. “We begin a new work together—” Obama insisted, in a beautiful speech chapter tonight.” The balloons fell. “—patriarchy is woven into the fabric—” as boundless in its optimism as Trump’s And the nation clenched its teeth, “Yesterday we took some action—” was in its pessimism. And, when he has the top and the bottom of a jaw, and “That is fucked up!” faltered, Obama said, something, some- waited for November. 

32 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 You’re pregnant!,” when she had only SHOUTS & MURMURS put on a lot of weight? I defy any mere mass of circuitry to duplicate this deeply human feat. As I recalled the horror OUTDONE on Bev’s face, and on everybody else’s, my entire body contorted in a wince BY IAN FRAZIER of shame and—I’ll be honest—a cer- tain species-specific pride. Top that, techno-wizards! Other un-smart stunts omputers may one day be able novelty reindeer antlers on my car. This came back to me: No computer will to reason exactly as humans do, time, the reply came instantly: a sim- ever amass enough mainframe clue- Cbut will they ever be as dumb? I had ple “Yes.” I looked at the screen, im- lessness to cut a big patch from the always thought that was impossible. pressed. Then, knocking me even flat- pair of bluejeans that it is mending Now, however, I’m not so sure. The ter, it followed up with “And a bumper rather than from the old bluejeans that other day, I was in Penn Station on my sticker that says ‘I ROLLER-SKATE— it uses for patches. Nor will it ever finish way home from work. A team of sci- DEAL WITH IT!’ ” I don’t roller-skate, filling out its income-tax return and entists had set up a table with a laptop but I had to admit that I admired the then mail it, along with the check for running the latest pattern-recognition statement’s attitude. Again, the com- the I.R.S., to a distant relative it hasn’t software, and they were asking pass- puter was eerily right. seen in years. You need to be a living, ersby to suggest questions for the com- The scientists, who were young guys breathing, flesh-and-blood creature to puter. With twenty minutes on my of the sort you would expect, talked achieve such things. hands, I asked it to find the best place among themselves in low, smug voices. I calmed myself down, proceeded to the platform, got on the wrong train, and did not notice my mistake until Trenton. The train back to Penn Sta- tion would not leave for another hour and a half. I never expect to be as smart as a computer, but, by God, I can be dumber. A hard rain began to fall, and I left the station so I could practice not knowing enough to come in out of it. Update: The consequences of the events related above are so well known as not to need a detailed repetition here. Preliminary reconstruction of the disaster has revealed the outline of what occurred. Evidently, the com- for me to sit while waiting for my train. I hung around, pretending to look at puter that the subject confronted in The word “processing” blinked on the my phone, and eavesdropped. Oh, how Penn Station tracked him, by G.P.S. screen for a minute or so. Then a photo pleased these guys were with the way signal, to Trenton. When it received appeared, with an “X” and a flashing their new program had performed! an indication that he had foolishly ex- arrow marking the spot. I looked more Already that evening, the computer ited into the rain, the computer, not closely. The place the computer had had forgotten to call home and tell its to be outdone (or, to use tech jargon, indicated was nearby, on a busy stair- “wife”—another computer, appar- “outdumbed”), distracted its scientist way, directly beneath a sign that said ently—that it would be late, and then handlers with complicated prompts “DO NOT SIT ON STAIRS”—the very spot had inadvertently sent “her” embarrass- that caused them to carry it into the I often choose myself! ing flirtatious e-mails intended for storm, which had by then settled over A bit stunned, I went and rested another computer at the ofce. Can the entire East Coast. A sudden drown- there, causing the usual bottleneck of everything I do, everything I am, be ing in the downpour not only destroyed hurrying commuters, some of whom translated so easily into code? I felt the computer but somehow led to a tripped over me. A computer as wit- myself descending further into despair. mass-suicide spasm among linked pro- less as I am—how can we maintain our No, damn it! I am a human being! grams, with thousands of computers irreducible humanity in the face of that? Our species does poorly thought-out and other devices ruining themselves Maybe it was just a fluke. Reassur- things, and we must not take a back in cofee spills, dog-bowl plunges, hot- ing myself that the machine could never seat to any machine on that. Remem- tub dunkings, and so on. In the wake duplicate such a lucky hit, I went back ber when I saw Bev at the Shelbys’ New of these occurrences, all Artificial Stu- and asked the computer, by way of the Year’s Eve party and blurted out, in pidity (A.S.) research has been halted, JAY DANIELJAY WRIGHT scientists, if it thought I should put front of everybody, “Bev, how fabulous! pending investigation. 

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 33 have their origins in the training of horses THE SPORTING SCENE for war, and one theory suggests that the piafe might have been useful for tram- pling enemies. But the piafe became an PRANCE MASTER abstraction long ago, like the pike in div- ing, or the asymmetrical bars. By 1733, How Charlotte Dujardin took over the most élite equestrian sport. when François Robichon de la Guéri- nière, the equerry to Louis XIV of France, BY SAM KNIGHT wrote a seminal guide to horsemanship, the piafe had already become a thing of mere ornament. The correctly piafng horse, de la Guérinière wrote, “stands in awe of the rider’s hand and legs.” Charlotte Dujardin, a thirty-one-year- old British rider who is the European, World, and Olympic dressage champion, rode her first piafe in the summer of 1999. She was in a sand arena at Wrotham Park, a Palladian manor in the suburbs of North London. Dujardin, who was fourteen, was spending a week helping out Debi Thomas, a friend of her moth- er’s, who worked in the stables on the property. Thomas had a twelve-year-old dressage horse that was trained to Grand Prix level—dressage has eight “heights,” of which Grand Prix is the highest—but it was struggling for rhythm in its piafe. She had been schooling the horse, a mare named Truday, from the ground but needed a rider on top. Thomas has trained horses for forty years, and she has never, before or since, put a child on the back of one trained to Grand Prix. Dressage horses are fre- quently compared to gymnasts. From the age of four, they undergo five or six years of strengthening and suppling ex- ercises before they’re able to carry out the advanced movements: the piafe, the passage (a slow, prancing trot, pro- nounced as in French), and the pirou- ette (a hand-brake turn, ideally executed in six to eight strides). There are fewer than a hundred Grand Prix horses in Dressage is the only Olympic event that can claim Xenophon as its first coach. Britain, and a good one costs several hundred thousand dollars. he piaffe is probably the most de- petition. In addition to making sure that But Thomas had been watching Du- manding and exquisite movement the horses don’t go forward or backward, jardin ride since she was a toddler. Du- inT the Olympic sport of dressage. A horse or side to side, the judges will keep track jardin’s mother, Jane, used to keep a pair in piafe defies what horses otherwise of the number of steps (twelve to fifteen), of jumping horses at home. At the age of do. Instead of going anywhere, it jogs their height (as high as the cannon bone two, Dujardin would scramble onto their on the spot, three-quarters of a ton of on the foreleg; as high as the fetlock on backs and gee them round the stables, moving muscle, feet rising and falling the rear), and insure that they are not, clicking and hollering. When Dujardin in the same four hoofprints like an an- in the somewhat baroque language got on Truday, and followed Thomas’s in- imation in a flip book. Next week, in of the sport, “unlevel.” Then they will structions—shortening Truday’s strides, Rio de Janeiro, seven judges around an score each piafe out of ten. shifting its weight to the hindquarters— arena, known as a manège, will evaluate No one knows what piafng is for. the horse began to jig. “It was no big deal the piafes of the four-day dressage com- The movements of dressage are said to to her,” Thomas said. But Dujardin looked

34 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 PHOTOGRAPH BY TEREZA ČERVEŇOVÁ down and caught the expression on the The Dujardins knew all this. “It has ship,” written in the fourth century B.C., trainer’s face. “She was, like, mesmerized,” always been a pompous sport, a money contains training exercises that are still Dujardin recalled recently. sport,” Ian Dujardin told me. “We were used in dressage, as well as the sport’s Within days, Thomas had Dujardin just about paying the rent,” Jane said. ethical rationale: “Anything forced or performing flying changes—in which the “How was I going to fulfill what I misunderstood can never be beautiful.” horse skips from one foot to the other, in thought she needed to do?” The treatise was rediscovered during the mid-canter—and the passage. “She just Renaissance and helped inspire the golden explained what I needed to do, and that ressage is one of those Olympic age of classical riding—displays for kings was it,” Dujardin said. Her mother looked sports that you catch yourself watch- and courtiers in the great houses of Eu- on from the rail. Jane had grown up on a Ding when you walk back into the room rope—which more or less ended with farm in Hertfordshire. She had been an and realize that you left the TV on. It’s the French Revolution. ardent show jumper, but her parents never legacy stuf, like archery, or the hammer, Within the sport, none of this feels came to watch. When Jane had children that sneaked into the Games at some particularly distant. Everything is judged of her own—two daughters, Emma- point and hasn’t quite been thrown out— according to sacred precepts—“harmony,” Jayne and Charlotte, and a younger son, although dressage has come closer than “impulsion,” “self-carriage,” “submission”— Charles—she poured herself into the most. At the 1952 and 1956 Olympics, that have come down intact from the an- world of show ponies and junior compe- blatant favoritism by judges to riders from cien régime. Dressage feels culturally other titions. The girls began competing at the their own nations almost led to the sport’s because it is. No country outside Europe age of three. “They did want to do it, be- expulsion. (Prince Bernhard, of the Neth- has managed to win an individual Olym- cause it was my passion to make them erlands, intervened.) The solution, which pic dressage medal since the United States want to do it,” Jane said. The family kept involved filming each ride and arguing did it, in 1932. The most plausible story only first- and second-place rosettes. about it for half an hour, pretty much behind the twelve cryptic letters that line “Literally all our money went on it,” killed dressage as a spectator sport. “The the manège and indicate where move- Dujardin’s father, Ian, told me. “All of it.” interest of the public died down alarm- ments stop and start is that they mark Ian ran a packaging company, and in ingly,” Colonel Alois Podhajsky, the di- where German princes liked their under- 1992, when Dujardin was seven, he won rector of the Spanish Riding School, in lings to stand. “V” is for “vassal.” a large contract to wrap up mirrors. He Vienna, wrote of a visit to the Rome Since she began competing interna- spent fifty thousand dollars on a show Olympics, in 1960. tionally, five years ago, Dujardin has oc- pony for his daughters. But by the sum- The sport was rejuvenated in the nine- casionally threatened the feudal niceties mer of 1999 another packaging deal had ties, when a new event, the freestyle, came of dressage. She wears a crash helmet gone badly wrong. “It pulled everything on the scene. The freestyle made its Olym- with her tailcoat and white gloves, rather down,” Jane said. “Our house, our home, pic début in Atlanta, in 1996, and since than the customary top hat, and enjoys our everything.” The Dujardins had to then has helped nudge the sport toward dominating a sport in which she fre- sell the show pony, and the horse box. the same emotional, aesthetic realm as quently finds herself up against more As Jane watched her daughter ride, figure skating: no one knows what the gilded competitors. “When they get in she felt both joy and dread. It was obvi- hell is going on, but at least it looks nice. the arena,” Dujardin told me, “they have ous that Dujardin should pursue dres- In the freestyle, riders devise their own got no nerve.” And yet Dujardin’s rid- sage. There was just no way to aford it. routines, which are set to musical med- ing, which is normally so subtle as to be Even within the expensive world of eques- leys, usually with any words removed, virtually unnoticeable, is helping to re- trian sport, dressage stands apart for the because they can distract the horses. The form dressage and to bring it to a state aristocracy of its ideals and the wealth of event is the climax of the Olympic com- of near-perfection. In 2006, the Dutch its participants. Ann Romney sent a horse petition and decides the individual med- three-time Olympic champion Anky to the 2012 Games. In 2008, Denmark als. During the previous three days, van Grunsven became the first rider to was represented by Princess Nathalie, of horses and riders compete for team med- score more than eighty per cent in a Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg. Élite foals als in the sport’s traditional tests—the Grand Prix test. In five years, Dujardin cost as much as sixty thousand dollars; Grand Prix and the Grand Prix Spe- has surpassed that sixteen times, and medal-winning horses go for millions; cial—which involve a strict series of currently holds the world record in all the expenses of taking part are fantastic; movements. Then everyone watches three forms of the sport. and the prize money is pitiful. The ca- novel combinations of piafe, half-pass In 2014, Dujardin scored 94.300 per reers of top riders can last decades, so (in which the horses go forward and cent in the freestyle, raising, at least in the best horses and the richest benefac- sideways at the same time), and extended theory, the possibility of the immaculate tors have a way of gravitating to them, trot, while the theme from “Pirates of ride. “It is a new world, you can say,” Su- concentrating the glory of dressage like the Caribbean” blasts across the manège. zanne Baarup, a Danish dressage judge the blood of the Hapsburgs. “It’s a vi- The freestyle probably saved dressage, who has marked several of Dujardin’s cious circle,” Astrid Appels, the editor but it masks the sport’s essential gran- performances, told me. “Why can you of Eurodressage.com, one of the sport’s deur. No other event in Rio this summer not achieve a hundred per cent?” Dujar- leading Web sites, told me. “The weak can claim Xenophon, the ancient Greek din has never really been able to explain in the wallet can often not aford com- general and student of Socrates, as its what she does. “I want to create,” she said. peting at international level.” first coach. Xenophon’s “On Horseman- “It is probably like an artist. They see in

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 35 their head what they want to draw, and rider when he was hired by Wilfried Since leaving Bechtolsheimer, Hes- they draw it. It is like I have a feeling in- Bechtolsheimer, a German industrialist ter had competed without major finan- side me that I want to create on a horse, and dressage enthusiast based in Glouces- cial backing. He taught, rented out sta- and that is what I do.” tershire. Bechtolsheimer had a stable of bles, and sold horses that he bought Grand Prix horses, and it was only by young and trained himself. In 2005, he fter her stint with Thomas, Du- riding them every day that Hester ab- sold his twelve-year-old Olympic horse, jardin began to study dressage from sorbed the intricacies of the sport. On Escapado, to a rival and added Valegro aA DVD. The presenter was Carl Hester, Fernandez, he was struck by the fact that to his stable. Valegro, a Dutch warm- an Olympic rider and trainer who has Dujardin had been able to train the horse blood gelding, cost only four thousand competed for Britain since 1990. Hester so well without ever having ridden a top pounds, but he wasn’t developing as Hes- is from the Channel Island of Sark, where horse herself. “She had managed to teach ter had hoped. His movements were so there are no cars. His first horse was a that without having felt it,” he said. The strong that they hurt Hester’s back when donkey, and in the past twenty years he he rode, and his frame was on the small has done more than anyone to popular- side. “I wanted something more elegant,” ize dressage in a country more tradition- Hester said. More worrying, Valegro was ally oriented toward rougher forms of a head-shaker—a sign of nerves that can horse riding: foxhunting, racing, and ruin a dressage horse’s career. In 2006, three-day eventing. Hester tried to sell Valegro but was un- In her bedroom, Dujardin watched able to find a buyer. When Dujardin ar- Hester teach his horses the elevated strides rived, desperate to ride everything in the of dressage. Then she went and practiced yard, he was relieved. “I was, like, ‘You on the family’s remaining pony, an Irish judges didn’t change their minds that day, can have him,’ ” he said. thoroughbred named Charlie McGee. but Hester agreed to give Dujardin les- In the spring of 2007, Hester took After she left school, at sixteen, Dujar- sons. Dujardin kissed her saddle, and part in the Sunshine Tour, a dressage din became a groom at a yard run by Judy swore that she would never wash it. competition that takes place in the south Harvey, a trainer, judge, and BBC dres- of Spain. He was gone for a month. Du- sage commentator. Harvey recognized he mysteries of dressage are many jardin mucked out stables in the morn- Dujardin’s talent. “She just watched it, and not unrelated to love. Young ings, and during the afternoons, in the looked at it, did it,” she told me. Harvey horsesT mature well or badly. Riders fall yard’s indoor school, which had mirrors— had a horse that she had been trying to and lose their nerve. There is always a not unlike those in a dance studio—she teach to piafe for months; Dujardin search for the feeling of connection, rode Valegro. “I just wanted him to relax,” taught it in two days. and no guarantee that you will find it. she said. Dujardin has worked on anx- In 2002, Jane’s mother died, leaving Horses impossible for one rider will ious horses since she was a little girl. Fam- an inheritance that allowed the Dujar- dance for somebody else. Mediocre rid- ilies would bring round naughty ponies dins to put a down payment on a house ers flourish on horses given up for the for her to school. “Every horse I get on and to buy Charlotte a dressage horse. same reason. There are relationships I can adapt to,” she told me. “It’s like a That summer, Jane and her daughters that make everybody better than they jigsaw puzzle.” went to an auction, where a slim three- ever were, and there are horses and rid- Valegro was hot. “It was just, ‘Go, go, year-old gelding bolted around the arena, ers that simply never meet. go, go, go!’ ” Dujardin said. “I used my ran toward the wall, and performed a During one of her first lessons with reins and nothing happened.” The horse, smart flying change. “That’s one for Char- Hester, Dujardin saw a four-year-old dark whose nickname was Blueberry, tossed lotte,” Jane said, and bought the horse, a bay horse cantering down the far side of his head and raised his front legs at the chestnut Westphalian named Fernandez, the manège. “I was, like, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” same time. Eventually, Dujardin man- for eighteen thousand pounds. she recalled. “He was so powerful.” In aged to calm him down. When Hester Dujardin trained Fernandez for three dressage, a young horse’s walk and can- got back, Dujardin showed him Valegro’s years, working in a pub to earn money. ter are considered largely unalterable progress. The canter was coming into When she was twenty-one, she went to (a trot is diferent—a trot you can fix), shape. “We used to walk down the drive a talent-spotting day at Addington and this horse’s canter was enormous. On and then back again. I said, ‘Please don’t Manor, in Buckinghamshire. A panel of Fernandez, Dujardin’s challenge had al- sell him. Please don’t sell him. Just let me judges watched fifty-six young horses ways been to enhance the horse’s gaits, have a chance to ride.’ ” and their riders, and chose a handful for but with this horse, Valegro, she could see They agreed that Dujardin would a national training program. Carl Hes- that the task was the opposite: to some- begin the slow process of bringing Vale- ter was helping out as a test rider. When how capture and control his energy. When gro through his levels—years of training the judges didn’t select Dujardin and Fer- Hester took Dujardin on, a few months and minor competitions—and Hester nandez, Hester questioned their decision. later, as a pupil—in return for lessons and would take over as the horse neared Grand “I said, ‘Let me sit on it,’ ” he told me. lodging for Fernandez, she would clean Prix status. “I was going to take him on Dujardin watched as Hester rode Fer- stables and warm up his horses—part of as an eight-year-old,” Hester said. It was nandez around the manège. her job was to exercise Valegro. “I just a typical arrangement for a dressage sta- Hester got his big break as a young wanted to figure him out,” she said. ble. Grooms and under-riders work on

36 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 younger horses. Competition riders and dred and fifty euros—barely enough to animals with long legs, capable of ex- their sponsors—people with money on cover the trip. Hester has never paid ceptional movements. But at Saumur the line—take them through to interna- Dujardin a salary, and she was strug- Roudier was captivated by the strength tional competition. “That is life, that is gling to get by. By now, Fernandez had of Hester’s new horses. They moved the way it works,” Dujardin said. reached Grand Prix level as well, and more like athletes. “It is a sport,” Rou- She trained relentlessly, riding as many Dujardin decided to sell the horse to dier said. “It is not only dancing.” That as eleven horses a day. Unusually, in a finance her career. The money paid of summer, a British team of four riders, sport that still retains an amateur, cava- her parents’ mortgage and allowed her led by Hester and with Dujardin as the lier spirit, Dujardin lived as an athlete. to buy a house near Hester’s yard. newcomer, won the European dressage Since she was a teen-ager, she has swum, A Norwegian rider named Cathrine title for the first time. worked out, watched her diet. Dujardin’s Rasmussen bought Fernandez. Rasmus- Dujardin was still relatively unknown riding is quiet, in part because her body sen is based in Denmark, where she works when she rode Valegro at Hagen, in is strong. “She could sit there with no out of the yard of Hasse Hofmann, a Germany, in the first major competi- reins. She would still be in the same well-known trainer. When we spoke, tion of 2012. She was on edge. “You al- place,” Hester told me. “She is a very Hofmann recalled his client’s delight at ways think, Bloody hell, I am in Ger- modern-day rider.” buying a horse from Hester’s stable which many,” she told me. (Since the 1964 Her fault was pushing too hard. “The had once scored seventy-four per cent at Olympics, Germany has won the team horses don’t take it,” Hester said. “When Grand Prix. Hofmann warned Rasmus- dressage gold ten times.) It was hot in she rode them, she liked to pretend they sen that she might not be able to get the Hagen, and there were lots of flies. Vale- were winning a gold medal every day.” same results as an experienced rider like gro’s head-shaking came back. Dujar- Early on, Hester nicknamed Dujardin Hester. “But yeah, Hasse,” she replied. “It din managed to win her first test, the Edwina, after Edward Scissorhands, be- is the groom that is riding it.” Hofmann Grand Prix, but as she was warming up cause her hands could be harsh, but he laughed as he told me the story. “You for her second—the Grand Prix Spe- was also invigorated by the younger know who the groom was? The fucking cial—Valegro began tossing his head, rider. Since the 2004 Olympics, when best rider in the world.” and Hester and Dujardin had an argu- Hester finished thirteenth, his own rid- ment about the way she was riding her ing had been in a rut. Now in his mid- ean-Michel Roudier, a French flying changes. “Carl was shouting at forties, Hester found that he wanted to Olympic-level judge, saw Dujardin me,” she said. “And I’m, like . . . my God, compete again. rideJ for the first time at her second Grand don’t do this to me.” In 2010, a TV crew made a short Prix, in April, 2011, in Saumur. Dujardin It was a relief to be in the ring. In the documentary series about life at the was on Valegro, while Hester rode Utho- Grand Prix Special, each rider performs yard. Onscreen, Dujardin and Hester pia, a dark bay stallion from his stable. the same thirty-six movements in order. bicker like an odd couple. (Hester is They finished second and first, respec- Music plays in the background, and in eighteen years older than Dujardin, and tively. Roudier was judging at the letter Hagen, in honor of the upcoming Lon- gay. She calls him Grandad.) The show “M,” on the long side of the manège. “Oh, don Olympics, it was the theme from includes the moment when Hester was my goodness,” he said to himself. “There “The Great Escape,” the British war supposed to take back Valegro. That fall, is the future of dressage.” movie. The refrain eerily matched the at the national championships, Dujar- For years, the sport had been ruled steps of Valegro’s passage. Christoph din rode the horse in the Prix St. George, by highly drilled, fine-boned horses from Hess, who was in charge of dressage in- the level below Grand Prix. The cam- Germany and the Netherlands, where struction for Germany’s national riding era catches Dujardin as she leaves the advances in breeding were producing federation, realized that no one was manège, fuming at an error that Vale- gro has made. “He’s too hot, he’s too hot,” she says. Hester waves her away. A few minutes later, when Dujardin finds out that she has won, she is trans- formed. She larks about with photog- raphers, jumps into a hot tub in her rid- ing breeches, and sips champagne. The series ends with Dujardin daring Hes- ter to ride Valegro now. Since 2007, the pair had won every class they entered. The master had been outfoxed by his groom. “She was absolutely not going to give me that horse back,” Hester said. In March, 2011, Dujardin and Vale- gro competed in their first dressage Grand Prix, in the South of France. They came in first, and won six hun- land feast, and Hester opened the annual horse, dog, and pet show. But Dujardin was an intermittent, fragile presence at the festivities. Valegro was for sale.

