PRICE $8.99 JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 A juggernaut of a novel, combining “ thrills with a truly authentic look at the inner happenings in Washington. I read it in one gulp. You will too.”

“Bravo!”

THE FICTION ISSUE CHILDHOOD

JUNE 4 & 11, 2018

11 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

31 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Jelani Cobb on racial-bias training at Starbucks; survivors of the Parkland shooting; Women.nyc; taking photos of the Beatles; “The Band’s Visit.”

LETTER FROM OKLAHOMA Rivka Galchen 38 The Teaching Moment An educators’ strike that rejuvenated local politics.

POSTSCRIPT David Remnick 44 Philip Roth

FICTION Lu Yang 46 “Silver Tiger” Karen Russell 66 “Orange World” David Gilbert 78 “Fungus”

PROFILES Larissa MacFarquhar 52 Writing Home Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s global fame.

PARENTING Rachel Kushner 50 The Leather Boys Chang-rae Lee 59 My Father’s Face Mohsin Hamid 71 What Is Possible Rivka Galchen 74 Mum’s the Word Jeanette Winterson 83 Capricorn

THE CRITICS BOOKS James Wood 88 The tragicomic fiction of Helen DeWitt. Lidija Haas 93 Porochista Khakpour’s illness memoir. 97 Briefly Noted

THE ART WORLD Peter Schjeldahl 98 Bodys Isek Kingelez at MOMA.

ON TELEVISION Emily Nussbaum 100 “The Good Fight.”

THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 102 “Solo,” “How to Talk to Girls at Parties.”

POEMS Gabrielle Bates 57 “Strawberries” Henri Cole 84 “Doves”

COVER Loveis Wise “Nurture”

DRAWINGS Victoria Roberts, Joe Dator, Robert Leighton, P. C. Vey, Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell and Ellis Rosen, Seth Fleishman, Will McPhail, Frank Cotham, Mick Stevens, Zachary Kanin, Roz Chast, Liana Finck, Carolita Johnson, Drew Panckeri SPOTS Philippe Petit-Roulet

New York Times Bestseller CONTRIBUTORS

Rivka Galchen (“The Teaching Moment,” Lu Yang (“Silver Tiger,” p. 46), a writing p. 38; “Mum’s the Word,” p. 74) is the au- instructor at Nanjing Normal Univer- thor of, most recently, “Little Labors.” sity, is the author of a novel and several story, novella, and poetry collections. Mohsin Hamid (“What Is Possible,” This story was translated with assis- p. 71) lives in Lahore, Pakistan. His lat- tance from the Nanjing Youth Literary est book is “Exit West.” Talent Project.

Lidija Haas (Books, p. 93), a books col- David Gilbert (“Fungus,” p. 78) is the au- umnist for Harper’s, has also written thor of, most recently, the novel “& Sons.” for the London Review of Books, the Guardian, and Bookforum, where she is Larissa MacFarquhar (“Writing Home,” a contributing editor. p. 52), the author of “Strangers Drown- ing,” is a staf writer and an Emerson Chang-rae Lee (“My Father’s Face,” Fellow at New America. p. 59) teaches creative writing at Stan- ford. His most recent novel is “On Such Karen Russell (“Orange World,” p. 66) a Full Sea.” has written four books, including the novel “Swamplandia.” This story will Loveis Wise (Cover), an illustrator liv- appear in a forthcoming collection. “MASTERFULLY CRAFTED.” ing in Philadelphia, has contributed to —SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE the Times and Cartoon Network. This Rachel Kushner (“The Leather Boys,” is her first cover for the magazine. p. 50) is the author of the novels “Telex “COMPELLING.” from Cuba,” “The Flamethrowers,” and Gabrielle Bates (Poem, p. 57) works for “The Mars Room,” which came out in May. Open Books: A Poem Emporium, in “BRILLIANT.” Seattle. Her poems and poetry com- Jeanette Winterson (“Capricorn,” p. 83) —USA TODAY ics have appeared in Poetry and the will publish her newest novel, “Frankiss- New England Review. stein: A Love Story,” in 2019. “HAUNTING.” —THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“ESSENTIAL.” THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM

PUT DOWN.”

“TRIUMPHANT.” —ELLE

IN PAPERBACK! SILVER SPARROW NEW YORKER RECOMMENDS PHOTO BOOTH “REALISTIC AND Our staf and contributors share Alice Mann’s photographs of SPARKLING.” what they’re reading, watching, drum majorettes at primary schools THE WASHINGTON POST and listening to. in Cape Town, South Africa.

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

and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008. ALICE MANN/INSTITUTE BY PHOTOGRAPH TIM BOELAARS; RIGHT: LEFT:

4 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 New York Times THE MAIL Bestselling Author JOSHILYN THE RIGHTS OF VICTIMS ment. But, as a former federal pros- JACKSON ecutor, I can attest that, as recently as I read Jill Lepore’s warning about the a quarter century ago, victims were “DESERVES TO BE dangers of the victims’-rights move- often an afterthought. In many civil- A HOUSEHOLD ment with some concern that I might law systems outside the United States, NAME.”* have contributed to the problem (“Si- victims have long had a formal role rens in the Night,” May 21st). In 1982, alongside the prosecutor. In 1998, when I published a book of profiles featur- the International Criminal Court was ing families of murder victims. I was established, its founding statute happy to learn that victims’ support guaranteed certain victims the right groups were using the book, but I won- to participate in trials, to protection der now if it played a part in the spread from retaliation, and to reparations. of the deleterious aspects of the vic- Achievements like this are essential tims’-rights movement, which depends, in afording the targets of war crimes to a degree, on seeing survivors as a the most basic forms of redress. As monolithic group. I tried to make it the American conversation about clear in my book that people experi- victims’ rights continues, I hope that ence crimes committed against their we will learn from this rich body of family members in many diferent experience. ways. We need to remember that not James A. Goldston all the families of the Oklahoma City 1New York City bombing victims wanted to see Timo- thy McVeigh executed. Bud Welch, CAT TALES whose daughter was killed in the bombing, not only was opposed to the Peter Hessler, in his article on rais- execution but also became a friend of ing a family during the Egyptian rev- McVeigh’s father. olution, mentions that on his cat’s Doug Magee forehead “tiger stripes formed the New York City shape of an ‘M’—a mark of the breed that’s known as the Egyptian Mau” “Only Joshilyn I played a role in the Victims of Crime (“Morsi the Cat,” May 7th). As a cat Jackson can present Act of 1984 and in the promulgation fanatic currently designing cat tem- such serious issues of the first federal sentencing guide- ples, I feel compelled to point out that with so much humor lines, created under the Sentencing the “M” is neither particular to nor Reform Act. Although, as Lepore indicative of the Mau breed. The “M” and humanity.” notes, elements of those acts can be comes from the tabby coat-pattern —Brunonia Barry criticized from both the left and the genes, and many breeds have it. Some right, the passage of these laws was people believe that the tabby’s genes “A vibrant, sharp and possible only because of support from may have come from the genetic con- humorous read…. the both ends of the political spectrum, tributions of Felis silvestris. The “M” from Ted Kennedy to Strom Thur- can even be observed in cats that don’t kind of layered book mond. That spirit of coöperation, which have tabby coats. I have had solid- one should consider resulted in compromises by both sides, black cats, and when strong light hit reading twice.” is what is sorely missing in today’s their foreheads at the right angle, a —Atlanta Journal- Congress. Today’s senators and repre- faint “M” was visible. Constitution sentatives—or their successors in No- Dan Shriver vember—should learn the wisdom of Silver Spring, Md. coming together in the middle. NOW IN PAPERBACK Dave Tevelin • Arlington, Va. Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited Lepore describes the complicated or- for length and clarity, and may be published in igins and the worrying ramifications any medium. We regret that owing to the volume Discover great authors, of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter. exclusive offers, and of America’s victims’-rights move- more at hc.com *Kirkus If your advanced non–small cell lung cancer has high levels of PD-L1, KEYTRUDA could be used alone as your fi rst treatment.

“LAST YEAR, I WASN'T SURE I'D SEE MY SON'S GRADUATION. THANKFULLY, I WAS WRONG.” -ROGER

KEYTRUDA will not work for everyone. Results may vary.

KEYTRUDA is used to treat a kind of lung cancer called non–small cell lung cancer 71% of patients treated with KEYTRUDA (NSCLC). KEYTRUDA may be used alone as were alive at the time of patient your fi rst treatment option when your lung follow-up, compared to 58% treated with cancer has spread (advanced NSCLC) and chemotherapy that contains platinum. tests positive for “PD-L1” and your tumor does not have an abnormal “EGFR” or “ALK” gene.

PD-L1 = programmed death ligand 1; EGFR = epidermal growth factor receptor; ALK = anaplastic lymphoma kinase.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION Call or see your doctor right away if you develop any • Kidney problems, including nephritis and kidney failure. symptoms of the following problems or these symptoms Signs of kidney problems may include change in the amount or get worse: color of your urine. • Lung problems (pneumonitis). Symptoms of pneumonitis may • Skin problems. Signs of skin problems may include rash, itching, include shortness of breath, chest pain, or new or worse cough. blisters, peeling or skin sores, or painful sores or ulcers in your mouth • Intestinal problems (colitis) that can lead to tears or holes or in your nose, throat, or genital area. in your intestine. Signs and symptoms of colitis may include diarrhea • Problems in other organs. Signs of these problems may or more bowel movements than usual; stools that are black, tarry, include changes in eyesight, severe or persistent muscle or joint sticky, or have blood or mucus; or severe stomach-area (abdomen) pains, severe muscle weakness, or low red blood cells (anemia), pain or tenderness. shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat, feeling tired, or chest pain • Liver problems (hepatitis). Signs and symptoms of hepatitis (myocarditis). may include yellowing of your skin or the whites of your eyes, • Infusion (IV) reactions that can sometimes be severe and nausea or vomiting, pain on the right side of your stomach area life-threatening. Signs and symptoms of infusion reactions may (abdomen), dark urine, feeling less hungry than usual, or include chills or shaking, shortness of breath or wheezing, itching bleeding or bruising more easily than normal. or rash, l ushing, dizziness, fever, or feeling like passing out. • Hormone gland problems (especially the thyroid, pituitary, • Rejection of a transplanted organ. People who have had an organ adrenal glands, and pancreas). Signs and symptoms that your transplant may have an increased risk of organ transplant rejection if hormone glands are not working properly may include rapid heartbeat, they are treated with KEYTRUDA. weight loss or weight gain, increased sweating, feeling more hungry Getting medical treatment right away may help keep these or thirsty, urinating more often than usual, hair loss, feeling cold, problems from becoming more serious. Your doctor will check you constipation, your voice gets deeper, muscle aches, dizziness or for these problems during treatment with KEYTRUDA. Your doctor may fainting, or headaches that will not go away or unusual headache. treat you with corticosteroid or hormone replacement medicines.

Important Safety Information is continued on the next page. IT’S TRU.

Learn more at keytruda.com

Roger is a real patient.

The clinical trial compared patients with advanced KEYTRUDA is a type of treatment called NSCLC who received KEYTRUDA (154 patients) immunotherapy that may treat certain with those who received chemotherapy (151 patients). cancers by working with your immune All patients in the trial tested positive for the system. KEYTRUDA can cause your biomarker PD-L1 at a level of 50% or more and had no previous drug treatment for their advanced immune system to attack normal organs non–small cell lung cancer. Patients with an abnormal and tissues in any area of your body and EGFR or ALK gene were not included in this trial. can a ect the way they work. These problems can sometimes become serious or life-threatening and can lead to death.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION (continued) Your doctor may also need to delay or completely stop treatment breastfeed during treatment with KEYTRUDA and for 4 months with KEYTRUDA if you have severe side effects. after your  nal dose of KEYTRUDA. Before you receive KEYTRUDA, tell your doctor if you Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including have immune system problems such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and colitis, or lupus; have had an organ transplant; have lung or herbal supplements. breathing problems; have liver problems; or have any other medical Common side effects of KEYTRUDA include feeling tired; pain in problems. If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant, tell your muscles, bones, or joints; decreased appetite; itching; diarrhea; doctor. KEYTRUDA can harm your unborn baby. Females who are able nausea; rash; fever; cough; shortness of breath; and constipation. to become pregnant should use an effective method of birth control during treatment and for at least 4 months after the  nal dose of These are not all the possible side effects of KEYTRUDA. Tell KEYTRUDA. Tell your doctor right away if you become pregnant during your doctor if you have any side effect that bothers you or that treatment with KEYTRUDA. does not go away. For more information, ask your doctor or pharmacist. If you are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed, tell your doctor. It is not known if KEYTRUDA passes into your breast milk. Do not Please read the adjacent Medication Guide for KEYTRUDA and discuss it with your oncologist.

KEYTRUDA has more FDA-approved uses for advanced lung cancer than any other immunotherapy.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs Having trouble paying for your Merck medicine? to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088. Merck may be able to help. www.merckhelps.com

Copyright © 2018 Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc. All rights reserved. ONCO-1247229-0004 04/18 keytruda.com MEDICATION GUIDE KEYTRUDA® (key-true-duh) KEYTRUDA® (key-true-duh) (pembrolizumab) for injection (pembrolizumab) injection What is the most important information I should know about KEYTRUDA? KEYTRUDA is a medicine that may treat certain cancers by working with your immune system. KEYTRUDA can cause your immune system to attack normal organs and tissues in any area of your body and can affect the way they work. These problems can sometimes become serious or life-threatening and can lead to death. Call or see your doctor right away if you develop any symptoms of the following problems or these symptoms get worse: Lung problems (pneumonitis). Symptoms of pneumonitis may include: • shortness of breath • chest pain • new or worse cough Intestinal problems (colitis) that can lead to tears or holes in your intestine. Signs and symptoms of colitis may include: • diarrhea or more bowel • stools that are black, tarry, sticky, • severe stomach-area (abdomen) pain movements than usual or have blood or mucus or tenderness Liver problems (hepatitis). Signs and symptoms of hepatitis may include: • yellowing of your skin or • nausea or vomiting • pain on the right side of your • dark urine • bleeding or bruising the whites of your eyes stomach area (abdomen) • feeling less hungry than usual more easily than normal Hormone gland problems (especially the thyroid, pituitary, adrenal glands, and pancreas). Signs and symptoms that your hormone glands are not working properly may include: • rapid heart beat • feeling more hungry or thirsty • feeling cold • muscle aches • weight loss or weight gain • urinating more often than usual • constipation • dizziness or fainting • increased sweating • hair loss • your voice gets deeper • headaches that will not go away or unusual headache Kidney problems, including nephritis and kidney failure. Signs of kidney problems may include: • change in the amount or color of your urine Skin problems. Signs of skin problems may include: • rash • itching • blisters, peeling or skin sores • painful sores or ulcers in your mouth or in your nose, throat, or genital area Problems in other organs. Signs of these problems may include: • changes in eyesight • severe or persistent • severe muscle weakness • shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat, muscle or joint pains • low red blood cells (anemia) feeling tired, or chest pain (myocarditis) Infusion (IV) reactions, that can sometimes be severe and life-threatening. Signs and symptoms of infusion reactions may include: • chills or shaking • itching or rash • dizziness • feeling like passing out • shortness of breath or wheezing • lushing • fever Rejection of a transplanted organ. People who have had an organ transplant may have an increased risk of organ transplant rejection if they are treated with KEYTRUDA. Your doctor should tell you what signs and symptoms you should report and monitor you, depending on the type of organ transplant that you have had. Complications of stem cell transplantation that uses donor stem cells (allogeneic) after treatment with KEYTRUDA. These complications can be severe and can lead to death. Your doctor will monitor you for signs of complications if you are an allogeneic stem cell transplant recipient. Getting medical treatment right away may help keep these problems from becoming more serious. Your doctor will check you for these problems during treatment with KEYTRUDA. Your doctor may treat you with corticosteroid or hormone replacement medicines. Your doctor may also need to delay or completely stop treatment with KEYTRUDA, if you have severe side effects. What is KEYTRUDA? KEYTRUDA is a prescription medicine used to treat: • a kind of skin cancer called melanoma that has spread or cannot be removed by surgery (advanced melanoma). • a kind of lung cancer called non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). • KEYTRUDA may be used alone when your lung cancer: has spread (advanced NSCLC) and, tests positive for “PD-L1” and, • as your rst treatment if you have not received chemotherapy to treat your advanced NSCLC and your tumor does not have an abnormal “EGFR” or “ALK” gene, or • you have received chemotherapy that contains platinum to treat your advanced NSCLC, and it did not work or it is no longer working, and • if your tumor has an abnormal “EGFR” or “ALK” gene, you have also received an EGFR or ALK inhibitor medicine and it did not work or is no longer working. • KEYTRUDA may be used with the chemotherapy medicines pemetrexed and carboplatin as your rst treatment when your lung cancer: has spread (advanced NSCLC) and is a type of lung cancer called “nonsquamous”. • a kind of cancer called head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) that: has returned or spread and you have received chemotherapy that contains platinum and it did not work or is no longer working. • a kind of cancer called classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) in adults and children when: you have tried a treatment and it did not work or your cHL has returned after you received 3 or more types of treatment. PD-L1 = programmed death ligand 1; EGFR = epidermal growth factor receptor; ALK = anaplastic lymphoma kinase; HER2/neu = human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. • a kind of bladder and urinary tract cancer called urothelial carcinoma. KEYTRUDA may be used when your bladder or urinary tract cancer: has spread or cannot be removed by surgery (advanced urothelial cancer) and, you are not able to receive chemotherapy that contains a medicine called cisplatin, or you have received chemotherapy that contains platinum, and it did not work or is no longer working. • a kind of cancer that is shown by a laboratory test to be a microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) or a mismatch repair decient (dMMR) solid tumor. KEYTRUDA may be used in adults and children to treat: cancer that has spread or cannot be removed by surgery (advanced cancer), and has progressed following treatment, and you have no satisfactory treatment options, or you have colon or rectal cancer, and you have received chemotherapy with luoropyrimidine, oxaliplatin, and irinotecan but it did not work or is no longer working. It is not known if KEYTRUDA is safe and effective in children with MSI-H cancers of the brain or spinal cord (central nervous system cancers). • a kind of stomach cancer called gastric or gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) adenocarcinoma that tests positive for “PD-L1.” KEYTRUDA may be used when your stomach cancer: has returned or spread (advanced gastric cancer), and you have received 2 or more types of chemotherapy including luoropyrimidine and chemotherapy that contains platinum, and it did not work or is no longer working, and if your tumor has an abnormal “HER2/neu” gene, you also received a HER2/neu-targeted medicine and it did not work or is no longer working. What should I tell my doctor before receiving KEYTRUDA? Before you receive KEYTRUDA, tell your doctor if you: • have immune system problems such • are pregnant or plan to become pregnant • are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, KEYTRUDA can harm your unborn baby. It is not known if KEYTRUDA passes or lupus Females who are able to become pregnant should into your breast milk. • have had an organ transplant use an effective method of birth control during Do not breastfeed during treatment and for at least 4 months after the nal dose of with KEYTRUDA and for 4 months • have lung or breathing problems KEYTRUDA. Talk to your doctor about birth control after your nal dose of KEYTRUDA. • have liver problems methods that you can use during this time. • have any other medical problems Tell your doctor right away if you become pregnant during treatment with KEYTRUDA. Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Know the medicines you take. Keep a list of them to show your doctor and pharmacist when you get a new medicine. How will I receive KEYTRUDA? • Your doctor will give you KEYTRUDA into your vein through an • Your doctor will do blood tests to check you for side effects. intravenous (IV) line over 30 minutes. • If you miss any appointments, call your doctor as soon as possible to • KEYTRUDA is usually given every 3 weeks. reschedule your appointment. • Your doctor will decide how many treatments you need. What are the possible side effects of KEYTRUDA? KEYTRUDA can cause serious side effects. See “What is the most important information I should know about KEYTRUDA?” Common side effects of KEYTRUDA when used alone include: feeling tired, pain in muscles, bones or joints, decreased appetite, itching, diarrhea, nausea, rash, fever, cough, shortness of breath, and constipation. In children, feeling tired, vomiting and stomach-area (abdominal) pain, and increased levels of liver enzymes and decreased levels of salt (sodium) in the blood are more common than in adults. These are not all the possible side effects of KEYTRUDA. For more information, ask your doctor or pharmacist. Tell your doctor if you have any side effect that bothers you or that does not go away. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088. General information about the safe and effective use of KEYTRUDA Medicines are sometimes prescribed for purposes other than those listed in a Medication Guide. If you would like more information about KEYTRUDA, talk with your doctor. You can ask your doctor or nurse for information about KEYTRUDA that is written for healthcare professionals. For more information, go to www.keytruda.com. What are the ingredients in KEYTRUDA? Active ingredient: pembrolizumab Inactive ingredients: KEYTRUDA for injection: L-histidine, polysorbate 80, and sucrose. May contain hydrochloric acid/sodium hydroxide. KEYTRUDA injection: L-histidine, polysorbate 80, sucrose, and Water for Injection, USP. Manufactured by: Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of MERCK & CO., INC., Whitehouse Station, NJ 08889, USA For KEYTRUDA for injection, at: MSD International GmbH, County Cork, Ireland For KEYTRUDA injection, at: MSD Ireland (Carlow), County Carlow, Ireland U.S. License No. 0002 For patent information: www.merck.com/product/patent/home.html usmg-mk3475-iv-1709r012 Revised: September 2017 ------This Medication Guide has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Copyright © 2014-2018 Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc. All rights reserved. ONCO-1247229-0004 04/18 How Great Isurace Is Made

“ ith a pull of the crank WAnd a turn of the gears Savings and service for 75 years With many ways to save Friendly agents, night and day he right coverage is just the start To how great insurance is made.”

Auto • Home • Renters • Cycle • Boat

geico.com | 1-800-947-AUTO | Local Office

Some discounts, coverages, payment plans and features are not available in all states or all GEICO companies. Motorcycle and ATV coverages are underwritten by GEICO Indemnity Company. Homeowners, renters and condo coverages are written through non-affiliated insurance companies and are secured through the GEICO Insurance Agency, Inc. Boat and PWC coverages are underwritten by GEICO Marine Insurance Company. GEICO is a registered service mark of Government Employees Insurance Company, Washington, D.C. 20076; a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary. GEICO Gecko image © 1999-2017. © 2017 GEICO MAY 30 – JUNE 12, 2018 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

New York’s love afair with Latin dance music is long and storied. It began with the rise of mambo kings and queens in the forties, and shifted focus in the late sixties, when a new assertion of Puerto Rican identity fostered hit-makers like the trombonist Willie Colón (above). He appears at the 34th New York Salsa Festival, at Barclays Center on June 9, in a lineup that also features Andy Montañez, Tito Nieves, the Venezuela-bred bandleader Oscar D’León, and the Colombian powerhouse band Grupo Niche.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADAM PAPE ful transition. (Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd St. 212-475- 8592. May 29-June 3.) NIGHT LIFE Marty Ehrlich The immense promise that Ehrlich suggested 1 back in the eighties is now long fulilled. His ex- ing of his mentor Jay-Z with the emotive crooning traordinary command of saxophones, lutes, and ROCK AND POP of the fellow Midwest artist Kid Cudi. He’ll have clarinets has grown steadily, along with his com- two opportunities to practice his crowd-suring positional and band-leading skills and his ease Musicians and night-club proprietors lead this week, at Bowery Ballroom and the Governors with both conventional and new-jazz practices. complicated lives; it’s advisable to check Ball. (Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. 212-307-7171. A duet with the trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith in advance to conirm engagements. June 2. Randall’s Island Park, Randall’s Island, East begins this tantalizing residency, which then un- River at the Harlem River. governorsballmusicfesti- folds with several diverse ensembles. (The Stone Ambient Church with Suzanne Ciani val.com. June 3.) at the New School, 55 W. 13th St. thestonenyc.com. Three years ago, during a wave of venue closures May 29-June 2.) in north Brooklyn’s D.I.Y. scene, Brian Sweeny (a Nnamdi Ogbonnaya founder of the notorious, now defunct Bushwick A Chicagoan whose skills as an instrumentalist Billy Hart Quartet community hub Body Actualized Center) started are as prodigious as his vocal delivery is rapid-ire, Although the saxophonist Chris Potter is substi- this roaming live series, tapping into New York’s Ogbonnaya comes of like a weirdo with a heart of tuting for the oicial band member Mark Turner, rich supply of gorgeous, historic churches, where gold on “DROOL,” an album on which multi-tex- the quick-on-its-feet interplay that has made this landlords have no sway. The concept is disarmingly tured and multi-tracked synthesizer lines ricochet unit a benchmark of twenty-irst-century jazz simple: expertly curated programs of “meditative, of his baritone like pinballs. He can be an m.c. or will undoubtedly remain intact. The collective devotional, and minimal” avant-garde electronic a singer, a braggart or an absurdist, punk or fal- features the same rhythmic acuity and tonal sen- music paired with stunning 3-D-mapped projec- setto romantic. As he brings his concept to the sitivity that the veteran drummer Hart honed tions, covering the churches’ interiors with gently Northside Festival, listen for “let gO Of my egO” with, among many others, Herbie Hancock and undulating New Age visuals. This week, the elec- and “Cindy OsO.” (Brooklyn Bowl, 61 Wythe Ave., Stan Getz. The quartet also includes the pianist tronic pioneer Ciani settles in for an evening of Brooklyn. 718-963-3369. June 7.) Ethan Iverson (of Bad Plus fame) and the bassist soothing music written for the Buchla 200e mod- Ben Street. (Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Ave. S., ular synthesizer, presented in quadraphonic sound, Liz Phair at 11th St. 212-255-4037. May 29-June 3.) with speakers positioned in all four corners of this The songwriter Phair recently tweeted, about try- gorgeous Romanesque Revival church in Bushwick. ing to re-learn one of her beloved early songs, “Ex- Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas (Bushwick United Methodist Church, 1139 Bushwick cavating ‘Batmobile’ currently . . . like a blind A shared passion for expansive jazz and the Ave., Brooklyn. ambient.church. June 2.) mole, clawing around the guitar neck trying to music of Wayne Shorter brought together two hit the right notes and remember all the made-up questing igures—the trumpeter Douglas and Ry Cooder chords.” There’s a reason Phair is dredging up the saxophonist Lovano—resulting in the 2015 If we’re to believe the earliest blues people—and the past: the release of a mammoth boxed set en- recording “Sound Prints,” and, subsequently, an why not?—the primary diference between blues titled “Girly-Sound to Guyville.” It marks the occasional working ensemble. Linda May Han and gospel is subject matter. On the strength of twenty-ifth anniversary of the release of “Exile in Oh, on bass, Joey Baron, on drums, and Law- that assessment, “The Prodigal Son,” Cooder’s Guyville,” her breakthrough studio début, and adds rence Fields, on piano, form the kind of envi- dreamy new protest album, is a hymnal that takes three disks featuring the earliest versions of some able support team that could hold its own even in his mastery of the rustic sounds of bottleneck, of that album’s songs. Many years ago, Phair sat in without these illustrious co-leaders. (Village steel, and acoustic guitar. He’s here to show of how a Lower East Side apartment with an unampliied Vanguard, 178 Seventh Ave. S., at 11th St. 212-255- well originals like “Jesus and Woody” and “Gen- electric guitar, trying not to disturb her roommates 4037. June 12-17.) triication” it with his timely excavations of for- as she spun yarns of loneliness and longing. At Na- gotten pieces like Blind Alfred Reed’s “You Must tional Sawdust, she will deliver a career-spanning New York Brass Festival Unload” and Blind Willie Johnson’s “Everybody performance as part of Brooklyn’s Northside Fes- A taste for tubas and joyous communal celebra- Ought to Treat a Stranger Right.” (Town Hall, 123 tival. (80 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. 646-779-8455. June 7.) tion is imperative at this marathon gathering of W. 43rd St. 212-840-2824. June 8.) eclectic brass-based ensembles. Drawing inspi- Sannhet ration from New Orleans, Eastern Europe, and Japanese Breakfast The sprawling instrumental metal of this Brook- the Balkan States, and the churches and streets Michelle Zauner, who performs under the moni- lyn trio drifts from melancholic post-rock to the of New York, diverse bands including Harlem ker Japanese Breakfast, has a gift for crafting lu- mouse-heartbeat drumming of black metal. But on Heavenly Notes, Slavic Soul Party, and Frank Lon- minous, gauzy indie pop. Her début album, “Psy- their most recent record, “So Numb,” they tran- don’s Klezmer Brass All-Stars unite for a ten-hour chopomp,” probed the peculiar place where grief scend the trappings of genre and land on something blowout. (McKittrick Hotel, 530 W. 27th St. 212- sometimes gives way to desire. Zauner’s latest, entirely their own. The music is contemplative and 904-1883. June 10.) “Soft Sounds from Another Planet,” which was smart, with textured sonic landscapes that appeal conceived as a space opera, is a cosmic, hopeful to headbangers and shoegazers in equal measure. Bill Orcutt, Tasha Dorji, and Joe McPhee ofering to anyone grappling with pain and heart- They’re currently on a brief tour with Self Defense Taking the stage with just their instruments, a ache. There’s an ode to robot love; a call to the fe- Family, and are joined in at this former Polish ban- head full of ideas, and a heart full of hope, im- male divers of Jeju Island, in Zauner’s birthplace, quet hall by the feminist noise-punk band Weeping provisers who perform solo are thrill-seekers who Korea; and an instrumental track that’s meant to Icon and by Cloakroom, a rif-oriented dream-rock share the rush of invention with an open-eared au- sound “like two satellites talking.” The combina- act from northwest Indiana. (Brooklyn Bazaar, 150 dience. The guitarists Orcutt and Dorji and the tion of bittersweet lyrics and space-age melodies Greenpoint Ave., Brooklyn. bkbazaar.com. May 31.) saxophonist and trumpeter McPhee—each with can make listeners feel, even if just for a moment, 1 a decided distaste for the conventional—bring as though we’re suspended from the now. (Warsaw, their idiosyncratic musical wares to this striking 261 Driggs Ave., Brooklyn. 718-387-0505. May 31.) JAZZ AND STANDARDS space. (Issue Project Room, 22 Boerum Pl., Brook- lyn. 718-330-0313. June 7.) Vic Mensa The Bad Plus The rapper Mensa came up in Chicago’s Savemoney Change—often diicult, even when necessary— Ralph Peterson Trio Honors Geri Allen crew alongside m.c.s like Joey Purp and Chance the shook the Bad Plus when the pianist Ethan Iver- Allen, the accomplished pianist and composer who Rapper, but he has set himself apart through his in- son (playing this week with Billy Hart’s quar- died in 2017, receives a well-deserved tribute from a volvement in activism and his rock-star élan. One tet) left the popular trio, in 2017. But the group respectful colleague, the drummer Ralph Peterson. day, he’s stage diving in leather pants; the next, he’s quickly rebounded with the pianist Orrin Evans Leading a piano trio, as he did on the acclaimed 1988 writing an essay for Time, chronicling the plight of and the aptly titled album “Never Stop II,” a vi- recording “Triangular,” which featured Allen, Pe- Palestinians in the West Bank. Last year, Mensa i- brant recording that shies away from the cheeky terson welcomes the pianist Orrin Evans, of the Bad nally dropped his eclectic début album, “The Au- reinventions of rock standards that originally gar- Plus, and the bassist Luques Curtis. (Jazz Standard, tobiography,” which combines the gritty storytell- nered attention. The band has pulled of a grace- 116 E. 27th St. 212-576-2232. June 12-13.)

12 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 FAST AS

THE LEXUS HYBRID LINE

Climb into the sumptuous cabin of the RX 450h or RX 450hL. Rev its 308-combined-horsepower1 3.5-liter V6. Bury the pedal. And smile. Switch it to Sport mode. Sink deeper into its 10-way power- adjustable driver’s seat. Grip its leather-trimmed steering wheel tighter. And smile. Pass a gas station. And another. And another. And smirk. Because when you choose the eiciency of a hybrid and get all the performance and luxury you want in return, it’ssmart as h too. The Lexus Hybrids. There’s more to h than just hybrid.

INSTANT ACCELERATION2 COMPARABLY PRICED TO LUXURIOUS INTERIOR GAS MODELS2

RX 450h

Options shown. 1. Ratings achieved using the required premium unleaded gasoline with an octane rating of 91 or higher. If premium fuel is not used, performance will decrease. 2. 2018 Lexus Hybrid base models compared to 2018 Lexus gas base models. ©2018 Lexus 1 NOW PLAYING

American Animals MOVIES Bart Layton’s movie tells a true story, more or less, with an emphasis on the stories that the characters tell themselves, and the inevitable trouble that ensues. The story begins in 2003, in Lexington, Kentucky, where Spencer (Barry Keoghan) and his friend Warren (Evan Peters) are students at Transylvania University. Whether from ennui or from a dreaminess fed by movies, they decide to steal a precious copy of Audubon’s “Birds of America” and a rare edition of Darwin from the college library. Their planning, hope- lessly lawed, is weakened rather than bolstered by two new recruits, Eric (Jared Abrahamson) and Chas (Blake Jenner), and, as for the old-guy disguises that they wear for the heist, all you can do is laugh. Layton’s background in docu- mentaries comes to the fore as the real-life rob- bers—now older, and a little wiser, though far from unanimous in what they choose to recall— discuss their strange adventure. The ilm, which kicks of in a lurry of visual tricks and narrative switchbacks, grows plainer in the later stages, Valérie Mairesse performs with the group Orchidée in Agnès Varda’s “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t.” and its concluding mood is surprisingly sad; these kids, who yearned to be something spe- cial, turned out to be anything but.—Anthony Life and Liberty Though “One Sings, the Other Lane (In limited release.) Doesn’t” involves bitter conflicts, grievous The fight for women’s rights in France The Damned (These Are the Damned) losses, and wrenching separations, it’s also gives rise to a film of artistic freedom. The very irst shots of Joseph Losey’s 1961 drama an efervescent and lyrical film that buoys set a tone of chilled alienation that’s utterly of Agnès Varda’s 1977 drama, “One Sings, its emotional extremes with a steady sense its time, as does the action with which the movie begins—the assault on a proper gentleman by a the Other Doesn’t,” which screens June 1-7 of purpose. Pomme’s music is featured so gang of leather-jacketed teddy boys. The violent at BAM Cinématek, is a radical blend of prominently that the movie could qualify youths who rampage through the rustic seaside genres and moods that matches its artis- as a musical. She and Suzanne, who live town of Weymouth are led by a sarcastic, dapper psychopath (Oliver Reed), who is pathologically tic originality with its protagonists’ quietly in diferent cities, maintain a copious cor- attached to his sister (Shirley Anne Field). She, revolutionary audacity. A personal film of respondence that, heard in voice-over, in turn, falls in love with the middle-aged Amer- epochal scope, it spans more than a decade frames the action and turns the film into ican executive (Macdonald Carey) who was their victim. Meanwhile, a sculptor (Viveca Lindfors) of historic changes regarding gender re- a cinematic epistolary novel. What’s more, has a troubled relationship with a government lations and the rights of women. documentary-like scenes of Pomme’s scientist (Alexander Knox), who is raising, in a The story begins in 1962, when Pauline travels in France and Iran (a lover’s native secret program, a group of children who are im- mune to radiation and destined to be the sole (Valérie Mairesse), a rebellious seven- country) foreshadow Varda’s cinematic survivors of the impending nuclear war. Losey’s teen-year-old high-school student in journeys in her recent film “Faces Places.” strongest critique of the times emerges with a Paris, befriends Suzanne (Thérèse Lio- Varda based her vision of local activ- unique stylistic lourish in his wide-screen, black- and-white images, featuring slow glides, skewed tard), a twenty-two-year-old mother of ism leading to broad-based progress on angles, standoish perspectives, and hectic stria- two young children who is pregnant again the era’s real-world changes, both in tions. His conlicted approach to modernity ap- and wants an abortion, which is illegal. mores and in politics. (France legalized pears in the cutting-edge accessories—from chic attire and high-tech audiovisual equipment to Pauline provides money and advice, thus abortion in 1975.) Her trust in the per- sports cars and balletic helicopters—that dazzle sealing their friendship, but circumstances sonal power derived from action is him even as he rues them.—Richard Brody (Quad soon separate them. Then Suzanne, strug- reflected in the confident serenity with Cinema, June 4 and June 6.) gling to make a living in the South of which Pomme and Suzanne confront Deadpool 2 France, leaves a job as a medical secretary their turbulent lives. The ultimate subject Ryan Reynolds keeps the comedic snark of the and opens a family-planning center. of “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t” is the fast-talking title character—a scarred mutant in a skin-tight suit who’s both wondrously agile and Meanwhile, Pauline, who calls herself pursuit of happiness; it ends with a voice- handy with swords—at high energy throughout Pomme (meaning Apple), indignant at over in which Varda says that Pomme this sequel, which outdoes its predecessor in pac- her own trouble getting an abortion, is and Suzanne “fought to gain the happi- ing, playfulness, and dramatic focus. Like those of many other Marvel heroes, Deadpool’s exploits inspired to write feminist songs and ness of being a woman” and cites the are rooted in grief—here, the death of his ian- forms an all-female group, Orchidée (Or- ongoing power of their “optimistic fight.” cée, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), for which he chid). They meet again in 1972, at a pro- The film’s last image, showing Varda’s blames himself. Brought back to the X-Men by the metal-clad Colossus (voiced by Stefan Ka- test outside a courthouse where a woman own teen-age daughter, Rosalie, in the pičić), Deadpool forms his own group, X-Force. is on trial for having an abortion, and role of Suzanne’s seventeen-year-old He ights alongside the fortune-favored Dom- their rekindled friendship, based now on daughter, launches the movie of the ino (Zazie Beetz) and, depending on circum- stances, both with and against the half-bionic their experiences of feminist activism, screen and into the future. Cable (Josh Brolin) as they battle the hellacious becomes the movie’s dramatic core. —Richard Brody Juggernaut and try to prevent the young mutant FILMS JANUS COURTESY

14 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 MOVIES

Fireist (Julian Dennison, of “Hunt for the Wil- into which, nonetheless, she leaps again, with a devoted to the Chekhovian cause, and Bening’s derpeople”) from taking revenge on the board- tragic obsession. The couple had been studying Irina is a ine addition to her gallery of complex ing-school headmaster (Eddie Marsan) who Auschwitz, where Sandra’s father, a Jewish sci- heroines, in ilms such as “20th Century Women” abused him. The director, David Leitch, keeps entist, was killed; she’s heading home to attend (2016) and “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool” the action, with its relexive antics and gory ab- a memorial ceremony for him. Then there’s her (2017), who gird themselves to ight of time surdities, brisk and light-toned. The movie’s brother, Gianni (Jean Sorel), a lacerating play- and trouble.—A.L. (5/21/18) (In limited release.) plotlines mesh with a gleeful precision, but its boy with literary ambitions, who is writing a context-free and ahistorical latness makes it less novel about brother-sister incest. With its hard Sollers Point than the sum of its parts.—R.B. (In wide release.) edges and dark shadows, crashing zooms and The title of Matthew Porterield’s quietly an- feline rages, Visconti’s tale is, in efect, a work guished drama refers to a Baltimore neighborhood First Reformed of gothic modernism, in which history replaces that’s near a now-shuttered steel mill and is still Paul Schrader’s latest movie is one of his most ag- mythology and madness evokes the spurned en- home to many of its former employees. There, the onized. Ethan Hawke plays Reverend Toller, who, lightenment of psychotherapy. In Italian.—R.B. twenty-six-year-old Keith Cohoe (McCaul Lom- after the loss of a son and the wrecking of a mar- (Film Society of Lincoln Center, June 10 and June 15.) bardi), recently released from prison (apparently riage, has washed up in Albany County, New York. for a drug-related ofense), is under house arrest He has a drinking problem, no visible friends, a The Seagull and living with his father, Carol (Jim Belushi), a beautiful old church to preside over, and a scat- This new version of Chekhov’s play, adapted by retired mill worker. Keith is white; many of his tering of worshippers. One of them, a pregnant Stephen Karam and directed by Michael Mayer, friends and neighbors, including his former girl- woman named Mary (Amanda Seyfried), asks is brisk to the point of haste. Running just over friend, Courtney (Zazie Beetz), are black, but, him to counsel her husband, Michael (Philip Et- an hour and a half, it hurries through the arrival in prison, Keith belonged to a white-suprema- tinger), who is profoundly depressed by the plan- of Irina (Annette Bening), a noted actress, at the cist gang, and when his house arrest ends its ex- et’s environmental decay. Toller, to his surprise rural home of her brother, Sorin (Brian Den- con members expect him to rejoin them. Mean- and ours, is drawn to Michael’s cause; the ilm nehy); the woodland staging of a play by her while, unable to ind work and in need of quick is, in part, about a search for something that will son, Konstantin (Billy Howle), and his moony money, Keith begins dealing drugs again. His in- lend fervor and ire to a damp soul. Schrader’s adoration of an ingénue, Nina (Saoirse Ronan), creasingly desperate rounds thrust him into wary insistence on his characters’ self-denial, and even clad in pristine white; the lamentations of Masha yet yearning contact with a wide range of charac- self-chastisement, feels both brave and cussed (Elisabeth Moss), who, in contrast, wears fune- ters, including his grandmother (Lynn Cohen), in an era when self-celebration has become the real black; and the scribblings of a modish writer, two young women who work as strippers, a ter- norm, and his story is equipped with a stripped- Trigorin (Corey Stoll), who neglects his duties rifying white-supremacist leader, an art-school down style to match; apart from two enraptured as Irina’s beau. (You cannot miss his wandering student, and a heroin addict hoping to break her set pieces, the camera barely stirs. The result has and predatory eye.) Though the light haze of idle- habit. Sketching Keith’s inner conlicts and practi- the air of an endurance test, and it might be wise ness through which the characters usually drift is cal struggles with a graceful, mood-rich lyricism, to get in training with the aid of Ingmar Bergman dispersed, the story, far from acquiring a sharper Porterield presses gently but painfully on some and Robert Bresson beforehand. With Cedric focus, seems to grow more inconsequential. But of the most inlamed and sensitive parts of Amer- Kyles, as the pastor of a megachurch.—A.L. (Re- the cast, which includes Mare Winningham, is ican society.—R.B. (In limited release.) viewed in our issue of 5/21/18.) (In limited release.)

Life of the Party Melissa McCarthy co-wrote this blandly amia- ble comedy with her husband, Ben Falcone, who directed. Despite her intermittent moments of comedic inspiration, McCarthy’s character and her performance are stuck in clichés. She plays Deanna Miles, a suburban stay-at-home mother whose husband, Dan (Matt Walsh), leaves her on the same day that they bring their daugh- ter, Maddie (Molly Gordon), back to college. Deanna, who quit college before her own senior year when she got pregnant with Maddie, in- stantly decides to inish her degree—and does so at Maddie’s school. Deanna is an embarrassingly rah-rah and style-challenged student; when the preternaturally calm Maddie gives her a make- over, Deanna unexpectedly attracts—and is at- tracted to—a twentyish frat boy named Jack (Luke Benward). The movie’s view of college life and romance is Hollywood boilerplate, and its depiction of family relationships is oversimpli- ied and sweetened to the vanishing point. The schematic action is enlivened by the whimsical supporting performance of Gillian Jacobs, in the winningly idiosyncratic role of an older student who spent eight years in a coma and has become a social-media celebrity.—R.B. (In wide release.)

