PRICE $8.99 OCT. 31, 2016

THE POLITICS ISSUE OCTOBER 31, 2016

12 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

31 THE TALK OF THE TOWN The choice for President. LIFE AND LETTERS Thomas Mallon 36 Presumptive The 2016 campaign, as a novel. SHOUTS & MURMURS Ian Frazier 41 Unburied ANNALS OF MEDIA Andrew Marantz 42 Trolls for Trump How the alt-right infiltrates the mainstream. A R E P O RT E R AT L A RG E George Packer 48 The Unconnected Hillary Clinton and the white working class. PORTFOLIO Katy Grannan 62 The Vote Selecting a President for the first time. FICTION Anne Carson 80 “Back the Way You Went” THE CRITICS BOOKS Kelefa Sanneh 84 What are immigrants owed? 89 Briefly Noted Joan Acocella 90 The rise and fall of Esperanto. MUSICAL EVENTS Alex Ross 96 The music of Kaija Saariaho and Gérard Grisey. POEMS Maria Nazos 38 “Cape Cod Pantoum” Charles Rafferty 55 “Attraction” COVER Barry Blitt “Significant Others”

DRAWINGS Seth Fleishman, Jack Ziegler, Avi Steinberg, Bob Eckstein, Liam Francis Walsh, Trevor Spaulding, John McNamee, Will McPhail, Roz Chast SPOTS Richard McGuire

CONTRIBUTORS

George Packer (“The Unconnected,” Anne Carson (Fiction, p. 80) is a profes- p. 48) is a 2016-17 fellow at the Doro- sor of classics, as well as a poet, an essay- thy and Lewis B. Cullman Center of ist, and a translator. Her new collection, the New York Public Library, and at “Float,” has just been published. New America. “The Unwinding” is his latest book. Thomas Mallon (“Presumptive,” p. 36) is a novelist, an essayist, and a critic. Andrew Marantz (“Trolls for Trump,” “Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years” p. 42) has been contributing to the mag- came out in paperback in August. azine since 2011. Charles Rafferty (Poem, p. 55) directs Maria Nazos (Poem, p. 38) is the author the M.F.A. program at Albertus Mag- of “A Hymn That Meanders,” a book nus College. His collection of prose of poems, and, most recently, “Still Life,” poems, “The Smoke of Horses,” is due a chapbook. out next year.

Ian Frazier (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 41) Katy Grannan (Portfolio, p. 62) is a pho- published “Hogs Wild: Selected Re- tographer and a flmmaker, whose first porting Pieces” in June, and is working feature flm, “The Nine,” will be shown on a book about the Bronx. at DOC NYC on November 14th.

Kelefa Sanneh (Books, p. 84), a staf Joan Acocella (Books, p. 90), who has writer, previously wrote about the pol- written for The New Yorker since 1992, itics of immigration in 2012. is working on a book about Mikhail Baryshnikov. Barry Blitt (Cover) is working on a ret- rospective book of his work, to be pub- Alex Ross (Musical Events, p. 96), a lished next year. This is his hundredth staff writer, is the author of “The Rest cover for the magazine. Is Noise” and “Listen to This.”

NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more.

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN VIDEO Tour a house of political horrors, The photographer and flmmaker inspired by climate change, gun Katy Grannan travels around the U.S. control, and Donald Trump. to capture the nation’s mood in 2016.

SUBSCRIBERS: Get access to our magazine app for tablets and smartphones at the App Store, Amazon.com, or Google Play. (Access varies by location and device.) GRANNAN KATY RHYNE; EMILY

6 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 THE MAIL

THE TRUTH ABOUT TRIPPING seriously by the scientific community. But focussing on a few people who can Ariel Levy’s piece on ayahuasca pres- be portrayed as cartoonish cliché-spout- ents two theories explaining how Am- ers out of a Wayne Dyer-inspired night- azonians might have discovered the plant mare only serves to hinder serious study combination that created the hallucino- of the benefits of what is undisputably gen ayahuasca: “the spirit of the plants a potent medicinal concoction. led indigenous people to brew the two Angela Dawe together” or “one day someone happened 1East Lansing, Mich. to drop a chacruna leaf into his B. caapi tea” (“The Secret Life of Plants,” Sep- WEIGHING THE ALTERNATIVES tember 12th). It’s also possible that the combination arose through the con- Rivka Galchen’s article on bariatric sur- certed eforts of experienced herbalists. gery mentioned some of the factors that One of the consequences of European make weight loss nearly impossible for conquest has been the dismissal of in- obese patients, but before we all rush digenous botany and agriculture. Colo- of to get bariatric surgery it would be nizers often depended upon indigenous wise to take a closer look at exactly why people for food, but, in order to justify diets and exercise don’t work (“Keep- their occupation, they portrayed native ing It Of,” September 26th). First, there peoples as poor custodians of the land. is a systemic problem with medical ed- When people sentimentalize pre-con- ucation: many doctors are trained to tact Indians as passive recipients of na- treat symptoms rather than uncover the ture’s bounty, they perpetuate this myth. root cause of disease. Second, patients In places like the Amazon, indigenous need more support in making tough groups shaped the landscape in sophis- life-style changes. Doctors might ad- ticated ways that we are still learning vise patients to eat right and exercise, about. If Indians appeared to demand but, without any follow-up, success is little of the environment, it was precisely unlikely; obese patients may also need because they had a nuanced understand- tests that insurance doesn’t cover, since ing of plants and their uses. they are often battling dysbiosis, psy- Melissa N. Morris chological issues, food sensitivities or Philadelphia, Pa. addictions, or hormonal imbalances that make it more difcult to lose weight. As someone who has greatly benefitted Finally, people in the U.S. tend to eat from taking ayahuasca, I believe that it foods that contribute to obesity; i.e, has the potential to provide relief and those that are readily available, cheap, healing to many people, and that it tasty, and require little or no prepara- should be rigorously studied. There are tion but that are also highly caloric and some other facts about me that would addictive. Most people are also largely probably surprise those whose only misinformed about what constitutes source of information about ayahuasca healthy food. Obese patients need a ho- is Levy’s article: I go by my given name, listic, personalized program in conjunc- not some moniker like Moonbeam Wa- tion with ongoing support in order to terfall. The word “vibration” comes out make lasting behavioral changes. of my mouth only when I’m singing Emily Adams along to Marky Mark and the Funky Brooklyn, N.Y. Bunch. I have never believed myself to have psychic powers. I do not think that • ayahuasca can bring peace to the uni- Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to verse. I have a full-time job. I hate kale. [email protected]. Letters may be edited It seemed to me that Levy’s article dis- for length and clarity, and may be published in played some skepticism toward those any medium. We regret that owing to the volume who would like to see ayahuasca taken of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 7 OCTOBER 26 – NOVEMBER 1, 2016 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Halloween is a feline feast, which BAM Cinématek celebrates in the series “13 Cats” (Oct. 21-Nov. 3), ofering classic and modern masterworks of horror and fantasy. It features “The Black Cat,” Edgar G. Ulmer’s Nazi-era allegory, from 1934, starring Béla Lugosi and Boris Karlof; Jacques Tourneur’s “Cat People,” from 1942, with Simone Simon as a Serbian woman fearing an ancient curse, and Paul Schrader’s 1982 remake, starring Nastassja Kinski; and two films by Hayao Miyazaki, “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Kiki’s Delivery Service.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL MARCELLE Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with Gloria Chien. Other composers on the bill include Handel, Weber, and Frank Bridge (the CLASSICAL MUSIC String Sextet in E-Flat Major), Benjamin Brit- ten’s principal mentor. Oct. 30 at 5. (Alice Tully 1 Hall.) (212-875-5788.) début with the orchestra in 2014. He returns OPERA to conduct a program featuring Bartók’s angu- Steve Reich 80th Birthday Concert lar “Dance Suite” and two more familiar pieces, Carnegie Hall honors the New York minimalist Metropolitan Opera Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor (with master with a concert ofered by the conductor In the nineteen-nineties and aughts, Karita Mat- the Philharmonic’s concertmaster, Frank Huang) David Robertson, the International Contem- tila was one of the Met’s leading prima donnas, and Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony. Oct. 27 and porary Ensemble, So Percussion, and Synergy racking up a staggering string of successes in Nov. 1 at 7:30, Oct. 28 at 11 A.M., and Oct. 29 at 8. Vocals. The program includes “Three Tales,” a some of the most challenging repertory for so- (David Gefen Hall. 212-875-5656.) controversial video opera about the perils of pranos, including the title role of Janáček’s sear- technology (with visuals by Reich’s wife, Beryl ing drama “Jenůfa.” Now she takes a stab at the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Korot); “Quartet,” a meditative work for pairs of scene-stealing role of Jenůfa’s intimidating step- The conductorless chamber orchestra’s frst foray pianos and vibraphones; and the world première mother, the Kostelnička, in a cast that also in- of the season at Carnegie Hall consists mostly of of “Pulse,” a piece co-commissioned by Carne- cludes Joseph Kaiser, Daniel Brenna, and Ok- taut and sparkling pieces in the spirit of Classi- gie Hall and ICE. (Note: Juilliard’s Axiom En- sana Dyka in the title role; David Robertson cism by Mozart, Beethoven (the Piano Concerto semble ofers its own birthday bash on Saturday conducts. Oct. 28 and Oct. 31 at 7:30. • Also play- No. 1 in C Major, with Christian Zacharias), and night.) Nov. 1 at 8. (212-247-7800.) ing: When it isn’t trafcking in outdated Turk- Bizet (the Symphony in C Major). The wild card ish caricatures, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s 1973 pro- is a world première by the young composer Jes- Denis Matsuev duction of “L’Italiana in Algeri” celebrates the sie Montgomery: “Records from a Vanishing The Russian pianist, possessor of a blunt but profound goofness and contagious energy of City,” a work inspired by Montgomery’s child- dazzling style, comes to Carnegie Hall to play an opera that uses spaghetti as a critical plot de- hood years on Avenue A, where her father owned masterworks by Beethoven (the Piano Sonata vice. Marianna Pizzolato (Isabella) and Nicola a rehearsal studio. Oct. 27 at 8. (212-247-7800.) in A-Flat Major, Op. 110), Schumann, Liszt, Alaimo (Taddeo) bring sly humor to their roles, Tchaikovsky, and Prokofev (the Seventh So- while René Barbera (an afable Lindoro), Ildar London Symphony Orchestra nata). Oct. 26 at 8. (212-247-7800.) Abdrazakov (a scene-chewing Mustafà), and Gianandrea Noseda, the dynamic Italian conduc- Ying Fang (a soaring Elvira) ofer sonic lustre. tor, opens Lincoln Center’s Great Performers Danish String Quartet In the pit, the conductor James Levine hits a win- series by leading two concerts with the king of The leading Scandinavian ensemble, whose mu- ning stride. (These are the fnal performances.) London orchestras. The frst, featuring the elec- sical wisdom and authenticity is already appar- Oct. 26 at 7:30 and Oct. 29 at 8. • The fnal per- trifying pianist Yuja Wang, ofers music by Wag- ent despite their young age, arrive at Zankel Hall formance of Mariusz Treliński’s production of ner, Ravel (the Piano Concerto in G Major), and to play a complex and inviting program of two “Tristan und Isolde” features formidable singing Shostakovich (the Fifth Symphony). The second valedictory works: Shostakovich’s pitch-black from Nina Stemme, Stuart Skelton, and René is devoted to Verdi’s towering Requiem, with the Quartet No. 15 in E-Flat Minor and Schubert’s Pape; Asher Fisch conducts the orchestra, well London Symphony Chorus and the vocal solo- indomitable Quintet in C Major (with the cellist drilled after several weeks under Simon Rattle. ists Erika Grimaldi, Daniela Barcellona, Fran- Torleif Thedéen). Oct. 26 at 7:30. (212-247-7800.) Oct. 27 at 6:30. • Rossini’s glorious “Guillaume cesco Meli, and Vitalij Kowaljow. Oct. 28 at 8 and Tell,” which uses a mix of Italian bel canto and Oct. 30 at 3. (David Gefen Hall. 212-721-6500.) Angela Hewitt French heroic styles to fabulously re-create the The doyenne of Canadian pianists, an elegant colorful legend of Switzerland’s fght for inde- American Composers Orchestra and knowing interpreter of Bach, gives two con- pendence, returns to the Met after eighty-fve Halloween is the theme for the A.C.O.’s next certs of the Master’s music at the 92nd Street Y. years, in a high-profle new production by Pierre concert, under the reliable hands of George The frst is a smorgasbord that features the Audi. The frst-rate cast includes Gerald Fin- Manahan. Spine-tingling diversions from “Capriccio on the Departure of His Beloved ley, Marina Rebeka, and Bryan Hymel; Fabio Bernard Hermann (a suite from his score to Brother,” BWV 992, and a batch of inventions and Luisi, currently the top man at the Zurich Opera the flm “Psycho”), Judith Shatin (the world sinfonias; the second ofers the complete French House, is in the pit. Oct. 29 at noon. • The revival première of “Black Moon,” for orchestra and Suites. Oct. 27 at 7:30 and Oct. 30 at 3. (Lexington of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” gets a largely new electronics), Paul Moravec (another première, Ave. at 92nd St. 212-415-5500.) cast, with Ildar Abdrazakov, Amanda Majeski, a suite from his recent opera “The Shining”), Malin Byström, Nadine Sierra, Paul Appleby, and David Del Tredici (“Dracula,” with the so- White Light Festival: “Sounds of India” and Matthew Rose taking the lead roles; Fabio prano Nancy Allen Lundy) grace the program. Mark Morris’s festival-within-a-festival at Lin- Luisi. Nov. 1 at 7:30. (Metropolitan Opera House. Oct. 28 at 7:30. (Zankel Hall. 212-247-7800.) coln Center is centered on dance, but there are 212-362-6000.) 1 some purely musical events as well. Two recitals by musicians integrating the South Indian Car- Heartbeat Opera: “Queens of the Night: RECITALS natic tradition with contemporary styles are of- Mozart in Space” fered at the Gerald W. Lynch Theatre: frst from The indie company continues to do things dif- Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center the vocalist Bombay Jayashri (famous for her ferently with an event that is one part classical The frst new-music performance of the sea- contribution to the flm “Life of Pi”), and then revue and one part drag show, including inter- son presents works by the Brooklyn-born Har- from the percussionist V. Selvaganesh. Oct. 27 galactic sets, a runway, and audience participa- old Meltzer (“Brion,” a fnalist for the Pulitzer and Nov. 1 at 7:30. (John Jay College, 524 W. 59th tion. John Taylor Ward, Jamilyn Manning-White, Prize); the Austrian Thomas Larcher, whose St., near Tenth Ave. 212-721-6500.) and Kristin Gornstein—outftted in gender- work about psychiatric patients is given life by bending, futuristic fashions—sing arias, duets, the soprano Tony Arnold, who is also the vocal- Bargemusic and ensembles by Mozart with the crack cham- ist in music by Finland’s Kaija Saariaho; and a Two star turns are featured at the barge this ber ensemble Cantata Profana. Oct. 31 at 7 and piano trio by Scotland’s James MacMillan which weekend: the Met tenor Paul Appleby, who of- 10. (National Sawdust, 80 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. na- incorporates the spirited playing of the violin- fers a recital of American songs by John Harbi- tionalsawdust.org.) ist Yura Lee, among others. Oct. 27 at 6:30 and 9. son, Nico Muhly, Ned Rorem, Harold Meltzer 1 (Rose Studio, Rose Bldg., Lincoln Center.) • The So- (a world première of a cycle based on poetry by ciety continues its approach to virtual tourism Ted Hughes), Gabriel Kahane, and others on ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES with a nod to works composed in, or about, the Friday night; and the admired veteran pianist United Kingdom in its pre-Brexit glory. Vaughan Ursula Oppens, who performs major works by New York Philharmonic Williams’s “Songs of Travel” brings the gifted Carter (including “Night Fantasies”) and Scri- Pablo Heras-Casado, well known internation- young baritone John Moore together with the abin on Saturday evening. Oct. 28-29 at 8. (Ful- ally and for his work as principal conductor of esteemed pianist Gilbert Kalish, who also per- ton Ferry Landing, Brooklyn. For tickets and full the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, made an exciting forms a four-hand arrangement of music from schedule, see bargemusic.org.)

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 13 14 THE “Rinaldo in the Enchanted Forest,” made circa 1763 by the French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard, in a show of his drawings now at the Met. life. But consider their targeted clientele. illustration—and include scenes of rustic landscape, portraiture, mythology, erotica, the Met’s pictures range across genres— Barry.)Instead,du Madame of behest ings in the Frick Collection, made at the Love,” the artist’s delirious suite doseof ofpaint that, drop in on “The Progress of show.ancientherégime in (Forfull a There’snotmuch direct flatterytheof self-regard of the wealthy and privileged. every class of viewer, while mirroring the that it becomes its own subject, seducing day: possessed of a virtuosity so extreme Frenchthe artistJethe presentworld.art You mightevencall ( rococogenius Jean-Honoré Fragonard Met,theat feelsstrangely timely. The “Fragonard: art world have in common? What do the ancien régime and today’s Plus Ça Change drawingsregarded studiesasnotas or keting of art which Fragonard advanced: a phasizes trend in the making and mar 1732 The show’s curator, Perrin Stein, em - 1806 ) would fit snugly into our intosnugly fitwould )

NEW Drawing ORKER, R E K R YO

f OCTOBER Triumphant Koonshisof

31, 2016 ,” - - - 1890 town,skip himselfartistthedid,as in appointments with the guillotine—or to whom were august enough to merit later catering to private patrons, only a few of tually made his way as an entrepreneur, Versailles,of excesses the with ac ated sions. This artist, commis now royal so closely most associ- shunned Fragonard top honors from the Academy, the young stays Chardin and Boucher and winning that, after training with the court main alone works in themselves. It’s instructivestand- as but painting for preparations his example.) Yet he still seemed, to sub asweknow him, wouldn’t exist butfor brushwork.fast,(Renoir, summarizing open,his esteemed Impressionists The haddrawn and painted incredibly well. grudges freedpeople noticeto that he revolutionary of slackening a until zeroforhalf centurya after his death, the younger painter. neoclassicismthatwaschampioned by without much success, to adopt the stern tried,David,he where Jacques-Louis of studio the later,entered years and Fragonard’sreputation sanknearto .Fragonard returned Paristo two ART - - - - knew knew just who they were—liked it, too. he people—andother thatproviding with terrific panache, anything he liked, to brandt Tiepolo.Fragonarddo, could to the secrets of prior masters, from Rem education and travels had made him heir inthe velleities of an artist whose early notation. There’s a windy air of freedom quick in register spirits high and ion peopled by little figures whose high fash Sylvanparks are Fragonarda specialty, wild nature, and meltingly pretty women. of neo-baroque heroes, wild but not too brown wash that impart waking dreams chalk,and ink,red of etly, flurries in world, you it at make smile. least can the change can’t you If significance. patterns of recycled or otherwise bootless in trapped feel artists which in time a fresh. It suggests cheerful resignation to lip-smackingly sensual, a bit silly—seemsindulgent, mood—euphorically onard decadence,present then, Fragthe that - dent historical epoch. It may be a sign of figure, grown in the hothouse of a deca sequentgenerations, likeoutmodedan The show ravishes, close-up and qui —Peter Schjeldahl - - - -

COURTESY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

1 ART

MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES rests on a pedestal near a Dorothea Lange pho- ture steadily refned, and your heart ambushed tograph of a migrant mother outside a tent in by rushes of emotion. Each canvas, as selected Museum of Modern Art Depression-era California—a reminder that and installed by the curators, Tifany Bell and “Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Americans have been displaced persons, too. Tracey Bashkof, evinces a particular character. Shelter” Through Jan. 22. The cumulative efect is that of intellectual and No word but “disgrace” can describe our passiv- emotional repletion, concerning a woman who ity in the face of the current displacement of Guggenheim Museum synthesized the essences of two world- changing more than sixty-fve million people. This grave, “Agnes Martin” movements—Abstract Expressionism and mini- accusatory exhibition evokes the transit, and the The abstract painter died in 2004, at the age of malism—and who, from a tortured life, beset by intermittent protection, of refugees through ninety-two, and this new retrospective afrms schizophrenia, managed to derive a philosophy, photographs, artists’ projects, water-puri fcation that the greatness of her work has only ampli- amounting almost to a gospel, of happiness. The tablets, and a steel-frame tent from the United fed in the years since. That’s something of a sur- efect of Martin’s art is not an exercise in over- Nations Refugee Agency: temporary shelter prise: no setting would seem less congenial to arching style but a mode of moment-to-moment that, for too many people, has now become the strict angles of Martin’s paintings than the being. Through Jan. 11. permanent housing. Photographs appropri- curves of Frank Lloyd Wright’s creamy seashell. ated by Xaviera Simmons consider the near- You might think that the work’s repetitive for- Morgan Library & Museum daily deaths in the Mediterranean, and are ac- mulas—grids and stripes, mostly gray or palely “Hans Memling: Portraiture, Piety, and a companied by a list of the drowned. Refugee colored, often six feet square—would add aes- Reunited Altarpiece” camps from Lebanon to Kenya are among the thetic fatigue to the mild toll of a hike up the Two late-ffteenth-century panels, depicting a world’s fastest growing; the show also acknowl- ramp. But these challenges to contemplation pair of pious Flemings accompanied by their edges the experiences of people trapped in Cal- and stamina turn out to intensify a deep, and favorite saints, have left their usual spot in Mr. ais and Lesbos. The most shattering object here deepening, sense of the artist’s singular powers. Morgan’s study to reunite with the Crucifxion is the smallest: a color-coded plastic bracelet, The climb becomes a sort of secular pilgrimage, they were created to fank (it’s on loan from an used by Doctors Without Borders to measure on which you may feel your perceptual ability Italian museum). Where the Morgan’s pictures arm circumference and gauge malnutrition. It to register minute diferences of tone and tex- have the icy exactitude of the best Netherland- ish paintings, the centerpiece, in which Jesus is attended by his mother and the Bruges-based abbot who commissioned the art work, is less orderly and in worse condition; Mary’s blue mantle, in particular, could use a trip to the dry cleaner. Memling was in his late twenties when he painted this triptych, an ambitious young painter making his way in booming Bruges. He would go on to paint such tenderly human por- traits as “Man with a Pink,” also on view here; this altarpiece would have served as his business card. Through Jan. 8.

Museum of Arts and Design “Coille Hooven: Tell It by Heart” In her strange, pointedly feminist porcelain min- iatures, the American ceramicist transports us to a mythic realm of brutal alienation and fantasti- cal transformation populated by animal women, warped dishware, pillows, and slices of pie. This rare solo exhibition, Hooven’s frst in a New York museum, spans thirty years, during which she has mined the domestic associations of the fragile medium with an eye on rebellion. In one early work from 1974, titled “The Last Straw,” a naked woman lies with her chest fat against the slant- ing base of an overturned cup. It looks like she’s about to slide to her demise—or, maybe, to free- dom. “Eve Bust,” made a decade later, presents the Biblical fgure with her left arm ending not in a hand but in a snake, slithering its way be- tween her breasts to whisper into her ear. Hooven balances peril with fanciful scenes of escape: a lion-faced woman sails away in a slipper; a lad- der leans against the hatch of a Trojan swan, its feathers glazed a celestial blue. Through Feb. 5.