he plan had been in place for some time. Hester had done the same with hisT previous Olympic horse, Escapado, which he had co-owned with a friend, Roly Luard, who restores English coun- try houses. In 2007, Luard had taken a half-share in Valegro, and now the two of them had the opportunity to finance Hes- ter’s yard, and Luard’s involvement in the sport, for years. “I can’t keep shelving out,” Luard told me. “I can’t just add lots of horses to my books.” For Dujardin, how- ever, the sale of Valegro was a devastating “Watch out for his being better at boxing than you.” prospect. On Sark, Richard Davison, who had managed the British dressage team, sought to comfort her, but he didn’t know •• what to say. “If you don’t have a world- class horse,” he told me, “you can be a talking. Dujardin and Valegro eased from egotistical nightmare,” Paul Belasik, an world-class rider, but it is worthless.” one movement to the next. “He did piafe American classical-riding trainer, told me. While Valegro was being vetted for transitions, passage, flying changes,” Hess Valegro and Dujardin presented a the sale, Dujardin’s parents took her to said. “Everything like being in another diferent image of the sport. Hester was Portugal to distract her. “We walked round world.” Dujardin and Valegro set a new known as an easygoing, orthodox trainer. and round and round,” Jane said. “You world record of 88.022 per cent. Isobel His horses jumped and went out in the could see she was in this never-never Wessels, a British judge at “C,” did her fields. In London, cheered on by huge land.” Dujardin understood Hester’s best to keep her scores under control, to crowds at Greenwich Park, on the banks financial limits better than most. “Carl avoid accusations of nationalism. “It was of the Thames, Hester, Dujardin, and has also come from a family with no back- like a moment,” she said. “Like you re- Laura Bechtolsheimer—the daughter of ground,” she told me. “But it was so hard, member where you were when Princess Hester’s old patron—won the team gold, because I really didn’t want the horse to Diana died.” Britain’s first-ever dressage medal. go. And it was, like, just the fact that it The ride in Hagen not only made The freestyle was held two days later, was for money. That was all. It was just Dujardin a contender for gold in Lon- in bright sunshine. Dujardin, on Valegro, all about money.” don but also announced her—and Hes- rode last. The penultimate competitor Hester felt uneasy, too. In the back of ter—as potential redeemers of dressage. was Adelinde Cornelissen, a Dutch rider everyone’s mind was Totilas, a tall black Since the eighteenth century, when on Parzival, a fifteen-year-old chestnut stallion, whose career had come to sym- classical-riding displays became the basis gelding. Performing to selections from bolize the sport’s excesses. Totilas was the for the modern circus, the sport has been “The Nutcracker,” Cornelissen appeared first horse to break the ninety-per-cent tainted by the notion that it is somehow to ride flawlessly. Valegro stumbled into barrier in dressage, taking his Dutch rider, deviant and even cruel, a display of hu- his final pirouette. When Dujardin came Edward Gal, to a clean sweep of the three man power rather than of equine skill. out of the manège, Hester said the mis- tests in the sport’s World Cup, in 2010. During the nineteen-nineties and the take had probably cost her the gold. An Totilas caused mayhem in dressage. No aughts, a training technique known as ofcial checked the horse’s bit. High one had ever seen the movements exe- “rollkur,” in which the necks of dressage above, Dujardin saw a woman leaning cuted with such panache. But the horse horses are held tight against their chests, over the grandstand. “You’ve done it!” the also divided the sport. Gal was accused became widely publicized. Horse-welfare woman shouted, half an instant before of using rollkur in his training—a charge groups filmed German and Dutch riders the stadium erupted. “Like the roof fell that he denies—and critics saw Totilas forcing their horses’ heads down for down,” Dujardin said. The Dutch were as an artificial creation. “Sometimes peo- minutes at a time. Photographs circulated furious, and complained. But the result ple thought it was a little bit too much of horses with bleeding mouths and stood. The judges noticed that Parzival’s circus,” Suzanne Baarup, the Danish tongues blue from tension. In 2009, Isa- jaws had crossed during the test, a sign judge, told me. Then, weeks after his tri- bell Werth, a German multigold medal- of the horse’s discomfort. umph at the World Cup, Totilas was sold list, was banned for doping her horse with After the Games, Hester took the Brit- to a German yard, for a rumored fifteen fluphenazine, a sedative used in the treat- ish riders to Sark to celebrate. There was million euros. Eurodressage.com crashed ment of schizophrenia. “It was just a real a vin d’honneur, a traditional Channel Is- from the trafc. But Totilas never went

38 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 as well for his new rider. Injured before developing new horses, and that morn- Hartpury College, an agricultural school the London Games, he retired from the ing she was working on Mount St. John a few miles from Hester’s yard. For the sport last year. Freestyle, a seven-year-old mare that she freestyle performance at the Games, Du- There were two potential buyers for is training for the Tokyo Games, in 2020. jardin has decided to keep her record- Valegro, both from overseas. Luard and Freestyle belongs to Emma Blundell, breaking floor plan, but she had asked Hester negotiated for six months with a supermarket heiress who runs a large her composer, Tom Hunt, to arrange a the second. Hester veered between his dressage stud farm in Yorkshire, and the new Brazilian-themed score. Hunt misgivings and his plans to buy houses young horse has already shown an un- e-mailed the latest version of the music and cars, and to pay of his debts. “It was usual aptitude for the sport’s advanced that afternoon. Dujardin and Valegro very exciting,” he said. “I can’t deny it.” movements. “You’re such a clever per- were on at ten-fifteen at night. They were But Dujardin sufered in the uncertainty. son,” Dujardin said, stroking her brown the final pair, and a crowd of six hundred She and Hester argued. Dujardin and back. “Aren’t you?” Two grooms tacked was there to watch. her partner, a South African long- up the horse, putting on white booties to Half an hour before they went on, distance runner named Dean Wyatt prevent her rear and front hooves from Dujardin and Valegro warmed up in a Golding, briefly broke up. At the last mo- clashing. Nearby shelves held tubs of gut floodlit barn on a hill above the college’s ment, the bid to buy Valegro fell through. balancer, biotin hoof supplement, and indoor arena. Dujardin wore a red down “They were all set,” Luard told me. “Then electrolyte-maintenance liquid. There vest over her dark-blue tailcoat. In the the money never went in the bank.” were two Valegro figurines in boxes. Du- flesh, Valegro is like a small train. Pufng Valegro’s future took eighteen months jardin often feels cold, and although the among the two or three other horses to resolve. Hester finally stopped talking day was warm, she wore a gray hoodie waiting to perform, he seemed possessed to the buyers, and in early 2014 he and with her Great Britain crash helmet. of a diferent force. Up close, when he Luard formed a syndicate, in which a At the far end of the manège, Hester shouldered past, the veins on his flanks new investor, Anne Barrott, bought a sat on one of two chairs, raised on a dais. looked like the estuary of a river system. third of the horse. Valegro would stay at Six dogs tumbled around him. Geese Hester watched, speaking into a small the yard. barked nearby. Dujardin entered the arena microphone that transmitted to an ear- Later that year, Dujardin devised a and began to trot and then canter so close piece in Dujardin’s helmet. “Work on new freestyle for Valegro. She made the to the edge that, each time she and Free- the lightness,” he said, as she practiced floor plan as difcult as she could imag- style passed, the air stirred briefly. As she a pirouette at the far end of the barn. As ine, opening with a half-pass in trot that practiced movements, Hester called out Valegro has aged and mellowed, Dujar- moved into a half-pass in passage, fol- in the dense patois of dressage. “O.K., din’s competitive energy has remained lowed by a combined piafe and pirou- the last one is downhill. You need a lit- undimmed, and one of Hester’s chal- ette and straight into another phase of tle bit more canter, a little bit more arch,” lenges is to keep the two in synch. passage. She rode an extended canter into he said, of a series of flying changes that “Smooth,” he said, as she rode a set of a double pirouette, and set the test to Dujardin was riding past a long mirror perfect changes toward him. “Good.” music from “How to Train Your Dragon.” set up at “B.” Gradually, other riders went out to Dujardin and Valegro performed the rou- Dujardin performed leg yields and perform. Valegro and Dujardin had the tine for the first time at the shoulder-ins, flexing exercises that date manège to themselves. She rode past a horse show, in London, that December. back hundreds of years, and Hester mirror in passage. She was about to take Together, they broke the last of Totilas’s mused for a moment on their history. the horse down the hill. She was about world records. “I literally did the final bit “Moving away from a sword,” he said. to take of her vest. She was about to with tears rolling down my face, because “Moving in to hack someone’s head of, ride into the arena and raise her right he is the sort of horse that gives you ev- or whatever.” He kept a quiet score of hand for the music to begin. She was erything,” Dujardin said. “He gives you Dujardin’s movements: seven point five, about to ride her impossible routine, to everything, and I can feel the partnership eight, the occasional nine. I asked follow an extended canter with a dou- and the connection. He is, like, with me.” whether Dujardin was doing the same ble pirouette. She was about to score in her head. “She just says either it’s good more than ninety per cent, enough for n a recent Tuesday morning, I or it’s shit,” Hester said. Dujardin barely gold in Rio. Her mother, watching from travelled to Gloucestershire to watch spoke during the session. Her eyes a balcony above the arena, was about to OHester and Dujardin train. Hester’s yard seemed focussed in the middle distance. cry. And plenty of other people would is on the edge of the Forest of Dean, on The detail of dressage riding takes place cry, too, because it moves us when we the grounds of an old mill. Rio will be in the seat—where one creature’s bal- see a person in true communion with a Valegro’s final Olympics—he is fourteen, ance informs the other. Dujardin can- horse. Dujardin was ready. Valegro crossed and the plan is to retire him at the end tered toward us in a zigzag, skipping the the barn in half-pass. Hester made to of the year. Hester and Dujardin have horse onto a diferent leg at each turn. leave. Then Dujardin turned Valegro been keeping the horse under wraps in “There you go,” Hester called. Dujardin back into the middle of the manège. recent months, competing only once and swept past. “Bit twisted,” she said. She wanted to ride the steps of one last training at seven-thirty in the morning, A few days later, Dujardin and Vale- piafe. The horse’s shoulders began to when they have the yard to themselves. gro rode their final rehearsal before Rio rise. But Hester cut them of. “Enough,” Dujardin is spending more of her time at a small dressage competition held at he said. “Save it for the ring.” 

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 39 A REPORTER AT LARGE THE DISTANT SHORE

In Peru, a killing brings an isolated tribe into contact with the outside world. BY JON LEE ANDERSON

efore Nicolás (Shaco) Flores In the following years, small groups was killed, deep in the Peruvian of Mashco began to venture out of the rain forest, he had spent decades forest, making fleeting appearances to Breaching out to the mysterious people travellers on the Madre de Dios River. called the Mashco Piro. Flores lived in A video of one such encounter, which the Madre de Dios region—a vast jun- circulated on the Internet, shows a naked gle surrounded by an even vaster wil- Mashco man brandishing a bow and derness, frequented mostly by illegal arrow at a boatload of tourists. In an- loggers, miners, narco-trafckers, and a other, the same man carries a plastic bot- few adventurers. For more than a hun- tle of soda that he has just been given. dred years, the Mashco had lived in al- Mostly, the Mashco approach outsid- most complete isolation; there were rare ers with friendly, if skittish, curiosity, sightings, but they were often indistin- but at times they have raided local set- guishable from backwoods folklore. tlements to steal food. A few times, they Flores, a farmer and a river guide, have attacked. was a self-appointed conduit between The latest attack, last May, took the the Mashco and the region’s other in- life of a twenty-year-old indigenous digenous people, who lived mostly in man, Leonardo Pérez, and this time the riverside villages. He provided them news did not subside. People from Pérez’s with food and machetes, and tried to community wanted revenge, and the lure them out of the forest. But in 2011, governor of Madre de Dios took the for unclear reasons, the relationship opportunity to rail about federal neglect broke down; one afternoon, when the of the area. The government needed to Mashco appeared on the riverbank and be seen to do something. beckoned to Shaco, he ignored them. A A few weeks later, ofcials announced week later, as he tended his vegetable that they were sending a team to en- patch, a bamboo arrow flew out of the gage with the Mashco, drawn from the forest, piercing his heart. In Peru’s urban Department of Native Isolated People centers, the incident generated lurid and People in Initial Contact, a recently news stories about savage natives at- created sub-ofce of Peru’s Ministry of tacking peaceable settlers. After a few Culture. When I spoke to Lorena Pri- days, though, the attention subsided, eto Coz, the head of the department, and life in the Amazonian backwater she emphasized that the government returned to its usual obscurity. preferred not to interfere with isolated

On the shore of the Madre de Dios River, in Peru, a group of Mashco Piro await observers sent by the Department of Native Isolated People. LUKEMAP SHUMANBY

40 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 PHOTOGRAPHS BY AARON VINCENT ELKAIM indigenous people, but the threat of vi- but, aside from some muddy unfinished made few inroads into the Amazon. olence had left no choice. “We didn’t tracks, the Peruvians’ eforts had been Then rubber was discovered, and, in the initiate this contact—they did,” she said. defeated by the “green hell” of the rain eighteen-seventies, South American rub- “But it’s our responsibility to take charge forest. The backwoods remained inhab- ber barons began to brutalize the jun- of the situation.” She told me that an ited only by animals and by native peo- gles of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and outpost had been set up near where the ple, who in those days were still referred Brazil. In 1910, the Anglo-Irish diplo- Mashco appeared, and a team from the to as “wild Indians.” mat Roger Casement spent three months department was going soon. She invited On one such trip, in 1977, I travelled among rubber traders and the indige- me to accompany them. up the Río Callería, near the unmarked nous people who were forced to work Only about a hundred groups of iso- Brazilian border, with a local guide for them, and wrote of the abuses he lated indigenous people are who spoke a few indigenous had witnessed. “These [people] are not believed to still exist, with dialects. We rode in a long only murdered, flogged, chained up like more than half of them liv- wooden dugout canoe known wild beasts, hunted far and wide and ing in the wilderness that as a peke-peke, its name de- their dwellings burnt, their wives raped, straddles Peru’s border with rived from the sputtering noise their children dragged away to slavery Brazil. Fiona Watson, the of its motor, a Briggs & Strat- and outrage, but are shamelessly swin- field director of the tribal- ton outboard. The motor had dled into the bargain. These are strong people’s-rights group Sur- a propeller that could be words, but not adequately strong. The vival International, told me raised—essential in shallow condition of things is the most disgrace- that the situation was dire waters. Even so, there were ful, the most lawless, the most inhuman, for the region’s aislados, as stretches where we were forced I believe that exists in the world today.” isolated people are called in Spanish. In to get out and pull the canoe by hand. The caucheros, as the rubber barons a cramped London ofce, Watson laid One day, after hours on the river with were called, were daring, ruthless men— out satellite maps to show me their ter- no sign of human habitation, we rounded the equivalent, in a sense, of modern-day ritory, small patches in a geography over- a bend and saw a dugout canoe, carry- narco-trafckers like El Chapo Guz- taken by commerce: arcs of slash-and- ing a woman and a child, both with long mán. The most murderously flamboyant burn farmland; huge expanses where black hair and naked torsos. At the sight of them was probably Carlos Fermín agribusinesses raise cattle and grow soy; of us, they began screaming and pad- Fitzcarrald. Immortalized in Werner mining camps that send minerals to dling frantically toward the riverbank, Herzog’s 1982 film “Fitzcarraldo,” he was China; migrant boomtowns. Some of where a row of crude shelters sat on a a man of limitless ambition who blood- the indigenous groups were hemmed in bluf that was cleared of jungle. They ily installed himself as Peru’s Rey del on all sides by mining and logging con- shouted a word over and over: pishtaco. Caucho—the Rubber King. cessions, both legal and illegal. One We came ashore cautiously, pulling Fitzcarrald was born in 1862, the el- tribe in Brazil, the Akuntsu, had been the boat. The camp had been hastily dest son of an Irish-American sailor reduced to four members. Near them, deserted; I found a fish still roasting turned trader and his Peruvian wife. By a man known to anthropologists only on an open fire. The boatman nervously the age of thirty, he had become wealthy as the Man of the Hole lives in a hol- said that we should not continue up- enough to build a twenty-five-room riv- low dug in the forest floor, warding of river, or the Indians might attack us. erside mansion, with grounds tended by intruders by firing arrows. He is believed When I asked him about the word the Chinese gardeners. Seeking to expand to be the last of his tribe. woman and child had shouted, he said his operations, he began looking for an Unless the trends were halted, Wat- that they believed I was a pishtaco, an overland route that would connect the son said, the Mashco Piro and the other evil person who had come to steal the Urubamba River with tributaries of the remaining aislados were doomed to ex- oil from their bodies. Brazilian Amazon. Using thousands of tinction—a disquieting echo of the sit- Months later, a Peruvian anthropol- indigenous conscripts to hack through uation of Native Americans in the nine- ogist explained to me the roots of their the jungle, he found that the headwa- teenth century, as white settlers forced fear. The term pishtaco, he speculated, ters were just six miles apart, on either them to retreat or die. “There’s so much originated in the sixteenth century, when side of a fifteen-hundred-foot peak, and at stake here,” Watson said. “These peo- Spanish conquistadors such as Lope de he conceived a railroad that would unite ple are as much a part of the rich tap- Aguirre began exploring the Amazon. the two river systems. The plan was to estry of humanity as anyone else, but These initial contacts had been so night- sail an iron-plated steamboat, loaded it’s all going down the drain.” marish as to inspire a cautionary tale with railroad ties, to the Urubamba’s that still endured: some of the Span- headwaters. There, native porters would n the late nineteen-seventies, I iards, frustrated that their muskets and lay a track over the mountain, disassem- made several trips into the Peruvian cannons rusted so quickly in the jungle ble the ship, lug its pieces across, and IAmazon, at a time when the jungle was humidity, were said to have killed Indi- put it back together. just beginning to open. The govern- ans and boiled their bodies in iron pots, In 1894, he launched an expedition ments of Brazil and Peru had recently then used their fat to grease the metal. to secure the route, and before setting agreed to build a trans-Amazonian high- For the next three hundred years, the out he addressed his followers from a way, linking the Atlantic and the Pacific, European settlers and their descendants balcony of his great house. “Like a good

42 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 and just father, I take you with me,” he youthful-looking man of fifty, Shepard showed me, Kamotolo—tall and beard- said. “I will reward you with the bounty had lived for a year in the nineteen-eight- less, with alert eyes—was clearly recog- of the divine mountains that extend ies among the Matsigenka people, who nizable as the man who appeared in the from where the Sun rises, and where shared territory with the Mashco; he Internet video carrying a soda bottle. abundant hunting awaits.” had learned their language and returned Other pictures showed an older man, Their quarry ended up being mostly many times since. Shepard worked at with wild hair and a scrufy beard, who the Mashco, who then dominated the the Emílio Goeldi Museum, an Ama- was likely Kamotolo’s father. He was region. Euclides da Cunha, the Brazil- zonian-research center in Brazil, but he rumored by locals to have killed Shaco ian scientist and explorer, described Fitz- travelled to Peru frequently as an infor- Flores; Kamotolo was thought to have carrald’s meeting with the Mashco’s mal adviser to Torres’s department. killed Leonardo Pérez. leader, in which he mustered his armed Soon after we set out, the paved road At the department’s outpost, Torres men to intimidate the natives into ended, and we began dropping down had left a small team of local Yine peo- coöperating. “The sole response of the the eastern escarpment of the Andes, ple, who spoke the same language as the Mashco was to inquire what arrows zigzagging through cloud forest and into Mashco. Their goal was to discover why Fitzcarrald carried,” da Cunha wrote. the humid lowland jungle. After seven they were coming out of the forest, and “Smiling, the explorer passed him a bul- hours, we reached the end of the road, to get them to stop their attacks. But the let from his Winchester.” The Mashco at Atalaya, a huddle of rough wooden Mashco didn’t like answering questions leader examined it, amused, and then houses and bodegas on the upper Madre about themselves, so Torres’s crew knew took one of his arrows and jabbed it into de Dios River. Atalaya was a destination little about them. They estimated that his own arm, looking on implacably as for adventure tourists; at the shoreline between five hundred and a thousand blood ran out of the wound. “He turned was a jetty lined with brightly painted Mashco lived in four groups in the jun- his back on the surprised adventurer, river canoes. But the recent killing had gle of Peru and Brazil, around an ex- returning to his village with the illusion threatened business in the area. A sign, panse of protected land called Manú Na- of superiority,” da Cunha continued. depicting the silhouette of an aislado with tional Park. They were related to the “Half an hour later roughly one hun- a bow and arrow, announced, “Beware! Yine, but separated by history: the Yine dred Mashcos, including their recalci- This is a zone of transit for Isolated In- were the descendants of Fitzcarrald’s trant chief, lay murdered, stretched out digenous Peoples. Avoid conflicts: Don’t conscripts, and the Mashco were believed on the riverbank.” attempt to contact them. Don’t give them to be the descendants of those who had It was the beginning of a seemingly clothes, food, tools, or anything else. fled. Former farmers who had become endless cycle of destruction. Eight de- Don’t photograph them; they might in- nomadic hunter-gatherers, they had for- cades after Fitzcarrald’s rampage, I took terpret the camera as a weapon. In the gotten how to plant food, and were the another trip, on the Madre de Dios, event of incidents, contact the Ministry only indigenous people in the region who where a gold boom had recently begun. of Culture.’’ didn’t know how to fish. But they hunted Along the river were small camps of Torres had recently overseen a ren- efciently, using unusually stout arrows, prospectors, who had set up diesel-pow- dezvous with a group of Mashco Piro: whose heads were attached in a distinc- ered pumps and wooden sluices and several families, possibly interrelated, tive manner that allowed anthropolo- were noisily gouging away the river- who were led by a young man called gists who found discarded shafts to track banks. Their arrival had clearly unset- Kamotolo. In photographs that Torres their movements. The community that tled the local Amarakaeri people. The Amarakaeri had once been a sizable warrior tribe, but, by the time I arrived, perhaps five hundred remained, living in rudimentary hamlets, where they sur- vived by fishing with poison and by pan- ning for gold. As for the Mashco, who had lived upriver, there was no sign of them whatsoever. It was as if they had never existed.

he Ministry of Culture’s team gathered a few months ago in Cuzco,T high in the Andes, where a van was loaded with provisions. The leader was an anthropologist named Luis Fe- lipe Torres, a slim man in his early thirties with an aquiline face and the unassuming manner of a professional observer. He was joined by Glenn Shep- ard, an American ethnobotanist. A Torres’s team was trying to contact was ural resources. Opening up the jungle between their huts, Meirelles said, “They perhaps three dozen people. In their first has made Peru one of the world’s larg- are the last free people on this planet.” encounters, it had been unclear how much est exporters of gold (as well as the sec- For Peru’s city dwellers, who had thought they understood of the outside world. ond-largest producer of ), and little about the isolated people, the film The Department of Native Isolated the Camisea natural-gas facility, north was a revelation. Soon afterward, the People was drastically underfunded and of Manú National Park, provides half country amended its laws to say that the understafed, so Torres shuttled between of the country’s energy. Politicians have aislados should be left alone. the Mashco outpost and other assign- been hesitant to disrupt business. Alan But, even as Peru embraced the no- ments in Madre de Dios. He had just García, the President from 2006 to 2011, contact policy, a new idea was emerg- returned from an even more remote area, insisted that the isolated tribes were a ing. Last June, the journal Science pub- where he had followed up on reports of fantasy devised by environmentalists to lished a paper in which two prominent aislados whose territory was being threat- stop development; an ofcial in the state anthropologists, Kim Hill and Robert ened by loggers. He showed me photo- graphs of the remains of a cookfire and a campsite, evidence that the department could use to begin the process of having the land protected. But Torres spoke of his work as almost futile. The depart- ment—tasked with looking out for all of Peru’s isolated indigenous people— was a tiny ofce with little political clout. The Ministry of Energy and Mines, by contrast, was a well-funded agency with the power to open up the Amazon to development that would bring wealth and jobs. “In the battle for the govern- ment’s ear,” Torres said dryly, “you can imagine who is more influential.”

or much of the twentieth century, Brazil defined the region’s approach Fto the aislados: its National Indian Foun- dation sent scouts to contact them, with the goal of assimilation. These eforts were mostly calamitous for the con- tacted people, who tended to die out from disease, or to wind up living in frontier shantytowns, where the men often succumbed to alcoholism and the women to prostitution. In barely fifty years, eighty-seven of Brazil’s two hun- dred and thirty known native groups Luis Felipe Torres, an anthropologist with the state’s isolated-tribes team. died of, and the ones that remained lost as much as four-fifths of their popula- oil company compared them to the Loch Walker, argued that isolated indigenous tion. In the nineteen-eighties, ofcials Ness monster. As loggers, miners, and groups were “not viable in the long term,” at the National Indian Foundation, hor- narco-trafckers moved in, aislados fled because their environments are too de- rified by the decline, began to enforce across the border into Brazil, seeking graded or too vulnerable to incursions. a “no contact” policy: when its agents sanctuary. Instead, they advocated a new policy, spotted aislados, they designated their In 2011, though, García was voted built around “well-organized contacts.” land Terras Indígenas—areas forbidden out of ofce, and his successor over- The article sparked a furious contro- to outsiders. turned his policies. Around the same versy. “Walker and Hill play straight into Most of the neighboring countries time, a documentary about the aislados the hands of those who want to open adopted Brazil’s no-contact policy, which ran on Peruvian TV. In it, a BBC film Amazonia up for resource extraction and anthropologists now see as the best way crew flew with José Carlos dos Reis ‘investment,’ ” Stephen Corry, the direc- to insure the survival of the remaining Meirelles, a prominent agent from Bra- tor of Survival International, wrote. “Let aislados. But, for Peru, land in the Am- zil’s National Indian Foundation, over a there be no doubt: isolated tribes are azon was too rich to give up. In the past part of the Amazon where aislados’ land perfectly viable, as long as their lands two decades, the country has experi- was being invaded by illegal loggers. As are protected. To think we have the right enced an economic boom, based on nat- the aislados stared up from the red earth to invade their territories and make