Sandra The vast yet stiling, luxurious yet menacing con- ines of a rural Italian villa provide the stagelike Theodore Haupt, Weird People, oil on canvas, 1948. Estimate $5,000 to $8,000. setting for this frenzied family drama by Luchino Visconti, from 1965. The story involves a new- American Art lywed couple—Sandra (Claudia Cardinale), a June 14 young heiress, and her bluf American husband, Andrew (Michael Craig)—who met and married Todd Weyman • [email protected] in Geneva. Visconti ilms their nuptial trip by sports car, from Switzerland to Sandra’s estate Preview: June 9, 12-5; June 11 to 13, 10-6; June 14, 10-12 in Volterra, with the kinetic thrill of a chase. But 104 East 25th St, New York, NY 10010 • tel 212 254 4710 • SWANNGALLERIES.COM what Sandra is leeing, it turns out, is the past—

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 15 DANCE

Togetherness ginning of the twentieth century, unison keeper of the flame is Mary Six Rupert, An ex-Rockette revives the unison act. dancing by women—“girl groups,” they who on June 9, with her group, Leg- were called—seemed to cheer people up, acy 36, will present a program called According to the historian William H. make them feel that they lived in a good “Forever Linked,” at Pace University’s McNeill, in his book “Keeping Together world. The first modern girl groups were Schimmel Center, in lower Manhattan. in Time,” people seem to have been con- created in the eighteen-nineties, by the The chain link, in Rupert’s mind, is vening to move in unison, or at least on Englishman John Tiller, for use in reli- America’s greatest precision-dance the same beat, for a couple of millennia. gious pageants. Soon the Americans group, the Rockettes. Originally, they This has been one of our species’ surest arrived in Europe with their own, snaz- were the Roxyettes, the presiding spir- means of sustaining communities. “Ide- zier version: high heels, short dresses. The its of the Roxy Theatre, on West Fifti- als,” he writes, “are always invoked; but great Franco-Russian dance critic André eth Street. Then, when Radio City keeping together in time arouses warm Levinson was wowed by them—sort of. Music Hall was built, they moved there emotions of collective solidarity and “There’s nothing excessive about these and became the Rockettes. Now they erases personal frustrations as words, by women, save perhaps a surfeit of health, are just the Dance of the Toy Soldiers themselves, cannot do.” Set a lot of peo- an absence of everything, be it morbid in Radio City’s Christmas show. ple marching, and they’ll be more likely or passionate, that is conducive to mys- But, at Pace, Rupert is going to throw to feel O.K. about going out and killing tery,” he wrote in 1925. They didn’t have back onstage everything that the girl their enemies. Get a bunch of Japanese much on, he added, “but there’s nothing groups once were: tappers, specialty acts Coca-Cola-bottling-plant employees modest about this nudity. Modesty is a (three-legged dancers! women tap- up early in the morning to do group spiritual or intellectual scruple haunted dancing on point!), and, of course, uni- calisthenics—McNeill shows us a by sin. In the earthly paradise of these son acts. Rupert started her own tap photo—and they’ll feel better about girls, corporeal purity is uncontaminated career at the age of two and a half, with bottling Coke. by such scruples” (translated by John a song-and-dance routine set to “How That’s when we do unison work our- Goodman). There, in a few words, is Much Is That Doggie in the Window.” selves. What about when we just watch what many Europeans thought of Amer- Later, she was a Rockette for thirteen it? Military parades arouse patriotic feel- icans in the years after the First World years. She is now a professor of tap and ings in the onlooker. That’s surely the War. To them, we were wonderful, and, jazz at Wagner College, on Staten Is- major reason for their existence. And, as very possibly, the end of their civilization. land. But she remembers.

theatre producers discovered at the be- The girl groups are mostly gone. One —Joan Acocella IIVONEN JANNE BY ILLUSTRATION

16 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018

DANCE

New York City Ballet Basil Twist / “Symphonie Fantastique” Ballet Tech Kids Dance The season wraps up with two mixed bills and the This musical puppet extravaganza premièred The choreographer Eliot Feld established Ballet inal performances of the comic three-act “Cop- twenty years ago. To Berlioz’s fantastical score, Tech, a tuition-free ballet school, in 1978. The pélia,” made for the company by George Bal- Twist creates a world out of bits of fabric, plas- students put on an annual show at the Joyce, anchine and the Russian ballerina Alexandra Dani- tic, and tinsel, all of which move in mesmeriz- where they perform various lively and age-ap- lova, in 1974. It’s one of those ballets—like “The ing slow motion inside a giant tank of water, re- propriate dances, a ine showcase for the young Nutcracker” and “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”— sulting in a kind of magical mystery realm. The dancers’ vitality, excellent technique, and focus. that plays with the idea of dancers as dolls or au- music, in a piano arrangement by Franz Liszt, Usually, as in the case of Feld’s “Meshugana tomatons. The entire second act takes place in a is played live by Christopher O’Riley. Not to be Dance,” set to klezmer music, and “Apple Pie,” dollmaker’s workshop, with dancers jerkily per- missed. (HERE, 145 Sixth Ave., near Spring St. set to bluegrass, there is a healthy dose of humor forming jigs and Spanish dances. This is a great 866-811-4111. May 30-June 3, June 5-10, and June involved. “Pointing 2” and “Pointing 3” (both ballet for kids, but it’s also slightly creepy, in keep- 12. Through July 15.) new this year), are more meditative, and cho- ing with the E. T. A. Hofmann story from which reographed to be performed in point shoes. (175 the plot is loosely drawn. • May 29-31 at 7:30: Rennie Harris Puremovement Eighth Ave., at 19th St. 212-242-0800. June 7-10.) “Mozartiana,” “Not Our Fate,” “Pulcinella Vari- As a choreographer of hip-hop, Rennie Harris is ations,” and “Glass Pieces.” • June 1 at 8 and June both an innovator and a classicist. He’s pushed “The Let Go” 2 at 2 and 8: “Coppélia.” • June 3 at 3: “Concerto the form further than anyone else, but he’s also The Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory is vast Barocco,” “Agon,” and “The Four Temperaments.” a staunch stickler about roots. His new produc- and cold, and the interdisciplinary artist Nick Cave (David H. Koch, Lincoln Center. 212-721-6500.) tion, “Funkediied,” looks back to his inspirations seeks to transform it into an uplifting “dance-based from the seventies—igures like Don Campbell, town hall.” The dancing is largely participatory. American Ballet Theatre the “Soul Train” star who invented the stop-mo- Visitors to Cave’s monumental installation are This year marks two hundred years since the birth tion style called locking. With a live band playing led through games of Twister and a line dance in- of Marius Petipa, the French-born choreographer James Brown and Philadelphia’s Hood Lockers vented for the occasion, or invited to just “let go” who dominated Russian ballet in the late nine- joining Harris’s crew in his structurally sophis- to the music of prominent d.j.s. On weekday eve- teenth century. This week and next, A.B.T. per- ticated, always juicy choreography, the show nings, professional dancers perform a ritual and a forms two of his works: “La Bayadère” and “Harle- should have no trouble getting on the good foot. procession involving Cave’s signature “soundsuits,” quinade.” The former, in a staging for the company (New Victory, 209 W. 42nd St. 646-223-3010. June with choreography by Francesca Harper. (Park Ave. by Natalia Makarova from 1980, is in the choreog- 1-3 and June 8-10.) at 66th St. 212-933-5812. June 7-10. Through July 1.) rapher’s exotique style: set in ancient India, it tells the story of a bayadère (a temple dancer) who is murdered by her rival for the afections of a hand- some young warrior. (The ballet contains one of the most famous depictions of an opium dream, a vision of slowly moving dancers descending from the sky along an inclined ramp.) “Harlequinade,” ART in contrast, is a light and happy work, based on stock commedia-dell’arte characters. The chore- 1 ographer Alexei Ratmansky has reconstructed um’s entire sixth loor—still not enough space to the steps and the in-de-siècle style by consult- MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES contain her media-spanning works, which con- ing period notations and archival images. • May front and engage in equal measure, illuminat- 29, May 31, and June 1 at 7:30, May 30 at 2 and Metropolitan Museum ing issues of race, gender, and power with insis- 7:30, and June 2 at 2 and 8: “La Bayadère.” • June “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic tent complexity. In short, Piper has expanded 4-5 and June 7-8 at 7:30, June 6 at 2 and 7:30, and Imagination” the very deinition of political art, making this June 9 at 2 and 8: “Harlequinade.” • June 11-12 Artifacts on loan from the Vatican—jewel-en- retrospective feel superbly acute. In the ear- at 7:30: “Romeo and Juliet.” (Metropolitan Opera crusted mitres and liturgical vestments heavy liest works on view, she experimented with House, Lincoln Center. 212-477-3030. Through July 7.) with embroidered gold thread—conjure the pag- LSD-inspired iguration and systems-based art, eantry and the plunder of the Catholic Church, but her performances of 1970 marked a turn- Rioult Dance NY but they’re handily upstaged by the jaw-drop- ing point, as she began testing the bounds of The choreographer Pascal Rioult expresses his ping, nothing’s-sacred presentation of haute-cou- social acceptability by riding public transport devotion to composers with dutiful craft. This ture designs in the museum’s collection galleries. in clothes reeking of vinegar, for example, or program focusses on Russians, bringing back Hovering above objects from the Byzantine era with a towel stufed in her mouth. Documenta- Rioult’s “Dream Suite” (2014), a whimsical, Cha- are mannequins dressed in knee-length Dolce tion of these and other actions spawned related, gall-inluenced treatment of Tchaikovsky’s Or- & Gabbana frocks from 2013, with ornate bead- performance-based pieces, in which the artist chestra Suite No. 2 in C, and his 2005 take on work that recalls altarpieces and stained glass. captioned photos of herself with thought bub- Stravinsky’s stark choral representation of a The procession continues in the medieval gal- bles to reveal unspoken truths, whether about peasant wedding, “Les Noces.” For “Nostalghia,” leries, with such remarkable garments as an ex- the racist dynamics of interpersonal interac- a première that borrows its title and its mood tremely low-cut loor-length gown, as volumi- tions or American disregard for Cambodian from Tarkovsky’s strange and melancholic ilm nous as a red tafeta tent, by Pierpaolo Piccioli refugees. Piper’s art can be concurrently play- meditation on Russia’s past, the composer, Po- for Valentino. There are two wedding dresses ful and angry, propelled by her dynamic trian- lina Nazaykinskaya, is living and the music is with angel wings, by Yves Saint Laurent and gulation of personal material, mass-media im- live. (Joyce Theatre, 175 Eighth Ave., at 19th St. Jean Paul Gaultier, respectively; another Gaul- agery, and direct-address performance and text. 212-242-0800. May 30-June 3.) tier ensemble, from 1994, was inspired by Joan of To enter “The Humming Room,” conceived in Arc. The Catholic imagination really runs wild 2012, visitors must hum a tune of their choice La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival at the Cloisters, where majestic architectural as they approach the guard posted at the en- In the inal week of the festival, the Argen- elements make for cinematic vignettes, such as trance. Once inside, they’re instructed to imag- tine-born dancer-choreographer Anabella Lenzu a pious bride in the dramatically simple, slop- ine what it was like to be Trayvon Martin as uses drawing, text, and video to relect on being ing “one-seam” wedding dress by the House of they view a small print of his face in the cross- an immigrant and becoming a mother, in “No Balenciaga, from 1967. Standing in a rectangle hairs of a gun, copies of which are free for the More Beautiful Dances.” In “The Unarrival Ex- of sunlight, she gazes up at a large twelfth-cen- taking. Through July 22. periments #4,” Ni’Ja Whitson, a rising choreog- tury cruciix, suspended from the vaulted ceil- rapher with a searching intelligence and a pow- ing by chains. Through Oct. 8. Whitney Museum erful physical presence, explores blackness and “Zoe Leonard: Survey” cosmology in relation to Heidegger’s “Being and Museum of Modern Art The American artist’s strangely beautiful, un- Time.” It all wraps up with a combination of col- “Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, pretentiously intimate, and adamantly politi- lective performance and dance party, organized 1965-2016” cal work is the subject of this powerful show, by AUNTS. (La Mama, 74A E. 4th St. 800-838- This expansive and invaluable retrospective of a nuanced selection of photographs, punctu- 3006. May 30-June 3.) the American Conceptualist occupies the muse- ated by rescued-object sculptures and text. (The

18 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 Your Business Becomes Our Business.TM

That’s why we make more eCommerce deliveries to homes than anyone in the country. Learn more at usps.com/shippingforyou

Trademarks are used with permission. Appearance does not constitute a USPS endorsement. United States Postal Service. All Rights Reserved. The Eagle Logo is among the many trademarks of the U.S. Postal Service.® ADVERTISEMENT 21 SQUARE

MILES OF 8. SUMMER ADVENTURE Discover Bermuda’s rich heritage and colourful culture just 90 minutes from NYC for your perfect Summer Fridays getaway. 1. GATHER AROUND A BEACH BONFIRE Listen to music and sip a Dark ‘N Stormy® at a Tobacco Bay Beach bonfi re. 2. STROLL PINK-SAND SHORES Follow beach trails on the South Shore from Horseshoe Bay to Warwick Long Bay. 3. DANCE TO THE GOMBEY BEAT Cheer on colourfully attired Gombey dancers, the pulse and rhythm of Bermudian culture. 4. BE A ROMANTIC Enjoy a couples’ massage— in a cave—at the Grotto Bay Beach Resort & Spa. 5. GO UNDER THE WAVES Explore thriving coral life and shipwrecks found in Bermuda’s crystal-clear waters. 6. CHOOSE YOUR FAVOURITE COLOUR Admire traditional Bermudian architecture in every shade of pastel on Front Street in Hamilton. 2. 7. BIKE OR HIKE THE BERMUDA RAILWAY TRAIL Wind along the 18-mile Railway Trail through tranquil 6. landscapes and along stunning rocky coastlines. 8. SEE A GIANT MURAL View Graham Foster’s masterwork that vividly tells the tale of Bermuda at the National Museum of Bermuda. ADVERTISEMENT

9. COME SAIL AWAY 14. Learn to sail in Bermuda’s 15. world-renowned sailing conditions: clear calm waters, mild wind and sunny skies. 10. GO UNDERGROUND Marvel at the delicate splendour of Crystal Caves, fi lled with crystal formations of every size. 11. EXPLORE A JUNGLE Walk lush trails at Walsingham Nature Reserve, known to locals as “Tom Moore’s Jungle.” 12. FIND FLAVOURS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Sample traditional Bermudian fare, like fi sh sandwiches, signature rum cocktails and buttery rum cake. 13. UNCOVER MILITARY MIGHT Discover Bermuda’s rich military history at the impressive Fort St. Catherine and Fort Hamilton. 14. INDULGE IN BERMUDA’S ESSENCES Breathe deep at The Bermuda Perfumery, nestled in a charming cottage in the Town of St. George. 15. JUMP OFF A ROCK Take the plunge into sparkling turquoise waters at Admiralty House Park and Clarence Cove. 16. WALK IN A BEATLE’S FOOTSTEPS Visit the Botanical Gardens, where John Lennon found inspiration for his fi nal masterpiece, Double Fantasy. 17. SIP COCKTAILS AT SUNSET Set sail on a sunset cruise aboard an elegant celebration yacht, complete with full bar. 18. TAKE IT TO THE TOP Climb the 185 steps to the top of Gibbs’ Hill Lighthouse, the tallest point on Bermuda. 19. TRY A NEW KIND OF RIDE Cruise Bermuda’s scenic, winding roads on a Twizy, a petite vehicle that’s perfectly fi t for two. 20. HAVE DINNER WITH AN OCEAN VIEW Raise a toast at dinner on the 5. beach with your toes in Bermuda’s pink sands. 21. TEE OFF A LEGENDARY ROUND Try your luck at the famously scenic 16th hole at Port Royal Golf Course. ART exhibition was curated by Bennett Simpson you look. Clement Greenberg, in 1951, adjudged Addicts” to the canvas of vigorous brown smears with Rebecca Matalon, of the Museum of Con- Soutine’s work “exotic” and “futile,” owing to by the counterculture hero William Burroughs, temporary Art, Los Angeles, and calibrated for its lack of “reassuring unity” and “decorative the aesthetic volume of this ifteen-artist group the Whitney by Elisabeth Sherman.) Carefully ordering.” But today the painter feels of the show is dialled up to eleven. But there are subtle structured, on the museum’s ifth loor, in seven moment, amid quite enough reassurance and touches as well. A willfully naïve abstraction by parts, the survey includes a hundred-and-four- decorativeness in recent art. Soutine was once the contemporary painter Josh Smith becomes foot-long collection of vintage postcards of Ni- cited as a major forebear of Abstract Expres- more mysterious in the company of a luminous agara Falls; color shots of New York’s vanished sionism; Willem de Kooning called him his fa- 1946 canvas, of igures in silhouette, by the ec- mom-and-pop shops, printed in the now obsolete vorite painter and also made a remark that ap- centric modernist Forrest Bess. And Katherine dye-transfer process; and a subversively enter- plies not only to the likes of Titian, whom he Bernhardt’s breezy painting of the Pink Pan- taining archive of photographs of Fae Richards, a probably had in mind, but also very neatly to ther plays a teasing game of cat and mouse with black lesbian actress from the nineteen-thirties, Soutine’s meat pictures: “Flesh is the reason oil George Condo’s cartoon-Cubist drawings of which is so lushly convincing you’ll be shocked to paint was invented.” But being favored by fash- rodents. Through June 30. (Ressle, 53 E. 75th St. learn it’s a iction. Some of Leonard’s subjects go ion incurred a cost when Pop and Minimalism 212-641-0608.) unnoticed because they’re mundane, the way na- conquered the art world, in the early sixties. ture becomes incidental in cities (eight pictures Ever since, the painter has occupied a blind “Queenie” document trees, resilient survivors that have spot in contemporary tastes. That should end A Carmen Herrera painting from 1978—a glo- grown enmeshed with the metal fences around now. Through Sept. 16. rious two-panel zigzag in black and emerald— them). Others are rendered invisible when so- draws visitors into this engaging grab bag of ciety turns a blind eye. Between 1992 and 1995, New Museum work by women, selected from the collection Leonard memorialized victims of the AIDS ep- “Aaron Fowler: Bigger Than Me” of El Museo del Barrio. The exhibition makes idemic in the coruscating installation “Strange The artist’s portrait of Lex Brown, his art-school astute connections across generations. Cristina Fruit,” discarded peels of citrus, avocado, and classmate at Yale, is one of two over-the-top as- Hernández Botero’s “Pectoral de Luz” (“Shield bananas, their bruised skins painstakingly made semblages installed against mirrored tiles in the of Light”), from 2005—a circular light box whole again with sinew, zippers, buttons, and museum’s street-front window display. Fowler bearing a gold-pigment imprint of the artist’s thread. Seen in 2018, the tenderly devotional uses a wild variety of materials as his chief ex- chest—invokes both pre-Columbian ritual and project assumes new dimensions—a meditation pressive gesture: Brown’s sensitively painted face feminist performance art, such as Ana Mendie- on bodies violated by gun violence and police would be hard to make out under her coif of ar- ta’s “Blood Sign,” made three decades earlier and brutality, and on the redemptive power of love. tiicial hair and L.E.D. lights even without the seen here in ilmed documentation. Two works Through June 10. background of discarded Christmas-tree trunks are united by their use of bubble-gum pink: an and pianos. A web of multiple orange arms, each inlatable life jacket adorned with Velázquez- Jewish Museum ending in a ist clutching a crushed tube of paint, inspired vignettes, made by Scherezade Gar- “Chaim Soutine: Flesh” are almost too tangled to make visual sense of. cia in 1999, and the quinceañera dresses dot- The centerpiece of this small, potent, and timely But wresting narrative order from the turbulence ting a print by Carmen Lomas Garza, from retrospective of the Russian-French painter, ele- of everyday American life, à la Thornton Dial, is 2005, an ingenious critique of the Chicano art gantly curated by Stephen Brown, is “Carcass of exactly the point, and Fowler does it with brio. movement’s sidelining of women’s concerns in Beef,” made circa 1925. (The picture is on loan Through Aug. 19. the nineteen-sixties. Through June 23. (Hunter from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, in Buf- 1 East Harlem Gallery, 2180 Third Ave., at 119th falo.) Painted in reds and blues as luminous as St. 212-396-7819.) those of Gothic stained glass, it crackles with GALLERIES—UPTOWN 1 formal improvisations (one swift white line res- cues a large blue zone from incoherence) and “It’s Personal” GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN wild emotion. It’s an event—an emergence, an From the brash post-Pop of the giant foam lips emergency—that transpires ceaselessly while on Gina Beavers’s sculptural painting “Makeup Cheyenne Julien & Tau Lewis Two exciting young artists share a phantasmic approach to the igure. Lewis, who lives in To- ronto, presents midsized assemblages of drift- wood, fabric, and fur that are tethered to arma- tures of concrete and salvaged steel—creatures sprung from the pages of a surreal bestiary of animal-saints. The Bronx-based Julien is a tal- ented painter who populates her unsettled world with cartoonish women, upending racist carica- tures. The scene-stealer is “Night Session,” whose gray-scale subject lies frozen in bed, naked and wide-eyed, as a disembodied pink hand holding a brush paints her black body white. Through June 17. (Chapter, 249 E. Houston St. 347-528-4397.)

“The Unseen” This dense eleven-artist show is a paean to the power of art to grapple with mysteries. A pair of crouching igures by the Brooklyn sculptor Sol’Sax, made of self-hardening clay, blood, and wax, with cow’s horns serving as pony- tails and batteries as genitalia, perch in cans (which once held pickled jalapeños) clutching igurines of themselves—a mise en abyme of regeneration. Two ornate sandstone heads, by the blues musician and artist Lonnie Holley, are a counterpoint to the solemn painted-i- breglass boys in John Ahearn’s “Rat Killers,” made in 1986, when the sculptor was living in the South Bronx. A cabalistic diagram by the cosmic-minded Paul Lafoley provides a color- From 1997 to 2002, Justine Kurland photographed teen-age girls in idyllic tableaux (such as “Daisy ful coda. Through June 3. (Fuentes, 55 Delancey

Chain,” above). The series is on view at the Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery through June 29. St. 212-577-1201.) & NASH AND MITCHELL-INNES THE ARTIST COURTESY

22 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 THE ALL-NEW 2019

IT’S EVERYTHING WE EVER IMAGINED, AND THEN SOME.

Imagine becoming one with your vehicle, connecting with all its intelligence through nothing more than a tap of your fingertip. Imagine completely redefining SUV performance with nothing more than a gentle nudge of the throttle. Imagine experiencing your music in another dimension without ever leaving the driver’s seat. Imagination built the all-new 2019 RDX and redefined not just what’s possible in an SUV, but also what’s possible at Acura. The future starts now. The future is Precision Crafted Performance.

RDX with Advance Package shown. ©2018 Acura. Acura, RDX, and the stylized “A” logo are trademarks of Honda Motor Co., Ltd. 1 OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS

Carmen Jones THE THEATRE John Doyle directs an all-black cast (including Anika Noni Rose) in the 1943 Oscar Hammer- stein musical, which transfers the music of Bi- zet’s “Carmen” to the Second World War. (Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St. 866-811-4111. Pre- views begin June 9.)

Cyprus Avenue In David Ireland’s play, directed by Vicky Feath- erstone, a headstrong Belfast Unionist begins to unravel when he sees a resemblance between his new granddaughter and the Irish republican leader Gerry Adams. (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555. Previews begin June 2.)

Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf Elevator Repair Service (“Gatz”) performs Kate Scelsa’s rif on Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” John Collins directs. (Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St. 866-811-4111. Previews begin June 1. Opens June 12.)

The Fruit Trilogy Eve Ensler (“The Vagina Monologues”) wrote this trio of short plays, directed by Mark Rosenblatt for Abington Theatre Company, depicting the lives of Repertorio Español, celebrating ifty years, premières Nilo Cruz’s “Exquisita Agonía.” ordinary women. (Lucille Lortel, 121 Christopher St. 866-811-4111. Previews begin June 2. Opens June 7.) Spanish Lessons daily basis from 1965 to 1973. With a bud- Log Cabin get of approximately twelve million dol- In Jordan Harrison’s comedy, featuring Jesse Tyler Nilo Cruz’s new play uses magical Ferguson, a circle of gay friends reveal themselves lars, the freedom flights were the United realism in a feminist love story. to be more conservative than they appear when seen States’ largest-ever airborne refugee through the eyes of a transgender acquaintance. When Nilo Cruz was awarded the Pu- program. Moving from Cuba to Florida Pam MacKinnon directs. (Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200. Previews begin June 1.) litzer Prize, in 2003, for his seventh full- during President Nixon’s tenure and the length play, “Anna in the Tropics,” it close of the Vietnam War made for a Love and Intrigue acknowledged a writer who was partic- political person, no matter how those Lev Dodin adapts and directs the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg’s production of Frie- ularly attuned not only to atmosphere politics were played out. drich Schiller’s 1787 drama, about a young aristo- and to how “diferent” families func- “Exquisita Agonía” (opening May 30, crat who falls in love with the daughter of a musi- tioned in America but also to how lan- at the venerable Repertorio Español, cian. (BAM Harvey Theatre, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. Opens June 6.) guage changes one’s circumstances, if which is celebrating its fiftieth anniver- you listen. In the play, a lector, well sary) is the story of a middle-aged Othello dressed and well mannered, reads to woman named Millie, who goes on a The Public’s free Shakespeare in the Park sea- son opens with Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s stag- workers rolling cigars in nineteenth-cen- manic search for the recipient of her ing of the tragedy, featuring Chukwudi Iwuji as tury Tampa. The workers, Cuban immi- recently deceased husband’s heart, which Othello and Corey Stoll as Iago. (Delacorte, Cen- grants, are used to this—listening to the leads her to fall in love with Amér, who tral Park. Enter at 81st St. at Central Park W. 212- 967-7555. In previews.) lector as they did their delicate work by is some thirty years her junior. Like hand was a job perk back in Cuba. The Tennessee Williams’s operatic 1951 play, Pass Over book the lector reads is “Anna Karenina,” “The Rose Tattoo,” “Exquisita Agonía” At LCT3, Danya Taymor directs Antoinette Nwan- du’s play, a story of two young black men that draws and, through that story of love, philos- is about a woman who finds life in death, on “Waiting for Godot” and the Book of Exodus. ophy, and agriculture, several of the play’s and a dream of love made real by a man (Claire Tow, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200. Previews characters find their inner voices and whose will to live is equal to her own, in begin June 2.) begin to explore their own passions. an atmosphere where poetic insights are Skintight Cruz’s writing is often described as the norm and women are the center. Idina Menzel stars in a play by Joshua Harmon “lyrical,” but that doesn’t really take into Cruz’s feminist view is one of the liber- (“Signiicant Other”), as a divorced woman who inds out that her father is dating a twenty-year-old account what is hard and sad about what ating aspects of his writing, as is a kind man; Daniel Aukin directs the Roundabout pro- he’s trying to express: what we lose and of magical realism that is not cloying but duction. (Laura Pels, 111 W. 46th St. 212-719-1300. how lost we are when we are displaced. true to his characters, and to the fact of Previews begin May 31.) Cruz knows something about that. He dispossession: sometimes we don’t know Sugar in Our Wounds was born in Cuba in 1960, and his family who we are because we don’t know where At Manhattan Theatre Club, Saheem Ali directs immigrated to Miami in 1970, on a “free- life has landed on our bodies, let alone Donja R. Love’s play about a queer love afair be- tween a young plantation slave and a mysterious dom flight,” or vuelo de la libertad. These in our hearts. stranger during the Civil War. (City Center Stage II,

flights carried Cubans to Miami on a —Hilton Als at 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. Previews begin June 5.) ALZONA ANGELICA BY ILLUSTRATION

24 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 1 THE THEATRE NOW PLAYING at J.Crew, jointly teaching social studies), before cident: they were among the handful of survi- shifting to family scenarios that—in this show, at vors of a bus crash. Four years later, Sophie has The Beast in the Jungle least—are no less sexually charged (a dying grand- come to Tom with an unexpected request. The Susan Stroman’s dance-theatre piece has the feel mother, a father and daughter shotgunning beers). balance of power keeps switching in Brad Birch’s of a chestnut that’s been dusted of after a few de- Markey is often described in shorthand as a per- two-hander, as we learn more about what hap- cades, and in some sense it is: it’s based on Henry formance artist, a label that obscures the fact that, pened on that fateful day and in its immediate James’s 1903 novella, a parable of love lost and as both a writer and an actor, she is an extraordi- aftermath. It turns out that Tom’s testimony may time wasted. What’s new are Stroman’s dances, nary comic talent. (The Bushwick Starr, 207 Starr have contributed to the bus driver’s arrest, but, a lush score by John Kander (“Chicago”), and a St., Brooklyn. 866-811-4111. Through June 12.) oh, that’s not the end of the story. Responsibil- book, by David Thompson, that resets the action ity, guilt, and the diiculty of moving on come in modern Europe and New York. John Marcher Time’s Journey Through a Room into play, of course, but so do politics, since the (Peter Friedman), gray-haired and sad-eyed, re- Honoka (Yuki Kawahisa) died soon after the 2011 driver was Muslim. The best is saved for last in counts a love afair that never was, with a lissome tsunami that ravaged Japan; a year later, her hus- this economical “Brits Of Broadway” import Italian girl named May (Irina Dvorovenko). As band, Kazuki (Kensaku Shinohara), is haunted from Cardif’s Sherman Theatre (“Iphigenia in a young man, he’s played by Tony Yazbeck (“On by the strange optimism that possessed her in Splott”), with a hard-hitting, unexpected twist the Town”), and Stroman knows what a sexy, lik- her inal days, even as he begins a new relation- involving Tom’s psychological evolution. (59E59, able leading man she has in him. He and Dvo- ship with Arisa (Maho Honda). The Japanese at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200. Through June 10.) rovenko have chemistry, but the “beast” that fol- playwright Toshiki Okada is fascinated by awk- 1 lows him, conjured with puppetry and dancers’ wardness, and in this Play Company production— bodies, looks like a budget Dementor. The show his third in collaboration with the director Dan ALSO NOTABLE has charm, but too little danger. (Vineyard, 108 Rothenberg and the translator Aya Ogawa—he E. 15th St. 212-353-0303.) takes that preoccupation to extremes. Kazuki and Angels in America Neil Simon. • The Boys in Arisa seem to be living in a deep daze, barely able the Band Booth. • Carousel Imperial. • Dance Our Lady of 121st Street to summon the drive to walk across the room. Nation Playwrights Horizons. • Frozen St. Nominally, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s 2002 dark com- (Honoka, who moves among them as a ghost, is James. • Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, edy is about a neighborhood reunion prompted by altogether more lively and talkative.) In combi- Parts One and Two Lyric. • The Iceman Com- the funeral of the title character, a beloved, can- nation with Anna Kiraly’s bright, expressionistic eth Jacobs. • Light Shining in Buckinghamshire tankerous nun—“that penguin bitch,” as Norca set and Amith Chandrashaker’s arresting light de- New York Theatre Workshop. Through June (Paola Lázaro) puts it. But tight storytelling is not sign, the efect is hypnotic, not unlike the ilms 3. • Mean Girls August Wilson. • Mlima’s Tale the point here, and neither is Sister Rose, whose of Carl Theodor Dreyer. (A.R.T./New York The- Public. Through June 3. • My Fair Lady Vivian body has been stolen from the funeral home. Plot atres, 502 W. 53rd St. 866-811-4111. Through June 10.) Beaumont. • Paradise Blue Pershing Square strands are brought up and abandoned; people Signature Center. • Saint Joan Samuel J. come and go for no good reason. But the play does Tremor Friedman. Through June 10. • Summer Lunt-Fon- have memorable characters spouting memorable Sophie (Lisa Diveney) and Tom (Paul Rattray) tanne. • Three Tall Women Golden. • Travesties dialogue. Few contemporary playwrights have used to date, but drifted apart after a horriic ac- American Airlines Theatre. Guirgis’s sense of rhythm or his lair for telling, grounding details. “Walter cherry-popped every Jordache bubble butt from Ninety-sixth on up,” Inez (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) rails. The Signa- ture’s cast is iring on all cylinders under Phylicia Rashad’s direction, even as it battles a sprawling set, by Walt Spangler, that creates problems rather than solving them. (Pershing Square Signature Cen- ter, 480 W. 42nd St. 212-244-7529.)

Peace for Mary Frances Mary Frances (the incomparable Lois Smith) is ninety years old, her lungs are illing with luid, and she has pretty much had it with life. “We don’t want you to sufer and die,” her granddaugh- ter Rosie (Natalie Gold) reassures her. “We just want you to die.” Drugs help alleviate Mary Fran- ces’s pain, but little can be done about her grown children’s immaturity and spite—not that Mary Frances herself was ever a saint. Smith is a plea- sure to watch, as always, while Johanna Day and J. Smith-Cameron are perfectly awful—meaning perfectly wonderful—as the Goneril and Regan of West Hartford. The playwright, Lily Thorne, must be commended for her matter-of-factness, bolstered by Lila Neugebauer’s unsentimental staging for the New Group, but the second act of her overlong début play runs in increasingly re- petitive circles. It’s not just Mary Frances who needs closure. (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200.) Thomas Paine, Autograph Letter Signed to Ira Allen, concerning a rendezvous at the Cae Boston in Paris, 1790s. Estimate $10,000 to $15,000. Singlet Erin Markey is as intensely committed an actor as Revolutionary & Presidential Americana from is imaginable, and her latest piece, performed with the Collection of William Wheeler III a perfectly synched Emily Davis, is both an explo- ration and a burlesque of the potential eroticism June 21 underlying pretty much all relationships. Tautly Marco Tomaschett • [email protected] directed by Jordan Fein, Markey’s demented script at times recalls the all-American absurdism of a Preview: June 16, 12-5; June 18 to 20, 10-6; June 21, 10-12 Mark Leyner novel. The duo begin as what seem 104 East 25th St, New York, NY 10010 • tel 212 254 4710 • SWANNGALLERIES.COM like high-school best friends (wrestling, shopping

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 25 written by women. The regal toy-piano expert Mar- garet Leng Tan begins the proceedings with pieces composed for her instrument and various counter- CLASSICAL MUSIC parts: a grand piano, bicycle bells, music boxes, a tin can. Further participants include Maya Felix- 1 brodt and Jasna Veličković, Karen Bentley Pol- er’s Transylvanian childhood; the festival’s long- lick, Elizabeth Hofman, Mari Kimura, Thomas OPERA time music director, Lutz Rath, conducts. June 5 Piercy, and Shiau-Uen Ding. June 2-16. (70 Flushing at 8. (Washington Sq. Park. Entry is free, but seat- Ave, Brooklyn. For full details, see spectrumnyc.com.) New York City Opera: “Brokeback ing is limited.) Mountain” 1 Spektral Quartet Annie Proulx’s short story about a love that blos- These scintillating players are persuasive ambas- soms between two cowboys in the inhospitable cli- RECITALS sadors for the lively scene back home in Chicago. mate of nineteen-sixties Wyoming was made fa- Their latest New York visit begins at Bargemusic, mous by the Oscar-nominated ilm, but Charles The Hands Free in Brooklyn, with a hearty pairing of Schoenberg’s Wuorinen’s score—harsh and jagged as a moun- “Les Mains Libres,” irst published in 1937, fea- String Quartet No. 3 and Brahms’s String Quar- tain range—hews closer to the original text than tures text by the French surrealist poet Paul Éluard tet No. 1 in C Minor. Then, in a casual setting at does Ang Lee’s majestic movie. Its U.S. première alongside delicate drawings by Man Ray. Inspired Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, the quar- stars Daniel Okulitch and Glenn Seven Allen; Ja- by the book’s mix of spontaneity and reinement, tet plays recent works by George Lewis (a Colum- copo Spirei directs and Kazem Abdullah conducts. a new chamber group—comprising the guitarist bia professor) and Eliza Brown, plus the New York May 31 at 7:30, June 2 at 2, June 3 at 4, and June 4 at James Moore, the violinist Caroline Shaw, the ac- première of a piece by David Fulmer, free of charge. 7:30. (Rose Theatre, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway cordionist Nathan Koci, and the bassist Eleonore June 3 at 2; June 5 at 6. (For locations and ticket de- at 60th St. 212-721-6500.) Oppenheim—has concocted an arresting set of tails, see spektralquartet.com.) spindly, lively pieces that sound both improvised The Rose Elf and inevitable. The guitarist Mary Halvorson and Prism Quartet David Hertzberg’s new chamber opera receives its the multi-instrumentalist Robbie Lee open at the The original version of Prism’s “Color Theory” pro- irst full performances in sepulchral surroundings. Kitchen. May 30 at 8. (512 W. 19th St. thekitchen.org.) gram found this ever-adventurous saxophone quartet The amorous and the otherworldly intertwine in collaborating with percussion ensembles. Here, in a R. B. Schlather’s production, for which the mezzo- Brooklyn Art Song Society: “New Voices” sequel designated “2.0,” the group performs with two soprano Samantha Hankey originated the title role. The innovative spirit that has driven New York’s solo percussionists copiously skilled in both compo- June 6, June 8, and June 10 at 7:30. (The Catacombs at indie opera scene for the past decade also gave sition and improvisation, Susie Ibarra and Tyshawn Green-Wood Cemetery, Fifth Ave. at 25th St., Brook- rise to this song-centric company. This program Sorey. Pieces by Elizabeth Hofman and Max Chung lyn. deathofclassical.com.) is built around twenty-irst-century composers. It complete the bill. June 3 at 8. (DiMenna Center for 1 includes entries from established names like Har- Classical Music, 450 W. 37th St. dimennacenter.org.) rison Birtwistle (“Songs from the Same Earth”) ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES and Kaija Saariaho (the mysterious “Quatre In- Da Capo Chamber Players stants”), as well as “It Wasn’t a Dream,” a sequence Flaunting its versatility, this esteemed new-music Met Orchestra of scenes from modern life, newly commissioned group covers an impressive range of idioms and For its inal concerts at Carnegie Hall this season, from Kurt Rhode. Miori Sugiyama and the com- styles in works composed between 1980 and now. the orchestra pairs works by two Austrian com- pany’s founder, Michael Brofman, accompany the Included are a world première by Dylan Mattingly; posers born a century apart: Mozart, whose op- soloists Charlotte Mundy and Zach Finkelstein. recent pieces by Tania León, Christopher Cerrone, eras form a cornerstone of the Met’s repertoire, June 1 at 7. (National Sawdust, 80 N. 6th St., Brook- Taylor Brook, and David Lang; and modern clas- and Mahler, who never wrote one. Gianandrea lyn. nationalsawdust.org.) sics by Elliott Carter, Mario Davidovsky, Philip Noseda conducts the irst, more spirited program— Glass, and Bruce Adolphe. June 4 at 8. (Merkin Con- Mozart’s “Turkish” Concerto, with the violinist MetLiveArts: Aizuri Quartet cert Hall, 129 W. 67th St. merkinhall.org.) James Ehnes, and Mahler’s tremendous Symphony This elegant, inquisitive young string quartet, No. 5. In the second, Michael Tilson Thomas leads which recently won the prestigious M-Prize cham- 92nd Street Y: New York Polyphony the soprano Pretty Yende in Mozart’s exquisite ber music competition, concludes its Metropolitan This inely balanced male-voice quartet largely motet “Exsultate, Jubilate” and Mahler’s more Museum of Art residency with a program focussed forsakes its Renaissance home turf for a concert of delicate Symphony No. 4. May 30 at 8; June 5 at 8. on music in migration. It includes a collaboration unaccompanied part-songs from the past two cen- (212-247-7800.) with the brilliant Syrian clarinettist and composer turies. Music from the German and English tradi- Kinan Azmeh; compositions by Komidas and Lem- tions brings the week to a gentle close. June 8 at 9. New York Philharmonic bit Beecher; and a sequence of new pieces by Pauchi (Lexington Ave. at 92nd St. 212-415-5500.) This season’s inal programs are poles apart. First, Sasaki, Michi Wiancko, Wang Lu, and Can Bilir the concertmaster Frank Huang leads the orches- that relect on the immigrant experience. June 1 at “Facets of Brahms” tra’s string section (and a few of its more pneumatic 7. (Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. metmuseum.org.) St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble delivers two pro- colleagues) in Tchaikovsky’s aristocratic, exuber- grams apiece at Merkin Hall, the Morgan Library, ant “Serenade for Strings,” and in some of Mo- Cantata Profana and the Brooklyn Museum. First, Brahms’s String zart’s best-known music: his “Eine Kleine Nacht- As the resident ensemble of Heartbeat Opera, Sextet No. 1 in B-Flat Major and his late Clarinet musik” and the Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, this versatile chamber group does its part to break Quintet display his love for rich and woody tones. with the principal associate concertmaster Sheryl down the stuiness of opera conventions, playing Then, the composer’s relationship with Clara and Staples as soloist. Then, Esa-Pekka Salonen con- drastically reduced orchestrations in makeshift Robert Schumann is examined, with music by each ducts a special concert that includes two of his own pits, and dressing in drag when the occasion calls member of the famous artistic and emotional trian- compositions and a genre-bending violin concerto for it, but at National Sawdust it showcases a dif- gle. June 5-6 at 7:30 and June 10 at 2; June 12-13 at 7:30 by Daníel Bjarnason, with dance by members of ferent kind of renegade streak. Pieces like Philippe and June 17 at 2. (For venue details, see oslmusic.org.) the Boston Ballet. May 31 at 7:30, June 1 at 11 A.M., Leroux’s “VOI(Rex)” and Simon Steen-Anderson’s June 2 at 8, and June 5-6 at 7:30; June 8 at 8. (David “Diiculties Putting It Into Practice” deconstruct Chelsea Music Festival Geen Hall. 212-875-5656.) the act of vocal performance into soaring high The culinary, visual, and musical arts are celebrated notes, heavy breathing, chatter, and mouth pops. in the course of this nine-day festival. This year, it Washington Square Music Festival Lucy Dhegrae is the vocal soloist, and Jacob Ash- honors Bach’s three hundred and thirty-third birth- The sixtieth season of this august al-fresco se- worth, the ensemble’s artistic director, conducts. day. For the opening night, a clutch of instrumen- ries opens with two relatively conventional works June 2 at 8 and June 3 at 4. (80 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. talists join with the spirited saxophonists of the by groundbreaking composers: Richard Strauss’s nationalsawdust.org.) Barkada Quartet in a program that includes Bach’s late Concerto for Oboe and Small Orchestra and Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and pieces by contem- Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major. They’re Female Composers Festival porary acolytes of the German master, including the followed by Ligeti’s “Concert Românesc,” which Spectrum, an intimate Brooklyn bastion of contem- festival’s composer-in-residence, Aaron Jay Kernis. incorporates folkloric traditions from its compos- porary sounds, mounts a series devoted to music (Various venues, June 8-16. chelseamusicfestival.org.)

26 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 ABOVE & BEYOND

Museum Mile Festival Vice reporter Hamilton Morris have spent an rist Roxane Gay is by how in demand she is. This marks the fortieth year that the museums lin- inordinate amount of time cataloguing the ef- She’s written poetry and iction, a prequel to ing upper Fifth Avenue are throwing a block party. fects of psychedelics. Morris told the Guard- Marvel’s “Black Panther” comic (about the Live entertainment and various outdoor activities ian that now is a particularly fertile period women of Wakanda), best-selling polemics will be set up to encourage a leisurely walk from for experimentation, because virtually every (“Bad Feminist”), and a memoir (“Hunger”). the Metropolitan Museum of Art up to El Museo possible strain that’s ever been discovered is Gay will appear in New York four times in the del Barrio. Admission to the participating institu- “available from diferent ethno-botanical ven- coming weeks, giving talks structured around tions in between—among them the Guggenheim, dors on the Internet.” Some of this territory the new anthology she edited, “Not That Bad: the Cooper Hewitt, the Jewish Museum, and Neue was covered at great length in “Taipei,” Lin’s Dispatches from Rape Culture.” Each one in- Galerie New York—is free. (Fifth Ave. between E. third novel, which the writer said lirted with cludes a conversation with a diferent writer. 82nd and E. 105th Sts. museummilefestival.org. June the autobiographical. The two self-styled “psy- She is joined by BuzzFeed’s Isaac Fitzgerald at 12 from 6 to 9.) chonauts” will discuss Lin’s irst work of non- Cooper Union. She also appears with the author iction, “Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Tayari Jones, at the Unterberg Poetry Center at Freshkills Park Change.” (17 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn. murmrr. the 92nd Street Y, on June 6; Aja Monet, at the Staten Islanders like to point out that the borough’s com. June 7 at 7:30.) New York Public Library, on June 11; and the sprawling public green space dwarfs Manhattan’s actress Ally Sheedy, one of the contributors to Central Park in size. It’s no small wonder that it Cooper Union “Not That Bad,” at the First Unitarian Congre- was fashioned on what was once the world’s largest One way to gauge the growing inluence of gational Society of Brooklyn, on June 12. (The landill. Slated for completion in 2036, the twenty- the cultural critic and gender-equality theo- Great Hall, 7 E. 7th St. 212-353-4100. June 8 at 7.) two-hundred-acre park is being developed in sec- tions; this schedule of tours and events is the per- fect way to get an early look at the acreage and the eight miles of trails that will make up the North Park, which is scheduled to open in 2020. You can hike or rent bikes for the day’s special tours, and also partake in kayaking. A free shuttle provides transportation between the park and the Staten Is- land Ferry Terminal in St. George. (Bikes are al- lowed on the shuttle buses as long as space is avail- able.) (350 Wild Ave., Staten Island. nycgovparks.org. June1 3 from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M.) READINGS AND TALKS

N.Y.U. Skirball Center James Patterson, a novelist whose books regularly outsell those of Stephen King and John Grisham, had an unlikely and yet entirely appropriate col- laborator for “The President Is Missing,” his lat- est thriller, which is set in the White House. Bill Clinton, the former Commander-in-Chief, helped Patterson give a particularly authentic lavor to the novel’s twists and turns. The new partners discuss their literary alliance at this talk. (566 LaGuardia Pl. nyuskirball.org. June 5 at 7.)

Symphony Space The “Selected Shorts” series generally honors the short-story form by having actors read works by well-known and emerging authors in front of a live audience. For this installment, T. Coraghessan Boyle and A. M. Homes will read selections from their own catalogues, and the actor Zach Grenier performs pieces from Boyle’s “The Relive Box” and Homes’s forthcoming “Days of Awe.” (2537 Broadway. 212-864-5400. June 6 at 7:30.)

Murmrr Using a time-honored form of trial and error

ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO AMARGO PABLO BY ILLUSTRATION called “tripping,” the author Tao Lin and the FßD & DRINK

1 TABLES FOR TWO spired, I went back another night, this BAR TAB Le Sia time mostly eschewing conversation with my dining companions for a focussed 11 E. 7th St. (646-370-6423) regimen of crawfish domination. The The first sign that you’re in for an adven- heady “numbing and spicy” broth played ture at Le Sia, which specializes in Bei- perfect assist, the mix of chili, garlic, and jing-style crawfish, is the house bib: not Sichuan peppercorn mingling beautifully your average flimsy scrap of plastic but a with the juicy, umami-rich “head-guts,” Lavender Lake rather weighty, tailored garment that as they’re sometimes called. In the rhythm 383 Carroll St., Brooklyn (347-799-2154) would make a perfect full-sized apron for and the heat, I found Nirvana. Sameness can be refreshing, particularly in a bor- a toddler. It’s also black, the better to hide Ordering crawfish as a “combo,” jum- ough where change is often costliest to those who drips and splatters—and drip and splatter bled with sweet-fleshed snow-crab legs desire it least. This, however, has not been true of you will, if you’re doing it right. Boiled or head-on shrimp, further ups the ante. the Gowanus Canal, which, poorly drained for much of the past two centuries, ripened into an crawfish are most commonly associated A combo comes with tender coins of un-water-like hue as it received the sins of the with Cajun food, but they lend themselves potato and lotus root; you might add growing, changing Brooklyn at its banks. Yet, on to Vietnamese flavors, too, as proven by starchy-sweet taro, and spongy cubes of a recent week night, a woman at this canal-adjacent bar, named for the channel’s ironic epithet, settled their popularity among the communities fish cake, too. For something on the in for what would pass beautifully as a lakeside of the Gulf Coast, and they’ve become lighter side, there’s an excellent sesame- evening—an illusion that was certainly helped by hugely prevalent in China, where they’re cucumber salad, or the Mr. Peanut and the fact that from nowhere in the bar was the Gowanus, a Superfund site, actually visible. On often prepared in spicy broth. Mrs. Edamame, an addictive bowl of both a fenced-in back deck, a charming simulacrum of On my first visit, I ate too gingerly, legumes, boiled in their shells and strewn a back yard, friends in their twenties communed plucking the crustaceans from their salty with whole star anise and thick peels of at picnic tables and ordered white ciders and green salads, dreaming of futures in which they, too, but mild “thirteen special flavor herbal ginger. And almost half the menu is de- might one day have private patios in gentrifying spices” bath, cracking them open to care- voted to kebabs: lamb, pork belly wrapped neighborhoods, with healthy lower beds and fully extract the delicious tail meat, wip- in enoki mushroom, silky Japanese egg- climbing vines. A gregarious waiter delivered bottles of rosé in ice buckets; the weight of one of ing my fingers obsessively. As the meal plant topped with bracing raw-garlic the year’s irst hot days loosened under fairy lights ended, I watched with some awe as a paste. The King of Kings Hot Dog lives and chance-of-thunderstorm skies. A man in chino stranger, alone at a nearby table, enjoyed up to its name: a slender tube of mystery shorts told a companion how pleased he was to have acquired a girlfriend who, he was discovering, what seemed like an entirely diferent meat carved into delicate petals, as elegant “doesn’t need much attention.” Still, he confessed, experience. His hands sheathed in plastic as a radish rosette. Dredged in crushed “I don’t have a very good track record with girl- gloves, he had strategically placed the cumin, fennel, and chili, it needs no fur- friends. We’ll see.” A friend, arriving late care of a stagnant F train, lung her arms around a woman bucket provided for shells directly in front ther seasoning—but, if you felt like dunk- and, in millennial hyperbole, promised eternal of him, leaning over it as he grabbed his ing it in your crawfish broth, you wouldn’t penance. “Don’t worry! I’ve already moved on,” prey swiftly, swiping them vigorously be the only one. (Crawfish $15 per pound; the woman said, navigating them toward a bar- tender, for a cocktail with cucumber, or maybe through the broth before snapping head dishes $3.95-$50.) rhubarb. Perhaps this summer, she thought, she’d from tail and sucking lustily on each. In- —Hannah Goldfield take up gardening.—Elizabeth Barber SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW FOR FAIBYSHEV DOLLY BY PHOTOGRAPH

28 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 ADVERTISEMENT In The Band’s 11 TONY AWARD® NOMINATIONS INCLUDING Visit , Playwright Itamar Moses BEST Helps Strangers MUSICAL Tell The Truth

BY MARK BLANKENSHIP “MY FAVORITE MUSICAL, NOT JUST OF THE SEASON, BUT

Sometimes, you can only be honest with strangers. ONE OF MY FAVORITES OF ALL TIME.” “It’s much safer to talk about things with someone - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone you don’t know and will never see again,” says playwright Itamar Moses. “They don’t know the story you’ve built up around yourself.” That curious freedom shapes The Band’s Visit, the new Broadway musical about a group of Egyptian musicians who get lost on their way to a concert in Israel. Stranded in a small town, they pass the time with the locals, eating at their tables and sleeping in their spare rooms. To Moses, who wrote the musical’s book, that’s a perfect catalyst for drama. “Everything that happens is only possible because these two groups of people don’t know each other,” he says. Take Iris, an Israeli wife and mother who finds her own birthday party crashed by musicians her husband brings home. After years of mute frustration with her marriage, she suddenly reveals everything. “The eyes of these strangers on her life make it impossible to ignore what she’s been trying to suppress,” Moses says. The same is true for characters who confess their dreams, regrets, and loves. Ironically, they may be even more honest with each other because they don’t share a language. The Egyptians speak Arabic and the Israelis speak Hebrew, but when they talk to each other, they use halting, tentative English. “When you don’t have unlimited language as a tool, you really have to get to the point right away,” THE BAND’S VISIT MUSIC & LYRICS BY DAVID YAZBEK BOOK BY ITAMAR MOSES Moses says. “People aren’t going to talk around BASED ON THE SCREENPLAY BY ERAN KOLIRIN DIRECTED BY DAVID CROMER the truth, because they don’t have the words.” Telecharge.com X 212-239-6200 Naturally, that limited vocabulary affected Moses’ o playwriting. “But I never lamented it as a limitation,” Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th St. he says. “I really enjoyed the tension between the THEBANDSVISITMUSICAL.COM simplicity of the language and the depth of the emotion. Sometimes there’s nothing better than having a constraint.” —Now in Paperback—

“I could not love “Poignant, “Dazzling, LESS more…. funny, and wise, bewitching and Brilliantly funny.” filled with be-wonderful.” —Ron Charles, unexpected turns.” —The New York The Washington Post —San Francisco Chronicle Times Book Review

Also available in ebook and audio littlebrown.com BOOKS THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT black men using the facility had not paid; lege education. (And the company an- SMELLING THE COFFEE they had. A couple of weeks after that, nounced that anyone can now use the a woman in California called the police rest rooms without buying anything.) In lijah Anderson, a professor of on three black women whom she thought the tempest of race in America, the res- Esociology and African-American were behaving suspiciously. They were olution was marked by an impressive de- studies at Yale, has spent much of his actually carrying bags out of a house they gree of good faith. Yet Starbucks’ attempt career exploring the dynamics of Af- had rented on Airbnb. Earlier this month, to address the larger issue—the racial as- rican-American life in mostly black a white student at Yale called the police sumptions that lead to such incidents— urban environments. Three years ago, on a black graduate student for exhibit- has met with skepticism. however, he published a paper, titled ing behavior that struck her as suspi- The company’s C.E.O., Kevin John- “The White Space,” which looked at cious: napping in a common area. Thou- son, announced that, on the afternoon the racial complexities of mostly white sands of social-media users have since of May 29th, Starbucks will close its eight urban environments. “The city’s pub- shared their experiences as persons of thousand cofee shops across the coun- lic spaces, workplaces and neighbor- color in a “white space.” try, in order to conduct “racial-bias train- hoods may now be conceptualized as Starbucks didn’t press charges against ing” for its employees. This isn’t its first a mosaic of white spaces, black spaces the men, but protests followed, along foray into race concerns. In 2015, after and cosmopolitan spaces,” Anderson with the requisite hashtag directive, in the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the wrote. The white spaces are an envi- this case, #boycottStarbucks. The men, company encouraged its employees to ronment in which blacks are “typically though, settled with the city for a dollar write the phrase “Race Together” on take- absent, not expected, or marginalized.” apiece and a promise to invest in a pro- out cups. The idea was widely ridiculed, Academics are commonly dogged by gram to assist young entrepreneurs. They but asking customers to contemplate the questions of how their research applies also negotiated a settlement with Star- most consistently radioactive topic in to the real world. Anderson has faced the bucks that included an ofer of a free col- American society while savoring their opposite: a scroll of headlines and social- preferred combinations of soy, mocha, media posts that, like a mad data set lib- and caramel was certainly noteworthy. erated from its spreadsheet, seem intent For the May 29th training, Starbucks on confirming the validity of his argu- has gone deeper, consulting with, among ment. The most notable recent case others, former Attorney General Eric in point occurred on April 12th, when a Holder; Sherrilyn Ifill, of the N.A.A.C.P. white employee of a Starbucks in Phil- Legal Defense Fund; Bryan Stevenson, adelphia called the police on two young of the Equal Justice Initiative; Heather black men, Rashon Nelson and Donte McGee, of the Demos Center; and Jon- Robinson, who asked to use the rest room athan Greenblatt, of the Anti-Defama- before they had ordered anything. They tion League. A video preview of the were arrested on suspicion of trespass- curriculum released last week featured ing; it turned out that they had been wait- messages from the company’s executive ing for a business associate to join them. chairman, Howard Schultz, and from The incident was both disturbing and Common, and a film by the veteran disturbingly common. A few days later, documentary-maker Stanley Nelson. an employee at a New Jersey gym called The concept of “implicit bias”—the