Rubin Museum of Art “Monumental Lhasa” Remote and romantic, the capital of Tibet became known worldwide at the turn of the last century, thanks to explorers and to the Asian and Western artists who pictured Lha- sa’s towering mountains and palaces. This al- luring show contrasts religious art familiar to Rubin audiences with watercolors, photographs, and flms from scholars and colonists, such as John Claude White, who went on a British ex- pedition to Tibet in 1903, and photographed the steep Potala Palace rising against the Red The Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist brings her rainbow-bright charms to the New Museum Mountain. (It’s one of many works on loan

in the retrospective “Pixel Forest,” which includes “Massachusetts Chandelier” (2010, above). from the British Library.) Maps and documents COURTESYMARGUERITE STEED HOFFMAN AND DEEDIE ROSE

16 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 ART intended for Asian use, such as a scroll paint- tal fringes. This show of works made between of Sorrows. Through March 12. (Cathedral of ing that depicts the teeming Drepung monas- the mid-forties and the mid-eighties (Smith St. John the Divine, Amsterdam Ave. at 112th St. tery, contrast with a map drawn by a monk in died in 1986) is largely, often exuberantly, ab- 212-316-7540.) 1857, whose clearly marked roads suggest a Brit- stract, even when it involves recognizable sub- 1 ish patron’s requirements. The inclusion of a jects. Still-lifes of shadows thrown by rods and dozen or so View-Master stereoscopes lets you gravity- defying arrangements of screens an- GALLERIES—CHELSEA see landmarks of Lhasa as Tibetophiles did be- ticipate the work of Barbara Kasten and Sara fore they were just a Google Maps search away. VanDerBeek. Other images are more expres- Goshka Macuga Through Jan. 9. sionist: liquid light-show eruptions and cas- The London-based Polish artist’s recent show 1 cading patterns in acid colors. But the most at the New Museum has little in common with radical pictures are the most restrained, a pair this one, save for a shared interest in the his- GALLERIES—UPTOWN of black-and-white images whose silvery, dis- tory of ideas. There she presented large tap- tressed surfaces fnd contemporary echoes in estries; here you’ll fnd busts of famous think- Ray Mortenson Gerhard Richter and Rudolf Stingel. Through ers impaled on bronze rods. With their trippy Like Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, and the other Nov. 5. (Gitterman, 41 E. 57th St. 212-734-0868.) colors—Einstein is canary yellow; Leibniz is a photographers whose approach to landscape was pink that lends his curly hair the appearance of dubbed “New Topographics” in the nineteen- “The Christa Project” roses—the arrangements suggest outsized mod- seventies, Mortenson’s eye is artfully matter-of- During Holy Week, in 1984, the Cathedral of els of molecules. A long drawing, displayed fat fact. A case in point: his black-and-white views St. John the Divine exhibited a bronze by the on a table, was sketched by a computerized pen; of New Jersey’s blighted Meadowlands, made British artist Edwina Sandys that shocked the its imagery runs the gamut from typeface designs between 1979 and 1980. Any illusion of Amer- city: the fgure of Christ, nude, agonized—and and random squiggles to allusions to Leonardo ican grandeur is long gone, buried in a waste- female. At the time, New York’s top bishop or- and Duchamp. Throughout, Macuga seems to land of smokestacks, parking lots, landflls, and dered it removed. Now the statue has returned, pose the question: How do you keep making art weeds. Mortenson stands back and takes all this on the altar of an apsidal chapel, where it an- when so much history has always already hap- in from the middle ground, so that, no mat- chors a show of works by twenty-two artists pened? Through Oct. 29. (Kreps, 535 W. 22nd St. ter how degraded the scenery, his broad vistas on the theme of divinity as it’s refected in hu- 212-741-8849.) have a tough-as-nails beauty and bite. Through manity. The strongest selections take on a new Nov. 26. (Stephenson, 764 Madison Ave., at 66th power in the ecclesiastical setting, such as Kiki Claire Sherman St. 212-517-8700.) Smith’s “Ice Man,” a resin cast of a male body The craggy, storm-soaked vistas of Sherman’s from 1995, which assumes the air of a pudgy paintings seem to await the entrance of a des- Henry Holmes Smith Messiah. The show was co-organized by the Jap- olate mermaid or a vengeful queen. But in the The little-known American photographer anese dancer Eiko, who appears in two dozen commanding landscapes on view here, not so worked closely with László Moholy-Nagy in photographs taken in post-tsunami Fukushima. much as one lonely hawk appears. Stillness suf- Chicago, in the nineteen-thirties, and was As she writhes in the ruins with her hair down, fuses the wild scenes, which are constructed in similarly drawn to the medium’s experimen- she looks like a female counterpart to the Man big, overlapping brushstrokes. Impasto bands

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 17 ART of emerald, royal blue, and lavender grow like crystals, with lines razored in by hard bris- tles. Specifcity of place is not Sherman’s sub- ject; “West Ridge,” the show’s title, is a feint. THE THEATRE (Which West Ridge? There must be a mil- lion of them.) The oils in the front room, lush 1 and grand as they are, have competition: each plores issues of education, inequality, and crimi- of the mixed-media works in the back, satu- OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS nal justice. (Second Stage, 305 W. 43rd St. 212-246- rated studies of sea caves and magic trees, is a 4422. In previews.) tiny knockout. Through Nov. 5. (DC Moore, 535 Coriolanus W. 22nd St. 212-247-2111.) Red Bull Theatre presents Shakespeare’s politi- Othello: The Remix 1 cally minded tragedy, directed by Michael Sex- The Q Brothers (“The Bomb-itty of Errors”) per- ton and starring Dion Johnstone as the Roman form their fve-person, eighty-minute hip-hop re- GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN general. (Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow St. 212- telling of the Shakespeare tragedy. (Westside, 407 868-4444. In previews. Opens Oct. 30.) W. 43rd St. 212-239-6200. In previews.) Cecily Brown The London-born, New York-based painter’s Dead Poets Society Party People bright and turbulent works on paper, installed Jason Sudeikis plays a nonconformist teacher at an The Universes ensemble stages this piece about on petal-pink walls, might be the season’s sexiest all-boys school, in Tom Schulman’s adaptation of the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords, show. Paper—casual, abundant, firtatious—feels his screenplay for the 1989 flm, directed by John based on interviews with veterans of the revo- like the perfect material for Brown’s whirlwind Doyle. (Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St. 866- lutionary groups and directed by Liesl Tommy. of deconstruction, synthesis, and expression. 811-4111. Previews begin Oct. 27.) (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555. Previews (Kudos to the curator Claire Gilman for her begin Nov. 1.) smart selection of works.) From afar, the larger The Death of the Last Black Man in the pieces look very Ab Ex-y. They do up close, too, Whole Entire World Request Concert except for small moments in which something Suzan-Lori Parks’s comedy, directed by Lileana At the Next Wave Festival, the Latvian direc- recognizable emerges from Brown’s swarms of Blain- Cruz, explores the archetypes of the African- tor Yana Ross stages Franz Xaver Kroetz’s play, gestures. Using watercolor, oil, pastel, ink, and American experience in absurdist vignettes. (Persh- which consists of only stage directions and depicts ballpoint pen, Brown produces spare, lacy works ing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. 212-244- a woman (Danuta Stenka) alone in her apartment. as well as crowded, hazy compositions layered 7529. In previews.) (BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Pl., Brooklyn. 718-636- with appropriations. In “Combing the Hair 4100. Oct. 26-29.) (Beach),” from 2015, we spot scribbly echoes of Finian’s Rainbow Degas’s voyeuristic portraits of women groom- Melissa Errico stars in the 1947 musical, about an Sagittarius Ponderosa ing. Other allusions include nineteenth-century Irish father and daughter who escape to the Jim The National Asian American Theatre Company eroticism, the busy scenes of Bruegel and Bosch, Crow South after stealing a pot of gold from a lep- presents MJ Kaufman’s play, directed by Ken Rus and animals from antique bestiaries. The gate- rechaun. (Irish Repertory, 132 W. 22nd St. 212-727- Schmoll, in which a transgender man returns fold nudes of Jimi Hendrix’s 1968 album “Elec- 2737. In previews.) home to central Oregon as his father’s health tric Ladyland” also ficker in and out. Fittingly, fails. (3LD Art & Technology Center, 80 Green- the exhibition’s title, “Rehearsal,” evokes the Homos, or Everyone in America wich St. 800-838-3006. In previews. Opens Oct. 31.) preparation of performers: repetition builds the Robin De Jesús and Michael Urie portray a couple muscle memory crucial to the appearance of ef- whose life is complicated by a violent crime in Jor- Sweat fortless motion, a quality of all Brown’s work. dan Seavey’s play, directed by Mike Donahue for Kate Whoriskey directs a new play by Lynn Not- Through Dec. 18. (The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Labyrinth Theatre Company. (Bank Street Theatre, tage, about a group of friends from an assembly St. 212-219-2166.) 155 Bank St. 212-513-1080. In previews.) line who fnd themselves at odds amid layofs and pickets. (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967- Susan Te Kahurangi King Kingdom Come 7555. In previews.) Born in rural New Zealand, in 1951, King stopped In Jenny Rachel Weiner’s play, directed by Kip Fagan speaking as a child and expressed herself through for Roundabout Underground, two women venture Terms of Endearment drawings instead: intricate compositions of in- under false identities into the world of Internet dat- Molly Ringwald stars in Dan Gordon’s play, based terlocking, serpentine curves, which sometimes ing. (Black Box, Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center on the Larry McMurtry novel and the 1983 flm, resolve into people or beasts. This astonishing for Theatre, 111 W. 46th St. 212-719-1300. In previews.) which follows a mother and daughter coping with show includes her early, black-and-white draw- love and tragedy over many years. (59E59, at 59 ings, mostly abstract and spanning the page, as Les Liaisons Dangereuses E. 59th St. 212-279-4200. Previews begin Oct. 29.) well as later works in color, in which white space Janet McTeer, Liev Schreiber, and Birgitte Hjort dramatizes the eruption of cartoon limbs and Sørensen star in Josie Rourke’s revival of the Chris- Wilderness noses from sinuous bands of blue and green. King topher Hampton drama, depicting the seductive En Garde Arts presents a multimedia piece is severely autistic and was deprived of admis- games of aristocrats in pre-Revolutionary France. about the pressures of addiction, trauma, and sion to art school, but this show (and a concur- (Booth, 222 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. In previews. sexual identity, based on interviews with young rent retrospective in Miami) should be enough Opens Oct. 30.) adults and accompanied by a folk score. (Abrons to banish the pejorative term “outsider” once Arts Center, 466 Grand St. 212-352-3101. Opens and for all. Through Oct. 30. (Edlin, 212 Bowery, “Master Harold” . . . and the Boys Oct. 26.) at Spring St. 212-206-9723.) Athol Fugard directs his 1982 drama, set in a tea 1 shop in South Africa in 1950, where two black men Ulrike Müller and a white boy face the cruelties of apartheid. NOW PLAYING The Austrian artist’s nearly symmetrical paint- (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. ings on enamel are joined by her charmingly 212-244-7529. In previews.) The Cherry Orchard terse works on paper, in which a vase of fowers Simon Godwin’s misbegotten production takes a can emerge from a smattering of dots and squig- Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 see-what-sticks approach to Chekhov’s last play, gles. Müller has long been active in New York’s Josh Groban and Denée Benton star in Dave about the foolish ways that rich people behave queer and feminist circles, and a geometric tap- Malloy’s electro-pop adaptation of a section when they turn out not to have any means after all. estry here nods to women’s peripheral place in of “War and Peace,” in an immersive produc- Working from an adaptation by Stephen Karam prewar abstraction, and to the greater opportu- tion directed by Rachel Chavkin. (Imperial, 249 (“The Humans”) which intermittently dips into nities they found in the applied arts. Müller’s W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.) modern slang, Godwin allows his capable actors paintings, by contrast, are unburdened by his- to fail in every available direction: Diane Lane, tory—still rigorous, but married to sprightli- Notes from the Field as Ranevskaya, is in a Douglas Sirk movie; Joel ness. Through Oct. 30. (Callicoon, 49 Delancey St. Anna Deavere Smith’s new solo work, based on Grey, as the old manservant Firs, is in a vaudeville 212-219-0326.) more than two hundred and ffty interviews, ex- act; Tina Benko, as the governess Charlotta, is,

18 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 THE THEATRE

amusingly, in an absurdist comedy. Even the cos- tongue-tied around women who are his social involved, paying little attention to his girl- tumes can’t make up their minds, switching from equals but recovers his firting abilities with friend (Ciara Renée) and childhood buddy period to J. Crew catalogue in the fnal act. And those below his station. Might it be because (George Salazar). The songs weave fairly an attempt to draw parallels between Russian serfs country maids can’t complain about his advances? smoothly between Sondheim homages and and American slaves by casting the roles along ra- Lest this sound unsavory by 2016 standards, bursts of pop, and Keen Company’s cast is lik- cial lines is woefully half-baked. Chekhov ofers Goldsmith pairs the class-conscious playboy able, if not very distinctive. The biggest issue many routes toward greatness; “all of the above” with a clever ingénue who runs rings around him: rests with the show itself: it’s hard to care for isn’t one of them. (American Airlines Theatre, 227 the witty and resourceful Kate Hardcastle (Mai- Jonathan’s dilemma, since we know Larson’s tal- W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300.) rin Lee), one of theatre’s wondrous heroines. ent would eventually be acknowledged. (Acorn, Scott Alan Evans’s production, for the Actors 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200.) Fit for a Queen Company Theatre, is overactive and overeager 1 In 2007, archeologists discovered the mummy (down to briefy drafting an audience member of Hatshepsut, an ancient Egyptian queen who, as a prop), yet curiously underperforming. The ALSO NOTABLE around 1473 B.C., took the remarkable step of as- play’s eccentric wit and sharply observed sat- suming the title of pharaoh, and ruled for some ire are still efective, and the plot mechanism is Afterplay Irish Repertory. • Chris Gethard: twenty years. The playwright Betty Shamieh uses well-oiled, but the actors work a little too hard; Career Suicide Lynn Redgrave. • A Day by the fact of her reign (if not the particulars) to it feels as if they’re demanding laughs rather the Sea Beckett. Through Oct. 30. • Duat Con- fashion this saucy, soapy historical comedy. Now than earning them. (Clurman, 410 W. 42nd St. nelly. • The Encounter Golden. • Falsettos Wal- Hatshepsut (April Yvette Thompson) is a vampy 212-239-6200.) ter Kerr. • Hamilton Richard Rodgers. • The and vengeful diva, with a scheming servant (She- Harvest Claire Tow. • Heisenberg Samuel J. ria Irving) who engineers a coup for both women. Tick, Tick . . . Boom! Friedman. • Holiday Inn Studio 54. • The Hu- But the play isn’t a meditation on black female While struggling to get his shows produced, mans Schoenfeld. • A Life Playwrights Hori- power so much as an overplotted political chess Jonathan Larson channelled his frustration into zons. • Miles for Mary The Bushwick Starr. • Oh, match, with elements of television drama: part this 1990 autobiographical musical, which he Hello on Broadway Lyceum. • Orwell in America “Empire,” part “Game of Thrones.” The Classi- performed solo—it was retooled for three char- 59E59. Through Oct. 30. • Plenty Public. • Pub- cal Theatre of Harlem’s production, directed by acters after his death. The piece is now interest- lic Enemy Pearl. • The Roads to Home Cherry Tamilla Woodard, plays it mostly for laughs and ing mostly for its dual peek into early-nineties Lane. • Stuffed McGinn/Cazale. • A Taste of titillation, with Irving providing the majority of New York and the mind of the pre-“Rent” Lar- Honey Pearl. Through Oct. 30. • That Golden Girls both, but one senses a deeper study of matriar- son, about to turn thirty and wondering if he Show! DR2. • Two Class Acts Flea. • Underground chy interred within. (3LD Art & Technology Cen- should follow his artistic dream or give up Railroad Game Ars Nova. • Verso New World ter, 80 Greenwich St. cthnyc.org. Through Oct. 30.) and join the squares. The barely fctionalized Stages. • Vietgone City Center Stage I. • Wait- Jonathan (Nick Blaemire) is mopey and self- ress Brooks Atkinson. Love, Love, Love The playwright Mike Bartlett’s bitter indictment of baby boomers begins in 1967, on the occasion of the frst, foolish hookup between two nineteen- year-old Oxford students, Kenneth (Richard Ar- mitage) and Sandra (Amy Ryan). Then it catches up with them at two twenty-odd-year intervals, as they mature into horrible parents. The script is fun when it’s not too on the nose, and Armitage is stel- lar. The second, most farcical act, in which Ken- neth and Sandra improvise a decision to divorce in front of their teen-age children, comes close to hitting the right pitch. But Ryan never accesses the dangerous impulsiveness that Sandra demands; she and Armitage can’t conjure the animal attrac- tion that their characters supposedly share. And, in their daughter Rose’s climactic speech, Zoe Ka- zan’s performance never catches fre. Which is all to say that Michael Mayer’s direction is strangely tepid for a show that’s meant to be a barn-burner. (Laura Pels, 111 W. 46th St. 212-719-1300.)

Sell / Buy / Date Sarah Jones is a monologuist of the frst order, a chameleon with immense heart and grace. What looks efortless—playing a multitude of charac- ters—is actually hard work, but Jones, who frst became known for her 2004 show, “Bridge & Tun- nel,” doesn’t sweat any of it. She’s grounded and delighted to be in our company; her imagination thrives on it. Unfortunately, this show, which Jones wrote, doesn’t quite take of. The forty-two-year- old star plays a British professor in the future, who’s looking back at various “types” associated with the sex-work trade. Jones loves all her characters, and we love her for that, but without a solid text the evening, despite its delights, feels like an event to no purpose. That said, it’s interesting to watch Jones develop—and that’s exactly what she’ll con- tinue to do, because she’s the real thing. (City Cen- ter Stage II, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212.)

She Stoops to Conquer The main story line in Oliver Goldsmith’s 1773 “Party People” (in previews, at the Public) explores the vexed legacies of the Black Panthers and the

ILLUSTRATION BY DANIELKRALL ILLUSTRATIONBY comedy concerns a wealthy gentleman who gets Young Lords, imagining an art opening where former members of the revolutionary groups reunite.

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 19 DANCE

The exhibition “At Twilight” explores the 1916 play “At the Hawk’s Well,” written by William Butler Yeats, who was inspired by Japanese Noh theatre.

Otherworldly Yeats, and the Irish master loved them, who were part of Yeats’s and Pound’s both for their austerity and, above all, world—Brancusi, Jacob Epstein, Henri At Japan Society, Simon Starling for their inclusion of the immaterial Gaudier-Brzeska—and a display of revives the spirit of Yeats. world. He himself was in close contact what Starling calls “mind maps,” which In the years before the First World with the beyond. Each Monday, he are montages of materials (letters, pho- War, many artists were trying to fight travelled from his home, in Sussex, to tographs, etc.) from the period. Now their way out of what they saw as the London, so that, with the help of his artifacts from the Glasgow perfor- prison of realism, the requirement that medium, he could have a talk with Leo mances have been installed in four gal- their work deal with the plight of Africanus, a sixteenth-century traveller leries at Japan Society, where they will women or workers or whatever. They and scholar whom he regarded as his remain until mid-January. wanted to return to what they saw as spiritual alter ego. Inspired by Noh, The star of the show is the grand the true source of art, the mind’s dia- Yeats, in 1916, created his play “At the and spooky first gallery, where, against logue with the soul. An especially ex- Hawk’s Well,” for three characters: the black walls, the beautiful masks have asperated participant in all this was the Irish mythological hero Cuchulain, an been hung atop what look like dead tree great Irish poet William Butler Yeats, old man, and a dancing hawk, gathered trunks. These are backed by a video of who felt that Western drama, by cutting around a basin of holy water on a lonely the hawk’s seven-minute solo, by the its ties with ritual, had lost its poetic mountainside. Venezuelan choreographer Javier De and social force. Then, in 1909, Yeats Nearly a century later, “At the Frutos, from the Glasgow show. The met the American poet Ezra Pound, Hawk’s Well” caught the attention of dance is very stark. The hooded brown who would soon be working on trans- the British conceptual artist Simon hawk (Thomas Edwards, from the lations of Japanese Noh drama, a highly Starling, who specializes in installations Scottish Ballet) stamps and folds his stylized form dating back to the four- and performances invoking older art- wings in and out to the beating of teenth century. Instead of parlors and works, often from early modernism, drums and gongs. The dance then un- social problems, a Noh play would have and reframing them in their historical folds into turns, runs, dips, and swoops, maybe a pine tree, some drummers, and context. This past summer, in Glasgow, but it ends as quietly as it began. We one or two masked performers, some- Starling staged “At Twilight,” a rein- seem, like Yeats, to have met spirits times representing ghosts. terpretation of “At the Hawk’s Well,” from the next world.

Pound showed the Noh texts to with masks in the style of the artists —Joan Acocella PING ILLUSTRATIONBY ZHU

20 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 DANCE

American Ballet Theatre Side. (N.Y.U. Skirball Center, 566 LaGuardia Here, they will perform “The Killing of Dussa- A.B.T. polishes of its brief fall season with a Pl. 212-998-4941. Oct. 27-28.) sana,” a story from the Mahabharata. (Gerald week of mixed bills. Not to be missed is Alexei W. Lynch Theatre, John Jay College, 524 W. 59th Ratmansky’s “Serenade After Plato’s Sympo- Jérôme Bel St. 212-721-6500. Oct. 28 and Oct. 30.) sium” (Oct. 26), new last season. In this curi- The mischievous French provocateur has been ous, complex work, Ratmansky takes on Pla- well known in New York dance circles for more “Sounds of India” / Mark Morris to’s dialogue on the nature of love. (The music than a decade, but only now, as part of the Cross- Dance Group is Leonard Bernstein’s eponymous violin con- ing the Line Festival, do New Yorkers get their Mark Morris’s ensemble will perform a pro- certo.) Seven male dancers embark on a series frst chance to see the 1995 work that he gave gram that includes two early works by Morris of danced monologues, by turns melancholy, his own name. At the Kitchen, “Jérôme Bel” is a set to Indian music. One of his earliest break- grave, and intoxicated. Ratmansky manages to stripped-down, back-to-basics afair involving a throughs was a solo, “O Rangasayee” (1984), a turn the language of dance into a conversation naked man and woman, illuminated by a single twenty-minute tour de force set to a raga by about ideas. On Oct. 27 and at the matinée on light bulb, as one of them hums a familiar piece Sri Tyagaraja. This will be the frst time that Oct. 29, the company’s newest principal, Jef- of classical music. Further uptown, at the Mu- it is performed by someone other than Mor- frey Cirio, dances one of George Balanchine’s seum of Modern Art (11 W. 53rd St.), Bel pres- ris; Dallas McMurray does the honors. In the greatest male roles, the Prodigal, from his ents “MoMA Dance Company,” an exercise for comic “Tamil Film Songs in Stereo” (1983), 1929 ballet “Prodigal Son.” • Oct. 26 at 7:30: members of the museum’s staf, who have chosen Morris juxtaposes the antics of ballet class with “Monotones I and II,” “Serenade After Pla- their own music and choreography, Oct. 27-31 the highly expressive style of Tamil flm music. to’s Symposium,” and “Prodigal Son.” • Oct. at 12:30 and 3. (The Kitchen, 512 W. 19th St. 212- The program also includes a new work, “Pure 27 at 7:30: “Her Notes,” “Symphonic Varia- 255-5793. Oct. 27-29.) Dance Items,” with music by Terry Riley. (Ger- tions,” and “Prodigal Son.” • Oct. 28 at 7:30: ald W. Lynch Theatre, John Jay College, 524 W. 59th “Her Notes,” “Monotones I and II,” and “Prod- “Sounds of India” / Kerala Kalamandalam St. 212-721-6500. Oct. 29, Nov. 3, and Nov. 5.) igal Son.” • Oct. 29 at 2: “Monotones I and II,” Kathakali Troupe “Her Notes,” and “Prodigal Son.” • Oct. 29 Curated by Mark Morris, this series at the “Works & Process” / “Rules of the Game” at 8: “Her Notes,” “Monotones I and II,” and White Light Festival refects Morris’s highly The most famous member of the creative team “Daphnis and Chloe.” • Oct. 30 at 2: “Mono- refned tastes, which he has honed over three for “Rules of the Game,” a multimedia produc- tones I and II,” “Symphonic Variations,” and decades of travels to India. The all-male Ker- tion that will make its local début at BAM in No- “Daphnis and Chloe.” (David H. Koch, Lincoln ala Kalamandalam troupe specializes in Katha- vember, is the pop star Pharrell Williams, who Center. 212-496-0600.) kali, a dance-drama style from the state of Ker- created the original score. But the central voice ala, in southern India. Like Kabuki and Peking is that of the choreographer Jonah Bokaer, who Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company Opera, Kathakali is an elaborate, vibrant, and appears here to introduce excerpts and talk about The company heads around the corner from its highly stylized art that combines singing and the piece, on which he collaborated with Williams, home at New York Live Arts for a week at the movement. The performers wear extravagant the co-composer David Campbell, and the visual Joyce, alternating between two installments costumes: masks, crowns, fantastical makeup. artist Daniel Arsham. (Guggenheim Museum, Fifth of Jones’s “Analogy” trilogy, a series of text- Men embody both male and female characters. Ave. at 89th St. 212-423-3575. Oct. 31.) heavy, collage-like pieces based on oral- history interviews. The New York première of “Dora: Tramontane” takes on the memories of Jones’s ninety- fve-year-old mother-in-law, who was young and Jewish in Belgium and France during the Second World War. “Lance: Pretty a.k.a. The Escape Artist,” also a local première, re- counts the experiences of Jones’s nephew, as a dancer, a drug addict, and a male escort. (175 Eighth Ave., at 19th St. 212-242-0800. Oct. 25-30 and Nov. 1. Through Nov. 6.)