44 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 contact with them, whether they want ments, and in the next half hour a cou- Following the killing, a squad of Mat- it or not, with all the likely consequences, ple of dozen men and women, some sigenka men armed with guns had pur- is pernicious and arrogant.” with small children, wandered in and sued the Mashco into the forest. After But protecting the tribes’ land might took seats on the floor. hiking for eight hours, they found their be an unrealistic hope. The governor of The villagers sat with stubborn ex- camp, but it was empty, so they destroyed Madre de Dios, Luis Otsuka, is the for- pressions. Most of them wore cast-of it and threw the Mashco’s arrows in the mer head of a statewide miners’ associa- Western clothing, except for one woman, river. It was both a defensive act and a tion, and he has not changed his loyal- who had on a traditional cotton robe punishment: the cane that the Mashco ties. He has allowed gold miners to strip with a hand-rendered design of black use for arrows ripens only once a year, large sections of jungle, and, a few months and white stripes. After stilted greet- and they would not be able to hunt until before I arrived, he sent bulldozers to ings, Shipetiari’s schoolteacher stood to they were replaced. begin pushing a road through the forest, say that the community was frustrated. Torres pointed to the protection which would run along the Madre de On an earlier visit by Torres, people had agents, and said that he hoped to be Dios River, connecting the gold-mining aired their views, and there seemed to able to hire more, but until there was areas to the regional capital, Puerto Mal- have been no results. “A brother was more money in his budget he needed donado. It would be, in a sense, the fulfill- killed here and nothing happens,” the two volunteers to help out. Rivera in- ment of Fitzcarrald’s dream. It would teacher said. “That’s why when foreign- sisted that he hire more agents, and give also be the destruction of the area’s wil- ers and N.G.O.s come from outside we them walkie-talkies. The schoolteacher derness, and of the Mashco. Indigenous- don’t tell them anything!” said, “The Mashco are going to come rights groups sued to stop construction, Torres listened diplomatically, and back. For sure they will come back to but Torres had little doubt that the road then reminded the Matsigenka that his look for food here when the rains come.” would eventually go through. When he department had hired the protection Rivera yelled, “The solution is to send met with Otsuka, as construction was agents, who were on constant patrol. He all the Mashco across the river!” Every- starting, the governor said bluntly that was paying the village for the use of the one laughed. Torres said, “That’s not pos- he thought the Mashco Piro should be meeting house, and had promised to in- sible.” If they returned, he said, the com- contacted, and by force. stall toilets and a water filter. “But this munity should not be aggressive: “If you Last year, Glenn Shepard was asked roof leaks,” he said, pointing to the palm- lose some bananas, they can always be to look into the situation, and he and leaf thatching overhead; perhaps, he replaced. If you kill one of them, you’ll Torres spent ten days speaking to local suggested, some of the villagers might live in a state of war.” Gesturing toward people. Shepard feels that the best thing volunteer to collect palm fronds to patch the forest, he said, “The Mashco are going for the Mashco would be total isolation. it. There was a long silence. Eventually, to continue to live here. So, if they come But, by the end of the trip, he agreed a woman named Rufina Rivera said, again, the thing to do is to stay in your that it had become impossible. “The “But what happens if we go into the houses and then let us know so we can Mashco Piro are already talking to us, forest to get fronds and the Mashco come, and we’ll use the contact we are in a sense, but it’s just one way so far— shoot arrows at us?” Torres said calmly, having with them to let them know it’s they’re coming out and killing people,” “O.K., understood. We’ll bring the not good to attack people.” he said. “We need to make it a two-way fronds from somewhere else.” Rivera said, “So you say if the Mashco dialogue. There has to be a next step. Torres was careful to refer to the come we shouldn’t do anything. But, if The only thing is right now we don’t Mashco using a term that the depart- they kill someone of mine, I’ll kill know what that is.” ment was trying to encourage: nomole, them—of course I will! If they come which means “brother” in the Yine lan- and kill my husband, I will kill them, orres’s most pressing job was guage. The crowd seemed to feel little and if they ask me why I am in prison to discourage fighting between the afnity. For them, the Mashco were out- I will say, ‘For killing Mashco.’ ” MashcoT and the other indigenous peo- siders. Although the Matsigenka’s tra- After the meeting, we walked with ple in the area, so his first stop was Shi- ditional home was a couple of hundred the protection agents to the edge of the petiari, the village where Leonardo Pérez miles to the north, they had long main- village and stopped on a broad path had been killed, which is almost exclu- tained a small outpost in Shipetiari, and shaded by trees. One of the agents sively inhabited by Matsigenka. Shipe- in the eighties a larger group had moved walked into the bush and crouched tiari, set back in the jungle, is composed in, eking out an existence by growing down. “This is where the Mashco was of family compounds—large huts on yucca and bananas. According to Shep- hiding,” he said. “Here he drew his bow stilts—connected by a labyrinth of foot- ard, they also worked with timber buy- and fired the arrow that killed Leo.” paths. At the village meeting house, we ers, who hired them illegally to log valu- Around us, the forest was silent, except were greeted by three “protection agents”: able hardwoods. for the trilling of a few cicadas. local men whom Torres had hired to The presence of the Mashco, and of patrol the community and to report any the ofcials tracking them, made it dif- omole, as Torres and his crew incidents. They had been given walkie- cult for the Matsigenka to live normal called their outpost, was two hours talkies and khaki vests with the depart- lives, much less expand their logging Nfarther downriver: a longhouse, made of ment’s logo. Torres asked them to gather operations. And Pérez’s death threat- crude planks painted green, propped up residents to discuss the latest develop- ened to bring about an open conflict. on stilts on a bluf above the river. The

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 45 surrounding forest had been slashed and Cuzco. There was an occasional flurry walked on, scrutinizing the path. There burned, and the open land was still dot- of excitement. One morning, a tapir ap- were four more sets of bent twigs: a ted with blackened stumps. Visitors peared in the reeds of the nearest islet, warning left by the Mashco. pitched tents outside the longhouse; in and Laureano scrambled after it with a “What does it mean?” I asked. the woods, at a discreet distance, a trench shotgun, returning empty-handed. An- “It means you should not go any far- latrine had been dug. other day, a large, hairy tarantula was ther,” Ponceano said. “If you do, they At the edge of the bluf, a wooden killed inches from the door of the long- will shoot you with arrows.” bench ofered a view of the rocky shore- house. For entertainment, people stared Nena led us back to the riverbank, line on the other side, where the Mashco at the river, or watched the endless suc- sweating and breathing in nervous gasps. had most recently appeared. The river cession of bright-colored macaws that Her husband worked in a sawmill, far was perhaps four hundred feet across, flew squawking overhead. away, and came home only every few and in the middle was a pair of low is- The team spent most of its time at a months, so she tended the plot herself, lets that were submerged when the table in the longhouse, poring over pho- often bringing along the baby and her water was high. Heavy rains in the past tographs of the Mashco, speculating three older children. “I keep the baby few days had turned the river into a about their relationships with one an- here,” she said, touching the bundle on swirling gray-green torrent, erupting other. By bringing them bananas, which her back. Then she gestured at a shaded into white water around rocks and they loved but didn’t know how to cul- area under some trees. “I usually leave fallen trees. tivate, and communicating in basic Yine, the others there, playing. Now I can’t There were five Yine agents at the the team had established a tentative rap- do that anymore.” With a distressed Nomole post, led by Romel Ponceano, port. In several short encounters, they look, she said that she didn’t know how a husky man in his late thirties, who had identified about twenty Mashco by she was going to feed her family now. was a chief in a community several days’ name. For now, they were emerging from journey away. His family had a long his- the forest about once a week, but that s we approached Nomole, going tory in the region, working as guides for was all. back upriver, the boat crew began the rubber barons and, more recently, One morning, there was a sound of shoutingA and pointing to the far shore. for oil explorers and mahogany loggers. distant whistling, and several of us ran A group of people had assembled, their Like a poacher who had become a game toward the riverbank. Flores, ahead of reddish skin distinct against the scree warden, Ponceano had begun working the others, shook her head: the sound of white rock. The Mashco had returned. for Torres, and had made himself indis- had come from a panguana bird, whose Across the river, the Nomole team pensable. He was aided by Reynaldo call resembled the Mashco’s whistle. was setting out from the shore: Flores Laureano, a sturdy man in his fifties, and Ponceano, as well as a doctor named and Nelly Flores, a plump, reserved ven if we couldn’t see the Mashco, Fernando Mendieta, who sometimes woman in her thirties, both from the it was clear that they were nearby. volunteered. To avoid disrupting their nearby Yine settlement of Diamante. EPeople in Diamante, an hour down river, work, Torres steered us toward a long When we arrived, Ponceano reported had reported quiet raids, in which the sandbar, a hundred feet from where the that the Mashco had appeared a week Mashco came looking for food and for Mashco had gathered. We crept toward earlier, and said they would return in six things to steal. Torres hoped that they a large tree snagged there, which ofered days, but they hadn’t shown up. Pon- would desist now that his team was us cover while we watched. ceano speculated that the rain had flooded feeding them, but if the rains kept them The Mashco on the shore had very the rivers that demarcated their territory, from the meeting point there was a risk erect posture and moved economically, and the Mashco, who didn’t know how that they would start again. seeming always to be in synch. Their to swim, had been unable to ford them. At a community meeting in Dia- leader, Kamotolo, was tall and square- As we waited, a pattern developed. mante, a woman named Nena, carrying jawed, with cropped black hair, and was People took turns as sentinels on the a baby on her back, stood nervously to completely naked; so was a younger man, bluf, watching for the Mashco and lis- say that she had visited her vegetable who looked to be a teen-ager. There were tening for a loud hooting whistle, the patch—a small plot that Peruvians call two women, who had long, thick hair sound they made to announce their ap- a chacra—and found indications that and wore flaps of woven bark on strings proach. The watchers kept their hopes the Mashco had been there. It had hap- around their waists, which protected their in check. In three decades of visiting the pened a week ago, and she was still afraid genitals but left their bottoms bare. Both area, Shepard had never seen the Mashco: to return. Torres wanted to review the women were pregnant, and they tended he had encountered them only once, as evidence, so we crossed the river in our to five children, all of them naked. warning whistles in the forest. peke-peke, with Nena pointing the way. The Mashco had a ritual greeting: Each morning, we were awakened Onshore, we followed her through a they hugged visitors, put their heads in our tents by the chattering of tiny titi maize field to a spot where she stopped on their shoulders, and then felt inside monkeys and the plunking call of pau- and looked around fearfully. At the en- their clothing, as if to ascertain their sex. car birds. The days were long and hot, trance to a barely discernible path into For perhaps forty minutes, the two punctuated by meals of river fish with the forest, she pointed at two twigs that groups mingled: the Mashco touching boiled yucca or rice, or spaghetti and had been bent so that their tips crossed. and probing, and the Nomole team tuna that Torres had brought from Ponceano inspected them closely, then acquiescing, mostly in good humor. The

46 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 warning signs near Nena’s farm, and Ka- motolo had hinted that the Mashco had HOW I BECAME A SAINT been in the area, but ofered no details. Ponceano had let the matter drop; he Some sloppy Googling at the Vatican, had learned in previous encounters that and James Richardson the soccer commentator, when he asked too many questions Ka- or the JR who builds boats, or some JR motolo rounded up the others and left. the Internet has never heard of I asked what the Mashco had said lost out on an immortal gig: when they saw us on the sandbar. Flores St. Jim, Patron of Apology. told me, “They said, ‘Are they bad peo- Sorry, guys: admittedly your Works ple?’ I said, ‘No, they are our friends, but were nobler than mine, your Faith purer. they’re not coming over because they have colds, and we don’t want you to But as for the required Miracles! catch them.’ ” (In fact, the whole team The one with the radiant child, the one with starlings was healthy; Flores was trying to keep the sweeping away the sky—there were millions encounter under control.) The Mashco, I happened to be present for. seeming unconcerned, had said, “Tell The water a clear stone over stones; the stream them to come!” of her gray hair, up close, clear; Before the Nomole team departed, how every way you look the fog Kamotolo said that the Mashco would is thicker than where you are. return in three days. The visits were get- ting more frequent, but Torres seemed —James Richardson as concerned as he was pleased. “Right now, it’s bananas they want,” he said. “But what will they be asking us for Mashco women approached Flores and, On the riverbank, the team mem- in a few years’ time? What will be the as she giggled, touched her breasts and bers were elated, swapping stories about turning point?” stomach. Kamotolo strode along the their interactions. When I asked Flores shore, sat down in the Nomole peke- about the women, she put a hand to her t sundown, Nomole’s gas-pow- peke, and then returned to the group, mouth in embarrassment. “They felt my ered generator was turned on for looking excited. The team had brought breasts and stomach and said to me, anA hour to pump water into a plastic two large hands of bananas and set them ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’ When I tank that sat on stilts, so that people down near a fallen log. Kamotolo peri- said, ‘No, I’m not,’ they said, ‘Tell us the could bathe under a rudimentary shower. odically went over, sat on the log, and truth! Don’t you have milk?’ When I Afterward, we met around the table in ate bananas, one after the other. said no, Knoygonro squirted her milk the longhouse, eating dinner and talking, There was little talk, and no sense of in my face, to say, ‘I do.’ ” Flores covered almost exclusively about the Mashco. urgency; it was as if the Nomole team her mouth again, giggling. One of the team members, an anthro- had crossed the river to play with a group The team spent the rest of the day pologist named Waldo Maldonado, was of largely mute children. A couple of making notes and going over photos, a voluble presence in the conversation. the younger Mashco swarmed Ponceano identifying the Mashco who had ap- Maldonado, a short, bearded man with and made him race with them, back and peared, while Ponceano translated their a fondness for Indiana Jones-style leather forth from the tree line to the shore. names. Kamotolo meant “honeybee.” boots, was from Cuzco, and before join- They seemed delighted by his chubbi- The younger man was Tkotko (“king ing the Department of Native Isolated ness. One of the women approached vulture”), and the two women were Knoy- People he had worked as a guide for Mendieta, and tugged at his shirt, a pur- gonro (“tortoise”) and Chawo (“hoatzin ecotourists in Manú National Park. He ple polo. He gently resisted, but the bird”). The children, too, were named for was trying to lose weight, and so, while woman finally got the shirt from him animals, except for one toddler, Serolo- the rest of us ate dinner, he would un- and pulled it on. geri, whose name meant “ripe banana.” furl a piece of embroidered Andean cloth When the team climbed into the The Mashco had carefully examined and take out a bag of coca leaves. As the peke-peke to leave, the Mashco lined the Nomole team’s gear and clothing— evenings wore on, he would become more up to watch. As the boat pulled away, looking, Ponceano believed, for weap- animated, chewing coca and rolling cig- Kamotolo began staring at us and ons, or for anything else they might find arettes—organic tobacco, he assured me. shouting. I had seen him questioning useful. They had removed the draw- One evening, Maldonado said, “These Ponceano about us, pointing in our di- string from Laureano’s shorts and kept people are all going to come out. It’s in- rection. Now, without the team there it. Kamotolo had been interested in Pon- evitable. The question is how we man- to distract them, the Mashco began ceano’s shorts, too, but then he noticed age it to make sure that their coming throwing rocks, which splashed into a big hole in the crotch and told him out does not result in their extinction.” the river. We hastily followed the No- to keep them. The anthropologists agonized over the mole team back to the outpost. Ponceano had inquired about the ethics of their work, with a concern that

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 47 seemed nearly parental. They wanted Her father was a Mashco who had been Mashco. The children ran toward him, to teach the Mashco to fish, for instance, captured as a small boy by Shaco Flores their arms outstretched. but worried that they’d choke on bones. and raised by his family, so that he could One of the boatmen with me recog- They were especially uncertain about serve as a translator in contacts. Nelly nized the man as Father Pedro Rey, a how to handle the raids on chacras. If referred to Shaco, who was Matsigenka, priest from a Dominican mission up- they planted farmland for the Mashco, as her grandfather. But she also thought river. He called out, “Padre Burro! Padre it would provide them with yucca and of the encounters with the Mashco as Mentiroso! ”—“Father Donkey! Father bananas, giving them less reason to in- a kind of reunion. “When I go to see Liar!” As Maldonado ran toward the vade other people’s property. But they them, I tell them I’m a relative,” she said, shoreline, yelling irately, the priest would have to depend on the state to and smiled. abruptly set down his gifts and headed teach them each step of the process. back down the river. Before long, he had “The big question is, can the Mashco he following Sunday, the vanished into the jungle. remain hunter-gatherers for another Mashco returned on schedule. A hundred years?” Shepard said. routineT had set in, with the Nomole he Nomole team was outraged Maldonado described the Mashco’s team handing over bananas, running at the intrusion. “What right do condition as an update of the hunter- races, and being embraced and searched. priestsT have to go against state law?” gatherer life style: they had figured out From the sandbar, I watched as Kamo- Maldonado said indignantly. Rey, he ex- where the villages were, and what they tolo squatted by a fire set among the plained, was a Spanish missionary who could get from them, but they seemed rocks on the shore, tending to some- had been in Madre de Dios for eigh- uninterested in settled life. His greater thing as it cooked: a stingray that he teen years, and had long promoted con- concern was abject dependence. “Will had spotted in shallow water and killed tact with the aislados. they become beggars now? Are they with an arrow. Rey was scheduled to lead Mass that going to stay on the beach and call out There were signs of a tentative open- evening in Boca de Manú, a village to the boats and say, ‘I want this and I ing. The Mashco had been fascinated downriver, and I found him there hav- want that’? In my heart, I don’t know by Ponceano’s camera, which they called ing dinner in a saloon. He sat alone, a if I’m doing the right thing.” Big-Eye, and, after Ponceano allowed wiry man with glasses and salt-and- The team members agreed that the one of them to hold it, he realized that pepper stubble. At the next table, Mat- Mashco were not really “uncontacted.” it was missing. The Mashco feigned ig- sigenka rivermen were drinking litre Shepard maintained that they had been norance, but finally a boy named Wasese bottles of Cuzqueña beer, shouting ebul- contacted a century ago, when Fitzcar- admitted that they had brought it to liently and swaying in their chairs. Rey rald invaded their territory, and that the “the older ones, those who stay in the quietly ignored them. After he finished survivors had isolated themselves by forest,” and asked if Ponceano wanted his meal, I introduced myself, and he choice. Now they appeared to be seek- to come and get it back. Ponceano asked, invited me to his church, where he had ing contact again, and perhaps it was “Will they kill me?” Wasese replied, “I to prepare for the Mass. unfair to stop them. The anthropolo- don’t know, maybe.” The church, several hundred feet away gists Hill and Walker argue that the im- On the shore, I could see Maldo- along a footpath, was a cinder-block pulse to engage seems universal. “Peo- nado making faces with the children. structure with a simple altar and a dozen ple want to trade,” they wrote. “And they Mendieta scribbled notes and took pic- wooden pews. Sitting in a pew, Rey told crave exposure to new ideas and new tures; at one point, he tried to inspect me that he was happy to see the Mashco opportunities. Humans are a gregarious the teeth of several of the Mashco. The defended but skeptical of the govern- species.” By seeking out bananas and young man named Tkotko pulled Flores ment’s motives. “The state is protecting tools, though, Kamotolo’s group might aside and spoke to her intently. She ex- its interests, not those of the indígenas,” have begun a path toward inevitable as- plained later that he had asked if she he said. The Nomole team had discour- similation. The Yine in Diamante still wanted to “lie down” with him and be aged the Mashco from dealing with any- speak their own language, but almost his woman. She had dodged his invita- one but them, missionaries included, all of them wear Western clothing, drink tion with a universal fib: she already had which Rey described as a moral afront: beer, and send their children to schools a boyfriend. “Those people have rights, and the right where they are taught in Spanish. As they talked, there was the sound to communication, too, but they are being The Mashco and their Yine cous- of a motor, and a boat appeared, head- impeded from exercising that right.” ins have been increasingly aware of one ing downriver. In the prow, a bearded He went on, “We in the Church another. In the seventies, a Mashco white man wearing a kepi-like hat stood have a hundred years of experience woman and her daughters, who be- with the rigid posture of a conquista- making contact. But, among govern- came known as the Three Marías, wan- dor. Maldonado and the others were ment ofcials, there are people who dered out of the woods and camped startled: they stopped what they were have never seen an Indian!” Rey’s mis- near a park ranger’s station. After a few doing and began shouting and waving sion had been established in the days years of dislocation and confusion, they at him not to interfere. The boat sped of the caucheros, and in his telling it were taken to nearby villages, and the past, but a moment later it swung back had rescued many of their victims. daughters eventually married local men. around, pulling close to the shore, and “When we came here, the rivers were Nelly Flores herself was half-Mashco. the man held out six machetes to the clogged with bodies,” he said, grimacing.