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM BY ILLUSTRATIONS the police, on the suspicion that two subtle, unconscious responses that we’re

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 31 conditioned to display—has lately be- bucks situation and others like it have cases, collectively known as the Civil come familiar, for reasons relating both demonstrated, there is a companion Rights Cases, involving the harassment to its valence among academics and to issue: the ways in which the police can of African-Americans in theatres and its ability to bridge a particular chasm in serve as a vector of the biases of indi- hotels and on trains. The Court ruled the dialogue about race. The popular per- vidual citizens. The question isn’t sim- against the plaintifs, finding that the ception of racism as mostly the product ply whether an oicer displays bias in Civil Rights Act of 1875 was an uncon- of the kind of monstrous people who, carrying out his oicial duty but whether stitutional violation of the rights of pri- say, would drive into a crowd of pedes- the call that led to his presence in a vate businesses. In a famous dissent, Jus- trians in Charlottesville, Virginia, makes given situation is itself the result of bias. tice John Marshall Harlan noted that it diicult to address the more pervasive The crucial aspect of the Starbucks story “today it is the colored race which is de- daily practices of it. In fact, the bar for isn’t whether a company can, in a sin- nied, by corporations and individuals perceived bigotry has been set so high gle training session, diminish bias among wielding public authority, rights funda- that, last week, an attorney caught on its employees. It’s the implied acknowl- mental in their freedom and citizenship.” video railing against Spanish-speaking edgment that such attitudes are so per- He added, “At some future time, it may employees at a restaurant in New York, vasive in America that a company has be that some other race will fall under and threatening to have them deported, to shoulder the responsibility of miti- the ban of race discrimination.” could release a statement earnestly de- gating them in its workforce. Not only was Justice Harlan pre- claring himself not to be a racist. It would be possible to see the recent scient about the current treatment of Implicit bias disassociates racism from incidents as a survivable pestering—rac- other races; he also foresaw a Presidency overt villainy and, as a consequence, en- ism as nuisance—were it not for the fact that strives to make the United States genders less defensiveness in the dia- that the denial of the unimpeded use of itself feel like a white space. Implicit bi- logue. A series of events in recent years public space has been central to the bat- ases often have a way of becoming ex- sparked conversations about implicit tles over civil rights since Emancipation. plicit ones. bias among the police, but, as the Star- In 1883, the Supreme Court heard five —Jelani Cobb

DEPT. OF PUBLIC SPEAKING gest concern is being chased by very to zoom in on my face or my legs,” Fuen- NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM small cowboys.” tes said. She was referring to evidence Kasky, whose of-air manner leans that she was hit by shrapnel, and, in her toward deadpan facetiousness, told Kelly, left leg, by a bullet. “I forgot to say that a lot of the girls in The car turned onto Central Park my class think you’re hot. I don’t know West. “Do you guys want to ditch this what you want to do about that.” He event and get ‘Escape to Margaritaville’ added, “I gave every single one of them tickets?” Kasky asked. David Hogg called ate on a rainy afternoon last week, your number.” Kelly to ask about pending legislation to LCameron Kasky and Zion Kelly, “Really?” Kelly asked, for a moment lower the voting age in D.C. to sixteen. gun-reform activists, were in the lobby unsure. In the museum, they were shown of the Hotel Beacon, on the Upper West There was talk of congressional lob- into a room just of the Theodore Roo- Side, wearing tuxedos. Kasky is a survi- bying, a book proposal, and a push for sevelt Rotunda, to wait for a sound check. vor of the mass shooting, in February, voter registration. Referring to David “I’m very, very hungry,” Kasky said. at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High Hogg, another leader of their move- “I would like to eat that prehistoric bird.” School, in Parkland, Florida. He was ment, Kasky asked Kelly, “Does David He encouraged Kelly to pose, seated, at memorably self-assured when, on CNN, fill you in on these things?” the head of a long polished table, and he pressed Senator Marco Rubio about “Most of the time,” Kelly said. made a silent three-second video, which, accepting N.R.A. funding; he went on “His brain works at the speed of a posted on Twitter, was watched a hun- to help organize the March for Our hummingbird,” Kasky said. dred thousand times during the follow- Lives. At that protest, Kelly, a high- Fuentes came out of the elevator. ing twenty-four hours. school senior from Northeast Washing- “Hello, fellas,” she said. The three of The conversation included Citizens ton, D.C., spoke about the death of Zaire, them, and three parents, climbed into United and “Deadpool 2.” his twin brother, who was shot and killed a car. Jef Kasky, Cameron’s father, re- “Is there anyone in here who works during an attempted robbery. Kasky and minded the students that they had opted directly for this museum?” Kasky asked. Kelly were waiting for Samantha Fuen- not to walk on the red carpet. His son There was not, so he lay down on the tes, another Parkland student, to join said that he wished event photogra- table, on his side, his head supported by them; they would then drive to the phers were “a bit more understanding one hand. American Museum of Natural History, of people who aren’t very photo—” “O.K., Dad, get the picture,” he said. each accompanied by a parent, to accept “Genic,” Kelly said. On the way to the sound check, awards at PEN America’s annual gala. Kasky laughed. “I was going for Fuentes, who is a senior, talked about Referring to a scene in “Night at the ‘photo-oriented.’” “The Universe in a Nutshell,” by Ste- Museum,” Kasky observed that his “big- “A lot of these photographers want phen Hawking, and said, “I wanted to

32 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 City sounds #MyDCcool Art everywhere Delicious dishes

make monumental memories

call 1-888-301-7001 be an elementary-school teacher, but flames. Behind them, the slogans of the now I’m scared of being a schoolteacher. Women.nyc campaign were projected So, something else.” onto the stone legs of the arch. One leg She caught sight of Morgan Free- began “How Does a City” and the other man. “I want him to narrate my entire continued “Work for Women?” life!” she said. She added that she con- As the sun set, the program started. sidered her role, among the March for Glen spoke, followed by, among oth- Our Lives activists, to be more moti- ers, Jessica González-Rojas, the exec- vational than organizational. “Am I utive director of the National Latina coming up with policies? No. Am I Institute for Reproductive Health; Erin coming up with budgets? No. That’s Vilardi, the C.E.O. of VoteRunLead, more Cameron’s department.” She was which helps women run for oice; and not yet used to public speaking. “And Sophia Chang, a writer and a former that was evident at the march,” she said, manager of some of the Wu-Tang Clan. laughing, referring to an interruption, A crowd gathered, and several women at that event, when she threw up. of New York City stopped to see what When the students returned to their Alicia Glen the fuss was about. greenroom, some of the evening’s other Nicole Corbett, the C.E.O. of a Union speakers were there. Jef Kasky made a on women, and she had come directly Square-based firm called Worn, which hesitant request of Margaret Atwood: from her oice, in City Hall. An aide had worked on the site, was in the crowd. Would she sign a copy of “The Hand- appeared at the vehicle’s tinted rear win- “We’re a mission-based creative agency, maid’s Tale” with the message “Better dow, which Glen rolled down to receive focussed on women-led companies and get the fuck out while you can”? At- what she’d been waiting for: a black women-led campaigns,” Corbett said. wood paused, and softly proposed, “Or, T-shirt that said “Women.nyc.” She (Her firm’s clients include Planned Par- ‘Better vote while you can’?” threw it on under her dark blazer. enthood and the dating-and-networking When Fuentes later spoke, she was “Norma Kamali, an icon of feminism, app Bumble.) She described some ads again sick, and left the stage. Kelly gave made these T-shirts for us,” she said. that had been designed for the city’s his speech. Fuentes returned, smiling, Women.nyc is both a Web site and free-Wi-Fi kiosks and a billboard at the with her mother. “I think sometimes I the name of an ad campaign meant to Port Authority Bus Terminal: “You’re forget I got shot, and I think that things provide a boost to New York’s female not going to see pictures of women in are easy,” she told the audience. “And residents. The site ofers information on these ads. It’s all about the power of then you throw up onstage for the sec- processes such as hiring a lawyer, start- words. Words like ‘We know you can ond fucking time in a row.” ing a business, and applying for aford- do it alone, but you don’t have to.’ That’s She ended her remarks with a mes- able housing, in the tone of an after-work coming from talking to women around sage to those afected by the shooting pep talk over Martinis: “Women of NYC, the city, saying, ‘What’s real? What do at Santa Fe High School, in Texas, four make your power move.” you want to hear?’” days earlier. “I know what it feels like Glen, a cheerful former Goldman Stacey Gordon, a mother of three, to lose the ones you love right in front Sachs executive with a board-meeting said that she’d happened on the event of your eyes: the rage, the sadness, the cadence, explained that the campaign after picking up dinner at By Chloe, a anguish, and the fear. My arms are open was part of a broader push by the city to vegan café and juice bar on Bleecker for you, to embrace you, but also to fight persuade businesses to adopt policies like Street. “I thought they must be a high- for you. Stay beautiful, and good night.” pay transparency, equal hiring, and paid school band,” Gordon said, of Fogo 1—Ian Parker parental leave. It came together, like many Azul. “And then I saw this ‘Women- political projects these days, in response dot-New York City,’ and I was sort of UNDER THE ARCH to the 2016 Presidential election. “In city blown away.” Gordon is launching a FORMATION government, on the one hand, we were nonprofit called the Wrinkle Project to all really depressed and miserable and “change the way people see aging,” and wanted to just drink for the next month,” she’d already tapped the Women.nyc Glen said. “But we also thought, Here’s URL into her iPhone. Standing nearby an opportunity to prove that cities are was Gabriella Verdugo, who had re- innovators, and we can really try to take cently graduated from Northern Ari- actions into our own hands.” zona University with a major in strate- ne recent evening, Alicia Glen, the In the shadow of the Washington gic communication. She said that she’d ONew York City deputy mayor for Square Arch, the evening’s musical en- recently moved to the city (“for, hope- housing and economic development, tertainment was setting up: the drum- fully, work”) and had found an apart- was sitting in a black S.U.V. that had mers of Fogo Azul, which bills itself as ment just south of Washington Square pulled over near Washington Square New York City’s “only all-women Bra- (“which is awesome”). Verdugo had Park. She was on her way to celebrate zilian drum line.” They wore blue and learned about the event on Instagram, the launch of a new initiative focussed carried instruments adorned with blue and made a mental note to go—but

34 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 then forgot about it until she heard the Herman’s Hermits, than he does today, ray said, he heard someone playing ‘Lady drumming. “I was in my apartment, and he had his own brief experience photo- Madonna’ on a piano. “We went in, and I heard cheering and screaming, and I graphing royals. He’d got the job he had there were the Beatles, and I said, ‘Oh, thought, Ah, it’s tonight! I have to go!” then, at the Sunday Times Colour Mag- shit.’ Don said, ‘Didn’t I tell you?’” She planned to visit the Web site when azine, with help from the photographer McCullin took a picture that appeared she got home to scour it for job leads. Antony Armstrong-Jones, also known on the cover of Life two months later, In the front row, close to the dais, stood as Lord Snowden, Princess Margaret’s and then they all went looking for in- Nicole Doz, a sanitation worker who was husband, and the two of them often teresting locations—an adventure known recently crowned Miss Staten Island 2018. worked together. One day, Snowdon to Beatles scholars as the Mad Day Out. She is one of only about two hundred asked him to bring a camera to Ken- “They were recording ‘The White women in the Department of Sanitation, sington Palace. “I took some photos of Album,’ and they hated their publicity out of some seven thousand six hundred him and Princess Margaret and their photos,” Murray said. “John wanted to uniformed employees. “Day to day, I drive children, in their Aston Martin, look- be photographed next to Karl Marx’s a street sweeper or I am out on collec- ing back over the boot,” he said. “While tomb, but when we got to Highgate tion, picking up either garbage or recy- I was shooting, a little old lady pulled Cemetery the gate was locked, so they cling,” Doz said. She had come to the at my shirt and asked what I was doing. stood in front of a little house nearby, Women.nyc event at the suggestion of It was Auntie Alice, who would be and we shot them there.” Murray learned the sanitation commissioner, Kathryn Queen Victoria’s last surviving grand- later that two young girls inside the house Garcia, and she was wearing a green San- child.” Murray and Princess Margaret, had shouted, “Dad! Dad! It’s the Beat- itation Department hoodie, a Miss Staten whom he called M., became good les outside!” But their father hadn’t be- Island sash, and a tiara. She said, “I hope friends. They went to movies together, lieved them, and by the time he got to that when I’m out doing my job, and and he took the children fishing. “One the window they were leaving. when I’m at events like these, I can in- time, at Buckingham Palace, a corgi dog “It was a Sunday afternoon, and on spire someone to take a diferent path.” started biting at my ankles,” he said. “I Sundays in those days London was 1—Eric Lach gently pushed it of, and a voice said, shut, literally shut,” Murray said. “If ‘Who are you?’” The voice turned out there had been mobile phones, we’d DEEP CUTS to be Queen Elizabeth’s. “I told her what have been surrounded in thirty seconds, MAD DAY OUT had happened, and she said, ‘Oh, don’t but that never happened. George would worry—that one is always doing that.’” suggest something, and then Paul would His other big break came on a sum- suggest something, and we just drove mer day in 1968. As Murray tells it, Don around. We did cause two slight rear- McCullin—a distinguished war pho- end accidents, but nobody else noticed.” tographer and a Sunday Times col- Murray shot the same things that Mc- league—asked Murray if he’d drive him Cullin shot, but from diferent angles— he British photographer Tom Mur- around while he photographed a mu- including an unforgettable scene of the Tray isn’t crazy about Alexi Lubo- sical group. “I knew more about music Beatles sitting next to and leaning over mirski’s oicial engagement and wed- than he did,” Murray recalled. “I thought an oldish man seated on a park bench, ding portraits of Prince Harry and I might get a few snaps, so I grabbed sound asleep. Meghan Markle. In one shot, the cou- a Nikon and two rolls of Ektachrome.” Prints of twenty-three of Murray’s ple are sitting on stone steps at Frog- When they arrived at the Times, Mur- Mad Day photographs are currently on more House and leaning in to each display, in two diferent sizes, at Soho other. “Harry is too round-shouldered,” Contemporary Art, near the corner of Murray said the other day, during a visit Bowery and Houston. (The larger ones to New York. “He’s squishing her, and sell for six thousand dollars; the smaller he’s so hunched over that she can’t get ones start at three thousand.) “That day close enough. And she should have both was a gift from God,” Murray said, as hands on top of his right hand, instead he signed and numbered a print. “If I’d of one hand down here, where you can’t known who we were going to shoot, see it.” There is, in fact, something dis- I’d have thrown up twice and taken four turbing about Markle’s right arm, which cameras and a hundred rolls of film.” seems to end at her elbow. “And, when A gallery employee carefully lifted the you put your hand on the bloke’s hand, picture he had just signed. “I don’t want you don’t press,” he continued. “It’s the to be rude about it, but most of Don’s same with leg models. A lot of them pictures from that day are crap,” Mur- lie on the ground and do the shots up- ray continued. “Mine are bloody mar- side down, so that the blood runs the vellous, though. Gone are the days when other way and you don’t see any veins.” I used to say they were O.K. They are Murray is seventy-four. In 1969, when the best.” he looked more like Peter Noone, of The Beatles —David Owen

36 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 1 THE BOARDS BLUE NOTE

n 1991, the same year as the Crown IHeights riots, the New York City Po- lice Department decided that it was time to make music again. The N.Y.P.D. Po- “Whatever you do in there all day is ine with me, lice Band had existed from 1901 to 1955, so long as it’s not writing a memoir.” and, to revive it, the department turned to Lieutenant Tony Giorgio, from the •• Ceremonial Unit, which handles every- thing from Columbus Day marches to next to Paul McCartney. Now he was blend of navy uniforms (N.Y.P.D.) and pallbearers for police funerals. Through back, on a Wednesday night, with nine powder-blue ones (Alexandria). “The the department’s internal computer sys- members of his band, who would be song we did, ‘Soraya’—we’re actually tem, called the Finest, Giorgio put out surprising the audience by jamming with going to keep it in our repertoire,” Amy a call for musicians. “I was looking for the show’s fictional Alexandria Cere- Pape, the N.Y.P.D. drum major, said. clarinets, woodwinds, brass, sousaphones,” monial Police Orchestra. Also in atten- “We have several diferent ethnic pa- he said the other day. “I got a gazillion dance were members of the N.Y.P.D.’s rades.” A man in a black T-shirt intro- guitar players and drummers.” Muslim Oicers Society and its Jewish duced himself to Pape. “Did I hear that The band grew to eighty strong, and equivalent, the Shomrim Society. “We you’re the assistant conductor? I’m the Giorgio, a fiftyish man with a Brooklyn want to see if it’s really true that music assistant conductor for the show!” accent and tidy salt-and-pepper hair, re- is the universal language,” Giorgio said. The actor John Cariani, who plays mains its conductor and musical direc- The theatre filled up with oicers in one of the Israelis, mentioned that his tor. He began playing the clarinet in the uniform, perhaps leading some audi- boyfriend is on the force. “He couldn’t fourth grade, he recalled, but picked up ence members to wonder if there’d been be here, because he’s working,” he said, drums in junior high, because the drum- a bomb threat. (In 2010, not long after adding, “Sometimes the way people in mers all had girlfriends. (“I became the a smoking car bomb was discovered on the arts speak about police oicers is a section head in percussion and had a girl- Forty-fifth Street, the two precincts that bit painful for me.” Just as “The Band’s friend by October,” he said.) In 1982, he cover the theatre district received an Visit” elides Middle Eastern politics, was filling in for a high-school choir di- honorary Tony.) During the curtain call, the actor-police confab sidestepped the rector who was on maternity leave when Giorgio gathered his musicians in the thornier issues of law enforcement. “The he decided to join the force. For a while, wings. “My patrol is a block from here,” show could have been not only Arabs he worked the Sixty-ninth Precinct, in the sousaphone player said. and Israelis—it could have been Rus- Canarsie, Brooklyn, before moving to the Dariush Kashani, who was playing sians and Ukrainians,” Giorgio said. Ceremonial Unit, where he’s now the the Egyptian band leader, silenced the “Some of the characters in the band commanding oicer. The Police Band audience and introduced Giorgio, say- we could really identify with,” Bill Mc- has a wide repertoire, including lots of ing, “If you don’t know who this guy is, Donald, an N.Y.P.D. trumpet player, Sousa marches; a spinof jazz ensemble Google him. He’s amazing.” Giorgio added. “When we’re on trips, some plays retirement events. “We just had a brought out the musicians, to wild ap- people are very . . . prominent.” He beautiful memorial ceremony in the head- plause, and said, “The N.Y.P.D. band has cocked a thumb at the guy next to him, quarters lobby, where we unveiled twenty- travelled the world—Japan, Hong Kong, a drummer. seven names of oicers who died in the Vietnam, Singapore—but the reason we “Are you my bro?” Ari’el Stachel, who line of duty,” he said. “I had two violin do it is the same premise of this show, plays an Egyptian ladies’ man, said, players play with a flutist.” which is that we’re all the same.” He led laughing. Giorgio was in the lounge of the Ethel a brassy rendition of “New York, New “A lot of similar dance moves,” an- Barrymore Theatre, home of the musi- York,” then welcomed the Alexandria other cop joked. cal “The Band’s Visit” (nominated for Ceremonial Police Orchestra to join his Joe Cohen, the president of the eleven Tony Awards), which follows an musicians for a rowdy Middle Eastern Shomrim Society, told the cast, “Toda Egyptian police orchestra that gets number from the show. “We have not raba” (“Thank you very much”), and stranded for the night in an Israeli des- rehearsed this,” Giorgio prefaced. “I’ll passed out N.Y.P.D. patches. “So lit!” ert town. Giorgio, a Broadway-musical tell you the secret: if we begin together Stachel said. buf—“First one I ever saw was ‘1776,’ and end together, it’s a success.” Cohen apologized, “We were out of and I’ve seen everything in between”— After the curtain came down, the N.Y.P.D. yarmulkes.” caught the show in April, and was seated cops and the cast posed for photos, a —Michael Schulman

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 37 weakened by anti-union laws. More- jon started his own Facebook group LETTER FROM OKLAHOMA (Oklahoma Teacher Walkout—The Time Is Now!), invited friends, and went to sleep. By the morning, the THE TEACHING MOMENT group had twenty-one thousand mem- bers; soon afterward, it had seventy- How an educators’ strike reinvigorated local politics. two thousand. In response to the threat of a walk- BY RIVKA GALCHEN out, the Republican-dominated Okla- homa legislature ofered teachers a pay raise of around six thousand dollars a year. It funded the raise with an as- sortment of tax bills, most of which disproportionately afect the poor—a cigarette tax, a diesel tax, an Amazon sales tax, an expansion of ball and dice gambling, and a five-dollar-per-room hotel-motel tax. The Republicans touted the move as historic, and it was: the legislature hadn’t passed a tax in- crease since 1990. The Democrats, along with the teachers, argued that the bill was far from suicient, since it included little additional funding for students or schools. On April 2nd, Hoxie drove to the capitol, in Oklahoma City, about a hundred miles away, to attend the first day of the walkout. He told me, “I think the legislators thought we would come out for a day and just go home.” The teachers protested for nearly two weeks. Heather Cody, a teacher Hoxie met at the walkout, helped organize a pro- test march from Tulsa to the capitol. During a trip to Disneyland, Hoxie Schools in Oklahoma are among the most poorly funded in the nation. said, Cody had noticed that she “walked sixteen miles in a day, so she thought, We can do this.” Hoxie and other raig Hoxie, an Army veteran and cooling, are open only four days a week. teachers packed enough food and water Ca father of two, still teaches phys- In late February, Hoxie and other for several days, knowing that they ics at Booker T. Washington High teachers in Oklahoma closely followed would be walking long stretches School, in Tulsa, though hundreds of the nine-day teachers’ strike in West through sparsely populated areas. “But teachers have left Oklahoma for other Virginia, which was prompted by low it soon became very apparent we didn’t states, in search of better pay. In the pay and insuicient health-care plans; need to carry anything,” Hoxie said. past decade, funding for K-12 educa- the strike ended when the state leg- “We’d top a hill and then we’d see a tion in the state has fallen by a billion islature passed a five-per-cent pay family there by the side of the road, dollars. In 2017, the Oklahoma State raise. Teachers in Oklahoma are paid with the bed of their truck loaded with Science Fair was cancelled, until a re- less than those in West Virginia, which water bottles, bananas.” This kept hap- tired teacher saved it by contributing spends forty per cent more per pupil pening. “An interfaith alliance was fifty thousand dollars from his savings. than Oklahoma does. During the feeding us dinner each evening. High Hoxie often supplies his classes him- strike, Alberto Morejon, a twenty- schools opened their gymnasiums for self, with help from parents, who give five-year-old social-studies teacher us to sleep in, pulling out their wres- him gift certificates to Walmart and in Stillwater, Oklahoma, searched for tling mats.” The Tulsa superintendent, Lowe’s. Still, Hoxie told me, “Booker T. a Facebook group that was discuss- Deborah Gist, walked with them. They Washington is one of the more fortunate ing a strike or walkout in his state. encountered snow, lightning, and an schools in the state.” Many schools, as He couldn’t find anything: the Okla- earthquake. “We were walking through a way to save money on heating and homa Education Association has been parts of Oklahoma that have barely

38 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY DEANNA HALSALL even recovered from the oil bust of the that was something I learned along read “Native America,” though almost nineteen-eighties,” Hoxie said. “They the way.” He is now on the ballot for no tribes are native to the area; they all came out for us. I didn’t know how House District 23. were sent there in the Trail of Tears. they even knew where we were.” And Oklahomans are proud to be called On the seventh day, Hoxie and the klahoma has essentially been under Okies, a term coined by Californians other teachers woke up in the high- Osingle-party rule for about a de- to disparage people who were fleeing school library in Jones. Several hun- cade. The state legislature is eighty per the Dust Bowl. (The pride, for some, dred people were waiting outside to cent Republican, and in the most re- is linked to the government policies walk the last nineteen miles with them. cent midterm elections the Democrats that led to better farming practices, A high-school marching band led them didn’t field a candidate in nearly half which prevented a recurrence of the the last mile to the capitol, where thou- the races. Governor Fallin is in her catastrophe.) The state’s beloved son sands of people greeted them. Aaron eighth year, and during her tenure Will Rogers liked to say that he be- Baker, a teacher from Del City who nearly all state agencies have seen cuts longed to no organized political party— took part in the march, told me, “I was of between ten and thirty per cent, even he was a Democrat. on the docket to speak, and I remem- as the population that those agencies Oklahoma’s constitution was largely ber being so moved, seeing a young serve has increased. A capital-gains tax drafted by Native Americans, at the Se- girl, just a teen-ager, holding out a bot- break was configured in such a way quoyah Constitutional Convention, in tle of water to me. Then I realized it that two-thirds of the benefit went to 1905, when hopes for an independent was my daughter.” the eight hundred wealthiest families Indian Territory were still held. The Oklahoma has a population of less in the state. An income-tax reduction constitution is unusually progressive. It than four million. During the walk- similarly benefitted primarily the grants the people legislative power out, the demonstration at the capitol wealthy. The tax on fracked oil was through referendums, provides for uni- was attended by as many as eighty slashed, and when it was nudged back versal sufrage, and details the oversight thousand people—more than came to up—it remains the lowest in the na- of everything from roads and wildlife the state for the land rush of 1889. All tion—the energy billionaire and polit- to banks and social security. It also for- the major school districts were closed, ical kingmaker Harold Hamm, whose bids open carry of a sword. From the and lines to get into the capitol to estimated net worth is quadruple the time Oklahoma was established as a speak with legislators often started budget that the legislature allocates to state into the nineteen-eighties, it was forming around 6 A.M. The scene had the state, stood in the gallery of the dominated by rural Democrats, who the high spirits of a music festival and capitol, letting the lawmakers know had a tinge of agrarian socialism. The the nerdiness of people who really love that he was watching. cities were the domain of country-club school. “Can we please put the smart Reversing tax cuts is never easy, Republicans. Oklahoma’s first Repub- people in charge now?” one sign read. but it’s almost impossible in Okla- lican governor was pro-choice. Many signs referred to Oklahoma’s homa. In 1992, a law was passed re- The state voted for Richard Nixon infamously high incarceration rate and quiring that any bill to raise taxes re- in 1968, but kept electing Democrats its private prison system, and to the ceive the assent of the governor and at the state level for decades. Only in fact that the state spends twice as much three-quarters of the legislature. The the nineties did local politics begin to per prisoner as per student: “If we law was pushed by two of the wealth- turn. I was in high school then, and of dress our kids in stripes, will you fund iest people in Oklahoma, Edward L. course didn’t notice. But I do remem- education?” Gaylord and Clayton Bennett, after a ber Pat Buchanan, who ran for Presi- Though the teachers came from previous teacher walkout led to new dent in 1992, as a Republican, speaking both sides of the political aisle—the education funding. It doesn’t cost much, to a packed University of Oklahoma legislators and teachers I spoke with in billionaire terms, to fund a candi- ballroom, talking about the National estimated that more than half the date in Oklahoma. Endowment for the Arts as if about an teachers were Republican—their re- The efects of the telescoped bud- evil spirit. That year, my boyfriend made ception was markedly partisan. “I’m get have been felt everywhere. There me a mixtape that included a Dead not voting for another stinking mea- is a ten-year waiting list for home or Milkmen song with the ironic lyric “Do sure when they’re acting the way they’re community-based help for the elderly you know what the queers are doing acting,” the Republican state repre- or for people with developmental dis- to the soil?” The culture wars were on. sentative Kevin McDugle said, in a abilities. Many rural hospitals have Going into the 1994 midterm elec- Facebook Live feed. Governor Mary closed. A bill was even passed that lim- tions, Democrats in Oklahoma held Fallin, a Republican, compared the its the gasoline usage of the state high- the governor’s oice, five of the state’s teachers to “a teen-age kid that wants way patrol. eight congressional seats, and large ma- a better car.” The day the teachers ar- Every state is politically odd, but I jorities in both houses of the state leg- rived from Tulsa, Fallin signed a bill find Oklahoma to be the oddest. In islature. Allen Hertzke, a professor of repealing the hotel-motel tax that had 2002, a gubernatorial election was cap- political science at the University of helped fund their pay raise. Hoxie told tured by the underdog because of strong Oklahoma, conducted exit polls during me, “I didn’t know I was going to run turnout from pro-cockfighting Dem- the midterms. Registered Democrats for oice when I started the walk— ocrats. The state’s license plates once were voting Republican down the

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 39 whole ballot. “I thought I was in a weird ergy drink he was marketing helped In the summer of 2016, Dollens precinct,” Hertzke said. “But I called him leg-press two thousand pounds.) knocked on around twenty thousand my students, and they were seeing the Republican candidates were encour- doors. “In the beginning, people weren’t same thing.” Republicans won the gov- aged to announce that they would not answering, even though I could tell ernorship, made significant gains in campaign on Sundays. Hertzke told they were home,” he told me. One day, the legislature, and secured all but one me, “I remember, in those exit inter- Dollens noticed that some four out of of the national seats. views, people just talking to us, their five doors were being opened. At one Hertzke attributed the shift in part visceral feeling about Democrats not house, the resident laughed and said to the influence of the Christian Co- caring for their values.” that he had opened the door because alition, which was founded by Pat Rob- he thought Dollens was the mailman. ertson. In Oklahoma, candidates of n 2016, when Oklahoma voted for Dollens was wearing dark-blue shorts both parties typically state which IDonald Trump over Hillary Clin- and a white polo shirt. “I started dress- church they attend in their campaign ton by a thirty-six-point margin, one ing like that every day,” he said. materials; “Have a blessed day” is a candidate for the state legislature Dollens campaigned on raising the common sign-of in voice mails. Be- flipped his district from red to blue. state income tax by a quarter of a per fore the nineties, most evangelicals in That was Mickey Dollens, who had cent, introducing industrialized hemp Oklahoma were Democrats; as late as just been laid of from his job as an to help the rural economy, and fund- the 1994 elections, sixty per cent of English teacher at U. S. Grant High ing education. “I ran on raising taxes,” registered Democrats in the state de- School, in south Oklahoma City, in a Dollens emphasized. “That worked.” scribed themselves as Biblical literal- round of state cuts to education. “I was He told voters that, for most of them, ists. Keith Gaddie, also a professor of lucky—I had just enough savings so I the increase would amount to thirty political science at the University of was in a unique position where I could dollars a year. “They voted for that.” Oklahoma, explained that, before the campaign each day,” Dollens said, ex- It was not an easy year to run as any- nineties, “people could vote for George pressing an idea of luck that I find par- thing but a Republican. The 2016 Okla- H. W. Bush—he spoke the evangeli- ticularly Oklahoman. Dollens, who homa teacher of the year, Shawn Shee- cal code—but they still liked their grew up in Bartlesville, is thirty years han, ran for the State Senate—and lost Democratic sherif, their Democratic old and blond, and looks as if he could by twenty-four points. Then he and his county commissioner. They knew those rescue your cat from a tree, perhaps by wife, who is also a teacher, moved to guys, and they knew they were pro- uprooting the tree. In college, at South- Lewisville, Texas, where they now earn life.” With Bill Clinton in oice, that ern Methodist University, he was a de- forty thousand dollars more a year. Karen changed. The Christian Coalition cam- fensive lineman; he tried out for the Gaddis, who taught for forty years in paigned heavily for Republican can- N.F.L., and, when that didn’t work out, the Tulsa area, ran as well, and lost by didates, with flyers about homosexu- he made the Olympic bobsledding nineteen points. Jacob Rosecrants, a sin- ality and abortion. (The Christian team. Later, Dollens worked as a rough- gle dad, a military-history fanatic, and Coalition was later denied tax-exempt neck in the oil fields. His father had a beloved geography teacher at Roo- status. Robertson himself was recently worked in the oil fields, as had his sevelt Middle School, in southwest in the news for claiming that an en- grandfather and his great-grandfather. Oklahoma City, lost by twenty points. Speaking with Democrats, I rarely heard anyone mention Trump. They preferred circumlocutions like “After November 8th,” or “In early 2017, I began to follow local politics more closely.” It was a good time to follow local pol- itics. “Normally in a year there might be one special election,” Anna Langthorn, the twenty-four-year-old chair of the state Democratic Party, told me. Since the Presidential election, Oklahoma has had nine special elections for state leg- islative seats. One legislator resigned after being charged with engaging in child prostitution, one with sexual ha- rassment, one with sexual battery, and one following an ethics-commission investigation; four went to other jobs; and one died. “That’s Oklahoma poli- tics,” Langthorn said, with a shrug. The “We can work up to antidepressants, but for now I want to start you on first special election, covering parts of eating a whole jar of cocktail olives over the kitchen sink.” Seminole and Pottawatomie Counties, didn’t get much coverage; Steve Barnes, all of this,” McWilliams, whose mother something.” Oklahoma has one of the the Democratic candidate, predictably is a public-school teacher, said. “The lowest voting rates in the nation, and lost. But, in a district that in 2016 had people who currently make up the Re- turnout is especially depressed among gone for Trump by a margin of thirty- publican Party of Oklahoma have made young people. six points, Barnes lost by only sixty-six it clear that they are not interested in Moser and Robinson began a group votes. His opponent made border con- funding public education.” that they eventually named the Fron- trol a central issue; Barnes focussed on After the 2016 election, McWilliams tier Coalition, with the goal of orga- education spending. was on the phone with his college room- nizing defunct county Democratic par- Jacob Rosecrants decided to run again, mate, who followed Oklahoma politics ties. Other groups were doing similar in a special election on September 12, closely. He said that if McWilliams kinds of work, and they joined forces. 2017. I followed his race closely; he had really wanted to make a The Frontier Coalition— been three years behind me at Norman diference he had to go to which has helped increase High School, and his House district in- his county party meetings, the number of Oklahoma cluded my childhood home. His high- Republican or Democratic. counties with active Dem- school English teacher canvassed with McWilliams changed his ocratic groups from for- him. He won by twenty per cent—a for- registration from Inde- ty-four to seventy-two— ty-point swing. Rosecrants told me that pendent to Democrat. had one rule for their he lost sixty pounds knocking on doors. McWilliams was not Facebook group: avoid “I saw a photo of myself at my swear- alone. The Pontotoc County posting about national is- ing in,” he said. “I was laughing because Democrats’ meetings typ- sues. “People know noth- those clothes did not fit me anymore.” ically drew around four ing about state and local The Democrats ended up winning people; suddenly, forty politics, but everything four of the nine special elections, all in people were showing up. Events in about the national news,” Moser said. areas that had voted heavily Republican Cleveland County grew to hundreds of “We want to change that.” in 2016. Karen Gaddis ran again, and people. “Near as I can tell, it was the won by five points. In a red district cov- same story almost everywhere across aren Gaddis, who is sixty-eight ering west Tulsa, Allison Ikley-Freeman, the state,” McWilliams said. “As much Kand a newly minted state repre- a twenty-six-year-old lesbian and a as we like to talk about data and auto- sentative, was with the teachers in front mother of three, began a State Senate mation in modern politics, things ha- of the capitol, wearing a red blazer, red campaign with only eight weeks to go, ven’t really changed a whole lot. I was pants, and a stars-and-stripes scarf because there was no Democrat on the talking to a woman who keeps up at- around her neck. It was the second ballot. Four years earlier, she had been tendance at her county meeting just by week of the walkout, and Oklahoma sleeping in her car, homeless, while try- leaving a message the night before, say- Arts Day, so Gaddis had invited an or- ing to finish a master’s degree. She won ing, ‘I look forward to seeing you to- chestra from Sistema Tulsa, a program, by twenty-nine votes. Two of the four morrow.’” McWilliams attended one run by a Methodist church, that ofers victors were teachers, and if you guess of the woman’s meetings recently, for free after-school music lessons, to be what issue they ran on you’ll be right. canvassing training; despite an unex- honored at the capitol. The Sistema pected spring sleet storm, the meeting kids, in pink T-shirts, played Beetho- ince the Presidential election, Jer- was packed. “The personal touch is still ven’s “Ode to Joy”; they played Rod- Sreck McWilliams, a twenty-eight- king,” he said. gers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma.” year-old software developer from Ada, McWilliams has often crossed paths The capitol was being renovated, and has put more than thirty thousand miles with Justin Moser, a thirty-eight-year- I followed Gaddis through scafolding on his old Honda, working to rebuild old fifth-generation Oklahoman from and past “Please Excuse Our Appear- the Democratic Party. McWilliams has Norman. When Moser was a college ance” signs. We took the stairs, crowded visited thirty or so Oklahoma coun- student, he was active in the Oklahoma with teachers and families, up to the ties, from Garvin to Greer to Coman- Intercollegiate Legislature (OIL), a fifth floor, where her tiny oice was at che, and spoken to activists from all mock-state-government program. OIL the end of a long, narrow hallway. Doz- seventy-seven. “Poor car is held to- held its sessions in the capitol, and sev- ens of constituents were waiting for her. gether with zip ties and prayers now,” eral alums are current legislators. “The Todd Henshaw, in jeans, boots, and a he told me. lieutenant governor would sometimes baseball cap, took a seat across from Before the election, McWilliams sit in on our mock legislative session Gaddis; there was barely room for his had never been involved in politics. and take notes,” Moser said. legs between the chair and the desk. “Didn’t like political parties,” he said. After the 2016 election, a friend of Henshaw teaches and coaches baseball “Still don’t, really.” McWilliams was a Moser’s from OIL, Ryan Robinson, and softball at Liberty High School, in registered Independent; in 2008, he posted on Facebook about feeling that Mounds. “I’ve been teaching for twenty- voted for John McCain. But the past what had happened was “our” fault. two years,” he said. He spoke in a smooth decade has not been flattering to those Moser explained, “By ‘our’ he meant teaching voice, but his hand was trem- holding power in Oklahoma. “Educa- our generation. We wanted to do some- bling. “My base salary is thirty-eight tion is the No. 1 reason I started doing thing. Lots of people wanted to do thousand dollars. And, even if they give

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 41 us raises, they’re not addressing class thousand dollars more, but I love my certain agricultural vehicles from cer- size. Up to seventy per cent of our stu- kids. We’re all used to working hard. tain requirements, comes up—and a dents qualify for free or reduced lunch. We can handle a lot, and we love it. small technical drama ensues. We are on a four-day-a-week schedule. But I know seasoned teachers who have Scott Inman, a slim, bespectacled Churches bring in bags on Friday for just been crying for the past three days.” sixth-term Democratic representative the Monday lunch that students are in a blue suit, stands up and says, “Do missing. We have two teachers leaving, he carpet on the floor of the Okla- you believe this law will be constitu- going to Texas. Signed contracts for Thoma House of Representatives tional? . . . A lot of folks upstairs”—he sixty thousand dollars. I just have to say, is green and gold, with stain-obscur- gestures toward the teachers in the I think the legislators are out of touch.” ing fleurs-de-lis, reminiscent of a pal- gallery—“have been told we can’t ex- Mary Barry, who teaches English ace, or of a casino. The representatives empt agriculture from something like as a second language at Boevers Ele- sit at dark-wood desks that are wired a capital-gains tax, because that would mentary, in Tulsa, came in. She has two to a digital board on which yea and nay be unconstitutional.” hundred and seventy students, each of votes are tallied in green and red. The It’s a super-nerdy bit of political whom she is legally required to spend legislative process is in some ways ad- subtext, but the teachers understand it. forty-five minutes a day with. She loves mirably transparent: sessions can be Every time I heard teachers talk about teaching, but her school, lacking the watched online, and it’s easy to look the proposed capital-gains tax increase, resources to hire more E.S.L. instruc- up the votes on each bill. they would add, “with an ag exemp- tors, was under “audit.” Barry explained On an average day, there might be tion, of course,” so that small family that she is part of the sizable Burmese a dozen observers in the visitors’ gal- farms would not be harmed. Some Re- population in the Tulsa area; six lan- lery, or none. On the ninth day of the publicans claimed that an exemption guages are spoken at her school. She teacher walkout, all two hundred and for small farms wasn’t possible. had also wanted to speak to the Re- thirty-two seats are filled with teach- As the session continues, Demo- publican representative Chuck Strohm, ers. “I had no idea there were this many crats try, within the constraints of par- who was not available to meet. “He’s people interested in the House Sub- liamentary procedure, to bring to the a waste of your breath, to be honest,” committee for Transportation,” some- floor a discussion of education fund- Gaddis said. one behind me deadpans. The gallery ing. After all the scheduled bills for the A wider hallway on the fourth floor appears to be ninety per cent women; day have been dealt with, the Repub- houses the oices of Republican legis- the floor is almost ninety per cent men. lican floor leader asks the members of lators. “This reminds me of my divorce,” Outside, Karen Gaddis, in her red the House to stand at ease—take a Robin Hibbard, a speech pathologist blazer, looked like just another teacher; break without adjourning—because of at Kennedy Elementary School, in Nor- here, she’s a poppy among dark suits. “some ongoing discussions between the man, said. She was there with two other On this morning, the teachers’ hopes majority and minority parties.” It seems teachers from Kennedy, waiting to speak center on three possible tax reforms that impossible to me, I confess, having been with Kim David, the chair of the Sen- would generate new revenue. Two of among the teachers at the capitol, that ate Appropriations Committee. “We them originated, before the walkout, the legislature won’t pass something. just keep bringing proposals to legis- with Republican legislators. When the session reconvenes, Inman lators” to raise revenue, she said. “They The session begins with a prayer, led asks the speaker to bring to the floor just say no. They never propose any- by a pastor from Oklahoma City, who a capital-gains tax bill. Inman says, “We thing themselves.” Her speaks of the God “of rec- had a bunch of folks walk down here colleague Kayla Melton, a onciliation.” Next is the from Tulsa yesterday asking for more kindergarten teacher, said, Pledge of Allegiance, fol- revenue, and I’d hate to see that they “I’m doing their home- lowed by a coda pledge to walked a hundred and ten miles and work. I’m going home at the state flag—“I salute the were sent home with not—” night coming up with flag of the state of Okla- The speaker interrupts Inman, and ideas.” Melton said she had homa. Its symbols of peace calls for a vote simply on whether to brought in her tax returns unite all people.” discuss the bill. The leaderboard lights to show her state senator The session is gavelled up in a pattern of red and green: Re- that in the past three years in by the presiding speaker, publican names come up red, Demo- she had spent twenty-six the Republican represen- crats green. hundred dollars on school tative Chris Kannady, who With a slight laugh, the speaker de- supplies. The senator, a Republican begins moving through the day’s agenda clares that the motion has failed. named Rob Standridge, “wouldn’t even with a hurried voice, like a bored auc- For the next few minutes, Inman look at the returns,” Melton said. Hib- tioneer. Senate Bill 1156, relating to tries to introduce various bills to sup- bard added, “When I was in training, travel insurance, is brought to a vote; port the teachers. Each time, the red- I said, ‘I want to work at the most dii- it passes. Senate Bill 1089, relating to and-green pattern on the leaderboard cult school, the one where they need an increase in permissible axle-load results in his motion being tabled. Fi- me the most.’ I could go tomorrow and weights, is brought to a vote; it passes. nally, he makes a motion to have an get a job at a hospital and earn thirty Senate Bill 912, which would exempt open discussion about education fund-

42 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 ing with the teachers who are present in the gallery. The speaker is silent. Then the Re- publican representative Katie Henke, a former pre-kindergarten teacher who in 2016 received a glowing endorsement from the Tulsa World for fighting for public education, asks to be recognized. As a teacher, Henke embodies the hope of an alliance with the Republican Party. Henke rises. “I move to table the mo- tion,” she says. She sits down. The speaker announces, “That’s a proper motion.” The red-and-green pattern repeats. When the session is gavelled out, not a single proposal for education has been brought to the floor. ••

n a taxi home from the capitol, the Idriver told me that he had retired as to repeal the taxes that funded the pal who is also sweeping the school a high-school principal in McLoud. teachers’ pay raises. A new president and driving the bus.” Tyson Todd Then he took a job as a classroom of the University of Oklahoma was Meade, the lead singer of the Oklahoma- teacher in Texas, where he made fifteen named—an energy executive. For now, based nineties band the Chainsaw Kit- thousand dollars more a year. He stayed Oklahoma’s students remain among tens, filed to represent Oklahoma as a in a bungalow in the yard of the school’s the most poorly funded in the nation. Democrat in the U.S. House. “I just principal during the week, and drove said to myself, ‘I have a platform, I have home every weekend. “I’ve always been he last days of the teacher walk- to use it, I can’t take this stuf any- a conservative,” he said. “But I don’t Tout coincided with candidate more,’” he said. mind paying taxes for education. You filing—a bureaucratic process in which And dozens of teachers filed. Carri have to pay for nice things. I paid for the spirit of democracy is fused with Hicks, a teacher and a mother of three, this car”—he gestured around his S.U.V. the spirit of the Department of Motor filed with her eight-week-old baby “I could have had a cheaper car, but that Vehicles. The walkout mostly failed to strapped to her chest. She had been wouldn’t have been as good.” He told secure more funding for classrooms, but coming to the capitol for years, using me he had loved teaching math. “If it was a baptism by fire for a movement her personal-leave days to advocate for you’ve got a real diicult problem, I of politically literate and engaged Okies. education. She had tried to contact the used to tell my students, then you take In the 2014 elections, eighty-seven incumbent in her district, Senator of your socks and count with your toes.” Democrats ran for legislative oice in Ervin Yen, a Republican, several times The next day, the teachers’ associa- Oklahoma; for this fall’s elections, the over the years, but had never received tion called for an end to the walkout. number has more than doubled. Owing a response until she announced her At a press conference, Alicia Priest, the to the walkout, and to the large num- candidacy. Then he called her cell president, said, “We must turn our at- ber of candidates, the filing proceed- phone. “At least now he has to speak tention toward the election season.” ings were moved from the second floor to me,” she said. She said that a poll of members showed of the capitol to the west entrance, where John Waldron, a social-studies that the majority did not think extend- the senators enter. Folding tables and teacher from Tulsa, had run in 2016, ing the walkout would be efective. She chairs were cordoned of with stan- and was signing up to do so again. I added, “We got here by electing the chions and rope. At the first set of ta- asked him if, as he’d knocked on doors, wrong people to oice. No more.” Many bles, candidates presented notarized pa- he had found that people knew who teachers were devastated, and recalled perwork, a certified check to the State their local representatives were. “Most that the association had not led the Board of Elections, and proof that they people never get to that chapter in the walkout. In the following weeks, del- were old enough to run. The next table textbook,” he said, with a small laugh. egations of teachers continued to fill belonged to the Ethics Commission. “But, when you talk to them, they’re the gallery. In Kentucky, the legislature Darrell Moore, a retired two-star interested. We have gotten to see here overrode a gubernatorial veto in order Marine Corps general, arrived with his pure, unalloyed, deep-red conservative to fund education; teachers in Arizona wife. He’d decided two days earlier to government, and we will learn from it. went on strike, as did teachers in Col- run as a Democrat for the House of The Okies proved it in the Dust Bowl, orado. In Oklahoma, the former U.S. Representatives. “The last election was that they could learn.” He added, “Peo- senator Tom Coburn began to support dominated by national issues, not local ple say they aren’t interested in politics. a referendum initiative with the power ones,” he told me. “We know a princi- But then politics happens to them.” 