White Light Festival / Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui As its Biblical title would suggest, “Babel(words),” the opening dance selection of this year’s White Light Festival, is about communication across di- visions of language and culture. A large cast, of di- verse national origins and dance training, speaks in many tongues, with body language to match, courtesy of the Flemish-Moroccan choreographer Cherkaoui and his co-creator, Damien Jalet. As the dancers rearrange huge metal frames (by the sculptor Antony Gormley), they also reassem- ble themselves, breaking apart and huddling to- gether with metaphorical implications. (Rose The- atre, 60th St. at Broadway. 212-721-6500. Oct. 26-27.)

BalletCollective Troy Schumacher’s ensemble enters its sixth season with a program of new works. Schum- acher, who is also a dancer with New York City Ballet, has developed a unique approach. Each project is a three-way collaboration between an artist or writer, a composer, and Schumacher himself. This time around, his collaborators are two architects, Carlos Arnaiz and James Ram- sey, and two young composers, Judd Greenstein and Ellis Ludwig-Leone. (The music will be played by Hotel Elefant; all the dancers are from N.Y.C.B.) One of the ballets is inspired by Ramsey’s designs for the Lowline, an un- derground park planned for the Lower East

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 21 of the story. Only a brief scene of Clara’s confict with her daughter (Maeve Jinkings) over the fam- ily fortune ofers a hint of troubled waters. In Por- MOVIES tuguese.—R.B. (In limited release.) 1 The Birth of a Nation have enough. With Shia LaBeouf.—Anthony Lane Nate Parker produced, directed, wrote, and stars in OPENING (Reviewed in our issue of 10/10/16.) (In limited release.) this bio-pic about Nat Turner, who led a brief, vi- olent—and brutally suppressed—uprising of slaves Finding Babel A documentary, directed by David American Pastoral in Virginia in 1831, and the movie’s strengths and Novack, about the writer Isaac Babel, who died in a In his directorial début, Ewan McGregor catches weaknesses arise equally from his highly personal- Soviet prison in 1940. Opening Oct. 28. (In limited re- the elegiac grandeur of Philip Roth’s 1997 novel but ized approach. As a child, the prodigious Nat was lease.) • Gimme Danger A documentary about Iggy flters out its bitter irony, historical sweep, and psy- educated in the main house by one of his owners Pop and the Stooges, directed by Jim Jarmusch. chological complexity. He also miscasts himself in (Penelope Ann Miller). As an itinerant preacher Opening Oct. 28. (In limited release.) • Inferno Ron the lead role of Seymour (the Swede) Levov, a suc- hired out for his master’s proft, Nat witnessed Howard directed this thriller, based on a novel by cessful businessman living comfortably in a rus- fellow- slaves enduring unspeakable brutalities; his Dan Brown, about a professor (Tom Hanks) who tic corner of New Jersey, whose settled existence is anguished exchanges of glances with them as they is being hunted by killers on the trail of a medie- overturned by the nineteen- sixties. The Swede—so wonder whether he’s a collaborator or an ally are val manuscript. Co-starring Felicity Jones, Omar nicknamed, as a star athlete in high school, for his the flm’s most powerful moments. Throughout, Sy, Ben Foster, Sidse Babett Knudsen, and Irrfan pale skin and blond hair, rare in his milieu of New- Parker shows the totalitarian nihilism of slavery, of- Khan. Opening Oct. 28. (In wide release.) ark Jews—is married to Dawn (Jennifer Connelly), fering insight into the slaveholders’ ruthless world 1 a Catholic of Irish descent. Their teen-age daugh- through the incisive voice of a house slave (Roger ter, Merry (Hannah Nordberg), consumed by po- Guenveur Smith); but in sequences evoking the NOW PLAYING litical activism during the Vietnam War, bombs a rape of Nat’s wife, Cherry (Aja Naomi King), and local post ofce, killing the postmaster, and van- of another enslaved woman named Esther (Gabri- The Accountant ishes from home. The earnest modesty of McGre- elle Union), he stifes the women’s voices and makes This thrill-free thriller, written by Bill Dubuque gor’s direction keeps the capable cast (including it all about Nat—and Nate. Enduring a monstrous and directed by Gavin O’Connor, piles up plotlines Dakota Fanning, Uzo Aduba, and Peter Riegert) in whipping, Nat is presented as Christ-like, an image like an overbuilt house of cards that comes crashing restrained balance, but McGregor himself doesn’t reinforced, after his arrest, at his hanging. But by down at the frst well-earned gufaw of ridicule. The display the grace or bounding humor that raises then, Parker’s actorly vanity has trampled politics disaster-by-numbers is all the more lamentable for the Swede from bourgeois banality to a kind of and drama alike.—R.B. (In wide release.) wasting a superb cast. Ben Afeck plays the title role heroism. McGregor and the screenwriter, John of a fanatically detail-oriented math wizard whose Romano, also bowdlerize the Swede’s character, Certain Women deftness with the books renders him useful to hard- omitting some of Roth’s crucial twists and reduc- The three sections of Kelly Reichardt’s new flm— pressed homeowners and international crime lords ing the drama from tragedy to misfortune.—R.B. set in Montana and adapted from stories by Maile alike—and whose wide range of clients also causes (In limited release.) Meloy—are consistent in their restrained tone but his range of pseudonyms to multiply. Diagnosed in divergent in their impact. The frst two episodes childhood as high-functioning autistic, he was sub- Aquarius ofer little besides moderately engaging plots, but jected by his father to brutal extremes on the tough- Despite Sonia Braga’s ferce performance as a woman the third packs an overwhelming power of mood, love spectrum, leaving him both traumatized and of unbreakable determination and proud refne- observation, and longing. In the frst, Laura Dern weaponized. Meanwhile, he’s being pursued by two ment, this drama by the Brazilian director Kleber plays Laura, a lawyer whose afair with a married man Treasury agents (J. K. Simmons and Cynthia Addai- Mendonça Filho quickly lapses into sentimental at- named Ryan (James Le Gros) is ending just as a cli- Robinson), hired by a businessman (John Lithgow), titudinizing. Braga plays Clara, a music critic and ent (Jared Harris), a disabled construction worker, and befriended by a consultant (Anna Kendrick) essayist who, in 1980, when she was a young mother comes unhinged. In the second, Ryan and his wife, whose life is in danger. Events fy by solely because of three, survived breast cancer. Now the retired and Gina (Michelle Williams), who is also his boss, visit they can be written and flmed; gun battles, hand- long-widowed writer lives alone in a fne old wa- an elderly acquaintance, Albert (René Auberjonois), to-hand combat, and other forms of mayhem un- terfront apartment in her native Recife. She’s the to buy stone for their country house. The third story spool by the yard; ponderous epigrams land with a building’s last resident; it has been emptied by a de- features Lily Gladstone as Jamie, a young caretaker thud; and the movie’s most alluring presence is the veloper who’s trying to push her out. Surrounded at a horse farm who drops in on an adult-education silent and immobile gleam of the hero’s Airstream by her records and her books, deeply rooted in the class and strikes up a tense and tenuous friendship trailer.—Richard Brody (In wide release.) community and relishing the ocean view, the free- with the teacher, a young lawyer named Beth (Kristen spirited Clara embodies an ideal of broad-minded Stewart). Here, Reichardt infuses slender details with American Honey intellectualism and erotic vitality that meets its fac- breathtaking emotion. The fervent attention to light The British director Andrea Arnold, who, in flms ile antithesis in predatory businessmen. (The flm and movement—as in a scene of a quietly frenzied like “Fish Tank” (2009), has scoured the rougher also views popular songs as a mode of cultural trans- nocturnal pursuit—seems to expand cinematic time regions of working-class Britain, now turns her at- mission, but, in the process, it veers toward stereo- and fll it with inner life.—R.B. (In limited release.) tention to the United States. The result is her lon- types.) Ultimately, friends rally around Clara for gest and loosest movie to date: a road trip, under- a rousing fnish; in the meantime, the director’s Christine taken by the eighteen-year-old Star (Sasha Lane), self-evident sympathies leach the complexity out Antonio Campos’s flm tells the sad and reproach- in the company of a mad and merry gang. In charge 1 ful story of Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall), is the adamantine Krystal (Riley Keough), who, like who worked as a reporter at a small TV station in Fagin, sends her minions onto the streets and takes THE FRONT ROW Sarasota, Florida, and who attempted suicide on a cut of the earnings; the diference is that these the air. That was in 1974, and the movie re-creates youngsters, uprooted and adrift, are not picking not just the sounds of the period (Christine sings pockets but selling magazines. Star’s orbit takes along to John Denver in her Volkswagen Beetle), her through parking lots, motels, and truck stops; and the brown-infested color schemes, but the there are passing encounters with oil workers, rich quickening race for more lurid news—which was types in cowboy hats, and a family of impoverished exactly, if briefy, what her death supplied. Her boss kids whose mother is too strung out on drugs to care is played, with typical trenchancy, by Tracy Letts; for them. The camera’s gaze is restless and encyclo- her colleague, who takes her to dinner and then to pedic, and the grimness of the settings is ofset by a “transactional analysis” meeting, by Michael C. a raucous soundtrack and by Arnold’s trademark Hall; and her mother, whose vague hippie tenden- splashes of hot and concentrated color. Whether her cies Christine deplores, by J. Smith-Cameron. But feeling for American lives on the move is as strong the flm belongs wholeheartedly to Rebecca Hall, as her grasp of British earthiness, though, is open A video discussion of Eddie Murphy’s who delivers a startling portrait of a dissatisfed to question, and the movie is menaced by its own “Harlem Nights,” from 1989, in our digital soul in a tall and awkward frame, struggling both

aimlessness; such hunger for sensation can never edition. Murphy and Richard Pryor star. to get ahead in her career and to fnd her berth in EVERETT

22 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 ADVERTISEMENT 2017 DESK DIARY

Our 2017 collection has arrived. Juggle your daily schedule of work and play with a much needed dose of humor.

Shop all ten colors at newyorkerstore.com/diaries or call 800-459-3037. MOVIES the world. Campos’s direction, alert but restrained, rapid medical triage of the survivors and a search for and a half hours, in fooling with the intricate plans of honors her memory by refusing to feed the craving the dead, ofcers pat down and document the new- the characters and, for good measure, with the minds for sensation.—A.L. (10/24/16) (In limited release.) comers before dispatching them to shelters. There, of the audience. The action is set in the nineteen- they maintain a semblance of normalcy by means of thirties, in Korea, and liberally adapted from Sarah Deepwater Horizon soccer games, impromptu performances, and phone Waters’s novel “Fingersmith,” a no less tasty tale Peter Berg’s account of the explosion on an oil rig of calls home. Meanwhile, a doctor does his best to of Victorian London. Kim Tae-ri plays Sook-Hee, the coast of Louisiana, in 2010, is so expertly done, provide needed care. Rosi flms the migrants empa- a young woman bred in the low niceties of crime, and so thrilling to behold, that you end up slightly thetically but sentimentally; he depicts helicopters who becomes a maidservant to the high-ranking troubled by your own excitement. Should the story and ships with bombastic grandeur. What’s more, Hideko (Kim Min-hee), herself no stranger to of a true catastrophe, which left eleven people dead half the movie has nothing to do with migrants— stratagems. It’s hard to fnd a single person onscreen and wrought havoc on the environment, really be it’s the story of a local boy named Samuele; his fa- whose title or demeanor is a reliable match for his this much fun? We get a small squad of characters ther, Nello, a fsherman; his grandmother, Maria; or her true nature; for instance, neither the youth- to guide us through the tangle of the incident. Mark and other residents of the island. Rosi gets close ful count who arrives to pay court to Hideko nor her Wahlberg plays Mike Williams, the chief electron- to them without hearing from them; he observes bibliomaniacal guardian is to be trusted an inch. Just ics technician on the rig, with Kate Hudson, as his them in a pristine isolation that implies anything to ensnare us more tightly, Park replays some of the wife, and an indestructible Kurt Russell, as his boss, and nothing.—R.B. (In limited release.) episodes with a twist, from a diferent viewpoint, yet known to all as Mr. Jimmy. The villain of the piece, the marvel of the movie is that, far from seeming like a senior fgure from BP, is—as you would hope— The Girl on the Train mere trickery, it feels drenched in longing and de- played by John Malkovich. (Though the bulk of the Except for a change in setting, from the suburbs sire. The cinematographer, gravely surveying these blame ultimately went to BP, fault was also found of London to New York State, this is a faithful ad- shenanigans, is Chung Chung-Hoon. In Korean with other companies; the flm has no room for aptation of Paula Hawkins’s improbably best-sell- and Japanese.—A.L. (10/24/16) (In limited release.) such niceties.) The movie, credible and relaxed as ing book. A little disloyalty would not have gone it delves into the daylight habits of the crew, bursts amiss. Emily Blunt, giving it everything but for- Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar into pandemonium as the well blows, night falls, and bidden to exert her comic gifts, plays Rachel, the Children the fames assume command. If you don’t quite un- lonesome, boozy, and therefore unreliable witness Ransom Riggs’s wonderful young-adult novel, the derstand what’s happening, you’re not alone; even of a crime. Also caught up in the palaver are a pair frst in a best-selling series, gets the full Tim Bur- some of the old hands, struggling to contain the of mildly interchangeable blondes (Haley Bennett ton treatment in this wobbly adaptation. The story chaos, are at sea.—A.L. (10/10/16) (In wide release.) and Rebecca Ferguson) and a trio of tedious men is set mainly in an orphanage on a remote island (Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, and Edgar Ramírez), near Wales, where a group of children with oddball Fire at Sea any one of whom could be a murderer. Little of powers (one foats in the air; another is a human Europe’s migrant crisis—the mortal dangers that Tate Taylor’s movie makes sense, and what does beehive) are huddled under the care of their head- migrants face while travelling to Europe, and the make sense seems barely to matter at all; fans of mistress, Miss Peregrine (a stellar Eva Green). Her difculties of European institutions in receiving middle-class homicide will note the expert use of mission is to protect them from the magical mach- them—is given a prettifed and distracted yet de- a corkscrew as a lethal weapon. The one bright inations of a shape-shifting creature named Barron voted consideration in Gianfranco Rosi’s documen- light, amid the gloom, is Allison Janney, who plays (Samuel L. Jackson), who is out to kill them and tary. It focusses on Lampedusa, the sparsely pop- a skeptical cop.—A.L. (10/19/16) (In wide release.) thereby achieve immortality. When a teen-ager ulated Italian island that is a main destination for (Asa Butterfeld) discovers his own peculiarity, he many of the overcrowded and rickety boats coming The Handmaiden bonds with the others to fght the evil that threat- from North Africa. Rosi shows rescue workers des- Park Chan-wook’s new flm is his most delectable to ens them. Riggs’s fantastical vision, which includes perately trying to reach foundering vessels. After a date. Illicitly suave, it takes pleasure, over nearly two time loops and a teen romance in a Second World

The director and writer Kelly Reichardt’s new film, “Certain Women,” based on stories by Maile Meloy, is a three-part drama set in Montana. The third

segment stars Lily Gladstone, as a solitary ranch hand who strikes up a friendship with a lawyer (Kristen Stewart) whom she meets in a night class. COURTESYIFCFILMS

24 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 MOVIES

War setting, allows Burton to manufacture some and Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) to an investigation that while, DuVernay traces the rising number of black beautiful, haunting set pieces. The flm begins with could cost him his job and even his pension. East- prisoners (Bill Clinton’s policies, many undertaken a little too much backstory but hits its entertaining wood flms the doomed fight with a terrifyingly in- with the support of black politicians, were also to and playfully macabre stride before devolving into timate sense of danger, focussing on its existential blame) as well as the widespread tolerance of police a C.G.I.-heavy maelstrom of action (never one of center, the little red button under the pilot’s thumb. violence against black people, linking legal depravi- Burton’s strong points). But there is enough dark The flm movingly depicts Sully’s modest insistence ties to entrenched economic interests. The flm re- whimsy at work here to overlook the business-as- that he was just doing his job and the collective cour- veals crimes that have been fabricated in the service usual ending.—Bruce Diones (In wide release.) age of fight attendants, air-trafc controllers, po- of oppression as well as another, real and ongoing lice ofcers, and the passengers themselves. But, crime—against humanity.—R.B. (In limited release.) Moonlight throughout, Eastwood boldly thrusts attention to- Miami heat and light weigh heavily on the furious ward the aftermath of the fight: the nerve- jangling Tower lives and moods realized by the director Barry Jen- media distortion of events and personalities, plus the This documentary, by Keith Maitland, reconstructs kins. The grand yet fnespun drama, straddling the investigators’ ultimate weapon, a computer simula- with forensic precision and dramatic immediacy the nineteen-eighties, depicts three eras in the life of a tion of the landing, a movie on which Sully’s honor 1966 sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin young black man: as a bullied schoolboy called Lit- depends. The result is Eastwood’s dedicated vi- that left eighteen people dead, an event that’s widely tle (Alex Hibbert), who is neglected by his crack- sion of moviemaking itself.—R.B. (In wide release.) considered the frst modern mass shooting. Maitland addicted mother (Naomie Harris) and sheltered and blends archival footage, original interviews with sur- mentored by a drug dealer (Mahershala Ali) and 13th vivors and responders, and animated images of sev- his girlfriend (Janelle Monáe); as a teen-ager with Ava DuVernay’s brilliantly analytical and morally eral sorts—including, strikingly, ones that return the his given name of Chiron (Ashton Sanders), whose passionate documentary traces the current-day mass interviewees to their age at the time of the attack. friendship with a classmate named Kevin (Jharrel incarceration of black Americans to its historical or- The animation, by Craig Staggs, has a notable imag- Jerome) veers toward romantic intimacy and leads igins in the Thirteenth Amendment, which banned inative specifcity, and the meticulously complex in- to violence; and as a grown man nicknamed Black slavery and involuntary servitude “except as pun- terweaving of styles turns the flm into a horrifying (Trevante Rhodes), who faces adult responsibilities ishment for a crime.” That exception, as she demon- true-crime thriller that’s enriched by a rare depth with terse determination and reconnects with Kevin strates by way of a wide range of interview subjects of inner experience. The efect is as much intellec- (André Holland). Adapting a play by Tarell Alvin (including Jelani Cobb, of The New Yorker) and archi- tual as emotional, folding the movie refexively into McCraney, Jenkins burrows deep into his charac- val material, quickly led to the systematic criminal- its subject: the personal importance of public dis- ters’ pain-seared memories, creating ferociously re- ization of black people. When Jim Crow laws yielded cussion. The dearth of archival interviews regard- strained performances and confrontational yet ten- to the civil-rights movement in the nineteen-sixties, ing this event corresponds to the interviewees’ ret- der images that seem wrenched from his very core. Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” and “law and rospective view of the mid-sixties. Exhorted at the Even the title is no mere nature reference but an order” campaign—which endure to this day—aimed time to put the troubles behind them and discour- evocation of skin color; subtly alluding to wider so- to keep black citizens subjugated and out of power. aged from speaking about their experiences, many cietal conficts, Jenkins looks closely at the hard in- DuVernay shows Ronald Reagan’s “war on drugs,” of the subjects approach Maitland’s interviews as timacies of people whose very identities are forged his economic policies, and his eforts at voter sup- long-overdue, albeit pain-flled, acts of personal lib- under relentless pressure.—R.B. (In limited release.) pression to be a part of the same strategy. Mean- eration.—R.B. (In limited release.)

Queen of Katwe Mira Nair’s inspirational drama is based on the true story of Phiona Mutesi, a girl from a poor neigh- borhood in Kampala, Uganda, who discovers chess at a Christian mission, quickly displays her talent for the game and, in just a few years, becomes a champion and a national hero. The director imbues the insistently heartwarming premise with sincere emotion and well-observed touches of wider soci- etal import. Madina Nalwanga makes her screen début as Phiona, an illiterate maize seller who joins a sports-outreach program run by Robert Katende (David Oyelowo), a brilliant civil engineer await- ing a permanent job in his feld. Discerning Phio- na’s intelligence and skill, Robert makes her educa- tion his main order of business; the action pivots on his efort to overcome the class-based disdain of a private- school headmaster who runs a major tourna- ment. The underlying political anguish of the poor people of Katwe is privatization—of schools, hos- pitals, and even the water supply—and the lack of a safety net, leaving them utterly dependent upon charity and good will. Nair flms the streets of Kam- pala with ardent discernment, in shots that are un- fortunately edited to slivers. Lupita Nyong’o brings vital energy to the role of Phiona’s mother; the entire cast, directed with grace, flls the soundtrack with a virtual symphony of voices.—R.B. (In wide release.)