48 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 By other accounts, the efect of the ation that Torres felt was awkward but I wouldn’t leave this jungle until I em- mission was disastrous. An Amarakaeri unavoidable. braced them and was able to tell them leader in the region told me that Rey’s Álvarez lived in Diamante, and one that they were not alone in this world.” contact with the Mashco was “outra- afternoon I found him there. He was His chance came in March, 2015, geous,” given the Dominicans’ previous sawing wooden planks in the entry of when he heard that the Mashco were results. “He’s trying to do what they did a half-constructed church, which he was going to emerge on the riverbank. “I felt with us, in a forced contact,” he said. “We building atop a concrete slab the size of a little scared,” he recalled, smiling were once fifteen thousand. Now we’re a basketball court; a sign said “Asam- broadly. “There were three of them, men, less than two thousand.” But there was blea de Dios.” Álvarez, a muscular, goa- and I gave them my hand and I hugged no question that the missionaries were teed man of fifty-five with prominent them, too, and at that moment I knew better established here than the state was, teeth, said that for years he had worked this was God’s mission for me.” The and Rey described the conflict with Mal- as a logger in the jungle, but at the age Ministry of Culture had pressed Álva- rez to stop meeting the Mashco, but he had persisted, bringing them bananas. He also brought clothes, until he real- ized that they didn’t wear them. “It seems that clothing disturbs them,” he told me. “They’ll have to be taught how to use clothes, I guess.” Waving around at the church, Álvarez said, “Every day, in my services, we pray for them here. For them, Satan and sin doesn’t exist. They don’t know about all those things. But God is merciful.” Álvarez complained that the author- ities had prohibited others from having contact, but were conducting encoun- ters themselves. “It seems they have some kind of concealed plan,” he said con- fidingly. “One day, it will come to light.” When I asked where the Mashco would be in five years, he brightened and re- plied, “They will be evangelizing on be- half of the Church, because the Lord’s word is powerful.”

he team’s greatest concern was the Mashco’s health. Controlled contactT is impossible without intense medical supervision: the societal equiv- alent, perhaps, of an organ transplant. Nena, a Yine woman whose land was invaded by the Mashco. In the first encounter, Mendieta had found that everyone was basically donado as an interruption in an other- of thirty he had found God and re- healthy. Now, though, Kamotolo’s wise cordial relationship. “I always give nounced his previous life. He told me, mother, Puthana, was coughing, and so the Mashco machetes when I pass by,” “My work now is evangelism, and God was Kwangonro; Wasese had inflamed he said. “The guards at the outpost have has work to do here on earth.” tonsils. The doctor worried that they no problem with me.” He was referring, A couple of years ago, a revelation were developing full-blown flu. I realized, to the Yine agents at Nomole. had led Álvarez to Diamante. “I had a Mendieta was thirty-eight and “They say to me, ‘Father, whatever you dream—a man told me to come to the single, the son of a public prosecutor want, but not when Waldo is here.’ ” mouth of the Manú River,” he explained. and a teacher who ran a home for or- As it turned out, Flores was a fol- “So I gave a challenge to God. I said, ‘I phans. Working for Peru’s Ministry lower of Mario Álvarez, an evangelical will go if you provide me with trans- of Health, he ran a hospital near the preacher who had been trying to con- port.’ Two days later, a man knocked on Dominican mission, and was also vert the Mashco. When the government my door and ofered me a canoe and a charged with overseeing most of the began intervening in the area, the sister as a guide.” Around that time, the upper Madre de Dios region, a vast area preacher had been told to cease his con- Mashco had begun appearing. “I heard where in digenous groups lived in various tacts, but Flores, his acolyte, was still of these naked people, and saw pictures degrees of contact with civilization. able to meet with the Mashco—a situ- of them,” Álvarez said. “I decided that The Mashco were at the most primary

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 49 stage, and Mendieta had become fasci- Mendieta said. “As long as they need els, and as night fell adolescent girls nated by their situation. “We realized things from us, they’re going to be there, came out to stand on the verge, ready we had to do something, but there was on the riverbanks, exposed to everything for the evening’s business. no budget,” he told me. When the Min- that comes along.” He paused. “The bot- Puerto Maldonado was founded by istry of Culture got involved, he began tom line is, we want their lives to be re- Fitzcarrald, and a main avenue there visiting surrounding communities to spected. The problem is that a lot of peo- still bears his name; guides take tour- educate local people and to inoculate ple in Peru don’t care about them at all.” ists downriver to view the wreck of the them against communicable diseases. iron boat that is said to have carried him Still, he was sure that eventually the eru’s national government is to his death. I had not been to the city Mashco would be stricken with an ep- mostly absent from Madre de Dios, in four decades, and in that time it had idemic, and their remoteness would Pso the future of its wilderness, and of grown from a wooden-shack backwa- make it difcult to treat. He said that the Mashco, depends on a few regional ter into a sprawling grid of a hundred isolated communities struck by viruses politicians in Puerto Maldonado. The thousand people. A bridge now crossed were governed by a “three-day rule”: capital is hundreds of miles from the the Madre de Dios, and a road extended children invariably began dying on the Mashco’s territory, a daylong trip. I set all the way to the border with Brazil; third day. In Madre de Dios, he had out by boat early one morning, and spent others led south to Bolivia and west to sometimes arrived too late. hours floating past dozens of illegal log- Cuzco. The only gap in the expanding For now, though, vaccinations were ging camps. Finally, I saw a small trib- road system was to the north, where out of the question; the Mashco were utary rushing into the Madre de Dios, Governor Otsuka wanted to push the still not entirely comfortable being ex- and realized that I was near the unin- road through the jungle alongside amined. Even donated clothing carried habited stretch where I had made camp Mashco territory. the risk of disease, and he fretted about decades ago. Where once there was a Otsuka had rushed of to tend to an the polo shirt that he had lost to the deserted riverbank, now pickup trucks emergency at a mining camp, where gas Mashco woman. He reassured himself roared up to discharge people into boats, cannisters had exploded, but his deputy that the shirt had been freshly washed, while gaudily painted buses waited for at the time, Eduardo Salhuana, was there and that it probably wouldn’t be worn them on the other side. I boarded a bus, when I arrived. A longtime political for long. Wasese had reported that when and followed a dirt road through a for- player in the region, as well as Peru’s they returned to camp the “older ones” est that was being burned by ranchers; former minister of justice, Salhuana was took the clothing away and burned it— the blaze was so intense that smoke ob- regarded as the real power broker in perhaps to prevent illness or perhaps scured the horizon. Eventually, a paved Madre de Dios. He greeted me coldly merely to destroy a vestige of the out- road led to Puerto Maldonado, through and led me into his ofce. side world. an area where hundreds of gold-min- When I pointed out that the gold-min- The Nomole team felt certain that ing camps have been carved out of the ing areas seemed totally unregulated, with more Mashco would come out of the jungle—home to as many as fifty thou- miners brazenly using banned chemicals forest. “In five years, we’re probably going sand miners. There were a few roadside and machines, Salhuana described it as to have forty or fifty people to deal with,” boomtowns, with bars, shops, and broth- inevitable. “There’s a lot of gold in Madre de Dios, but only 6.7 per cent of the re- gion is legally available for mining,” he complained. Madre de Dios had reserves worth billions of dollars, he added, and as prospectors poured in they had no choice but to break the law. Salhuana ac- knowledged that corruption, prostitution, and other crimes were rife, and that Puerto Maldonado had become a major transit point for cocaine. But, in his telling, all the problems were the fault of the na- tional government, which did nothing to enforce its own laws in the region. In any case, Salhuana said, the laws were already too strict. “Sixty-five per cent of the territory of Madre de Dios has been classified as protected area, with fifteen per cent given to indige- nous reserves,” he said. (In fact, barely half of the area is restricted, with about ten per cent set aside for indigenous people.) “So much land is protected that there is not much left for people to do anything with. But they are asking us, I followed Maldonado to the edge of tolo had asked, excitedly, “Are they good ‘Where is there left for us to work?’ ” the bluf. Through binoculars, we saw people? Shall we call them?” Ponceano When I asked about the road that three men emerge from the forest. None had said no, and they had let the boat would open up the Mashco area, he re- of the women or children were with pass. The Mashco had told the other plied, “The road isn’t defined as an of- them. Maldonado was nervous. “Where Yine agents to look after Ponceano and cial project yet. In any event, the peo- are the women?” he asked. “What’s make sure nothing happened to him. ple of the area are yearning to be better going on?” He told the team, which “They’ve invited me to join them,” he connected with Puerto Maldonado.” I had started carrying bananas down to said, laughing. “I just say, ‘Another day.’ ” mentioned the sordid roadside settle- the peke-peke, to stand by. As we readied our boats to cross back ments north of the city. Was that what As Maldonado spoke, however, a line to Nomole, Maldonado confessed that he wanted for the area around Nomole? of women and children began he had chewed too much “Any infrastructure project will obvi- appearing from the forest. coca the night before. Un- ously have an impact,” Salhuana replied. He whooped with relief and able to sleep, he had lain “But there’s also a lot of poverty in the ran down to join the peke- awake fretting about the indigenous communities. The other op- peke. On the opposite shore, Mashco. “All I could think tion is to leave them as they are.” Tkotko roared like a jaguar about was ‘Are they all right? at him, then laughed up- Are they sick?’ ” But Men- he nomole team’s mission to con- roariously, explaining in dieta found that Puthana’s tact the Mashco was inspired by pantomime that his eyes cough had abated, and so killings,T and by the fear that there might looked as if they were go- had Kwangonro’s. Wasese’s be more. In the end, though, the killers’ ing to pop out of his head. sore throat appeared to have motivations remained elusive. When I There appeared to be growing trust gone away, too. For now, the Mashco asked Nelly why Shaco Flores had been between the two groups. The Nomole seemed safe. killed, she shrugged; despite her family team had instructed Kamotolo to meet A few days later, I flew out of Puerto relationship with the Mashco, she seemed only with them, and he seemed to have Maldonado, on the first leg of the trip to find their behavior impossible to pre- complied, moving his family to a closer home. As the airplane banked over the dict. During encounters, she said, “They camp, about three hours’ walk away. jungle, I could see the great river, loop- hold my hands, get into the boat, and Maldonado said that the relationship ing like liquid silver below. Then, for say, ‘Take us to your house.’ But we can’t. was limited: “Our conversations are several long minutes, the jungle disap- They might shoot us with arrows.” very basic. He asks things like ‘Are you peared, replaced by an expanse of giant Shepard thinks that Shaco was killed married?’ ‘Do you have kids?’ ” And he craters. The scale of destruction was because he stopped giving the Mashco had few illusions about the Mashco’s breathtaking: it was reminiscent of ae- things. “They became angry,” he said. motives: “He keeps coming because he rial photographs of North Vietnam It was unclear why Shaco had changed knows he can get things.” But he had after it was carpet- bombed by B-52s. his habits: perhaps indigenous-rights become fond of Kamotolo, who was I realized that I was looking at the groups had encouraged him to leave the right age to be his son. Laughing, goldfields of Madre de Dios. the Mashco alone, or perhaps it had he recalled the time that Kamotolo had In Lima, the uneven efects of Peru’s become too expensive to continue the searched their peke-peke and found a new wealth were evident. Around the handouts. Either way, the contact had pair of panties left behind by a French city, beggars work the trafc intersec- created a dependency that was painful journalist as she changed into her swim- tions near gaudy casinos, and rivers brim to break. “He had got them basically suit. He had put them on, backward. with trash. Crime is rampant, so most hooked on bananas and pots and pans,” The Mashco seemed to have a spe- homes are protected by iron bars on the Shepard said. cial bond with Ponceano, whom they doors and windows and by walls topped For the Nomole crew, it was a re- sometimes adorned with a crown of by razor wire; armed guards abound. minder that their work entailed real leaves. He attributed his influence to Before I left, I stopped by the De- dangers. One afternoon, keeping watch a vision that one of the Mashco women partment of Native Isolated People, in a on the bluf, Maldonado spoke about had after taking a hallucinogen derived massive concrete government building the history of attacks in Brazil, where from the Amazonian flower floripon- overlooking a noisy highway. Torres was more than sixty contact agents had dio. When they met, he recalled, the there, with his boss, Patricia Balbuena been killed by aislados in the past forty woman had asked him his name. When Palacios, the vice-minister of intercul- years. Apparently, the greatest risk came he told her his Yine name, Yotlot, mean- turality. I asked Balbuena whether the after a bond of familiarity had been es- ing “river otter,” she had exclaimed, Mashco would still exist in five years. tablished. According to one theory, the “Oh, you are Yotlot! I knew you were “Hopefully they’ll last a little longer aislados were provoked by fears that the coming today.” than that,” she said. “Maybe we won’t be outsiders’ gentle approach masked a After that, he said, the Mashco had able to stop the changes, but maybe we plan to log their land, take their women, regarded him as their primary link to can slow them down. The changes are and kill their men. the outside world. He told me about going to continue, though, and, in the As we talked, we heard the whis- standing with them on the riverbank end, the ones who are going to survive tling that announced the Mashco, and when a logger’s boat appeared. Kamo- will be those best able to adapt.” 

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 51 PERSONAL HISTORY LOVE IN TRANSLATION

Would I be a different person in French? BY LAUREN COLLINS

moved to Geneva to be with my roommate told him, six weeks into the “Huh?” I replied, continuing to dab husband, Olivier, who had moved term. “When you got here, you couldn’t at the puddle. there because his job required him speak a word.” At that point, Olivier “Their capillarity isn’t very good.” Ito. My restaurant French was just pass- had been studying English for more “What are you talking about? That’s able. Drugstore French was a stretch. than a decade. not even a word.” IKEA French was pretty much out of After England, he moved to Cali- Olivier said nothing. A few days later, the question, meaning that, since Oliv ier, fornia to pursue a Ph.D., still barely I noticed a piece of paper lying in the a native speaker, worked twice as many able to cobble together a sentence. His printer tray. It was a page from the Mer- hours a week as Swiss stores were open, début as a teaching assistant for a fresh- riam-Webster online dictionary: we went for months without things man course in calculus was greeted by Capillarity noun ka-pə-’ler-ə-tē, -’la-rə-. like lamps. a mass defection. On the plus side, one 1 : the property or state of being capillary We had established our life together day he looked out upon the residue 2 : the action by which the surface of a liq- in London, where we met on more or of the crowd and saw a female student uid where it is in contact with a solid (as in a capillary tube) is elevated or depressed de- less neutral ground: his continent, my wearing a T-shirt that read “Bonjour, pending on the relative attraction of the mol- language. It worked. Olivier was my Paris!” ecules of the liquid for each other and for those guide to living outside the behemoth By the time we met, Olivier had be- of the solid. of American culture; I was his guide to come not only a proficient speaker but living inside the behemoth of English. a sensitive, agile one. Upon moving to Ink to a nib, my heart surged. He had learned the language over London, in 2007, he’d had to take an the course of many years. When he English test in order to obtain his li- till, we often had, in some weirdly was in his teens, his parents sent him cense as an amateur pilot. The exam- basic sense, a hard time understand- to Saugerties, New York, for a homestay iner rated him “Expert”: “Able to speak Sing each other. The critic George Steiner with some acquaintances of an Amer- at length with a natural, efortless flow. defined intimacy as “confident, quasi- ican they knew. Olivier landed at JFK, Varies speech flow for stylistic efect, immediate translation,” a state of in- where a taxi picked him up. This was e.g. to emphasize a point. Uses appro- creasingly one-to-one correspondence around the time of the Atlanta Olym- priate discourse markers and connec- in which “the external vulgate and the pic Games. tors spontaneously.” private mass of language grow more and “What is the English for ‘female ath- I knew Olivier only in his third lan- more concordant.” Translation, he ex- lete’?” he asked, wanting to be prepared guage—he also spoke Spanish, the na- plained, occurs both across and inside to discuss current events. tive language of his maternal grandpar- languages. You are performing a feat of “ ‘Bitch,’ ” the driver said. ents, who had fled over the Pyrenees interpretation anytime you attempt to They drove on toward Ulster County, during the Spanish Civil War—but his communicate with someone who is not Olivier straining for a glimpse of the powers of expression were one of the like you. Manhattan skyline. The patriarch of the things that made me fall in love with In addition to being French and host family was an arborist named Vern. him. For all his rationality, he had a ro- American, Olivier and I were translat- Olivier remembers driving around Sau- mantic streak, an attunement to the ing, to varying degrees, across a host gerties with Charlene, Vern’s wife, and currents of feeling that run beneath the of Steiner’s categories: scientist/artist, a friend of hers, who begged him over surface of words. Once, he wrote me a atheist/believer, man/woman. It seemed and over to say “hamburger.” He was letter—an inducement to what we might sometimes as if generation was one of mystified by the fact that Charlene called someday have together—in which every the few gaps across which we weren’t Vern “the Incredible Hunk.” sentence began with “Maybe.” Maybe attempting to stretch ourselves. I had Five years later, Olivier found him- he’d make me an omelette, he said, every been conditioned to believe in the im- self in England, a graduate student in day of my life. portance of directness and sincerity, mathematics. Unfortunately, his scho- We moved in together quickly. One but Olivier valued a more disciplined lastic English—“Kevin is a blue-eyed night, we were watching a movie. I spilled self-presentation. If, to me, the defini- boy” had been billed as a canonical a glass of water and went to mop it up tion of intimacy was letting it all hang phrase—had done little to prepare him with some paper towels. out, to him that constituted a form of for the realities of the language on the “They don’t have very good capillar- thoughtlessness. In the same way that ground. “You’ve really improved,” his ity,” Olivier said. Olivier liked it when I wore lipstick,

52 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 The moment for languid afternoons spent naming the knees and the eyelashes had passed. Our classroom was the kitchen. ILLUSTRATION BY ELENI KALORKOTI THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 53 or perfume—American men, in my ex- speakers to use the possessive pronoun tions, by which some people seem to perience, often claimed to prefer a more where none was strictly necessary sounded be able, nearly telepathically, to make “natural” look—he trusted in a sort of immature—stroppy, even. My dinner, themselves mutually known. emotional maquillage, in which one my book, my toy. took a few minutes to compose one’s “Whatever. It’s my language,” I’d ’m sitting at my desk one after- thoughts instead of walking around, reply. noon, surfing the Internet, when I undone, in the afective equivalent of And why, he’d want to know, had I Icome across a YouTube clip of Bradley pajamas. For him, the success of le cou- said I’d clean the kitchen when I’d only Cooper giving an interview on TF1, the ple—a relationship, in French, was some- tidied it up? I’d reply that no native French television channel. He’s trilling thing you were, not something you were speaker—by which I meant no normal his “r”s as if he’s gargling air. He even in—depended on restraint rather than person—would ever make that distinc- throws in a couple of heins. on uninhibitedness. Where I saw artifice, tion, feeling as though I were living The interviewer asks Cooper how he saw artfulness. with Andy Kaufman’s Foreign Man. His he learned French. He says that during Every couple struggles, to some ex- literalism missed the point, in a way college he spent six months living with tent, to communicate, but our difer- that was as maddening as it was easily a family in Aix-en-Provence. TF1 calls ences, concealing one another like nest- mocked. him “la coqueluche de Hollywood,” using ing dolls, inhibited our trust in each For better or worse, there was some- a word that has the unique distinction other in ways that we scarcely under- thing of about us, in the way that we of being a homonym for “heartthrob” stood. Olivier was careful of what he homed in on each other’s sentences, and “whooping cough.” said to the point of parsimony; I spent focussing too intently, as though we “Our viewers appreciate the fact that my words like an oligarch with a ter- were listening to the radio with the you spoke to us in French tonight,” the minal disease. My memory was all moods volume a notch too low. “You don’t interviewer says. and tones, while he had a transcription- seem like a married couple,” someone I click on another video, this one ist’s recall for the details of our exchanges. said, minutes after meeting us at a from an American channel called Our household spats degenerated into party. We fascinated each other and CelebTV. linguistic warfare. frustrated each other. We could go ex- “Who knew Bradley had this secret “I’ll clean the kitchen after I finish hilaratingly fast or excruciatingly slow, weapon for getting the ladies? He’s to- my dinner,” I’d say. “First, I’m going to but we often seemed hard pressed to tally fluent in French!” read my book.” find a reliable intermediate setting, a Like the presenter, I’m impressed. “My dinner,” he’d reply, in a babyish conversational cruise control. We didn’t An excellent command of French seems voice. “My book.” possess that easy shorthand, encoding like a superpower, the prerogative of so- To him, the tendency of English all manner of attitudes and assump- cialites and statesmen. I didn’t have a passport until I was in college. The pre- requisite for speaking French, I have al- ways thought, is being the kind of per- son who speaks French. I need French like a bike messenger needs a bicycle. I consider myself a fish. One day, I see a woman named Alessan- dra Sublet on television and pronounce her name “sublet,” as in what you do to an apartment, achieving a sort of reverse Tar-zhay efect. But there’s Bradley Cooper, nailing his uvular fricatives on the evening news. I tell myself the same thing I do when faced with such challenges as doing my taxes: if that guy can hack it, I can, too. Maybe you speak French not because you’re privileged; you’re privileged be- cause you speak French. The language suddenly seems mine for the taking, a practical skill. Herbert Hoover was fluent in Mandarin. On a blustery morning in mid-March, I report for my first day of school. The entryway is shaded by a metal canopy, topped by a mint-green neon sign (“ECOLE-CLUB”). Inside, a canteen ofers hot meals, eaten on damp trays. Sleepy- perate climate, several discothèques, saically, he is completely deaf in his eyed students take their cofee at tables and a thirteenth-century fort. Lana is right ear (childhood meningitis). He’s of teal linoleum. Smoking is no longer in Geneva with her husband, who works freakishly adept at keeping up with con- allowed, but its accretions remain, add- at a bank. She doesn’t mention a job, versation—even in another language, ing to the sensation of having enrolled but she looks like a salon model, with even at a fifty-per-cent disadvantage— in a laundromat in 1973. crimson fingernails and thick brown but, in order to hear, he has to turn his I climb the stairs to Room 401. We’re hair, plaited like that of a dressage con- head so that he’s looking almost directly a dozen or so, sitting at four tables testant. She is the second of three sis- over his right shoulder, which forces arranged in a rectangle. For the next ters. She takes copious notes with a him to speak out of the far left corner month, we will meet five hours a day. mechanical pencil that she produces of his mouth, as though he’s perpetu- The professor introduces herself. She is from a plastic case. When she makes ally telling a dirty joke. Enunciation is Swiss, in her sixties, with leopard-print a mistake, she scrubs at it with a gum not his strong suit. His syntax can be bifocals and a banana clip. eraser, delicately blowing the leavings equally askance. He starts sentences and “I am Dominique. Just call me Do- from the page, as though she were wish- lets them trail of, circling back after mi nique. Not Madame—Dominique. I ing on a dandelion. he’s put whatever he was going to say will tutoyer you. You can tutoyer me, too,” It’s Lana’s turn to introduce me. “Je through another lap of thought. she says, indicating that we’re all to use vous présente Lauren.” Lana explains that We don’t speak French as regularly the informal form of address. “I’m from I come from a village in North Caro- as we should. We try, but it’s hard, with Lausanne.” lina. I like books and travelling. Lana English at our disposal, to summon the Lausanne, by train, is thirty-three does an impeccable job, except that she will power to dial back to a frequency minutes from Geneva. says magasin américain instead of mag- devoid of complexity, color, and jokes. “The genevois,” she adds, “consider azine américain, so everyone thinks I Had my language skills developed in the lausannois very provincial.” work in an American store instead of tandem with our relationship—the abil- The class is intensive French B1—a for an American magazine. ity to say things mirroring my desire to level into which I’ve placed after taking say them—we might have got into the an online test. According to the diag- upposedly, the best way to mas- habit. But the moment for languid af- nostic, I can get by in everyday situa- ter a foreign language is to fall in ternoons spent naming the knees and tions, but I can’t explain myself sponta- Slove with a native speaker. Language, the eyelashes has passed. Our classroom neously and clearly on a great number in delineating a boundary that can be is the kitchen after a long day, extractor of subjects. This is true: like a soap-op- transgressed, is full of romantic poten- fan howling. Olivier’s uptight (he can’t era amnesiac, I’m at a loss to articulate tial. For the philosopher Emmanuel let a mistake go without correcting it). things of which I do not have direct Levinas, the erotic intention amounted I’m impatient (the moment I make one, experience. Still, I’m pleased that after to a “sublime hunger” for the other, the I cave). We can’t seem to lower our in- eight months in Geneva my piecemeal more foreign the more delectating. It hibitions and just let the conversation eforts at picking up the language, which is no accident that the metonym for flow, the way you’re supposed to do to consist mostly of reading free newspa- language is a tongue, not an ear, an eye, enter another language. When I try out pers, have promoted me from the bas- or a prehensile thumb. A willingness a new word, I feel conspicuous, as though est ranks of ignorance. One day, when to take one on—to take one in, filling I’m test-driving a car I can’t aford. It’s the front-page headline reads “Une task one’s mouth with another’s words— hard for me, as someone for whom En- force pour contrôler les marrons chauds,” I suggests pliancy, openness to entice- glish is a livelihood, to embrace my sta- grasp that Geneva is about to sic the ment. It worked for Catherine of Valois tus as an amateur in French. I’m the op- police on the venders of hot chestnuts. (Henry V, English) and for Jane Fonda posite of Eliza Doolittle: I don’t want “Alors! ” Dominique says. (Roger Vadim, French). One can only to speak like a lady in a flower shop; I For our first classroom assignment, hope that one day the hardworking farm want to speak grammar. we’re to conduct a conversation with the boy from Rosetta Stone dazzles the Ital- person next to us, and then introduce him ian supermodel with his command of espite its pretensions to clar- or her to the group. We spend the next the congiun tivo trapassato. ity, French can be maddening. Vert ten minutes chatting haltingly—an Love is both the cause and the con- D(green), verre (glass), ver (worm), vers awkward silence passes over the crowd tinuance of my commitment to learn- (toward), and vair (squirrel fur) consti- roughly every twenty seconds—before ing French, its tinder and its fuel wood, tute a quintuple homophone, not even Dominique calls the class to attention. but, pedagogically, I’m not having great counting verts, verres, and vers. ( You “Lauren, you will be my first victim!” luck with the soul-mate method. Oli- don’t pronounce the final “s” in French.) A Hacky Sack, confirming that I vier does not materialize at the tinkle Folklorists have argued for decades over have the floor, comes sailing across of a handbell, as did Abdul Karim— whether Cinderella’s pantoufles de verre the room. a twenty-four-year-old table servant might have come about as a mishear- “Je vous présente Lana,” I begin. who became Queen Victoria’s closest ing, on Charles Perrault’s part, of pan- Lana, a twenty-six-year-old Bos- confidant, teaching her Urdu—or toufles de vair. The subjunctive is a wish. nian Serb, likes gymnastics. She comes proofread my letters, blotting my mis- Gender’s a bitch. Le poêle: a stove. La from Banja Luka, a town with a tem- takes with light pink paper. More pro- poêle: a frying pan. A man’s shirt, une