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 43 POSTSCRIPT PHILIP ROTH

he meaning of life is that it stops. them. Recently, when I asked him what the next day. Great. But what was I sup- Especially in his later years, he thought of Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize, posed to do next, go a third time? So I T Philip Roth often quoted this he said, “It’s O.K., but next year I hope started writing again.” Roth kept a lit- remark attributed to Kafka, and it was Peter, Paul and Mary get it.” tle yellow note near his desk. It read hard not to think of it when the news Most creative careers follow a famil- “No Optional Striving.” No panels, no came that his heart had given out. He iar arc: the apprentice work; the burst speeches, no all-expenses-paid trips to lived to be eighty-five, but he had little of originality; the self-imitation; and, the festival in Sydney or Cartagena. The expectation of making it much past sev- finally, the tailing of. Had Roth’s cre- work was murder and the work was the enty. Over the years, there had been ative career reached its pinnacle at the reward. Roth said he was never happier, stretches of depression, surgeries on his typical point, his achievements would never felt more liberated, than when he back and spine, a quintuple bypass, and still have included “Goodbye, Colum- was working on his favorite of his nov- sixteen cardiac stents, which must be bus,” “Portnoy’s Complaint,” “The Ghost els, “Sabbath’s Theater.” some kind of American League record. Writer,” and “The Counterlife.” But Then, in 2010, at the age of seventy- By the time Roth was in his seventies, then Roth, having faced the crises of a seven, Roth did something utterly un- he would open his eyes in the morning failed marriage and a barrage of illnesses, expected. He retired. He adored Saul and experience a moment of ecstatic sur- redoubled his sense of discipline and Bellow—adored the work and the prise: he had pulled it of again, stolen set himself free. He became a monk of man—but he thought that Bellow had another taste of being alive, a self, con- fiction. Living alone in the woods, he made a mistake by continuing to write scious of the beautiful and chaotic world. spent his days and many of his nights and publish even as his mental acuity Roth’s vitality never dwindled, par- trained on the sentence, the page, the waned. Roth read his own work, the ticularly on the page; the propulsive “problem of the novel at hand.” Month whole of it, and determined that he force that first announced itself in the after month, at a standing desk, he went was done. Quoting Joe Louis, he said, late fifties, with “Defender of the Faith,” about exploring American history “I did the best I could with what I had.” “Eli, the Fanatic,” and “Goodbye, Co- (“American Pastoral,” “I Married a Com- And, in the last eight years of his life, lumbus,” persisted for more than half a munist,” “The Human Stain,” “The Plot Roth, living mostly in his apartment, century, to the last elegiac description Against America”) and, always, the mir- near the Hayden Planetarium, gave of a javelin thrower in “Nemesis,” his acles, the hypocrisies, the mistakes, the himself the rest he had earned. He spent career-closing novella. In interviews and strangenesses of being alive while fac- more time with friends, he read vol- public appearances, Roth could be ing the inevitable “massacre” of aging. umes of American and European his- slightly grand, ending an observation “I work, I’m on call,” he told me in tory, he went to chamber-music con- with an Anglo-ish “Do you know?” the midst of this creative ferment. “I’m certs, he watched baseball and old Talking about “the indigenous Ameri- like a doctor and it’s an emergency room. movies. He appointed a biographer, can berserk,” he tamped down his more And I’m the emergency.” Roth’s con- Blake Bailey, and gave him what he antic side, as if to stand apart from the centration on the task was absolute. needed “to do the job.” With his com- madness. But, released from obligation, When a friend left him with a kitten, petitiveness long faded, he became a he could easily flip a switch and be once he couldn’t endure the distraction of reader, and a booster, of younger writ- more the wiseacre of Weequahic. He having to provide food and attention. ers—Teju Cole, Nicole Krauss, Zadie was in competition with the best in “I had to ask my friend to take it back,” Smith, Lisa Halliday. And he waited. American fiction—with Melville, James, he recalled. I once asked him if he took He had had his portion, and then some. Wharton, Hemingway, Faulkner, Cather, a week of or a vacation. “I went to the As he put it in “The Dying Animal,” Ellison, Bellow, Morrison—but he was Met and saw a big show they had,” he “You tasted it. Isn’t that enough?” funnier, more spontaneous, than any of told me. “It was wonderful. I went back —David Remnick

44 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 “PHILIP ROTH, NEW YORK, 198”/© THE IRVING PENN FOUNDATION THE IRVING 198”/© YORK, NEW “PHILIP ROTH,

PHOTOGRAPH BY IRVING PENN many well ponds. The villagers called this the Sun Family Well Pond. But FICTION since when was Granny named Sun? When I was small, that well pond was strictly of limits to me. Deaf Granny al- SILVER TIGER ways said that water figured in my fate, and she feared that if I fell into the pond BY LU YANG there’d be no saving me. But how I yearned for the world of the well pond! There was another boy in the village, a year older than me, named Dong. Once, he caught a very small turtle and brought it to show me. It was a lovely little tur- tle. When you turned it over, it would stretch out its head and its legs, and wave them helplessly in the air. It worked itself into a little frenzy, but couldn’t right itself. We summoned a girl from the village to come and play with us. Her name was Juan; she was my age. Juan’s hair was thin and yellowing, and tied at the crown of her head in what they call a joss-stick braid. Juan leaned close to Dong and asked enviously, “A turtle! How’d you catch it, Dong?” Dong said loftily, “I caught it in a well pond.” I asked, “Are there more?” He tossed his head. “Sure, plenty more. When I caught this one, he was covered in black mud. I put him in a brass bowl and washed him clean. See how clean he is!” “How do you know there are more?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he said, pushing Juan’s hand away from the turtle. “My mother lived with my deaf granny from a ponds are no more than a dozen me- told me.” I very young age and was sent to be tres across, suicient for only the two Then Juan said, “I’ll bet it wasn’t Dong with my mother and my father only on or three households that neighbor them. who caught it at all. Aunt Ma got it for feast days and for memorials. Behind Sometimes they are pressed into service him.” Aunt Ma was Dong’s mother. We Granny’s house was a deep well pond, to extinguish fires that break out in called her Ma not because she was his and it was in that well pond that I first nearby grass heaps and pigsties. They mother but because her family name was saw the silver tiger. Much of what I’m say Deaf Granny’s well pond came about Ma. Aunt Ma was the sturdiest woman going to tell you is inextricably bound in the following way: For many years, a in the village, more powerful than a man. up with that silver tiger. In physical stream had passed by her house, then In the depths of winter, I’d see her pass form, the silver tiger’s paws flexed and an abrupt decision was made to fill it in my window in the early morning. She sprang as it stepped nimbly through and turn it into a narrow belt of good was sure to be carrying a big bamboo the thickets of my childhood memory, cropland. But Deaf Granny has always basket and a heavy net over her shoul- an awe-inspiring presence. been stubborn, and she wouldn’t go along der, the bamboo handle shuddering with I have to begin this with the well with the plan, no matter how much her each step. Granny told me that the net ponds. Well ponds are an ancient form neighbors cajoled and cursed. So, when was full of little fish and shrimp she’d of water storage, still in use in the coun- the villagers filled in the stream, a sec- caught at the river fork by the village. tryside around Rongtang Town. As the tion a dozen metres long was left be- Catching a turtle in a well pond would name implies, they are shaped like pools, hind her house, and she hired some men be child’s play for Aunt Ma, so I believed but are well-like in depth. Well ponds from outside the village to deepen it. what Juan said. But Dong, his pride must be kept clean: women are strictly They dug to the depth of a bamboo wounded, was furious. He snatched up forbidden to scrub chamber pots or wash pole, the water turned a dark, dark green, the turtle, gave us a nasty look, and left. their undergarments in them. Most well and it became one more of the area’s From then on, I was even more fas-

46 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 PHOTOGRAPH BY HANNAH WHITAKER cinated by the world of the well pond. ually lost himself in the job. Ah Yang membrane were stretched tightly across When I thought of all the little turtles stood at the water’s edge, dead stick in the Sun Family Well Pond, reluctant to concealed within the dark-green water, hand, watching more dead sticks and give way beneath me. This was the water I couldn’t sit still. Many times I de- twigs falling gently from the tree like of my fate. The water of my fate held cided to sneak of by myself and take brown feathers. Ah Yang raised his head firm and unbroken beneath me, until a a look. Many times I made it as far as to look at Fifth Uncle in the tree, and cry rang out from someone passing by. the vegetable patch behind the house, it seemed as though the twigs were drift- Later, Aunt Ma would always say to just a few steps from the well pond. ing down from inside his bent body. others, and to Ah Yang, “If I hadn’t seen And many times Deaf Granny dragged Fifth Uncle moved from one tree to him and given a shout that day, the child me by the ear back into the smoke- the next, filled with the pleasure of labor. would have drowned for sure.” She also wreathed kitchen. She would point at He hadn’t the slightest inkling that, below said, “The banks of the Sun Family Well the steaming pot and say, “Ah Yang, my him, Ah Yang had already met the water Pond are so steep a crab couldn’t crawl good grandson, I’ve boiled a pot of pork of his fate—he had fallen into the well out.” Aunt Ma was a sturdy woman; for you. If you fall into the well pond pond. There were two aspects to what Granny was right to call her coarse. Her and drown, you’ll never get to taste it.” happened that day. One was Fifth Un- voice was as coarse as the rest of her. She For a stretch of time that winter, the cle’s pleasure in his work; the other was couldn’t have known that her shout would weather was unusually clear and warm. Ah Yang’s falling into the pond. You were consign Ah Yang to such long years of Granny decided to have someone trim focussed on the former, and so overlooked hardship and regret. the branches of the dozen willows that the latter. Even though, after the fact, you That was the first time I saw a silver stood around the well pond. She asked may be able to comb through your mem- tiger. As it happened, I lay on the wa- hunchbacked Fifth Uncle from the vil- ories of the scene and recover the second ter’s surface for only an instant, but in lage to help. Fifth Uncle was the most aspect, the clouding of those memories that instant I saw the most essential sil- honest man in the village. He was only (like damage to an old photograph) is ver tiger. What a beautiful tiger it was. thirty, but his back was bent like that of something you are powerless to prevent. It was not an animal of this world, made a sixty-year-old. Granny chose him be- The best you can do is to note that the of flesh and bone and fur. It was only a cause he worked hard and kept silent. banks of well ponds are often steep, and shadow filled with silver. Or, you could “And, what’s more,” she said, “he’s good in the winter, when the weeds have with- say, it was a silver body: silver fur, silver in the water. Ah Yang can go down by ered, the well ponds are like nothing so motion, silver pride, a silver riddle. I lay the well pond to play, and even if he falls much as enormous, irregular buckets. on the water of the well pond and in there’s no call to worry.” And so I And the light was good that day. And watched the silver tiger approach from dressed in a big quilted jacket and a cot- the dark-green water of the well pond the air above me, drawing closer to my ton hat and followed Fifth Uncle to the hid so many turtles. And a patch of fro- face. The sunlight, passing through it, well pond I’d been yearning to explore. zen earth beneath Ah Yang’s feet had became variegated and dazzling, danc- Behind us, Granny warned, “Fifth Uncle, melted just enough to loosen. And the ing, enchanting. Terrified, and yet con- don’t let Ah Yang play in the water.” smallest and lightest of the falling twigs soled, I closed my eyes. I felt as if the When we reached the well pond’s just happened to brush his eyebrows and silver tiger were tenderly swallowing me edge, the sunlight was floating clean and lashes. A certain principle will occur to whole. I felt as if it had already swal- bright on its surface. Sure enough, hunch- you: though the well pond seems small lowed me into its belly. I felt that I was backed Fifth Uncle worked hard and si- to an adult, merely an oversized oval bath- slowly becoming the silver tiger. Things lently. He climbed one of the old willows tub, to Ah Yang it is an ocean, an abyss. went on in this way. The transforma- and got busy. I stood below, occasionally Ah Yang is the one who is speaking tions were continuous, endless. I remem- helping retrieve a dead branch that had now. Ah Yang is the one who wrote all ber the last thing I saw: a silver tiger in fallen too far away. Standing there with the words you see here. Ah Yang wanted the process of swallowing the selfsame branches in my hands was boring, so I so much to catch a turtle, shrouded in silver tiger. The child on the surface of looked up at Fifth Uncle and said, “Dong green. Ah Yang wanted to make a hole the well pond had disappeared com- has a little turtle. It came from a well in its shell and tie it with a string to a pletely, as though he had never existed. pond. Do you think there are more?” willow root at the water’s edge. Just as Granny said, Ah Yang had al- Straddling a fork of the tree, Fifth Fifth Uncle’s absorption in his work ways been a sickly and unlucky child. Uncle mumbled, “Sure, plenty more.” meant that my fall into the well pond The blind fortune-teller had seen this “Why can’t I see them, then?” went smoothly; there was nothing to hin- in the hour of his birth. The fortune-teller Fifth Uncle answered, “They’re hid- der my arrival at the water’s surface. But could not see faces, but he could see ing under the water.” there, on the sunny face of the water, I Heaven’s will. What’s more, he had now met with an unexpected setback that found his way unerringly to Granny’s fter a while, Fifth Uncle climbed halted my progress. I did not, in fact, fall house, approaching step by step from a Aanother tree. He moved quietly all the way into the well pond—I was re- very great distance. He sat on a wooden and deftly as he worked. He’d brought jected at the water’s surface. Wearing my bench in the kitchen and said, “This a big pair of black iron shears and a thick, quilted coat and cotton hat, hold- child was a nobleman in a former life. handsaw with a wooden handle, and as ing a willow switch in my hand, I lay on Nobles may come calling, but they do he employed each tool in turn he grad- top of the water. It was as if a strong not linger. In this child’s fate, there is

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 47 death by water, by metal, by earth, and Deaf Granny believed that, when Ah told the story of this sufering to some by wood. There is no death by fire.” Yang fell into the well pond, he had a close female friends and noted their ex- Deaf Granny kept a tight hold on my fright that settled inside his body and pressions of rapt fascination. But they right ear, as though I were a rabbit on stopped him up. She burned several stacks weren’t like Juan, I thought. They would the verge of bounding of. She pinched of paper money by the old willow stump never say, “Let me look.” my ear and asked the fortune-teller, “Tell at the well pond. As the money burned, Many people that night tried to steal us, what can break his curse?” she called loudly, “Yang, child, come home a glimpse through the window—they The fortune-teller lowered his head to eat. Your granny’s cooking meat.” To were child laborers from the farm-tool and stayed that way for a long time, then this day, I wonder if part of my soul re- factory. These spies at the window told finally said, “By the time he is nine, this ally did get lost in the green depths of me later that my operation, performed child’s roots will be firm. Keep him alive the Sun Family Well Pond. Each bill without anesthesia, had been truly hor- until he’s nine—once he’s rooted, there’ll that Granny burned was cut with a beau- rifying to watch, worse than a woman be nothing to fear.” tiful crescent-moon design. in childbirth. They heard the discussion Father took me to the hospital in between the skinny doctor and my fa- s Aunt Ma passed beneath the Rongtang Town, which was next door to ther. The doctor asked, “Should we anes- Atrees, she saw me lying on the sur- a farm-tool factory. He carried me through thetize him?,” and my father said, “No, face of the well pond, shimmering, about a heavily curtained doorway and into a it could damage his brain.” The doctor to sink. She gave a cry, then pulled me dim room. It looked to me like the chang- hesitated. “He may not be able to stand from the well pond with her own rough ing room of a decrepit public bath. The it otherwise.” My father answered, “Stu- hands. Fifth Uncle was already scram- whitewashed walls were marked with pidity may kill you, but pain never has.” bling down from the tree. Aunt Ma messy purple streaks. Someone brought The skinny doctor gave a few dry coughs raised my soaking body up high and in a hot-water bottle. The bottle was green and rubbed his hands together. “Fine, placed me on Fifth Uncle’s bowed back. and very full. Father pressed it to my groin then, you’ll have to help us hold down “Ah Yang,” she said later, “you looked and my member. At first it burned, but his arms.” He called in another, rough- just like a hand towel scooped out of a after a while it felt nice and warm. “You’ll faced man to hold my legs. From a pocket, washbasin, all flowing with water.” be fine if we just warm you up,” Father he produced a length of unusual wire. It After my rescue from the well pond, said. I didn’t believe him for a second. I was more than a foot long, and one end I met with another of my childhood heard a distinct sound of farm tools rat- was flattened and curved; it looked like misfortunes. This particular misfortune tling and banging next door. I guessed an oversized ear pick. He weighed it, was, from start to finish, confined to my that it was the sound of an iron hoe strik- gleaming, in his hand. He said, “All right, immature manhood: I was unable to ing a pair of shears. I was afraid that the have you got a hold on him?” pee properly, no matter how hard I tried. people at the hospital might use those The spies at the window could tell Some calamity had beset my member; farm tools on me. Then a skinny man you the next part in great detail. They something or other was blocking it. All with a yellowish face came in. He wasn’t could tell you how the skinny doctor day long I was desperate to pee, yet in wearing a white gown. Father bowed to reached out a yellow hand and lightly the course of three days I managed no him and asked, “Our turn, Doctor?” fingered Ah Yang’s penis, then carefully more than a few thimblefuls. I was very The next room was also dim. A high, and deftly inserted the wire into it. Then young to sufer such pain. Tears in my narrow iron bed was pushed against one Ah Yang in pain was like a fish in a fry- eyes, I sought out Dong and Juan and wall. Father put me on the bed, which ing pan: his belly arched, bucked, twisted. joined in the game they were playing was covered with tattered grass mats. I Then his limbs were pressed tightly to with an iron shovel. I said to Dong, “I suspected that the holes in the mats had the bed by his father and the other man. can’t pee, and it hurts.” been made by people kicking their heels. Then, unable to move, he began to cry Dong pointed at the shovel and said, Father pressed his hand to my forehead and curse. Then the sound he made was “We’ll sharpen it good and cut of your and seemed at a loss. The hot-water bot- almost inhuman. Then great quantities penis. Then you won’t hurt.” tle on my groin suddenly felt cold. of liquid came flowing from his mem- “Bah!” I said. “You can cut of your My life before the age of nine was ber, a mixture of piss and blood. Then own!” precarious, as if it were a drifting thing the mat beneath him was soaked and I turned my back on him and said that refused to come to rest in my body. dyed red. Then his head struck the iron to Juan, “I can’t pee, it hurts.” My ghastly cries in that hospital dis- bed with a bang. Then he could make Juan said, “Let me look.” turbed the peace of half the residents no further sound. Then the piss and blood I hastily pulled my split pants closed, of Rongtang Town. At that young age, continued to pour from him, flowing to concealing my sufering manhood. I knew what it was to curse wildly in the edge of the bed and dripping to the Juan became upset. “You’re useless,” an iron hospital bed, to hurl profanities floor. Then Ah Yang became limp and she said. “Even the well-pond water at people who roughly held my limbs. shrivelled, as though sleeping. spirits don’t want you.” Before the age of nine, I was pressed When I had grown up, my father My eyes reddening, I snapped back, down on a bed and made to undergo told me severely, “We didn’t use anes- “Stupid Juan, who said that?” an operation I scarcely dare to recall thesia, in order to preserve your wits.” I “Aunt Ma. Aunt Ma said it. Are you now. In later days, when I had become was silent, though I thought that “wits” going to tangle with her?” an eminent intellectual in Luocheng, I were good for little but making one

48 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 Fine Estate Jewelry more sensitive to pain. To this day, on hunched back. I lay across his back and (Platinum) my bookshelf there stands an elegant saw the wide-open fields outside the hos- little bottle, with two objects visible in- pital. I felt a cold wind blowing from the side. One is a tuft of hair, cut from my north, cooling my swollen cheeks. I lay head when I was a year old; the other on Fifth Uncle’s back as we passed field Pair Art Deco is a round stone the size of a pea. The after field of cold earth and wheat stub- round and baguette diamond stone in the bottle was plucked from ble, until we were back at the village. I dress clips, c.1925 my body by the skinny doctor. There saw sparrows flying out from under the $27,500 are times when I wonder how an ob- eaves of the buildings, in little flocks and ject even rounder and smoother than a groups, the same as they always had. pea could have caused me so much pain. Deaf Granny stood beneath the eaves,

What the spies outside the window waving to me from a distance. She’d SHOWN did not see was the silver tiger. I saw it. stood there waiting for three days and ACTUAL SIZE In the extremity of my agony, I saw the three nights. She asked everyone re- silver tiger again. It was a diferent sil- turning from Rongtang Town about ver tiger. Or it was the same silver tiger me. She asked only one question: “Did but it had changed its nature. The one Ah Yang cry?” Baguette diamond faceted band $5,750 on the surface of the well pond had been I was brought to my granny draped gentle and bright; the one under the iron over Fifth Uncle’s back. I said in her ear, Emerald cut sapphire (9.10 cts., Ceylon, no hospital bed was fierce and keen. The “Granny, Ah Yang didn’t cry. Ah Yang’s heat) and pair triangle silver tiger stuck its head out from the back now.” My voice sounded very small diamonds (1.58 cts.) ring shadows under the bed and opened its and soft to me. I watched as my granny $38,500 Emerald cut diamond five huge and shapeless mouth, biting down suddenly covered her eyes and began stone ring, Tiffany & Co. on my right ankle. I felt its teeth sink- sobbing. She forgot to cover her mouth. (5D=about 3.00 cts.) ing deep into bone and sinew. I felt it Her mouth was very old and very empty, $13,750 tearing through the connection between and it opened, huge and round, before FIRESTONE AND PARSON me and the bed with an obscure strength. me. It wasn’t a nice mouth to see at all. 30 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02116 I felt it trying to drag me into true dark- (617) 266-1858 • www.firestoneandparson.com ness. I sought to grip the railings of the n later days, when I was an intellec- bed. I even became grateful for the hands Itual in Luocheng, I looked for a way that held my four limbs tight. I hoped to write a record of the thatched house for a still heavier, more heartless pres- where I lived as a child with my deaf New Yorker sure to hold me fast to that hospital bed. granny. A simple and honest record. If I didn’t want to be dragged away. “Help you visit the countryside around Rong- Cartoon Prints me,” I said. “It wants to carry me away.” tang Town now, you won’t see any such Not one person, inside or outside the lovely thatched houses. The walls of the Find your favorite room, heard what I said. The operation house were two feet thick and made of cartoon on virtually any topic had reached its climax, and they had no piled earth. Or, rather, of pounded earth. at newyorkerstore.com attention to spare. My hands grew tired The man who built the house would pile from gripping the railing, but they never on some mud, then heft a great club and loosened their hold. pound it down. Between the piling and Enter TNY20 for 20 off. In fact, I bled from two places during the pounding, a single wall took days to that operation. Ah Yang’s member was complete. I loved the sound of the club bleeding. Ah Yang’s ankle was also smacking the wet earth; that sound bleeding. One kind of pain there, an- signified the countryside to me. The roof other kind of pain here. Can I speak of was made of a plaited reed mat, thatched it this way? I just want you to under- with wheat stalks set aside from the au- stand that the silver tiger was truly there. tumn harvest. They were piled on thickly It has come many times. I bear the marks and carefully. The builder used a flat of its teeth to this day. block to pat one end of each straw bun- I fought the silver tiger for three days dle until it was even, then trimmed the and three nights. During those three other end with shears and carefully days and nights I lost all awareness of plucked out the weeds and the broken Roz Chast, April 3, 2017 anything else in the hospital. The iron fragments. Every stalk of the roof thatch- bed was the arena of the battle, where I ing was in perfect order, and the straw resisted the tiger with all my might and kept its fresh yellow lustre for six months was eventually victorious. On the morn- or more. I remember the special care the ing of the fourth day, Fifth Uncle arrived builder took with the shaping of the and carried me out of the hospital on his eaves, never satisfied with his work. And,

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 49 father asked one of the Rockers, “So what’s this about?” The guy said of the Mods, “They’re fucking women is what!” Rocker masculinity was embattled. But it was already fragile, as “The Leather Boys” so ingeniously suggests. My parents lived in Kentish Town, which was then an area of cold-water flats, where a famous theorist of the work- ing class—Karl Marx—also once lived. The electricity in my parents’ flat ran on a coin-operated meter, and my dad spent a lot of time at the pub downstairs, where the electric light was free—or, at least, that was his excuse to my mother, who was twenty-two and spent her evenings boiling diapers on the stove because my older brother had just been born. My fa- ther still claims that pub culture and class PARENTING BY RACHEL KUSHNER consciousness go hand in hand, because everyone went to the bar for the free elec- tricity. (By “everyone,” I believe he means THE LEATHER BOYS men.) But, as the story goes in our fam- ily, on Guy Fawkes Night he was home with my mother, watching out the win- ometimes a movie you love fuses pri- Reg’s grandmother’s house. Dot, with her dow as people dragged unwanted furni- Svately with your identity, no matter mother’s help, plots to get Reg back by ture and other junk to a blazing bonfire how distant the world of the movie may pretending that she’s pregnant. (“That’s in the street, in keeping with the custom be from your life. When I hear the phrase what mums are for!” her mother sooth- of the holiday, which commemorates Guy “leather boys,” for instance, it’s almost like ingly assures her, after Dot thanks her for Fawkes’s attempt to blow up Parliament, hearing my name, ridiculous as that may suggesting the subterfuge.) To a modern in 1605. When a woman pushed an empty seem. The 1964 movie “The Leather Boys,” audience, Pete’s romantic attachment to baby pram toward the fire, my mother directed by Sidney J. Furie, depicts the Reg is obvious enough, but it may not handed my brother to my father and ran working-class motorcyclists known as have been to viewers in the mid-sixties. downstairs to retrieve it. She wanted it Rockers, a British subculture that existed (Men having to share a bed would have so badly that she was in tears as she before I did and on which I make no claim. seemed perfectly normal in working-class pleaded with the woman not to burn it. My parents saw the movie in 1965, in London at the time.) At the end of the The woman relented and gave my mother London, where they lived for a few years film, Reg agrees to seek work alongside the pram. It was a Silver Cross—a lux- before I was born. My father was no Pete on a ship sailing for America, where ury make—but dirty and with a stretched Rocker, but he had scoped out the scene they will start a new life. Reg goes to a spring that caused it to list to one side. at the Ace Café, which is featured in the bar by the wharf, where Pete has arranged My mother was thrilled with her lop- film—a twenty-four-hour roadhouse to meet him. As Reg waits, he slowly un- sided hooptie, and while my father end- diner with a giant neon sign, where the derstands that he’s in a gay bar. The mood lessly tinkered with his Vincent, she’d phenomenon of “café racing” was pop- is bleak. He walks out, and the movie ends. push my brother down to Regent’s Park. ularized. My dad rode a modified Vin- The first time my dad rode his Vin- This life my parents lived took place cent Black Shadow, an exotic bike at the cent to the Ace, which was on a ring before I was born. I can’t see it, but I can Ace, where people mostly had Triumphs, road in northwest London, an argument watch “The Leather Boys” with them. BSAs, and Nortons, tricked out with was taking place out front, where bikes I’ve seen the film many times, but re- drop bars and rearsets. were lined up in gleaming rows. Some cently my view of it has changed. When The movie revolves around two bik- misguided troublemaker was defending I was younger, it served my imagination ers who meet at the Ace: Pete (Dudley the Mods. Mary Quant and the fashion with a perhaps fictitious cool: I pictured Sutton), an eccentric lone wolf, and Reg world had claimed the Mods and their my father as one of those bikers at the (Colin Campbell), who is bound in an dandyish, androgynous look, their Ves- Ace. That was wrong for a few reasons, unhappy teen-age marriage to Dot (Rita pas and Lambrettas, as an ascendant not the least of which, as he has reminded Tushingham). Reg, at Pete’s urging, leaves trend—one that threatened to overtake me, was that his motorcycle had a side- Dot, and the two bikers share a bed at the Rockers as the image of cool. My car, for his family. ♦ JAN BUCHCZIK JAN

50 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 when it was done, Deaf Granny’s thatched For having denied me anesthesia kept me awake that night. Granny pat- house put all the other houses to shame. during the operation, for having added ted my cotton quilt, saying, “Sleep.” I It had one door and one small window, to my sufering, my father made a mea- didn’t want to make her angry; I pre- which was in the kitchen. Two loquat gre gesture of repentance. From Rong- tended to be asleep. But, in the midst of trees sprouted outside that window, and tang Town, he brought me a small cop- childhood darkness, my ears could catch by the time I was nine years old they had per gong, the size of an ox’s hoofprint, the slightest sound, and my eyes saw all quietly grown tall and luxurious, taller along with a mallet made from a bam- moving objects. I knew that the silver even than the eaves of the house. boo chopstick, the thick end tightly tiger had come, from somewhere out- I am speaking of an empty thatched wrapped in rags. He presented me with side the village. This silver tiger was house. As everyone knows, when Deaf the gong and the mallet, saying, “Ah Yang, diferent. Or perhaps it was the same Granny died she was buried in the veg- if you ever feel any pain, you just strike silver tiger, and had yet again changed etable plot outside the house. I, on the this gong as hard as you can.” I asked its nature. Its movements were slow and other hand, lived past the age of nine why I would do that. Father answered, dogged as it approached. It stood out- and eventually boarded a train and went “If you strike the gong, I’ll hear it, and side the door of the thatched house like to Luocheng and established a home. I’ll come and take you to the hospital.” I an old stone bench, cold and heavy. So, in fact, what I’m speaking of is an just looked at the little copper gong, not Those times that I saw the silver tiger, empty house. There is no one inside it. daring to touch it. But that day, after she I didn’t know that it was a tiger; nor did Granny and I both left it, though I see had made the corn cakes, Granny sud- I understand its color, its light. The now that we left it in diferent ways. denly said to me, “Ah Yang, go into the phrase “silver tiger” is something I hit Faced with an empty thatched house, village at noon tomorrow and strike your on only later, when I was older, a term I am uneasy. I must fill its emptiness with gong.” I asked what for. Granny rubbed I used to describe the experiences of my things that have no form of their own. my ear and said, “Just do as you’re told.” youth. “Silver tiger” was one of the bless- Perhaps the fragrance of food would Behind the thatched house was the ings granted to me by seventeen years serve. Perhaps the fragrance of boiled vegetable plot, and beyond that was the of education. It is what’s known as a pork and corn cakes. Before my ninth well pond. In front of the house there compound phrase, and, as a compound year, anytime I became ill, or fell into were wheat fields—field after field. In phrase, it joins with other words and water, or fell from a tall peach or willow winter, there were no haricot beans out- phrases to enrich my speech. Mean- tree, every time I was wounded or struck, side the house; you couldn’t find them while, as a visual image, it illuminates or narrowly escaped death, the kitchen if you tried. Everything around the the realm of my experience. of the thatched house would be sufused thatched house changed with the sea- Deaf Granny leaned against the lo- with the smell of good things to eat. I sons. What should have been there in quat tree to the left of the window, got to eat my granny’s boiled pork nearly spring was there in spring. What should stepped on a couple of broken bricks every year. Her handmade corn cakes have been there in summer was there that had fallen from the chimney, and were tender and delicious, one side seared in summer. What should have been pulled herself with diiculty onto the brown, the other a pale yellow. The marks there in fall was there in fall. What back of the silver tiger. The tiger was so of her hands on the cakes’ surface were shouldn’t have been there in winter was docile; it seemed even to bow its head movingly clear. On those fragrant days, not there in winter. Thus, there were no and kneel. I shouted, “Granny, don’t go! the little girl Juan would always come white-and-purple haricot beans. You can’t let it take you away! Don’t go! early to play and stay until it was time By the time I was nine, my roots were Don’t let it take you away!” I shouted, to eat. My granny would console me: firm. In the year I was nine, Deaf Granny and continued shouting until daybreak. “We should all share, Ah Yang.” left me. It was some kind of flux; she At noon the next day, I went to the She also said to me, “If Juan catches nearly died of the shame. She soiled her village to ring my gong. I ran all through sight of you while you’re eating a corn own clothes and could never get them the village, ringing the gong as I went. cake, you must share it with her. When- clean. Everyone said that when she was The faster I ran the louder I rang it, and ever anyone sees you eating, you have to younger she’d been so clean, so appeal- the louder I rang it the faster I ran. I share with that person.” She explained ing. They were quite right. She couldn’t was fast, and I was loud. I was nearly that food would turn sour if other peo- stand what she’d become, and in the last mad. I wanted so much to stop, to have ple stared at it for too long and would few days I’d often hear her talking to her- Fifth Uncle take me to my mother and give you a bellyache. self, saying, “I’m filthy, I ought to be dead.” my father. I wanted to lie across his I’m quite certain that no one was The sun went down, setting on a hunched back and bid farewell to Dong, watching the last time Granny made corn distant village. Deaf Granny brought Aunt Ma, and the little girl Juan, who cakes. She lingered in the kitchen, seem- out her corn cakes, making delivery would be following behind. ingly unwilling to come out. She spent after delivery to everyone in the village. “Don’t let me keep you,” I would say. the whole day inside. All day, from morn- She walked lightly, at a steady pace. Her “Go on back.” ♦ ing till night, the stove smoke spiralled feet barely touched the earth as she de- (Translated, from the Chinese, by up from the kitchen. That day, Granny livered a last gift to everyone. That whole Eric Abrahamsen.) made five hundred and sixty-one corn night, the fragrance of corn cakes drifted cakes. Each one of them was delicious, through the village. NEWYORKER.COM better than any she’d made before. Perhaps it was that heavy scent that Lu Yang on growing up and writing in China.

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 51 PROFILES WRITING HOME Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie comes to terms with global fame.

BY LARISSA MacFARQUHAR

e have to go further back, tually, I travelled to Lagos and bought when threatened with death. He is a “ to 2005. I’m in Warri, in her novel ‘Purple Hibiscus.’ I started man in the Achebean tradition, whose W Delta State, I’m working reading it in the taxi to my aunt’s place.” principled intransigence brings about as a doctor, and my mom and I are hav- his destruction. ing a fight. She’s saying, You’re stagnat- That was the problem with our people, Papa Before Imasuen read the book, he ing, you read medicine and you haven’t told us, our priorities were wrong; we cared had thought that middle-class Nige- too much about huge church buildings and gone further, you could do better! I was mighty statues. You would never see white peo- rian lives like his were too boring and happy, I was in this quiet place becom- ple doing that. marginal to write about. He worried ing a provincial doctor, but in Nigeria about his readers losing interest—when that is a lack of ambition, so my mom “I got to my aunt’s. I kept on reading he was writing his first manuscript, he was angry. She showed me a photo- it.” The prose was clear and decep- thought there had to be a spaceship, graph in a magazine of a young woman tively simple. The story unfolded slowly, or a flashback in time, and the whole with beads in her hair, and she said, calmly, its violence muled by the con- thing had to be constantly cutting back Look at this small girl, she has written fusion of its narrator, a guileless teen- and forth, like a movie trailer. “Purple a book of horticulture, about flowers— age girl. There were surprises but no Hibiscus” was a revelation: “I knew those you could do something like that. She tricks. characters. It was as if my generation didn’t care what I did, really, she just had been given permission to speak. “Why did He have to murder his own son so wanted me to do more. So she told me, we would be saved? Why didn’t He just go The cliché of American fiction is being Write books! Don’t just sit there dish- ahead and save us?” about Long Island and idle housewives, ing out Tylenol. I said O.K. So I got a and I realized, We are allowed that now— computer and started writing.” “On the bus back to Warri, a five- we can write banal shit! And there’s an Eghosa Imasuen was twenty-eight. hour trip, I finished it. I didn’t sleep. audience for it.” He was living near his parents, in a Then I got to my flat and opened my small city some two hundred and fifty computer, got my file for my novel, round the time that Imasuen was miles southeast of Lagos. He read a trashed it, deleted the trash, and started Agetting yelled at by his mother, lot, mostly thrillers and science fiction, again.” the author of “Purple Hibiscus,” Chi- pulp paperbacks he bought from sec- “Purple Hibiscus” was the story of mamanda Ngozi Adichie, who is now ondhand bookshops for a dollar or less. a rich family dominated by a tyranni- regarded as one of the most vital and “Literature to me was recommended cal Catholic man, Eugene. Eugene’s original novelists of her generation, was reading in school, which was Chinua father never converted, so Eugene won’t living in a poky apartment in Balti- Achebe. ‘Things Fall Apart,’ ‘Arrow of allow him into his house, and forbids more, writing the last sections of her God,’ ‘Things Fall Apart,’ ‘Arrow of his children to accept their grandfa- second book. She was twenty-six. “Pur- God,’ ‘Things Fall Apart,’ ‘Arrow of ther’s heathen food in the few minutes ple Hibiscus,” published the previous God.’ I tried to read Ben Okri once—I they spend with him each year. He bru- fall, had established her reputation as couldn’t get past page 10. After a while, talizes his children into submission, an up-and-coming writer, but she was these books were fifty years removed but because he deeply loves them. not yet well known. from me, and they are set in the way When he beats them, he weeps. Although there had been political past. You didn’t feel it. violence in the background of her first “But I always had this idea for a the belt stopped, and Papa stared at the leather book, she had written it as a taut, en- in his hand. His face crumpled; his eyelids novel, genre fiction. I start writing, and sagged. “Why do you walk into sin?” he asked. closed story of one family; her second, my entire copy is shit. It’s really bad. “Why do you like sin?” “Half of a Yellow Sun,” would be much I’m like, Oh fuck, this is so bad. So I larger. She was constructing a story of go online and I read about Chima- He also donates anonymously to or- symphonic complexity, with characters manda, the girl in the magazine who phanages and hospitals, and publishes from all over Nigeria and many levels got me insulted by my mother. Even- an anti-government newspaper even of society, twisted together by love and

52 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 “There is a certain kind of black American that deeply resents an African whom they think of as privileged,” Adichie says.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PARI DUKOVIC THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 53 pus to teach, she dressed in a way that she felt conflicted about. She had no- ticed that, in American academia, a girly style—bright colors, patterns, frills, bows, rules, heels, eyeshadow, pink lipstick, all the accoutrements of fem- ininity that she had always loved—was taken to be the sign of a silly woman. She felt she had to prove herself, so she had decided to dress in the busi- nesslike, anhedonic manner of serious American feminists. It had been nearly ten years since her first stint in America, as a college student, when, as she later put it, she discovered that she was black. Her roommate at Drexel University, in Phil- adelphia, learning that she was from Africa, had been amazed that she knew how to use a stove, that she didn’t lis- ten to “tribal music.” She had since imbibed, bit by bit, the semiotics of “I wanted to make sure you were both happy enough with your race in America, which she had ini- life to withstand a major setback with your food.” tially found mystifying. She now un- derstood why people got ofended at the mention of watermelon, or fried •• chicken, or hair. She had decided to set her Biafra the chance encounters of refugees. It which would be sampled in a Beyoncé story in Nsukka—the town in Igbo- was the story of Biafra—the secession- music video and distributed in book land where she had grown up, and ist republic in Igboland, in eastern Ni- form to every sixteen-year-old in Swe- where her father had taught statistics geria, which existed for three years in den. She would become the face of at the university—and to center it on the late nineteen-sixties, through civil Boots No. 7 makeup. She would be- the household of a radical professor. war and widespread starvation, before come the sort of person who attended It was a mark of her obsessiveness that surrendering to the Nigerian govern- Oscar parties and was photographed she felt almost superstitiously partic- ment. The book would be a story in with Oprah and Brigitte Macron. But ular about where she wrote each part. the tradition of the great war novels; all this was in the future. To write the first section, which de- she had no interest in clever literary Sitting in Baltimore, Chimamanda scribed the early sixties, before the war experiments. found that writing her Biafra novel began, she moved back into her par- Later, this book would win the Or- was arousing in her a degree of obses- ents’ house and wrote in her childhood ange Prize and be made into a movie. siveness that she had not experienced bedroom. Then she would publish a book of short before. She did nothing else. She was stories, “The Thing Around Your nominally enrolled in an M.F.A. pro- “our women who follow white men are a cer- tain type, a poor family and the kind of bod- Neck,” and win a MacArthur Fellow- gram at Johns Hopkins, which gave ies that white men like.” He stopped and con- ship. Her third novel, “Americanah,” her a stipend for two years, but for tinued, in a mocking mimicry of an English which would win the National Book weeks at a time she avoided classes accent, “Fantastically desirable bottoms.” Critics Circle Award, would be larger and stayed inside to work, leaving only still, describing the disorientation, to go downstairs to buy bananas and To write about the early months of the release, and cruelties experienced by peanuts, or to pay for a delivery of war, she went to Abba, her ancestral young Nigerians abroad, and their out- Chinese food. If she felt restless, she home town. She wanted to smell it. siders’ dissection of America. As her jumped rope. subjects expanded, her audience would, When she wanted to reset her mind, “They thought Ojukwu had arms piled up somewhere, given the way he’s been talking, too, until her celebrity became unteth- she read Derek Walcott. It didn’t mat- ‘No power in Black Africa can defeat us!’... ered from her books and took on a life ter which poem—she just wanted to our men are training with wooden guns.” of its own. She would give a TED talk, hear his voice. She liked some other “The Danger of a Single Story,” which poets, too, but only modern ones. If a But to write the last part of the book, would be viewed more than eighteen poem had a “thee” or an “O” in it, she when the war was going very badly for million times. She would give a TEDx turned the page. Biafra, she didn’t want to be in Nige- talk, “We Should All Be Feminists,” When she did venture out to cam- ria at all: she needed distance. Thus,

54 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 Baltimore. The city meant nothing to wrote her a letter in which he addressed gether would-be writers and show them her. It was also extremely cheap. her, in English, as “My dear son.” She that they had skill enough to make a She had always known that she knew his English was imperfect, so go of it. She did not, in general, feel would write about Biafra, but it was when she saw him she said, Papa, it’s the need for the company of other writ- no small thing to presume to tell the “daughter.” And he said, Of course I ers. She liked the idea of writers sup- story of the war that had been such a know the diference between daugh- porting one another, but she thought defining catastrophe for her country, ter and son—I just wanted to let you that it was only a matter of time be- and one that she had not lived through know that you are everything a son fore the knives came out. She could herself: it ended in 1970, seven years would be. Her mother found out her never live somewhere like New York, before she was born. It had been a ca- father had died five days after it hap- where you were tripping over writers tastrophe especially for Igbos, and, while pened: someone had walked all that every time you turned around, writers being Igbo was not important to most time, through occupied territory, to tell in restaurants, writers in the supermar- people she knew, it was very important her. When her mother got the news, ket, writers on the subway. She thought to her. She had written a play about as Chimamanda’s father told her later— if she were married to a writer, one day Biafra in high school, but decided it it sounded more dramatic in Igbo— she’d wake up and strangle him. was dreadful and put it aside. Then, she “carried herself up and threw her- Later, when she felt eyes constantly shortly after she finished “Purple Hi- self down.” upon her, she started to have an aver- biscus,” she wrote a short story about Biafra was not studied in school, sion to talking about what she was the war, as a second test. The story and people didn’t speak of it—it was working on, or even her past work. She worked. It was time. as if her parents’ generation had bur- began to worry that any answer she She wanted the incidents she de- ied those years—so she knew that for came up with would be pretentious and scribed to be true, so she asked many many Nigerians of her own age and untrue. people about those years. She had not younger her novel would be read as The more she wrote, the less sure she became. known much before she started ask- history. That was why she felt she must Each post scraped of yet one more scale of ing: her parents had lived through the get the history right, especially the hor- self until she felt naked and false. war, but they rarely mentioned it. She ror of the war on the Biafran side, which knew that when Chuks, her eldest was not visible from Lagos. She sensed But back then the thought of a room- brother, was born in Biafra, in 1968, her that her book would be important, that ful of writers discussing craft appealed mother had had to beg for milk for it would have an efect on people. She to her. him, fearing he would die of malnu- had always had an efect on people. At the beginning of the workshop, trition. Her father, like most academ- She was aware that she possessed some many of the students were starstruck. ics, had worked in one of the directo- kind of power that was connected to A young Yoruba writer, under the grav- ries in the Biafran capital. He had tried her storytelling but not reducible to it. itational pull of “Purple Hibiscus” and to persuade his father to join him there, Her editor sent the manuscript to “Half of a Yellow Sun,” had made her but he didn’t want to leave Abba Chinua Achebe, who had been inti- characters Igbo for years, in the way mately involved in the Biafran strug- that Chimamanda, having read only “Who am I running away from my own house gle, to whose novel “Things Fall Apart” English books as a child, had made her for?” she had written a story in tribute, and first characters apple-eating and white. and stayed there until it was almost whose novel “Arrow of God” she read Chimamanda wanted to overcome her too late: the Nigerian Army was close over and over, although she did not re- students’ intimidation and create an in- to overrunning the town, and most read books. He called her “a new writer timate atmosphere, so she gossiped; people had already fled. At the last endowed with the gift of ancient sto- she asked about their clothes and their minute, he left for a refugee camp, and rytellers.” When she read this, she cried. love lives; she stayed up talking all night. there he grew sick and died. Her fa- The book was published in 2006, just This persona was quite diferent from ther believed that it was the loss of his before she turned twenty-nine. her public self: if an interviewer on- dignity as much as the physical cir- stage, or even an audience member, cumstances that killed him—to be a fter reading “Purple Hibiscus” and asked what she considered a stupid or titled man reduced to begging for food Atrashing his manuscript, Eghosa racist question, she would often say, in from relief agencies, or, if that food ran Imasuen wrote and published a first icy tones, exactly what she thought. out, scrambling for lizards. As the el- novel, decided he hated it, and started She told the students not to explain dest child, her father was obligated to work on a second. Then, in 2007, a guy too much, that they could throw in ex- bury his father, but because of the war he knew, who had written a Kafkaesque pressions in Igbo or Yoruba or pidgin he couldn’t do it. novel about a Nigerian who wakes up and trust the reader to get it. She told Her mother’s father had also died white, told him that Chimamanda was them that even if a story was autobi- of sickness in a refugee camp. He and holding a writing workshop that Sep- ographical it should be shaped—that, her mother had been very close. Many tember, in Lagos. for instance, although in life you could fathers at that time would not have Chimamanda had thought that one have ten close friends, in fiction you taken much trouble to educate a daugh- thing she could do with the success of could not, because it was too confus- ter, as he had. At one point, her father “Half of a Yellow Sun” was bring to- ing. She told them to avoid inflated

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 55 language—“never purchase when you suade people only if they were com- in my workshop who had been gang- can buy.” fortable enough to talk honestly. raped, and there was a tension with She encouraged them to write or- She had always hated the punitive this girl wanting the class never to talk dinary stories. Many students in the orthodoxies of the Western left—the about rape,” OluTimehin Adegbeye, workshop loved science fiction, but she way that people who didn’t understand now a nonfiction writer, says. “Chima- thought sci-fi was childish, because certain protocols because they came manda gave her permission to leave, anything could happen. Others were from a diferent background could find but she didn’t take it—she felt the con- still writing “loincloth fiction”: stories themselves banished while barely com- versation shouldn’t be had at all. But of a noble man caught between the prehending what they’d done wrong. Chimamanda felt we needed to have white devils and tradition. “The Nige- This was an experience that many Ni- it, so she went up to her room to talk rian style has always been to bloviate, gerians had when they left the coun- with her.” to put some isms,” Imasuen says. “It’s try. Chude Jideonwo, a friend of hers The workshops lasted ten days, and what they call Big Grammar. People who works in P.R., had come back from in that time she wanted things to hap- still think that to tell an important a year at Yale scarred and angry. “Lib- pen: she wanted catharsis and remak- story they must engage colonialism, or erals in America just assume that ev- ing, she wanted convictions to crack. the dictatorship of the nineties. They eryone has the same world view and She had several means at her disposal are forgetting that in Lagos there is a the same history,” he says. “Gender pro- to achieve these ends. She had the au- guy who wakes up every morning and nouns, for instance. In Nigeria, anyone thority that derived from her success, earns two thousand naira washing cars who believes that people of minority but this was a blunt instrument, one and uses a thousand to buy weed and sexualities should not be jailed is al- she didn’t like to use. She had her per- food, and the other thousand is to buy ready a progressive, so we don’t have sonal charisma, and the ability to change studio time for his album.” the mental space for fighting about the way things looked by redescribing The workshop became an annual pronouns. When I came to Yale, I didn’t them. But she also persuaded with the event, and she expanded its reach: she know that a person who wasn’t ‘he’ or acuteness of her attention. “Chima- found a corporate sponsor to fly in writ- ‘she’ was ‘they,’ and I felt like I was manda will see you,” Aslak Sira Myhre, ers from all over the continent. While walking on eggshells, I didn’t know the director of the National Library of she was irritated by Westerners who what firestorm I was going to walk into. Norway, who taught in her workshops, talked about Africa as though it were People didn’t just hold opinions—those says. “She sees when you’re lying. She a country, she had always been some- opinions were the sum of their person- will see when you’re insecure. She will thing of a sentimental pan-Africanist ality. I felt that either I agreed with see the social game that’s happening herself. them or they would shun me.” in any situation. If you tell her a story Conversations that started out about Having herself once been bewildered about your life, she will always know writing often veered into certain kinds by America’s complicated racial dynam- when you’re concealing something, and of politics—sexual, feminist, religious. ics, she was distressed at the thought usually she will not leave it alone.” For her, those kinds of politics were as that bewilderment itself could be ofen- Seeing people was something that basic a part of human existence as the sive. “Sometimes people are reluctant she could do in a small room that she traditional drivers of fiction: love and to ask you a question, because they don’t could not do in a book. But the in- money. She wanted peo- want to ask you anything stincts and the methods that she used ple to feel that they could that’s racist,” she says. to shape and move the people in her be who they actually were. “You’re not allowed to say workshops—enticing, joking, needling, She particularly wanted you don’t know, and you’re listening—were the same instincts and gay writers to feel at home, not allowed to be curious. methods that she used to shape and because it was so hard There are many circles move a story. She was finely attuned to to be gay elsewhere in in which asking a black how much a person could take—how Nigeria, and in fact two woman about her hair is much pain and sadness could still be people in her workshop considered very ofensive. pleasurable, or at least stimulating— came out there for the Now, there are ways to do and to the physiology of persuasion. first time. On the other hand, she also that and be ofensive, but half the time Too little pain left a person too com- wanted people who had what she con- it’s that people are just sanctioned and fortable, too much shut him down. sidered to be the wrong beliefs to say left confused. I just feel like we can’t There must be pain; but, within a story, what they were thinking, as long even talk about race.” for the reader as for the characters, there as they didn’t do so in a nasty way. Conversations in the workshop grew must also be relief. If there was a ter- It wasn’t that she felt that all beliefs heated. There was shouting and cry- rible family, there was another family. were acceptable; in fact, she consid- ing. She wanted to be able to talk about If there was no safety, there was love. ered one goal of the workshop to anything, but she knew that some sub- If there was no love, there was writing. be social engineering, which she jects were diicult for some people, so During the years she was holding defined, only partly joking, as getting she told her students that if the con- her workshops, she was writing her everyone to think exactly as she did. versation grew too overwhelming they third novel. She called it “Americanah”— But she thought that you could per- could leave the room. “There was a girl the unflattering Nigerian term for peo-