Sully Clint Eastwood transforms the events, in 2009, of Flight 1549—which Captain Chesley Sullen- berger and First Ofcer Jef Skiles safely landed in the Hudson River after losing both jets in a bird strike—into a ferce, stark, haunted drama of hor- ror narrowly avoided. Eastwood’s depiction of Sully (played, with terse gravity, by Tom Hanks) begins with a shock: the captain’s 9/11-esque vision of his plane crashing into New York buildings. The ac- tion of the flm involves another shock: federal of- fcials question Sully’s judgment and subject him

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 25 NIGHT LIFE

Bring It Back mer Daniel Fang told Thrasher over the summer. Turnstile digs up hardcore’s best Yates, Fang, Brady Ebert, and Franz intentions. Lyons formed Turnstile in Baltimore, “Out of Rage,” by the Maryland band in 2010, carving out time from their Turnstile, nominally cops to its echoes other bands to release singles and tour. of Zack de la Rocha and Tom Morel- Their melodic rifs, bright-eyed spirit, lo’s leftist metal—the song could be a and riotous sets stood out, and the Trump dig if you squint just so. “You group gained an enthusiastic following blow a lot of smoke, scared to move,” in tight-webbed hardcore scenes across the vocalist Brendan Yates shout-raps the country. The music video for over popping snares and slow-swung “Drop,” from 2014, showcases the bass guitar, which hammer with a band’s loud and fast brand of opti- blacksmith’s touch. “Two cents to im- mism—filmed in black-and-white and press, with a closed-mind view.” hand-painted, frame by frame, in Throughout Turnstile’s 2015 album, shades of turquoise, goldenrod, and “Nonstop Feeling,” Yates and his co- salmon, the clip features a toothless hort propose a more open-minded ten-year-old flashing peace signs, and stance, cunningly blurring party lines. at least one puppy. It captures hard- The record flips the strict fundamen- core’s richest paradox: that angry music talism of its genre, with stomping rap can be happy, and that venting wrath drums, Red Hot hooks, and wilting alt responsibly clears the mind for better interludes, embracing turn-of-the- use. “Human emotion is unrelenting,” century hybrid rock styles that many Yates told Substream last year. “The punks of a similar age have left stufed songs are about ways of adjusting to under childhood beds. “I found Turn- emotion.” stile through hip-hop, which really is These principles of clear thinking a testament to their influence in shift- and clean living underlie Turnstile’s ing music and culture,” Cody Verdecias, scene, which creates space for well- the A. & R. who signed the band to considered chaos; at the band’s Oct. 27 the metal label Roadrunner this spring, stop at Sunnyvale, with the beloved said recently. “Anyone can rebel against outfits Angel Du$t, Fury, Krimewatch, their parents, anyone can rebel against and Big Bite, there will be rage to spare, society, but rebelling against your peers and to share. is the hardest thing to do,” the drum- —Matthew Trammell JORDANAWAN ILLUSTRATIONBY

26 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 1NIGHT LIFE

ROCK AND POP lapped up by music élites well before he had re- leased a proper work of his own. His songs often Musicians and night-club proprietors lead ofer little more than an upright piano—after col- complicated lives; it’s advisable to check laborating with such like-minded minimalists as in advance to confrm engagements. the xx, Sampha Sisay released “Too Much,” a bal- lad about taking things lightly, which soon served Cypress Hill as the foundation for the standout track on Drake’s Rap’s frst Latino platinum-sellers and pioneers of “Nothing Was the Same.” Kanye West tried his its stoner sub-genre, B-Real and DJ Muggs have hand at the same kind of wrenching fnal act on his been pushing the envelope for as long as they’ve latest album, enlisting Sampha to soften his boom- been recording. They struck morbid gold in 1991 ing manifesto “Saint Pablo.” But the singer does with “How I Could Just Kill a Man,” a brooding fne solo work, too, as displayed on his forthcom- call-and-response anthem, and their follow-up ing début album; the lead single, “Timmy’s Prayer,” triple- platinum hit “Insane in the Brain,” from 1993, boasts couplets as rich as its chords: “My vital or- cemented their place on freak-out festival bills for gans are beating through / my ribcage opened, my years to come. B-Real’s high-pitched, nasal vocal heart ballooned,” he sings with vivid tenderness. style helped the music stand out from gangster-rap Sampha is accompanied and supported by the vo- fare, and the group’s fuency in nu-metal styles gave calist and cellist Kelsey Lu. (Music Hall of Williams- them cred across genres. For this one-of Haunted burg, 66 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. 718-486-5400. Oct. 27.) Hill concert, they invite the infuential East Or- ange rap duo Naughty by Nature to reign terror. “Scream” Twentieth-Anniversary Party (Terminal 5, 610 W. 56th St. 212-582-6600. Oct. 28.) The twisted minds at Music Video Time Machine celebrate the two decades since Wes Craven birthed Local Natives the horror franchise that keeps on attacking. In This summer, these Silver Lake indie-pop stars 1996, the movie’s self-awareness and pop-culture released “Villainy,” an uncompromising, shout- fuency was innovative for a genre that demanded along love letter to their city. Since their 2009 little more than blood, guts, and jump cuts. Today, début, “Gorilla Manor,” the band has lost mem- young audiences reared on its subversion of clichés bers and loved ones, but expanded in songwrit- and typecasts are drawn to titles that break form ing and arrangement. Kelcey Ayer, Ryan Hahn, as sharply as they slash: “It Follows” and “Don’t and Taylor Rice travelled to Southeast Asia, Cen- Breathe” have inherited the flm’s cynical edge and tral America, and the Pacifc Islands while record- cult adoration. Fans can relive the camp at this ing their latest album, “Sunlit Youth,” reëmerg- dance party, featuring nineties-themed d.j. sets and ing this September with a long play that is horror-movie trailers from the era. (Rough Trade, fttingly warm and harmonious. Its lyrics speak 64 N. 9th St., Brooklyn. roughtradenyc.com. Oct. 31.) of self-discovery and transparency: “Save me from the prime of my life / And I will wait for you S U R V I V E at the end, love,” Ayer sings, as romantic a sen- The feel-good binge of the year might still be the timent as any young adult might muster. (Ter- frst season of “Stranger Things,” a mystery-thriller minal 5, 610 W. 56th St. 212-582-6600. Oct. 26.) series in which a gang of young protagonists join forces to fnd their best friend, who’s trapped in a Primal Scream parallel dimension. The initial rush of acclaimers Though they formed in 1982, these Glasgow psych praised the show’s Dungeons and Dragons refer- rockers didn’t gain their footing until the release ences, nostalgic touches of action-adventure melo- of their euphoric album “Screamadelica,” in the fall drama, and, because it’s set in a sleepy nineteen- of 1991. The lineup has evolved since the band’s in- eighties suburb, lack of smartphones. But, as it ception, with comings and goings presided over creeped and crawled on, more fans took note of the by the frontman Bobby Gillespie, a former drum- haunting analog score that perfectly accented each mer for the Jesus and Mary Chain. What remains episode. S U R V I V E, the Austin synth group is Primal Scream’s consistent quality of output that composed the music, ofcially released the and a commitment to an evolving sound. Al- soundtrack in August; they bring their chilling though the band’s latest studio album, “Chaosmo- mood music to Good Room for their FIXED Hal- sis,” from last March, was not received by critics loween party, with opening sets by JDH and Dave P. as enthusiastically as their 2013 comeback efort, (98 Meserole Ave., Brooklyn. 718-349-2373. Oct. 31.) “More Light,” the group has long pleased them- selves frst, and let others follow if they’d like. Trash Talk (Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. 212-777-6800. Nov. 1.) Having built a reputation on maniacal touring— they once played a hundred shows in a hundred Ricky Eat Acid days—this California-based punk outft has now Maryland’s Sam Ray, who performs as Ricky Eat settled into a role once thought improbable for Acid, avoids stoking anticipation for his releases, an underground powerhouse: business propri- and instead sticks to spontaneous and clever meth- etors. Trash Talk’s Lee Spielman and Garret Ste- ods of distribution, appropriate for his ambient venson founded and operates Babylon, an egal- sound’s sheepish contrast to noisy, kinetic E.D.M. itarian shop just outside Hollywood, which Ray’s live shows are engaging without relying on carries a tightly edited selection of magazines, giant stage props or oversold button-mashing pag- books, and apparel; the band members installed eantry, though a certain degree of hardware play a bowl behind the store, where local skateboard- remains unavoidable. At a time when many elec- ers while away the hours. Back on the road for a tronic musicians are burdened with proving their coast-hopping run of dates through the fall, Trash artistry or their marketability, Ricky Eat Acid does Talk is supported by the Bay Area miscreant Ant- neither, opting to make personal compositions won and Black Noi$e, one of Detroit’s most capa- with little pretense. (Baby’s All Right, 146 Broad- ble young club producers. (Brooklyn Bazaar, 150 way, Brooklyn. 718-599-5800. Oct. 27.) Greenpoint Ave., Brooklyn. bkbazaar.com. Nov. 1.)

Sampha Tricky A cherished new voice in soul, and a welcome new “Here come the horses to drag me to bed,” David perspective in electronica, this British musician was Bowie wrote in an issue of Q magazine, about

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 27 NIGHT LIFE this U.K. trip-hopper’s début album. “Here come the Tricky to fuck up my head.” Adrian Thaws is certainly of the same otherworldly ilk as his late critic: his ethereal, deeply dark mate- ABOVE & BEYOND rial has traced a life shrouded in turmoil. Grow- ing up without parents—his father was absent, and his mother took her own life when he was four—Thaws bounced between grandmothers and great-grandmothers before taking to the gestat- ing blends of breakbeat hip-hop and experimen- tal electronic music that were writhing in Bris- tol. He’s since released ten albums from various knotted identities; he showcases his latest collab- orative project, under the name Skilled Mechan- ics, along with Rituals of Mine. (Webster Hall, 125 E.1 11th St. 212-353-1600. Oct. 28.) Rise of the Jack-o’-Lanterns Couchant).” (20 Rockefeller Plaza, at 49th St. 212- JAZZ AND STANDARDS Jack-o’-lanterns are taken seriously at this yearly 636-2000.) • Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century showcase: more than fve thousand elaborate tomes from the Fox Pointe Manor Library, includ- Kurt Elling pumpkin carvings are on display, which artists ing frst editions of “Paradise Lost” and Agustín Whether you love him or merely admire his in- spend up to ffteen hours illustrating, gutting, de Zárate’s “The Strange and Delectable History telligence and daring, Elling is certainly one of a and whittling down to breathtaking detail. Stroll of the Discoverie and Conquest of the Provinces kind, a vocal virtuoso who juggles erudition and through a scenic path and take in haunting tunes of Peru,” go under the gavel on Oct. 26 at Sothe- spontaneity with impunity. Here, he celebrates the and giant specimens that weigh more than a hun- by’s. Two days of prints—including Munch litho- release of his frst holiday project, “The Beauti- dred pounds, along with elaborate multi-gourd graphs and Morandi etchings—follow, on Oct. 27- ful Day.” (Birdland, 315 W. 44th St. 212-581-3080. structures that are stacked and illuminated to 28. (York Ave. at 72nd St. 212-606-7000.) • Prints Oct. 26-29.) depict dinosaurs, dragons, and pop-culture sta- will also fll the galleries at Phillips on Oct. 26, in ples. Artists will set up at live-carving stations, a sale that includes a set of nudes and portraits— JALC Orchestra where audiences can watch them turn around mostly drypoints—by Egon Schiele, as well as a The so-called Jazz Age of the nineteen-twenties hundreds of jacks throughout the weekend. portfolio of screenprints (“SP”) by Josef Albers. and early thirties—predating the iconic Swing (Meadowlands Exposition Center, 355 Plaza Dr., (450 Park Ave. 212-940-1200.) Era—saw the untrammelled music of New Or- Secaucus, N.J. therise.org. Oct. 27-30.) 1 leans co-existing with the straightened sounds of popular dance bands, a confuence that will The State of the Union Songbook Live READINGS AND TALKS be examined by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Or- This year, the Obie-winning composer Michael chestra, under the direction, for this event, of Friedman (“Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”) has Newark Public Library the clarinettist Victor Goines. In addition to performed several original works on The New Zadie Smith, the cherished English novelist, es- emblematic work by Armstrong, Ellington, and Yorker Radio Hour, for which he polled Amer- sayist, short-story writer, and contributor to this Gershwin, the evening will also feature an idi- ican voters about their political views and in- magazine, is the inaugural guest at the Newark omatically inspired Goines opus, “Untamed El- terpreted their stances as songs. The segment Public Library’s Philip Roth Lecture series. Since egance.” (Rose Theatre, Broadway at 60th St. 212- comes alive in this special performance, featuring writing her landmark début, “White Teeth,” in 721-6500. Oct. 28-29.) guests invited by Friedman and a talk with The 2000, and joining the English department at New New Yorker’s Sarah Larson. (The Greene Space, 44 York University a decade later, Smith has been an Rene Marie Charlton St. 646-829-4000. Oct. 26 at 7.) inimitable voice in literature and, occasionally, On her Grammy-nominated album “I Wanna in the realm of nonfction. She appears ahead of Be Evil (with Love to Eartha Kitt),” this feisty Village Halloween Parade the November release of her ffth novel, “Swing singer and outspoken civil-rights activist paid Everyone’s invited—but costumes are required— Time,” for this new annual series, focussed on top- tribute to an equally forthright and defantly ec- to march in this wild parade, one of the city’s ics in American literature and history. (5 Wash- centric inspiration. Marie’s new album, “Sound most exuberant traditions, now in its forty-third ington St., Newark, N.J. 973-733-7784. Oct. 27 at 6.) of Red,” is a decidedly personal project, ofer- year. “It’s a time for people in the most modern ing eleven original songs that hop through mu- city in the world to come out and behave in a The New School sical idioms, confrming her aversion to stylis- completely primitive way,” Jeanne Fleming, the Toni Morrison, the Nobel laureate and Pulit- tic pigeonholing. (Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St. event’s longtime director, told The New Yorker in zer Prize-winning author of “The Bluest Eye,” 212-576-2232. Oct. 27-30.) 1989. This year’s theme is “Reverie,” evoking the “Sula,” and “Beloved,” will receive the 2016 PEN/ transformative power of the masquerade along Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in Amer- Enrico Pieranunzi Quartet with Halloween’s purge of the mischievous spirit. ican Fiction. She will be honored at “Danger- Having collaborated with American jazzmen for The parade will feature more than ffty-three ous Work,” a ceremony featuring performances decades, this fuent and lyrically inclined Italian bands, hundreds of giant puppets, and thousands by the actress Adepero Oduye, of “Steel Magno- pianist is thoroughly conversant in mainstream of New Yorkers letting out their inner monsters. lias” and “The Big Short”; the veteran actor Del- modernist conventions. He returns to the venue (Sixth Ave., heading north from Canal St. to 16th roy Lindo; the jazz pianist Jason Moran; and the that hosted him last year (as captured on his lat- St. halloween-nyc.com. Oct. 31 at 7.) mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran. (66 W. 12th St. est album, “New Spring: Live at the Village Van- 1 pen.org. Oct. 27 at 7.) guard”), using the same rhythm team and a wor- thy substitute, Seamus Blake, holding down the AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES Cooper Union saxophone spot. (Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh In recognition of the centennial of the Pulitzer Ave. S., at 11th St. 212-255-4037. Oct. 25-30.) If you’ve been hankering after a picture of Salome Prizes, thirteen recipients of the poetry award will gazing lovingly upon the severed head of John the gather to share original works as well as selections Steve Ross Baptist, Christie’s is the place to go this week. The from other winners. The poets presenting are Rae A cabaret mainstay, Ross looks beyond the dis- Biblical scene, rendered by the studio of Andrea Armantrout, John Ashbery, Peter Balakian, Carl tingué night spots of the Big Apple at this bene- Solario in the ffteenth century, shares the bill Dennis, Stephen Dunn, Jorie Graham, Yusef Ko- ft for the charitable organization Heartbeats of with mythological scenes, wintry landscapes, and munyakaa, Sharon Olds, Gregory Pardlo, Philip the World, which assists displaced Jamaican stu- royal portraits in the house’s sale of Old Masters, Schultz, Vijay Seshadri, Natasha Trethewey, and dents. Rest assured: the seriousness of the cause on the morning of Oct. 26. The afternoon is de- Charles Wright; music by the composer David won’t put a damper on his vocal verve and noted voted to nineteenth-century art, including a hand- Lang will be performed by the violinist Johnny wit. (Merkin Concert Hall, Kaufman Music Center, some water scene by Corot, “Le Batelier Quit- Gandelsman and the pianist Pedja Muzijevic.

129 W. 67th St. 212-501-3330. Oct. 29.) tant la Rive avec une Femme et un Enfant (Soleil (7 E. 7th St. poetrysociety.org. Oct. 27 at 7.) AMARGO PABLO ILLUSTRATIONBY

28 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 FßD & DRINK

1 TABLES FOR TWO tequila, lime, and basil-honey concoction, BAR TA B The Lucky Bee rimmed with Thai chili, which packs an impeccable punch. Lucky You (rum 252 Broome St. (917-262-0329) served, frappe-like, in a dangerously de- “Why does a Thai restaurant have to licious coconut) and Bee My Honey have dark wood, canned-lychee Martinis, (vodka, pineapple, ginger) are appropriate and photos of the royal family?” Rupert for Tinder-facilitated meetings, or for a Nofs, the owner of the Lucky Bee, re- bachelorette powwow. The Astor Room cently asked. He was standing next to a The dishes, composed by the chef and 35-11 35th Ave., Astoria (718-255-1947) pink Illuminati eye, the insignia of his co-owner Matty Bennett (formerly of Hollywood isn’t the first thing that comes to mind farm-to-table Thai street-food restaurant, the Fat Radish), are designed to be eaten when you think of Astoria. But Kaufman Astoria Studios, a massive complex in Queens with all the which resoundingly rejects cliché. If tra- family style. Start with the grilled whole gray charm of a penitentiary, has been producing ditional Southeast Asian eateries are shrimp, butterflied and brushed with films for nearly a century, beginning with silent personified in the sombre silhouette of Nam Jim, a signature dipping sauce that pictures, in the nineteen-twenties, and continuing into the streaming age—“Orange Is the New Black” the late Thai king, the Lucky Bee is the is tart, sweet, spicy, and addictive. The is filmed there today. A door on the west side of the spirited progeny of Nicki Minaj (with a coconut-poached crab meat arrives on building opens to a marble staircase that Groucho penchant for pink and bold prints) and majestic betel leaves, a tender, zesty pro- Marx, Rudolph Valentino, and Gloria Swanson once descended to dine in the studio commissary, a space Grace Jones (to whom the bathroom tein salad impossible to re-create at home. that, in 2014, was refurbished into a speakeasy. But décor pays assiduous homage). Imagine Leave room for the braised short ribs the atmosphere is far from clandestine—the Astor such a creation, in the words of Nofs, (inspired by Bennett’s English back- Room has become a popular watering hole for gre- garious locals. On a recent Saturday night, one such “dressed in Hollywood Regency and hav- ground), cooked in coconut milk with woman pulled out a stool for a tipsy wallflower dil- ing the night of her life in Bangkok,” and lemongrass and galangal for upward of igently reading plaques describing the studio’s glam- you’ve got some idea of the Lucky Bee. four hours. orous history. “This is better than standing alone by yourself over there,” she said. Another regular de- From the ceiling (hanging pots of lan- The best item on ofer, and the sole livered a soliloquy on how to meet people in New guorous ferns) to the wall (candy stripes, dessert, is not on the menu, available only York. (Ditch the apps, talk to strangers in bars.) It’s bamboo fans, flamingos) to the windows by request. On a recent Tuesday, one easy to strike up a conversation over quirky bric-a- brac, such as a taxidermied beaver honoring the fur (army-camouflage curtains), nothing quite patron was about to call an Uber when fortune of John Jacob Astor, the namesake of both matches. But everything somehow jives, the coconut tapioca pudding arrived, the bar and the neighborhood. Also helpful: refresh- down to the floral-print fabric covering unassuming in a lowball glass. Beneath ing cocktails like the Georgia-Georgia (gin, basil, rosemary, grapefruit bitters) and A Cold Day in displayed jars of homemade candied Bud- a cloud of golden-crusted marshmallows Maine (gin, St. Germain, cucumber). Patrons have dha’s hand, kumquat with star anise, and were banana-tofee gems, tapioca pearls, been known to complain about a woman smoking pickled watermelon rind. The frenzy of and an exquisite layer of liquid honey. with a vintage cigarette holder in the ladies’ bath- room—she inevitably disappears on second glance. the festive hive is kept alive by a litany of One spoonful, and you know why it Those bound to this earthly sphere can be assured, topnotch, surprisingly subtle cocktails doesn’t require advertising. The queen at least, of their own existence: the bartenders’ from the hot-pink bar at the back of the bee never does. (Dishes $12-$38.) T-shirts are printed with an old W. C. Fields apho- PHOTOGRAPH BY MEREDITHPHOTOGRAPH BY JENKS FORTHE JOOSTNEWSWARTE YORKER; ILLUSTRATIONBY room. We Know You Like It Hot is a —Jiayang Fan rism: “I drink, therefore I am.”—Wei Tchou

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 29

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT THE CHOICE

n November 8th, barring some drama is not likely to end soon. The country, never acceded to the author- astonishment, the people of the afterefects of this campaign may be- ity of competing visions and demo- OUnited States will, after two hun- foul our civic life for some time to cratic resolutions. dred and forty years, send a woman come. Worse still, he does not accept the to the White House. The election of If the prospect of a female Presi- authority of constitutional republican- Hillary Clinton is an event that we dent represents a departure in the his- ism—its norms, its faiths and practices, will welcome for its immense histori- tory of American politics, the candi- its explicit rules and implicit under- cal importance, and greet with in- dacy of Donald J. Trump, the real- standings. That much is clear from his describable relief. It will be especially estate mogul and Republican nomi- statements about targeting press free- grati fying to have a woman as com- nee, does, too—a chilling one. He is doms, infringing on an independent mander-in-chief after such a sicken- manifestly unqualified and unfit for judiciary, banning Muslim immigra- ingly sexist and racist campaign, one ofce. Trained in the arts of real-estate tion, deporting undocumented immi- that exposed so starkly how far our so- promotion and reality television, he grants without a fair hearing, reviving ciety has to go. The vileness of her op- exhibits scant interest in or familiar- the practice of torture, and, in the third ponent’s rhetoric and his record has ity with policy. He favors conspiracy and final debate, his refusal to say that been so widely aired that we can only theory and fantasy, deriving his knowl- he will accept the outcome of the elec- hope she will be able to use her ofce edge from the darker recesses of the tion. Trump has even threatened to and her impressive resolve to battle Internet and “the shows.” He has never prosecute and imprison his opponent. prejudice wherever it may be found. held ofce or otherwise served his The American demagogues from the On every issue of consequence, past century who most closely re- including economic policy, the en- semble him—Father Coughlin and vironment, and foreign afairs, Hil- Senator Joseph McCarthy among lary Clinton is a distinctly capa- them—were dangers to the repub- ble candidate: experienced, serious, lic, but they never captured the schooled, resilient. When the race Presidential nomination of a major began, Clinton, who has always political party. Father Coughlin been a better ofce-holder than a commanded a radio show and its campaigner, might have antici- audience. President Trump would pated a clash of ideas and person- command the armed forces of the alities on the conventional scale, United States, control its nuclear against, say, Jeb Bush or Marco codes, appoint judges, propose Rubio. Instead, the Democratic legislation, and conduct foreign nominee has ended up playing a policy. It is a convention of our sometimes secondary role in a quadrennial pieties to insist that squalid American epic. If she is this election is singularly impor- elected, she will have weathered a tant. But Trump really does rep- prolonged battle against a trash- resent something singular. The talking, burn-it-to-the-ground prospect of such a President—er- ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM ILLUSTRATIONS BY demagogue. Unfortunately, the ratic, empty, cruel, intolerant, and

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 31 corrupt—represents a form of national and the impunity that celebrity con- to Trump’s profound estrangement emergency. fers. It is not merely narcissism that from the truth. He said that he saw At a time of alarming and paralyz- leads him to speak about grabbing “thousands and thousands” of Mus- ing partisanship, this is an issue that women’s genitals or to endorse the lims in New Jersey cheering the at- reasonable voices in both parties can “Lock Her Up!” chants directed at his tacks of 9/11. When he was told that agree upon. At last count, more than opponent. It is his temperamental au- this never happened, he repeated the a hundred and sixty Republican lead- thoritarianism—a trait echoed in his claim, mocked the disabled reporter ers had declared their refusal to sup- admiration of Vladimir Putin. who exposed it—a grotesque antic port Trump. Fifty national-security of- The consistencies of Trump’s char- captured on video—and then denied cials who served in Republican Ad- acter are matched by the inconsisten- having done so. He maintained that ministrations have done the same. The cies of his policy positions. Every pol- he saw a picture of Ted Cruz’s father Cincinnati Enquirer, the Arizona Re- itician is allowed to change his or her “having breakfast with Lee Harvey public, the Dallas Morning News, and mind, but Trump abuses the privilege. Oswald”; no such picture exists. He the Columbus Dispatch—all conser- His reversals on issues as fundamental boasted of conversations with Putin vative newspapers, which have en- as first-strike nuclear policy and our that never occurred; he said that Putin dorsed only Republicans for between obligations to nato reflect not so much had not invaded Ukraine. He described seventy-six and a hundred and twenty- climate change as a Chinese-perpe- six years—have endorsed Clinton. USA trated hoax, then said that he hadn’t. Today, which has never endorsed a Day and night, Trump assembles and candidate, has declared Trump “unfit distributes these murky innuendos for the presidency” and has also en- and outright lies through his Twitter dorsed Clinton. account. He is particularly obsessed with the President. To Trump, Obama rump is an old American story has many, many secrets: his birth, his and a very new one—a familiar faith, his loyalties. In the candidate’s varietyT of charlatan blooming again conspiratorial catchphrase, “There’s in the age of social media. It wasn’t something going on.” so long ago that he was a fixture of There is something going on. If the local tabloids (“Best Sex I’ve Ever Trump is an opportunistic infection Had”), with a sideline as a cartoon ty- spreading throughout the body politic, rant on “The Apprentice.” Then, be- what explains our susceptibility? Many ginning in 2011, came the bigotry of answers have been ofered. The mobbed his attempt to delegitimize the Obama but weak Republican primary field. Presidency through voluble support of Cable television’s propensity for broad- the “birther” theory. Yet his propensi- casting hours of Trump’s rallies. Re- ties have long been apparent. More a thought process as the blunderings sentment at the “browning of Amer- than forty years ago, the Justice De- of ignorance. He was once pro-choice; ica,” in the era of the first African- partment filed a civil-rights case against more recently, he has suggested that American President. Anger over the Trump and his father for discrimi- women who get abortions should be failure to punish those Wall Street ex- natory housing practices; the Trumps punished. His role models, too, change ecutives who helped tip the country hired Roy Cohn, a former aide to Jo- with circumstance. Ronald Reagan, he into the worst recession since the Great seph McCarthy, to defend them. In once wrote, could “con people” but Depression. The radicalization of the 1989, Trump took out a full-page ad in couldn’t “deliver the goods.” Now Rea- Republican Party leadership. A white the News implicitly calling for the ex- gan heads the list of the Presidents working class that has been losing ecution of the Central Park Five, four he admires most. Asked just last year ground, and a disconnected political African-Americans and a Latino who to name the best of the previous four class, particularly within the Demo- were then fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen Presidents, Trump chose Bill Clinton, cratic Party, that has failed to convey years old, and stood accused of rape having once lauded him as “a great any sense of empathy. Numerous writ- and assault. They were convicted and President.” Now Clinton, like his wife, ers and analysts, including George imprisoned, and when, years later, they is a criminal. Three years ago, Trump Packer, in this issue, have explored these were exonerated on the basis of DNA remarked of Hillary Clinton’s work as questions in depth. evidence, Trump continued to insist on Secretary of State that she was “prob- We are in the midst of a people’s their guilt, as he did just a couple of ably above and beyond everybody else”; revolt, a great debate concerning weeks ago. That statement might have now, of course, her term was a “total income inequality, the “hollowing” garnered more attention had he not disaster.” of the middle, globalization’s win- made it a day before the disclosure of The combination of free-form op- ners and losers. If the tribune whom a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video, in portunism, heroic self-regard, blithe the voters of the Republican Party which he spoke, in graphic terms, of contempt for expertise, and an airy have chosen is a false one, we can- his own predilection for sexual assault sense of infallibility has contributed not dismiss the message because we