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 55 chemise, is feminine, but a woman’s shirt, darin. Thanks to the Normans, who in- author Prosper Mérimée to concoct an un chemisier, is masculine. vaded England in the eleventh century, entertainment. Mérimée gathered the Linguists have attempted to make somewhere between a quarter and half party. He handed out pens and paper, an objective assessment of the relative of the basic English vocabulary comes instructing the guests to jot down the difculty of languages by breaking them from French. An English speaker who composition he was about to read. down into parts. One factor is the level has never set foot in a bistro already When he had finished reading, the of inflection, or the amount of informa- knows an estimated fifteen thousand guests handed in their papers, and Mé- tion that a language carries on a single words of French. rimée tallied the results: in the course word. The languages of large, literate The challenge is figuring out which of a hundred and sixty-nine words, Na- societies usually have larger vocabular- ones. Is “challenge,” for example, some- poleon III made seventy-five mistakes, ies. You might think that their struc- thing else entirely in French, or just a Eugénie sixty-two, and Alexandre Dumas tures are also more elaborate, but the matter of Coopering out a “shallonge”? twenty-four. The winner was Prince Met- opposite is generally true: the simpler French is notably not a hospitable en- ternich, of Austria, with only three mis- the society, the more baroque its mor- vironment in which to try your hand. takes. Dumas, auto-chastising, turned phology. In Archi, a language spoken in The thing that’s tough about French to him and said, “When will you pre- the village of Archib, in southern Dage- is the thing that’s exemplary about s ent yourself at the Academy, to teach stan, a single verb—taking into account French, which is that French speakers us how to spell?” prefixes and sufxes and other modifi- across the board are language nuts. cations—can occur in 1,502,839 difer- Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow ondays, Wednesdays, and Fri- ent forms. This makes sense, if you think write in “The Story of French,” “De- days, we have Luisa, a stout Ven- about it. Because large societies have bates about grammar rules and accept- Mezuelan Frenchwoman with cantilevered frequent interaction with outsiders, their able vocabulary are part of the intel- gray curls. Luisa speaks quickly and cor- languages undergo simplification. Mem- lectual landscape and a regular topic rectly. She does not welcome questions. bers of relatively homogeneous groups, of small talk among francophones of Every morning, she greets us—she’s a on the other hand, share a base of com- all classes and origins—a bit like mov- vous woman—with a scowl. mon knowledge, enabling them to pile ies in Anglo-American culture.” Class opens briskly. We turn to Chap- on declensions without confusing one American politicians play golf or ter 2, “Come to My House!” The topic another. Small languages stay spiky. But, sing in barbershop quartets; French of discussion is cohabitation. amid waves of contact, large languages statesmen moonlight as men of letters. Luisa zeros in on Satomi, a Japanese lose their sharp edges, becoming bev- Charles de Gaulle was famous for res- academic. elled as pieces of glass. urrecting obscure bits of vocabulary, such “Tell me about your living situation, Another way to try to rate the dif- as quarteron (a small band) and chienlit Satomi.” culty of a language is to consider its (a chaotic carnival), which had last been “I live with my husband,” Satomi unusual features: putting the verb be- heard sometime around the sixteenth says quietly. “He’s American.” fore the subject in a sentence, for ex- century. It took Olivier three weeks and “Is he an ideal roommate?” Luisa ample, or not having a question parti- a working group of twice as many rela- asks. cle (“do”). Researchers analyzed two tives to settle on the French text of our “Yes, but sometimes he uses my hundred and thirty-nine languages to wedding invitation, which read, in its toothbrush,” Satomi says, daring to create the Language Weird- entirety, “Together with our elaborate. ness Index, anointing Chal- families, we request the plea- “That’s an intimate violation!” Luisa catongo Mixtec—a verb-ini- sure of your company at a barks. tial tonal language spoken by wedding lunch.” The ideas Satomi withdraws as quickly as a slap six thousand people in Oa- of excellence and failure are bracelet. xaca—the world’s oddest lan- so intimately linked in French Luisa turns to Scotty, who is from guage. The most conven- that what passes for a com- Alaska, which, she says, is “not really tional was Hindi, with only pliment is to say that someone part of the U.S.” a single unusual feature, pred- has un français châtié—a well- “Scotty, what are the qualities of the icative possession. English punished French. Olivier has ideal roommate?” came in thirty-third, making fond memories of watching “They have to be nice,” she replies. it a third as weird as German but seven the grammarian Bernard Pivot, a na- “And, for you, what is nice?” times weirder than Purépecha. tional celebrity, administer the Dicos “Friendly?” According to the Foreign Service In- d’Or, a live televised tournament in which “Friendly seems a little extreme,” stitute of the U.S. State Department, contestants vied to transcribe most ac- Luisa says, her eyebrow jerking up. French is among the easiest languages curately a dictated text—the Super Bowl Scotty thinks for a moment. for an English speaker to learn. It re- of orthography. “The ideal roommate shouldn’t quires an estimated six hundred hours Pivot’s competition was inspired by smoke?” of instruction, versus approximately the dictée de Mérimée. On a rainy day in Most of the class nods in agreement. eleven hundred for Pashto or Xhosa and 1857, at Fontainebleau, the royal coun- But there is sniggering from the corner twenty-two hundred for Arabic or Man- try estate, Empress Eugénie asked the where several Italians sit en bloc. “Yeah,

56 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 maybe for you,” one of them says. “You’re not our ideal roommate.” Carlos, a Spanish bellboy, chimes in: “Not someone bipolar.” “No!” comes a cry from the Italian corner. It’s a woman named Cristina. “I’m an artist,” she says. “This concerns me. One day I’m happy, one day I’m not. I was living in Norway. I was a lit- tle depressed. I didn’t want to talk to my roommates, and they were the type of person that if they asked ‘How was your day?’ you had to say, ‘I took the bus, I ate a sandwich.’ After a week, we had to have a discussion about the fact that I wasn’t very communicative. But their view of communication was exaggerated.” “Listen, it’s a matter of respect,” Car- los replies, fingering a black cord that he wears around his neck. “If you have a bad day, you don’t have to put it on the •• other person.” Carlos is right, but he’s driving me delight, I know the diference between words are connected by the liaison sys- nuts with his inability to stop actually un éléphant (a male elephant), une tem, in which a word ending in a con- answering the questions instead of éléphant (a female elephant), and un sonant links to the next one if it begins merely demonstrating his ability to do éléphanteau (a baby elephant of either with a vowel. They’re impressionable, a so. You say tomato, Carlos says the prob- sex). little bit fickle, behaving diferently de- lem these days is that when you ship My vocabulary is beginning to im- pending on whom they’re with. A French food it loses its vitamins. prove. I treasure each acquisition, re- word, if all its friends did, would defi- Lana raises her hand. membering the exact circumstances— nitely jump of the Brooklyn Bridge. “My boyfriend—my ex—and I time, place, company—under which it As for Dominique’s suggestion that bought an apartment in Bosnia,” she was made. English is a trust fund, an we could become fluent by watching says. “But the problem was that we never unearned inheritance, but I’ve worked TV, I find sitcoms and reality shows— fought. One day, a woman telephoned for every bit of French I’ve banked. In with their fast, slangy dialogue and se- me and she said that she was with him. French, words have tastes and textures. rial plots—extremely hard to follow if I told him about it, and he asked me They come in colors and smells. Ruban I don’t already know what’s happening. how did I know it was true. I said that is scarlet and scratchy, the stuf we I decide to start with the radio, which she had described our apartment—right bought before a costume party to tie a in elocution makes up for what it lacks down to the sheets on the bed.” letter “A” around my neck. Hirondelle in context clues. Every morning, while Luisa, stone-faced, waits a minute will always be an easy hike on a gray I’m getting ready, I turn on Radio France before responding. day in May. We’re ticking of the Sta- Internationale. At first, I listen to the “C’est la vie, non?” tions of the Cross, which a Savoyard previous day’s news in français facile, fol- devout has installed on the rocky slope lowing along with the transcript that ominique says that we can ab- we’re scampering up, Olivier becoming RFI posts on the Internet, for learners sorb the language by osmosis. We the first man to ascend a pre-Alp while around the world, every afternoon. Dshould have the television or the radio carrying a golf umbrella. “Une hirondelle Français facile is in fact quite dif- on whenever we’re home. I’m militant ne fait pas le printemps” (“One swallow cult. In “Eight Months on Ghazzah about following this piece of advice, as— doesn’t make a spring”), he says, citing Street,” her novel about an English- in inverse relationship to my daily a typically gloomy French proverb. The woman who moves to Jeddah with her needs—I can read and write, and even sky rips open as we reach Calvary. husband, Hilary Mantel—an English- speak, in French much better than I can But French—for me, at least—is an woman who moved to Jeddah with her comprehend it. But bit by bit the lan- exceedingly tough language to crack by husband, in 1983—describes the pro- guage is taking shape, definite articles ear. If English is difcult to pronounce, tagonist’s eforts to learn Arabic. “An- and nouns and indirect objects and verbs French presents learners with the op- drew took her to the bookshop at the and prepositional phrases hanging of posite problem: easy to say, hard to hear. Caravan Shopping Center,” Mantel subjects and predicates and predicate Every syllable is accented equally, mak- writes. “She bought a language tape, complements like a Calder mobile. ing it difcult to figure out where one and a book to go with it, and during Conjugations are coming along. To my word ends and the next begins. French Jamadi al-awal she pored over this book,

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 57 and set the careful slow voice of the be saying quoi a lot. Even as it dawns families, spoken from Greenland to Si- language tutor echoing through [the on me that I may have pledged lifelong beria. Nor, as the linguist Geofrey Pul- apartment]. ‘Good morning. Good fealty to a man who ends every sentence lum explains, are Eskimo languages morning, how are you? Well, praise be with the equivalent of “dude,” I’m taken actually especially rich in snow termi - to God. Welcome! Will you drink by an eerie joy. Four years after having nol ogy. What they are rich in is sufxes, cofee? How are your children? How met Olivier, I’m hearing his voice for which allow their speakers to build end- is your wife?’ ” Despite her intelligence the first time. less variations upon a small base of root and industry—she’s a cartographer by words. (If you’re tallying derivations, trade, with a surfeit of free time—the CHNAPSIDEE—the way a German Eskimo languages also have a multi- woman is strangely impotent. Arabic would describe a plan he’d hatched tude of words for sun.) Sticking strictly won’t take. Sunder the influence of alcohol. Pilkun- to lexemes, or minimal meaningful units Her frustration resonates with me. nussija—Finnish for “comma fucker,” a of language, Anthony C. Woodbury has My eforts at French leave me at once grammar pedant. In Mundari, ribuy- catalogued about fifteen distinct snow inert and exhausted, as though I’ve tibuy refers to the sight, sound, and mo- words in one Eskimo language, Central been dog-paddling in a pool of stand- tion of a fat person’s buttocks. Jayus, in Alaskan Yupik—roughly the same num- ing water. But as the weeks go by the Indonesian, denotes a joke told so poorly ber as there are in English. A cartoon, liaisons begin to sound less murky. I that people can’t help but laugh. Knull- mocking our credulity, features two Es- drop the script and start tuning in to rufs is Swedish for “post-sex hair.” Gümüş kimo speakers. One asks the other, “Did the correct morning’s broadcast, le sept- servi means “moonlight shining on the you know that in Hampstead they have neuf par Patrick Cohen. water” in Turkish. Culaccino is the Ital- fifty diferent names for bread?” Trying to understand Patrick Cohen ian word for the mark left on a table by Even if Eskimo speakers did possess is an almost physical challenge—I have a cold glass. a voluminous vocabulary for snow, or to concentrate my mental energy and Words like these are marvellous. We Hampsteaders for bread, it wouldn’t then push with all my might, straining make lists of them, compile them into prove that they were subject to some to make out the words the way one would treasuries, trade them over any dinner separate reality. Lepidopterists have to lift a dumbbell. Listening to one of table at which holders of various pass- terms for the behavior that butterflies Cohen’s guests speak about the need for ports have convened. (The German, armed exhibit at damp spots (puddling) and more women in positions of power at with Kummerspeck—“grief bacon”—will for the opening of the silk gland found companies, I think how universal that always win the day.) They’re fun to say. on the caterpillar’s lower lip (spinneret). conversation is. As I’m nodding along, They’re funny to think about, in their Architects can distinguish between ar- the thought occurs that I’ve missed a Seinfeldian particularity. They expand rowslits, bartizans, and spandrels, while feint or a negation that actually renders and concentrate the world, making it pilots speak of upwash and adverse yaw. the entire argument the opposite of what bigger-spirited while at the same time New words are created every day by peo- I’ve understood it to be. Maybe I’ve got more specific. In Russian, you can’t call ple who are able to comprehend their the right topic but not the stance, and the sky “blue.” The language obliges its meanings before they exist. Novel lan- the guest is actually anti-women exec- speakers to make a distinction between guage can be a function of time as well utives. An unreliable auditor, I can’t trust siniy (dark blue) and goluboy (light blue), as of space. Czech speakers came up what I’m hearing. so that what is in English one color be- with prozvonit—the act of calling a cell A few weeks later, I stumble into comes in Russian two. phone and hanging up after one ring so the bathroom, pulling the phone out We like to think that the lexicon of that the other person will call you back, of the pocket of my robe in my usual a language reveals broad truths about saving you money—because cell phones bleary routine. I put it on the counter, its speakers. The wine will flow, and the were invented, not because they were swipe to the RFI app, and press Play. Japanese guest will mention komorebi, Czech. Even if some languages express First four words: nid d’oiseaux chan- the sunlight filtering through the leaves certain concepts more artfully, or more teurs. No preamble. Patrick Cohen, I of trees, and the Frenchman will ofer succinctly, it’s precisely because we rec- know immediately, is talking about a l’appel du vide, the urge to jump of a ognize the phenomena to which they nest of songbirds. clif, and there will be collective acknowl- refer that we’re delighted by knullrufs That night, Olivier’s brother calls. edgment of the aesthetic qualities of the and Kummerspeck. Usually, their conversations pass me by— Japanese and the nihilistic ones of the A language carries within it a cul- I’ve missed years of ambient commen- French. But the idea that untranslatable ture, or cultures: ways of thinking and tary, overheard plans—but this time lit- words prove that speakers of diferent being. I spoke American English with tle fragments of dialogue sing out, as languages experience the world in rad- the people to whom I was closest (with though someone has fiddled with the ically diferent ways is as dubious as it the exception of Olivier), who spoke volume knob on the background music is popular, originating from “the great American English back to me. For most to our life. Eskimo vocabulary hoax”—the notion of my life, I had assumed that Ameri- “Elle n’est pas très mobile, quoi,” I hear that Eskimo has fifty or eighty or a hun- canness agreed with me, because I had Olivier say. dred words for snow. never questioned it. My alienations were I don’t know whom he’s talking about, Eskimo is not a language but a group localized, smaller-bore. In North Car- or why she’s incapacitated. He seems to of them, comprising the Inuit and Yupik olina—my parents had migrated there

58 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 SKETCHBOOK BY BARRY BLITT

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 59 from Philadelphia and Long Island, questions of form. The necessity of clas- student and maker of New Year’s reso- rendering us lifelong newcomers—I sifying each person one came across as lutions hopes that the answer is yes. craved the immensity of New York. In vous or tu, outsider or insider, potential More than any juice cleanse or lottery New York, I longed for the intimacy of foe or friend, seemed at best a pomposity win or career switch, a foreign language North Carolina. It wasn’t that I didn’t and at worst an act of paranoia. The easy adumbrates a vision of a parallel life. like either culture. I loved them both. egalitarianism of English tingled like a The fantasy is that learning one acti- Yet I felt that I could claim neither place phantom limb. French could feel as “old vates a latent alter ego, righting a lin- as fully my own. In North Carolina, I and cold and settled in its ways” a place guistic version of having been switched was an arriviste; in New York, some part to live as Joni Mitchell’s Paris. One day, I at birth. Could I, would I, become some- of me would always be a bumpkin, mar- bought a package of twenty assiettes à gril- one else if I spoke French? velling at the existence of “doorman lades and ached for America, where you buildings” and thinking the phrase “plus could use your large white paper plates t’s a Friday class. We’re listening one” a little mean. In some way, I felt for whatever the hell you wanted. to a Mauritanian folktale on tape. that I had already learned a new lan- Like Mark Twain—who translated IThere is a wise old man. He notices that guage, “picked it up,” like Zadie Smith, one of his stories from the French back his daughters have lately been wearing “in college, along with the unabridged into English, to produce the thrice- more revealing clothes. He summons Clarissa and a taste for port.” baked “The Frog Jumping of the County them and seats them around him in a “Why do people want to adopt an- of Calaveras”—I at first found the lan- circle, and then shows them his hands. other culture?” Alice Kaplan, the French guage comically unwieldy. In its reluctance The right one is open. In it, he holds scholar, writes. “Because there’s some- to disobey itself, it often seemed efete. an ounce of gold. The left one is closed. thing in their own they don’t like, that One French newspaper had a column “Choose one,” he tells his daughters. doesn’t name them.” For me, French that recapitulated the best tweets of Without knowing what’s in it, they wasn’t an uncomplicated refuge. I was the week in more characters than they all select the left fist. coming at the language, I think, from took to write. The biggest ridiculousism “But you see that in my right hand the opposite direction: I had acciden- I ever came across was “dinde gigogne there’s an ounce of pure gold while you tally become the proprietor of a life composée d’une dinde partiellement désossée, don’t know what’s in the other one,” the sufused by French, and, for all its charms, farcie d’un canard partiellement désossé, man says. there was something I didn’t like in it. lui-même farci d’un poulet partiellement The daughters still want whatever is In French, the grid was divided difer- désossé ”—that is to say, turducken. in the left hand. ently, between public and private, rather Even if muruaneq—a Yupik word for Thus bidden, he opens it. There’s than polite and rude. At first, I felt its soft, deep fallen snow—was basically nothing there but a lump of coal. emphasis on discrimination, its relent- powder, the question tantalized me: Does “You see, my children,” he declares, less taxonomizing, as an almost ethical each language have its own world view? “man always prefers that which hides defect. French—the language and the cul- Do people have diferent personalities itself from him.” ture—was so doctrinaire, so hung up on in diferent languages? Every exchange Luisa presses Stop on the tape deck and scans the classroom. “What do you think?” she says. “Lauren?” “I think the Mauritanian folktale is pretty sexist,” I reply. “Is that so? But why? There’s a pro- found philosophical lesson here—that people should have a hidden side.” “Why doesn’t he tell his sons that, then?” “It’s not sexist to say that a woman should have more mystery.” “I think that’s sexist.” “It’s not sexist,” Cristina, the artist, says, cutting in. “It’s about tradition ver- sus modernity.” Luisa, warming to this interpreta- tion, turns to Cristina and asks her to continue. “Too open is not interesting,” she says. “That’s the moral of the story.” Carlos can’t help himself. “Man and woman are not the same!” he cries. “That’s reality.” It’s a pile-on. I know I should prob- ably fold. But now, like Carlos, I can’t help trying to articulate my feelings. clues as to the parts of speech that are best” once it became clear that the for- “Reality can be sexist,” I say, fixing not so much idioms as loose afnities. mulation didn’t really work in French, Carlos with a stare. “What if this was How is one to know that inclement al- because French speakers took it liter- Saudi Arabia instead of Mauritania?” most always goes with weather; that as- ally. Tell a francophone, “This is the Carlos is, for a millisecond, speechless. persions are cast but insults hurled; that best tarte au citron!,” and it will come “Ladies,” he says, regaining his com- observers are keen; that processions are across less as sincere praise than as an posure. He opens his chest to the room, orderly; that drinks, as someone appar- asininity. She’ll go silent as she tries to like a lawyer addressing a jury. “Do you ently decreed sometime in the early years figure out what you’re comparing it prefer a man who shows it all or who of this century, must be grabbed and with, whether you’ve actually sampled keeps a little hidden?” e-mails shot? In English, I strained to all the tartes au citron the world has to “I think people should wear what- avoid such formulations. But in French ofer. It was hard to accept that, in ever they want,” I say. conformity was my ambition. Speaking French, a compliment resonates in in- “No, but what if a guy is walking verse proportion to the force with which around in collants?” it is ofered. Much better to say the Merde, what are collants? I whip out tart is “bonne” than “très bonne.” Dis- my little dictionary app like a gunslinger crimination was a higher virtue than in a saloon fight. efusiveness. “What do you think of a guy,” Cris- In “Giovanni’s Room,” James Bald- tina is yelling, “who wears tights to show win describes French as “that curiously his intimate form?” measured and vehement language, My pistol requires a password. I can’t which sometimes reminds me of stifen- type fast enough. ing egg white and sometimes of stringed “It’s not the same for a man or a wo- ofered a sense of community, the rare instruments but always of the under- man,” Lana says, raising a manicured hand. chance to crowdsource my personal the- side and aftermath of passion.” I liked Carlos replies, “That’s why I asked saurus. I was trying to join in, not to how Baldwin captured the relationship what you ladies think.” distinguish myself. I wasn’t a writer but between the obliqueness of French— “Women aren’t the same as men,” a speaker. I wasn’t an observer but a par- the under and the after—and its erotic Lana continues. “They care what we ticipant. It was such a happy thing to charge. Its formality, paradoxically, wear. I care what he feels, what he strive for a cliché. heightened its potential for feeling. thinks.” Bilinguals overwhelmingly report Shedding superlatives, I felt as though After class, Cristina approaches me that they feel like diferent people in I were enacting a linguistic version of in the canteen. diferent languages. It is often assumed Coco Chanel’s dictum that before leav- “That was very American of you, that the mother tongue is the language ing the house a woman should remove what you said.” of the true self. In many ways, it remains one piece of jewelry. I wondered if per- “Thanks,” I say, sawing away at my the primal vehicle. A person who has haps the Mauritanian folktale—what veal cutlet. spoken English most of her life is al- is hidden is desired; to conceal certain Repeating “I think that’s sexist” ways going to speak English when she parts is to keep them sensitive—had doesn’t exactly qualify as rhetorical py- stubs her toe (or, according to spycraft, actually been about French. rotechnics. But I’m pleased that I’ve at the moment of orgasm). But, if first French is said to be the language of managed to say something that sounds languages are reservoirs of emotion, sec- love, meaning seduction. I found in it reasonably like myself. I’ve thought of ond languages can be rivers undammed, an etiquette for loving, what happens learning as something passive. I’ve been freeing their speakers to ride diferent next. My acquisition of the language hoarding words as though they were currents. People are more likely to say had been a sort of conversion, and, in rare doubloons, tucking them away in they’d push a man of a bridge—in order the same way that Catholics valued the the velvet pouches of my cerebrum. But to save five other people about to be hit Latin Mass for its grandeur, French rep- they’re worthless, I realize, out of circu- by a train—when the dilemma is pre- resented to me a sacred medium. Where lation. A language is the only subject sented in their second language. I had once interpreted Olivier’s reti- you can’t learn by yourself. The linguist Dan Jurafsky writes of cence as pessimism, I now saw the deep a phenomenon called semantic bleach- romanticism, the hopefulness, of not he crazy thing is that once you’ve ing, in which words, most often in the wanting to overstate or to overpromise. internalized the vocabulary you have afective realm, lose their power with Vous and tu concentrated intimacy by toT figure out how it goes together. In a the passage of time, so that the “awe” dividing it into distinct shades—the language with sixty thousand words, fades from “awesome” and “horrible” emotional equivalent of Russian’s two there are approximately a hundred bil- becomes merely unpleasant. French, shades of blue. I understood, finally, why lion trillion ten-word combinations that for me, was semantic baking soda, re- it made Olivier happy when I wore make grammatical sense. Knowing which invigorating my expressive palette. “Fun” makeup; why he didn’t call me his best permutations work is, to some extent, and “excited” were out, having no ob- friend; why, in five years, I had never intuitive. But fluency is also a function vious equivalent. I realized how many heard him burp. Love was not fusion. of familiarity, as grammar ofers few fun things I was excitedly calling “the “Je t’aime” was enough. 