56 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 sible for her country’s history: she would write what she felt like. Her first STRAWBERRIES two novels had been written in the voices of characters who were younger A car’s tires thu-thunk and more naïve than she; the protag- over the rubbery black trip wire at the oil change, onist of “Americanah,” a young woman triggering a fat bell, named Ifemelu, would be her equal. and a group of girls in silver leotards are relected She had also decided that the book like spatters of sap in its windows— would be an unembarrassed love story. liquidine, irm, gleaming. She had grown up consuming vast quan- It’s a Game Day; they are the girls tities of pulp romances, and she wanted chosen to split in tempo to the brass band, to extract something of their addictive heel of a front foot sliding over Astro-Turf, quality, their sheer gratification. Ife- top of a back foot grinding over lit green, melu would leave an American boy- cervix slapping the ifty-yard line friend in New Haven to return to Lagos, like a fried egg lipped down on a griddle to burn. in the hope of reuniting with her first Behind the bleachers, a boy takes of the shirt of another boy, love, Obinze. The American boyfriend paints a letter there in red paint (R, was idealistic and political, always tu- and then another boy I-O-T . . . ). toring poor children and organizing When the sun goes down over the ridge rallies; Obinze had grown rich by cur- all the painted boys will make PATRIOTS. rying favor with a Big Man, and was For now the sun rises, sanctioning the street: part of a society that was thoroughly Jify Lube, pet store, the Sam’s Super Sandwiches cynical about both politics and love. It teens ile into, practicing the joke of language— was clear that there was a connection I love you . . . I like your faded shirt . . . between the American man’s idealism The morning is cool on the outside and the fact that Ifemelu never felt at and hot in the restaurant, the war in the words home with him: his rigorous ethics made playful as a war can be, meaning his love conditional upon finding the each gut bleeds out like a slit pig’s, same ethics in her. And there was, sim- illing the cracks in linoleum, spilling over, becoming smooth. ilarly, a connection between Obinze’s The layers of red dry and build on one another, acceptance of the flaws of his home and for years the gap between ceiling and loor lessens; country and his unconditional love for backs hunch as the mind saws downward, revealing rings. everything about Ifemelu, bad and good. In the parking lot, Are you asleep? Like many novelists, Chimamanda was says the boy who is not my boyfriend, more skeptical of activism in her fic- running his ingers along the band of my underwear. tion than she was in her life. Across the street from this, for years, an ancient tortoise roams the loor he house was full. It was late last of the pet store, closing his army-green beak TDecember and the Christmas around the red toenails of sandalled women, flights were coming in. Her brothers thinking them strawberries. and sisters were gathering at her house I feel ashamed for all the people in Lagos before driving six hours east I’ve been kind to knowing kindness to spend the holidays with their par- is all it will take. ents in Abba. Ijeoma, her eldest sis- ter, was coming from Connecticut; —Gabrielle Bates Chuks, her eldest brother, had flown in from London the day before. Chi- mamanda’s husband and her young- ple who when back home did irritat- with the same detached authority with est brother, Kene, were coming from ing Americanized things like carry which Westerners wrote about Africa. Maryland. Uche, her second sister, was water bottles and complain that their She had been watching Americans for now back from a fellowship in Swit- cooks couldn’t make panini. She had years by then, and she would write about zerland; she and the second brother, realized that she was no longer just Ni- what she saw in them: their childlike Okey, were the only ones who lived gerian: she had become a hybrid, a cos- optimism; their willed blindness to full time in Lagos. mopolitan, the sort of person who “di- their own power; their peculiar racial Chimamanda’s two-year-old daugh- vided her time,” who was always in hypocrisies. She called “Americanah” ter was with the babysitter. A nephew airports. The book would be, as Myhre her “fuck-you book,” by which she was watching football in the living room; put it, “post-post-colonial”: she as an meant she no longer felt that she must teen-age nieces were wandering about. African would write about America be a dutiful literary daughter respon- She and Chuks’s wife, Tinuke, were

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 57 chatting at the dining table. Chima- roast chicken, a salad, a platter of plan- else in the village, but he converted manda declared that indulged children tains. People wandered up, filled a plate, early on to Christianity, because he saw raised in the West lacked resilience and and left again. Tinuke’s daughter ap- that it was the way of the future. He whined too much. Tinuke reminded her peared at the top of the stairs and Ti- saw that education was also the way that that morning she had fed her nuke hid the binder under the table. of the future, so he sent James to school daughter three separate breakfasts. She took out her phone to show Chi- starting at the age of three. In some Tinuke had just woken up from a mamanda a video of the daughter play- ways, Chimamanda was disappointed nap and thrown on a black-and-white ing solo violin at a charity benefit for that her grandfather had not been an maxidress to come downstairs, bring- autism research. unbending Achebean hero, staying ing with her a school binder, because “I say to my daughter, You can be faithful to his traditions, refusing West- she wanted to show of one of her humble, but if you come out quite ern enticements; he was, instead, a prag- daughter’s essays. Tinuke was an un- mousy that’s how they’re going to see matic, forward-looking man who, see- abashedly stereotypical Nigerian mother, you,” Tinuke said. “In England now, ing that the new world could not be inciting her children to ever- greater there’s a kind of fakeness: you’re meant resisted, joined it. Then again, a cer- educational and musical achievement. to be humble, but you’re meant to be tain kind of forward-looking pragma- She had instantly recognized herself in confident, you know? And in the Ox- tism was an Igbo tradition in itself. the Ojiugo character in “Americanah,” bridge interviews, if you cannot speak And she knew that if he had not sent and complained to Chimamanda that for yourself, you’re doomed.” his children to church schools she if she was going to write about her could “Mama!” Chimamanda’s daughter would not exist, and no other child of she next time just use her name and said, appearing next to her. her father would have her kind of life. make it oicial? “Yeah, boubou? The idea of selling But she still wanted the other story. oneself is very American,” Chimamanda James married young, and moved She knew the recent test scores of all the clever said. “My experience as an undergrad- with his wife, Grace, to Berkeley in the children. uate in America, having come from nineteen-sixties to study for a Ph.D. “You are not going to be a rapper, sweetheart. Nigeria, was that there was just a lot Although he was ofered a job teach- We did not come to London for you to be- of bullshit. Half my class knew noth- ing in his department there, he never come a rapper.” ing, but they talked the most. And I considered staying: he felt it was his remember thinking, What the hell is duty to his parents to study hard and Chimamanda pushed through the going on?” go home. After he became a professor, swinging door into the kitchen, and “Mama!” one of the first things he did was to pay came back with some glasses and a “Yeah, boubou? It really shocked for his father to take up his title. David bottle of wine. She poured Tinuke a me. Both men and women in my Adichie had been ofered the town’s glass. “You know, there are times, at classes—” highest title, Ozo, but in order to take night, when I just decide that I’m going “Mama!” it up you were meant to throw a feast to listen to words of wisdom,” Tinuke “Yeah, my boubou. Kedu ife o? Bia. for the town, and he hadn’t been able said. “And I just go from one of your Bia welu nke a. Bia ebe a.” to aford it. After he became a titled talks to another, and I think, You know man, he was not supposed to eat in pub- what? I can do this! Yes! I’m a woman. he family travelled to Abba every lic, because it was beneath his dignity. Sometimes I write you messages and TChristmas throughout her child- Many of her father’s colleagues had then I delete them because I think, hood. Because it was where her father’s also gone abroad for graduate school, No, I’m becoming a fan. I don’t want family had lived for many generations, and some had brought home white to be a fan.” farther back than they could trace, she wives: there was Irish Mrs. Moore, who Chimamanda was very pleased to considered Abba her home town, even lived on their street and spoke Igbo; hear this, because Tinuke was not one more than Nsukka, where she had there was Mrs. Ijere, who was Swiss. for easy compliments. Some years be- grown up. She realized that it was not Other men came home alone and set- fore, Chimamanda had sent her an consistent with her feminism to iden- tled down with a Nigerian woman, and early copy of “Half of a Yellow Sun,” tify with her father’s home rather than then many years later a biracial Amer- along with the blurb she had received with her mother’s, but that was the way ican or European would turn up and from Achebe. Tinuke read a few pages, things were. On holidays in her child- say, You’re my father. When Chima- called her up, and asked, in genuine hood, they spent a day or two with her manda read Barack Obama’s memoir puzzlement, “Are you sure this is the mother’s family and three weeks with and learned how his father had de- book he read and praised?” her father’s. By custom, an Igbo child serted his white American wife, whom “You never told me my talks make belongs to her father’s people. he had married despite already having you feel empowered,” Chimamanda said. Her father, James, was born in Abba a wife in Kenya, she judged the father “I’ve told you. Have I not told you?” in 1932. His father, David, was born less harshly than Obama did. “It’s easy “No! But it makes me very happy.” there, too, as were David’s father, Adi- to understand it as deceitful,” she says. Around ten o’clock, Taiwo, her cook, chie, his grandfather Maduadichie, and “But I don’t see it that way. To be an began bringing out dishes one by one, his great-grandfather Olioke. David African man of that time, to have this as they were ready—beef stew, rice, a Adichie was a farmer, like everyone privilege of being educated, often by

58 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 ish the lather, which he needed for clean- ing the rest of his face—his eyelids and his temples and his angling, broad fore- head, unwrinkled then, going foamy and white. Sometimes he liked to frighten me by turning quickly and opening his eyes wide and flaring his lips, this snowy beast, and then smile when I began to whimper, and although my heart deto- nated each time, I liked it, too, for the way it was him and not him and him again, in the span of a gasp. He’d wash away the suds with great handfuls of water, dousing himself while briskly rubbing his skin once more, and you would wonder why he didn’t just take a shower instead. Maybe it was because he was a refugee during the war and grew up in the harsh times af- terward, but bathing every day was a habit neither he nor my mother had yet developed. I can imagine them both waiting in line for their brief turn at a PARENTING BY CHANG-RAE LEE cold-water spigot, poised to clean them- selves as swiftly and as fully as they could. On the weekends, I often showered MY FATHER’S FACE with my father, and he showed me how to rub tiny dark rolls of grime from my forearms and from the scallops of my ne of my clearest childhood mem- the southeast-facing windows, as drafty heels, and then scrubbed my sham- Oories is of my father washing his as they were, for the brightness they let pooed scalp so hard it would tingle long face. He did so in a most particular way, in. My father was settling into his first afterward. My favorite part was when with a vigor and thoroughness that doctoring position, as a staf psychia- he dried my hair, his method not to made me feel somehow cleaner for sim- trist at the Bronx V.A. hospital, and al- blot and rub, as you normally would, ply having watched him. In the morn- though extra money was scarce, our but to hold each end of the smallish ings, while he got ready for the work- family was moving up in the world. towel and whip the middle back and day, I’d sit on the toilet seat brushing My father would turn on the taps forth against my head to flick away the my teeth as he went through the vari- until the water ran warm and then lib- dampness. No plush bath towels for us. ous stages of his ablutions. This was in erally splash himself as he bent over the Forty-five years later, I would be the early nineteen-seventies, when we basin, sprays of water dotting me. Like washing him, Parkinson’s having ren- lived in a low-end red brick rental com- seemingly all Korean men back then, dered his body stif and frail, his mind plex near the Sound in New Rochelle. he wore a ribbed tank top beneath his loitering elsewhere. With both hands Our second-floor apartment was a small dress shirts, and the shoulder straps he held the shower bar as I sponged two-bedroom with a living-dining area would get a little damp as he wet his his flanks and hosed him of with the and a worn galley kitchen. It had one face and ears and neck. He built up a sprayer. I washed his face, too, but with cramped bathroom, its dulled chrome load of soapy lather and got to work, my hands, if more gently than he prob- fixtures speckled with rust and the tiles roughly polishing the sides of his nose ably wanted. I tried not to get soap in coming loose in spots, but even my and his cheeks in a circular motion and his eyes. When he was dying, I was far mother wasn’t fretting too much. We radiating outward to his ears, using his away and couldn’t get to him in time. were just a couple of years landed in index fingers and thumbs to scrape the The hospital morgue staf let me see the country, and this was as suitable a nooks and whorls. Making a rake of his him. He lay on a gurney with a sheet place as any. My kid sister and I loved fingers, he scoured behind his ears, then drawn up to his chin. There was his the playground and grassy field that the shifted to the back of his neck, tilting mouth, in a slight pinch. His sunken apartment overlooked—you could check his head slightly to each side to bare it cheeks. His forehead was cold wood who was out there and sprint down in for forceful soaping. Next, he rotated against my lips. He smelled sterile, al- a breath—and my mother appreciated the bar of Ivory in his hands to replen- most clean. It wasn’t him.  JAN BUCHCZIK JAN

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 59 people in your home town contribut- cause they were born after the war, she ment. As a consequence of the politi- ing money to pay part of your school didn’t know. cal turmoil, government workers, in- fees—not only do you owe them money, In 1983, when she was six, there cluding professors at the university, you owe them in an emotional way, be- was a coup. She remembers the family were sometimes not paid for months cause you’re a shining star for them, crowding around the radio, the mar- at a time, and there would be no bread, you’re theirs. Then you go of and fall tial music, a neighbor shouting, “Coup! or milk. in love with somebody who would not Coup!” She remembers her mother She was raised Catholic, and as a be acceptable to them, and you feel coming home from work and saying, child she loved the Church. She loved torn. Often, the village wins. And so, I need you children to teach me the going to Mass, loved the drama of it, reading Obama’s book as a person who national anthem, because I have heard the robes, the candles, the incense, the was familiar with stories of that sort, that soldiers will come to the univer- Latin words, the diferent colors for part of me wanted to say, It’s not that sity and if you cannot sing the anthem the diferent seasons—purple for Ad- he didn’t love you.” they will beat you. She remembers vent, white for Christmas, red for Pen- She was the fifth child of six. The watching firing squads executing thieves tecost. She loved the singing, and the family was very close, always laughing on television. She knew that there were way everyone would hug one another and joking, but she felt that the three things you shouldn’t say, at least not at the end of the service. She never felt younger children were raised less tra- directly. When she was twelve and writ- the pervasive Catholic guilt that she ditionally, though whether this was just ing a paper about politics, her parents later encountered in Graham Greene. because they were later-born or be- told her not to write about the govern- She knew the liturgy by heart, and would whisper it along with the priest. At some point later on, she stopped going to Mass, but when she was young she wished she could be a priest. “Ni- gerian Catholicism is almost feudal, and the priest is God,” she says. “The priest would sweep in in his long sou- tane, and you cleared the way because Father was coming. I wanted that! I wanted the power. But it was a beau- tiful kind of power, because I felt I would instruct people on . . . I had dan- gerous ideas as a child.” As a child, she had a kind of natural authority. Many girls wanted to be her friend, and in an efort to win her they would present her with their lunches, and she would eat them. At the same time, she had episodes of depression— the beginnings of a disease that contin- ues to alict her—though she did not yet have a name for them. “I was a pop- ular child who had tons of friends and did well in school,” she says, “but then I would have moments where I didn’t want to see anybody, didn’t want to talk to anybody, cried for no reason, felt that I was bad and terrible, isolated myself.” Because of her popularity, when she decided to stick with Igbo all the way through high school, others did, too, despite the fact that Igbo was a very uncool subject that most kids dropped as soon as they could. She wanted to know Igbo deeply, not just as a family language, but her pride in the language was unusual. “There is something I call, unkindly, Igbo shame,” she says. “Igbos who grew up in Lagos try their hardest to run away from their Igbo-ness. If you meet them in public and say couldn’t stand the cadavers. After a year, In Nigeria, when a woman in her something in Igbo, they will not re- in 1995, she decided to apply to colleges family had a baby, all of her female rel- spond in Igbo.” in America. At that time, many students atives came to help and she lay in bed We lost the Biafran war and learned to be were doing the same. It could take extra like a dying queen. She loved the idea ashamed years to get your degree in Nigeria, be- of that in some ways, but when she had cause the university lecturers were so her baby, in Maryland, she instructed In Nigeria, the stereotypical Igbo is often on strike, and when you gradu- her mother not to come for a month. loud, aggressive, greedy, even criminal. ated there seemed to be no jobs. And She realized afterward that she had in- People will say, Don’t let an Igbo man so, many students sat for the SATs in ternalized what she took to be an Amer- work for you, because before you know the hope of escaping, as she put it later, ican notion, that having help with a it he’ll have taken over your business. in “Americanah,” “the op- newborn was something to People accuse Igbos of perpetrating the pressive lethargy of choice- be slightly ashamed of. You 419 scams that got Nigeria a reputa- lessness,” and because they were supposed to do every- tion for being a country of grifters. were “eternally convinced thing on your own, or else She finds it hard to say what it is that real lives happened . . . you weren’t properly bond- about Igbo-ness that means so much to somewhere else.” ing, or sufering enough, or her. She believes that there is something something like that. to the stereotype that Igbo culture is he had always imagined Right from the begin- too materialistic. And that Igbos are far Sthat she would marry ning, she found that she was more puritanical than Yorubas about fe- someone flamboyantly un- consumed by anxiety. She male sexuality. It’s not that Igbo culture familiar—she pictured her- seemed to have become a is better—it’s just that it’s hers. She feels self shocking the family by bringing slightly diferent person—neurotic, on she has people to whom she belongs, home “a spiky-haired Mongolian- edge. She didn’t much like this version and to whom she could go back, if she Sri-Lankan-Rwandan”—but the man of herself, but she couldn’t help it. Even needed to. But, in her family, she and she ended up marrying, in 2009, was now that the child was two, when she her father are the ones who care most almost comically suitable: a Nigerian slept, she checked to make sure that she about the Igbo language. Her nieces and doctor who practiced in America, whose was still breathing. nephews hardly speak it. Even in Abba, father was a doctor and a friend of her When she was younger, she wasn’t in the heart of Igboland, many children parents, and whose sister was her sis- sure she wanted a child at all. She felt in the generations after hers speak only ter’s close friend. Before they had a baby, that since writing was the point of her English. She worries that within a gen- she spent about half the year in Nige- existence, if she couldn’t write she might eration or two the language will die out. ria, and her husband would join her as well die, and she worried that she Her own Igbo was imperfect enough when he could. But her husband doesn’t couldn’t both write and be a good mother. that when she wrote poems as a teen- want to be apart from the baby for too She decided to chance it, but already ager she wrote them in English. When long, so now she lives most of the time during her pregnancy she began to see she was seventeen, she managed to get in the U.S. “One of the perils of a fem- signs of trouble. At one point, she wasn’t a chapbook published. She went to meet inist marriage is that the man actually getting anything done because her par- with a Big Man in the media in the wants to be there,” she says. “He is so ents were visiting, and the house was hope that he would promote the book; present and he does every damn thing! full of workmen because she’d decided as they were talking, he walked around And the child adores him. I swear to that since they were having a baby they behind her, reached under her shirt, and God, sometimes I look at her and say, needed to redo the kitchen, and not squeezed her breast. For several seconds, I carried you for nine months, my breasts writing was driving her crazy, so she de- she did nothing—too shocked to react. went down because of you, my belly is cided to go away for ten days just to Then she pushed his hand away, but slack because of you, and now Papa work. She planned to come back with nicely, gently, because she didn’t want comes home and you run of and ig- the draft of a short story. She found to ofend him. Later that day, she de- nore me. Really?” stories punishing in a way that novels veloped a rash on her face, neck, and In America, they live in a big, new weren’t—in novels there was room to chest, as though her body were protest- house in a suburb of Baltimore, on a fail, room for bits that she didn’t like ing in a way that she had not. She told cul-de-sac alongside four other similar that much, but short stories were all a friend about it that day, and then told houses arranged in a semicircle. In pressure. She checked into a hotel room no one else for twenty-five years. “Americanah,” she describes Princeton in Annapolis and set up her computer, In the eighties and nineties, there as having no smell, and her neighbor- but then she spent the whole time sit- was an emphasis on the sciences in Ni- hood has no smell, either. It is calm, ting on the bed watching episode after gerian schools, so even though she had spacious, bland, empty—the opposite episode of “Spiral,” a French police pro- already published a book of poems, she of Lagos. If she looks out the window, cedural, and eating chocolate cake. started university, in Nsukka, studying she sees nothing. She doesn’t know many Once the baby came, finding the medicine. She thought maybe she could people in Maryland, and doesn’t want mental space to work became even more become a psychiatrist and use her pa- to. She can go out and people don’t rec- complicated. Working for her meant tients’ stories in her fiction, but she ognize her. It’s a good place to work. becoming wholly consumed by people

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 61 who didn’t exist, which felt harder and courage her from doing this—it seems tration, because that was how people more perverse when confronted by a to them unlikely to be helpful—but ought to behave on the road, and in baby who did. She and her husband she does it anyway. “They somehow Lagos they didn’t. Security and thieves split the childcare fifty-fifty. After the connect me to something about human were a problem, so she lived in a gated birth, he took six months of work, and beings. I don’t know. I just know that neighborhood with armed guards at the then he started working again, but only I have a connection to the story of the entrance who checked the trunk and three days a week. She was supposed Holocaust. I find that I’m drawn to the engine of every vehicle coming in, to work on the days he stayed home, stories in which life is normal, and and another guard and another gate se- but often she found that she was so then it’s not, overnight.” She isn’t try- curing the driveway to her house. Part run down after her time on duty that ing to cure herself—to turn depres- of the reason she was happy in Nigeria she just fell asleep. Those days were sion into happiness. That wouldn’t work was that she knew she could leave. exhausting. “I’d take her to the play- anyway. She is, perhaps, trying to turn In Lagos, she is as recognizable as ground, with what I call the Society of depression into bereavement: some- the President. Her face is on billboards. Stay-at-Home Mothers, who are all thing that at least has meaning, a story People crowd around her at the air- deeply good and pure and righteous, with people in it, rather than a grim port. When she enters a restaurant, and their entire lives are about the blank. She hates depression, but sad- there is a ripple of recognition. Some- well-being of their child, and I’m, like, ness is diferent. “I think I’m addicted times she will ask for the check and Oh, Lord, I haven’t even read the damn to a certain kind of nostalgia,” she says. discover that someone else has paid for news, I’m reading fiction only for thirty “I watch these films and I find myself her meal. Her books are widely pi- minutes before sleep, that’s not the per- in a state of mourning for all the things rated—her publisher tells her that the son I am.” that could have been. They just make most pirated books in Nigeria are her Aside from not being able to write, me cry and cry. I don’t know. All I novels, books by T. D. Jakes (the pas- the thing that had most worried her know is that I will continue to watch tor of an American megachurch), and about having a baby was the immedi- them. I go on Netflix all the time to the Bible. She is admired as a Nige- ate emotional aftermath. Her doctor check, to see.” rian who has become an international had told her that she was likely to celebrity, bringing renown to her coun- sufer from postpartum depression, he months she spends each year try and a sense that now, for a Nige- so she went online to find out how Tin Lagos are mostly very pleasant. rian, anything is possible. But, because other women had coped. Most of them Her house is in Lekki, an upper- she is so visible, everything she does seemed to advocate doing a lot of yoga, middle-class neighborhood on a pen- or says is scrutinized. which was not at all what she wanted insula separated from the mainland by She feels she can’t leave her house to hear. But in the end, after her child a lagoon, and bordering the ocean. She in Lagos without dressing up, because was born, she was fine. has her cook and a driver, Gabriel. She she might be commented upon, and She dreaded falling into that pit is surrounded by people she loves. She she is not wrong: when she appeared again. She knew that some people doesn’t write much—there are too many on television with natural hair, it was thought there was a link between de- people around. She is happiest when an event. She had started wearing her pression and art, that it gave you in- she is home. hair natural as an undergraduate, in sight or depth or something, but the Nigerians in bleak houses in America, their part because she’d grown sick of the idea that someone could write while lives deadened by work, nursing their careful physical discomfort of straightening it, depressed made no sense to her. “I can’t savings throughout the year so that they could but she also hated the idea, instilled in even read. It’s a horrible, horrible thing. visit home in December for a week, when they her when she was young, that natural I can’t see my life, I’m blind. I feel my- would arrive bearing suitcases of shoes and black hair was unsightly and had to be clothes and cheap watches, and see, in the eyes self sinking—that’s the word I use with of their relatives, brightly burnished images of made more like white hair to be pretty. my family and friends. Well, actually, themselves. Afterwards they would return to She started talking about natural hair I don’t talk about it with my family America to ight on the Internet over their my- in public, which annoyed many women much, as lovely as they are, because thologies of home ... at least online they could who felt (correctly) that she was judg- they don’t really understand depres- ignore the awareness of how inconsequential ing them for straightening theirs. they had become. sion. They expect a reason, but I don’t This was only one of the issues on have a reason.” Nobody else in her fam- On the other hand, so much about which she had started, in recent years, ily got depressed, and they thought she Lagos was infuriating. The traic was to rub Nigerians the wrong way. When should keep it quiet—certainly not talk so bad that it could take several hours she said that she hadn’t revealed that about it in public, as she felt she ought to drive a few miles, and the honking she was pregnant because she didn’t to do. “There’s such a stigma attached and exhaust and yelling and awful be- want to “perform” her pregnancy, she to illness in general in this culture,” she havior that went with the traic were was taken by some Nigerian women says. “Nigerians will have cancer and even worse. People stuck in their cars, to be shaming those who liked to post they will hide it and lie about it.” unable to move, were liable to be robbed. pictures of their growing bellies on so- When she is in a depression, she When she drove in Maryland and saw cial media. The kind of feminism she sits for hours and watches films about cars immediately pull over at the sound espoused in her TEDx talk—women the Holocaust. Her family tries to dis- of a siren, she felt like weeping in frus- should be permitted to hold positions

62 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 of power; if a woman arrived alone at a hotel or a restaurant, she should not be assumed to be a prostitute—is not particularly controversial in America. But in Nigeria any feminism could be taken as a declaration of war against men. When it emerged that she had got married and, later, had a baby, many people in Nigeria were genuinely shocked: they hadn’t realized that fem- inists did those things. Even among progressive Nigerians, she was controversial. Some said that feminism was a Western concept, and accused her of promoting a colonized notion of women; some Nigerian fem- inists felt she wasn’t radical enough. When she became a spokesperson for No. 7 makeup, people said that wasn’t a feminist thing to do; when she per- mitted “We Should All Be Feminists” to be printed on Dior T-shirts that sold for more than seven hundred dol- lars, people said she’d been corrupted by capitalism. When she said on Brit- ish television that the experience of trans women was diferent from that •• of women born female, because they had once experienced the privilege of living as men, she was castigated for ist and patronizing, and whom she ven- ing not to know what it means. The implying that trans women were not omously fictionalized in her short story same postcolonial theorists who assign real women. She found this criticism “Jumping Monkey Hill.” your books & videos in classes.” particularly wounding, because she had She is O.K. in principle with not being as though God, having created him, had slapped stuck her neck out for L.G.B.T.Q. him lat against a wall and smeared his fea- liked: she thinks that the desire to be rights for years, so she fought back, tures all over his face liked is something that women need to decrying what she felt was a simplify- get over. A male friend of hers told her ing orthodoxy that, in the name of Asked where she went instead to find that Ifemelu, the main character of supporting trans women, denied that the best African fiction, she said, “My “Americanah,” was Chimamanda with- there was any diference between their mailbox,” where she received her work- out her warmth, and she bristled at this, experience and that of cis women at shop students’ stories. On Nigerian even though she thought it might be all. On the other hand, some Nigeri- Twitter, all hell broke loose. “It doesn’t true. Why the hell are you judging her ans were pleased that she’d said some- take much brain juice to realize from like that? she thought. If Ifemelu were thing sensible for once. her interviews that Ms CNA’s ego a male, would you expect and want When she talks about feminism or can sink an island,” wrote Manny. “So warmth? All the same, it is painful to be gay rights in Nigeria, she knows what the best African fiction is in Chima- attacked. “Ta-Nehisi Coates said to me she’s getting into, and she does it on manda Adichie’s inbox?” Abubakar once that what hurt him the most, be- purpose. But her celebrity is such that Ibrahim, a novelist, wrote. “I hail thee, coming successful, was how much it was even an ofhand remark can set of a queen-god mother. Go fuck yourself, black intellectuals who seemed to be out fracas that she did not anticipate. A Chimamanda.” for him, and I know what that’s like. I few years ago, when asked by a jour- Earlier this year, Chimamanda com- told him that there’s a circle of Nigeri- nalist to comment on the shortlist for mented to a reporter in France, “Post- ans who are resentful of my international the Caine Prize, an English award for colonial theory? I don’t know what it success, and it’s very hurtful, because I African fiction, she said she had no in- means. I think it’s something that pro- want my people to wish me well.” terest in the topic, although one of the fessors made up because they needed nominees, she said, was “one of my boys to get jobs.” Nigerian academics reacted ne day in the summer of 2015, in my workshop.” Her antipathy to the with hurt and outrage. “That’s it!” Dii- Oshe was at home in Maryland, Caine Prize was long-standing, due to cult Northerner wrote. “We need to in the early stages of pregnancy, feel- her dislike of a former administrator put Chimamanda in rice. How can you ing nauseated and generally crappy. of the prize, whom she had found sex- shit on postcolonial theory while claim- It was a warm day, so she was sitting

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 63 go, but no one else. Okey drove to a point on the highway near Nsukka, then, as instructed, set of on a mo- torcycle taxi for the designated meet- ing place, carrying ten million naira in a sack. Nobody knew if he would be seen again. They had heard that sometimes a family member would bring the money, only to find that the victim was already dead, and then be killed himself. Okey rode on the back of the mo- torcycle, talking to the kidnapper on his phone. The motorcycle driver asked where they were going, there was nothing around here. Okey said to him, Just keep driving. When they entered a forest, the kidnapper told “Excuse me, can you watch my stu? And also ight o a thief?” Okey to stop. The kidnapper told him not to look to the right or left, just keep walking, then drop the bag. •• Okey obeyed; the kidnapper on the phone told him to leave. Back at the in the garden. Her husband was in- mother’s house; he told her mother house, the family held their phones, side, cooking and chatting with her what to say when the kidnappers willing them to ring and afraid that brother Kene, who had come over to called back. Chimamanda called the they would ring. Then her father was visit. All at once, they both emerged house to talk to the F.B.I. agent. He delivered. from the house and started walking told her he was a big fan and had A few days after he was released, toward her and she knew instantly read all her books. Later, she would her parents flew to America. Her fa- that something was wrong. She find this funny. ther seemed to her to have shrunk. He thought, One of my parents has died, There were no demands until the had a cut on his head from when the which one is it? She thought, I don’t next day. This was the usual method: kidnappers threw him into the trunk want to know what has happened, kidnappers delayed, so that you worked of the car. When they got to the for- whatever it is, because life is going to yourself up into a panic. The next day, est, they had left him sitting in the change forever. Her husband told her they called and demanded five million dirt for many hours. He hadn’t eaten, that her father had been kidnapped, naira—around fourteen thousand dol- because he thought their food might and she screamed, then vomited, then lars—and told her mother that if she be poisoned. Now any loud noise made started to cry. Her father had been in told the police they would kill him. him jump—her husband took to mak- a car driving from Nsukka to Abba, They didn’t call for another day. On ing his smoothies in the garage, be- but he had not arrived. When her the third day, they demanded ten mil- cause her father would startle at the mother tried to call him, his phone lion naira. There were laws against tak- sound of the blender. He rambled when was switched of, as was the phone of ing out too much money at once, but he spoke. his driver. Two hours later, her mother kidnappings were common enough She felt anxious all the time, al- received a call from his phone: the that the banks made an exception. though she knew he was safe. She kidnapper told her, Madam, we have She was terrified that her father would go to his room often, to make him, and hung up. Her mother had was dead. When the kidnappers called sure he was still there. For months, as not called Chimamanda to tell her her mother, her mother had asked to her pregnancy progressed, she barely the news, fearing she would have a hear her husband’s voice, but the man slept, and when she did she dreamed miscarriage. on the line refused. Her father was di- about the kidnapping. She dreamed She pulled herself together and abetic and didn’t have his medicine that she had found out where he was started making phone calls. She called with him. The F.B.I. man told her being held but she couldn’t get to him, the governor of Anambra, her home mother to forge an emotional connec- and she woke up crying and sweating. state. She called the American consul- tion with the kidnapper, so she called She also felt very guilty. The kidnap- general in Lagos, because her father him “my dear son,” and told him she pers had said to her father, Tell your was an American citizen, through was an old, old lady, and begged him daughter Chimamanda to come up his two elder daughters, who were for mercy. The family made a plan to with the money. She thought, It was born in Berkeley. The American con- drop of the money. The kidnappers all my fault: I should have known that sul sent a Nigerian-American F.B.I. knew all about them: they said that my parents would be a target because agent, a kidnapping expert, to her Okey or a particular son-in-law could of me, I should have arranged for a

64 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 guard to protect them. Why did I not is more diverse than most, but it’s of her ambition, when she was nine, do that? still America. She moved into her cur- to be class monitor, because the mon- For six months, she refused to go rent house just before the 2016 elec- itor was empowered to patrol the to Nigeria or to read Nigerian news. tion, and when, the morning after classroom, holding a cane, and write What really hurt was that the prob- Trump won, she began reading about down the names of noisemakers. Told lem wasn’t just her country—it was post-election vandalism in Baltimore, that the child who scored the high- Igboland. Kidnappings were more and about how someone had spray- est mark on a test would become mon- common in Igboland than anywhere painted “nigger” on a black woman’s itor, she concentrated hard and at- else, and it was well known that it was car, and how Trump had been elected tained the highest mark, only to be often your own relatives who were the not by the white working class after told by the teacher that the monitor kidnappers. all but by suburbanites, she started to had to be a boy. The boy who got the panic. She became convinced that her second-highest mark duly took up er child is two. Soon she will new neighbors had guns and were the post, although he was unsuited Hhave to go to school and become going to shoot them because they for its responsibilities. “The boy was part of the world, and this brings up were black and supported Clinton. a sweet, gentle soul who had no in- several quandaries that Chimamanda All day, she refused to leave the house. terest in patrolling the class with a has postponed thinking about. She Then the doorbell rang, and it was cane,” she said, “whereas I was full of recently wrote a short manual on rear- the neighbors bearing welcome gifts, ambition to do so.” Should her daugh- ing a child—“Dear Ijeawele, or A and they turned out to be a Japanese ter grow up cherishing similar ambi- Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Sug- couple, a Bangladeshi couple, a white- tions, she did not want them thwarted. gestions”—but although she is now a black couple, and a lefty white cou- What was the right age to begin published authority on the subject, ple. She was so relieved that she al- indoctrinating her daughter in femi- and holds fully formed opinions on most cried. nism? she asked herself. “If I tell her questions such as how gender stereo- when she’s four, They don’t let women “There aren’t enough middle-class black folks types imprison boys as well as girls, to go around,” Bill said. “Lots of liberal white do that!, will it do something to her?” she finds that when one descends from folks are looking for black friends.” she wondered. “You know that English principles to logistics things become word ‘chippy’—will she become one complicated. She cannot create a child Another advantage of raising her of those people who are called chippy?” in the way that she can create a char- daughter in Nigeria would be that she Then again, maybe she shouldn’t worry acter, of course, but she can choose would spend more time speaking Igbo. about that—why shouldn’t her daugh- the setting and the language of her She was determined that her daugh- ter be chippy? There was plenty to be daughter’s childhood, which is already ter should grow up speaking the lan- chippy about. to choose one set of possible selves guage, but her husband is not Igbo Did she have to choose between over another. and doesn’t speak it perfectly, so she trying to protect her from racism and She wants to raise her child in Ni- had hired an Igbo nanny. She had no- trying to protect her from sexism? If geria, because she wants her to be pro- ticed that her daughter was picking she did, she would pick racism. Then tected as she herself was protected, up a lot of words and phrases from again, she found herself getting an- growing up there: not knowing she is her books, which were all in grier about sexism more black. Someday she will talk to her English. She thought about often, because the fight felt about what it means to be black, but translating them, but they lonelier. Her friends never not yet. She wants her daughter to be described things, such as said, Was that really racist?, in a place where race as she has en- flying elephants, for which but they did say, Do you re- countered it in America does not exist. she could not imagine an ally think that was because Even as a privileged Americanah, Igbo equivalent, so she de- she’s a woman? she found that arriving at an Amer- cided that she had to write For now, she watches her ican airport was often jarring—a re- some Igbo children’s books child play in the playground minder that she was once again black herself. in Maryland with both girls and foreign. And it wasn’t just the On the other hand, rais- and boys, of several races, white customs oicers who hassled ing her daughter in Nige- and allows herself to feel her. “There is a certain kind of black ria would mean that she would likely sentimentally happy at the sight. If American that deeply resents an Af- learn much sooner, and more defini- her daughter still knows only stories rican whom they think of as privi- tively than she would in America, about flying elephants, in the wrong leged,” she says. “Privileged Nigeri- that she was a girl. She doesn’t want language, in a childish genre where ans especially. My husband and I have her to know that too early, either. Of anything can happen, and wants to got to the airport and they’ve said to course, there was sexism in America be liked, and is not yet a feminist, that us, You’re Nigerian, I bet you have as well, but nobody was going to say is O.K. She watches her playing and twenty-five thousand dollars in your to her in an American school, You! thinks, Right now she doesn’t know bag, let’s see it.” Go to the girls’ line. In “We Should yet. None of those children do. But Her neighborhood in Maryland All Be Feminists,” she told the story in a year or two they will. 

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 65 66 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 PHOTOGRAPH BY HANNAH WHITAKER FICTION ORANGE WORLD BY KAREN RUSSELL

BNORMAL RESULT. HIGH “You fall asleep together on the sofa. what a dumb verb. “Woo!” she screamed, RISK. CLINICAL OUTCOME Only one of you wakes up.” dropping to all fours on the stairs. The A UNKNOWN. “Don’t fall asleep,” Rae dutifully pain expanded to fill the empty house. At night, Rae pulls a pillow between takes down. “Orange World.” When the pain threatened to take of her legs and lets the pain scissor at her. They have already covered Green the roof, she pulled on a wool shirt and She feels like a gut-shot animal lying in World, a fantasy realm of soft corners stumbled into the moonlit street, a hand the road. Rae was not raised with reli- and infinite attention. “I want to ac- spread against her belly. “Help me,” Rae gion, so when she sees the blood in the knowledge that Green World is the begged. The neighboring houses stared toilet she invents her own prayers. After ideal, but Orange World is where most down at her like blank-faced jurors. She the results from the third set of tests of us live,” the Educator repeats. limped across the road. Strange light come back, she starts begging anything Next, they watch a parental horror brimmed in the gutter that ran along that might be listening to save her baby. movie in photo stills, titled “Red World.” the sidewalk. Its source was unclear. As And then, lo, something does answer. The Educator, in her bright Australian she advanced, the light changed color, I can help you. It spoke without accent, encourages them to imagine ba- developing a reddish tint. It was a very speaking, glowing low on the horizon. bies falling down stairwells and eleva- short step through this mist into the She had made it over the ledge of tor chutes. Speared by metal and flung gutter. Wading through ankle-deep 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., what she’d once be- from passenger seats. Drowning in toi- water, Rae cried out. Pain folded her lieved to be a safe hour. The out-of- let bowls and choking on grapes. knees below her. A taut and fiery string the-woods hour. Rae has never made it this far into a ran from her pelvis to her throat, and What are you? pregnancy before. Hers is a geriatric it felt as though some secret hand kept The voice tipped out of the red light. pregnancy. Her husband finds this lan- plucking at it. This is how the devil That’s the wrong question. What would guage hilarious. “Like Sarah in the Bible.” woos you, before you know it is the you like me to do? Everybody gets a swaddle and a baby devil. A bodiless, luminous voice rose • doll. The head comes of of Rae’s. While out of the storm drain. she is jamming the head back on, the “Yes,” she heard herself promise. “Orange World,” the New Parents Ed- swaddle floats to the ground. Picking “Anything.” ucator says, “is where most of us live.” the swaddle up, she steps on it. • She shows a slide: a smiling baby with Sneaker bacteria: Orange World. a magenta birthmark hooping her eye. Decapitation: Red World. Three months later, Rae pauses in the No—a burn mark. The slides jump back “Your head is on backward, love.” bedroom doorway to watch her new- in time, to the irreversible error. Here is The Educator watches as Rae born son breathing. He’s got a very ma- the sleepy father, holding a teapot. wrenches it around. ture snore, this baby. His father is also Orange World is a nest of tangled “You should go to the New Moms sawing logs. She could listen to their electrical cords and open drawers filled Group,” the Educator suggests. “It’s a duet all night. Green World. The baby with steak knives. It’s a baby’s fat hand great resource for first-time mothers. was born on the winter solstice, emerg- hovering over the blushing coils of a Veteran moms show you the ropes.” ing into a world of lengthening light. toaster oven. It’s a crib purchased used. Rae smiles and thanks her. In this He was born healthy, just as the voice “We all make certain compromises, crowded room of cheerful, expectant in the gutter had promised. of course. We do things we know to people, there is no space to say, “I don’t Already, Rae’s brain has rewired itself be unsafe. You take a shower with your know if there will be a baby.” to wake her at 4:35 a.m. Outside, snow baby, and suddenly—” pours through the neighbors’ leafless The Educator knocks her fist on the • birches. The flakes feel wonderful on her table, to mimic the gavel rap of an in- On the first night that the devil ap- upturned face, her fever-freckled chest. fant’s skull on marble. Her voice low- peared to her, her husband was on a trip Why hadn’t she thought to appeal to ers to a whisper, to relate the final crime: to New York to woo new clients. “Woo,” Heaven, Rae wonders now. She took the

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 67 first deal ofered. She’d done a better job The gutter is a cold canoe. Rae low- milk, she’s sure, than her baby ever gets. negotiating for the Subaru. ers onto an elbow, stretching flat. As- Below her, the devil makes a queer Rae kneels in the gutter, on a thick phalt pushes at her shoulders, her tail- gurgling sound. Tonight it has a long paste of dead leaves. She unbuttons her bone. It seems impossible that she hasn’t paddle-like tail, erratically needled, like shirt to the navel. Snow wakes groggily got sick yet, in all these weeks of ap- a balding cactus, which lashes at her into water, a trickling stream that car- pointments. Perhaps the devil is keep- side; she feels blood racing away from ries beer tabs and flashing ice into the ing her well. She tries not to look at a fresh cut. It drinks. It drinks. More storm drain. She fishes for the clasp of it; when she looks at it, her milk dries milk floods around its lips, turning its her bra. Her breasts are straining against up. It lays its triangular head on her fur shiny and wet. the thin lace. On the opposite side of collarbone, using its thin-fingered paws She hears the devil’s swallows slow- the street, her own home gazes back at to squeeze milk from her left breast ing, its thorny lashes fluttering against her. The windows look like holes that into its hairy snout. Its tail curls around her skin. Its head lolls onto her chest, any monster could reach through; the her waist. Unlike her son, the devil has breath whistling through its teeth. walls seem blue and pregnable. Like dozens of irregular teeth, fanged and Without thinking, she smooths a raw clockwork, at 4:44, the devil appears, broken, in three rows; some lie flat spot between its ears. making itself out of fog and solidifying. against the gums, like bright arrow- “Goddammit!” Its tone has changed completely since heads in green mud. Its lips make a The devil has bitten her; it pushes of the baby’s birth. No longer does it ofer cold collar around her nipple. She feels her stomach with its clawed feet. It wob- any green guarantees, promising safety the tugging deep in her groin, a men- bles through the melting snow, its belly to her child, her friends, her family. These strual aching. Milk gushes out of her, swaying beneath it, and vanishes through nights it’s all red threat: Feed me, or else. more milk than it seems any single the bars of the storm drain. She stares So she does. body could possibly produce; more at the eerie triple imprint of its teeth, al- ready shrinking from view. The first time, she thought that she’d have to disguise these scratches and bruises, the bloody evidence of these feedings. But, by true dawn, the worst of the wounds had van- ished, erased by some bad magic, leav- ing only a lurid rash. She is back in bed three minutes before her husband stirs on the pillow. “There you are,” he says, smiling. “Our boy slept well, didn’t he!” • Rae’s mother calls to see how things are going. Her mother would be here, but she is caring for her own mother on the opposite side of the world, in a hos- pice facility. Her heart is breaking not to be with her daughter, just as Rae’s is breaking not to be with her mother and her grandmother. The breaking is continuous—in the ouroboros of care- taking, guilt and love and fear and love continuously swallow one another. “I love you,” they tell each other fre- quently on these calls. More truth won’t fit through the tiny colander of the telephone receiver. Rae admits that she is having some diiculties with nursing. “Oh, God, don’t feel guilty!” her mother says. “Give him a bottle, al- ready. You were all formula-fed, and look how you turned out!” This is not particularly reassuring “Hurry up with that dictionary!” to Rae, although she appreciates the impulse. There is no natural moment Now it lives inside her, liquefying. In- “Hey, what are you doing here?” he in the conversation to say, “Mother, the admissible, indigestible event. Is that asks. “This is a healthy-foods store. No devil has me.” what the devil is drinking? cigarettes.” • At 9:09 and 11:32 and 1:19 and 2:04 She stifles the impulse to lie. and 3:22 and 6:12, Rae’s son wakes up. “I’m here for the New Moms Group.” Sixteen weeks into the pregnancy, Rae They wake together, her eyes flying When Nestor raises a brow, she had received a call from a genetic coun- open just as his wailing rises beside laughs and says, “Yes, I know. I’m old. sellor. Something had gone from being her. Before she knows what she is, she Old women can also be newborn. Any- possibly wrong to probably wrong. is rolling toward his voice. Night bright- body can.” In her dream that night, the genetic ens into morning, and they are together The New Moms Group sits in a cir- counsellor was picking out nail polish for the pivot. cle on a faux-fur rug in the homey, dingy for her. “This black? Or this black? Green World. The wailing is pro- back room. Every adult face looks freak- This one?” foundly consolable. It is the question to ishly huge to Rae. The New Moms get In the best of circumstances, a preg- which she is the answer. The milk satisfies pink nametags; the Old Moms, red nancy was a walk down a gangplank. hunger and thirst; it moves softly be- ones. It’s Valentine’s Day, a fact that But theirs were not the best of circum- tween their bodies, quieting both of them. shocks Rae; that’s not the kind of time stances, the genetic counsellor had told Joy has been the great surprise of moth- she’s been keeping. Rae and her husband. It is a scary re- erhood. The flood of love for the baby Yvette, the group leader, announces sult, she acknowledged. The numbers is so fierce that she is always trying to that they will “share” around the circle. kept changing on them: 1/100, 1/50, 1/14. qualify it to herself, to hide it from her “O.K.,” one of the New Moms says. Even early on, when the odds were with own inner sight. Hormones—of course She’s a white woman, wearing sun- them, Rae had feared this outcome. it’s all hormones. Hormones? Under her glasses and overalls and transmitting a Somebody has to be the 1. chin, the baby burps. He is wearing pa- definite hostility to being looked at, like With a dark egotism, she felt cer- jamas that make him look like a tiny a vampire or a vacationing Olsen. “I’ll tain that she and the baby would be medieval friar. The love winging around start. My name is Lisette, and I had a the rale winners. the room scares her with its annihilat- baby girl three weeks ago. I’m wearing If you believe that, what else do you ing force. It’s loosening the corset strings a diaper right now. I’ve been finding believe? of her history, the incarcerated fat of quarter-size clots of blood in my pants. But then, a day later, by the train “personality.” She and the baby are one I piss blood when I sneeze. O.K. Pass.” tracks, where pollen floats in a spectral body again, nourishing itself. “Hello. My name is Flore,” a hol- yellow migration to the Willamette River, For perhaps the first time in her life, low-eyed black woman with a new- two deer appear. Fawns, preceding their she knows what to do, and she does it. born gumming her turtleneck says, “and mother like tiny spotted footmen. this is Baby Dennis. Baby Dennis wakes It’s a sign. • up every twenty minutes.” It’s a sign. The New Moms Group meets at the “My name is Halimah. I had a All will be well. Milk and Honey Co-op, a cheerfully C-section, and I feel like a library where And still she hears the calm, dry derelict storefront between King of they mis-shelved all the books.” voice inside her: If you believe that, what Subs and the weed dispensary, just min- These women’s struggles are identi- else do you believe? utes from Rae’s house. One Wednes- cal to Rae’s, and yet she has to fight down day, at 10:27 a.m., she puts the baby in her distaste, the voice that says, “So what?” • his carrier and walks down the hill, and “Shut up” and “You should be Even as a girl, Rae was a terrible ne- kissing his fuzzy head every third step. ashamed of yourself.” I am a sexist, she gotiator. She gave anybody anything “Don’t worry, baby,” she tells him. admits to herself. Rae notes the rise of they asked of her. She owed the world; “This is just anthropology.” acidity in her body as she listens to the the world owned her. “The weak be- “Did you know,” she overhears a mothers describe their secret torments long to the strong,” her grandfather woman in line to buy a sack of oats tell- and night terrors and pelvic agonies. liked to say, a sentence that electrified ing her friend, “that breast milk is made “My name is Rubecca,” a white woman her with its poetic horror. She never from our blood? Isn’t the body amazing?” around Rae’s age says. She has smile lines felt that she could simply take up space; “That doesn’t sound true, Ellen,” the and a topless blue mermaid tattooed on no, one had to earn one’s keep here on friend says, with a blazing lucidity that her left biceps. Rae envies the mermaid. planet Earth. As a kid, Rae’s body Rae wants to warm her hands over. Gravity is on her side, under the sea. soundlessly absorbed the painful things “That’s what I thought,” Ellen says “Rebecca?” someone hopefully that happened to it, and not even an placatingly. “But Google it. Read the suggests. echo of certain events escaped her lips. science.” “Rubecca,” Rubecca repeats. For nearly Sometimes she thought the problem Then she winks at the cashier, five minutes, she shares about her sciat- (the gift, she’d once believed) was an- Nestor, whom Rae knows because he ica. Does she have a baby? It’s unclear. atomical; she didn’t seem to have a gag works a second shift at the gas station What she definitely has is sciatica. reflex, so none of the secret stuf—the where she buys, or bought, cigarettes. Little babies are yawning all around gushy black awful stuf—ever came out. Nestor recognizes Rae and grins. the circle, held on laps and centered