32 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 deplore the messenger. The white can Vice-Presidential choice, Mike ing in towns that have faced signifi- working-class voters who form the Pence, has tried to position himself for cant losses in manufacturing jobs. To core of Trump’s support—and who the future on the national stage but has address the compounding efects of were once a Democratic constitu- distinguished himself as one of the trade and technology on displaced ency—should not have their anxiet- country’s most fiercely anti-gay politi- workers, she would promote training, ies and sufering written of. Their cians, declaring that marriage freedom and include a tax credit for businesses struggle with economic abandonment would lead to “societal collapse.” that take on apprentices. She would and an incomplete health-care sys- A chasm lies between a candidate’s allocate $275 billion over five years to tem demands airing, understanding, promises and a President’s legislative infrastructure improvement, focussing and political solutions. accomplishments, but the ambitions on transit and water systems, which Many Trump supporters are G.O.P. must be assessed, however partial their should create employment while re- stalwarts who would support the Party’s eventual enactment. In many ways, ducing inefciencies. nominee no matter what. At the same Clinton’s campaign is the antithesis of In general, Clinton’s tax plan is less time, to deny the racist and nativist campaigns during past times of eco- advantageous to the financial indus- component of Trumpism is to shy from nomic uncertainty. She ofers no soar- try and more conducive to jobs-inten- a fundamental truth about American ing rhetoric on the order of “Morn- sive enterprises. Despite her reputa- social history. There really are Trump ing in America,” “A Bridge to the 21st tion for being overly solicitous of Wall enthusiasts who resent President Century,” or “Yes We Can.” What she Street, Clinton has strong proposals Obama because he is black, and be- does ofer is a series of thoughtful and to prevent large financial institutions cause his being black is symbolic of all energetic proposals that present pre- from taking on risks that could derail the other ethnic groups and recent ar- cisely the kind of remedies that could the economy again. She promises to rivals who threaten their place in the improve the lives of many working- defend the Dodd-Frank reforms social hierarchy. To follow Trump, in class and poor Americans of all races. (which Trump, like all the Republi- an efort to secure justice and respect, She would simplify the tax code for can candidates, has pledged to over- is to deny justice and respect to those small businesses and streamline their turn) and to build on them. She would he insults and disdains—particularly licensing requirements. She would in- impose new fees on risk; strengthen African-Americans, Hispanics, Mus- crease health-care tax credits through the Volcker Rule, which prevents banks lims, women. In Donald Trump’s the Afordable Care Act, which, in from making potentially disastrous pinched and fearful vision, politics is a theory, would both expand coverage bets with government-backed depos- zero-sum game. and reduce the burden on employers. its; and bring regulatory light into the She would also seek to expand access so-called shadow banking system, illary Clinton’s vision and to Medicaid and would extend Medi- where much of the 2008 financial temperament are the opposite of care to people as young as fifty-five. crisis began. She would demand that Hher opponent’s. She has been a pioneer She would substantially increase fund- hedge funds and other large financial throughout her life, and yet her career ing for community health centers and firms provide far more information to cannot be easily reduced to one tran- provide significant federal support regulators about their trading activity, scendent myth: she has been an ideal- for child care. And her college-aford- and her Administration would pre- ist and a liberal incrementalist, a glass- ability plan would help students vent those firms from becoming so ceiling-smashing lawyer and a cautious refinance debt, and support states that overleveraged that a faulty bet could establishmentarian, a wife and mother, subsidize tuition. bankrupt them and lead to widespread a First Lady, a rough-and-tumble po- Clinton’s tax plans are also designed economic crisis. litical operator, a senator, a Secretary to promote broader-based afuence. Clinton brings a wealth of knowl- of State. Her story is about walking She would increase the tax rate on edge and experience to matters of for- through flames and emerging changed, short-term capital gains for high earn- eign policy, but she is more hawkish warier and more determined. In her ers, with lower rates for longer-term than President Obama. She urged in- intelligence, in her gimlet-eyed recog- holdings; close the “carried-interest” tervention in Libya, and our failure to nition of both the limits and the pos- tax loophole that favors hedge-fund coördinate a more orderly mission there sibilities of government, she’s a par- managers; and levy fees on banks with has had dismal results. As Secretary of ticular kind of inspirational figure, a high debt levels. She would impose a State and as a candidate, she has been pragmatist and a Democratic moder- four-per-cent surcharge on incomes among those who have pressed the ate. We wish that Clinton faced a wor- above five million dollars a year, and President to use American military thy opponent: she deserves a less sul- adopt a minimum thirty-per-cent tax strength in Syria more extensively than lied, more substantive win. But her rate on incomes above a million dol- he has been willing to countenance. claim to our support goes far beyond lars a year. She supports an “exit tax” Considering the dimensions of our fail- the nihilism of the alternative. It is also and other fiscal adjustments that ure in Iraq, we hope that Clinton has notable that she has chosen as a run- would discourage so-called corporate learned a greater caution from the Pres- ning mate Tim Kaine, a highly capa- inversion—the ofshoring of compa- ident for whom she worked. And yet, ble politician with a record of genuine nies to tax havens like Ireland. And as Secretary of State, she did an enor- compassion; by contrast, the Republi- she proposes tax incentives for invest- mous amount to repair relations with

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 33 foreign governments in the wake of gogue. In the notorious Korematsu of her party’s boldest and most pro- the Bush-Cheney years and to focus decision, in 1944, the Supreme Court gressive ideas, on college-tuition pol- greater attention on our complicated acceded to President Roosevelt in al- icy and criminal-justice reform. Un- relations with China. She was also in- lowing the internment of Americans like her opponent, she is capable of strumental in laying the groundwork of Japanese descent, an action that listening. Yes, it is political listening, for the economic sanctions and the po- Trump recently refused to denounce but Clinton is a politician, and that is litical approaches that led to the nu- outright. As Justice Robert Jackson, hardly a sin. clear deal with Iran, signed after her who dissented in Korematsu, noted, Hillary Clinton is neither saint nor tenure ended. a precedent like that remains a loaded prophet; she is a pragmatist of deep The most important reason to vote gun. Clinton will not radicalize the experience and purpose. But her tough- for Clinton may be the matter of the Court; she will honor its best tradi- ness, her guile, and her experience— Supreme Court. For two generations, tions of truly judicious scrutiny. qualities that helped her patiently dec- conservative Justices have dominated Despite the conspiratorial conjec- imate Trump in their three debates— the Court, and they have imposed their tures of Clinton’s opponents, her pol- will be assets in future political bat- will on several critical areas of the law. itics hide in plain sight. She is a com- tles. In “Leaves from the Notebook of Thanks to Citizens United and related mitted progressive on many issues, a Tamed Cynic,” Reinhold Niebuhr cases, the law on campaign finance is including the rights of women and mi- wrote that there was no reason “to be- in shambles, and wealthy donors now norities; gun laws (she would expand lieve that Abraham Lincoln, the states- reign over the political process. In 2013, background checks, close gun-show man and opportunist, was morally in- a five-to-four majority gutted the and Internet-sales loopholes, and re- ferior to William Lloyd Garrison, the Voting Rights Act, perhaps the most peal legislation that immunizes the gun prophet. The moral achievement of important civil-rights law in Ameri- industry from liability litigation); and, statesmen must be judged in terms can history, and Republican state leg- more recently, immigration (where she which take account of the limitations islators have taken advantage of this favors comprehensive reform, a path- of human society which the statesman shameful moment in the Court’s his- way to citizenship, and an end to fam- must, and the prophet need not, con- tory to limit the franchise of those ily detention). sider.” In this populist moment, the who might vote against them—that is, On the existential issue of climate attractions of continuity hold little ro- minorities and Democrats. Over the change, Clinton has pledged to pursue mance. And yet Clinton not only prom- years, a shifting alliance of Justices has the Congress-proof path that Obama ises to be a vastly better President than protected certain key constitutional has set of on. She would carry out his her opponent; she has every chance of rights—notably, a woman’s right to so-called Clean Power Plan, a series of building on the successes and insights choose and the right of universities to regulations designed to reduce carbon of a predecessor who will leave ofce consider diversity in student admis- emissions from the electricity sector, with a remarkable record of progres- sions. Clinton has a chance to lock in which is currently in litigation. She has sive change and, in an often ugly time, these gains, reverse some of the losses, and called for the installation of half a bil- as an exemplar of Presidential temper even augur a new, and very diferent, lion solar panels by 2020—producing and dignity. era on the Court. roughly five times the amount of solar The Republican-controlled Sen- power currently generated—and, most ast month, in a broadcast to union ate has refused even to grant a hear- ambitiously, she has said that she would representatives, Clinton remarked, ing to Merrick Garland, President put the U.S. on track to reduce over- L“Why aren’t I fifty points ahead, you Obama’s politically moderate and all emissions eighty per cent by 2050. might ask.” Throughout the campaign, highly qualified nominee to replace At the same time, Clinton has declined commentators have had much to say Antonin Scalia, who died in Feb- to support the measure that experts say about her “negatives,” her “baggage.” ruary. It will be among Clinton’s first would most efectively further these Her greatest political problem—the duties to renominate Garland, or choose goals: a tax on carbon. Her reluctance reason that she is not even farther ahead someone else for that seat, and, since here, while disappointing, is not hard in the polls—is that so many voters Ruth Bader Ginsburg is eighty-three, to fathom; such a tax stands no chance distrust her. She and her husband are Anthony Kennedy eighty, and Ste- in Congress, at least as it is currently not unique among politicians in en- phen Breyer seventy-eight, she may constituted. riching themselves on the speaking cir- have several more opportunities to re- Like President Obama, Clinton has cuit and in the business world—every- shape the Court. A progressive Su- “evolved” on such issues as L.G.B.T.Q. one from Al Gore to Rudolph Giuliani preme Court could be Clinton’s most rights, Wall Street regulation, and has done so—but it is understandable noble legacy, but one whose realiza- higher minimum wages. During the that, when those fees amount to tens tion will require strong Democratic past year, she listened carefully to the of millions of dollars over the years, voices in the Senate—something that arguments of Senator Bernie San- and when Clinton speaks in such fa- voters should remember in other races ders’s campaign and of the Black Lives miliar tones to audiences of invest- to be decided on November 8th. A Matter movement, and, without re- ment bankers, her opponents assume Court of Trump appointees could fail linquishing her essential center-left the worst. The Clintons are right to to check him or any future dema- pragmatism, she came to embrace some assert that their foundation is infinitely

34 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 more worthy than Trump’s, but it is gripped other parts of the world. It ig- raged supporters? Will he build a new also more than fair to wish that the nores, too, the reckoning that is due in alt-right media platform? Or will he Clintons, knowing full well that they the party that nominated him, with retreat to the Elba of Mar-a-Lago? were not done with public life, had Ted Cruz as the more primly dema- There is no predicting the actions of a taken far greater care to avoid poten- gogic also-ran. (Cruz also talks about man who prides himself on his unpre- tial conflicts of interest, or even the ap- patrolling Muslim neighborhoods and dictability. But, beyond Trump, there pearance of them. There is another rea- about Clinton’s criminality.) is Trumpism: a profound hostility to- son to wish for reëvaluation: Clinton’s Not even a sound defeat is likely ward political professionalism; a strong mistrust of the media can make her to cause Trump to recede from view. antipathy toward technocratic élites; a guarded, stubbornly opaque—a reflex Now, as he trails in the polls and de- disenchantment with liberal values. that was evident from her initial fail- clares the election “rigged,” thanks to Whether it gathers behind a Ted Cruz, ure to come forward with her White- a collusion of the media, political élites, or a Ben Carson, or some candidate water documents, in the nineteen-nine- and inner-city “communities,” he yet unsummoned, it indicates a seam ties, to her failure a few weeks ago to seems to be preparing the ground for of disafection that any successful Ad- disclose her pneumonia. an unlovely and prolonged assault ministration must address. For the most part, however, Clin- on a Clinton Presidency. Even some Clinton may lack Obama’s capacity ton is distrusted in ways that have lit- for eloquence. Her task as President is, tle to do with her own choices, be- nonetheless, to find a way to commu- yond the choice to be part of public nicate and connect with the public. In- life. She has been the target of twenty- spiration and persuasion are part of the five years of hatred, misogyny, and job, in the ofce as well as on the cam- conspiracy-mongering, endlessly meta- paign trail. She must reach the most morphosing from one confected “scan- alienated and angered members of the dal” to another—Filegate, Benghazi, American electorate. Obama inherited the State Department e-mails. As each a financial crisis when he took ofce. one has proved to be more smoke than The civil crisis that Clinton will in- fire, the fury has found another tar- herit is less sharply defined, but her get. Now attention has moved to the political legacy will depend upon her WikiLeaks dump of her staf’s e-mail. ability to alleviate it. Thanks to the tradecraft of what ap- Another legacy of hers will be as- pears to be Putin’s hackers and his sured. The election of a woman to the fond desire to unnerve the American Presidency will have myriad reverber- political class, we now know that Clin- ations in the life and the institutions ton’s aides exchange fevered political of this country. President Obama’s elec- calculations; that they say in private tion certainly did not end the saga of what they might not on television; Republican leaders who have with- racial conflict and prejudice in the that they make the occasional thought- drawn their support for him have United States, but as a distinct step less or arrogant remark. Not since the adopted his maximalism. Speaker of forward it opened up the world to release of the Nixon White House the House Paul Ryan has said that countless young people. Similarly, elect- tapes has any political figure had pri- Clinton wants to strip away all color ing a female President means imagin- vate communications subjected to and joy from the lives of Americans. ing new possibilities: that a woman this degree of public scrutiny. Yet no Senator John McCain has sworn that might survive that gantlet of derision dark alter ego has emerged. Whatever he will work in the Senate to block to hold power with confidence, with- Americans think about Hillary Clin- any Supreme Court nominations that out apology, to enlarge our notions of ton, we cannot say that we don’t know a President Clinton might make. Nei- authority and hasten an age when a fe- her. We do know her. And there is a ther has come to terms with the ways male President will no longer be ex- great deal to admire. in which his party’s rhetoric and tac- ceptional. Just as President Obama was tics have enabled Trump’s rise. If any- able at certain moments of glaring in- avid Plouffe, who managed the thing, their hope seems to be that the justice and crisis to focus the country Obama campaign in 2008, has swell of passions he has brought to- on matters of race in a potentially last- Dcalled the Trump candidacy a “black- gether will not dissipate but propel ing way, Hillary Clinton, who has em- swan event”—irrational, but unique to their own ambitions. phasized in her campaign and through- Trump. It is unlikely, Ploufe says, that To witness Trump’s behavior these out her political life such issues as anyone will soon come along with the past weeks has been to watch a man early-childhood education, paid fam- same capacity to overstep the tradi- preparing the outlines of his own mar- ily leave, and equal pay, could also tional institutions of party, media, and tyrdom. It is unclear how he will go on change the nation in deeply consequen- big money, and tweet his way to the making his political mark. Will he run tial ways. That’s a thrilling possibility nomination of a major party. Yet this for ofce again? Will he fan the calls for all Americans. ignores the nativist backlash that has for “revolution” among his most out- —The Editors

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 35 ment, the latest disaster or crisis, and telling all the others to suit up. If Nixon LIFE AND LETTERS was shredded and poisoned by each of his pre-Presidential defeats, Hillary died a little with each of Bill’s victo- PRESUMPTIVE ries, one after another, in Arkansas and beyond, all of them forcing her to stand What would a fiction writer do with the campaign of 2016? at a spot on the stage that she knew she should not be occupying. Her life BY THOMAS MALLON was supposed to take place behind the lectern, not beside it, hoisting the hand of the man who’d just got the votes. By the time it was “her” turn, it was psychologically too late, just as it was for Nixon in 1968. In his case, win- ning could not make up for losing; in hers, fifteen years of jury-rigged self- fulfillment cannot make up for the pre- vious twenty-five of self- suppression and worse. “I’m with her” is not just her slogan; it’s her condition. She is always still with all the other compromised, renovated, and discarded Hillaries, the way the supposedly “new” Nixon re- mained fused to the “old.” She is also bursting with Rodhamized literary dop- pelgängers, from Dorothea Brooke and Carol Kennicott to Tracy Flick. This is no normal quadrennial clash of titans that we’re living through, but, even so, wouldn’t a sort of equal-time rule apply to a novel about 2016? Would I not be obligated to enter the—what should I call it—consciousness of Don- ald J. Trump? The answer is no, and I can honestly maintain that I’m assert- ing not a point of personal preference here but a literary imperative. Trump lacks even the two-dimensionality re- Capturing the Faustian politics of this year’s Presidential race. quired in a sociopath; the emotional range is as impoverished as the vocab- deologues will tell you that the fifties car, as his self-hatred ran a race ulary. Trump simply advances, like the personal is political, but a novelist with his contempt for others, and raw Andromeda strain, a case of arrested Iwill tell you that the political is per- need sometimes manifested itself in a development that is somehow also met- sonal. Politics does transfiguring and weird tenderness. astatic. Even “the Donald” sounds more terrible things to the people who prac- Thoughts of Nixon inevitably bring like an analogue than like a person. tice it, enough to provide any fiction one to Hillary Clinton, so often de- Literature ofers an explanation for writer with a career. In my own nov- scribed by the adjective formed from Trump’s inability to follow the pun- els, I often rendered those practitioners Nixon’s name. If I were compelled to dits’ summertime urgings that he put from the viewpoints of lesser figures— produce a book of fiction about the aside the centrifugal id he displayed in not Joe McCarthy but a young Senate 2016 election, Hillary would be my the primaries for something more stafer—until I went “inside” Richard full-throated choice for its principal “Presidential” in the general. E. M. For- Nixon for a novel about the Watergate point-of-view character. I’m with her, ster memorably said that “the test of a years. I discovered that I had never felt because I feel right at home in the dank round character is whether it is capa- more comfortable in a character’s skin. gymnasium of her mind, where she is ble of surprising in a convincing way.” This no doubt says plenty about me, forever teaming up and exercising and Trump cannot surprise in any way; he but it also says something about him: rearranging the diferent parts of her is a flat character, and to put him in Nixon was entirely palpable. One could personality, benching whichever ones charge of any stretch of a novel, the hop in and drive him like a big-finned have no usefulness to the present mo- way a point-of-view character is by SOURCE:OLSON/GETTYSCOTT (TRUMP); BROOKS (CLINTON)KRAFT/GETTY

36 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN GALL definition in charge, would be as irre- even penitentially, thinking about all times set far in advance of the main sponsible as putting one of his small the other considerations one would action, often for purposes of foreshad- fingers on the nuclear button. In truth, have to give to a novel about 2016. owing, usually ironic. “Finale” takes I don’t see him functioning as a char- place in the last months of 1986, when acter of any kind in this novel; he would see the main action beginning on Reagan, amid many second-term ca- operate more as a looming anal face, May 3, 2016, the day Trump placed lamities, comes thrillingly close to abol- like Dr. T. J. Eckleburg’s eyes, hover- ITed Cruz’s father atop the Grassy Knoll, ishing nuclear weaponry during his ing over the valley of ashes, in “The won Indiana, and joined Hillary in be- Icelandic negotiations with Mikhail Great Gatsby,” or simply as his own coming a “presumptive” nominee. “Pre- Gorbachev. And so the prologue, oc- late-nineteen- nineties billboard near sumptive” would be high on my list of curring ten years earlier, shows Reagan the Lincoln Tunnel. The sign adver- possible titles for this novel. It’s a word in defeat at the Republican Conven- tised the Trump Taj Mahal casino in that’s supposed to pertain to the elec- tion of 1976, unexpectedly addressing Atlantic City with an enormous pic- torate—it’s their presumption that these its delegates with a peculiar medita- ture of its owner. The slogan? “He’s will be the candidates—but it seems tion on nuclear apocalypse. Got It. You Want It. Come Get It.” to apply more to the candidates them- A prologue for “Presumptive” can In my novel “Finale,” set during the selves, with its suggestion of presump- scarcely be resisted, if only because it last years of Ronald Reagan’s Presidency, tuousness: as Ethel Merman used to provides the opportunity for the dinner- I never, except for a few pages in the sing, aside from the hostess with the party scene that is de rigueur in polit- epilogue, entered Reagan’s conscious- mostess all you need to become Pres- ical fiction. The date: January 22, 2005. ness, not because I felt there was noth- ident is “an ounce of wisdom and a The place: the Donald J. Trump Grand ing there but because what was there pound of gall.” “Presumptive” also Ballroom at the Mar-a-Lago Club, in looked so smoky and unseizable. In John echoes “consumptive,” suggesting an Palm Beach. The event: the wedding Updike’s “Rabbit at Rest,” Harry Ang- occupational disease that devours the reception of Donald J. Trump and strom muses upon the fortieth Presi- body and spirit. Melania Knauss. dent: “You never knew how much he But, if we start in May, what about A few days earlier, the Palm Beach knew, nothing or everything, he was like the primaries? Am I really going to de- Town Council had voted 5–0 to deny God that way, you had to do a lot of it prive the reader of Ted Cruz? Yes. Can Trump permission to stage a fireworks yourself.” I decided that Reagan, who the book thrive without the low en- display during the postnuptials: too had eluded capture by his authorized- ergy of Jeb Bush? The maligned face much danger to the loser mansions access biographer, Edmund Morris, was of Carly Fiorina? Little Marco’s des- nearby. About ten days before the wed- best approached from the outside, perate, last-minute adoption of Trump- ding, Felix J. Grucci, Jr., of the famous through puzzled observers, both admir- style crassness? The jiggling pivots of Long Island fireworks family, had per- ing and detracting, from Nancy Reagan Chris Christie, whose speeches might suaded Trump to approach the coun- to Christopher Hitchens—rather the as well have started the way the Fat cil. Grucci was then producing the fire- way Gore Vidal gave us his novelized Boy in “The Pickwick Papers” begins works display on the National Mall version of Abraham Lincoln, in 1984. his story—“I wants to make your flesh celebrating George W. Bush’s second Last fall, while on book tour for creep”? I’m afraid we have no more swearing-in, and in ofering his dis- “Finale,” I was often asked if I planned need of these characters than the elec- counted package he no doubt expressed to write a novel about this election. torate did. If they had been able to sus- the same sentiment he later put for- The campaign to Make America Great tain our interest, they would still be in ward to the Times: “It would have been Again was still in its infancy, and I the newspapers instead of auditioning very exciting to do the inauguration of would deflect the query with a refer- for this novel and being rejected. a president and the wedding of Don- ence to my actual work in progress, Does this mean that Bernie must ald Trump in a single week.” about the second term of George W. go? After a million twenty-seven- dollar Was that town-council meeting, Bush. As we got deep into 2016, the contributions, each one so poignantly where Trump was told that he could Iraq insurgency and Hurricane Katrina close to the retail price of a single hard- not have what the President was hav- came to feel almost like refuges. So did cover book? I’m afraid he must, for the ing, the moment when the idea of run- the political discourse of the early simple reason that he never gave our ning for President, with which he had two-thousands: I invite you, in our cur- heroine as much of a scare as the F.B.I. long conducted a publicity-garnering rent ghost-tweeted political era, to go director, James Comey, did while inves- flirtation, first became a little serious? back just eight years, to the Facebook tigating her e-mails. Bernie would pro- When the oyster spread the first real postings of Sarah Palin, and tell me vide, as he did in the campaign, solid- layer of nacre on the grain of sand, and that they do not now read like a lost ity but no suspense. He was something the great bivalve that is the Donald volume of “The Federalist Papers.” that had to be contained, complimented, puckered and whispered, “Someday, I My chief wish for the present po- condescended to, and, finally, co-opted, swear to God, I’m going to do it”? litical moment is to see it turn quickly relegated at the Convention to subdu- On January 22nd, no fireworks— into a forgotten past, but having al- ing the passions of his followers. sad!—but, still, an enormous recep- ready pondered the protagonist’s point Authors of historical fiction are al- tion at Mar-a-Lago, where, eleven years of view I find myself perversely, maybe ways tempted to write a prologue, some- later, Trump laid claim to Super Tuesday