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 61 FICTION

62 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID DORAN ynette was on Oxford Street, ward. And the culprit who’d pushed arm and make him turn around, to which was a stupid place to be her was forging on through the crowd, accuse him. at any time, and especially at oblivious of any trouble he’d left in his “Excuse me!” she began indignantly. Lfive o’clock on a winter afternoon. It wake. “Hey, you!” Lynette shouted at was her own fault. She’d gone into John his back, but he didn’t hear her, or erhaps it was as soon as she Lewis after work for a few things she turn around. As soon as she was steady touched him, before he turned needed, and then she’d tried on some on her feet she went hurrying after Paround, that she knew it was Toby. It clothes, which she hadn’t meant to, him, pushing furiously herself between wasn’t really so extraordinary that she’d and now she was stuck in a crowd of trudging individuals, consumed by her followed him all that way without rec- other shoppers and workers, fuming rage at this retreating back in its mid- ognizing him—she’d seen only his back, inwardly and shufing in half steps, length tobacco-brown coat, which was and the open, flapping coat had ob- funnelling into the entrance to the swinging open in spite of the weather— scured his shape, a knitted hat had hid- Underground. Everybody was shape- the man had his hands carelessly in den his hair. Anyway, Toby had changed less, mufed in down coats, hooded. his pockets. Out of sheer stubborn- a lot—filled out and become more defi- Sleet was blowing in their faces—no ness, Lynette refused to limp on the nitely, heavily, his good-natured self— one looked up at the Christmas lights. hurt ankle, wouldn’t allow anyone to in the years, nine years, since she’d last Lynette had heard someone say that see that she was wounded. The tear- seen him. She realized in that moment, one of the shops was pumping artifi- ing hot pain, every time she put her to her surprise, that he’d been only a cial snow into the street, which made weight on it, seemed inseparable boy when they separated and then were the idea of even real snow somehow from her injured amour propre—she divorced. They had seemed so ancient disgusting. Lynette was tall, anxious, couldn’t bear the picture of her own to themselves in those awful days, so original, in her late thirties, with cofee- foolishness, the idiotic ugliness of her darkened and wizened by experience colored freckled skin; her hair was stumbling sideways, hanging on to and bitterness. It hadn’t quite occurred shaved above her ears, and the rest of strangers. Suddenly she hated this to her, in the time since they’d parted— it, dyed bronze and pink, was piled up afternoon, this whole day, her whole and the parting had been all her in a striking bird’s-nest mess, into life. The idea of her own separateness doing, he had just sufered it intensely, which soft spatters of sleet blew and from others was essential to Lynette’s with a white, fixed, wronged stare melted. She was wearing a red tartan dignity; she held herself apart from and outbreaks of bafed protest—that scarf with a wool coat she’d found in the mainstream. Ahead of her the to- he might have had all this growing left a charity shop—bright pink, with a bacco coat dipped down the stairs into to do. big shawl collar—and believed that the Underground and she followed Toby wasn’t exactly better-looking she despised the kind of clothes you after it, wouldn’t take her eyes of it, now. In fact, he’d never really been her could buy in department stores like couldn’t forgive it. Something about type, which might have been part of John Lewis. It humiliated her to be that turned back infuriated her—its the problem. He still had that sandy caught out in this queue, branded with broad unconscious strength, its serene coloring, his nose raw and pink with her own plastic carrier, stupid like unawareness of her. cold, something naked in his face, everyone else. They were all funnelled in together knobbed cheekbones and cracked lips, A man came pushing through the again, through the ticket barriers, and bony forehead; she guessed that his crowd from behind her, accidentally she felt for her Oyster card in the side reddish-fair hair had receded quite some striking her hard with his shoulder pocket of her bag without looking, so way, underneath the hat. But he had as he passed, sending her staggering as not to lose sight of her man—he more force now than he used to have, on her high heels; Lynette stumbled was halfway down the escalator to the as if his bones had thickened and hard- sideways, grabbing at a teen-age boy northbound platforms before she got ened: something unfinished in his face hunched in a thin jacket, and then on at the top. She wanted the Victo- had been completed and closed. At the tripped against the wheels of a push- ria line, and at the bottom he turned sight of her, however, his expression chair, only just stopping herself from right for the Bakerloo, but she wouldn’t cracked open into such spontaneous, falling on top of the child inside it. let him go until she’d said something friendly pleasure that it was like a flare She was shocked out of her self-posses- and had some acknowledgment from against the underground light. sion, her ankle wrenched painfully, him. So she followed him onto the “Lynette! What are you doing here?” the hem of her pink coat dragging platform but couldn’t see him at first. A train was arriving: as the crowd in the dirty slush. A small stir of Then there he was, back still pre- surged forward, he grabbed her with commiseration opened around her: sented to her, making his way along both hands, hanging on to her sleeves someone helped her to right herself, the platform to the other end; she so that he wouldn’t lose her, smiling and the child’s mother reassured the pushed through the crowd behind into her face. They let the train go. child, who began to cry. “No, I’m fine, him until she was close enough to “The same as you, stupid,” she said, I’m O.K.,” Lynette said. “Sorry, thank touch the heavy weave of his coat, returning his smile. “Living here.” you, sorry.” could almost feel the heat he radi- “I thought you’d gone abroad?” The people behind them, mean- ated, smell the sweet-sour wool. Lyn- “I did, but I came back.” while, were pressing inexorably for- ette put out her hand to tug at his Still holding on to her, Toby looked

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 63 around him as if he’d been so preoc- Things have gone pretty well these past musician who was thoroughly wrapped cupied that he’d hardly taken the trou- few years. Do I sound smug? The stu- up in his own work. ble, until now, to notice where he was. dios are getting plenty of work. We’ve Toby was carefully tactful. “I don’t “Listen, this is no good. Let’s get out set up a new production company to blame you about the mothering. It’s of here to talk.” develop some more innovative proj- good, but very messy. Not much sleep.” “But it’s hell up there, too.” ects. We can aford to take a few risks When the train jolted and he put “Then where are you going to get now. And what about you? You look an arm round Lynette’s shoulders to of? Where is it you live? I’ll get of the same as ever.” steady her, she imagined that their bod- with you and we’ll find somewhere for “Not prosperous, you mean.” ies, separated by all the layers of their cofee. Or for a drink. It’s really good “You know what I mean,” he said, winter clothes, were snifng each other to see you.” flatteringly, but easily—as if her looks, out, old familiars, remembering each The old Toby—the young one— and his pleasure in her looks, didn’t dis- other’s nakedness, and all the daily close- had been very shy. He’d had the air of may him as they once had. ness and lust and shame that, in the a country boy, which, in a way, he was: Well, she wasn’t prosperous, she comedy played out by their conscious he’d grown up in a dilapidated farm- said. She had a temp job in admin at selves, they must pretend not to remem- house, though his parents weren’t farm- the BBC. It was hardly temping—she’d ber. “I’ve got a suggestion, by the way,” ers but artists. But how worldly he ap- been there almost a year. It paid the he said. “All the bars will be packed, it’s peared now! He seemed to know how bills, although, of course, in London a nightmare, pre- Christmas. We could to take command of their time and it didn’t really pay the bills. But she go back to my place in Queens Park arrange for their pleasure. And if he didn’t care about money, he knew that. and have a drink there, instead. More was inviting her out for a drink, Lyn- She had everything she wanted. She peaceful. I’d like you to see it.” ette thought, then he had surely for- was still singing. Her parents were fine, The last thing Lynette wanted was given her for the past. He had got both alive, both still working: her mother to meet his wife. She could imagine over her, just as she’d promised him was a nurse and her dad, whose own her already, without meeting her. She he would—though she hadn’t, actu- father had come from Sierra Leone, knew what she looked like from Face- ally, been quite sure. She’d been afraid was driving for a private car-hire firm; book: small and blond and sparky, flex- that he was one of those men who he’d fin ished with the buses. “And have ible from her Pilates, hostile. “Really? were marked for life when they were you married again, Toby?” she asked Wouldn’t I just be in the way? Isn’t it hurt. But that fear had been only her him. the children’s teatime and all that?” vanity, after all—naturally, he’d for- She thought she felt the faintest “Oh, they’re of visiting Jaz’s sister. gotten her. She knew that she wouldn’t wincing in him then, thrumming I’ve got the house to myself.” ever tell him now about how he’d sent through his body like a dull bass note. That was startling. How worldly her flying and she’d come vengefully But she might have been imagining was he, coolly inviting her to trespass after him. “I’m meeting friends later it; in his face, she couldn’t see anything on the grounds of his second marriage? in Marylebone,” she lied. “I’m sure we but bright openness. “I thought you’d Lyn ette even wondered for a mad mo- can find somewhere there for a drink. have heard about Jaz,” he said. “We’ve ment whether she’d made Toby wicked I’m free till eight.” when she left him, whether he’d learned On the train there was no chance from her how to have his own secrets of a seat. Standing, pressed tightly and calculate for his own devious pur- against each other, among all the wet poses. She studied his open, hopeful coats, still smiling into each other’s expression—cautiously, as if she were smiles, leaning in to confide—Lynette just musing over the timing of her was tall enough to speak into his ear, imaginary arrangements for later— even though Toby was six foot three but couldn’t catch any flicker of sug- or four—and swaying together, hang- gestiveness or sin. Probably what she’d ing on to the bar overhead, they talked concluded all those years ago still with a warmth and ease they might got two little girls. We’re very happy.” held: if she was too complicated, he not have managed seated side by side. “I did hear something. I’m so glad was too simple. Perhaps he believed If Lynette inclined against him, she you’re happy.” that they could have their innocence could take the weight of her ankle. “What about you?” back, as if there’d never been anything Anyway, she hardly noticed the pain. “Oh, remember what I told you: I’m between them. “All right, why not?” She was too full of her own perfor- not really the marrying kind. Or the she said. “I’m curious to see where you’ve mance: confident, forceful, charming. mothering kind, either.” ended up.” “You’ve changed!” she said to Toby. “Never say never.” “I’ve just realized what it is. You look “I’ve got a nice boyfriend,” she added, he house—a whole house! he prosperous!” which was another lie, or a half lie— really was prosperous!—fronted Laughing, he blushed. So at least particularly that word “boyfriend,” which rightT onto Queens Park, so that at both he still blushed easily. “I am prosper- she would never normally have used ends of the long sitting room, on the ous,” he said. “Moderately prosperous. about the man she saw sometimes, a first floor, you looked out onto bare

64 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 winter trees, a tracery of wet branches gleaming black in the reflected light from the windows. Toby went around switching on lamps but didn’t draw the curtains, and so the room was filled with their awareness of the thin city darkness outside, and the rushing sound of the rain, which had begun to fall in earnest. He knelt to put a match to the kindling in the wood-burning stove. Lynette was taking in the distinctive, comfortable, expensive room, well lived-in, and its idiosyncratic mixture of old things and modern ones: a worn leather sofa with scufed cushions, smol- dering-red rugs on the dark polished boards, some kind of ancient silk ap- pliqué on one wall, a painted rocking horse, piles of children’s books, toys, an elliptical smoked-glass cofee table, a Bose hi-fi, shelves stacked with vinyl. “The gentleman says, ‘You tell me you’ve got a dastardly plan, then I’ll Oh, I’d like to stay here, she thought swear to defeat you, and then we can both expense this.’ ” before she could stop herself. She was dead tired; it had been a long day. Toby shook out the match, and behind the •• bleary stove window young white flames sucked and stretched, as sinuously as central-heating system, which Toby you: everything’s in the inner life.” animals. must have turned on, radiators tick- Displeased, Lynette tapped on her “You’ve trailed your coat in the mud,” ing as they began to warm up. When glass again, drumming a rhythm, turn- he noticed, still kneeling, picking up he returned, he’d taken of his coat ing away from him to look at an old her hem and frowning at it. Lynette and was carrying two glasses of white clock with an enamelled face, painted saw with a pang the patch on his crown wine, the glass faintly green, stems with dancing cupids, telling the wrong where the hair was sparse. “We ought twisted like barley sugar. She tapped time. “This is a nice piece,” she said to put it to dry,” he said. “Then you one with her nail, making it ring. “Is randomly, though she hated the sim- can brush it of before you go out white all right?” he asked. “You used pering pink cupids. Why did men again.” to like it.” always do that, run their women to- Pretending to see the mud for the In the old days, he was always gether into a continuum? Had Toby first time, she told him not to fuss, it anxiously searching her face to see forgotten Lyn ette so thoroughly, or didn’t matter, but he insisted on car- whether she liked things or didn’t like had he never known her? How could rying of the coat to hang it some- them; his subordination to her will had he not see that she and Jaz were op- where warm. There had always been dragged at her, making her resent- posites, who would dislike each other a mismatch between the rugged form ful. Now she couldn’t see past some on sight? On Facebook, at least be- of him—knotty biceps and big, coarse, new barrier in his eyes, as if behind fore the babies—Lynette had stopped freckled hands—and the delicate way it he were placid and settled, hard- looking afterward—Jaz was usually he touched things and fretted over ened. “I still do,” she said. “What a huddled with a crowd of similar- look- them. Lynette remembered that this lovely place.” ing friends, fellow- schoolteachers, per- scrupulous solicitousness of his had He glanced around him proprieto- haps, their arms around one another’s goaded her into bad behavior; it had rially, pleased. “Do you approve?” necks. They were all grinning, and one made her careless and wasteful, afraid “You’ve got your mother’s good of them might have her eyes crossed that his loving kindness might enclose taste. I don’t mean exactly the same or be sticking her tongue out; some- her too entirely, like a sheath. Left taste as hers, but the same confidence times they were wearing funny hats, alone in his sitting room, she stood and good instincts. I thought I was or set against the backdrop of a for- stubbornly without exploring, putting going to discover things about Jaz eign city. When she first saw the pho- her weight on her good foot, rubbing when I came in here, but I can’t feel tos, Lynette understood that Toby had her long tapering hands together, palms her anywhere.” opted for an easier, chummier life, turn- yellow with cold, nails painted dark “Jaz isn’t interested in her surround- ing his back on certain kinds of dif- maroon, in the heat that was only just ings, so long as everything’s comfort- culty. And why not? starting to come from the stove. She able. She can’t believe what a big deal She sat down in one corner of the heard a reassuring rush of life into the I make out of choosing stuf. She’s like leather sofa, with Toby at an angle

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 65 to her, their knees almost touching, “Do you remember our car crash?” in the past for that gingery coloring. in a low chair covered in striped vel- she said. “On the way home from your Now it seemed like a signal sent up vet. He had been right to bring her parents’ house? When that white jug- from Toby’s passionate, secret life, from here. In the anonymity of a bar some- gernaut was almost on top of us on which she was shut out. Checking his where, they’d have fallen easily into the motorway because he didn’t see us watch, he worried about her friends a surface flirtation under her control; in his blind spot?” in Marylebone. “Though I wish you here, in his family home, everything “Clipped our back end when you could stay longer.” was transparent, and therefore went tried to accelerate ahead of him.” “Yes, I ought to go soon.” deeper. How could they be strangers “I really thought we were going to She was running her finger around now, when they were so intimate once? die. And all that time—while we went the rim of her glass, making it ring out. They had belonged to each other in spinning across into three lanes of on- Why couldn’t he guess that those their youth. Her eyes filled with tears coming trafc—all that time you were friends didn’t exist? unexpectedly, at the idea of it. The just talking to me very quietly in your “Tell me about your singing,” Toby wine was very cold, delicious; her body normal voice, telling me everything said. was relaxing in the thickening warmth was going to be all right. It was very Then Lynette was flooded with all of the room, while the clarifying al- calming. No, that isn’t what you said the anguish that music entailed for her. cohol flashed through her blood like exactly. You were just saying, Nothing ’s It made her sick that he knew about ice. Reminiscing, avoiding treacher- happened yet. It ’s all right so far. Noth- certain things she’d rather forget: how ies, she and Toby seemed to be tread- ing’s happened yet.” ambitious she’d been, and the grand ing on safe stepping stones above “Nothing did happen,” Toby said idea of her talent that she’d once cher- dark flowing water. He was sorry he stoutly. ished and had since discarded. Her hadn’t kept in touch with her broth- “But we could have died tragically voice hadn’t been as good as she’d hoped, ers: such lovely guys, they used to young, like lovers in a story.” she had failed to make a career out of seem super cool to him. They were a He laughed. “I’m glad we didn’t die.” it—although she did do some teach- nightmare, Lynette said. They’d been Lynette was watching all the time ing, hourly paid, and also some exam- in all sorts of trouble but were settled for any little clue that gave away what ining for the Associated Board. Turn- now. One painting and decorating, was missing from his new life. And ing her face away, she presented him one in the police—you know, poacher she was changing her mind about his with her haughtiest profile. “Oh, that. turned gamekeeper, what a joke. And looks. The raw sweetness Toby had I’m in a show at the moment. You know how was his mother? Lynette knew once had was solidified now into au- I’m superstitious. I don’t want to talk about the cancer—was it still in re- thority; he was substantial and mas- about it.” mission? Carol wasn’t so well, Toby sive, without self-doubt. In the fire- “And you have felt free? You told said. She was having more chemo. light the wiry hair on his forearms and me that as long as we were together Lyn ette touched the back of his hand the down on his ruddy cheekbones you weren’t free to give yourself over kindly, lightly, with her long fingers. had a russet glow: she’d felt distaste to your work completely.” “Did I say that? How pretentious of me!” She felt a spasm of exasperation that Toby had stored up all the non- sense she’d ever spoken and taken it so seriously. In fact, she was guesting in a student production of “Dido and Aeneas,” in which Aeneas was got up as the captain of an American foot- ball team and Dido as a cheerleader; it worked surprisingly well. Toby didn’t know anything about music, anyway. Lynette hummed to herself the open- ing lines of Dido’s lament, as she looked around at the beautiful room. How strange that Toby was so sim- ple and yet his simplicity had had all these solid, complicated efects in the real world, these material accumula- tions and accretions—and children, too, the branching out and infinite complication of children. Whereas her own complexity seemed to have had “В конечном итоге, все сводится к Waukesha County.” no consequences. It was all wrapped up inside her—she had nothing to It was when everything was almost didn’t know that Lynette had been show for it. She didn’t even own any- over between them and she was put- here, in this house, printing her pres- thing significant. ting her things into boxes. She hadn’t ence everywhere so that it haunted wanted to take much, only a few es- him wherever he looked. If Jaz didn’t oby hunted for a stif brush in sential CDs and clothes. She had pre- know, then he didn’t have to think the utility room. While he worked tended to be busy with the boxes, but about what it meant. withT it over the sink, getting the mud her hands were shaking and she hardly Jaz called, but he didn’t pick up his of her pink coat, Lynette idled in the knew what she was packing, and To- phone or ring her back. He wasn’t ready spacious kitchen, stroking the dark teak by’s ranting behind her was terrible be- to talk to her, not yet. He was delib- surfaces, rattling the drawers open and cause it was so uncharacteristic, as if erately not thinking something. He closing them—so many gadgets!—and something in him that should never wasn’t thinking that he’d put every- admiring the children’s photos and have come to light had been broken thing together—family and work and drawings stuck to the fridge and on open and exposed. “Take whatever you home—all so that Lynette could visit the cupboard doors. What gorgeous like,” he’d said. “Everything you’ve it someday and see that he’d managed little girls! Finally, holding her coat up touched is spoiled for me now.” to have a good life without her. He to the light, he was satisfied. “You can’t knew that if he held of from think- see any trace of it.” oby stood for a moment with ing that for long enough then at some “Here’s my number,” Lynette said, his back to the closed door, not point it could no longer possibly be scribbling it on a board that was already thinkingT or processing anything, then true, and he’d forget that he’d ever chalked with “pasta, Calpol, kitchen returned to the kitchen. He had work thought it might be. towel, black olives.” “Text me, so I get to do this evening; he ought to make yours. It’s been so nice catching up.” a sandwich or an omelette and get on ynette managed to limp to a “I’d like to stay in touch.” with it. He checked his phone and then chilly, empty pub around the cor- “I’d like it, too.” he noticed Lynette’s number written Lner, where no one was watching the “You ought to meet Jaz sometime.” on the chalkboard. After a moment’s football on gigantic screens. She “That would be nice.” hesitation, he erased the number with bought another glass of wine, which It was still raining hard, but she a wet cloth, wiped the whole board wasn’t a good idea, because it wasn’t wouldn’t take an umbrella. “I don’t mind clean, then rewrote “pasta, Calpol, anything like as nice as the wine she’d getting wet,” she called back from the kitchen towel, black olives.” He washed had at Toby’s, and, anyway, two glasses steps outside his front door, laughing out the cloth and ran tap water in the always gave her a headache. Halfway up at him. “It’s lovely! I love the rain.” sink, rinsing away the dried mud he’d through her drink, she remembered They were waving and smiling. Lyn- brushed of her coat, sending it spin- the silky top she’d bought because it ette turned to go. And just as Toby ning down the plughole. was reduced, and must have left be- closed the door behind her, abruptly When he took his omelette upstairs hind in his house, with its price tag stopping up the flood of light from in- to eat it in front of the twenty-four- still attached, in its plastic carrier. She side, she put her weight down clum- hour news, the first thing he saw was imagined Toby pulling out the slinky sily on her sprained ankle, missing the her forgotten plastic carrier, tucked leopard-skin print and examining it, bottom step and slipping heavily on underneath the sofa where she’d been surprised by how cheap it was, sorry the wet stone. She cried out and grabbed sitting. He ate the omelette without that Lynette couldn’t aford anything at the railing that ran in front of the tasting anything, not taking his eyes better, wondering if she wasn’t too basement area. Toby couldn’t hear her of the TV screen, and then when he’d old to wear it. At least he was bound from inside the house. A man hurry- finished eating he put down his plate to text her now, as soon as he discov- ing past with his collar pulled up against and picked up the carrier gingerly, with- ered that she’d forgotten it. She put the weather chose not to turn around. out opening it or looking inside. Per- her phone on the tabletop in front of The street lights seemed all but oblit- plexed, he stood holding it stify away her and waited. Would she tell him erated by the falling rain; tall trees in from his body. He’d have liked to bury that she’d hurt herself, that she was the gated park reproached her with it deep in a dustbin somewhere out- still close by? I ’m just around the cor- their penitential stillness. Everything side, perhaps on the next street, only ner, bit of a disaster, I ’ve done some- was desolation—it was too much. Hot he couldn’t do that, in case Lynette thing silly to my ankle. She didn’t know tears of pain and self-pity mixed with came back to ask for it. And now that yet. She waited to see what words the cold rain on Lynette’s cheeks. But he’d erased her number he couldn’t he chose to use. She might not tell she wouldn’t, she couldn’t, climb the even text her to ask for her address so him anything, might not even get steps to that front door again, although that he could post the thing, get rid of back to him at all, in fact. She might she longed for the warmth stoked up it. The item incriminated him, what- just take an Uber home. It really was inside, the flames licking in Toby’s stove. ever he did. Eventually, he hid it at the better to be free. Or, if it wasn’t bet- As if the pain had summoned it, she back of one of the cabinets in his ofce ter, it was necessary. ♦ remembered a scene quite unlike all upstairs. Toby wasn’t a natural deceiver, the steadying, consoling stories that and he hadn’t done anything that wasn’t NEWYORKER.COM she and Toby had exchanged upstairs. innocent. But it would be better if Jaz Tessa Hadley on fction as anthropology.