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 69 against chests. It’s hard not to view the watches Yvette’s face and awaits her Yvette scribbles her number on a mothers as their large ventriloquist’s reassignment, from weary stranger to piece of paper and hands it to Rae. dummies, yapping away while the ba- dangerous lunatic. “Here. Call me sometime. You have bies pull the strings. Yvette doesn’t bat a false eyelash. In- to break the cycle.” When they get to Rae, she freezes. deed, a look of naked exasperation flashes The baby is awake, blinking its dark, “Don’t be shy,” Yvette says. Yvette is across her carefully made-up face. innocent eyes. Now Rae worries that a mother of three, or four—Rae didn’t “That fucking thing. It’s been com- Yvette is the lunatic. What is this woman catch the exact number. Her children ing south of Powell?” saying? How can she possibly advise keep running up to her and radiating The aisle seems to narrow, enclos- breaking a compact with the devil? of again, in an explosion of organic ing them in a daylit tunnel. Is Yvette “Look, it is not the devil, O.K.?” crumbs. She wears her black hair in a making fun of her? “It’s not?” high ponytail and looks suspiciously ra- “You .. . you’ve heard it?” “It’s a devil. Like, one of the little diant to Rae; she grew up in Miami and “Uh-huh. Two winters ago, after my ones. A knockof Satan.” works as a choreographer for a dance second daughter was born, it came Rae swallows her shame. “It’s not company; in all her movements, there around every night. It moved under omnipotent. It doesn’t claim that. But is a spirited eiciency, a sort of freestyle my house and never shut up.” She it is powerful. The things it knows—” grace—warm-blooded and unrobotic. shakes her head. “You really think it’s reading your She seems to take real pleasure in help- Rae’s cheeks are on fire. “Did you . . . thoughts?” Yvette yawns. “A plant could ing the bewildered new mothers orient did it promise you something, too?” do that.” themselves in the postpartum tall grass. “Oh,” Yvette says, and laughs bitterly. “No, you don’t understand. . . .” But she clearly enjoys her role as Yvette “It certainly tried. I wasn’t interested.” Rae looks down at her son’s wispy the veteran, Yvette the alpha mom. Shame nettles over Rae’s skull like head, pale as lettuce with intricate blue “I’m having a hard time with night a tight red cap. “I see. Well. I, ah, I bit? veins. Veteran mothers seem so smugly feedings,” Rae finally says. I made a deal with it.” certain of everything. Yvette, with her Everyone clucks. Advice rolls over Smoothing her hair back from her cloth diapers and her homemade yo- her: Ferber, No-Cry, weighted blankets, temples, Yvette fails to conceal her dis- gurt—how does Yvette know for cer- white-noise machines. Has she tried appointment. She has long acrylic nails, tain what this devil can and cannot do? Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleepsuit? Binkys? a chic blue. “Rookie mistake, babe.” “It can’t do shit. It’s not clairvoyant. Loveys? These words embarrass her. Rookie mistake? It’s just a rat fink with a taste for moth- They seem to leach the intelligence Her whole body flushed, Rae leans er’s milk.” from her body, in the way that the starv- in to defend herself, which somehow Yvette’s daughter darts between ing devil leaches mineral from her bones. results in an impassioned defense of them, a strong, beautiful girl. She sticks At the end of the meeting, Yvette the very entity that is draining her life: her tongue out at Rae. approaches her. They stand in the “It saved my child. When he was still “Quit feeding it. Cold turkey. You’ll bee-products aisle, surrounded by cas- inside me—” see.” tles of natural laxatives. “I hope that “That thing!” Yvette laughs angrily. • wasn’t too overwhelming,” Yvette says. “That thing can’t add a minute to your “Really, you just need to experiment child’s life and it can’t take a minute For a while, Rae is almost euphoric with and find out what works for your baby.” away. It preys. That’s all it does. It feasts relief. But, as the sun sets, her fear rises. “The baby, I love the baby. I love on blood.” While her husband and her son sleep, nursing the real baby. . . .” Down the aisle, Yvette’s children are Rae reads news stories on her tiny screen, Rae feels dizzy from sleeplessness. drawing on the freezer door with bees- Red World stories. Women in ICE de- She can feel herself blinking rapidly, wax lip balm, giggling. As Rae watches, tention centers, separated from their water escaping down her cheeks. Oh, the older boy takes a big bite of wax children. Women in Beijing, afraid to God! For years she was a vault, but now and swallows. breathe the toxic air. She reads and reads she is a leaky mess. She can’t keep any- Rae looks at Yvette with a freezing until her teeth are vibrating from the thing inside herself, not the blood ru- dread, a melting relief. sustain pedal of the tragic news cycle; ining her underwear or her oozing milk “Are you sure? It was pretty con- the horror feels bottomless. She won- or the moisture in her eyes or the words vincing. Its eyes, you see . . .” ders how far afield the devil goes; there beading on her tongue: “It’s not our “Yes, yes, I know,” Yvette snaps ir- are deals to be made all over the globe. baby I was asking about. Every night ritably. “And the voice like a peal of By the time 4 a.m. rolls around, her since I got home from the hospital, I’ve thunder.” resolve has evaporated. Rae sees that been nursing the devil.” Rae nods warily. It feels like sacrilege she has no choice; she has to feed it. To Rae describes the devil in a rush, to be discussing this out loud at noon. deviate from the pattern she’s estab- with a sick satisfaction—its bulging “Whatever you do?” Yvette says. lished would be to risk other deviations. eyes and the spiny paddle of its tail, “Don’t read anything online. Those mes- Even the walk from the front door the way that it looks sometimes like a sage-board bitches are crazy. They’ll tell to the gutter is beset with peril. More prehistoric porcupine, sometimes like you your baby is going to die and sign snow crystals the trees. A car full of a sort of mutant red raccoon. Now she of with an angel emoji.” teen-agers comes shrieking around the

70 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 when I was born. He was a young dad, and it felt as if he had all the time in the world. When I was nine, he finished his Ph.D. and we moved back to Lahore, and that part of my life came to an end. He got a job as a university professor, so he wasn’t at home anymore, and, after my sister arrived, my mom worked for another year or two, then stopped, and I grew older, and things changed, as things do. It’s been the better part of four de- cades since we first moved back to Pa- kistan, and in that time I’ve lived all over the place and worn a suit to work in Manhattan and ridden the Tube to work in London and lost my hair like my dad and married and had two kids, PARENTING BY MOHSIN HAMID and now I live next door to my par- ents in Lahore, and when my kids come home from school I’m the one WHAT IS POSSIBLE who sits with them and watches car- toons on TV. My wife works and I write, so my n California, my mom worked an in time to make us dinner. She brought days are spent in the house, and I get Ientry-level job at what now might home the bacon, in my mind. (Of the to go hunting for butterflies with my be called a Silicon Valley tech busi- non-pork variety, I ought to add, given kids and watch the kites build and re- ness. It made audiocassettes. My dad that we were a Muslim family, though build their nest in a tree on the back made peanut-butter-and-jelly sand- I’m not sure I was aware that there lawn and preen on the water-overflow wiches and popcorn. He picked me up was such a thing as religious identity, pipe on our roof like the symbols adorn- from preschool, strapping me into the back then.) ing some proud nation’s currency. yellow child seat mounted at the back Once, my mother’s younger brother On the weekend, my wife joins us of his bike. He had a mustache and visited from Pakistan. “Where’s your on our outings, and so do my parents, sideburns and not much more hair wife?” I probed. “I’m not married,” he or, rather, we all join my dad, because than that, and on his bike I toured the told me. “Then who makes the money?” he has the patience to find the nest of campus of the university where he was I asked. a tailorbird or the slyly dancing form studying and went to swimming class My mother told me that my uncle of a praying mantis, which takes some and the grocery store, and at his side thought it was odd that I called my doing, for we don’t live in the country- on our sofa I watched cartoons on parents by their first names. side; we live in a city of eleven million our small black-and-white TV, a TV My earliest best friend was a Dutch people. in which I always saw colors, though kid whose dad was a geologist and At times, I miss having a regular job I was told by friends that this wasn’t whose mom was part Indonesian. My and a place to be during the day with possible. subsequent best friend was an Amer- people my age. I miss it a lot. I can be My dad never told me that it wasn’t ican kid whose father was an Afri- resentful of my wife. I can complain, possible. He was my buddy, and we can-American poet and whose mother even as she tells me that I’m doing ex- made model planes and ant terrariums, was what I suppose should be called actly what I told her I always wanted and went hiking in the hills and swim- European-American and I think was to do. ming in Lake Lagunita, which in those originally from Texas. The thing I re- But then there are times such as days was sometimes dry and sometimes member most about them was that when, a few months ago, my five-year- not. We fed butterflies sugar water and they had almost the same first name, old son looked at me while we were watched them unfurl what we called his mother and his father, diferent by playing and said, “Baba, when I grow their tongues and drink. just one letter. up, I be your brother?” My mom drove to work every week- But I guess my real best friend was And I looked at him with wonder day morning in our secondhand blue my dad. It’s funny to think that, as I and said, “Yes. When you grow up, you Datsun and drove back every evening write this, I’m twice the age he was be my brother.”  JAN BUCHCZIK JAN

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 71 corner, blowing through two stop signs. “See you tomorrow.” does Rae realize how badly she’s been Only one of the tail-lights is working. Fire is spilling around the distant hoping for rescue. Before giving birth, Rae wouldn’t have mountain. Limping home, she can feel Crawling into bed at dawn, she wakes blinked at any of this. Now she hears the road through the sole of one shoe. her husband. Adrenaline hums inside the ticking menace latent in the most She forgot to lock the front door be- her chest. Once again, she has escaped banal arrangements of weathers and ob- hind her. Her son, awake in his crib, sees with her life. Deep in some hell, the jects and personalities. Orange World. her face and begins to cry. devil, swollen with her milk, is begin- The freezing sky and the night and all ning to empty again, even as life surges the people in it. • through her. Her husband sighs hap- Carefully, Rae lowers herself into the Perhaps this was the wrong strategy, to pily, rolling toward her. She finds his gutter. She grips the asphalt, recalling antagonize the devil. The next night, the mouth with her mouth, moves lower. her labor, that earth-splitting pressure. creature sinks its fangs under her skin. Half his body is rigid and awake, his Pain can mean such diferent things, Blood sheets down her breast. Now she mind still trailing dreams. She has al- depending on what you believe is draw- is infected with new visions. They seep most forgotten that this kind of syn- ing closer to you, pushing into view. through the porous boundary between chrony is possible, so diferent from the The devil’s tongue has a ridge that her and the creature, whose snout feels bad business being transacted in the splits it down the center. Her extraor- as tight as a clothespin against her skin. gutter. Afterward, stroking the healed dinary rash, infernally authored, is easy This will be your future, the devil’s bruises above her tailbone, he asks, to conceal as an ordinary rash. Nobody eyes beam up at her. If you don’t obey me. “Were you feeding the baby this whole wants to look too closely when she What it shows her is so monstrously time? You must be so tired.” nurses, not even her husband. Nobody original that she has to bite her cheeks “I am. But it feels good to be food.” but Rae is studying her left breast like to keep from screaming and waking “What—” a painting. Grains of psychedelic color her son on the other side of the road. “I said, I feel lucky to know what it stand out against her skin. A Braille that Tonight’s special: a made-to-order evil. means to be food, before I am dead.” says “THE DEVIL WUZ HERE.” Her devil has never put this on the Unlike her son, the devil has no table in such precise terms. It must be • problem latching on. The pain is bear- stealing words from the briny jars in January 2. Dear Baby: You have been able if she focusses on the nursery win- her mind, unspoken and unspeakable— here long enough to accumulate dirt dow, gleaming on the opposite side of because how could a scaly demon-rat under your fingernails. the empty road. Then it starts to chew, know the verb “predecease”? Rae stares down at her Mom’s Line- and reflex gets the better of her. She That’s right. Tits out, bitch. a-Day journal. At some point, this had shrieks, unthinking, and pulls its snout The devil feasts. sounded like a very manageable goal. from her breast. No sooner is she free One line a day. But she is seriously in of the latch than the visions pour into • the red. The last entry—“You are get- her, a dark flood. Rae’s mother is the best woman Rae ting a tooth!”—is followed by a month “What are you, really?” she asks. knows. What would her mother say if of snowy blankness. Guiltily, Rae stares Standing on its hind legs in the gut- she could see Rae, at 5 a.m., pulling at all the empty days. Before her son’s ter, foaming and bristling, it seems to down her Hanes nursing bra to top of birth, she’d worked as a science journal- grow larger and thicker, wilder and sicker, the devil? A devil? Yet her son has years ist. This is a new kind of writer’s block. its bright, eggy eyes gleaming with mois- and years ahead of him, she hopes, on February 19. Dear Baby: Today, ture. Oh, God. Is the devil crying? this earth that can spin from green to a little scratch disappeared above your “You’re playing me,” she accuses. “You orange to red in one nuclear flash. left eyebrow. think I don’t know the literature?” The bra is new. The devil stares at All her life, Rae has been rehearsing The devil bashes its jaw into her col- it thoughtfully, then eats the sale tag. for the worst imaginable scenarios. Her larbone like a shovel. fears often get fact-checked, their valid- “Ow!” • ity confirmed. She’s written about the Feed me, or else, its eyes shine at her. Only once, in all these lonely months acidifying oceans and sarin attacks. It’s She sees Yvette’s face in the sunny of nights, is she spotted. Lying on her psychic whiplash to turn from these as- co-op. side, she is caught in the headlights of signments to the baby’s sleeping face ko- “You can’t see the future,” she says. a garbage truck. She clutches the devil alaed against her chest, in a marsupial “You’re just plagiarizing my imagination.” to her, lacing her fingers through its accessory recommended to her by the How much longer can this continue? trembling fingers. Something incred- Old Moms. For $49.99, you, too, can con- A year? Two? Much longer, the devil’s ible happens—the driver locks eyes vert your deflated abdomen into a pouch. ravenous eyes suggest. Starving even with her, and then goes right on driv- March 1. Dear Baby: I like the while feasting, poor thing. Eating fuels ing. The implacable pace of the truck, way you turn in half circles on the mat- hunger, a devil’s full belly flattening as huing mammoth breaths in the street tress, like a senile clock. milk stretches her breasts. She watches light, makes Rae feel as if she had ac- “The baby” sounds cold to Rae, but her hand reach out to smooth its cold, tually been run over and left for dead. “my baby” sounds too cozily propri- spiny fur. Only as the truck rounds the corner etary. “I am your mother,” she tells him

72 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 instead, reintroducing herself dozens Return the bullets to the gun. imals.” Together the mothers review of times each day. “We belong together.” Swat away the infected mosquito. the suspects: March 22. Dear Baby: Save the job that pays our rent. “Was it an anteater? A bok?” She thumbs through the blank pages, Prevent the warhead from reaching “It is a capybara,” Marie says, with shining and white. The happiness she western Oregon. grave finality. feels is frightening to her. It’s nothing Keep our son safe from the police. The capybara is the largest rodent she’s ever rehearsed for. Only an idiot Reverse the spread of leukemia. in the world. It is endemic to South would try to write about it. Bring them home to me safely, my America, a barrel-size hamster with babies, oh, please. gingery fur. Rae is not so sure, but she • The interloper, it seems, arrives in defers to her new friend. Her mother sends her a gift, a “smart a variety of costumes. “Mine was a “Mine was not a devil,” Carol, an sock” that will beep if the baby’s heart hawk. It descended on me every night Old Mom with carroty curls, says. “It stops in his sleep. and tore at my breast.” was an extraterrestrial.” Two stars, the top-rated online re- “Mine came as a horse. A miniature Rae doesn’t want to begrudge an- view gives it. “I was expecting to get horse, or possibly a donkey. It had enor- other woman her confidence, her cer- more use out of this.” mous buckteeth. I’m still missing pieces tainly hard-won confidence in a soci- of my shins.” ety that prides itself on dismantling • “Mine was a bear cub. It had a pur- women’s testimonies. At the same time, “Look, I don’t mean to sound harsh,” ple tongue. It sharpened its claws on she thinks, Bullshit, Carol. It was a devil. one of the Old Moms says, in a Ther- the fire hydrant.” “O.K., ladies,” Yvette says, address- aflu voice. “But you established a pre- That nobody notices these deficits ing Rae and Marie. She gives them an cedent. You set up this routine, and and bruises says something about the exhausted smile, and Rae recognizes now it expects to be fed at the same battered invisibility of the postpartum the bludgeoned kindness of a mother time every night.” body. People tactfully agree to unsee of four children under the age of three. Rae nods miserably. She did! the brown blood seeping onto their Wait, is that even possible? Three chil- “It’s a vicious cycle.” blue sofa cushions, the haunted bulges dren under the age of five? Her mind Yvette has convened a special meet- moving under a friend’s sweater. When is a fog machine. “Let’s not mince shit. ing, Friday at 8 p.m., which feels like Rae was pregnant, these same Linda You have to stop feeding this thing.” midnight to Rae. The co-op is closed, Blair undulations made strangers smile. Marie gives Rae a look of utter its windows shuttered. Six women sit “I saw a foot!” a bus driver once gasped, dismay. around the table, Old Moms with de- pointing at her abdomen, as if a blue “Does a problem go away on its monic experience. The seventh woman whale had just fluked. own?” Yvette says. “It does not.” is another New Mom, Marie. She and “I’m not sure what ours is,” Rae ad- “Mine did!” Carol says. her wife run the piano store on Frank- mits. “Maybe a badger?” “Carol. Please. This is not helpful.” lin; Yvette put her in touch with Rae. Yvette holds up “The ABCs of An- “Look,” Marie says. “This approach, Sometimes they meet at the park, trot- ting behind their strollers like bleary centaurs. Marie has also been feeding the devil, in a ditch behind the Windy Grove apartments. Marie and Rae sit side by side. Under the table, Marie takes her hand. It feels a little traitorous to make a new friend, when she is out of touch with every- one she loves. But it’s happening to them, a friendship. She pictures octo- puses bobbing in the sea, their tenta- cles curling around each other. Diaph- anous mothers with great swollen heads, bulbous with fear. Shyly, Rae asks the Old Moms, “Did you bargain with it, too?” A torrent of stories follows. What this devil once promised to do for them: Stop the car from running the red light. Shrink the tumor. Jail the kidnapper. Drain the water from her brain. “The carpet really brings the room together.” name was Oren—my brother’s name. I then forgot that fact, and then re- membered. When my daughter was two years old, I overheard my friend— my own friend!—talking to her about how leaves die in the fall. How reck- less, I thought, though I had recently brought my daughter to a showing of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” no problem. “Do you know anyone who is died? How many people have died? Are you going to die?” I had been forced to admit to her that her grandfather was dead, and even that he had a name. I hadn’t enjoyed that. But what about her? Does she move through life as if it were a mortuary? She proceeds to list everyone we know and love, inquiring, like a prosecutor, Will this one die? Will that one die? I confess to the truth, person by per- son, feeling like an executioner. “Mama, I have to tell you something.” PARENTING BY RIVKA GALCHEN I’m worried. What is it? “Laetizia says she can cut her own MUM’S THE WORD nails now.” few weeks later, we have dinner A at a friend’s house. The friend’s “ ama, when I die, I want to die pasta, or death. At three, my daughter brother has just died. I don’t think my Min Egypt.” became aware that at age four she would daughter knows. There’s a giant boxer- This is around 5:45 A.M., my four- get another round of vaccinations. faced dog there, under the table, gnaw- year-old daughter. “After three comes five,” she began de- ing on rawhide. “Did you ever give a “I want to die in Egypt so that I can claring. There were also many, many dog a bone, Mama?” be a mummy,” she clarifies. tears, anticipating the horror. “Are there I said that as a little girl I had a dog An autopilot parenting personality shots at ten? I’m going to turn ten.” who loved bones. I had another dog in runs things for me. “Mummies are Eventually she just started saying, to college who— great,” I say. “I love mummies.” anyone who didn’t ask, “I’m five.” “Are they died now, those dogs?” “Mummies make other mummies. I don’t recall being interested in death Fair enough. I have a strong child- With toilet paper.” as a child. I recall being interested in hood memory of my mother remov- “Yes,” autopilot me says. But I’m wak- “Three’s Company.” My whole family ing the cluttered kitchen drawer from ing up, and my misguided mom-splain- was interested in “Three’s Company.” under the Kermit the Frog telephone; ing personality is taking over. “I mean, My father may have been the excep- she removed that drawer and shook its mummies are dead people. They are tion; he liked to visit the graveyard in entire contents into a garbage bag. Ter- wrapped up by living people. Not by our neighborhood, and he went to a rible! I was fond of opening that drawer, other mummies, and it’s not toilet—” screening of “Shoah.” But even when knowing that anything could turn up: “Mummies aren’t dead.” my father died the rest of us stuck to a pink auto-insurance key chain, a plas- “They’re not alive—” our not-talking-about-death principles: tic watch (not ticking), a scrap of paper “That’s not true!” she says, with high you won’t find a photograph of my dad that read “bears—robinhood.” I will al- emotion. Then a pause, and she begins on the wall at my brother’s apartment, ways let the clutter live, I thought. I to cry. “If I have to die, then I don’t or at my mother’s. We excel at ignor- will always be open to these surprises. even want to exist.” ing ghosts, and have practice at it. My These days I love an empty drawer. As a parent, I find that I spend a maternal grandfather died before my The day after the dog-and-death good amount of time talking about mother was born. I never asked about dinner, I mention to my daughter on things that don’t interest me, like My him; I was never told. When I was thirty the subway ride home that we’re going

Little Pony, or when we’re next having or so, a cousin informed me that his to stop by to see Papa at a cofee shop. BUCHCZIK JAN

74 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 I’m glad it worked for you. But I’m not Cold turkey. ready to wean yet. I’m afraid of it! I “We have to stop together,” Marie Papa is there meeting with a friend he don’t want my family to sufer.” tells Rae after the meeting. “Promise hasn’t seen for a long, long time, I ex- “Uh, hello? None of us want our me. I can’t do this alone.” plain, so it will be nice— families to sufer.” Eight hours later, when she hears “She’s really lucky to still be alive, “It speaks with great authority about the scratching of the little claws on her right?” many calamitous possibilities. Then it porch, Rae bolts the door. For the first It’s a beautiful day. The friend is there promises me that if I feed it, these bad night since giving birth, Rae nurses with, I have been told in advance, her things will not come to pass.” only her son. new boyfriend. The couple gives of that “Rookie mistake,” Yvette says. “It • kind of happiness that makes people can’t do that for you.” seem inarguably good-looking. I get my She sees Marie’s face fall and adds, The next morning, when Rae opens the daughter an enormous chocolate-chip with surprising gentleness, “It’s under- curtains, her devil is skulking along the cookie. When I break of a piece of the standable, though. It’s not like there’s road in broad daylight. “Get the fuck back cookie for myself, she growls at me. a manual.” in the gutter,” she says. “Get the fuck Meanwhile, I’m catching bits of a story: Actually, there are hundreds of man- away from my house.” Instead it runs up one thing that brought these two peo- uals. Rae has several on her nightstand, a Douglas fir, whipping its long tail around ple together is that they both had dead mostly unread. the trunk. It bounces across the power spouses. That was an important con- “Do you know about Clever Hans?” lines, leering at her. Three black Priuses nection. Another friend of theirs who Yvette asks. “No? This was a horse, be- roll under the devil, unaware. also had a dead spouse married some- lieved by all to be a mathematical ge- That night, it scratches at the door one who didn’t have a dead spouse. My nius. ‘What’s two plus two, Hans?’ his for hours. It crawls into her skull, whin- daughter has chocolate smeared all owner would ask. And Hans would ing over the giggling baby as he top- around her face, like a lion cub at the stamp four times with his hoof.” ples blocks. Angrily, then pitifully. Fi- carcass. The children of this other man “Wow. They really lowered the bar nally, when she can’t take it any longer, with the dead spouse who married some- for genius for old Hans.” Rae gets out of bed. She is midway one without a dead spouse don’t even “Well, it turns out Hans was just a down the stairs when the baby, her real know about their father’s dead wife— canny motherfucker. He read cues from baby, begins to cry. A cry of pure hun- and they’re teen-agers. This is not good, his owner, and he knew when to start ger. Beautiful in its fearless fullness, its we all agree. The new boyfriend says, and when to stop clomping. This thing expectation of an answer. She can’t leave “You need someone who will let the is like that. A manipulator.” her son weeping in his crib. Nor, she ghost be in the room.” Marie looks unconvinced. Rae sees realizes, can she fail to keep her com- There he is, suddenly, a vision of my the echo of her own shining fear. pact with the creature in the gutter. A father: he’s watching “The Rockford “What exactly is it promising you?” compromise, then. Files” and then “Kojak” as I fall asleep Yvette asks. “What does it tell you will Orange World. Suiting the poor baby on the living-room sofa, so that I can happen, if you quit?” up like a marshmallow at 5 A.M. Jerk- be in the same room as he is. There he “I . . . I can’t say. I am afraid that ing on a hat, mittens. Letting him nurse is again, telling me to orient the map speaking these fears will turn them into hungrily on her right breast as she car- first, and I am disagreeing, really pas- prophecies.” ries him down the steep stairs. Open- sionately, No, you don’t have to orient “Oh, boy. I have a whole shelf of ing the door onto the gray, evolving film the map— bullshit for you. ‘The Treasure Is the of dawn. Hurrying down the porch steps, Yes, yes, we all learn from our chil- Cave,’ have you read that? No. 1 best- her hand pushing through plushy snow dren, but what do we learn? Why is it seller. Those authors are laughing all to grasp the railing. (The snow keeps so often something that they don’t even the way to the bank.” falling this year, breaking records.) Cross- know about? When my daughter finally Then Marie explains that her little ing a lake of street light to the gutter. did turn four, when the doctor’s visit with girl has a fever of a hundred and two. It’s easier than you’d think, to cross an vaccinations—which she had been work- The temperature will keep climbing, icy road carrying a nursing infant. She ing for what seemed to me years to she knows, unless it helps. And, to help, commends herself on her good sense— avoid—actually happened, she surprised it needs her milk. What if she gently she’s chosen the right footwear, heavy- me. She looked coolly at her right arm, weans the devil? duty boots. Good soles. O.K. This can as she received two shots, then coolly at Yvette shakes her head. Even her work. She can do this. Just this once— her left, as she received another two. She “no” is somehow balletic. Rae watches The creature is waiting at the en- didn’t cry. She didn’t flinch. She was just her swaying ponytail and hears wind trance to the storm drain, washing its interested. She also calls Hershey’s Kisses in the treetops. paws in the falling water. She balks just Hershey’s Curses. Take it to mean what Couldn’t she leave a bowl of milk as it starts loping toward them. you will. Her favored conflict-resolution out for it occasionally? “No!” Her baby’s eyes fly open; his strategy isn’t too bad, either: “Mama, let’s Cold turkey. mouth goes slack around her nipple. not chat about this anymore.”  Just this once? This extraordinarily Her son absorbs her horror and pushes terrible night? it outward in a long, blossoming cry.

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 75 Groupon plastic surgery and pretend to be twenty. Women like you— “You think I’ve never been tested? You think I’ve never begged for help?” Yvette stares at them. She was a cheer- leader in high school, Rae can tell. She has that way of smiling even while screaming, a red-lipped control. “My daughter died,” she says. “Gen- evieve. When she was two months old. That is why I say I have four children. Because it would be a lie not to in- clude her.” Rae pushes a fist into her mouth. Marie, beside her, starts to whimper. “Do you want to know how she died?” Yvette folds her manicured hands on the table. Her smile is terrifying. Nobody speaks. “Right,” she continues. “Tell me, •• honestly: if I had let that thing suck my tit at night, would she still be alive Together they retreat into the stillness Old Moms are nodding; sweet today? Should I have taken the deal of the house. Across the street, she can Zhaleh, a mother of twins and an on- when it was ofered? Do you ladies hear the devil hissing at her neighbor’s cology nurse, pounds a fist on the think I killed my daughter?” cat, poor incontinent Rambo. table: “We mothers of Southeast Port- In the silence that follows, Rae hears land cannot entertain this devil any the spinning of a thousand roulette • longer!” wheels. Two nights later, an emergency meet- Marie stifens beside Rae. If you believe that, what else do you ing is convened after hours at the Milk “Listen, you . . .” She leaves a beat believe? and Honey Co-op. for the unspoken noun, a very un- • Marie looks haunted. “I broke,” she friendly noun. “It’s easy for you Olds confesses to the group. The veterans to tell us to drive it of. Nothing is at The stakeout begins at 3 A.M. Bonnie struggle to conceal their disappointment. stake for you. Personally? It has pro- and her sisters run a wildlife-removal “So did I,” Rae admits. “I went out- tected my baby. My daughter’s last MRI company, and she shows up in her van. side, and it ran right at me and my was totally normal. Not one of the There are enclosures ranging in size baby, like a rabid thing.” nightmares has come to pass.” from squirrel to panther. “You brought the baby?” “Congratulations. Good for you.” “Trap and release,” Bonnie prom- Orange World. Rae’s face is hot. She Yvette rolls her eyes. “You must think ises. “Nobody gets hurt.” nods. your milk is white gold or something.” Valerie donates a Wallababy sling. “O.K.,” Yvette says, breathing loudly “Excuse me?” Zhaleh brings a case of injectable through her nose. “That’s O.K. Wean- “Believe me, if I thought this thing sedative. ing is a process.” could protect my kids? I would give it Ellen brandishes a cap gun. “It’s just “Today, I saw it outside,” Rae says. my viscera in a sippy cup,” Yvette says. a toy. I hate guns, personally. Some- “Howling for me, in noon light. It’s “But it can’t do shit.” body went of registry.” going to hurt my family!” Rae and Marie exchange a long look, Earlier in the evening, Rae had asked “Well,” Yvette says. “This appears flaunting their complicity. So what if her husband if he could give their son to be an extreme case. An extreme man- the Old Moms are judging them? The his bottles; she was socializing with some ifestation of will.” Old Moms have no idea what they are new friends. “It’s a sleepover, actually,” “I think it’s just so hungry,” Marie up against. she said. “A sort of initiation, for the New whispers. “Women like you love to play the Moms Group. We take a night of and “Ladies, any suggestions?” martyr, don’t you?” Yvette says. “You sleep like the dead. Yvette is hosting.” “If anybody says the word ‘Binky’ would rather this thing be the real devil “A sleepover! That sounds awkward.” again, I will scream,” Valerie, an Old than admit that you are powerless like But he’d sounded truly happy for her; Mom who has a sexy lisp, and/or is the rest of us.” Rae could take a long time to warm maybe a little drunk, says. “They need Anger tightens Rae’s chest. She up to people. help corralling a demon. We can use imagines lunging at haughty, gorgeous They park the van across the street netting, or a Havahart trap.” Yvette. Women like you love to get from Rae’s house. After so many nights

76 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 alone, it feels strange to know that the at the glove box and up again, Oregon women in the voices of their children, others are watching her. She can’t see will have transformed from dark for- a nightmare karaoke. It shrinks into a their faces from the gutter. But she feels est into high desert. Two women hoist whisper, a plea for more life. Hunger self-conscious, lying on her side in a cold the carrier, and together they push with nothing but itself to ofer for bar- sweat, waiting. Right at 4:44, the crea- through the underbrush to a meadow ter. It seems to levitate, midway up a ture climbs out of the storm drain. Noth- of snow. It is Rae who kneels and opens sunbeam, before disappearing from ing in her lifetime has come to her as the door. sight—not with anything as dramatic reliably as this monster. It keeps a faith- “All right,” Rae lies. “You’re free.” as a flash, but with a gentle scattering ful calendar. Yvette must be right—the They watch in silence as it scampers of motes, domestic and unremarkable. real devil, Rae feels certain, would not of. At first it has a pale, vulpine face. On a rock near the trailhead, Valerie be taken in so easily. Without suspicion, But, as it runs, it seems to shimmer in discovers its skin, already bubbling with it bounds over to her and begins drink- and out of view, its edges melting and the forest’s bright-bodied flies. There ing ecstatically. She waits until its gelid revising themselves. Very quietly, al- is no corpse to bury and nothing left eyelids flutter, then gives the signal. Val- most undetectably, it begins to break to nurse back to life. erie stands in front of the storm drain; apart. Huge-eyed and snuling, it looks Yvette can’t stop yawning, for some Carol blocks of the exit to Powell. back at the women. A final trick: tug- reason. She buries her face in her As gently as she can, she inserts the ging at the heartstrings. It mewls piti- hands politely, but it continues for a needle. Drugging a devil is no easier fully, faking a limp. “Nobody move,” very long time. The others touch her and no harder than cutting her baby’s Yvette cautions. But even her eyes are back and shoulders. Marie is crying fingernails. There is a plexus of vessels filling. It is hard to watch anything die. openly. Bonnie shows them the hair- under the forked tongue where the de- As the sun sparkles on the sides of Mt. line cracks in her glasses. “Its screams tomidine is absorbed. This isn’t going Hood, the creature continues to shape- did that.” to work, she thinks. But, as it turns out, shift: a wolf cub, a bunny, a kit fox, a “I’ll drive,” Rae volunteers. “I’m a her fear of failure changes nothing. It spotted fawn. Every animal protago- pretty good driver, actually.” does not slow the progress of the sed- nist of their infants’ board books. ative, and soon the creature’s chin drib- “Oh dear. It’s forgetting its shape.” • bles against her shoulder. She brushes “Poor motherless thing. Look at it And where has Rae’s own mother been dirt from the leathery webbing of one looking.” all this while? paw. Sleeping in her arms, the creature “It’s exhausted. It can’t keep itself Her mother is still on the other side feels no heavier than her own son. together. It doesn’t know what it is of the globe, caring for Rae’s grand- In the back of the van, she draws anymore.” mother in a shadow story, a solemn her knees up to her face. Her devil is “It knows it’s hungry.” and uncertain leave-taking. Feeding in a large cat carrier, its fur poking It keens at Rae like something her puréed fruits with a little spoon, through the holes. twisting on a spit, pinioned above leap- combing her eight remaining hairs. “You see?” Marie does not disguise ing flames. Snow crosses Yvette’s im- They are so far apart on the parabola her satisfaction. “Capybara, for sure.” passive face, and Rae understands why that Rae’s morning is her mother’s Bonnie drives stick and knows the they had to travel hundreds of miles night. When the phone rings at an ob- mountain roads. In the cage, the thing scene hour, Rae knows it is her mother. begins to howl in its sleep. Someone At the same moment, they ask each hands Bonnie earplugs. The real dan- other, “Is everything O.K.?” ger, of course, is the ice on the road. While Rae watches, her baby’s eye- “Fucking Portland,” she says. “We need lids crease and open. Sunlight splashes a cloud of salt to fall now!” On a sharp all around the kitchen. Joy threatens curve, the van fishtails. Every mother to take the roof of the house. The is thinking of her child, her children. light is almost blinding today. She Who will care for them if I die? The crouches over him to shelter them both. question floats above their heads in a A feeling leaps into her from the past: collective thought bubble, like that from their children’s bedrooms. The “Mother! You felt this way about me!” wordless prayer that unites two hun- sound is shattering and unforgettable. “Yes,” her mother says. “And I feel dred passengers during airplane tur- Its edges crisp and blacken. The crea- that way about you still.” bulence: Let me live, let me continue. ture bobbles of, unsteady on its legs Green World. Rae is learning to iden- Return me to the earth, alive. and disintegrating where the sun tify it very late in this life. Her feet push Who are you bargaining with? Rae pierces its furry body. It screams again, into the floorboards. Happiness travels wants to ask. Who do you imagine is smoke rippling from its shoulders. It through her, heels to skull. She cradles listening? turns and fixes the pain-dulled sau- her son. She cradles the phone. Re- “Bonnie! Watch the goddam road!” cers of its enormous eyes on Rae’s face. motely, her mother is cradling her.  They drive for two hours, and pull “Mama?” it says. “Mama?” over at an arbitrary spot just shy of the It goes streaking into the woods, a NEWYORKER.COM sandy border where, if you look down burst sac of pure light. It calls to the Karen Russell on the diabolical side of parenthood.

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 77 78 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 PHOTOGRAPH BY HANNAH WHITAKER FICTION FUNGUS BY DAVID GILBERT

he insurance check came in the apples and the bananas, this phrase didn’t know. Sometimes he imagined the mail. From Geico. With unfurled in his thoughts, beyond his himself temporarily mute, with a hand- T its big-eyed lizard mascot. A thoughts, really, since he had no no- made sign hanging around his neck Cockney gecko. As though disaster tion of darkness or dawn under those that read “I don’t know.” Index cards should appeal to ironic children. There fluorescent lights, innocuous soft rock he could give to anyone who might are no geckos in Portland, Oregon— coming down from above, the cheer- ask him a question. All those people, or in East London, for that matter. ful young woman bagging the produce. well-intentioned, looking to help. Not their natural habitat. But there It was more like an archeological frag- They drove down Skyline, across are geckos in South Carolina. Andrew ment from a still buried dream. Dust- Cornell, through Forest Park. The In- remembered them. In the winter they covered and frayed along the edges. ternational Harvester Scout was in- would sneak indoors and hide near In the darkness before the dawn— fused with the seventies of Andrew’s curtains, frozen like novelty rubber the dawn. youth. The rounded edges. The re- until roused, and then such speed. Of The rhythm relaxed him. The rep- movable hardtop. Even the green color course the goal was to catch one, to etition pleasing, the sentiment myste- seemed era-specific—post-psychedelic hold it in your palms, a brief warm riously loaded. And the glory of that and pre-preppy, the same shade as the home, until boredom set in, after which em dash. cannabis poster that had hung on his you’d release it onto the porch. The In the darkness before the dawn— bedroom wall in Charleston. As if An- crueller boys did worse. With tennis the dawn. drew were ever a real smoker of weed. racquets. With windups into trees fol- Andrew e-mailed himself the line, Ingrid and Ron had restored the Scout lowed by whoops. Geckos lose their At Whole Foods the subject. to its original condition, right down tails if captured endwise, probably their The envelope from Geico lay un- to the tape player and the collection most famous trait. Autotomy is the opened on the hall table for a month. of cassettes. Those small plastic cases term, Greek for “self-severing,” which Pretend forgotten. Like library books seemed elegant in retrospect. And per- Andrew had misread last week as “serv- and bills, like the shirt he wore four sonal. Like reliquaries. Today he was ing.” Self-serving? No, no, se-ver-ing, days in a row. Right by the wooden listening to Little Feat’s “Waiting for as in divide by cutting. Certainly an bowl for house keys and loose change Columbus.” Andrew had forgotten how efective means of survival. To lose and lip balm and hair ties and other much he once liked this album, thanks what has been caught. But why a gecko pocket sundries. A receipt that seemed to the musical tastes of his older broth- should come to represent an insurance too significant to abandon. But An- ers. Hearing those songs again, after company baled him, beyond the ob- drew could borrow Ingrid and Ron’s all these years, hearing the particular vious wordplay, which seemed weak car for only so long, so on Wednes- order of those songs, their timeless even for advertising and was outdone day he finally deposited the check, flow, unlocked a vague yet uncanny only by the Aflac Duck. and on Saturday he and Willa headed sensation: knowing what was com- In the darkness before the dawn— downtown, to Wentworth Subaru on ing without really knowing what was the dawn. Burnside. Maybe he should have got coming. The instant recognition and This phrase had dropped into An- a sitter, as friends had suggested, but confirmation, the sequence as rooted drew’s head a few days earlier, while Willa had insisted beyond his capac- as DNA. Plus the memory of his older he was buying groceries. Restocking ity to say no. brothers, shirtless in the sun, Andrew those things with an expiration date: “Can we get the car right away?” she watching them, imagining himself in the eggs and the milk and the yogurt asked from the back seat. this bright future. and the fruit—more fruit than he and “Um, probably not right away,” An- Roll tape . . . roll tape . . . roll the tape. Willa could ever consume within the drew said. In the rearview, Willa was having a allotted time period. Decay seemed Willa frowned. silent conversation with herself. built into the transaction. But, as An- “Though I’m not sure. Maybe. I don’t “How you doing?” Andrew asked. drew watched the cashier ring up the know.” “We almost there?” she answered. strawberries and the blueberries and And that was the truth. Andrew “Kind of,” he said.

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 79 “Like, how close?” crete and, vice versa, the concrete turn- Desks lined the perimeter, a selection “Not entirely sure. Ten minutes?” ing abstract. of cars posed in the middle, like col- She returned to her private business. In the darkness before the dawn— lege jocks. Andrew was taking the roundabout the dawn. “So we pick one of these?” Willa way, which had turned into the only “O.K.,” Andrew said to Willa. asked. way. It took them through the trees “Here?” “In a way. Not necessarily these cars.” of Forest Park—firs and hemlocks and “Yup.” “So what are these?” cedars, alders and maples. An over- Andrew hoped they would find “Example cars,” Andrew said. abundance of green and a reminder parking easily—nothing tricky, no cir- “Can we pick the color?” of why they had moved to Portland cling around, no deciphering of signs, “Absolutely.” and the Pacific Northwest. The ver- just a clear and conspicuous spot he “Any color?” dure of the place, verdure his word, could pull into; otherwise, he might “Whatever color the car comes in.” pronounced in a comically preten- get flustered, and, once flustered, he “Brown?” she asked. tious accent that had always spurred might get overwhelmed, the hassle Brown was Andrew’s favorite. From laughter from his wife. The ride spilling into a larger panic, with An- amber to cofee to tweed. Baseball mitts. through this urban wilderness helped drew then retreating home. Nowadays Panelled libraries. Hazel eyes and chest- Andrew with his composure, negoti- everything seemed to be a test. All er- nut hair and quick-to-tan skin. A short ation never his strength. He was the rands done on a tightrope. But thank- suède skirt. This color preference was youngest of four boys, and so was al- fully there was an opening in front of controversial among the followers of ways trying to catch up while his the dealership, with fifty minutes still pink and yellow, almost disqualifying mother held him close. Sullivan’s Is- on the meter. Always an eerie kind of because of poop, which only gave An- land. The beach. Andrew scared of boon, this ghostly time added to your drew more enthusiasm for the shade. being ditched. Appropriately, “Feats clock. Another presence still warm. A Firewood and bourbon. A cabin in the Don’t Fail Me Now” was playing as shadow of a shadow. woods. the Scout crossed the Willamette via Andrew put on another hour. “Sure,” he said, “but it’ll be called the Burnside Bridge. The I-5 traic something else. Like russet or hickory.” below was moving well, the progres- he dealership was brick and glass, “Cinnamon?” sion symbolizing some inscrutable Ta version of traditional modern Willa was reading a book about a order, car-space-space-car-space-car, that implied the late nineties of An- horse named Cinnamon. “Exactly. as if there were language here, an al- drew’s graduate-school years: inclusive Something like that.” most understandable pattern of verse, and hopeful and almost glaringly Andrew often wished that all of where five months ago everything had inofensive. Hootie and the Blowfish his conversations could be with six- gone red and wrong, the particular ar- could have been the architects. The year-olds. rangement of stresses describing the showroom smelled of institutional Other people were browsing as well, sudden end of his wife and his older cleaner that masked all potential odor most in intimate pairs, circling the daughter, the abstract turning con- with extreme, almost toxic cleanliness. various models. Some had their hands buried in pockets, perhaps fearing that their touch might imply a bind- ing agreement. Others were bolder: opening and shutting doors, sitting behind the wheel, checking the stor- age capacity. Willa fell into this camp. Within minutes her handprints were everywhere, and Andrew envisioned himself trailing her with a chamois cloth and returning things to their primal polish. Nothing to see here. And then a certain emptiness filled the space—or hollowed the space where the image had been, leaving behind a delayed silence. Recently he had found himself wading into Wikipedia, usually after waking up in the middle of the night, where- upon he would try to simulate a sooth- ing conversation via hyperlink. Geico into Gecko into Autotomy into Re- generation into Morphallaxis into Hydra into Immortality into Clonal Colonies into Mycelium into Hypha “I figured as much.” ing. He should probably have brought into Robert Hartig into hopefully get- “So these all yours?” she asked, ges- along a friend. Maybe Ingrid or Ron. ting back to sleep before 6 a.m. turing broadly. Someone to guide him through this In the darkness before the dawn— “In a way,” the man said. “All our exchange. Focus him. Do more than the dawn. diferent models. All a bit diferent. Or just nod and nod again. “I like this one,” Willa said. very diferent.” But Willa was engaged. “We need “The Crosstrek,” Andrew said. “Diferent?” a good car,” she said. “What does that mean?” “Depending on what you want.” “You’ve come to the right place.” “Nothing, really. Just two words “What about color?” “A really good car.” jammed together.” “They come in a variety of colors.” “O.K.,” the man said, giving a sin- “Cross and trek?” “Not just these colors?” gle sharp wink. “Uh-huh.” “Not just these colors.” In the darkness before the dawn— “How about this?” Willa asked, The man turned to Andrew as the dawn. touching another. though they were co-conspirators in “Um, the Outback.” this charming plot. He introduced him- hey walked down Ankeny Street, “And this?” self—Brian something—which forced Ttoward the main Wentworth Su- “The Forester.” the other side of the exchange, Willa baru lot. As they walked, Brian made Willa rushed to the next one, de- giving her name with a wave. Now they it clear that these were just the vehi- lighted by this naming of the cars. were three: Andrew and Willa and cles that were in stock—always vehi- “The Impreza,” Andrew said. Brian. Brian was in his late fifties, early cles, Andrew noted, never cars—and “Really?” sixties. Car salesman seemed a second he could always get other vehicles from “Yeah.” career; Andrew imagined him once other dealers within the I-5 corridor. “What does that mean?” working outdoors. Comfortable in the It was sunny and warm, warmer than “Nothing in English, as far as I elements. Capable. This Brian proba- usual, though yesterday had begun with know,” he said. bly had grown children who could flee frost and tomorrow’s forecast called “Impreza?” on their own in case of emergency— for freezing rain. The air itself seemed “Uh-huh.” maybe when the Cascadia subduction exhausted by these swings. Brian car- “It actually means ‘feat’ or ‘achieve- zone finally fulfills its predicted ca- ried a briefcase, which gave him a ment’ in Italian, as in impressive,” tastrophe. Andrew wished he had never covert vibe. Halfway there, Andrew said a salesman in a dark-blue fleece read that article. But no. Everyone in reached for Willa’s hand and squeezed vest, “Wentworth Subaru” emblazoned Portland had talked about the Really a sort of Morse code—long, short, across the breast. He was standing be- Big One, with its estimates of local short, long—which had no meaning hind them, inconspicuous yet com- apocalypse. Earthquake and tsunami. but comforted him. Construction was mitted, as though wearing suburban Liquefaction and inundation. All the happening all over this part of Port- camouflage. He seemed a veteran of horror running just below their feet. land, the industrial becoming more something diicult, his sensitivities In ten years? In fifty years? The termi- residential by the month. Cranes and hard-earned. nal math of those odds and percent- concrete mixers. Random blasts from “Impreza,” Willa said in a dubious ages. How do you know when to run? air horns. A new neighborhood was tone. And this was two years ago, when the being dragged up by the hair. “Hey, I don’t name them,” the man world seemed more solid. “So here we are,” Brian said. said. “We need four-wheel drive,” An- The lot was surrounded by mature “Im-pre-za,” Willa repeated. drew said. maple trees and a chain-link fence. “It’s one of our more popular mod- “Sure, what with the winter we had,” Hard-hatted men lingered along the els,” the man said. Brian said. shaded curb, either on break from work And here it was. The moment. The Andrew nodded. or waiting around for work, while negotiation before the negotiation, their “Well, all these vehicles are all-wheel above them multiple pairs of sneak- small talk hardening into chrome and drive. Which is almost better.” ers dangled from electrical wires, their steel. Andrew braced himself for the There was further talk about the presence more ominous than mischie- impact of buying and selling, of put- Subaru’s symmetrical system, which vous. Brian unlocked the gate. Inside, ting cold, hard shape to time. Sweat was designed to optimize both trac- cars were parked end to end in three started to gather along his hairline. A tion and balance, the power routed to rows. Bright and somewhat confec- drop coasting down his spine. How all four wheels, insuring outstanding tionary, as though born from Subaru- easily he could turn into water, drown grip in rough terrain and poor weather. size Pez dispensers. in his own insecurities. And then a quick explanation of the “Again,” Brian said, somewhat de- In the darkness before the dawn— merits of the boxer engine: the fuel fensively, “this isn’t our entire inventory.” the dawn. mileage, the surprising power. As Brian Andrew understood that this was Willa glanced at Andrew and then talked, Andrew feigned paying atten- pretty unusual, the way he and Willa back at the man. “We need to buy a tion, like so much of his listening now- were picking their car. Or vehicle. The car,” she said. adays. Words seemed cored of mean- usual way was to research the diferent