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 37 primary victories. In the prologued meantime, under the ballroom ceiling’s plaster cherubs, Trump dances with CAPE COD PANTOUM Melania in her Dior gown, years be- fore its designer, John Galliano, loses Tonight you’re loaning Billy your car, a brand-new his job for saying “I love Hitler” on seal-gray Volkswagen Passat with four doors, video; and Trump’s guests can dine on though last week at 3 A.M., he stole your canoe, lobster rolls, Cristal, and Grand Mar- and sank it in the autumn sea, then swam ashore. nier chocolate-trufe cake. He’s Got It. You Want It. Come Get It. Tonight you’re lending Billy your car—it’s brand-new— History records that a former Pres- and he’s a well-meaning, blue-eyed Byronic drinking man ident of the United States and his wife, who last week, at 3 A.M., stole your beached canoe, the junior senator from New York, were and when it sank he blamed it on a dolphin. by the pool that evening. She wore, ac- cording to the Times, “a pale lemon A well-meaning, blue-eyed, Byronic, hard-drinking man suit,” and later, with her chronic fidel- whose phone calls you take, no matter the hour, ity to the truth, she said that she at- who sank your canoe and blamed it on a dolphin, tended because she “happened to be and the young man with him, whom the sea sadly devoured, in Florida.” Bill Clinton is believed to have skipped the ceremony and left the so you’ll always take Billy’s call, no matter the hour. reception after having a cocktail. Did Because, you sigh, his mother’s dying, too, and he’s drinking again. Hillary leave with him? If so, did she He’s no longer a young man (he’s sad and he’s drowning), want to? Did their early departure and neither are you, and all friends sometimes sin. annoy the groom? This is the inciden- tal stuf that historical fiction wants to Besides, you sigh, his mother’s dying, too, that’s why he’s drinking. script and dramatize, to portray plau- She wasn’t a beauty—she came on to you long ago. sibly and without much fear of contra- And he’s not a young man; he’s drunk and he’s drowning. diction, along with what we know ac- So you press the phone to your cheek, stare out the dark window. tually happened. The historical novelist is always prey Who hasn’t come on to you? (Who wasn’t lovely long ago?) to the enjoyments of hindsight. Any (Even Billy did; his tragic need, his blank blue eyes.) poolside talk of politics at the Mar-a- You press the phone to cheek, stare out the dark window, Lago reception would have involved and listen to him make a mess of our peaceful lives. Hillary, yes, but not Trump. The guests would have been buzzing about the uni- Now back in bed, we return to our disrupted romance. versally anticipated 2008 Presidential Although last week, at 3 A.M., he stole your canoe, smackdown between the New York sen- you set a sinking man adrift in the sea of second chance: ator and another of the wedding guests, tonight you’ve loaned Billy your car again, brand-new. Rudolph Giuliani, the Republicans’ front-runner. That was the political —Maria Nazos drama of the moment. In fact, it was likely Giuliani’s anticipated presence at the reception that accounted for Hil- getting the job he really wants, a half If the Trumptastrophe had a first lary’s just happening to be in Florida. mile down the street. substantial victim, not counting the I think back to the Vice- Presidential sixteen dwarf-tossed primary oppo- rom its old “local” days through debate of 2012, when Ryan, sounding nents, it was Paul Ryan, destroyed from the current twittering era, politics like a statistics-ridden seminarian, ex- without and within by attempting to Fhas always been Faustian. And “Pre- plained with great unsmiling specific- maintain his future viability. For weeks, sumptive,” like most political novels, ity how he would attempt to reform we heard him say that he hoped to be requires a substantial point-of-view the entitlement programs that are even- able to endorse Trump, and received character who’s willing to make an ofer tually going to bankrupt us. The next updates on his struggle to “get there,” of his soul. That would be Paul Ryan. day, the mainstream media uniformly an arrival he gave the impression would By May of this year, newly in a job he agreed that the contest had been “won” happen if he could get Trump to move didn’t want and shouldn’t have taken, by the incumbent, Joe Biden, whose a few decimal points his way on one the Speaker of the House was already rebuttals consisted mostly of mugging budgetary matter or another, as if one’s locked in brimstone-scented negotia- and smirking over Ryan’s solemn eforts ability to vote for Donald Trump de- tions, psychosomatically consuming his at prescription. Regardless of one’s pol- pended on an exact mental alignment six-per-cent body-fat content while itics, it wasn’t hard to see which of the over Medicare Part D benefits. trying to retain some chance of ever two debaters was the more serious man. Each further inch down the slippery

38 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 slope, Ryan looked less like Eddie Mun- and both in a constant scurrying panic, election where appeal or even reference ster and more like Lucifer, until he “got Priebus to make the disaster he was to precedent has any utility. Besides, there,” endorsing Trump on June 2nd supposed to prevent look like the out- the elder statesman I’d really like to and then sort of, maybe half but not come he wished for all along, and Was- kibbitz this New Yorker vs. New Yorker really, taking it back when Trump began serman Schultz to make the eventual- apocalypse is dead. I would have cho- questioning the impartiality of Judge ity she schemed for look like something sen Ed Koch, who was asked during Gonzalo Curiel. In the end—and it she was almost surprised by. She has his mayoralty, in the boom year of 1987, probably will be the end of him—Ryan already had her comeuppance, but where what he thought of Trump’s demand was back in the “Apprentice” board- would you put the odds of Priebus fa- for the same tax abatement to build room: he’s with him. Or was. After the tally displeasing Trump over the next Trump Tower that he’d been granted “Access Hollywood” tape emerged, couple of weeks—two hundred to one? to construct the Grand Hyatt several Ryan said he could no longer campaign Both Debbie and Reince will long be years before, when the city was flat on for or “defend” Trump—but still en- forgotten by the time this book comes its back. He told the reporter, “Piggy, dorses him. As a result of all this weath- out, but their interim desperation strikes piggy, piggy.” Well, a dead man can ervaning, Ryan is now loathed by the me as entertaining, maybe even instruc- deliver a novel’s epigraph, and maybe Trumpster Visigoth wing of the Re- tive, and there’s always that printed dra- that’s the one for “Presumptive.” publican Party and held in contempt matis personae to remind the reader of by its impotent #NeverTrump rem- who they used to be. he novel would benefit from nant, who are spending the fall cru- The temptation to add to this co- two or three entirely fictional cified on Jeb’s old exclamation point. hort Anthony Weiner, another minor figures—maybeT a veteran speechwriter The character Paul Ryan would be character with a manna-from-heaven now confined to tweeting, or a com- heard in “Presumptive” longing for name and career story, is nearly over- puter hacker, since this has been, be- Trump’s defeat, and seen working for whelming. The now-estranged hus- tween Hillary’s e-mails and those of it in secret, in the hope of being called band of Huma Abedin, the vice-chair the D.N.C., the most electronic polit- upon to “pick up the pieces” after No- of Hillary’s campaign, probably saw ical year since the reel-to-reel period vember. This pitiable Brutus-cum- plenty whenever he looked up from his of Watergate. A plausibly fanciful ex- Hamlet doesn’t realize that he’s one of texting, but he doesn’t get a callback pansion of this year’s actual cyber plot the pieces, and more likely to be swept for something like the opposite reason would put Hillary Clinton, a figure away than picked up by anyone else. of the one excluding Kaine and Pence: who can make Nancy Reagan seem For sheer stoutheartedness and non- Weiner is the sort of character who positively relaxed, into the always re- collaboration, Lindsey Graham and could run away with the book. More- vealing grip of worry. Do the Russians, Susan Collins will have bit parts. over, his once farcical story has recently or does Julian Assange, have those ten Political novels are of necessity taken a dark and creepy turn with those thousand-plus still missing e-mails? densely populated. I’ve had to include texts to an underage girl; if all he can Will one of the F.B.I. agents who in- a dramatis personae with the last two ofer, instead of comic relief, is more terviewed her on July 2nd go rogue novels I’ve written. Minor characters, misery and loathing, we don’t want him. and release his personal notes, show- not quite point-of-view but not flat, Chorus characters have proved use- ing conclusively that the only way she either, always threaten to overpopulate ful to me in political fiction. “Water- avoided indictment for lying to fed- the book. Given the much higher than eral investigators was by telling a story normal impeachability of both Trump wildly at variance from the one she and Hillary, an author might feel a re- had been telling the public for a year sponsibility to pay sustained attention and a half? to Tim Kaine and Mike Pence, until I am the least conspiracy-minded he reminds himself that he’s trying to of authors. Honestly, you go write a get people to spend that Bernie-like nonfiction book premised on Lee Har- twenty-seven dollars on his book. Mario vey Oswald’s having acted entirely Cuomo has said that his mother used alone and see how long you keep your to think of Walter Mondale as polenta. gate” has Alice Roosevelt Longworth, phone number listed. Still, let’s recap Kaine and Pence both seem less like the witty crone of Dupont Circle who’d a breathtakingly quick sequence of food than like some kind of fireproofing, been in the city since her father, Teddy, events from this June and July. On their place at the bottom of each ticket went to the White House, and “Finale” Monday, June 27th, Bill Clinton just earned by an ability to smother the features Nixon a dozen years after his happens to meet Loretta Lynch, the more combustible qualities of the can- resignation, still in search of usefulness Attorney General, at the Phoenix air- didate at the top. and redemption. My George W. novel port. On Friday, Lynch more or less I would pretty much ignore them in in progress has Ann Richards and Bob withdraws from the investigation of favor of each party’s national- committee Dole splitting the role, like equal-time Hillary. On Saturday, the F.B.I. inter- chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and commentators hired for the season by views Mrs. Clinton as part of what she Reince Priebus, both with names out CNN. But chorus characters for “Pre- likes to call a “security review.” On of Dickens, or at least Terry Southern, sumptive”? I think not. This isn’t an Sunday, the Times reports that Hillary

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 39 opinions? For the reader the great test is, how is thinking of keeping Lynch on in her test was “rigged,” he will not feel the much of that truth can he accept though it jos- Administration, and on Monday the defeat. I predict that he will use his tle his opinions? Justice Department closes its investi- concession speech to talk about how In the political novel, then, writer and reader gation, without filing charges. No se- many millions of votes he got in the enter an uneasy compact: to expose their opin- ions to a furious action, and as these [opin- ries of political events in Washington primaries and how throughout the fall ions] melt into the movement of the novel, to has moved so rapidly toward resolu- his crowds remained bigger than Hil- fnd some common recognition, some super- tion since the Cuban Missile Crisis. lary’s. Or, true to his size-matters creed, vening human bond above and beyond ideas. There is no transcript from the he can brag about losing certain de- private Clinton-Lynch conversation mographics by the hugest majority in My novels have been more about aboard Lynch’s plane on the tarmac, American Presidential history. the clash of ideas than about ideas which means that a reader of “Pre- Clinton will be as depressed as themselves, but, even so, in writing sumptive” could only learn what was Nixon was the night of his landslide about American politics of the recent said through one of the principals. Lo- victory over McGovern, in 1972. Just past I have been pleasantly surprised retta Lynch has to assume that func- listen to some of the White House to experience something like the out- tion, because she was—like James tapes made that evening. In the course come Howe desires. During the red- Comey—in a diferent sort of Faus- of phone conversations with Henry vs.-blue era, with everyone locked in tian position from that of Paul Ryan. Kissinger and Hubert Humphrey, he his MSNBC or Fox silo, liberal review- It’s a smaller version of the position sounds more in need of consolation ers, which is most of them, have by that Hillary Clinton is in: knowing than congratulation. Hillary, too, be- and large given a warm welcome to that she can save the country from Don- comes more herself in defeat than in novels that invite readers to feel con- ald Trump. The selfless excuse of no- victory. After winning, her fraud com- siderable sympathy for figures like bility is a more terrible temptation than plex, the curse of the compulsive Richard Nixon and Nancy Reagan. mere personal ambition. I don’t know achiever, will kick in, and she will be Many say, “I almost found myself lik- what happened on that plane in Phoe- bitter over the perception that she owes ing him, or her,” a testament perhaps nix or in the F.B.I.’s Pennsylvania Av- her victory to the mutant candidacy of to fiction’s intimacy, its ability, beyond enue headquarters that Saturday. The Trump. Having been denied the chance even that of biography, to invite iden- interview summary of the latter, re- to run against a mainstream senator or tification and understanding. leased in another holiday-weekend doc- governor, she will worry that defeat- Dick Cheney once asked his wife if ument dump, proves little beyond Clin- ing the Donald puts another Roger she was bothered by how often he got ton’s ability, when not under oath, to Maris-like asterisk next to her name, compared to Darth Vader. “No,” she re- say she cannot recall the training she like the one next to First Lady—not plied. “It humanizes you.” That may once swore she had received. But a the most desirable way for the first fe- have been a joke Cheney told at a press novel has to show what happened on male President to have begun her as- dinner, but if the fictionalization of pol- both those days. cent to the ofce. itics can soothe our angry ideological One of the worst appraisals a nov- She will also be wondering if her divides it may even serve some civic elist can get, from an editor or from a triumph will finally embolden her to usefulness. Cheney’s day, however, is fast reviewer, is that the narrative he has believe something and stick to it, to beginning to seem like a second Era of produced is “episodic,” a series of set act upon positions that haven’t resulted Good Feelings. In the eight or so months pieces that are connected but not pro- from triangulation conducted by the since I was on the road with “Finale,” pulsive. “Presumptive” will surely earn village it has often taken to tell her the times have sufciently darkened for the dreaded adjective. If it is faithful what she should think. But in the hours me to relinquish most of my optimism to the campaigns, it will be a noncu- just after her victory she will be wor- about my own literary genre. mulative series of lurches and calam- rying about what Assange and the Rus- I have always liked writing epilogues: ities that include baskets of deplor- sians still might know, and wondering putting Major Henry Rathbone into ables, pneumonic collapses, and what to do with them. The first call a mental asylum forty-six years after appearances on “Dr. Oz.” It will be all she makes in the early morning hours he shared Lincoln’s box at Ford’s The- circus and no bread—let’s put Mark of Wednesday, November 9th, will atre; having Richard Nixon, two de- Cuban in the front row of the first de- be, God help the republic, to Sidney cades past his resignation, pushing the bate, and is that Paula Jones over Blumenthal. buttons of a Walkman in a Moscow there?—a tale full of sound bites and hotel room. For an epilogue to “Pre- fury, signifying nothing genuine or rving Howe once described the “se- sumptive,” however, I would have to hopeful or brave. vere test” that a political novel poses go to a place I’ve never gone in a novel— Where does it end? On Election Ifor both writer and reader: the future. And even as someone whose Night, with Clinton’s victory and literary sensibility has as often as not Politics rakes our passions as nothing else, Trump’s defeat, a loss that will not ren- and whatever we may consent to overlook in been comic, and whose faith in his der him measurably more afronted or reading a novel, we react with an almost de- country has been firm and sunny, I have angry or whatever he is. Because he is monic rapidity to a detested political opinion. to say that, as a novelist and a citizen, a flat character, it will leave him un- For the writer the great test is, how much truth the future is right now the one place I changed. Even if he cries that the con- can he force through the sieve of his [own] can’t bear to look. 

40 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 to run for and be elected to the Par- SHOUTS & MURMURS sippany school board. If the story had ended there, all would have been well. But, sadly, a se- UNBURIED quel occurred to darken that happy outcome. It started out quite inno- BY IAN FRAZIER cently. As the school-board president, I proposed a new policy mandating live in what my wife and I like to of Dracula caught my eye. It was a skel- that only healthy snacks be given to think of as a safe neighborhood. Re- etal arm reaching out of the well- trick- or-treaters. The ordinance was Icently, however, at a house just up the manicured lawn. If Dracula had in fact duly voted upon and passed, and I street, I have noticed disturbing evi- been buried alive, as the skeleton arm ofered to keep an eye open for any vi- dence of possible criminal activity, or, seemed to suggest, that made a certain olators. Going around the neighbor- at the very least, a violation of local amount of unfortunate sense; when hood and looking in windows, I no- zoning laws. What stopped me short you spend your days lying in a cofn, ticed that the Hampst family seemed one morning as I was walking our dog you do run the risk of this kind of to have some snack-size boxes of Milk was the sight of a “human” corpse mixup. But how did no one see the arm Duds ready in a wooden salad bowl smashed up against the front of this waving in the air, after it had labori- by the door. I went around to the back house. I put the word in quotation ously burst through the sod? And why and met Mr. and Mrs. Hampst com- marks because I’m not quite sure to ing in from the garage. I told them, what category the poor dead creature very politely, that the treats I had ob- belongs. served in their front hall were not al- It was as flat as a pancake and had lowed. Overreacting, Mr. Hampst evidently hit the house at a high rate began to shout and turn red in the face. of speed. To me, it appeared to be a In a matter of seconds, he had a heart witch. Among the seasonal decorations attack and dropped dead. at the house—a plastic pumpkin, a sheaf Of course I felt terrible. I thought of Indian corn, a silhouette of a black that the very least I could do was ofer cat arching its back—this grisly, flat- to defray some of the funeral costs, and tened body, with a witch’s hat still in suggested to my helpful neighbors with place and a broom also stuck to the the front-yard cemetery that we give siding, sent a shudder of revulsion mixed Mr. Hampst a plot there. They pro- with pity down my spine. One could ceeded to inform me that it was not a picture the accident all too clearly. A real cemetery (italics mine). Now, I had young witch, hardly more than a child, wondered why the mourner with the is flying too fast on her broom, then: chainsaw remained in the exact same crash! The little arms outstretched on position for hours and even weeks with- either side, the green fingers spread in out leaving for food and other neces- a hopeless last-minute attempt to soften sities, but I had not wanted to pry, and the impact, were enough to break your my neighbors did not go out of their heart. way to correct any mistaken impres- The negligence of the homeowner sion I might have had. was all the more shocking because he I’m sure there’s a lesson somewhere (or she) happened to have a cemetery was it ignored, waving and waving, ever in all this. Building community takes in the front yard. Small, gray, plastic more slowly, until death finally arrived, patience, time, and (sometimes) a re- tombstones announced that Franken- blessedly, for the supposedly deathless grettable loss of life. But we also have stein, Dracula, and the Wolf Man were vampire? Rigor mortis then set in, fol- a double standard. The fact remains all interred there. Surely it would not lowed by weeks and months of rot and that a long-dead, decaying young witch be too much to hope that the unlucky decay and scavenging by local animals, is still plastered against my neigh- little witch be given a decent burial as until the bones of the arm were all that bors’ house. Let’s try a little thought well, even if she was not a celebrity. remained. What kind of clueless home- experiment: One of the mourners who was vis- owners could fail to notice such a hid- Would the corpse of a full-grown iting the cemetery, a lanky young fel- eous process taking place on their own warlock, a male individual with some low who wore a hockey mask and car- front lawn? power and influence, be subjected to ried a chainsaw, stood unmoving, as if Enough was enough. I walked to such indignity if he happened to be in shock, beside the Wolf Man’s grave. the front door and rang the bell. A flying on a much larger broom and “Did you know him?” I asked quietly. handsome, smiling couple in late mid- ended up smashing into the wall of The grief-stricken fellow did not reply. dle age answered. We got to talking. someone’s house? I think we can all TOMI UM A troubling detail about the grave And that, in short, is how I happened agree that the answer is obvious. 