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 67 THE CRITICS

POP MUSIC OUT OF THE TRAP

Can Gucci Mane survive his legend? BY KELEFA SANNEH

very time Gucci Mane gets out of whimsy turned Gucci Mane into some- ing session: as an inmate, he passed the jail, he likes to go straight to the re- thing more than a fairly popular rapper: time by composing verses in pencil on Ecording studio—a habit that is acknowl- he became a folk hero, the kind of per- a legal pad. The album’s only featured edged among his fans as a testament to former who is almost as much fun to talk rappers are , Drake, and both his work ethic and his turbulent life. about as to listen to. Some musicians have Young Thug, all defining voices of the On May 26th, it was time for another re- a song or an album that they are known current moment, and all fans. introduction. Freed once more, after serv- for, but Gucci Mane has been known To celebrate his return, and his re- ing three years in federal prison for ille- primarily for being Gucci Mane, although birth, Gucci Mane booked a night at gal possession of a firearm, Gucci Mane he sometimes calls himself Gucci Mane Atlanta’s grandest venue, the Fox The- went to the studio. Less than twenty- LaFlare, or simply Guwop. (This last atre, a former movie palace with an or- four hours later, he released a grim come- nickname may come in handy if he ever nate ceiling, decorated with trompe-l’oeil back track, “1st Day Out tha Feds,” sound- receives a threatening letter from the legal stars, and nearly five thousand seats, all ing defiant: “I bend, don’t break, I don’t department of an Italian fashion house.) of which sold soon after the concert was ask, just take / Black gloves, black tape, And in 2011 he acquired a new trade- announced. He took the stage at pre- and I don’t play nor pray.” mark, when he covered the right side of cisely nine o’clock, shirtless beneath a He delivered these words in an un- his face with a tattoo of an ice-cream sparkling golden jacket that reflected the hurried slur: his warm Southern accent cone, accented with red lightning bolts lights above him and the flashing phones and peculiar enunciation soften the per- and one of his favorite interjections: “Brrr.” below. “Wsappenin’,” he said, grinning. cussive force of his syllables, as if he were He later explained, as if it were obvious, “It’s Gucci, bitch!” The beat dropped, but drumming with brushes. (A hard word that the image was a celebration of his for a few minutes he barely rapped, pa- like “straight” might come out as some- status as “the coldest in the game.” trolling the stage while the crowd shouted thing gentler: “shkray.”) In a genre that This summer, a new Gucci Mane has his lyrics back at him. The concert was celebrates resourcefulness, no one is appeared, one so clearly transformed that billed as “Gucci Mane & Friends,” and more resourceful than Gucci Mane, who some fans insist he has been replaced by the surprise guests arrived roughly in built his legacy not on mainstream hits a clone. Formerly a self-described “big order of popularity, building from local but on a series of modestly successful fat rich nigga,” he emerged from prison favorites like OJ da Juiceman to a cou- major-label albums and a profusion of looking lean and happy, flashing a newly ple of emissaries from pop music’s A-list, the unofcial albums known as . white smile. On Snapchat, he posted a Future and Drake. One guest was a new New releases arrived every year—some- video of himself eating a well-balanced friend: Fetty Wap, the New Jersey war- times every month—and even though meal. “Yeah, this is kale right here,” he bler behind “Trap Queen,” which was the guy on the cover wasn’t always avail- said. He says that he is sober after years among last year’s most popular songs. able to promote them, listeners were of addiction to prescription cough syrup. Fetty Wap calls Gucci Mane his favor- drawn in by an idiosyncratic style that And, at the age of thirty-six, he seems ite rapper, and he followed an exuberant was as consistent as his life was not. to be relishing his role as one of the most performance at the Fox by posting, the “Gucci Mane is one of the most street widely admired rappers on the planet, next morning, an even more exuberant guys I ever met,” , one of his especially among his peers. Gucci Mane Instagram video. “Yo, yesterday I met longtime producers, says. “But when he showed a generation how to emphasize Gucci Mane,” he said. “I met mother- raps it sounds like nursery rhymes.” Of intonation over enunciation, and how to fuckin’ Guwop!” course, these rhymes tend not to be child- deploy slight rhythmic imprecision to The concert wasn’t quite exhaustive— friendly, or friendly at all: “Pissy yellow buck the stif authority of the beat. His if it had been, it might still be going. jewelry, pussy, don’t piss me of / Sever new album, “Everybody Looking,” is the In this room of admiring faces, more a nigga head of, cut a nigga feet of.” product of a six-day recording session than one of which was decorated with This combination of menace and and, you might say, a three-year writ- an ice-cream cone, every song was a PORLAN MIGUEL ABOVE:

68 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 Gucci Mane’s rhymes draw from his turbulent life. He jokes, “My flow so schizophrenic that I think I need a straitjacket.” ILLUSTRATION BY R. KIKUO JOHNSON THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 69 fan favorite, and no one seemed to mind seemed to be in high spirits, especially mini- album.) His music has drawn its that the guy about being “geeked- in a song called “Lemonade,” which de- unsettling power not just from ostensi- up crazy” had changed his ways. Gucci scribed colorful jewelry with the bewil- bly true crime stories but also from side- Mane has disclosed, in interviews, that dered enthusiasm of someone seeing long references to addiction and men- he felt “numb” during the drug-addled it for the first time. (“Yellow diamond tal illness: he has bragged about “eating years when he was most prolific. So pinkie ring, call that there the lemon them Percocets like they was baked when he declares, at one point, “I done rock / Jewelry box a lemon bin, my ear- beans,” and joked, “My flow so schizo- shook of all my demons—now I’m back ring size of apricot.”) Gucci Mane has phrenic that I think I need a straitjacket.” to myself,” fans might wonder who, never found a consistent home on the At his glassy-eyed best, he evoked a exactly, that is. radio, at least outside Atlanta, but his zombie kingpin, staggering through a music and mythos spread online, some- strange and half-dead world. “I keep on ucci Mane, one of the greatest rap- times through viral images. (One showed hearing voices,” he once rapped. The pers Atlanta has ever produced, is him in a majestic white fur coat, which voices were telling him to buy more Ghimself a product of Birmingham, Ala- morphed into a waterfall—the rapper as watches, more diamonds, more cars. bama. His name is Radric Davis, and force of nature.) And, because main- The older, meaner hip-hop world el- when he was nine he moved with his stream success never seemed within reach, evated brilliant but scrufy neighborhood family to a rough apartment complex in he generally eschewed crossover attempts guys like Gucci Mane, without asking East Atlanta, where his accent marked in order to focus on his core fans, which them to apologize or explain. But it also him as an interloper. (He once described meant focussing on the “trap,” or dope fostered a kind of exoticism: it was tempt- himself as “a country boy and a city boy house: his discography includes the “Trap ing to think of Gucci Mane primarily as all blended into one.”) He was an inter- House” series (five volumes), “” an avatar of East Atlanta mayhem, rather loper, too, in Atlanta’s booming hip-hop (three volumes), “Trap Back” (two vol- than as an entertainer and a craftsman. scene: when a local group scored a hit umes), and “Trapology.” “Everybody Looking” is certainly enter- with a lighthearted song called “White Gucci Mane’s first conviction, in 2001, taining, like dozens of Gucci Mane re- Tee,” he and some friends recorded a was for cocaine possession, but what fol- leases before it, but it hints at a previ- fearsome remake, “Black Tee,” which was lowed can make him seem less like a trap ously implausible (and, it must be said, a paean to robbery; in an accompanying god than like a lost soul. In 2005, the happy) possibility: that the craftsman low-budget video, his face was masked month after the killing for which he might outlive the avatar. He still sounds by a black handkerchief. wasn’t charged, he was arrested for beat- like himself—the album is carefully de- Gucci Mane’s musical career has been ing a concert promoter with a pool cue; void of any corrupting outside influence inseparable from the criminal career he pleaded no contest. He was arrested or, for that matter, any concessions to that has frequently interrupted it, bur- a number of times in the following years, non-initiates. (On one track, he declares, nishing his legend while sabotaging his for increasingly erratic behavior, and in “My Glocks sing my hooks, and we call professional prospects. He says that he 2011 he pleaded guilty to pushing a it ‘pop’ music.”) But he is equally un- started selling drugs at thirteen, and so woman out of a moving vehicle. Two compromising on the subject of his new- when, as a fledgling rapper, he declared years later, his mother filed an unsuc- found sobriety, outing himself as a “re- himself “independent,” the implication cessful petition for guardianship, declar- covering drug addict” in the album’s was that he didn’t need record-company ing that he had been given diagnoses of first stanza. And, though there is still money because he had plenty of his schizophrenia and bipolar disorder; a plenty of mayhem, many of the wildest own. His first real success, a 2005 gem- psychiatrist testified that she didn’t know claims are made in the past tense. “I got ophile’s anthem called “Icy,” almost whether his behavior “was based more so drunk, I left Privé and I crashed a ended his career, and his life. It featured on the primary psychiatric issue or on Bentley,” he raps, as if he still can’t quite another Atlanta rapper, Young , the substance-abuse issue.” This is a sad believe it. and after the two men argued over its and disturbing chronicle, but fans some- Privé is an Atlanta night club, which ownership a friend of Jeezy’s was found times treated the arrests as welcome proof was also the site of the Fox concert’s of- shot to death. Gucci Mane was arrested that Gucci Mane’s life really was as out- cial after-party. Gucci Mane showed up for the shooting, but he claimed that rageous as his rhymes. there shortly after two, and he seemed to he acted in self-defense, when the be the only person in the room not drink- man and some associates burst into an t seems hard to believe, in the con- ing or smoking anything. He watched, apartment to assault him; the case was scientious era of “Hamilton” and Ken- impassive, as the d.j. crowed, “Gucci dropped. In an interview afterward, Idrick Lamar, that there was once a time home—the whole motherfuckin’ city Gucci Mane insulted Young Jeezy in when rappers were scary, and their music come out!” Not long afterward, Drake characteristically vivid language. “The was condemned by observers from across arrived, thumping his chest, bowing his nigga shaky, like a earthquake,” he said. the political spectrum. In some ways, head, and pointing to him in a gesture “Like a—what they call it? Quicksand. Gucci Mane is a holdover from this of respect. Gucci Mane did not rap, but Stepping on quicksand.” older, meaner era, which is one reason he did briefly accept the microphone in The first big-budget Gucci Mane al- that a younger, courtlier peer like Drake order to make a request. “I wanna hear bum, released in 2009, was “The State vs. is so eager to get his blessing. (The two some Gucci,” he said. And then he stood Radric Davis.” Despite the dour title, he are reportedly planning a collaborative and listened to the guy on the record. 

70 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016

of the nineteen-eighties and recklessly BOOKS attempted to buy the publishing com- pany where he worked. “The Good Life” picked up the Calloways’ story fourteen STATUS UPDATE years later, around the time of 9/11, when Corrine became involved with a man she Jay McInerney’s trilogy about the perils of privilege. met while volunteering at Ground Zero. The new book, like its predecessors, BY ADELLE WALDMAN is set against a major historical event— in this case, the financial crisis of 2008. The Calloways are still together. Russell now heads a small, independent publish- ing house with a focus on literary fic- tion. He yearns to make the company more profitable, but his big move in that direction backfires, humiliatingly. In the course of the novel, Russell, once brash and exuberant, is brought so low that, when Corrine spots him unexpectedly one day, she is thrown by “his slumped comportment, his slack demeanor, even by the gray in his hair. . . . He looked like one of those exhausted souls she saw every day on the subway, men she imag- ined stuck in jobs they hated, going home to wives they didn’t love.” The final touch in this portrait of middle-aged malaise comes when Rus- sell takes part in a ceremonial softball game in the Hamptons. A natural ath- lete, he sees the media-saturated event as a chance to redeem himself before the glitterati, if only for the duration of the game. But Russell plays badly, flub- bing a key catch and allowing two de- cisive runs. When Corrine tries to cheer him up, Russell tells her not to bother: “That was possibly the most mortifying mo- ment of my adult life,” he added. “Oh, come on, it’s just a game.” “No, it’s not. It’s never just a game.”

Nobody has a more exquisite appreci- here’s a moment in Jay McIner- “Bright, Precious Days” forms a tril- ation than McInerney of the morbid, ney’s new novel, “Bright, Precious ogy that began with “Brightness Falls” hypervigilant sensitivity we tend to har- Days”T (Knopf ), when one of its princi- (1992), McInerney’s most accomplished bor about our place in the world, espe- pals, a book editor in his early fifties, and ambitious novel, and continued with cially when we’re feeling down. comes to feel that he is a failure: “How “The Good Life” (2006). The three books Russell’s crisis of confidence coincides was it that after working so hard and by revolve around Russell and Corrine Cal- with Corrine’s renewed involvement with many measures succeeding and even ex- loway, an attractive couple whose lives her attentive—and rich—love interest celling in his chosen field, he couldn’t appear to be very nearly charmed. But from “The Good Life.” (Though Rus- aford to save this house that meant so the Calloways are restless types who have sell has been guilty in the earlier books much to his family? Their neighbors the misfortune of living on a certain of his own indiscretions, he has grown seemed to manage, thousands of people “skinny island” where afuent profes- too tired, or dejected, to bother with in- no smarter than he was—less so, most of sionals like them feel comparatively poor. fidelity.) The contrast between these two them—except perhaps in their under- In “Brightness Falls,” Russell became story lines, and the picture that emerges GINNIS standing of the mechanics of acquisition.” caught up in the leveraged buyout frenzy of a marriage that seems both more sta- c ble and lonelier than it has ever been, is McInerney (photographed above in 1988) is an intently psychological novelist. quietly afecting. The secret romantic M RICK

72 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 longings and professional disappointments cue from the Arts and Leisure section of people like the Calloways, who spend and decide to check out an exhibition— summers in the Hamptons and live in a costumes of the Hapsburg Court at the Tribeca loft (albeit a rent- stabilized one), Met, say, or Japanese lacquerware of the might seem too frivolous to be placed at Muromachi period at the Asia Society.” the foreground of a novel, let alone three. The disconnect between the narrator’s But McInerney rejects satire’s self-pro- life and his almost comically staid vision tective distancing as surely as he resists of it is at the heart of the book. Why, its flattening efect on characterization; McInerney earnestly wants to know, has in tone, “Bright, Precious Days” is mel- this man lost his upper-middle-class bear- low, earnest, almost elegiac. It is intelli- ings—why is he at a trashy night club in gent, and knowing in its depiction of cer- the middle of the night, chatting up a tain segments of New York (especially the woman whose “voice is like the New Jer- world of publishing), but, unlike his best- sey State Anthem played through an elec- known novels, it’s rarely dazzling. tric shaver,” instead of living wholesomely and finding a nice girl (an editorial assis- hat an author famous for slick, tant, maybe, or a graduate student at an stylish evocation of drug-addled Ivy League school) to take to those ex- youthT has evolved into a restrained, al- hibitions he imagines himself attending? most sombre chronicler of professional- If this buttoned-up vision of the good class ennui may seem surprising. “Bright, life isn’t entirely convincing, neither is Precious Days” is a far cry from “Bright the answer McInerney ofers—that the Lights, Big City,” the novel that made narrator is reeling from a family trag- McInerney an instant celebrity in 1984, edy he hasn’t properly dealt with. The at the age of twenty-nine. But, under- oversimplicity of this diagnosis wasn’t neath the glamour and flash of his sub- lost on McInerney, who has spent most ject matter, he has always been a more of his career returning to the same ques- committed psychological novelist than tions, growing increasingly sophisticated his reputation suggests. in his attempts to understand the allure Even “Bright Lights,” that most gid- of self-destruction and the compromises dily evocative of eighties novels, isn’t re- required to support a sustainable degree ally a period piece. It’s a highly disci- of happiness for ambitious, intelligent plined work of fiction that happens to (and relatively afuent) people. capture its period. That’s why it has aged In the seven novels and forty-odd sto- better than the Brat Pack titles it’s typ- ries he has published since “Bright Lights,” ically associated with. Unlike some of McInerney has experimented widely and those books, “Bright Lights” relies far with varying levels of success, veering from less on the timeliness of its material than comedy to self-conscious seriousness, from on the energy of its prose: the small and local to the decade-span- The night has already turned on that im- ning. He has tried writing from the per- perceptible pivot where two A.M. changes to spective of women (in the charming “Story six A.M. . . . Somewhere back there you could have of My Life,” from 1988) and sexually con- cut your losses, but you rode past that moment on fused men (in “The Last of the Savages,” a comet trail of white powder and now you are try- from 1996). But his interest in psychol- ing to hang on to the rush. Your brain at this mo- ment is composed of brigades of tiny Bolivian sol- ogy has remained in place. It found its diers. They are tired and muddy from their long most thoughtful expression in “Bright- walk through the night. There are holes in their ness Falls,” which is broader in scope than boots and they are hungry. They need to be fed. “Bright Lights” and its closest rival, among McInerney’s novels, in the virtuosity and McInerney maintains this brisk, moody near-perfection of its execution. comedy for the next hundred and eighty The book seems at first very diferent pages, as his unnamed narrator unravels from its predecessor, almost self-con- in a bender. sciously so. “Brightness Falls,” like a nine- The real drama of “Bright Lights” is teenth-century novel, is told from the not sociological. The narrator, however perspective of an omniscient narrator; blitzed, thinks of himself as being, really, its humor is understated, derived from “the kind of guy who wakes up early on dry observation and clever dialogue. Sunday morning and steps out to cop the When Russell’s assistant—the ofce’s Times and croissants. Who might take a “token punk,” who wears an “Eat the Rich”

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 73 button pinned to her shirt—tells him she improbability of its central conceit— her preteen daughter shopping at All- is going to lunch, Russell replies, “I’ll warn Russell’s outlandish attempt to buy his Saints, or that the girl and a friend went Donald Trump.” McInerney’s focus has company. It feels forced, a means of link- to see “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” or largely shifted from the question of so- ing Russell and Corrine’s personal prob- that Russell tried making “Mark Bitt- briety (or the lack of it) to matters of sta- lems to the headlines of the era. McIn- man’s improbable, and not entirely suc- tus (or the lack of it). Of a writer friend erney’s evocation of New York was so cessful, forty-five-minute turkey.” of the Calloways, whose first book was powerful in “Bright Lights” because it But if “Bright, Precious Days” doesn’t an unexpected success, he writes, “Every- emerged naturally from the story he had match “Brightness Falls” stylistically, it one listened to him just a little more in- to tell. By the time he wrote “Bright- does explore similar terrain. Once again, tently these days, as he listened less at- ness Falls,” McInerney had been labelled McInerney’s real subject is happiness, and tentively to everyone else.” But, unlike a a New York novelist, and, as if on cue, whether it can survive the batterings of social satirist such as Tom Wolfe, McIn- he delivers long, cinematic set pieces de- our restlessness and ambition. On this erney is equally deft at capturing person- picting everything from parties of the subject, he is mature and humane, ofer- ality traits. Russell’s charismatic friend Upper East Side’s rich and shallow to ing considered and convincing analysis Washington, for example, has “the ability police raids on homeless encampments instead of familiar novelistic tropes. McIn- to convince, if only to the point that you in the East Village. They are well done, erney is sensitive to arcs, both in charac- felt it would be very stufy to believe com- but feel performative, not quite organic. ters and in relationships. Russell’s crisis pletely in your own position, or for that of spirit, as it unfolds over the three books, matter in anything. It would be so uncool.” he danger, of course, of double- feels like a natural and uncontrived con- Thematically, however, “Brightness (or triple-) dipping, as McInerney sequence of a lifetime characterized by Falls” and “Bright Lights” overlap sub- hasT done in reviving the cast of “Bright- buoyant self-satisfaction. He has always stantially, as their titles suggest. Russell ness Falls,” is that the later books invite been appealing and mostly good-hearted can be viewed as a cleaned-up version comparison to the first. And “Bright, Pre- but a little callow, the kind of person who of the earlier book’s feckless narrator. He cious Days,” like “The Good Life” before is savvy enough to conceal, even to him- and Corrine live the kind of life that the it, lacks the original’s texture and piquancy, self, the fact that he is all too mindful of hero of “Bright Lights” yearned for, com- its panoramic vibrancy. McInerney does whose stock is rising and whose is fall- plete with those de-rigueur Sunday- a lot of plain telling, informing us with ing. Corrine, who has long floundered afternoon trips to museums. But they voice-over directness that the Calloways, professionally, was always the more solid still aren’t all that happy. In their early “Ivy League sweethearts,” had “followed of the two, the more philosophical and thirties, they want to want what they their best instincts and based their lives self-sufcient, even if she is financially have—each other, a committed relation- on the premise that money couldn’t buy dependent. In “The Good Life,” she met ship—but they are no more able to will happiness, learning only gradually the a man who seemed capable of appreci- away their nagging discontents than the many varieties of unhappiness it might ating her in ways that Russell temper- narrator of “Bright Lights” was to refrain have staved of.” The sharpness of McIn- amentally could not. “Bright, Precious from snorting that final, inadvisable line. erney’s portrayals of side characters made Days” shows us how that once promis- Corrine feels neglected and unappre- for a big part of the pleasure of “Bright- ing new relationship plays out and how ciated. She resents Russell’s insatiable need ness Falls”; in the later books, he seems it compares to the older, imperfect but to socialize, his desire to be among fash- to rest on those characterizations, with- still loving one; on this subject, McIner- ionable people, not just because it keeps out adding to his earlier insights, like a ney is refreshingly clear-eyed. him from home but because his concern man who built his home when he was Still, there’s no dodging the paradox with status strikes her as a little ridicu- richer and now can’t quite aford the up- at the heart of his career. Although his lous: “Proximity to the glamorous,” she keep. They’ve grown dusty, a little stale. best books have never been merely light- thinks, “confirmed in Russell some sense Although he has continued the tra- weight eighties period pieces, the books of his own entitlement.” Russell, for his dition of draping the novels around set in that decade, and redolent of it, part, feels hemmed in by a wife whose pivotal events in New York’s recent his- remain his strongest. Something about judgment he both respects and resents, tory, McInerney’s evocation of the aughts what he calls the era “of big hair and big and annoyed by her need for continual re- feels halfhearted compared with the shoulder pads” seems to have galvanized assurance. In the course of the novel, he scene setting of his eighties novels. He McInerney: the buzzing confusions of becomes increasingly vulnerable to temp- leans heavily on proper nouns and youth asserting themselves, in narrative tation. One evening, he finds himself more topical references, something he did vigor, over the wan compromises of age. attracted to Corrine than he’s been in ages, sparingly in both “Bright Lights” and Perhaps that accounts for the nostalgic but his passion is stoked more by egoism “Brightness Falls.” When he did use mood that pervades “Bright, Precious than eros. A sexy French heiress has hit one—when he name-dropped Donald Days.” As Russell’s friend Washington on him, and the “narrowness of his es- Trump in “Brightness Falls,” for exam- remarks wistfully, at a dinner party that cape” is exciting: the “vision of himself as ple—it served a dramatic purpose. In recalls a more boisterous one from an upright husband had increased his ap- “Bright, Precious Days,” on the other “Brightness Falls,” “We didn’t know it preciation of the wife for whom he per- hand, McInerney seems to be merely was the eighties at the time. . . . No one formed this heroic feat of abnegation.” telegraphing the moment and milieu, told us until about 1987, and by then it If the novel falters slightly, it is in the as when he tells us that Corrine took was almost over.” 