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 81 makes and models within the deter- scenes of mystical transmission, oth- “O.K., so this is the Forester Tour- mined afordable range and visit vari- erworldly and psychic. Sure, Andrew ing,” he said, pleased to be selling. ous dealerships and go on test drives thought, a type of performance, but Andrew slipped into the driver’s and, once decided, discuss options and who could argue with the animating seat, Willa into the passenger’s. add-ons and special features and, finally, efect? My dramatic daughter. Willa She looked so small up front, small negotiate the price. A systematic, log- slid her hands forward until her chest and solemn. Like a miniature woman ical approach, as his wife would have and arms were sprawled over the hood, with eccentric tastes. preached. Like with the Prius, which her cheek resting against the metal, as “I like this,” she said. had been their first new car thanks to though she were communicating with “The interior is a saddle-brown a small inheritance. But how often does a living, breathing thing, hearing its leather, which is probably our nicest a person let his six-year-old decide all wild-stallion heart. interior in terms of interior options.” on her own? Once, many years ago, when An- The repetition of the word “interior” Andrew turned to Willa. “O.K.,” he drew was flying home from San Fran- pleased Andrew, the way Brian stressed said, “go have a look.” cisco, his last Christmas before get- every syllable, flattening the peak into Willa released his hand and stepped ting married, this boy in the middle a wind-bitten butte—where the shale forward. She surveyed the scene, shield- seat had turned to him as the plane slides dangerously and the back ing her eyes from the midday sun. She taxied toward the runway and said, wheels hang almost over the edge, as seemed to represent some royal spirit, “We’re going to crash, you know.” And the poet Roethke might have adver- a princess addressing her armored right then Andrew had believed him, tised, Roethke whom Andrew adored, knights. She started forward, down one believed this towheaded reaper, who, Roethke who had died north of here, of the rows, laying her palm on every being young and innocent, seemed on Bainbridge Island, after sufering car she passed, pausing for a moment, more in tune with broader lethal cur- a heart attack while swimming in a channelling whatever she was chan- rents. Andrew thought about causing friend’s pool. Drowning was the sec- nelling. Andrew and Brian followed, a scene. Stopping the plane. Choos- ondary mortal efect. Like poetry it- like obliging consorts. ing embarrassment over extinction. self, Andrew thought. Afterward, as A dark-blue Outback. Because how stupid to die when you expiation, the pool was filled in and A dark-blue Outback. knew you were going to die. But of transformed into a Zen garden, now A dark-blue Outback. course he did nothing and instead re- part of the Bloedel Reserve. Andrew A red Outback. mained silent in his seat as the ground had visited the place when he was in A light-green Crosstrek. accelerated into suspicious air. For five graduate school and this genre of pil- A dark-gray Crosstrek. hours he dissected every bump, every grimage had seemed meaningful. He Andrew himself was less equipped alien sound, and when the plane finally had stood over the damp grave and for such matters of destiny. Every- landed he turned to the boy and said, paraphrased his own elegy against the thing behind him still seemed too “Well, buddy, guess you were wrong sides of wet stones, the moss wound close. Yesterday. Last week. Months there.” And the boy looked at An- with last light. ago. Hydroplaning to sledding to rein- drew as though he were the biggest “And the Forester,” Brian contin- deer to Santa Claus to Wodan to the dummy on the plane, maybe the big- ued, “comes standard with a rear-vision Wild Hunt to what should we eat for gest dummy on the planet, the no- camera and reverse automatic brak- dinner and what should we do this tion of reasonable adulthood having ing, so safety is front and center. And summer. But Willa had already turned perished on the ground in Charles- G.P.S., of course. And premium audio, the past into a story that she often ton. It was a story he often told. The which is smartphone-ready. Blind- told with sad clarity, Andrew confirm- boy-on-the-airplane story. He doubted spot detection on the rearview mir- ing the details. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Her that he would tell this story. Willa rors. Heated seats for cold mornings, saving grace was this strong and and the Subaru. Though he was sure when the wind and the rain make you strange imagination. Even Brian Brian would. desperate for relief.” One thought of seemed seduced by the force of her “This one,” Willa said, straightening. Roethke and Roethke seemed every- vision, his free hand brushing the ve- “Yeah?” where. “Same with the steering wheel,” hicles she had spurned, half in con- “Yeah.” Brian said. solation, half in wonder at what they Brian nodded with evident satisfac- Willa looked at the steering wheel, might have lacked. tion, having already invested himself Andrew’s hands on the steering wheel. A white Outback. in this peculiar father-daughter rou- Andrew flinched from the pretend A silver Impreza. tine. He placed the briefcase on the burn, shook his hands pretend cool. A dark-blue Impreza. nearby dark-blue Impreza and snapped In four years this would be consid- A bronze Forester—Willa stopped open its latches, revealing keys arranged ered corny, but right now Willa grinned with abrupt significance, Andrew and in rough correspondence with the ve- at the wonder of being fooled by Dad. Brian stopping a few paces behind. She hicles on the lot. After a few passes “It’s a keyless ignition system. You reached over and placed her other palm through the color-coded fobs, Brian familiar with those?” Brian asked. on the hood and tilted her face toward located the correct one. A beep and the Andrew nodded. The Prius had had the sun. Like in a movie. One of those doors unlocked. the same. He pressed on the brake and

82 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 street dwellers to keep chickens, goats, and pigs, and to grow vegetables. I was nine or ten when we got Gra- cie, fully grown and in milk. The plan was for me to manage her solo. The preparation was the rubber glove. Then the right hymns had to be chosen to sing to Gracie, because goats don’t like to be too cheerful. Unlike sheep, goats are thinkers. You can see it in the slit pupils of their rectangular eyes. My mother thought it had something to do with eternity. Goats, we’re told, are going to Hell, unlike sheep, who are going with Jesus. One morning in January, we went together to milk Gracie. It was my first time. My mother was a Capricorn, a sat- PARENTING BY JEANETTE WINTERSON urnine January woman, for whom it was always winter. We lived in the North of England, so perhaps the cli- CAPRICORN mate was to blame for her melancholy, or perhaps it was the certain knowl- edge that her life would never change. nyone can milk a rubber glove. to it, and it’s hard to talk to anything In fact, it had changed, because she had AFirst, fill it with warm water. that has no name. adopted me, and I could have been the Hold it in the non-milking hand, Gracie Fields was our goat. Gracie springtime if she had trusted the sun. and, with the active hand, this: Fields was a music-hall star, a heart- Gracie was poking her head out of Index finger and thumb two inches throb wartime singer, a Lancashire lass her pen, waiting for us. Animals that above the teat, gripping it like a nip- like us, but, unlike us, she could sing are milked like routine. My dad had ple. The other three fingers squeeze in Italian and milk the hearts of battle- rigged a ramp up to a derelict bedstead the udder firmly but placidly, applying bred soldiers. and boarded over the springs. You don’t pressure unanimously or individually— The war had been over for twenty- want to lie under a goat like you’re it’s like playing the recorder. five years, but my parents still talked fixing an old car; it’s better to get the Yes, anyone can milk a rubber glove. about it. There was a service revolver udders at seated height. Gracie had a There is no failure because there can in the duster drawer. little trough for her milking food tied be no success. Milk won’t squirt out My mother liked singing, and she onto the bedhead. and flow into the pot. The rubber glove believed that our goat milked better if My mother filled the trough with a won’t jump sideways. There is no need you sang to her. My milking days in- handful of chewy fodder, instructing to shave it first (udders are hairy). cluded singing to the rubber glove. me while I sat, one leg of, one leg on And there is no need to name it. It’s “Like this,” my mother said, but her the boarded bed, trying to milk Gracie. safe to say that most people prefer not hands were bigger than mine and her “Squeeze! Squeeze down!” to name their rubber gloves—not even voice was bigger than mine, and when Gracie was dancing with her hind heavy-duty ones in regular use. With she was there Gracie knew, the way legs like a music-hall act we could sell. a goat, it’s diferent. Your goat is your animals know, to stand still, chomp at She wouldn’t keep still for me. goat. her trough, and deliver up the warm My mother started singing “Have My mother was deeply religious and milk that on cold days steamed white You Any Room for Jesus?” she read the Bible on a loop, starting at into the white air. “He who bore your load of sin,” I Genesis, finishing at Revelation, then We lived in a tiny terraced house, sang back. back to Genesis. She knew that Adam’s one of a row of a hundred and fifty, op- Still no milk. The white air moist task was to name the animals after their posite another row of a hundred and on my face, and my mother pushing kind, and although there is no mention fifty, on a long street with a town at one away my red fingers and milking Gra- in Genesis of naming them personally, end and a hill at the other. We lived at cie into the enamel can. life is personal, and it’s hard to sit milk- No. 200, not far from the top of the hill, “Tomorrow you’ll come by yourself,” ing something every day without talking where there were plots of land for the she said. ♦ JAN BUCHCZIK JAN

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 83 reached forward, pausing near the Start/ Stop button, pausing as though the moment were inherently loaded, be- DOVES fore finally finishing this most minor of beginnings. Gray and white, as if with age, or some preserving The car sparked to life. of the past, as in Beowulf, our hoary ancestor, “It has a hundred-and-seventy- hoary as in a bat or a willow, or the venerable horsepower 2.5-litre four-cylinder boxer hoary dove that lew straight into my picture engine,” Brian said. window today and then lay dead on the front porch. As if the day were now somehow We buried it—in some distorted version of its normal self— on fire. folded in a white cloth napkin in the back yard. Still soft enough to be cut into like a cabbage, I thought, week later, Andrew and Willa I’m glad I’m not dead. Listen to them now, A went back to Wentworth Subaru higher up in the trees, biting and scratching, to pick up their new car. But first they with their unmistakable twitch of life. Don’t fear dropped by Ingrid and Ron’s house, in nothing, their twittering voices cry. The true spirit Riverwood. Ingrid ofered them break- of living isn’t eating greedily, or relection, or fast—she had pancake batter ready to even love, but dissidence, like an axe of stone. go—though breakfast was already three hours old for Andrew and Willa. Well, —Henri Cole then, some cofee. It was another warm day, the third warm day in a row, which turned Andrew’s friends and acquain- “Getting nice and long,” Ingrid said. gathering and twisting of her hair. tances into great talkers of spring, these “I never want to cut it again.” “Can we think about it?” Andrew enthusiasms a safe expression of hope. “I was once one of those creatures,” asked. Like Ingrid, with her arms-wide dec- Ingrid said. “For sure,” Ron said. “I’ll invite the lamation on the glories of the season. Ron came in from outside. “How Kims and Pellicheks regardless.” She was wearing a white T-shirt and about this day,” he said. “No pressure,” Ingrid promised. bluejeans, green clogs, and had been “How about this day,” Ingrid “Seriously.” grading papers outside on the deck confirmed. How quickly people apologized for while Ron gardened below. Ron and Ron grabbed a leftover piece of asking anything of them. Ingrid were more than twenty years bacon from the kitchen table. “Hey, I It was like a superpower. older than Andrew, their children al- was thinking of cooking some elk sau- ready done with college. As a couple, sage and maybe a few burgers if you rom Riverwood they drove north they had always conjured up what life guys care to join us for dinner. Plenty Fon OR-43, Ingrid in the passenger ahead might look like. The foggy land- of food. Maybe get the Kims over with seat, since Andrew wanted a final turn scape in the distance. Temperate and their kids. The Pellicheks, too.” with the Scout. Her window was down, sloped. Ideal terrain for a vineyard, as “Ooh, great idea,” Ingrid said. her elbow cresting the edge. She re- Andrew once joked with his wife after Their gentle scheming, probably sembled a pleased hitchhiker, the uni- a night of drinking too much wine concocted that morning, in bed. verse open to her suggestion. The music with them. Andrew looked at Willa, unsure helped as well: Yes, “Yessongs,” “I’ve “So a new car,” Ingrid said. which of them had permission to de- Seen All Good People.” “Yep,” Andrew said. cide such things, their individual needs “I love the old-school collection of “That’ll be nice.” so intertwined—or knotted, as An- tapes,” Andrew said. “I’ll miss the Scout.” drew thought, when he woke up in “Oh, that’s Ron’s doing,” she said. “Oh, the Scout is very lovable,” In- the middle of the night and saw her “The whole live-album thing, it’s grid said. sleeping by his side, this small expec- brilliant.” She went over to Willa with a hair- tant bump under the comforter. Willa “What’s that?” brush in hand, which she waggled for into Wilhelmina into Wilhelmina “They’re all live albums,” Andrew permission’s sake. Willa relented, though Feemster Jashemski into Garden Ar- said. her shoulders hunched, her face tens- cheology into Oplontis into Villa Pop- Ingrid inspected the cassettes. ing through the initial strokes. Andrew paea into Peristyle into Willa open- “And live albums,” he said, “from thought he did a decent job on the ing her eyes, blinking Andrew back the era when live albums were a big grooming front but soon recognized into being. She seemed to know bet- deal. The double live album. Or, in this Ingrid’s native skills, her other hand ter. Helping him notice what he should case, the monster triple live.” Often, moving in conjunction with the brush, have noticed. The coming rain. The when Andrew got talking, he seemed as if polishing brass. need for more milk. The refrigerator on the verge of drafting an obsessive “You want a braid?” door left open. But right now she was social-media post. Willa nodded. absorbed with Ingrid and the careful “I never noticed that,” Ingrid said,

84 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 running her finger across the plastic Willa calmly reading a book, Willa al- A few straggling screams and whis- rows—“Live Rust,” “Before the Flood,” ways reading a book, pulled from the tles from the audience. “The Song Remains the Same,” “Rock ’n’ shelves of secondhand books: ponies In the darkness before the dawn—the Roll Animal”—as though hunting for to fairies to boy detectives to best friends dawn. her husband through those small mor- to pioneer families to problematic sis- “No real diference, timewise,” An- tarless gaps. ters, all heading toward the terminus drew said to Ingrid, gripping the steer- From the stereo: of wizards and the bookmark where ing wheel. her older sister had ceased. “I’m sure,” she said. Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit did- “I watched ‘L’Avventura’ last night,” dit diddit didda Andrew told Ingrid, feeling an almost hey pulled in front of the dealer- desperate need for more conversation. Tship. Once Willa was free from Andrew glanced over at Ingrid. He “Or I watched almost half of ‘L’Av- the car seat, the car seat needed to be had always loved this part of the song ventura’ before falling asleep.” freed from the Scout. This was no small and was curious whether she was awake “I love that movie,” Ingrid said. task, though it was certainly easier than to the coming crescendo. She must “Yeah, I hadn’t seen it in a while. the coming installation in the new car, have been beyond beautiful when she But I’d had a few beers, enough so I which Andrew dreaded—anchoring was younger. That round face and those could watch something without feel- those straps, convinced that he was green-blue eyes, full lips pleasantly ing guilty, you know, about watching doing it wrong, the fit too loose, the chapped, slightly oversized teeth like something. Like a pass from doing any- consequence possibly horrific. In con- mischievous killers of carrots. When thing serious.” trast, the release was almost enjoyable. she smiled, she suggested the memory “ ‘L’Avventura’ is not exactly light Underneath lingered the forensic evi- of herself half-naked in a field some- viewing,” Ingrid said. dence of Willa’s snack life. where. Andrew told her how he had “Yeah, well—” “Don’t worry about that,” Ingrid bought “Yessongs” only because of the “Ron and I watched a hockey game said, as Andrew started sweeping the album’s artwork. “I thought those trippy last night—that’s how drunk we were.” crumbs clear. Roger Dean landscapes were the cool- “But I fell asleep while they were The orange dust of cheddar Goldfish. est thing. My brothers thought the still on that island. And that’s not even Potato chips and M&M’s and cookies. music was crap.” halfway through.” He had been letting her eat what- “Well, my brothers liked Kraftwerk,” “My God, Monica Vitti,” Ingrid ever she wanted. she said. said. But Andrew wanted to leave no trace “Oh, man, Kraftwerk.” “They’re on that island longer than of his impact on the world, no sugges- “You know them?” I remembered.” tion of his causing any trouble to any- “For sure. ‘Autobahn’ was a personal “It’s not exactly an action-packed one. When leaving a hotel room, he favorite.” movie,” Ingrid said. would make the bed and hang up the “That’s some deep knowledge.” “I know. Maybe it was a mistake. I towels and feel bad about the trash in “Yeah, I was already a pretentious was just curious.” the wastebasket. But after a few more freak at twelve.” Andrew turned onto Barbur Bou- sweeps he gave up on the crumbs. levard, going toward the Ross Island “Sorry,” he said. ’Cause it’s time, it’s time in time with Bridge. “You want me to stick around?” In- your time “But I don’t remember how it ends. grid asked. And its news is captured Like, I have a hazy—” “I think we’re probably good from For the queen to use! “We’re going to Burnside, right?” here.” Ingrid asked, surprised by this unex- Andrew picked up the car seat with Andrew lifted his chin in anticipa- pected direction. one hand, took Willa’s hand with the tion of the churchlike burst of Ham- “Yeah, just up M.L.K. Boulevard.” other. mond organ—Rick Wakeman and his “Right, yeah, O.K.” Ingrid resettled “Well, then, O.K.,” Ingrid said. array of keyboards—and then power into her seat, as though finding herself Andrew smiled—posing, he thought, nodded to the epic crash from Alan in a church pew. as he often did for women, starting White’s cymbals. Always his favorite “Just as fast this way,” Andrew said. with his mother. Looking for praise part, which his brothers somehow found “Right, got it, sorry.” and approbation. But Ingrid was boring. And maybe Andrew was hop- Andrew checked the rearview mir- diferent. Ingrid obviously loved him ing Ingrid might be amused by this ror again. without the implied indenture, as display of enthusiasm. But she was star- Willa was holding her book like a she loved all her friends, a blessed ing out the window. bucket she was emptying over her head. bunch who could do no wrong be- “All Good People” still playing, “All cause she herself had deemed them Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit did- Good People” again and again. just right. Andrew often wondered if dit diddit didda In a cappella and with clapping. some silence between them might Suddenly the song did seem boring, lead to a revelation, a confirmation, He checked the rearview mirror: and sentimental, too. an invitation, those forming nouns of

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 85 “Enjoy the car, and call me if any questions come up.” “Thanks, and will do.”

hey drove toward home, though Tthe day was still early and An- drew had nothing planned—no play- dates, no sense of how the afternoon might shift into evening and then into bed. But he knew that he would pass on Ron and Ingrid’s dinner invitation. Too much sideways sympathy. An- drew and Willa like endangered crea- tures. Like polar bears and ice. And, even worse, the undeniable satisfac- tion of the attention, the weighted proximities, which pushed emotion into the realm of the representational: ladies and gentlemen, the widower and his surviving daughter. No, in- stead Andrew would make pasta with butter, and he would think, I need to “I feel so vulnerable right now.” do this better. Already he hoped he might sleep through the night rather than wake after three hours and lie •• there trying to convince himself that more sleep would come, stubborn until action. He sometimes tried to catch “So you happy with your new car?” sunrise. her eye and keep the contact longer he asked. The Subaru seemed childish com- than was comfortable, communicate “Huh?” pared with the Scout, the engine going unspeakable possibilities. Like now. “With the car, you happy?” vroom vroom vroom. Everything about With his feel-sorry-for-me face. The Willa made a barely interested it suggested a mistake. The particular sad sack’s seduction. And maybe she show of looking around. “Sure,” she fit of the seat. The touch-screen con- understood his less-than-innocent said. trol panel. The challenge of finding intent without ever thinking him Andrew could tell that Brian wanted KOPB on the virtual FM dial. And bad, both humoring and forgiving more, wanted the same performance since there was no moderating influence, him. as last week, Willa spreading her arms no one to ease his mind and bask in and gracing this vehicle with her pres- the newfangled pleasures, his typical ndrew had to sign various receipts, ence. But Willa had already forgotten. poor judgment held sway. ABrian gently attempting to upsell The car was simply a car, and Brian On the radio, “This American him on a tire plan and extra roadside was simply the man who had sold them Life.”A woman was talking about find- assistance, after which they went over the car. Which Andrew regretted. The ing an ancient roll of undeveloped film. the more subtle features of the For- ease with which people receded from In the back seat, Willa was picking ester. The entire process took longer view. Like buying cofee and exchang- her nose. than expected, and by the end Brian ing pleasantries with a person waiting As they drove along Burnside, skirt- seemed an actual friend, Andrew hav- in line and how this could make An- ing Washington Park, Andrew consid- ing shared his insecurities about Blue- drew feel human for the rest of the ered going to the zoo, or the children’s tooth setup and the sleek navigation day, the fact that people were nice and museum, places they had visited mul- and media systems, his desire for old- decent and maybe he was nice and de- tiple times, but before he could settle school knobs and buttons. Brian cent and maybe there was a nice and on something—maybe the Japanese laughed easily, though his jovialness decent future ahead—all these noth- garden—they had passed the exit and seemed laced with humiliation, as if ing moments growing in number, ten- the possibility seemed irretrievably lost. he were still in doubt about his sec- uous yet taking shape around the void, Plus the crowds. The parking. The te- ond career choice. But Andrew was the impression of life gradually be- diousness of those excursions, the melo- thankful when he ofered to install the coming life. dramatic subtexts. He imagined going car seat. Brian asked for, and then received, home and watching the rest of “L’Av- Willa climbed aboard. a high five from Willa. ventura” with Willa, describing to her Brian did the honors of strapping “Awesome,” he said. the oblique precision of the movie, the her in. He shook hands with Andrew. cinematic use of space, the poetry of

86 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 elision. Laughable and perfectly Port- into soil by way of their own humus-like She was all the beauty the world needed. land. Though sometimes he thought waste material. The use of the term The trunk was fissured at the base, that he should do more of this, should “coprophagy” and the joking about the creating a seam wide enough to slip curate a higher level of existence. Like cycle of poop. The proclamation about into—in other words, an absolutely those fathers who created perfect ath- this being a perfect day for banana splits perfect hiding place. Willa knew that letes. He could craft a child from bits and banana slugs. The hugging of trees trees could communicate, could help of the Criterion Collection and Art- and the foraging for mushrooms. All one another by sending nutrients forum and The New York Review of these details, slowly shrinking down to through the soil. She knew this with- Books. Become one of those parents the size of a jar. out really knowing how or why. Fungi who stage-manage their children’s pre- They started walking. into mycelium into hyphae into my- cociousness. R-rated movies. Indecent Willa picked up a stick, which she corrhizal networks into positive-feed- gallery shows. Inappropriate novels. waved around, either as baton or as back loops into this tree still standing Turn them into cultural contemporar- foil. despite the terrible damage. Willa ies. But those parents often seemed The trail was a well-established me- curled up inside the dusky hollow. She screwed up in some way, even though ander through the woods, cultivated was always excellent at squirrelling their children were possibly more in- by decades of footsteps. Around them herself away. Behind couches. In linen teresting. Or maybe just more screwed there seemed to be an infinite sam- closets. The ground beneath her was up themselves. Perhaps it was better pling of vegetation: ferns and clover soft and suggestive of sleep. People to keep them innocent for as long as and scrub and bracken giving way to had carved their names on the inside. possible, if “innocent” was the right maples and firs and oaks and hem- Doug. Louise. Peter hearts Mickey. Sibyl. word. Untainted? Unadulterated? All locks covered in lichen and moss. The Teen-agers, probably. Older kids. Willa this mental back and forth lasted only sun cut through the canopy as though dug her fingers into the warm dirt: a a few seconds. It was like being pushed shining through shattered stained glass, rich brown-black flecked with white. into familiar water, Andrew instantly portraying the story of the world be- She brought her fingers to her nose. soaked. In the end, he decided “L’Av- fore man and woman became involved. The odor had a pleasant tucked-away ventura” could wait. Green on green on green on green, all mustiness. Like a secret in the base- “How about we go for a hike or of this chlorophyll inducing a bleary ment. A family relic found. Curious, something?” Andrew suggested to the anesthetic—or Andrew thought so. she licked one finger—smoky—then back seat. But he tended to pause and scribble another—chalky—then reached down They were just getting onto Skyline. this sort of nonsense in his head. for a larger pinch, which she dropped “Like, now?” Willa asked. Willa was farther up the trail, bound- onto her tongue, sucking the fizz “Yeah, like something in Forest ing along, swinging that stick. against her soft palate. It tasted bio- Park.” As if she were alone and on an logical, intimate, her saliva like rain. “If you want.” adventure, the resourceful orphan, The resulting mud possessed an al- “It’s a nice day,” Andrew said. and Andrew was the tracking shot. most chocolate tang. She ate more, Silence. The distance between them pleased with the oddness “Nothing long. Just for an hour.” grew, and he imagined the of this endeavor, comforted More silence. world behind her forgot- by the acceptable flavor. “It’ll be fun,” Andrew promised, ten. All she had to worry Larger pinchfuls this time. practically begging for her enthusiasm. about was surviving this Creating a new, undiscov- “O.K.,” she said. wilderness, minute by min- ered land in her stomach. ute. Bushwhacking where A small hill breathing in- e parked near the trailhead for need be. Seeking shelter side her. Growing bigger. Hthe Wildwood-Newton loop, an when darkness turned solid Then she heard her name, easy mile-long hike they had done be- and the inevitable creatures mingling with the back and fore. All four of them. About a year appeared along the edges. forth of the wrens. Willa! ago. In late June. A pleasant summer Bears and wolves. Fantas- Hey, Willa! Where are you, walk, and afterward they went to the tic beasts. Perhaps a friendly dog Willa? A frantic echo in the echoing Skyline Restaurant and had burgers equally far afield. The woods, though wood. The ground seemed to trem- and shakes. Andrew’s brilliant idea, as pristine, seemed broken, fallen and ble, the day draining of color and light. he had self-touted throughout the meal. splintered, like the site of mystical bat- Willa peered from the opening, her Maybe he and Willa could do the same tles, thousand-year wars. That Doug- mouth and chin streaked blackish today. He wondered if she would re- las fir in the near middle distance. brown. Instead of seeing the lord of member, or if he was now responsible Massive. Two hundred feet tall. Which nature she saw Andrew, red-faced and for her memories and should remind Willa scurried toward, as if she were near weeping, searching the woods for her. The banana slugs along the path. being pursued and needed cover. Did a pregnant tree.  The banana splits for dessert in their she recognize the gracefulness of her honor. The discussion about detriti- flight, the confident leaping through NEWYORKER.COM vores, which process waste material the brush, the lightness of her touch? David Gilbert reads “Fungus.”

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 87 THE CRITICS

BOOKS FUNNY HA-HA, FUNNY PECULIAR The stories of Helen DeWitt.

BY JAMES WOOD

long with the uncanny determin- That’s the DeWitt tone—tart, brisk, “ø” in Danish. And then comes this larky Aism of her surname, Helen DeWitt snobbish, antic. She can take a recogniz- aperçu: “It’s interesting, everyone knows has several assets, inherited or acquired, able social situation or fact and steadily that Perec’s La disparition is a book in useful to the comic writer: she is a trained twist it into a surrealist skein. See what which the letter e does not appear, but classicist, whose teasing instincts have she does, from the same book, with the Rabbit, Run is never mentioned as a been schooled in ancient Greek and peculiarities of English fast-food outlets companion piece in which the letter å Roman satire; her style is brilliantly heart- during the nineteen-nineties: does not appear. Ångstrom being the less, and cork-dry; original herself, she An American in Britain has sources of sol- correct spelling of the surname of the is a witty examiner of human and cul- ace available nowhere else on earth. One of eponymous protagonist.” tural eccentricity. She is, above all, play- the marvellous things about the country is the We have moved from Calvino to ful—rigorously so. Though she’s famous multitudes o fried chicken franchises selling Wodehouse—if one can imagine a Ber- for her big first novel, “The Last Samu- fried chicken from states not known for fried tie Wooster who is not a straightfor- chicken on the other side of the Atlantic. If rai” (2000), her comedy, committed to you’re feeling a little depressed you can turn ward dimwit but an eccentrically clever serial absurdities, doesn’t always flourish to Tennessee Fried Chicken, if you’re in black and hermetically erudite dimwit. What best in long forms. It blooms into rifs despair an Iowa Fried Chicken will put things grounds all DeWitt’s brilliance and and fugitive ideas, rebellious asides and in perspective, if life seems worthless and death game-playing is the way that she dra- quick conceptual tryouts. She is a mas- out of reach you can see if somewhere on the matizes a certain kind of hyperintelli- island an Alaska Fried Chicken is frying chicken ter of the paragraph-length flareup. Here, according to a recipe passed down by the Inuit gent rationalism and probes its irregu- in “The Last Samurai,” the narrator tells from time immemorial. lar distribution of blindness and insight. us about the single sexual encounter she That telltale “everyone knows”: it is had with a British travel writer she de- In her new book of very loosely linked thrown out by the implied narrator, who risively nicknames Liberace (because his short fiction, “Some Trick: Thirteen Sto- seems unaware that, in the larger scheme prose style is facile and treacly): ries” (New Directions), there are pas- of things, almost no one knows any- sages and pages that had me laughing thing at all about Georges Perec. Who No sooner were Liberace and I in his bed without our clothes than I realised how stupid out loud. A man, for instance, is de- speaks like this, and to what assumed I had been. At this distance I can naturally not scribed as having “the tormented, wind- audience? We take the joke about Rab- remember every little detail, but if there is one swept look of Andrew Jackson as seen bit Angstrom’s missing “Å” to be obvi- musical form that I hate more than any other, on a $20 bill.” The collection’s final story, ous lunacy; but what if our character is it is the medley. One minute the musician, or “Entourage,” is an otherworldly fantasy deadly serious about it? In DeWitt’s more likely aged band, is playing an overorches- trated version of The Impossible Dream; all like something out of Calvino, about an world, the life of the mind is perilously of a sudden, mid-verse, for no reason, there’s unnamed character who gets so obsessed close to the life of madness. a stomach-turning swerve into another key and with the oddities of diferent languages you’re in the middle of Over the Rainbow, that each time he visits a new country epressed pain is the engine of “The swerve, Climb Every Mountain, swerve, Ain’t he brings back a suitcase full of books Last Samurai.” It is a wonderfully No Mountain High Enough, swerve, swerve, R swerve. Well then, you have only to imagine written in the native tongue. Eventu- funny book, but comedy dances near Liberace, hands, mouth, penis now here, now ally, he hires an entourage of translators, the abyss; the apprehension of humor’s there, no sooner here than there, no sooner each member “a native speaker of the frailty links DeWitt to the tragicomic there than here again, starting something only language in which books in the accom- tradition of Cervantes, Sterne, and to stop and start something else instead, and panied suitcase were written.” Our pro- Nabokov. Sibylla, the book’s narrator, is you will have a pretty accurate picture of the Drunken Medley. tagonist fixates on certain linguistic de- an American single mother living in The Medley came at last to an end and Lib- tails—the frequency of “z,” “w,” and “y” London, a woman of undoubted bril- erace fell into a deep sleep. in Polish, the dotless “i” in Turkish, the liance and eccentricity who is trying to MIGUEL PORLAN ABOVE:

88 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 In “Some Tricks,” DeWitt dramatizes the eorts of artists trying to preserve their genius in the face of a hostile world.

ILLUSTRATION BY AART-JAN VENEMA THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 89 raise her prodigiously clever son, Ludo. bish Sibylla gleefully notes the incom- Since Ludo’s father is absent, Sibylla (He is the product of Sibylla’s Drunken prehension of the average punter— decides that male role models are best Medley with Liberace, whom she has people who, when they see a child in a provided by the film she obsessively re- never seen again.) Despite her Oxford stroller reading the Odyssey in Greek, veres, Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samu- education and her knowledge of many admonish Sibylla in customary ways: rai.” She tells us that she and Ludo have languages, Sibylla is less than gainfully he’s far too young; he’s only pretending been watching it once a week. As in employed: she spends her days at home to read; ancient Greek is a dead lan- “Don Quixote,” the comedy and the pain digitizing old trade journals like Ad- guage; he should be outside playing proceed from the absurd implacability vanced Angling and The Poodle Breeder. football; and so on. DeWitt captures of her logic. If Greek worked for Mill, Sibylla has fixed and disdainful ideas the rigorous unreality, close to solipsis- it must work for Ludo. If Ludo lacks a about modern schooling, and decides tic madness, of Sibylla’s existence, a mind male role model, then “Seven Samurai” to bring up her genius son as John Stu- running at a higher temperature than must step in as a proxy. Realistic coun- art Mill was brought up by his father: ours: “When I was pregnant I kept terarguments are unknown in this house- learning Greek, starting at the age of thinking of appealing names such as hold, except as pure intellectual exer- three. Sibylla adds Japanese, Hebrew, Hasdrubal and Isambard Kingdom and cises. And, if “Seven Samurai” tells Ludo Latin, French, and Arabic. Thelonius, and Rabindranath, and Dar- all he needs to know, it follows that the There is little money; to save on heat- ius Xerxes (Darius X.), and Amédée, boy will be schooled by his fictional mod- ing costs, mother and son spend hours and Fabius Cunctator. Hasdrubal was els. Denied information about his bio- at a time on the Tube, going around the brother of Hannibal, the Cartha- logical father—Sibylla refuses to reveal London on the Circle line, where snob- ginian general who crossed the Alps.” Liberace’s identity—Ludo sets of, quix- otically and samurai-ishly, to find an ideal father: seven fathers, to be precise, each of whom he tests and fights. De- Witt loves seeing what she can do as a comedian. Her second novel, “Lightning Rods,” published in 2011, satirically pos- its that the solution to workplace sexual harassment might be a scheme by which female employees are paid extra to sex- ually service the male workers, a kind of institutionalized prostitution. Like everything in Sibylla’s life, her son is an obsessive concern to her, but he is also “the Infant Terrible” for whom she slaves away at her typing, and whose demands, like those of any young child, interrupt her thoughts. (The novel en- acts this by having Ludo break the flow of Sibylla’s narration on the page, leav- ing passages of text hanging, uncom- pleted.) DeWitt beautifully dramatizes the ambivalence that Sibylla feels about her grand project. A funny, careless line like “I was just locking my bike when I thought suddenly: Rilke was the secre- tary of Rodin” seems darker hued when set against Sibylla’s thwarted ambitions and misspent days. One day, she and Ludo meet a woman in the supermar- ket, who starts weeping. “She once saved my life,” Sibylla tells her curious son af- terward, before characteristically swerv- ing into a discussion of Ernest Renan’s position on verb conjugation in Aryan languages. (Sibylla is as expert at the Intellectual Medley as Liberace was at the Drunken version.) Gradually, we discover, in rationed revelations, that “Do you have room in your bag for this?” Sibylla has tried to commit suicide, and that the threat has not gone away: “She ice cream is perfectly rational to a child, (she had started countless novels, and tried to kill herself once and was so is his need to know the identity of this was her fiftieth manuscript), was un- stopped. ...Now she can’t because of his father, or the reasons for his moth- deniably brilliant herself. me,” Ludo says later, in one of the nov- er’s unhappiness. Behind “The Last Sam- The New Directions reissue of “The el’s sadder lines. But despite her son’s urai,” shadowing it but subtly unmen- Last Samurai,” which appeared in 2016, intellectual maturity (he is eleven when tioned, lies the failed project of John carries an afterword by DeWitt in which he learns about the attempted suicide), Stuart Mill’s highly rational upbring- the story of the novel’s own diicult bril- Sibylla will not talk to him about this ing. Mill learned Greek at the age of liance is almost nostalgically revisited: event, or much else, it seems. He voices three—he was “properly taught”—but “It has been 20 years since London ed- what the reader is beginning to grasp: at twenty he doubted if he could go on itors looked at the manuscript and com- “What if there was a person who never living. In his “Autobiography,” plained that there was too listened to anything anybody ever said?” Mill recounts a spiritual cri- much Greek and Japanese, It would be a mistake to force this sis that, he realized, his edu- there were too many num- strange and brave book into a sentimen- cation had partly precipitated. bers, 17 since Jonathan Burn- tality it deliberately disrupts. It won’t be Mill blamed his unhappiness ham of Talk Miramax Books made into a conventionally humane do- on long habits of “precocious took the book to the Frank- mestic novel about a frustrated single and premature analysis” that furt Bookfair and caused a mother and a brilliant, questing son. Still, had steadily separated him sensation.” Adding that after- it is not only about being ineiciently from “the very culture of the word, DeWitt writes her intelligent and trying to raise a genius, feelings.” Discovering, at last, struggles into the history of not only about the inanities of the school the salvation of Wordsworth’s her novel. But wasn’t the al- system. Sibylla’s unreliability, both as a poetry, Mill felt himself re- legory already there? “The mother and as a narrator, is complexly connected to natural beauty, and to “the Last Samurai” can be seen as belonging revealed, and tugs at the book’s progres- common feelings and common destiny to a distinguished American tradition, sion. Ludo may be a genius, but as long of human beings.” Ludo yearns for some from Melville to Jenny Oill, of writing as he only absorbs everything his mother of that precious commonality; his bur- about the diiculty of creating a success- tells him to absorb he is not an original den is to have a mother who is unable ful work of art. Sibylla is not explicitly genius. At one moment, we catch him to weigh its importance. a writer, but she is an intellectually am- opining, to one of his prospective fathers, bitious young woman who is forced by that “Schoenberg is obviously wrong to f some novelists observe a kosher-like circumstances to be a Bartleby-like scriv- dismiss the Japanese print as primitive Iseparation between their autobiogra- ener. Her work is constantly interrupted and superficial.” Dazzling, especially from phies and their fictions, DeWitt seems by her genius son, but allegorically the an eleven-year-old, except that we know to encourage the contamination. The au- book is really about the diiculty of look- he is just parroting something his mother thor’s note on the jacket of her new book ing after—mothering—one’s own ge- told the reader a hundred or so pages borrows the following description from nius. Sibylla is torn between impera- earlier. Who is the true genius, mother Christian Lorentzen’s 2016 profile in New tives—the maternal and the internal. “It or son? Who is the thwarted genius? York: “Helen DeWitt knows, in descend- is my duty as a mother to be cheerful,” The novel’s real power lies in the way ing order of proficiency, Latin, ancient she tells us, “& so it is clearly my duty it exposes the frailty not merely of pa- Greek, French, German, Spanish, Ital- to watch a work of genius & abandon rental narcissism (whereby the child be- ian, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Norwe- Advanced Angling & composition.” De- comes a convex mirror of the self ) but, gian, Swedish, Arabic, Hebrew, and Jap- Witt knows that this really means: It is more deeply, of parental rationalism. anese.” This information would appear my duty to be an artist, but it is clearly “Rational” is Sibylla’s favorite word, often to be biographically immaterial or, at my burden to abandon my own genius repeated. Kurosawa’s film, she remarks, least—as, say, in the multilingual Joyce— and spend all my time being a mother is essentially “about the importance of something to discover through the fic- and typing up Advanced Angling. rational thought.” She advises her son tion. But a certain amount of authorial The stories in “Some Trick” return that, having turned six, he is “old enough mythmaking was doubtless inseparable often to this artistic drama; in them, to act like a rational human being.” from the immense success, and perhaps painters, writers, and musicians attempt When Ludo bargains for ice cream, she also the appeal, of “The Last Samurai” to preserve their genius in the face of a warns him to try to “act as a rational when it first appeared, in 2000. Here was hostile world run by vulgar businessmen, human being.” Most people, Sibylla an excitingly original, strikingly ambi- mercantile agents, and idiot fashion de- thinks, are habitually illogical: “They tious novel about, among other things, signers. An aesthetic category clearly of could probably be rational quite easily genius, the costs of eccentricity, and the interest to DeWitt (as it is to Sheila Heti if they were properly taught.” But there loneliness lurking in the possession of in her novel “How Should a Person Be?”) is almost nothing rational about being immense intelligence. And its author, an is the ugly work of art, the diicult ar- a parent, beginning with the pure sur- American with an Oxford D.Phil. in tifact that cannot be easily assimilated. plus of conception. And children and classics, a talented linguist who had ap- In “Trevor,” a very early story (dated parents have a hard time agreeing on parently sacrificed a life of academic ease “Oxford, 1985”), a man and a woman de- what is rational. If a child’s desire for for the loneliness of literary greatness bate the proposition that “a painting of

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 91 a beautiful subject is almost invariably a the pursuit of truth.” Peter, a genius, ac- the discourse, and be seen with the right rotten picture. Guaranteed kitsch, in cording to his agent, wants only to make books, like de Man’s “Blindness and In- fact . . .” To accompany and embody the “a rational decision.” But whose ratio- sight,” or, better still, Toril Moi’s very debate, DeWitt’s own prose turns de- nality runs the world? Like Sibylla, like cool “Sexual/Textual Politics,” pub- liberately kitsch and ingratiating, all Quixote, Peter is condemned to survey lished in September of that year. faux-Jamesian mink: “For his own stream a world that eternally fails his standards. DeWitt’s story is a deliciously light of remarks had been gurgling and chat- arabesque around the most popular and tering in the sunlight briskly on, and had eWitt has spoken regularly about prestigious of these concepts, the Death just been coursing down a little cascade Dher epic run-ins with copy editors of the Author—a figurative phrase used of cheery murmurs about tea, so that the and agents and publishers; the afterword by Roland Barthes and others to de- abrupt cessation of the agreeable warm in the new edition of “The Last Samu- scribe an ideal authorial withdrawal undercurrent of consent”—and so on. rai” is uncharacteristically discreet. Talk from a literary text. In Oxford, our nar- It’s a slight text, interesting now because Miramax, the publisher of her first novel, rator and a young man named only X it could be a work by the Liberace of disappeared within a few years of her walk home after a dinner. The narra- “The Last Samurai.” début, at which point “The Last Samu- tor is skeptical of the Death of the Au- More substantial is the collection’s rai” was effectively out of print. “Light- thor; or, rather, she’s interested in the first story, “Brutto,” about Nuala, an im- ning Rods” had been completed by 1999, actual deaths of actual authors. She’s poverished German painter, long resi- but DeWitt spent more than a decade drawn to the deathbed scenes of Vol- dent in London. In 1962, while a stu- trying to find a receptive publisher. New taire and Hume, their age’s most re- dent dressmaker, Nuala had to create, York called her “America’s Great Unlucky nowned free thinkers, and the atten- for her exams, a Gesellenstück, a jour- Novelist.” Perhaps DeWitt sometimes tion paid to their last words. James neyman piece of work. It’s a vile thing, feels a kinship with Peter Dijkstra, the Boswell famously visited Hume at the as ugly as young Charles Bovary’s fa- purist Dutch writer in her story “Climb- end, to ask him if he was truly unper- mous hat, a dirty mustard-brown suit— ers,” who has been in an asylum for five turbed by his unbelief in the afterlife. “the sullen mustard wool, the psychotic years. Certainly, she seems to be haunted Were these nonbelievers really God- stitching, the brutal dowdiness snarled by the contracts, real and figurative, that deniers to the end? The deathbed scene, at the world.” But it has its own vicious artists must make with an audience, and the narrator argues, would seem to be integrity. A flashy Italian gallerist named with what Maurice Blanchot called “the “your last chance to find out what he Adalberto sees this suit, and immedi- consciousness industry.” If you want your really thought.” So the death of the au- ately orders twenty, at a thousand pounds writing “to be a solution to credit card thor is something of a problem for the each. He finds the ugliness cool. Adal- debt,” Dijkstra thinks, “there is a bridge Death of the Author: DeWitt’s story berto hangs the suits in his gallery in that has to be crossed.” Most of the sto- is a canny deconstruction of the theo- Milan, and people love it: “Miuccia ries in “Some Trick” play out, as it were, retical nostrum, and ends with the spar- Prada bought out the show.” Now Nuala on that bridge. At times this space feels klingly true joke that Roland Barthes’s can pay her bills, but not by painting; limited, a bit obvious. I prefer my alle- writings are like “the witty, iconoclas- even her ugly work has sold out its in- gory to lurk in deep cover. When De- tic works of Hume and Voltaire,” and tegrity. Eventually, in a fit of disgust, Witt’s passionate struggle for aesthetic that “Boswell would have gone to the she submits her Gesellenstück for the expression—a struggle that powerfully deathbed of Barthes.” Touché. Turner Prize. animates “The Last Samurai”—is reified But what makes the story really funny “My Heart Belongs to Bertie” is in these tales as scenes of repetitively is that, back at her place, while our nar- about Peter, a children’s author whose rigged business with imbecile agents and rator is trying to explain all this to her “book of robot tales” has been an un- mindless art dealers, the comedy sufers, companion, he is intent on something expected success and made a great deal hardens a bit, and narrows its scope. else, and is making his moves on her. of money. Irritated by his publisher’s Maybe that’s why “Famous Last DeWitt understands perfectly how hav- limitations, Peter wants to find a new Words,” the best piece in the collection, ing the right (and right-on) terminol- firm and editor for his next book. Jim, and the funniest, has nothing to do with ogy might function, for a certain kind of his “hot shot literary agent,” uncom- art worlds and the bitter toil of the ge- male student, as merely the key to a more prehendingly tries to help. The story nius. It is also one of her earliest sto- desired lock: “X’s hand moves up my has some of the zany energy and ab- ries, written, like “Trevor,” in Oxford in thigh. I have noticed this tendency to surdist extremism of “The Last Samu- 1985. It’s a sharp academic satire, though reductionism in X before. The text is in- rai.” Peter’s demands are presented with unlike most academic comedy in its finitely variegated, the subtext always the deadpan sobriety: “It would mean a lot warmheartedness. In 1985, those of us same. . . . X discussed the deconstruction to me to work with someone who ad- who were just arriving at university had of teleology and put a hand on my knee.” mired Bertrand Russell.” The poly- no idea that literary theory, ruddy in its In this efervescent tale, a whole era floods mathic Peter doesn’t mind if his pro- triumph, was actually running a fever, back when X puts his hand on the nar- spective editor knows nothing about and had probably peaked in power. Paul rator’s breast and sonorously demands, number theory or the structure of the de Man had died in 1983, but theory “What is woman? . . . Is this the mark atom; what matters is that this person was still the only game in town, and of woman?” He’s de man. But she’s de have “an unswerving commitment to the eager freshman’s task was to imbibe wit. Sexual/textual politics, indeed. 