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 41 physically: Cernovich was among the first to insinuate publicly that Clinton ANNALS OF MEDIA had a grave neurological condition, and that the media was covering it up. By “fight back,” he meant, basically, tweet- TROLLS FOR TRUMP ing. Internet activism is sometimes de- rided as “slacktivism”—a fair character- How the alt-right spreads fringe ideas to the mainstream. ization when an online campaign tries to, say, cure AIDS or end child labor. When BY ANDREW MARANTZ the goal is to seed social media with mis- information, though, online organizing can be shockingly efective. “Tomorrow, everybody’s going to be Googling the alt-right,” Cernovich said. He has an adenoidal tenor and a lisp, but when he is indignant he can be an im- passioned orator. “The narrative is be- ing written, and you’d better get of your fucking asses and write your own.” His feed filled with real-time comments. (@beelman_matt: “PC is for PUSSIES”; @ciswhitemale: “Mike is a bosss.”) Cernovich wore a plaid shirt, par- tially unbuttoned to display his chest hair. Visible behind him were a swim- ming pool, trimmed boxwoods, and a mountain glowing in the afternoon sun. (@CanadaUncuck: “nice pool.”) Cer- novich often blogs about fitness, and he publishes self-help books for men. He also writes about how to build a per- sonal brand online; his maxims include “Conflict is attention” and “Attention is influence.” Although he doesn’t appear on Fox News or syndicated radio shows, he is an expert at using social media to drive alt-right ideas into the heart of American political discourse. “Here’s what we’re gonna do tomor- row,” he said. “We have to think of a good hashtag, and we have to have all n late August, Hillary Clinton an- includes the Republican nominee for of our memes lined up.” He suggested nounced that she would soon give a President. It also includes extremist com- talking points for his followers to deploy, Ispeech, in Reno, Nevada, linking Don- mentators, long belittled or ignored by such as “If the alt-right is racist, is Israel ald J. Trump to what has become known the media, whom mainstream pundits racist, too?” Cernovich prefers to call as the alt-right—a loose online aflia- are now starting to take seriously. himself an “American nationalist,” but tion of white nationalists, neo-monar- The afternoon before Clinton’s speech, he often uses “we” when discussing the chists, masculinists, conspiracists, bellig- Mike Cernovich, a thick-chested white alt-right movement. “We can control erent nihilists, and social-media trolls. man in his late thirties, sitting on a ve- the narrative on Twitter,” he continued. The alt-right has no consistent ideol- randa in Southern California, opened “Mainstream media we’ve lost.” He said ogy; it is a label, like “snob” or “hipster,” the live-streaming app Periscope on his he hoped that Clinton’s Reno speech that is often disavowed by people who iPad and filmed a video called “How to would elicit “a full-scale media attack on exemplify it. The term typically applies fight back against Sick Hillary and the me,” adding, “I want this to become an to conservatives and reactionaries who #ClintonNewsNetwork.” By “Clinton international trending topic.” are active on the Internet and too anti- News Network,” he meant CNN and Clinton did not mention Cernovich, establishment to feel at home in the Re- other corporate media outlets. The word but she attacked Alex Jones, the paranoiac publican Party. Bizarrely, this category “sick” described Clinton morally and Texas radio host, and Breitbart.com, the Pravda of the alt-right. She listed some On Mike Cernovich’s blog, he developed a theory of white-male identity politics. recent Breitbart headlines, including 42 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY MATT DORFMAN “Would You Rather Have Feminism or a “global worldwide brand.” When we “And my life is over,” Mike said, Cancer?,” which were written by Milo first spoke, on the phone, I asked him half-smiling. Yiannopoulos, the fame-seeking troll. whether he worked from home or in an “We’re having a girl!” Shauna said. “I Cernovich calls Yiannopoulos “one of ofce full of employees. Chuckling, he think it’ll be good for him, soften him the only guys, other than me, who’s doing said, “It’s definitely just me, dude.” up a bit.” social media right.” Before the current I visited him in mid-September. He “I’ll be nice to her, as long as she’s not election, Cernovich and Yiannopoulos had recently moved to a cul-de-sac where a basic bitch,” Mike said. were known primarily as Internet mi- every house has stucco walls, a ceramic Cernovich sat at the kitchen table, sogynists. Cernovich was drawn to po- tile roof, and bland xeriscaping. He met facing a mirror, and placed his laptop litical commentary after recognizing a me outside, wearing a rumpled gingham next to a teapot full of flowers. (Shauna kindred spirit in Donald Trump. shirt and jeans. A day-old Orange County is in charge of decorating.) “Right now, Yiannopoulos, writing on Breitbart Register lay at his feet. He looked flesh- a hundred and twenty-eight people are the next day, called Clinton’s speech “a ier than he did in his videos, and his eye reading Danger and Play,” he said. drive-by shooting with a water pistol contact was less steady with me than it “What’s fun is when you get a hot story fired from a mobility scooter.” Alex Jones is on camera. Next door, a sticker on a and watch the number tick up into the recorded a video in which he stood in garbage bin advertised WorldNetDaily, thousands, like a video game.” Nowa- his back yard, wiping sweat from his a Web site known for promoting birther- days, the blog is mostly a platform for brow, as he muttered about the Rocke- ism. Cernovich hadn’t met the neigh- pro-Trump spin, but at first it was about fellers and the Rothschilds. “People say, bors yet. “They’d probably geek out if how to pick up women. Its name comes ‘Oh, my God, you’ve hit the big time— I told them my name,” he said. “Then from Nietzsche. (“The true man wants Hillary Clinton talked about you,’ ” he I’d have to say hi every time I see them, two things: danger and play. For that rea- scofed. “Give me a break. Hillary Clin- and maybe they’d want to be friends— son he wants woman, as the most dan- ton’s average YouTubes, on her own chan- nah, not worth it.” gerous plaything.”) Early posts included nel, have, like, five thousand views. Our Cernovich trained as a lawyer. In 2003, “Misogyny Gets You Laid” and “When average one has hundreds of thousands.” he was accused of raping a woman he Should You Compliment a Woman?” His video was viewed more times than knew; the charge was later dropped, but (Answer: “During or after sex.”) the ofcial upload of Clinton’s speech. a judge ordered him to do community Early in Shauna’s relationship with Cernovich covered the Reno speech service for misdemeanor battery. (His Mike, she read Danger and Play, includ- on Periscope. “Is she gonna fall?” he said, record has since been expunged.) On his ing such posts as “How to Cheat on Your watching live footage of Clinton ap- first blog, which he started in 2004, he Girlfriend.” She said, “I would come proaching the stage. “She’s grabbing the ofered a libertarian critique of prosecu- home from work crying—‘How can you handrail!” He tweeted, “Sick Hillary grabs torial overreach, emphasizing free speech write such rude things?’ He’d go, ‘You handrail as walking up steps. #AltRight- and false rape allegations. He launched don’t understand, babe, this is just how Means.” The hashtag was already trend- his current blog, Danger and Play, in guys talk.’ ” (Advice from the blog: “Al- ing on Twitter, as the alt-right’s support- 2011, after his first wife filed for divorce. ways call your girl ‘babe,’ ” to avoid mix- ers and opponents competed to define His second wife, Shauna, who is ing up names.) Shauna, who has stopped the movement. Political spin battles are twenty- nine, and pregnant with their working, continued, “I was still upset, waged online every minute, and it can first child, was in the kitchen. She is as though, and he eventually deleted some be difcult to gauge who is winning. warm as her husband is taciturn. “I’m so older posts.” Media consumers don’t believe every- embarrassed!” she said, apologizing for “I rewrote some of the wording,” Mike thing they read, and, because of per- an imaginary mess. The house was clean insisted. “I never disavow things I’ve said.” sonalization algorithms, no two social- and compact; the small, paved back yard Throughout our September conversa- media feeds look the same. The next day, had a single lawn chair. The lush veranda tions, he referred to his more misogynist the mainstream consensus was that the in the Periscope videos belonged to Shau- remarks as “locker-room talk.” two sides had fought to a draw. na’s parents, who live a few blocks away. His political analysis was nearly as Cernovich thought that Clinton’s Mike and Shauna met in 2011, at a crass as his dating advice. In March, he speech “was the stupidest thing she could bar in Santa Monica. “He was pretty ag- tweeted, “Hillary’s face looks like melt- have done.” He added, “Her social-media gressive,” Shauna told me. “He grabbed ing candle wax. Imagine what her brain advisers are twenty-four-year-old basic my arm, pulled me into him, and said, looks like.” Next, he tweeted a picture of bitches who feel triggered by us, and so ‘You fit nicely.’ ” Clinton winking, which he interpreted they asked their boss to yell at us and “It sounds creepy, but it looked less as “a mild stroke.” By August, he was de- make us go away. Well, we’re not going creepy in context,” Mike said. claring that she had both a seizure dis- away. They just made us stronger.” “It worked,” Shauna said. “We were order and Parkinson’s disease. making out, like, five minutes later.” “There are a million things wrong ernovich lives fifty miles south Mike said that, when they started dat- with Hillary,” Cernovich told me. “She’s of Los Angeles, in a deep-red con- ing, “I didn’t take it seriously. But she a documented liar. She’s massively cor- Cgressional district. On the Internet, he just refused to go away, and now—” rupt. She wants to let in more so-called represents himself as a “Pulitzer-worthy “I’m married and pregnant!” Shauna refugees, which makes her an existential journalist” who runs Cernovich Media, said, smiling. threat to the West.” (He calls the Syrian

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 43 refugee crisis a “media lie.”) “But I was “What she actually wanted was for me sies.” Politics is a blood sport, but, during looking at the conversation online—what to be more assertive, to be the man in the primaries, Jeb Bush and the rest of was getting through to people and what the relationship. So I would be more as- Trump’s “cuckservative” opponents pre- wasn’t—and none of that was sticking. sertive, and she’d be happier for a few ferred to be genteel. “What are Trump’s It’s too complex. I thought that the health days. Then she’d go, ‘No, I need to be in policies? I don’t particularly care,” Cer- stuf would be more visceral, more res- charge,’ and we’d butt heads.” They sep- novich wrote on Danger and Play. And, onant from a persuasion standpoint, and arated in 2011. (Cernovich’s ex-wife de- in another post: “If Trump ofends you, so I pushed that.” clined to be interviewed.) it’s because you live in a cucked world On September 11th, Clinton fainted After law school, his wife became a where no one speaks their minds.” after attending a memorial service at successful attorney in Silicon Valley. But Ground Zero. Cernovich Cernovich was not admit- hile I was in California, Cer- wrote a post called “Com- ted to the California bar novich hosted a meet-up for his plete Timeline of Hillary’s until nine years after getting readers,W on the boardwalk in Hermosa Health #HillarysHealth,” his law degree. In the mean- Beach. I arrived early, not quite sure what which included such data time, he says, he got by with to look for. A crowd had gathered around points as “peculiar travel “freelance legal research” and a drum circle. “Can you feel the Earth’s habits” and “lengthy naps.” “appellate stuf.” Cernovich’s rhythm?” a drummer asked. Nearby, a It got two hundred and forty wife earned millions of dol- film crew from Women.com was shoot- thousand page views—less lars in stock from an I.P.O.; ing a video about sex positivity. At an than a marquee Hufngton he told me that he received outdoor bar, I spotted some beefy white Post story, but impressive for “seven figures” in the divorce men, in T-shirts and shorts. “Cernovich?” a blog with no advertising budget. More settlement. This seems to have been, and I asked. They nodded. important, #HillarysHealth became a might still be, his primary source of funds. About sixty people showed up, in- national trending topic on Twitter. That (He insists that book sales provide his cluding a few women and people of color. day, Chris Cillizza, a centrist pundit at main income.) Cernovich’s admirers peppered him with the Washington Post, wrote an article ti- Cernovich says that during college, questions. “What about Hillary’s body tled “Hillary Clinton’s Health Just Be- at the University of Illinois, he was so- count?” a young man asked, referring to came a Real Issue in This Campaign.” cialized to be submissive. “I was friends rumors that Clinton has ordered the kill- Scott Greer, a deputy editor of the Daily with a lot of girls who had crushes on ing of several enemies—among them Caller, tweeted, “Cernovich memed me, but I was too polite to fuck them,” John F. Kennedy, Jr.—or has murdered #SickHillary into reality. Never doubt he said. After his divorce, he reinvented them herself. Cernovich looked skepti- the power of memes.” himself as an alpha male. His self- cal, and the young man was disappointed. Without months of priming by Cer- published 2015 book, “Gorilla Mindset,” “Then again, Bill’s brother was a drug novich and others, Clinton’s collapse is a manual for men who want to “un- dealer, and they have ties to organized might have been seen as an isolated event. leash the animal” within them. The book crime,” Cernovich said. “So who knows?” And the alt-right rumors may have is filed under Gender Studies in the Am- Cernovich told me, “I believe in strong prompted Clinton to be secretive about azon Kindle store. Until recently, it was borders, including keeping out Islamic having pneumonia, making it a bigger the top seller in that category, ahead of terrorists. If people think that’s inher- story when it was revealed. “I decline the “We Should All Be Feminists,” by Chi- ently racist, fine—but I’m an American Pulitzer for my work on Hillary’s health,” mamanda Ngozi Adichie. nationalist, not a white nationalist.” A Cernovich tweeted. “I will not accept a On his blog, Cernovich developed a few people at the meet-up were white scam award from a scam organization.” theory of white-male identity politics: nationalists—not the skinhead type men were oppressed by feminism, and but the more polished, just-asking-the- here is a lot of discussion in cer- political correctness prevented the dis- question variety. Some attendees proudly tain parts of the Internet about “red- cussion of obvious truths, such as the called themselves “deplorables,” and many pillT moments.” In the 1999 film “The criminal proclivities of certain ethnic praised Cernovich as a corrective to tra- Matrix,” the hero faces a choice: the blue groups. His opponents were beta males, ditional journalism. “Corporate news is pill will allow him to stay within a com- losers, or “cucks”—alt-right slang for fucking fake, dude,” a cybersecurity con- fortable delusion; the red pill will cause “cuckolds.” “To beat a person, you lower sultant named Jef Martinez said. “You him to wake up. “Red pill” is good brand- his or her social status,” he wrote on Dan- can just tell.” An informal poll revealed ing—it’s cowardly to live a lie. On many ger and Play. “Logic is pointless.” that no one believed in polls. Trump was message boards, though, the lie being Although he disdained electoral pol- going to be President, no matter what dismantled is gender equality. itics (“No thinking man buys into this the cucked media said. “My first marriage was ruined by fem- two-party political system”), he was in Most conversations touched on free inist indoctrination,” Cernovich told me. an ideal position to foresee Trump’s rise. speech (which everyone was for) and He married his first wife in 2003, when In July, 2015, he tweeted, “I said if a Re- political correctness (which everyone they were law students at Pepperdine. publican acted like me and ran for ofce, was against). “I’m sick of the censorship, Initially, he said, the “power arrangement” it’d be a movement. Donald Trump has the words you can’t say,” Steven McHale, was “fifty-fifty.” Then came a realization: proven me right. People are tired of pus- a marketing analyst, told me. Milo

44 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 Yiannopoulos had recently been banned con policy wonks are. Every backstory world in a day. Instead of picking up a from Twitter, and the attendees were out- was the same—East Coast, Harvard, newspaper or visiting its home page, raged. “It’s straight-up thought polic- trust fund, nepotism. Look, if the experts people scan their social-media accounts, ing,” someone said. “It’s ‘1984.’ ” decide tomorrow that we’re going to war where myriad information sources— The prevailing logic was that, short with Russia, who’s gonna fight that war? the Daily Mail, links posted by Steph of yelling fire in a crowded theatre, any- Jonah Goldberg and Ross Douthat? Fuck Curry, a distant relative’s Facebook one should be able to say anything, in no. It’ll be guys I know from Kewanee.” rants—compete for their attention. any venue. But censure is not censorship. His parents are devout Christians. The term “meme” was coined by Rich- The Constitution guarantees that the His mother didn’t finish high school; his ard Dawkins, in his 1976 book, “The government won’t restrict what you can father bounced between factory jobs, Selfish Gene”; he defined it as any “unit say; it does not guarantee that you can eventually working at a junk yard. “Kids of cultural transmission” that stays alive shout obscenities on CNN, or that you I knew either joined the Army or didn’t by “leaping from brain to brain.” In a can harass co-workers, or that you can leave town,” Cernovich said. “The smart- footnote to the 1989 edition, he wrote, make racist arguments without being est kid in the class above me got into the “Computers are increasingly tied to- made to feel like a racist. One of the uni- University of Chicago, and I went, gether. Many of them are literally wired fying marks of the alt-right sensibility is ‘What’d he do wrong?’ Because, in my up together in electronic mail ex- the assumption that no speech act is be- mind, a city is smaller than a state, so change. . . . It is a perfect milieu for yond the pale. Instead of being ofended the University of Illinois had to be a bet- self-replicating programs to flourish.” by blackface or pictures of dead babies, ter school.” Cernovich’s parents and his Dawkins was worried about compu- you are encouraged to see them as funny, three siblings still live in the area, but he ter viruses. He couldn’t have predicted even if you don’t understand why. At the rarely visits or calls home. “There’s noth- Guccifer 2.0 or #ZombieHillary. meet-up, a pudgy man wore a T-shirt ing to talk about,” he said. “If I still be- “We may be at a threshold,” Dawkins with a picture of Harambe, the gorilla lieved in Jesus, we could talk about that.” told me recently. “In the past, I would’ve that was killed earlier this year at the As we spoke, a fan sent him a mes- been tempted to say, about the Internet, Cincinnati Zoo. People pointed at the sage: Rush Limbaugh had just men- that although everybody has a mega- shirt and snickered, adding, “Dicks out tioned #ZombieHillary on his radio show. phone, in many cases it’s a quiet one. You for Harambe.” I asked the man to ex- The hashtag, referring to Clinton’s sup- can put up a YouTube video, but who’s plain the joke. “It’s a funny thing people posed frailty, had trended the previous going to watch it? Now, however ridic- say, or post, or whatever,” he said. “It’s day on Twitter, after Cernovich encour- ulous what you’re saying is, if you make just a thing on the Internet.” At times, aged his followers to use it. “I would like it memetically successful, something re- it can seem like anything—a dead go- to claim credit for it, but I can’t,” Lim- ally bad can spread through the culture.” rilla, a rape threat, a Presidential elec- baugh had said. “Somebody on Twitter tion—is just a thing on the Internet. did it.” Cernovich told me, “He’ll never ernovich had another red-pill mention me by name, but he’s at least moment during a trip to Budapest, ou guys want a snack?” Shauna listening to the periphery.” Cwhere he saw hundreds of Syrian émi- “ asked. People have always expressed extreme grés camped out in a train station, wait- Y“Not now, babe,” Mike said, his eyes views online, but for many years there ing to be resettled elsewhere in Hun- on his computer screen. She put out a was no easy way for such opinions to gary. Based on the media coverage of bowl of pita chips, which he ignored. spread. The Internet was a vast landscape the crisis, he’d expected to see squalor, It was 11 A.M., and he had been sit- dotted with isolated viruses. The rise of amputees, wailing children. Instead, he ting at his kitchen table for hours. First, social networks was like the advent of said, “there were able-bodied men play- he appeared, via Skype, on “The Gavin air travel: a virus can now conquer the ing soccer. Guys and girls flirting. It hit McInnes Show,” an online alt-right talk show. Then he perused Twitter. In Sep- tember, Cernovich’s tweets were seen more than a hundred million times. When he bragged about this on Twit- ter, one of his followers replied, “Guer- rilla Mindset: How Mike Cernovich waged war on journalism and won.” “Some people say they hate Beltway insiders and establishment media types, but it’s actually sour grapes,” Cernovich said. (Ann Coulter came to mind.) “Deep down, they want the cool kids to love them. I actually fucking detest those peo- ple.” He grew up in Kewanee, a farming town in Illinois. Not long ago, he said, “I started looking into who these neo- legitimacy at this point that if they re- ported, ‘We just saw Trump beat the shit out of a guy on the street,’ skeptical peo- ple like my readers would go, ‘Really? Is there video? Was the video doctored?’ ” Such casual cynicism, of course, redounds to Trump’s advantage. For his part, Trump may have changed his mind about al- most every policy proposal and campaign strategy, but he consistently maintains that journalists are scum. In 2010, when the right-wing provo- cateur Andrew Breitbart started a blog called Big Journalism, the name was ironic. Now Breitbart.com gets more trafc than the Los Angeles Times, and Steve Ban- non, Breitbart’s former editor-in-chief, is running Trump’s campaign. Cernovich •• said, “Going by the statistics, I’m less influential than some people”—Trump, me—these people aren’t refugees. It’s a on behalf of someone who is even more say, or Kim Kardashian—“but way more hoax.” He shared photographs of the ref- ruthless online than he is. In mid- October, influential than some punk blogger at ugees on Facebook, writing, “There is Cernovich released another book, “maga Politico or The Weekly Standard who no oppression. The media lied.” The Mindset,” about Trump’s “unapologeti- thinks of himself as part of the media photos were shared nearly five thousand cally masculine” persona. élite. Objectively, I am the new media.” times—his first taste of viral fame. Ever since the advent of the mass Cernovich realized that a meme could media, professional journalists have been s Shauna Cernovich was leaving reach more people than a newspaper a bulwark against seditious or far-fetched the house to visit her parents, she story, without having to cross an editor’s theories. One might attribute this fact toldA me, “They don’t fully understand desk. With savvy framing, an alternative to their paternalism, their myopia, or what Michael does. They get that he voice could seem as authoritative as the their rectitude. In any case, their work likes Trump and that he puts stuf on nightly news. He decided to become one tended to have a homogenizing efect. the Internet—they just don’t get how of those voices. Newscasters told us that the world was that’s a job.” Her parents are secular Per- He had already insinuated himself more or less as we expected it to be, and sian Muslims who left Iran before it be- into public conflicts in order to gain fol- we more or less believed them. This sys- came a theocracy. “My dad hates when lowers. (“Conflict is attention.”) And in tem had its faults: after all, far-fetched women cover their hair,” she said. 2014 he became a champion of Gamer- theories are sometimes true. In 1922, “We sometimes joke that he’s more Gate, a vicious campaign against femi- Walter Lippmann, in his book “Public Islamophobic than I am,” Mike said. nists in the video-game industry. He Opinion,” warned of “the manufacture “My dad actually created an anony- goaded his opponents on Twitter: “Who of consent,” a power that media gate- mous Twitter account so he could troll cares about breast cancer and rape? Not keepers could use for good or for ill. Muslims,” Shauna said. “At the same me.” Cernovich’s afliation with Gamer- That was a twentieth-century prob- time, he hates Trump, because he’s, like, Gate made him, he said, “toxic in the lem. The media no longer has the abil- ‘If he’s saying negative things about difer- eyes of a lot of people,” but he calculated ity to manufacture consent. Walter Cron- ent groups, then how do we know he’s that the exposure was worth it. kite was once the most trusted man in not going to come after Persians one He picked fights with celebrities on America; in 2013, according to a Read- day?’ Even if you believe certain things, Twitter. (Seth Rogen took the bait; Cer- er’s Digest survey, the most trusted per- you shouldn’t necessarily say it openly.” novich called him “Cuck Rogen.”) “I’m son was Tom Hanks. “Let’s say, for the Mike shrugged. “I don’t think any not a pure troll,” Cernovich told me. “Pure sake of argument, that Walter Cronkite ideas are of limits,” he said. “Actions, trolls are amoral”—they post swastikas, lied about everything,” Cernovich said. yes. Words, no.” he suggested, not out of an allegiance to “Before Twitter, how would you have He stood up and stretched, thrusting Nazism but because they enjoy riling known? Look, I read postmodernist the- his chest forward and his arms back. people. “I use trolling tactics to build my ory in college. If everything is a narra- “Lowers your cortisol,” he explained. He brand.” tive, then we need alternatives to the poured himself a cofee, sat down, and Pro-Trump activism channelled sev- dominant narrative.” He smiled. “I don’t read articles about Ahmad Rahami, who eral of Cernovich’s interests: he could seem like a guy who reads Lacan, do I?” was suspected of planting bombs in New hurt a feminist’s chances of becoming These days, Cernovich’s primary tar- Jersey and Manhattan. Developments in President, associate himself with the year’s get is the “hoaxing media.” He told me, the Rahami case were big news in the top story, and deploy brawler methods “The mainstream media has lost so much New York area, but not everywhere on

46 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 the Internet. “If there’s a story that can it in the past minute,” he said. Many of “Righteous Indignation”: “There’s a part hurt Hillary, I want it in the news cycle,” the tweets included images, as he’d re- where he’s on a plane for five hours, with- Cernovich said. “When I first started, quested: Clinton and Merkel laughing out Wi-Fi, and he has withdrawal symp- that meant figuring out how news cy- conspiratorially; a caricature of Clinton toms. I relate to that. And, you know, cles work.” One way to propel a story as a ventriloquist’s dummy, sitting on Breitbart had a huge cultural impact, but into the mainstream is to get it linked Soros’s lap. “It’s hard to tell yet whether he died of heart failure at forty-three.” by the Drudge Report. “If it’s on Drudge, this is a killer hashtag or just an O.K. then it’s on ‘Hannity,’ ” Cernovich said. one,” he said. A hashtag will trend, he he following week, Cernovich “If it’s on ‘Hannity,’ then Brian Stelter’s estimates, if it gets thirty-five hundred went to the first Presidential debate, talking about it on CNN.” The Drudge tweets within an hour. “That’s a guess— atT Hofstra University. He lacked press Report favors big newspapers and es- Twitter keeps that stuf secret,” he said. credentials, so he found a few dozen tablished right-wing blogs; Danger and Around 3:30 p.m., he announced that Jill Stein supporters on the perimeter Play is not on the list. “If I have a really he was done for the day. “I’ll go to the of the campus, and streamed their pro- hot story, I might leak it to someone at gym, relax for a bit,” he said. Before clos- test via Periscope. “Police keep sending Breitbart, or to someone else who can ing his laptop, he checked his direct mes- us to diferent areas,” he texted me. He get the Drudge link.” That journalist sages on Twitter, and found a tip alleg- claimed that this was “psyops” designed usually returns the favor by embedding ing that, in 2014, a Reddit user had asked to dampen the protesters’ morale. In a a Cernovich tweet in the story. for help removing a “VERY VIP” e-mail Periscope video called “No free speech Twitter is Cernovich’s favorite me- address “from a bunch of archived e-mail.” at #Debates2016,” he said, “Mainstream dium for promoting memes. The site de- The tipster claimed that the Reddit user media’s not gonna talk about this.” votes a prominent place to its list of trend- was Paul Combetta, one of Hillary Clin- “The cops are Soros people!” one com- ing topics—the most discussed phrases ton’s I.T. stafers. Cernovich clicked the menter wrote. and hashtags of the moment, according link to the Reddit thread and noticed “Harambe!” another wrote. to a proprietary algorithm. “It starts on that it had been deleted. “Son of a bitch!” I was inside the gates, in a gym where Periscope,” he explained. “I’ll show you.” he said. “This might actually be true.” the TV networks had set up broadcast He propped his iPad upright on the He returned to muckraking mode. booths. I ran into Lou Dobbs, the Fox kitchen table, so that the camera lens “We’re going to make a whole new news Business anchor, who was wearing pan- faced the mirror, and started filming. cycle about her fucking e-mails again!” cake makeup. I asked him if he’d heard Within seconds, thousands of view- he said. “This poor fucking woman.” He of Cernovich. “Absolutely!” he said. “I ers had signed on. “We’ve gotta get a started a new Periscope video. “What do follow him on Twitter. Seems very smart.” hashtag trending,” he said. “We definitely you guys want to do for a hashtag?” he We parted, then Dobbs chased me need to remind the world that Hillary said. He decided on #HillarysHacker. It down. “Can I revise that?” he said. “I’m Clinton is bringing in the terrorists.” was trending before he finished the video. not sure I follow him.” (He does.) “I’ve Viewers made suggestions, and Cer- That day, more than forty-two thousand seen his stuf, and I think it’s interest- novich, monitoring the feed on his lap- tweets were posted with the hashtag. ing,” he added. “Interesting is a good top, read them aloud. “HillarysMigrants I returned to Cernovich’s house the thing, right?” is good,” he said. “HillarysTerrorists is next morning. By then, the Reddit story Cernovich watched the debate from good. Yeah, just keep throwing them a parking lot, on his phone. Afterward, out.” He overlooked #hillaryshitmen and he gave me a ride to Manhattan. Trump #hillarysmigrantcuntlickers, as well as a had spent much of the debate snifing commenter who wrote, “Nice tea kettle audibly, and I asked Cernovich if he wor- of flowers Cuck.” ried about Trump’s health. “I wouldn’t After a few minutes, Cernovich chose be surprised if they messed with his mike #HillarysMigrants. He instructed his to make it sound like that,” he said. followers, “Remind people that Angela He predicted that traditional journal- Merkel, George Soros, Hillary Clinton— ists would spin the debate in Clinton’s they’re all together. Post pictures of them favor. “The left likes to talk about power together. Post pictures of the terrorist at- structures, right?” he said. “Well, the tacks.” While he was talking, Shauna re- had been covered by Vice and New York, media still thinks of itself as speaking turned home and sat on a couch in the and a congressman had asked prosecu- truth to power. What they don’t realize background of the shot. (“If I stayed out tors in Washington, D.C., to look into is that someone like me is perceived as of his videos all the time, I’d never be al- it. Cernovich had tweeted dozens of times the new Fourth Estate. Maybe they lowed in the living room,” she told me.) since I’d left, including at 1:30 A.M. He should check their structural privilege.” He went on for twenty more minutes, was wearing the same gingham shirt. “I The “paternalistic” media, he said, was referring to George Soros’s son six times didn’t go to the gym last night,” he said, giving way to a more democratic one. “It as a “basic bitch.” sheepishly. “I’ve gained twenty pounds makes journalists crazy, because they used He ended the Periscope video and during this fucking election.” to be in control,” he said. “They can’t searched for #HillarysMigrants on Twit- He told me that he’d been reading control people anymore. Everyone has a ter. “Ninety-two people have posted to Andrew Breitbart’s 2011 autobiography, voice now.” 