74 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 Prikryl, who is a senior editor at The BOOKS New York Review of Books (to which I contribute), was born in Czechoslova- kia and immigrated with her family to CHILDHOOD’S END Ontario, Canada, when she was six—a passage that seems to have created an A début about life, language, and what binds them. attitude of friendly scrutiny toward tragic material. Many of these poems BY DAN CHIASSON filter her earliest memories through the scrim of folklore, from which they bor- row their swift, severe causality and, es- pecially, their terror of abandonment. Their aesthetic is bright, kaleidoscopic, a child’s vision of abundance frozen and preserved; she borrowed it in part from the genre of Czech movies called pohádka, lavish costume versions of fairy tales. Prikryl tends to favor paradox, as in the riddles and tests of childhood stories, and innuendo, which feels at once erotic and political. She moves by not moving, desiring “little / more than the // arrival of the little more / that ar- rives,” finding everywhere “misunder- standings that are not, / we both know, misunderstandings.” Prikryl is a notably resourceful writer of autobiography. When poets write about their past, they sometimes exclude their shaping hand from the picture. There are countless poems that describe grainy black-and-white photographs in a tenderly impartial tone, as though photographs and the poems that de- scribe them weren’t acts of selection and judgment. Prikryl not only acknowl- edges but plays up her role in curating her origins: in “A Package Tour,” she In Jana Prikryl’s “The After Party,” metaphor often takes the place of reality. casts herself as a kind of intrepid Time Lord, hoisting “a furled umbrella” as she ana Prikryl’s first book of poems, not only that ticking of a clock but the leads her unsuspecting European an- J “The After Party” (Tim Duggan beating of a heart: cestors toward the poem written about Books), brings to a close the long pe- Do not lose hope. them. This kind of temporal loop-de- riod of silent evaluation known as child- We found new hope. loop is not merely postmodern mischief; hood. The “after party” is our memory There is no hope. it’s autobiographical writing with the of the past, not so much recollected You have to hope. act of writing left in. It foils the illusion It’s my last hope. in tranquillity as relived in the riotous There’s always hope. of linear chronology: the last is first, the terms of style and form. But it is also It grows on trees. first is last. The poem is a “making-of ” the afterlife: this is a book haunted by documentary supplied with English sub- generations of the dead, including The poem veers from the pattern in titles, a work assembled after the fact to Prikryl’s brother, who died suddenly in its last line, literally giving up “hope”; lead triumphantly to the main event. 1995; the book is dedicated to him. In but the underlying rhythm holds on for Prikryl’s memories of childhood are this bonus interval of borrowed time, one last instant. Hope vanishes the mo- intensely sensory: lacking a family nar- the hour ticks by especially loudly; the ment it becomes ubiquitous: “It grows rative with a clear form, she presents, poems that measure it are also subject on trees” is what we say of something instead, unusually vivid, one-of impres- to it. There is a contest here between so common as to be worthless. “Time- sions and colorful hunches about what elegy and forgetting. In “Timepiece,” piece” is a poem about perseverance, al- they might have meant. “Ontario Gothic,” the meter (iambic dimeter, a rare one, though, as in much of Prikryl’s work, the book’s opening poem, is a little two- and hard to pull of efectively) recalls there’s a vicious undertow of despair. part origin story. In the first part, Prikryl

PHOTOGRAPH BY JODY ROGAC THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 75 be writing Czech. If a change of life is a change of language, why rank the one above the other? “Reality’s my kind of metaphor,” she writes; and, else- where, “metaphors swarm the surfaces of things.” These lines from “Unre- quited” nail it: “His feeling is metaphor so complete / it’s the hum alone on loan from the hive.” Metaphor is a poet’s spell, her magic; more than any other feature of poetry, it transforms reality—unless, as here, it’s already a part of reality, swarming, and thereby taking the place of, the “surfaces of things.” Language in this enchanted book sometimes seems to have an independent intelligence. As Prikryl writes, it “houses a will as ac- quisitive / as ours, if not more so”: it compels its speakers to say whatever it has in mind. In “Ars Poetica,” lan- guage has its own dreams, not of sex but of “description, unmitigated / de- scription,” dragging the fainthearted poet into acts of seduction she’d really (swear to God, really and truly) rather not attempt. It’s a brilliant and funny poem about the power of feigned pow- erlessness, a subject at least as old as the shepherds and lasses of classical pastoral. An imagined debate between Prikryl and Benedict Cumberbatch about “what’s driven poets to this •• bluf / of severely impartial / impu- dence” lands them in an Alphonse- lies on her back, summer-daydream style, his “wife,” is pointedly not referred to Gaston routine at a party’s end, before and looks up at the clouds and “float- as her mother. The speaker is a child— Cumberbatch suggests, reasonably ing albino basketballs of hydrangea,” or a grownup acting like one, or being enough, that “we spare / each other the along with “anything else passing over, treated like one—who nevertheless is embarrassment / of being the last / to including / one has to assume”—since entrusted with this anti-family’s sur- leave and leave in unison.” Prikryl’s re- it can’t be verified, except in the imag- vival. The child who grows up feeling sponse: “Goodness that shows / every ination—“the neutral look / on a pas- that her family’s safety depends on her sign of being also / resourceful has al- senger’s face glancing down from a win- own composure, no matter how crazy ways been so / difcult to refuse.” dow seat.” Sentience in a poem can go the circumstances, steers herself again An after party keeps people from van- wherever it likes: here it gets divvied up and again into adult jams where her ishing into the night, and yet it, too, has between the earthly kid and the heav- mettle alone makes all the diference. an end. The fear that cherished people enly traveller, the one looking up at the In “Ontario Gothic,” it’s a stretch will evaporate creates the fantasy of a other looking down. In the second part, to become a back-seat driver. To a new leave-taking that leaves nobody behind. dream logic takes the wheel: speaker of the language, English idi- As with lost siblings in many fairy tales, Halfway there he squeezed between the oms retain a troubling trace of literal- the loss feels remediable, as though the shoulders of the seats ness long after they are understood. All right path through the forest or the right to join his wife and me in back. I need hardly tell you the more so if the novice speaker is sequence of words might somehow re- what a stretch it was, wedging my arm also a child: children write stories with store them. A book that tries so ear- between the driver’s seat and door real-life couch potatoes, where cats and nestly to dilate endings, or to divide them to steer with the tips of my fngers, dogs rain from the sky. “Thanks to that infinitely into smaller and smaller units, sidewalks in those parts just wide enough for a car. one’s nerve,” Prikryl writes in “Siblings has to be concerned with its own man- and Half Siblings,” “the four of us ner of conclusion. The collection’s final The man is her father, or perhaps boarded an overnight // and this is En- poem, which, in forty-two sections, takes her lover; the woman in the back seat, glish.” Meaning that otherwise she’d up almost half the book, is a remarkable

76 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 sequence: “Thirty Thousand Islands,” named for the largest freshwater archi- BRIEFLY NOTED pelago in the world, in Lake Huron. Its hero is Mr. Dialect, a name that sug- gests his retention of Old World lan- New England Bound, by Wendy Warren (Liveright). Whereas guage and customs. (Prikryl’s brother most studies of slavery in the United States concern the an- was seven years older than she was, and tebellum South, this one stakes out less visited territory—the so had more to lose when the family left laws and decisions made by the colonists in New England Czechoslovakia.) Mr. Dialect wears a two centuries earlier. In 1638, eight years after John Win- “suit bespoke / and out of style,” frozen, throp’s famed “City Upon a Hill” sermon, the first documented as he is, at the moment of his death; his shipment of enslaved Africans arrived. That same year, the bearing has about it the terrible luxury colonist Samuel Maverick, “desirous to have a breed of Ne- of an open cofn. He excels at evasion. groes,” attempted to create slaves through rape. African slaves He cannot be adequately described, partly started working on West Indian plantations and at New En- because his own command of style raises gland ports. Not all of this was legal, but, as Warren points such a high bar (“His very mood / an out, it was hardly at odds with Puritan piety. Many colonists index / of gestures that the artist / over- used Scripture to justify it. steps”), and his death seems almost an aspect of his suaveness and civility. He Cursed Legacy, by Frederic Spotts (Yale). This biography of will “rise”—like the sun, like Lazarus— Klaus Mann, a “literary enfant terrible of the Weimar era,” fo- “with an air of dressing / to breakfast cusses on his relationship with his domineering father, Thomas beside / a caramel brunette.” When he Mann; his struggle to live openly as a homosexual; his exile speaks, he ofers this dating advice after the rise of the Nazis; and his drug addiction and his for the pickup bars of the afterlife: fixation with suicide. Deftly handling a story ripe with psy- When the voices start confding their chological and cultural meaning, Spotts paints Mann as a hero, Christian names waging a war for truth, liberty, and self-determination. (At as I’m rinsing plates on the Never nineteen, he wrote the first expressly gay novel in German lit- erature.) Spotts’s book is surprisingly timely, particularly in its it’s time to haul anchor, wait in a dive in Parry Sound, portrayal of the generational divide between Klaus and his and buy a round conservative father, who, despite homosexual leanings of his for whoever won’t be a stranger. own, thought homosexuals should be closeted, and who was “horrified” by his son’s work. Should a drink materialize you didn’t order, make eyes The Extra at the girl who didn’t send it, as I’d , by A. B. Yehoshua (Houghton Mifin Harcourt). In have done. this thoughtful novel, a contentedly single Israeli harpist living in the Netherlands returns home because of a bu- The poem’s sections ofer, like the reaucratic issue to do with her mother’s apartment in Jeru- thirty thousand islands they describe, salem. She enjoys her forced sabbatical, wandering the city, the chance that Mr. Dialect might touch sparring with Orthodox neighbors, and freelancing as a down anywhere, at any moment. He’s movie extra. The issue of childlessness burdens the second not dead; he’s just living on one of the half of the novel, as she finds herself in a series of argu- other islands. His sister’s book has be- ments with her mother and with her ex-husband, neither come the place where he can tarry of whom accepts her decision not to have kids. Few minds awhile, maybe even settle down: are changed, but Yehoshua seems to be hinting that, “in a Should some international country that never ceases to be a threat to itself,” peaceful undocumented deadlock is a small but genuine victory.

wish to pursue Look, by Solmaz Sharif (Picador). “It matters what you call a a lifestyle entirely free from applause, thing”: so begins this remarkable début poetry collection, which is a deliberation on the way we talk about war in both the pub- he refected, this lic and the private spheres. Sharif recounts her Iranian im- would be the place. migrant family’s experience living under surveillance and in He glances round. detention in the United States, and elegizes an uncle who was killed fighting in the Iran-Iraq War. Throughout, she draws Mr. Dialect assumes his immortality as on the Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military and the eerie beauty of the place, the “cool Associated Terms—used by the American military to define underpinning” of its pines and shim- and code its objectives, policies, and actions. By turns fierce mering waters, yields to the beauty of and tender, the poems are a searing response to American in- the language that is used to conjure it.  tervention—“Hands that promised they wouldn’t, but did.”

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 77 Instead, the show fanned open to ON TELEVISION multiple perspectives—among other things, during its brilliant second sea- son it made the marriage of Diane and NEIGH SAYER Mr. Peanutbutter feel as intimate as any- thing on “The Americans.” Meanwhile, The melancholy pleasures of “BoJack Horseman.” BoJack fell in love with an owl his own age, a network executive who had just BY EMILY NUSSBAUM woken from a thirty-year coma. (When she met him, she said, “Who?”) He got hen “BoJack Horseman” dé- star of a network sitcom called “Horsin’ cast in his dream project, a Secretariat buted, in 2014, it didn’t look par- Around,” a hacky “Full House”-like se- bio-pic. Eventually, in one of the series’ ticularlyW original. It was the hundredth ries about a bachelor raising orphaned most lacerating episodes, he landed in series about a middle-aged man—well, kids. Since then, he’s become a famous bed with his oldest friend’s teen-age a horse, but still—who did bad things. It has-been, marinating in self-pity. This daughter. Yet, magically, even as he was the latest scathing portrait of the particular form of show-biz pathology trashed each opportunity, the series didn’t downside of fame. It was the newest has been explored a few times before; bog down in bleakness: it was sympa- streaming dramedy: yet another adult an- namely, in “The Larry Sanders Show.” In thetic to BoJack’s depression and the imated alt-comedy meta-sitcom. sources of his pain, but it didn’t In an anti-antihero frame glamorize his solipsism as a of mind, I took much too long special sensitivity. to catch up on what turned out Better yet, “BoJack Horse- to be one of the wisest, most man” never stacks the deck by emotionally ambitious and— reducing more decent char- this is not a contradiction— acters to dummies or dupes. spectacularly goofy series on Unlike lesser sad-guy shows, television. Created by Raphael the series includes complex Bob-Waksberg, illustrated by types like Princess Carolyn, the brilliant Lisa Hanawalt, BoJack’s agent and sometime and airing on Netflix, “BoJack girlfriend, a fortyish worka- Horseman” is a world-creation holic in a series of dead-end show, merging bleakness and relationships (with BoJack, a joy. Like “The Simpsons” and cheating jackrabbit, and, most its best descendants, “BoJack hilariously, Vincent Adult- Horseman” uses animation to man, three little boys stand- imagine a teeming, surreal al- ing on one another’s shoul- ternative universe—in this case, ders under a trenchcoat). a place called “Hollywoo,” in There’s also Todd, his sad- which animals and humans live sack roommate; the indie-film side by side. BoJack, a former director Kelsey; BoJack’s deer sitcom star, is a horse in a Cosby friend Charlotte, whose fam- sweater; Diane, his sardonic bi- ily he took refuge with when ographer, is a human. Diane’s Los Angeles overwhelmed husband is a dog; BoJack’s him; and many more—a true agent is a cat; a bunch of whale moral menagerie. strippers give lap dances in “the In certain ways, the show’s blowhole room.” Easily half the most original character may gags are silly animal puns, ver- be not BoJack but his mirror bal or visual, like Broadway image, Mr. Peanutbutter posters for “Fun Ham,” kan- BoJack is a horse. His agent is a cat. His biographer is human. (voiced by Paul F. Tompkins), garoo bellhops, or a painting a golden retriever whose own of Manet’s Olympia as a shark. The another familiar TV trope, in the first sea- awful nineties sitcom, “Mr. Peanutbut- sheer density of these giggle-inducing, son BoJack fell into a love triangle, with ter’s House,” was a ripof of “Horsin’ collect-them-all punch lines gooses Diane and her husband, Mr. Peanutbut- Around.” Unlike BoJack—but like many the show’s more harrowing themes, as ter. The season took some gorgeous ex- golden retrievers—he’s preternaturally if Nathanael West had written “Miss istential leaps, particularly in the second enthusiastic, full of silly show-biz ideas Lonely hearts” in pufy glitter ink. half, but had it stuck entirely to the P.O.V. but also happy just to sit at home watch- The basic story is this: In the nineties, of BoJack, a dyspeptic, near-suicidal know- ing “Bones,” his tongue lolling. Mr. Pea- BoJack (voiced by Will Arnett) was the it-all, it might have felt airless. nutbutter becomes the host of a game

78 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY BENDIK KALTENBORN show called “J. D. Salinger Presents: every plot: it’s a shared set of memories Hollywood Stars and Celebrities! What much simpler and more comforting than Do They Know? Do They Know the real ones. Things? Let’s Find Out!” He’s been di- On a junket, BoJack rages at jour- vorced twice, including from a horrible nalists who call “Horsin’ Around” a bad Jessica Biel, who bravely plays herself. show: “It lasted nine seasons! Its whole Artistically, he has low standards. But purpose was for people to watch it so he has a legitimate inner life. His open- the network could sell ad time so the ness to intimacy makes his wife, the un- show could make more money than it happy Diane, itch. It also provides a cost to produce. It did that well. It was goad to BoJack himself, suggesting that a good show.” But BoJack knows that it even for the rich and famous there are has more meaning than that. It’s no co- better ways to chase your tail. incidence that “BoJack Horseman” it- self replicates the plots of sitcoms— he third season of the show, Princess Carolyn goes on a series of which recently appeared on Netflix, bad dates, BoJack crashes a wedding— isn’tT a masterpiece like the second: a few to inject them with something rawer plot gears grind. But it lands powerfully, and more unsettling. It does the same with an earned tragedy that’s as potent thing with jokes, messing with ancient as anything on TV this year. Along the comedy math so that the missing beat way, BoJack lobbies for an Oscar nom- becomes the joke. “I’m the only albino- ination at film festivals and at a bat mitz- rhino gyno I know,” one of Princess Car- vah—for an actual bat. There are some olyn’s dates says, just before ordering a classic installments, particularly an in- bottle of wine. “Oh, great, you’re also a genious silent episode set at an under- wine addict,” she replies. It’s a clever water film festival, a rif on “Lost in joke for people who love dumb jokes. Translation,” with sardines that cram In one episode, we discover that into buses and a Chaplinesque subplot “Horsin’ Around” wasn’t BoJack’s only about BoJack acting as a midwife to a TV show. Back in 2007, he tried to make male seahorse. There’s a story in which a dark comedy called “The BoJack Diane gets an abortion while the pop- Horseman Show,” with his writing part- star dolphin Sextina Aquafina, the “sexy ner, a Harvard-grad hamster named fourteen-year-old dubstep wunderkind” Cuddlywhiskers. The two panicked for whom she’s been hired to write when executives liked their experimen- tweets, sings a hilariously rude pro- tal script, so they added benders choice anthem. Again and again, the and “anti-catchphrases,” sabotaging their show takes sharp jabs at modern cul- own creation for the sake of edginess. ture, including a delirious vision of a Then “BoJack Horseman” itself ofers post-apocalyptic L.A. Times, with noth- up an episode, “That’s Too Much, Man!,” ing left but customer service. that includes the very gimmicks that it The show has always had a built-in makes fun of in BoJack’s failed show, risk: as efective as BoJack is as a char- including a weeks-long drug bender, acter, he runs in circles. That’s what ad- with multiple blackouts. “This may be diction is, after all. BoJack’s life is a for- the nitrous and bath salts talking,” Bo- mula, one that he feels desperate to Jack says at one point, “but I want to correct: he’s ashamed of who he is, at- do some more nitrous and bath salts.” tempts to become creative or feel love— There’s a caustic—and then poignant— and then inevitably binges, betrays a parody of the pointlessness of making loved one, and runs away, realizing that amends; there’s an A.A. meeting at it’s impossible to truly repair the dam- which a slug’s rock bottom is literally age. Then back to shame. Repetition is under a rock. There’s the world’s most the signature of sitcoms, too; it’s their random joke, about the Oberlin a- curse and their power. On “BoJack cappella group the Obertones. The ep- Horseman,” again and again, someone’s isode should seem self-indulgent, but, life crashes, and he ends up on the liv- miraculously, the risk pays of. It does ing-room sofa, high, bingeing on reruns what “BoJack Horseman” does best, al- of “Horsin’ Around.” The cynical, know- lowing the most heartbreaking parts of ing characters may mock that show’s life to leach into the genre that’s meant cornball ways, but they’ve memorized to soothe them. 

THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 79 seen as an instruction manual in the art THE CURRENT CINEMA of throwaway cool. Swipe a phone from a café table, make a call, dump the phone, and walk on: that’s the kind of knack FIND YOURSELF we have learned from Bourne over the years, and the new film supplies a few “Jason Bourne” and “Little Men.” low-tech addenda, such as a Molotov cocktail snatched from the grasp of a ri- BY ANTHONY LANE oter, then tossed for Bourne’s advantage. He makes fire as he goes along. The riot occurs in Athens’s Syntagma Square and the surrounding streets, where a crowd is raging against the gov- ernment. This fits the story, because the wildness of the ruckus, after dark, acts as cover both for Bourne, who is meet- ing Nicky, and for a trained assassin (Vin- cent Cassel), who has been ordered— by whom I will not say—to take them out. But the melee also suits the direc- tor, Paul Greengrass, who specialized in drama-documentaries, on such subjects as the shooting of civilians in Northern Ireland and a racially motivated stab- bing in London, before turning to “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum.” You can feel him itching to link the ordeals of his fictional hero to the stresses and the fractures of po- litical reality. It’s almost as if he were Matt Damon stars in Paul Greengrass’s latest installment of the Bourne saga. faintly ashamed at having to concoct yet more unlikely shenanigans—plots he obvious thing to do, should agent, which is widely viewed as non- within plots, at the C.I.A.—at a time you wish to forget your troubles and canonical. So, what are we to make of when unfeigned drama is bursting out justT get happy, is to bind your knuckles “Jason Bourne,” crammed as it is with of the headlines. and enjoy a bout of illegal fistfighting flashbacks to its predecessors? Is it the Certainly, though the scenes in Ath- on the Greek-Albanian border. That is fourth gospel, plumbing the mystery of ens come early in the movie, they mark the chosen hobby of Jason Bourne (Matt the Bournian logos, or should we dis- its high point, bringing clarity to chaos Damon), and, for someone of his inter- card it as apocrypha? and permanent damage to my nerve ests, there is no better way to relax. The Either way, the new film racks up the endings. Greengrass then proceeds to fight lasts precisely one punch, and it air miles. From the Balkans, we zip to another topical zone: Bourne is caught signals the start of the imaginatively ti- Iceland, where a former colleague of up in the case of Aaron Kalloor (Riz tled “Jason Bourne,” which finds our Bourne’s, Nicky Parsons ( Julia Stiles), Ahmed), a Silicon Valley tycoon who man trotting the globe in a bid to dis- hacks into a C.I.A. mainframe (“Could founded a Facebook-like corporation cover, once and for all, who he is and be worse than Snowden,” someone says) called Deep Dream, and who is now what he was and which of his passports and downloads a list of illicit programs under pressure from the director of the to use. Will the poor guy never stop? onto a memory stick. The landscape of C.I.A., Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Frankly, since Jason is already on Greek Bourne has always been littered with Jones), to assist with national security. soil, it would be easier if he went look- widgets, beginning with the tiny laser One could argue that Internet billion- ing for a golden fleece. device buried in Jason’s hip, in the first aires should be humanely culled, like The Bournology, for moviegoers, runs film, that bore the details of his Swiss badgers, but Bourne’s duty, nonetheless, as follows. We have three major works bank account. Then came the SIM-card is to keep Kalloor safe and the cause of with Damon as the central figure: “The switcheroo, in “The Bourne Suprem- freedom alive. Bourne Identity” (2002), “The Bourne acy”—a fiddly business that lightened The presence of Jones is always wel- Supremacy” (2004), and “The Bourne the load of Bourne’s brutality. At forty- come, but notice how he slots into a Ultimatum” (2007), known collectively five, Damon remains in frightening well-worn position, previously held by to scholars as the synoptic Bournes. Then fettle, but twinned with that hunkhood Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, and Albert comes “The Bourne Legacy” (2012), star- is a touch as deft as a pickpocket’s. The Finney: the older gentleman spy, whose ring Jeremy Renner as a Bourne- flavored entire Bourne franchise, indeed, can be machinations rouse the ire—and the

80 THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL ROGERS dormant idealism—of Bourne. Much of (Jennifer Ehle), is a psychotherapist. says to Gloria’s son, Tony (Michael Bar- the latest film smacks of established rou- When Brian’s father dies, they inherit bieri), who is about the same age and tine. Any car chase in which drivers weave his house, and that means relocating whose own father is absent and un- through oncoming trafc is to be ap- from Manhattan to Brooklyn, with their mourned. (“I realized that he’s better plauded, but the thought that Bourne thirteen-year-old son, Jacob (Theo Tap- when he’s not around,” Tony says.) The pulled that stunt in Moscow, in “The litz). On the ground floor of the house two boys join forces, growing closer as Bourne Supremacy,” does take a slight is a dress shop, run by a Chilean woman their parents start to bicker and fall out. edge of its impact in “Jason Bourne.” named Leonor (Paulina García), who Brian is one of the big kids, straining True, we’re now in Las Vegas, and his was a good friend of the old man’s—so after adult wisdom as if he were audi- nemesis is at the wheel of an armored good that he didn’t raise her rent for tioning for a role, whereas the little men SWAT truck, but it’s still more of a key eight years. She’s still paying eleven hun- seem better equipped to ride the bumps. change than a brand-new tune. As for dred a month. Brian wants to triple it. Hence the lovely travelling shots of the the doomy question that beats through- Let the battle commence. boys—Jacob on roller blades, Tony with out the movie—Who is Bourne, any- To what extent audiences elsewhere a scooter—as they whisk along sunlit way?—the issue was raised and settled will be stirred by these agonies is hard streets. You get a whif of Trufaut, and long ago. His true name is David Webb, to say, but Sachs finds ways in which to a strong sense that none of the grownups and he was recruited into black ops and counter the charge of parochialism. For can match that gliding ease. deprived of his memory, though not of one thing, we see Brian play Trigorin in The best reason to watch “Little his talent for martial arts or for falling a stage production of “The Seagull,” the Men” is Michael Barbieri, who mus- down a stairwell and using someone else implication being that, since Chekhov ters a blend of soulfulness and aggres- as a cushion. All this we know from ear- drew our attention to the squabbles of sion that would be remarkable at any lier films, and “Jason Bourne” merely fills unregarded souls, nothing lies beyond age. The danger for any Sachs movie in the gaps. Greengrass is as dexterous dramatic bounds. Then there is the sad- is that its humane quietude could slide as ever, yet the result, though abound- eyed García, who earned international into dullness. Not with this boy around. ing in thrills, seems oddly stifled by self- acclaim in the title role of “Gloria” (2013), Tony plans to become an actor, and consciousness and, dare one say, super- and who, though meek of manner, has we observe him in drama class, roar- fluous. Come on, guys. There are so many a resilience that verges on the unnerv- ing through repetition practice with wrongs in the world. If Bourne could ing. We are so accustomed to cranky his teacher—hurling back phrase after tear himself away from the mirror for a characters undergoing a sentimental phrase as if he were volleying at the moment, could he not be persuaded to sweetening that it’s a shock when Le- net. So compelling is Tony that he go and right them? onor does the opposite, as her initial starts to outgrow not only Jacob, who greeting slowly loses its warmth. There seems wispy by comparison, but all ove and death are all very well, are times when she’s downright mean, other aspects of the film. Presumably, but if you want to turn your life on slipping a thin jibe into the conversa- that’s why Barbieri has been honored Lits head nothing compares with moving tion like a knife between the ribs. Talking with a role in the next Spider-Man house in the tristate area. That was the to Brian about his father, she says, “I was adventure. I was hoping that it might story of the gay couple in Ira Sachs’s more his family, if you want to know, take a little longer for a promising “Love Is Strange” (2014), whose income than you were.” young actor to fall into Marvel’s clutches. fell after their marriage, and real-estate The title of the film, likewise, has a No chance.  trauma strikes again in Sachs’s new whetted edge. Brian can be inefectual, movie, “Little Men.” Brian (Greg Kin- and he knows it. So does his son. “He’s NEWYORKER.COM near) is an actor, and his wife, Kathy not that successful or anything,” Jacob Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YO R K E R , AUGUST 8 & 15, 2016 81 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three fnalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Danny Shanahan, must be received by Sunday, August 14th. The fnalists in the July 25th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the fnalists in this week’s contest, in the August 29th issue. Anyone age thirteen or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

“ ” ......

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“Your overhead is going to kill you.” Carolyn Beck, Toronto, Ont.

“The queen has agreed to split everything ffty-ffty.” “Welcome to orientation.” Donald Metzler, New Providence, Pa. Joe Repine, Ann Arbor, Mich.

“We could also go with a chandelier.” Ross Taylor, Chicago, Ill.