92 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 tally fine, but they should have to stay BOOKS out of my way.” She describes an ex- perience common to many suferers from chronic illness—that of being dis- THE DISBELIEVED missed as an unreliable witness to what is happening inside her. Since no sin- In women’s memoirs of illness, doctors as well as diseases pose problems. gle medical condition, a doctor once told her, could plausibly afect so many BY LIDIJA HAAS diferent systems—neurological, respi- ratory, gastrointestinal—she must be having a panic attack. But it isn’t only a question of whether or not individual patients are believed. An enigmatic disorder that might have justified a great influx of research money and ingenuity has instead remained stalled and under-investigated, with key players unable to agree on basic facts, such as what it does, how to tell who has it, and what, if anything, can treat it. The standard two-tier test for Lyme, established in 1994, is extremely impre- cise, prone to false positives and false negatives. It detects only the antibod- ies mustered to combat the bacteria, so it isn’t a reliable way to ascertain cur- rent, persistent infection. (Whether the symptoms are caused by ongoing in- fection or are merely an afterefect of an earlier one is among the most con- tested questions in the so-called Lyme wars.) The test will give a pass to pa- tients whose immune response has been quieted by antibiotics yet can be trig- gered by certain antibodies that may be present in non-suferers. Researchers and insurers have often insisted not only on positive test results but also on the classic signs of early Lyme infection, such as the distinctive s Lyme disease a feminist issue? It multi-symptomatic, chronic, hard to bull’s-eye rash and swollen knee joints, Imay sound ludicrous to ask this of diagnose—that remain associated with even though many people infected with a tick-borne infection that can usually sufering women and disbelieving ex- the spirochete bacterium do not pre - be dispatched with a course of antibi- perts. Lyme disease, symptoms of which sent such signs. Some of the symptoms otics. Yet its name commemorates the can alict patients years after the ini- of “chronic Lyme”—headaches, exhaus- two women living in the town of Lyme, tial tick bite, appears to be one. tion, and cognitive dysfunction—have Connecticut, who, in the mid-seventies, “I don’t care if people don’t think been dismissed as too vague or too sim- fought the medical establishment to feminism is important, because I know ilar to those of other conditions to be have the disease acknowledged and it is,” the musician and early Riot Grrrl accorded diagnostic weight. Given these treated. “You know,” a doctor informed Kathleen Hanna says toward the end vagaries, it’s impossible to say for sure one of them after failing to find the of “The Punk Singer,” Sini Anderson’s whether chronic Lyme actually does source of her symptoms, “sometimes 2013 documentary about her. “And I afect a greater number of women than people subconsciously want to be sick.” don’t care if people don’t think late- men. But there’s a sense in which the It’s tempting to think of this reflexive, stage Lyme disease exists, because I condition itself has been feminized. paternalistic skepticism directed at fe- have it and other people have it. . . . If In a 2009 paper, Gary Wormser and male patients as a remnant of a bygone they don’t want to believe in it or they Eugene Shapiro, two of the authors of era. And yet there’s a class of illnesses— don’t want to care about it, that’s to- the Infectious Diseases Society of America guidelines on Lyme treatment, Porochista Khakpour admits that she has a tendency to romanticize illness. concluded that “illnesses with a female

PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANCES F. DENNY THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 93 preponderance, such as fibromyalgia, illness memoirs—in which order gives symptoms, which is such that she can- chronic fatigue syndrome, or depres- way to chaos, which is then resolved, not be “medically cleared,” prevents her sion” might be receiving a false diagno- with lessons learned and pain tran- from becoming a psych patient. sis of chronic Lyme. That conclusion scended along the way. Nor does the Nonetheless, Khakpour isn’t much seems preordained by the authors’ start- book try to preëmpt doubt or blame worried about coming across as un- ing assumption that chronic Lyme—“a by emphasizing the author’s irreproach- hinged. Returning home, in California, vaguely defined term that has been ap- able state of mental and physical health to rest, she screams at her mother about plied to patients with unexplained pro- before misfortune struck. “I have been a chemical detergent she’s using to clean longed subjective symptoms”—doesn’t sick my whole life,” Khakpour writes the kitchen: “See, you’re trying to kill really exist. Yet even those in the field at the start. “I don’t remember a time me! You brought me here to finish the who discount the phenomenon of when I wasn’t in some sort of physical job!” Though she’s worn down by her chronic Lyme concede that there are or mental pain, but usually both.” mistreatment at the hands of some of people who sufer “prolonged subjec- her doctors, Khakpour seems unsur- tive symptoms” long after they have re- “ ick” reënacts her halting, years-long prised; as a woman of color, born in solved the initial infection—a “severe Sjourney toward a clear diagnosis, Iran, she begins from the assumption impairment” often labelled post-treat- sketching in her burgeoning career as that many Americans will find her sus- ment Lyme disease syndrome. To begin a writer and her various love afairs and pect. Her lack of defensiveness is per- from the premise that a condition is friendships along the way. It proceeds haps the book’s most remarkable qual- imaginary is to prejudice eforts to pro- by fits and starts, organized not chrono- ity. When doctors disbelieve her, or when vide a physiological explanation. In the logically or even by theme but by geo- her relapses reliably “coincide with global nineteen-nineties, the Centers for Dis- graphical setting, so that, as she circles turmoil,” she wonders whether her ease Control was found to have used from Los Angeles to New York to Santa symptoms might indeed be psychoso- millions of dollars in research funds in- Fe and on to Europe and back, a spiral matic, some form of P.T.S.D.; after she tended for myalgic encephalomyelitis / shape emerges, not unlike that of the becomes addicted to the pills prescribed chronic-fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) ofending bacterium. She is diagnosed to treat her insomnia, she seems open for other purposes, in the belief that the with Lyme more than once, although to the suggestion that maybe her ad- disorder was not worth exploring. her grab bag of “nebulous” symptoms diction is the main source of her prob- This approach is self-confirming: the are also attributed to a number of other lems. She cheerfully lists the ways in more that suferers from a debilitating things, from polycystic-ovary syndrome which she damages her own health, in- illness are excluded from mainstream to an adrenal tumor, then to anxiety cluding by smoking cigarettes every day medicine, the more they’ll be forced to and depression—not to mention “so- during the writing of her book. consider quack treatments and the less matization disorder,” which seems to What’s more, she confesses to a long- credible they may appear to be. The stakes be used more or less as a synonym for standing tendency to romanticize both of belief are high in the case of Lyme, what was once called hysteria. By fo- physical and mental illness: she remem- because the longer it is left undiagnosed cussing on place, Khakpour implicitly bers passing out at thirteen as “the first the less likely it will respond to treat- situates herself in the long line of women time I got to feel like a woman,” asso- ment (usually oral or I.V. antibiotics). who have been, as the writer-director ciating “ailment” and endangerment with So the lengthy, flawed, and often pro- Todd Haynes has put it, speaking of femininity, and feeling “disappointed” hibitively expensive process of receiving his 1995 film “Safe,” “pathologized by when the family physician told her faint- a diagnosis can have dire consequences. their own dis-ease in the world.” ing was normal for her age; even when At first glance, the novelist Poro- Because a sense of uncertainty and she tries to resist being dumped in the chista Khakpour, who chronicles her dislocation is central to the book, the psychiatric ward, she notes that “a part own experiences with Lyme in a new reader inhabits Khakpour’s confusion of me had always dreamed of its un- memoir, “Sick” (Harper), seems rather and is occasionally tempted to mistrust known underworld.” In other words, she less battle-hardened than you might her perceptions. In her desperation for seems ever ready to consider the possi- expect. The cover ofers a portrait of a cure, she seems willing to bankrupt bility that her sickness is either innate the author as a fragile, dark-eyed beauty, herself with endless medical consulta- or something she has “brought onto my- her face bisected by a nasal cannula, tions, and to entertain all sorts of un- self.” “I am a sick girl,” she writes. “I and the book sustains a note of ambig- orthodox theories. At other times, she know sickness. I live with it. In some uous unease. What, exactly, is wrong avoids mentioning Lyme altogether ways, I keep myself sick.” with her, she imagines the staf at when admitted to the hospital, keen to This isn’t the illness memoir most Mount Sinai wondering during the last skip the knee-jerk mockery and mis- readers will expect, and, Khakpour makes of many E.R. visits described in “Sick”: trust of the medical staf. At one point, clear, it isn’t the one she sold to her pub- “Is this cardiac, is this neurological, is at a doctor’s insistence, she agrees to lisher several years ago, which was a sim- this psychological, is this infectious dis- enter a psychiatric ward, and endures pler and more familiar “story of triumph.” ease?” And where and when did it begin? three days in the holding area, being Instead, she writes in an epilogue, the Despite its intermittently chatty tone, told that “there is nothing physically book “insisted on its own ending,” re- “Sick” is a strange book, one that re- wrong with you, you need to understand jecting “my bows, my full circles, my pretty sists the clean narrative lines of many that.” Only the severity of her physical arcs, my character development” in favor

94 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 of an uneasy acceptance that sickness is testing, as when we see them argue about wise left untreated and worsening for a permanent part of our condition, “with Brea’s attempt to avoid microscopic traces years on end. As in so many other areas you as long as life is with you.” Khak- of mold. If he could even briefly feel of American life, women of color often pour notes, too, in her acknowledgments, what she’s feeling, she tells him, the sig- endure the most extreme versions of that she had originally included far more nals her body is receiving, he’d know it’s this problem. analytical framing and references to other worth taking these extreme precautions. In light of the disturbing stories and writers, before eventually deciding to “Right,” he says, gently, “and conversely, statistics Dusenbery gathers, one could strip out everything but her personal ex- if you lived with the total absence of read Khakpour’s approach as a refusal periences. Khakpour’s decision to avoid these signals, you’d feel insane every time to play an unwinnable game. A woman explicit claims to scientific or literary au- you’re making some great adjustment in with chronic Lyme (or ME/CFS, or thority is a bold move, one that draws your life” to deal with some entirely un- fibromyalgia, or any number of poorly attention to the ways in which women detectable threat. understood conditions) can’t be guar- are expected to tell stories of sickness— By nonetheless continuing to be- anteed fair treatment from the medi- and the ways in which their storytelling lieve in her experience, Wasow serves cal establishment. Dusenbery frames can afect their chances of accurate di- a function similar to that of the strap- the central problems as “a knowledge agnosis and efective treatment. ping husbands and sons and brothers gap” and a “trust gap,” both of which who, it’s said, possess an inexplicable are systemic and self-reinforcing. Doc- ther recent portrayals of contro- power over doctors. Bring a sensible- tors still know far less about diseases Oversial chronic illness generally take seeming man along to your appoint- that primarily afect women and about pains to weave in reassurances for their ment or to the E.R., Maya Dusenbery, how common conditions such as heart audience. The accounts of ME/CFS in an editor at the Web site Feministing, disease express themselves in women’s Julie Rehmeyer’s memoir “Through the suggests in “Doing Harm: The Truth bodies as opposed to men’s; they also, Shadowlands” and Jennifer Brea’s doc- About How Bad Medicine and Lazy research suggests, tend to disbelieve umentary film “Unrest” log the strug- Science Leave Women Dismissed, Mis- women’s accounts of their pain and gle of their protagonists to overcome diagnosed, and Sick” (HarperCollins). other symptoms, creating a familiar se- initial diagnoses of psychosomatic re- It’s the best way to insure that you are ries of double binds. Signs of either sponses to stress or, in Brea’s case, some given the benefit of the doubt, and will distress or stoicism may equally lead “distant trauma I might not even be not become one of the countless cau- them to discount a woman patient’s able to remember.” Understandably, tionary tales that fill her book—women pleas (she’s just overreacting, or else it then, both women are careful to em- who are sent home mid-heart attack can’t be that bad). A psychiatric diag- phasize their previous strength and to calm their nerves, or with an appen- nosis can be made on a hunch, and any competence, reinforcing the sense of dix on the point of rupture, or other- resistance to that diagnosis can then what illness has cost them and also let- ting viewers and readers know that, however bitter the public disagreements between advocates and researchers in the past over the status of ME/CFS, we are in safe hands here. Rehmeyer, starting with her book’s subtitle—“a science writer’s odyssey into an illness science doesn’t understand”—regularly underscores her respect for hard sci- ence and her qualifications therein, as someone who once studied mathemat- ics at the graduate level at M.I.T. Brea has the advantage of visual foot- age to demonstrate her transformation from an energetic young woman who enjoyed kayaking to one who, on many days, can barely drag herself up of the bedroom floor. But her film also includes a kind of stand-in and guarantor for any potentially skeptical viewer, in the form of her husband, Omar Wasow, whom she met when they were both Ph.D. stu- dents at Harvard. Wasow stuck by her as her health deteriorated, and, in addi- tion to giving the film a central love story, he provides a subtle form of reality- “And make it look believable.” be reframed as evidence of its correct- for clarity, dogged by a suspicion that has been wrong since her childhood, ness. Dusenbery quotes a member of none is possible. She imagines her ill- when her family was exiled after the the board of the American Autoim- ness as a monster that wakes and sleeps revolution in Iran. And more contin- mune Related Diseases Association as at unpredictable times and cannot be ues to go wrong: car crashes, violent saying that, not so many years ago, fully understood, at one point asking, boyfriends, a rape referred to in pass- “mental health professionals were often “Does it need a name?” By the time ing but never addressed directly. For the first to make a correct diagnosis” she finally receives a definite diagno- much of the book, attempts to unravel of autoimmune disease; after all, psy- sis, she has to ask two doctors repeat- the central medical mystery lead only chiatrists lack the incentive that other edly to confirm what they’ve seen in to further entanglement and mistrust, physicians have to treat their field as a her blood work. So consistently disbe- as when she realizes that a group who dumping ground for irritating women lieved, she now remains partly trapped claim to be trying to help her are ac- and their unidentifiable problems. in a disbelief of her own, and yet si- tually Scientologists looking for an- In “Illness as Metaphor,” Susan Son- multaneously experiences “such a re- other recruit. In a cab to the E.R. on tag points out that the illnesses doc- lease that it felt almost violent.” her birthday, convinced she’s going to tors are quickest to brand as psycho- die, Khakpour puts her mother on hold genic are those they understand the he feminist literary critic Chris- during a call in order to soothe the least—multiple sclerosis was once rou- Ttina Crosby, in her devastating imagined fears of the driver: “Excuse tinely mistaken for some sort of hys- book “A Body, Undone: Living On After me, sir, just so you know, it’s Farsi. I’m terical paralysis—and that these are Great Pain,” recounts that, after a bik- Iranian, but not one of the bad people, also the conditions that inspire meta- ing accident left her a quadriplegic, she please don’t be worried.” Often in her phorical thinking on a grand scale: “Any gained a new ainity for horror as a story, terror seems to float free, mov- important disease whose causality is genre. Of course, an incurable chronic ing from person to person and unsure murky, and for which treatment is in- illness of unknown origin that ravages of its precise object. The fear that hor- efectual, tends to be awash in signifi- the suferer while remaining suspect ror stories induce, as Crosby writes, “is cance.” She warns that “nothing is more and all but undetectable to those around the fear of fear itself.” punitive than to give a disease a mean- her has the hallmarks of horror. So does “Sick” isn’t written like a manifesto— ing—that meaning being invariably a the diiculty in knowing whom to trust, no cool marshalling of the evidence moralistic one.” This idea implies an when some doctors try to help at the and no polemical tone—but it is one. injunction against interpretation and risk of professional penalties and oth- In her acknowledgments, Khakpour against narrative shaping that’s all but ers exploit the vulnerability of sufer- claims a debt to her far-flung commu- impossible for a writer on the subject ers, sucking up vast sums for unproven nity of “sick people,” women of color, to obey. Even Sontag herself admitted remedies. In Brea’s film, we learn of a especially, saying the book “was all for to having cheated in “Illness as Meta- Danish family whose child is taken you.” She dramatizes a paradox: soli- phor,” borrowing “narrative pleasure” away by the authorities and held for darity with other suferers is a source from the other writers she quotes, who years, in the belief that her parents, by of both comfort and information, and had made free with precisely the sorts treating her ME/CFS as real, have efec- yet it can also lead you to be written of mystification of illness she was ar- tively been abusing her and keeping her of as one more member of the herd guing against. So seductive is narrative sick. Crosby’s reading of a Poe story in of suspected malingerers. Like her im- logic that Julie Rehmeyer claims to which “every element of the narrative pulse to reassure the cabdriver that she have found consolation in the absence is overcharged with significance, every is not one of those “bad people,” the of a “clear, unambiguous, scientifically detail mysteriously endowed with a temptation to separate herself from her ratified explanation for what had hap- blank surplus that oppresses rather than fellow-suferers is one she exposes and pened.” The “upside” of being struck enlightens”—and that continually in- ironizes in order to resist it. It can seem with a crippling mystery condition was vites the reader to try to figure out what’s that Khakpour is daring the reader to that “the experience had an openness, going on while repeatedly frustrating find her draining, histrionic, inconsis- a fertility about it—I felt more room those eforts—could certainly be ap- tent, to sympathize with doctors who to create my own meaning.” plied to Khakpour’s book, with its para- may view her as what Dusenbery calls Patients typically seek comfort in noid logic and spiralling, dizzying struc- a “heartsink” patient. But she is also more fixed forms of narrative, of course: ture. Like Haynes’s film “Safe,” her making the case that nobody should finding a name for their condition, and memoir evokes the mood of horror have to be a reliable narrator or a hyper- with it an implied structure for their without the genre’s opportunities for rational patient in order to receive basic inchoate experience, can in itself ease relief, and it allows illness—along with respect and compassionate, creative sufering. Khakpour tries several times its supposed remedies—to be read both treatment. to reconstruct an origin story—a time as an escape and as an isolating, sufo- Virginia Woolf, in the essay “On when she could have been bitten by a cating captivity. Being Ill,” wondered why illness had tick in childhood, or a period spent in Rather than wrestle her subject into not yet taken its rightful place in lit- bucolic surroundings with a wealthy more comfortable territory, Khakpour erature, alongside love and war. Read- boyfriend whose mother had herself forces her reader to deal with unre- ers might complain, she suspected, that contracted Lyme. There is a longing lieved uncertainty. Something is wrong, it “lacked plot,” and certainly it would

96 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 call for “a new language,” “more prim- itive, more sensual, more obscene.” Even to describe a headache to your doctor, BRIEFLY NOTED she wrote, would require you, pain in one hand and “a lump of pure sound Men and Apparitions, by Lynne Tillman (Soft Skull). The narra- in the other,” to “so crush them to- tor of this ruminative and amusing novel is a cultural anthro- gether that a brand new word in the pologist whose area of specialty is the family photograph. In end drops out.” Pain and disease are his late thirties, he is reckoning with some familial issues of his what they are—they resist meaning own: his wife has left him and his sister has died. His account and the narratives that make it. Other of his life is interspersed with essaylike digressions on the his- people’s sicknesses, as bodily phenom- tory of photography and the image saturation of digital culture. ena, must be imagined or taken on trust, Dozens of photographs accompany the text, and wordplay since they can never quite be transmit- abounds. The novel concludes with a pseudo-academic study ted across the gap. Woolf identified on the “ethnography of the new man.” At times aphoristic and both the sick and their caretakers as at times just plain corny, the book succeeds as a gentle satire of outsiders by default. Invalids are “de- generational self-absorption and emotional disengagement. serters” from “the army of the upright,” and, she noted wryly, anyone who takes The Red Word, by Sarah Henstra (Black Cat). Set at an unnamed the time to engage with them must be Ivy League college in the nineties, this novel follows a student likewise: “Sympathy nowadays is dis- named Karen as she moves between two worlds: a queer- pensed chiefly by the laggards and fail- friendly, women-centric home that she shares with acutely in- ures, women for the most part . . . who, telligent activists, and the drug-ridden, misogynistic fraternity having dropped out of the race, have where she sleeps with one boy and is in love with another. time to spend upon fantastic and un- When her housemates try to expose the behavior of the frat, profitable excursions.” Karen feels torn, and is terrified of the repercussions. Henstra Khakpour at times presents herself draws on Greek mythology to comment on contemporary is- this way—a misfit, or a conscientious sues—how assault can take on ambiguity and how the inter- objector, but one among many. Unfor- nalization of rape culture convolutes gender politics, to the tunately, for the situations described in point where constructive conversation is nearly impossible. books like hers and Dusenbery’s to change, it’s not the patients who would Go Tell the Crocodiles, by Rowan Moore Gerety (New Press). need to be more open, curious, unbe- “Everything important here happens on the margins,” a rap- holden, and willing to spend their time per tells the author near the start of this snapshot of Mo- on strange and unprofitable explora- zambique, where the facts of daily life often contradict in- tions; it’s the doctors, and the institu- ternational organizations’ cheery reports of economic growth. tions that direct and fund medical re- We meet a sixth-grade dropout from the countryside who search. In an afterword to a recent sells corn muins in the capital, Maputo; a veteran of the So- edition of Woolf ’s essay, Rita Charon, mali civil wars who became a smuggler after being smuggled a doctor and the executive director of himself; a motel owner from Pittsburgh who fought in Viet- the Narrative Medicine program at Co- nam and worked for the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. The lumbia, advocates for medical practi- focus on personal perspectives rather than on oicial narra- tioners to adopt “the clinically power- tives yields a people’s history of the country. ful stance of radical ignorance” or “radical unknowingness.” “As long as I Reporter, by Seymour M. Hersh (Knopf ). Hersh—who broke don’t assume anything about a person the news of the My Lai massacre and, for this magazine, the in my care,” she writes, “I may learn torture in Abu Ghraib—began his career modestly, as a local something that will help.” As an aim, reporter in his native city, Chicago. A striking feature of this “radical ignorance” may go too far; with- memoir is that, as the milieu of his reporting shifts, from the out doctors making certain inferences South Side to the Pentagon and Vietnam, his attitudes and based on their existing knowledge, there methods remain unchanged. He is alert to signs of systemic can be no diagnosis. And yet, when dis- racism, institutional coverups, and press self-censorship. And orders with such drastic efects remain he is hugely tenacious; he wakes Abe Rosenthal, the manag- so little understood, researching and ing editor of the Times, at three in the morning to complain treating them may require that much about a publication delay, trying him first at home and then, more humility and imagination. Given directed by the man’s irate wife, at the home of a girlfriend. He that medicine is itself a narrative prac- shares some tricks of the trade, such as never leading with your tice—in which the case history has al- core questions and the usefulness of a good bluf, and reflects ways played a central part—it, too, might that “I might not have accomplished what I did if I were at benefit from a respect for ambiguity.  work in the chaotic and unstructured journalism world of today.”

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 97 tial 1989 group exhibition in Paris, which THE ART WORLD put Western and Third World artists on an equal footing and inaugurated an era of globalist perspectives on contemporary VIEWS OF UTOPIA art. Before that, he had been little known outside the Democratic Republic of the The imaginary cityscapes of Bodys Isek Kingelez. Congo. And he had remained obscure even within his homeland, owing partly BY PETER SCHJELDAHL to his temperamental aloofness from the local art scene. (He might admit foreign visitors to his studio, but almost never an- other Congolese. Unsatisfied with being the country’s best artist, he as much as deemed himself the only one.) Like other travelling art folk, I grew accustomed to coming upon Kingelez’s works in inter- national shows—invariably with a thrill of refreshment at the beauty and energy they radiate amid what is frequently blah fare. Global art has increasingly tended not toward national variety but toward a sameness of art-schooled conventions. Kingelez was born Jean-Baptiste (his full name) in 1948, the eldest of nine chil- dren of agricultural workers, in the vil- lage of Kimbembele-Ihunga, three hun- dred and seventy miles from the capital, then called Léopoldville, in what was still the Belgian Congo. In the eighteen-eight- ies, during the colonial scramble for Africa, Leopold II had acquired the country as private property and exploited it with such extraordinary brutality that, in 1908, it was wrested from him by Belgian civil authorities. Independence came in 1960. Not long afterward, a military coup headed by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu led to the mur- der of the country’s first Prime Minister, “Étoile Rouge Congolaise” (1990). Kingelez projects visions of a glorious future. Patrice Lumumba, and, in 1965, to Mobu- tu’s assumption of dictatorial powers, odys Isek Kingelez was, by his own styles, mostly in cut and painted paper, which he wielded until he was ousted by Bdescription, a “designer, an architect, card stock, and plastics, with occasional an insurgency in 1997. Promulgating a a sculptor, engineer, artist.” Though a urban detritus: used packaging, bottle cultural doctrine of African “authentic- boastful man, he neglected “genius” in the caps, soda cans. The pieces range in height ity,” Mobutu renamed the capital, in 1966, list of his identities, so I’ll tack that on. from about a foot to four feet and, in and the nation—to Zaire—in 1971. (The Kingelez, who died three years ago of width, from a couple of feet to the nearly country was renamed again after his oust- cancer, at the age of sixty-six, in Kinshasa, nineteen-foot sprawl of the artist’s mas- ing.) Kingelez was educated by Belgian the capital of the Democratic Republic terpiece, “Ville Fantôme” (1996), a tab- Catholic missionaries. He mastered such of the Congo, is the subject of a phenom- leau bristling with skyscrapers engirdled subjects as calligraphy and took his new enal exhibition at the Museum of Mod- by a ring road. The work’s efect demands name, which paid tribute to his relatives ern Art. Curated by Sarah Suzuki and an oxymoron: daintily powerful, say, or and to his natal region. He moved to Kin- TION, CAAC/PHOTOGRAPH: MAURICE AESCHIMANN MAURICE TION, CAAC/PHOTOGRAPH: wonderfully installed with help from the deliriously serene. Kinships with craft- shasa in 1970, studying at the University German artist Carsten Höller, the show work, toys, folk or outsider art, and bri- of Lovanium and, later, supporting him- presents scores of the “extreme maquettes,” colage inevitably suggest themselves, only self by teaching at a secondary school. as Kingelez termed them, that he began to be plowed under by the rigor of an A story has it that, when Kingelez pre- making in the late seventies. These de- aesthetic as sophisticated as that of an sented one of his maquettes to oicials at pict imaginary buildings and whole cit- Alexander Calder or a Joseph Cornell. the Institute of National Museums in the ies in a perfectly integral mélange of mod- Kingelez burst upon the world with late seventies, they refused to believe that

ern, postmodern, and entirely invented “Magiciens de la Terre,” a hugely influen- he had made it, so he created another be- COLLEC THE PIGOZZI COURTESY

98 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 fore their eyes. This led to six years of em- efect” somehow prevent bombs from ployment at the museum, where he worked detonating in any subsequent attack—“an as a restorer of masks and other tribal rel- appropriate solution” for New Yorkers, ics, steeping himself in techniques and he said at the time, “that will help dry forms that he pointedly shunned in his their tears and heal their wounds.” own work. In spirit, he opted for a more In shape, Kingelez’s buildings are var- recent Congolese tradition, concentrated iously tiered, towering, serpentine, pin- in Kinshasa and, across the Congo River, nate, finned, and scalloped. Colonnades in Brazzaville, the capital of the neigh- and grand staircases abound, as do inge- boring Republic of the Congo: the Soci- nious decorative grids of circles, stripes, ety of Tastemakers and Elegant People, a diamonds, stars, and floral motifs. He was movement of Europhile dandyism, with a great and subtle colorist, with a palette initiates called sapeurs, that had emerged anchored by the red, yellow, and green of among servants of colonial overlords in the national flag of Zaire. He once said, the late nineteenth century and was sub- “A building without color is like a naked ject to recurrent, innovative revivals. Kin- person.” The hues of any given piece are gelez was a flamboyant dresser himself, symphonic, with blended harmonies that though socially he was all but a recluse. unite the riots of form. You get the work He took no part in Kinshasa’s vibrant immediately as an orderly composition, music and night-life scenes. In the mid- or it gets you, though hours might be eighties, he began devoting himself to art spent in absorbing the details. With full time, while living with, eventually, well-intentioned pizzazz, MOMA provides three wives and a number of children, visitors to the show with headsets for amid a prosperity augmented by invest- three-and-a-half-minute, self-guided ments in Kinshasa real estate. virtual-reality tours of “Ville Fantôme,” Rarely travelling outside the D.R.C., allowing them to jump from one place to he immersed himself in dreams of his another—to plazas, roofs—and to look country’s betterment. He was avowedly up, down, and around. That’s fun, but utopian. His cityscapes repeatedly pro- more about the V.R. medium than about 1st Time Buyers% ject glorious futures for his home town anything that it conveys. (I had a spasm Save 25 of Kimbembele-Ihunga and for Kinshasa, of vertigo, gazing downward from atop a and .COM as well as fantastic monuments and other skyscraper.) I would have much preferred Mercer Sons e distinctive full roll of our unlined 3 7/16” button down enhancements in places that it seems he to be provided with opera glasses, for close is unmistakeable. Its traditional style, impeccable good taste, had never seen, including Belgium, Ger- inspection, with more elective fantasies of absolute comfort and long lasting value will not be matched. Pima Cotton Oxfords- Classic Blue, White, Pink and Yellow. many, Japan, Palestine, the United States, miniaturized pedestrianhood, in real space. MADE IN USA SINCE 1982 and the Soviet Union. He made only Not that exploration of Kingelez’s cities Pullovers, 140’s, Sport Shirts, Traditional Boxers, Custom. oblique reference to the civil unrest that would be easy under any circumstances. Catalog CALL 800-705-2828 Swatches raged in his country from 1994 to 2003, He gave scant thought to the needs of by alluding to the peacekeeping mission circulation either on foot or by motorized of the United Nations. All Kingelez’s fu- transport. He wasn’t an urban planner. He turistic visions assume economies of im- was an architectural rhapsode. mense wealth and exclusively govern- “You’re awful when you’re creating a mental or corporate purpose. There’s never work of art,” Kingelez’s second wife, Mad- a private residence or, apart from parks eleine Mupanga, calmly remarks to him and stadiums, much sign of sites for en- in a documentary film that accompanies tertainment. It’s all business, although the the show. The artist concurs. When he’s appearance of the maquettes is so festive working, he says, he “can’t stand any HELP FOR ADDICTION that this realization dawns slowly. Kinge- sound, not even a mosquito. I’m more Dawn Farm offers affordable treatment for drug and alcohol addiction on a working farm. lez’s subjects included palatial medical aggressive with my kids. It’s like I’m ill.” Accredited, internationally known, a unique facilities, such as “The Scientific Center That’s entirely believable. Kingelez’s program with compassionate care and hope. of Hospitalisation the SIDA” (1991), which works sustain a charge of intense inspi- www.dawnfarm.org • 734.669.3800 he made in response to an AIDS epidemic ration and exacting execution—no de- in Zaire that was, at one point, estimated tail lax or arbitrary—rather like that of to have infected between six and eight Coleridge’s (also topographical, come to per cent of the population. A work from think of it) “Kubla Khan.” The fact that 2002, not in the show, envisions replace- Kingelez’s projects are unrealizable shields ments for the Twin Towers of the World them from any nattering rationality. They Trade Center, along with a third, water- possess the invincibility of uncompro- filled tower that would by its “cooling mised, unflagging, sheer desire. 

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 99 on her, she lost her money to a Madof- ON TELEVISION like grifter, and Wisconsin swung red. Lockhart joined a new firm, though she held on to her statement necklaces LAWYERS’ POKER and her air of hauteur. But, alone in her spacious oice, she’s losing her cool, Survival strategies on “The Good Fight.” watching cable news, gawking at clips that feel maybe ten per cent removed BY EMILY NUSSBAUM from the real thing: “When asked about the tweet, White House oicials in- few weeks ago, on “The Good like ‘The Wire.’”) But the sequel, whose sisted that the President was joking, A Fight,” some Chicago litigators opening scenes take place on Inaugu- saying, ‘Mermaids do not exist, there- found the pee tape. Initially, they sus- ration Day, is an angrier product than fore Trump’s reference to talking with pected that it was a hoax—entrapment the original. It features an unforget- one—’” Lockhart now owns a gun; she by Project Veritas, perhaps, designed table credits sequence, in which fancy has a fling with an Antifa activist. to embarrass the D.N.C. Their firm purses blow up like Molotov cocktails, When, in the second season, she starts investigated, and in the process they punctuated by shots of Putin fishing to microdose hallucinogens, it seems discovered an entire genre of pee-tape and of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. less like a breakdown than like an at- fakes. The F.B.I. weighed in. tempt to match her insides There was a granular com- to her outsides. parison of bathrobe screen Lockhart is white, but her grabs. (“Enhance!”) Finally, firm, Reddick Boseman, is a they had confirmation: it was majority-African-American the real thing. institution, founded by a And then they buried it— civil-rights pioneer; its bread all of them, conspiring to- and butter is suing the Chi- gether, with varying motives. cago Police Department. The Releasing a video of Rus- setting is easily as plush as sian prostitutes peeing on a the one on “The Good Wife,” bed that the Obamas slept in, which took place at the the group understood, would white-shoe firm Lockhart/ lead to nothing but another Gardner, but the structural shockeroo news cycle. There do-over feels designed to would be outrage, then dis- address “The Good Wife”’s traction, and on to the next biggest flaw: it was an Obama- round. To survive in an era of era, Chicago-set show that numb unreality, they needed whifed when it came to race. a better strategy. Now there are enough black “The Good Fight,” like characters that none of them “The Good Wife,” its pre- need to represent blackness. decessor, is a cockeyed love The best is Adrian Boseman, letter to just this kind of stra- a charismatic macher played tegic life, as lived by a set of by the great Delroy Lindo. educated, hypercompetent There’s also the wonder- professionals: a liberal élite, ful Cush Jumbo, from “The if you will. It’s a dark com- Good Wife,” as a perpetually edy about the limits of savvy, bemused rising star named about whether it’s possible Lucca. When Lucca, an as- to maintain detachment and The show is a dark comedy about the limits of savvy. sociate at Reddick Boseman, pragmatism, not to men- gets pregnant by a politically tion respect for the law, in the face Sometimes I watch those credits twice. ambitious federal prosecutor, a white guy of chaos—including internal chaos. With their French Revolutionary air, who hopes to win over black voters, Both shows were co-created by Rob- they’re a nifty metaphor for the show’s the story develops promising echoes of ert and Michelle King, married show- incendiary mind-set, as exemplified by “The Good Wife”’s central plot, about runners who have learned, during their its heroine, the litigator Diane Lock- a power marriage between cynics. Not years of making network television, to hart, an EMIL’s List Democrat whose every plot deals with race—plenty deal camouflage their freak flag as a pocket plans to retire with her hot Republican with technology, a longtime obsession of square. (Their brand might be summa- gun-expert husband dissolved when, the Kings—but the subject feels baked rized as “Looks like ‘L.A. Law,’ tastes in a triple whammy, her man cheated in, not imposed. Among other things,

100 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY PETRA ERIKSSON Incomparable senior the show loves to mock the peacock- The Kings even have an episode living in Bucks County. ing of white liberals, as when a man about an ongoing obsession of Sorkin’s, confides to Lucca, randomly, “The Root the morality of accusing powerful men A unique senior living community in historic Bucks County, PA embraces the Quaker is a great online magazine. I have it on of sexual wrongdoing, online, anony- values of service, honesty, trust and accept- Google Alert.” mously. It isn’t the only “Good Fight” ance. Pennswood Village features inspiring episode about #MeToo: the best one natural beauty, a welcoming atmosphere and he first season, which had an arc featured a subtle accusation directed at a diverse group of neighbors who push the about that Madof-like swindler, Boseman himself. This episode is less envelope of intellectual and cultural T achievement. was fun, but I was loath to recommend controlled. Ostensibly, the subject is Call 888-214-4626 it, for a stupid but legitimate reason: the Shitty Media Men list, although it today for your FREE it streams on the ripof subscription mashes in Aziz Ansari’s infamous date, information kit. service CBS All Access, a gated com- with elements of Peter Thiel’s dealings 1382 Newtown-Langhorne Rd • Newtown, PA 18940 munity tucked away from the news with Gawker. Like “The Newsroom”’s www.pennswood.org 1< cycle. The second season is too good version, which was about a Web site to ignore. There are plenty of torn- that outed campus rapists, the episode from-the-headlines plots, about Milo skates over crucial truths. Frustratingly, TAPPAN Yiannopoulos, #MeToo, and ICE vio- it suggests that men are getting fired CHAIRS lence. But the show’s appeal is broader as a result of rumors, rather than fol- Hand turned, than any single issue. “The Good Fight” lowing internal investigations. It’s car- hand woven. View the full is simply a fun, confident, muscular se- toonish about its lead feminist activ- collection at ries, in which every character is inter- ist. But there’s a daring, even liberatory, Chiltons.com. esting, down to the judges. The dia- nastiness to the episode’s portrait of logue pops; the aesthetic choices ideological divides, which cause the sparkle. As on “The Good Wife,” the firm to burst into debate—“This is just chiltons.com 866-883-3366 elevator is a sexy stage, from which the revenge porn!”; “The Web site just characters look out at us as they bicker warns people of!”—in a way that nails and flirt. Birds slam into the window taboo crosscurrents of the moment, in- of the F.B.I. investigator’s oice. Lap- cluding the fault lines beneath the sur- Basil Twist’s tops showing the pee tape glow yel- face of female solidarity. low, in a giggle-inducing homage to And as messy as the episode is—at “Pulp Fiction.” One episode even fea- certain junctures, it feels like some- tures a “Schoolhouse Rock”-style song thing that was cooked up during a Tickets at HERE.org about impeachment. pissed-of boomer book group on the In between “The Good Wife” and Upper West Side—it manages to define Your Anniversary this show, the Kings made “BrainDead,” the Kings’ central precepts. They are Immortalized a one-season zombie allegory, in which pragmatists. They loathe ideologues. in Roman Numerals 3-Day Rush Available! Washington was taken over by alien They are suspicious of cant on both Crafted from Gold and Platinum bugs, which crawled into the ears of sides—and they are not wild about JOHN- CHRISTIAN.COM congresspeople (literally) and turned theatricality, which they see as a tool OR CALL 888.646.6466 them into half-deaf partisan fanatics. of phonies. They also know the limits If Wisconsin had watched it, maybe of their own analysis: at the end of the things would be diferent. It was a far episode, it turns out that Diane Lock- cry, superficially, from “The Good hart has unwittingly protected preda- Fight,” but it had a similar slapstick tors. Her client, a tech guy who has intelligence. But the show that “The funded a lawsuit to destroy the list, did Good Fight” most reminds me of is, so specifically to keep himself of it. oddly, “The Newsroom.” Like Aaron And he wins, because the list was poorly Sorkin, the Kings have a native sym- strategized. pathy for Ivy-educated workaholics At the episode’s climax, the list’s cre- doing walk-and-talks. But, rather than ator confronts Lockhart. “My guess is place the emphasis on one cranky white you’ve never thought of yourself as a male genius/truthteller, “The Good traitor?” the millennial activist sneers. Fight” shares the spotlight. When its Diane isn’t having it. “You know what heroes get self-righteous, it pokes them your problem is?” she spits back. sullivan+ associates ARCHITECTS instead of worshipping them. The char- “Women aren’t just one thing. And you acters don’t apologize for their intelli- don’t get to determine what we are.” gence, but the show is smarter than But the real zinger is her next line, which they are. It’s like “The Newsroom” for is sisterly in its way. “Next time, hire a martha’s vineyard people who hated “The Newsroom.” lawyer—and do your list right.” 

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 101 tois is less charming on the human THE CURRENT CINEMA tongue. Han may be murmuring en- dearments, but he sounds like someone who has dined on unrefrigerated shrimp GALACTIC ENTANGLEMENTS and is about to sufer the consequences. Chewie, I think this is the beginning of “Solo: A Star Wars Story” and “How to Talk to Girls at Parties.” a beautiful friendship. The film is written by Lawrence BY ANTHONY LANE Kasdan, whose credits include “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Raiders of t has been five whole months since rude, and since when did a movie decry the Lost Ark” (1981). For “Solo,” he has Ithe last “Star Wars” movie, and the its characters before they’re introduced? teamed up with his son Jonathan, and wait has been intolerable. Our patience Mind you, if “The Empire Strikes Back” one thing I liked about the result—and has been sorely tried, and to test it fur- (1980) had presented us with “the irri- also, I suspect, the thing that will exas- ther would constitute a gross violation tating Yoda,” we might have paused perate the more pious fans of the fran- of our civil rights. No citizen should be before munching on his nuggets of chise—is how often it feels nudged by denied his or her dose of galactic hy- gristly wisdom. the spirit not of “Star Wars” but of In- perdrive; curb that prerogative, and the Solo flees Corellia, leaving behind diana Jones. There is a heist aboard a Supreme Court would have something Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke), for whom he has speeding train, on an elevated mountain track, that has nothing to do with outer space and plenty to do with avoiding mortal peril by a whisker: precisely the sort of rampant gamble that Dr. Jones used to enjoy. Admittedly, Beckett, Solo, and the gang are stealing a load of coax- ium—one of those precious elements, unique to cinema, which might as well be labelled MacGuinium—rather than Nazi gold or legendary jewels, but it’s the swagger of the larceny that counts. I half expected Solo to crack a whip. In short, let us give thanks for all that is absent from this film. No monk- ish Jedis, robed in wraparound brown. No superannuated Skywalker, ma- rooned on his little island rock. No windy convenings of imperial councils. And not a single mention of the Force; Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover star in a ilm about Han Solo’s early years. not once is Solo solemnly told to try feeling instead of thinking—good ad- to say on the matter. Luckily, just as tem- the hots, or, to judge by his expression, vice if you’re having a massage, but pers were starting to flare, “Solo: A Star the tepids. We join him three years later, worse than useless for anyone hoping Wars Story” has arrived to save the day. and, if I told you that he’s used this valu- to operate complex machinery. Need- The hero is Han Solo, and he is able time to finish a Ph.D. in marine less to say, “Solo” still pays its respects played by Alden Ehrenreich, who, aside biology or gender studies, I would be to movies past. Viewers may experi- from the fact that he looks, talks, walks, paltering with the truth. Instead, he’s ence a warm trickle of nostalgia as they grins, and growls in a manner that bears been soldiering: an honorable calling, hear John Williams’s original score, ris- no relation whatever to Harrison Ford, but one that he now sloughs of, choos- ing softly to greet the Millennium Fal- is perfect for the part. As for the plot, ing a ragged life of crime in the com- con—dusty and battered, and almost it can best be summarized as “A Por- pany of Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and certainly requiring new brake pads, but trait of the Pilot as a Young Jock.” We Val (Thandie Newton). The highlight, still the real deal. If only the scene first encounter Solo on the cruddy for Solo, is a prolonged bout of mud- weren’t such a blatant retread of “Sky- planet of Corellia, where he pilfers and wrestling, his vast and matted opponent fall” (2012), in which 007 opens a ga- hustles for a living, trying not to an- being none other than Chewbacca rage door and reveals an Aston Mar- tagonize Lady Proxima (voiced by ( Joonas Suotamo). So that’s how they tin DB5, as seen in “Goldfinger” (1964), Linda Hunt). Or, as an onscreen title met. What cements their union is the to the sultry accompaniment of a Bon- ungallantly calls her, “the foul Lady news that Solo can speak—or, at any dian chord sequence on the soundtrack. Proxima.” I know she’s a giant worm rate, gurgle—the language of the Wook- Nothing like the old tunes to get an in a pond, but there’s no need to be iees, though it must be said that the pa- audience on your side.

102 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY WREN MCDONALD The Falcon belongs, at first, to salad days of Solo. Personally, I pre- largely free of Kubrickian threat. In- Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover): ferred him in “The Force Awakens” deed, the most surprising aspect of the part smuggler, part dandy, and the only (2015), at the other end of his career. film is its suburban mildness, plus the figure who allows himself time to relax, Visibly weary, and fearful of having lost hapless charm of its hero, Enn (Alex not least in the unrushed delivery of his greenness and his crunch, he was Sharp). He’s a high-school kid living his dialogue. “Everything you heard played once again by Harrison Ford, in Croydon, on the southern outskirts about me,” he says, with a sly hesita- who, at the age of seventy-three, re- of London, in 1977. The date matters, tion, “is true.” While uttering the line, tained the rueful and lopsided smile for punk is in full cry, and Enn gets his he even holds out his tumbler of booze that had lightly mocked the whole “Star teen-age kicks from going to see terri- for a refill. Glover is on a roll right now. Wars” ethic from the start—the smile ble but pleasingly clamorous bands. His music video for “This Is Amer- that said, “Can you believe this shit? Then the aliens show up. ica,” with its four-minute blend of the Me neither, but we might as well have This crashing of the otherworldly ludic and the apocalyptic, is the most fun along the way.” The reason for the into the humdrum is the running gag startling visual product of the year, and name Solo, we are now informed, is on which the movie proceeds. (It was “Solo” pales and shrinks beside it, yet that he always seems to be on his own. prefigured, in 1978, by one line in Doug- Glover’s Lando does supply a modi- Really? On the evidence of the new las Adams’s “The Hitchhiker’s Guide cum of cool—a substance, let’s face it, film, he should have been called Han to the Galaxy,” when a two-headed that is balingly hard to unearth in the Gregarious. Thousands of star systems stranger was introduced thus: “This is saga of “Star Wars.” to get lost in, and he barely gets a min- Zaphod Beeblebrox from Betelgeuse So, who made this film? “Directed ute to himself. Five, you know, not bloody Martin by Ron Howard,” we read in the cred- Smith from Croydon.”) But it’s not that its, but it was not until midway through resh from a galaxy far, far away— funny, and Mitchell’s humor is no less production, or later, that he took con- Fnot Solo’s galaxy, but another one— scattershot than it was in his début film, trol. Until then, the tale was driven by is a band of colonists, who assume the “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” (2001). Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, who, form of whichever species they happen That raucous tale has since fared bet- having made our eyeballs bubble and to visit. Ergo, while staying on Earth, ter onstage, and I suspect that the new pop with “The Lego Movie” (2014), they resemble humans. In “How to Talk work might well arrive at a similar fate; were presumably hired to import a sim- to Girls at Parties,” we meet a house- it’s one of those movies which are so ilar zest to the shenanigans of Han. ful of these space invaders, and, in cor- desperate to become cult viewing that Whether they were relieved of their poreal terms, their disguise cannot be they feel no obligation to be any good. duty, by decree of Lucasfilm and Walt faulted. Their fashion sense, though, is Still, it does spring a few shocks in the Disney Studios, for having disobeyed less discreet. Many of them favor all- casting department. Elle Fanning plays orders—for becoming, in efect, a two- over bodysuits, in a lurid plastic mate- one colonist, who befriends Enn (“Do man Rebel Alliance, lampooning the rial that clings like a second skin: a dis- more punk to me,” she says), while Ruth genre that they were meant to sustain— comfiting tribute to the fetishistic Wilson is genuinely spooky as another. we may never know, but biting the hand sculptures of the British artist Allen And, hang on, who’s that snarling ma- that feeds you, in a billion-dollar busi- Jones, which were mimicked by Stan- triarch of the club scene with the shock ness, is asking for trouble. Even nib- ley Kubrick, in 1971, for the nastier seg- of spiky hair? Extraterrestrials can land bling on its pinkie is a risk. It was How- ments of “A Clockwork Orange.” anywhere, but Nicole Kidman, in Croy- ard, therefore, the embodiment of a The mood in “How to Talk to Girls don? Give me a break.  safe bet, who brought the movie home. at Parties,” which is adapted from a How keenly you respond to it will short story by Neil Gaiman and di- NEWYORKER.COM depend on how tempted you are by the rected by John Cameron Mitchell, is Richard Brody blogs about movies.

THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2018 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

VOLUME XCIV, NO. 16, June 4 & 11, 2018. THE NEW YORKER (ISSN 0028792X) is published weekly (except for ive combined issues: February 12 & 19, June 4 & 11, July 9 & 16, August 6 & 13, and December 24 & 31) by Condé Nast, which is a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: Condé Nast, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. Chris Mitchell, chief business of icer; Risa Aronson, vice-president, revenue; James Guilfoyle, executive director of inance and business operations; Fabio Bertoni, general counsel. Condé Nast: Robert A. Sauerberg, Jr., president & chief executive of icer; David E. Geithner, chief inancial of icer; Pamela Drucker Mann, chief revenue and marketing of icer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at addi- tional mailing of ices. Canadian Goods and Services Tax Registration No. 123242885-RT0001.

POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO THE NEW YORKER, P.O. Box 37684, Boone, IA 50037 0684. FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS, ADDRESS CHANGES, ADJUSTMENTS, OR BACK ISSUE INQUIRIES: Please write to The New Yorker, P.O. Box 37684, Boone, IA 50037 0684, call (800) 825-2510, or e-mail [email protected]. Please give both new and old addresses as printed on most recent label. Subscribers: If the Post Of ice alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. If during your subscription term or up to one year after the magazine becomes undeliverable, you are ever dissatis ied with your subscription, let us know. You will receive a full refund on all unmailed issues. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within four weeks after receipt of order. For advertising inquiries, please call Risa Aronson at (212) 286-4068. For submission guidelines, please refer to our Web site, www.newyorker.com. Address all editorial, business, and production correspondence to The New Yorker, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. For cover reprints, please call (800) 897-8666, or e-mail [email protected]. For permissions and reprint requests, please call (212) 630-5656 or fax requests to (212) 630-5883. No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the consent of The New Yorker. The New Yorker’s name and logo, and the various titles and headings herein, are trademarks of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. Visit us online at www.newyorker.com. To sub- scribe to other Condé Nast magazines, visit www.condenast.com. Occasionally, we make our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services that we believe would interest our readers. If you do not want to receive these offers and/or information, please advise us at P.O. Box 37684, Boone, IA 50037 0684 or call (800) 825-2510.

THE NEW YORKER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR LOSS OF, OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS, UNSOLICITED ART WORK (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND TRANSPARENCIES), OR ANY OTHER UNSOLICITED MATERIALS. THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, ART WORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND ORIGINALS, UNLESS SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY THE NEW YORKER IN WRITING.

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2018 103 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Mick Stevens, must be received by Sunday, June 10th. The finalists in the May 28th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the June 25th 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

“He makes us watch this fire-safety video once a year.” Daniel Atonna, Montgomery, N.Y.

“I understand this is just until the boiler gets fixed.” “First, I set the mood.” Clare Christiansen, Oak Harbor, Wash. Darren Gersh, Chevy Chase, Md.

“The only other channel is brimstone.” Arnie Hummasti, Astoria, Ore. HUMANITY Ai Weiwei CHANGING THE Edited and with an introduction by Larry Warsh

“Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei has long used CONVERSATIONS his fame and social media as a megaphone for his activism. . . . Humanity, a little blue book . . . collects THAT CHANGE excerpts from Mr. Ai’s thoughts and aphorisms.” THE WORLD —Robin Pogrebin, New York Times WHAT SCHOOL COULD BE Insights and Inspiration from Teachers across America Ted Dintersmith

“ A compelling meditation on learning, human potential, and the power of the human spirit. If you care about our future, read and share this book.” — John Merrow, former PBS NewsHour education correspondent and author of Addicted to Reform: A 12-Step Program to Rescue Public Education

RADICAL MARKETS Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society Eric A. Posner & E. Glen Weyl

“ Perhaps the most ambitious attempt to rethink democracy and markets since Milton Friedman. Twenty years from now this just might be the book people are talking about.” —Kenneth S. Rogoff, author of The Curse of Cash

BRAVE NEW ARCTIC The Untold Story of the Melting North Mark C. Serreze

“ Ultimately, what Serreze produces is a kind of detective story; the major crime is the human causation of global warming. . . . An alarming, evidence-based book by a scientist who is not by nature an alarmist.” —Kirkus

PERFECT ME Beauty as an Ethical Ideal Heather Widdows

“ A scholarly work that is urgently relevant to the current cultural moment.” —Meagan Garber, The Atlantic