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 47 A REPORTER AT LARGE THE UNCONNECTED

The Democrats lost the white working class. The Republicans exploited them. Can Hillary Clinton win them back? BY GEORGE PACKER

he basement of a hotel on incentives and other enticements to In the nineties, President Bill Clin- Capitol Hill. A meeting room nudge corporations into focussing less ton embraced globalization as the over- with beige walls and headachy on share price and more on “long-term arching solution to the country’s prob- light,T cavernous enough to accommo- investments,” in research, equipment, and lems—the “bridge to the twenty-first date three hundred occupants but empty, workers. She said, “We have come to century.” But the new century defied the except for Hillary Clinton. She sat at a heavily favor the financial markets over optimistic predictions of élites, and small round table with a cloth draped the otherwise productive markets,” in- during this election, in a nationalistic to the carpet. Her eyes were narrower cluding manufacturing, “which have been backlash, many Americans—along with than usual—fatigue—and she wore a pushed to a narrower place within the citizens of other Western democracies— knee-length dress jacket of steel-blue over-all economy while an enormous have rebelled. “I think we haven’t orga- leather, buttoned to the lapels; its me- amount of intelligence, efort, and dol- nized ourselves for the twenty-first- tallic shine gave an impression of armor, lars went into spinning transactions.” As century globalization,” Hillary admit- as if she’d just descended from the bat- she plunged into the details, her eyes ted. America had wrongly ceded man- tlefield to take a breather in this under- widened, her color rose, and her finger ufacturing to other countries, she said, ground hideout. Politics, at times so occasionally gave the table a thump for and allowed trade deals to hurt workers. thrilling, is generally a dismal business, emphasis. “I want to really marry the Clinton has been in politics through- and Clinton’s acceptance of this is key public and the private sector,” she said. out these decades of economic stagna- to her power. She’s the ofcer who keeps Her ideas are progressive but incremen- tion and inequality, of political Balkan- on marching in mud. talist: raise the federal minimum wage ization, of weakening faith in American I sat down across from her. With only to twelve dollars an hour, but not fifteen; institutions and leaders. During this a few weeks left until the election, I support free trade, as long as workers’ period, her party lost its working-class wanted to ask her about the voters she’s rights are protected and corporations base. It’s one of history’s anomalies that had the most trouble winning. Why were aren’t allowed to evade regulations. she could soon be in a position to prove so many downwardly mobile white Amer- The thumps got harder when Clin- that politics still works—that it can icans supporting Donald Trump? ton turned to the Democratic Party. In better the lives of Americans, including “It’s ‘Pox on both your houses,’ ” Clin- her acceptance speech at the Philadel- those who despise Clinton and her kind. ton said. “It was certainly a rejection of phia Convention, she said, “Americans every other Republican running. So pick are willing to work—and work hard. But few years ago, on a rural high- the guy who’s the outsider, pick the guy right now an awful lot of people feel way south of Tampa, I saw a metal who’s giving you an explanation—in my there is less and less respect for the work warehouseA with a sign that said “amer- view, a trumped-up one, not convincing— they do. And less respect for them, pe- ican dream welding + fabrication.” but, nevertheless, people are hungry for riod. Democrats, we are the party of Broken vehicles and busted equipment that.” Voters needed a narrative for their working people, but we haven’t done a were scattered around the yard. The place lives, she said, including someone to blame good enough job showing we get what looked sun-beaten and dilapidated. When for what had gone wrong. “Donald Trump you’re going through.” One didn’t often I pulled up, the owner eased himself down came up with a fairly simple, easily un- hear that thought from Democratic pol- from a front-end loader, hobbled over, derstood, and to some extent satisfying iticians, and I asked Clinton what she and leaned against a pole. He was in his story. And I think we Democrats have had meant by it. fifties, with a heavy red face, dishevelled not provided as clear a message about “We have been fighting out elections hair, and a bushy mustache going from how we see the economy as we need to.” in general on a lot of noneconomic is- strawberry blond to white. He wore a She continued, “We need to get back to sues over the past thirty years,” she said— blue short-sleeved shirt torn at the tails claiming the economic mantle—that we social issues, welfare, crime, war. “Some- and shorts that exposed swollen legs. He are the ones who create the jobs, who times we win, sometimes we lose, but we had powerful forearms, but his body was provide the support that is needed to get haven’t had a coherent, compelling eco- visibly turning against him. The corners more fairness into the economy.” nomic case that needs to be made in order of his mouth sloped downward, in an Clinton has given a lot of thought to to lay down a foundation on which to expression poised between self-mockery economic policy. She wants to use tax both conduct politics and do policy.” and disgust at the world. It was a face

48 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 Democrats can reclaim the “economic mantle,” Clinton said, adding, “I want to really marry the public and the private sector.” PHOTOGRAPH BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 49 of the disabled ofended Frisbie. “To make fun of somebody like he did, on national TV!” he said. “And when they asked him what he’s ever done for the country, and he said, ‘I built a hotel’— how many jobs has he done for the U.S. that he hasn’t outsourced to people from other places?” He went on, “I don’t see where we’re going, or how either of them is going to benefit us in the economy.” The nineteenth-century term for someone like Frisbie was “workingman.” In the mid-twentieth century, it was “blue collar.” During the Nixon years, people like him embodied the “silent majority”— seen by admirers as hardworking, patri- otic, and self-reliant, and by detractors as narrow-minded, jingoistic, and bigoted. In the wake of the culture wars of the “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana? But seventies and eighties, some downscale seriously, that’s the last time we knock.” whites embraced the slur “redneck” as a badge of honor. (Not just in the South: they kicked ass in my California high •• school, too, showing of the ring worn into the back pocket of their jeans by that invited human exchange—a saving said. “They’re just in it for themselves.” cans of snuf.) In “White Trash: The 400- grace in a ruined landscape. The house behind his shop was a drug Year Untold History of Class in Amer- His name was Mark Frisbie. When he den. His wife had lost her day-care cen- ica,” the historian Nancy Isenberg writes, was younger, a girlfriend had asked him, ter to bank foreclosure. Frisbie had spent “More than a reaction to progressive “Are you the Frisbee from Wham-O?” four days at a local hospital for back and changes in race relations, this shift was Frisbie retorted, “Sure, that’s why I live chest pain, running up a sixty-thousand- spurred on by a larger fascination with in a trailer with no front porch and drive dollar bill. The doctor was Arab or In- identity politics.” Being a redneck “im- a pickup instead of a Porsche.” At the dian, and his accented English was barely plied that class took on the traits (and age of fifteen, Frisbie began working for intelligible to Frisbie, but he picked up allure) of an ethnic heritage, which in turn a farm-equipment manufacturer; he on an accusation that he was shopping reflected the modern desire to measure stayed for three decades, until he launched around for pain prescriptions. Mexicans class as merely a cultural phenomenon.” American Dream. He went into busi- were moving in; Frisbie and his wife Today, Frisbie is part of the “white ness to please his father, he said—“Then wanted to move out. As we talked, two working class.” At first, the term sounds the bastard died on me.” After spotting Latinos were stuccoing a gas station across more neutral than its predecessors—a the metal warehouse, Frisbie agreed to the highway. category suitable for pollsters and econ- buy it, for two hundred and fifty thou- Immigrants, politicians, banks, crim- omists (who generally define “working sand dollars. The next day, the woman inals, the economy, medical bills. You class” as lacking a college degree). But who owned it got a call from a man in heard Frisbie’s complaints all over the the phrase is vexing. The blunt racial Georgia ofering four hundred and fifty country, especially in small towns and modifier, buried or implied in earlier ver- thousand. But she and Frisbie had al- rural areas. I soon forgot about Frisbie, sions, declares itself up front. Without ready shaken on the deal, and she but the rise of Donald Trump got me the adjective “white,” the term is mean- wouldn’t back out. thinking about him again. When I called ingless as a predictor of group thinking “Barter and a handshake used to mean American Dream and asked Frisbie which and behavior; but without the noun something,” he said. “Not anymore.” Presidential candidate he was support- “working class” it misses the other key It was the depth of the recession, and ing, he said, “Do they have that line for demographic. “White working class” Frisbie’s customers had grown scarce, de- ‘None of the above’?” He had lost the mixes race and class into a volatile com- manding, and unreliable. He was down house that had been in his family for pound, privilege and disadvantage from half a dozen employees to himself generations, and he and his wife had been crammed into a single phrase. and his stepson, William Zipperer. (Fris- forced to live in his shop for several years, “Working class,” meanwhile, has be- bie had five children.) The government until they moved into a retirement trailer come a euphemism. It once suggested was killing him with regulations, and one park. His health had grown worse—he productivity and sturdiness. Now it means law had required him to build a fence was strapped to an oxygen tank—but he downwardly mobile, poor, even patho- around his repair yard. Politicians did didn’t trust Clinton’s promises to improve logical. A significant part of the W.W.C. nothing to help him. “They all steal,” he health care. As for Trump, his mockery has succumbed to the ills that used to be

50 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 associated with the black urban “under- that polls show members of the white who owned hardware stores or were drug- class”: intergenerational poverty, welfare, working class to be the most pessimistic gists, or first teller in the bank, propri- debt, bankruptcy, out-of-wedlock births, people in the country. etor of a haberdashery or principal of a trash entertainment, addiction, jail, so- Americans like Mark Frisbie have no small-town high school, local lawyer, re- cial distrust, political cynicism, bad health, foundation to stand on; they’re unorga- tired doctor, a widow on a tidy income, unhappiness, early death. The heartland nized, unheard, unspoken for. They sink her minister and fellow-delegate, minor towns that abandoned the Democrats in alone. The institutions of a healthy de- executives from minor corporations, men the eighties to bask in Ronald Reagan’s mocracy—government, corporation, who owned their farms . . . out to pay morning sunlight; the communities that school, bank, union, church, civic group, homage to their own true candidate, the Sarah Palin, on a 2008 campaign stop in media organization—feel remote and false, representative of their conservative or- Greensboro, North Carolina, called “the geared for the benefit of those who run derly heart.” best of America . . . the real America”— them. And no institution is guiltier of this Mailer’s Democrats are personified in those places were hollowing out, and pol- abandonment than the political parties. the brutal proletarian jowls of Mayor iticians didn’t seem to notice. A great in- So it shouldn’t have come as a com- Richard Daley, and in the flesh and the version occurred. The dangerous, depraved plete surprise when millions of Ameri- smell of the Chicago stockyards. The cities gradually became safe for clean- cans were suddenly drawn to a crass country’s political parties were corrupt, living professional families who happily strongman who tossed out fraudulent they were élitist, yet they still represented paid thousands of dollars to prep their promises and gave institutions and élites distinct and organized interests (unions, kids for the gifted-and-talented test, while the middle finger. The fact that so many chambers of commerce) through tradi- the region surrounding Greensboro lost informed, sophisticated Americans failed tional hierarchies (the Daley machine, tobacco, textiles, and furniture-making, to see Donald Trump coming, and then the Republican county apparatus). The in a rapid collapse around the turn of the kept writing him of, is itself a sign of a Democratic Party, however, was about to millennium, so that Oxycontin and dis- democracy in which no center holds. tear itself apart over Vietnam. ability and home invasions had taken root Most of his critics are too reasonable to In Chicago, the Party establishment by the time Palin saluted those towns, in fathom his fury-driven campaign. Many voted down a peace plank and turned remarks that were a generation out of date. don’t know a single Trump supporter. back the popular antiwar candidacies of J. D. Vance, a son of Appalachia and But to fight Trump you have to under- Senators Eugene McCarthy and George the Rust Belt, managed to escape this stand his appeal. McGovern. The Convention’s nominee, crisis—he served with the Marines in Trump’s core voters are revealed by Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, had Iraq, went to college at Ohio State, then poll after poll to be members of the strong support from labor but hadn’t en- attended Yale Law School, forty years W.W.C. His campaign has made them tered a single primary. This was what a after the Clintons went there. He now a self-conscious identity group. They’re rigged system looked like. The sham de- works in a venture-capital firm. This kind one among many factions in the coun- mocracy and the chaos in Chicago led of ascendance, once not so remarkable, try today—their mutual suspicions flar- to the creation of the McGovern-Fraser now seems urgently in need of the hon- ing, the boundaries between them hard- Commission, which reformed the Dem- est accounting that Vance provides in his ening. A disaster on this scale belongs to ocrats’ nominating process, weakening new memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” It’s a kind no single set of Americans, and it will the Party bosses and strengthening of “Black Boy” of the W.W.C. Vance grew play out long after the November elec- women, minorities, young people, and up with a turbulent mother who became tion, regardless of the outcome. Trump single-issue activists. In Thomas Frank’s addicted to painkillers and bounced from represents the whole country’s failure. recent book, “Listen, Liberal,” he de- one man to another, giving and receiv- scribes the result: “The McGovern Com- ing abuse. The life he describes is not just or most of the twentieth century, mission reforms seemed to be populist, materially deprived but culturally isolated the identities of the major political but their efect was to replace one group and self-destructive. When he meets peo- Fparties were clear: Republicans spoke for of party insiders with another—in this ple with “TV accents,” he feels a deep es- those who wanted to get ahead, and Dem- case, to replace leaders of workers’ orga- trangement. Reading “Hillbilly Elegy,” I ocrats spoke for those who wanted a fair nizations with afuent professionals.” understood why, on trips to regions like shake. Whatever the vagaries and hypoc- This shift made a certain historical North Carolina’s Piedmont, I sometimes risies of a given period or politician, these sense. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. was a sclerotic felt that I’d travelled farther from New were the terms by which the parties un- politburo, on the wrong side of the Viet- York than if I’d gone to West Africa or derstood and advertised themselves: the nam War. The class rhetoric of the New the Middle East. Vance is tender but un- interests of business on one side, work- Deal sounded out of date, and the prob- sparing toward his world. “Sometimes I ers on the other. The lineup held as late lems it addressed appeared to have been view members of the élite with an almost as 1968, and it’s still evident in “Miami solved by the wide prosperity of the post- primal scorn,” he writes. “But I have to and the Siege of Chicago,” Norman Mail- war years. A diferent set of issues mat- give it to them: Their children are hap- er’s brilliant report on the party conven- tered to younger Democrats: the rights pier and healthier, their divorce rates lower, tions of that lunatic year. Here’s Richard of disenfranchised groups, the environ- their church attendance higher, their lives Nixon, back from the political dead, greet- ment, government corruption, milita- longer. These people are beating us at our ing Republican delegates in Miami Beach: rism. In 1971, Fred Dutton, a member own damned game.” Vance points out “a parade of wives and children and men of the McGovern Commission, published

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 51 a book called “Changing Sources of tion to do good, and to correct injus- to shake. To the left, the Clintons were Power,” which hailed young college- tices.” Clinton had “a kind of spiritual sellouts; to the right, they were spies, educated idealists as the future of the high-mindedness . . . a kind of fervor, sneaking across partisan lines to steal Party. Pocketbook issues would give way and self-justification that God is on her ideas and rhetoric that advanced their to concerns about quality of life. Called side.” Hillary went town to town in South McGovernite revolution. Because Hil- the New Politics, this set of priorities Texas, registering Hispanic voters, her lary’s politics have always been joined to emphasized personal morality over class Bible in hand. For her, politics had to an idea of virtue, and because she is a interest. The activists who had been conform to an idea of virtue. Bill, the woman, the suspicions about her have cheated by the Daley machine in Chi- natural, didn’t ask if he was on God’s been the greater, even on the left. The cago in 1968 became the insiders at the side—politics was all about people. Times Magazine notoriously mocked her 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami Neither of them had a carefully worked- as “Saint Hillary.” Beach, which nominated McGovern. out ideology. Their political philosophy Bill Clinton campaigned for Presi- Many union members, feeling devalued dent in 1992 as a populist champion of by the Party, voted for Nixon, contrib- the struggling middle class, but—con- uting to his landslide victory. fronted with deficits, a recalcitrant bond McGovern’s campaign manager was market, and Wall Street-friendly eco- a young Yale-educated lawyer named Gary nomic advisers—he governed as a mod- Hart, who had assigned the campaign’s erate Republican. His first budget was Texas efort to a Yale law student named long on deficit reduction and short on Bill Clinton. Clinton’s new girlfriend investments in workers. He passed the from Yale, Hillary Rodham, joined him Family and Medical Leave Act, and he that summer in San Antonio. Hart and raised the minimum wage, but other pro- Clinton embodied the transition that came down to two words: “public ser- posals, such as spending on job training, their party was undergoing. Education vice.” Bill and Hillary moved to Arkansas ran into Republican resistance and Clin- had lifted both men from working-class, in 1974, and got married the following ton’s own determination to balance the small-town backgrounds: Hart labored year. They were policy wonks, and by fo- budget. In late 1993, over the objections on the Kansas railroads as a boy; Clin- cussing on incremental reforms—in ed- of his union supporters, he pushed ton came from a dirt-poor Arkansas wa- ucation, rural health care, children’s wel- through Congress the North American termelon patch called Hope. The Mc- fare—they thrived politically in Arkansas, Free Trade Agreement, which had been Govern rout left its young foot soldiers where they spent the two decades after negotiated by his predecessor, George with two options: restore the Party’s work- McGovern’s defeat. They muted some of H. W. Bush. When I asked Hillary Clin- ing-class identity or move on to a future the most divisive social issues, compro- ton what her views on nafta had been, where educated professionals might com- mised on others, and mashed together she said, “I don’t know that I was partic- pose a Democratic majority. Hart and idealism with business-friendly ideas for ularly focussed on it, that’s not what I Clinton followed the second path. Hart economic growth. Old- fashioned Dem- was working on. I was working on health emerged as the leader of the tech-minded ocratic class politics was foreign to them, care.” Some people who knew her at the “Atari Democrats,” in the eighties; Clin- even though Bill sometimes sounded like time say that she privately opposed the ton, the bright hope of Southern mod- an Ozark populist. Hillary was the more deal, but in public she remained loyal to erates, became the chairman of the Dem- passionate liberal, and from the begin- her husband’s Administration. She of- ocratic Leadership Council, a position ning she was a tough fighter. When she cially turned against nafta only in 2007, that he used as a launchpad for the Pres- took the lead on her husband’s most im- when she first ran for President. idency in 1992. portant initiative as governor—raising Bill Clinton’s Presidency was so lack- Hillary’s background was diferent. the state’s abysmal educational stan- ing in history-making events, yet so She had grown up outside Chicago, in dards—she made an adversary of the crowded with the embarrassing minutiae a middle-class family. Her father, a teachers’ union. Instead of speaking for of scandalmongering, that it was easy to staunch conservative just this side of the the working class, the Clintons spoke miss the great change that those years John Birch Society, owned a small drap- about equipping workers to rise into the meant for the country and the Demo- ery business. Her mother taught her the professional class. Their presumption was cratic Party. Clinton turned sharply to- Methodist creed: “Do all the good you that all Americans could be like them. ward deregulation, embracing the free- can, for all the people you can, in all the In the eighties, the decade of conser- market ideas of his Treasury Secretary ways you can, as long as ever you can.” vative ascendancy, the Clintons’ brand of Robert Rubin and the chairman of the Hillary changed from Goldwater Girl politics seemed to provide the ingredi- Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan. The to liberal activist in the crucible of the ents of a Democratic revival. But, to some, results appeared to be spectacular. Here sixties, but she remained true to her or- the couple’s mixture of uplifting rheto- is Clinton’s version, in his final State of igins. Sara Ehrman, one of Hillary’s ric and ideological elusiveness suggested the Union Message, in 2000: “We are co-workers in Texas in the summer of untrammelled ambition and hidden agen- fortunate to be alive at this moment in 1972, described Clinton to her biogra- das—anything but public service. Bill history. Never before has our nation en- pher Carl Bernstein as a “progressive and Hillary became the objects of a deep joyed, at once, so much prosperity and Christian in that she believed in litiga- suspicion, which they’ve never been able social progress with so little internal

52 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 crisis and so few external threats.” The time in all of human history,” he said. ternet was ending global poverty). Re- country had more jobs, higher wages, The spirit of the time was a heady con- jecting globalization was like rejecting faster growth, bigger surpluses; it had coction of high purpose and self- the sunrise. Only the shortsighted, the replaced “outmoded ideologies” with congratulation—a secular brand of Cal- stupid, the coddled, and the unprepared dazzling technology. The longest peace- vinism, with the state of inward grace would turn against it. Resistance, Fried- time expansion in history had practi- revealed outwardly by an Ivy League de- man predicted, would come mainly from cally abolished the business cycle. Eco- gree, Silicon Valley stock options, and a people in poor countries—bureaucrats nomic conflict was obsolete. Education White House invitation. Meritocracy attached to their perks and tribes wed- was the answer to all problems of social had become the creed of Clinton’s party. ded to their local traditions (the olive class. (His laundry list of proposals to This spirit followed Bill and Hillary tree of the title). The book’s heroes were Congress included more money for In- out of the White House. The conflation entrepreneurs, financiers, and technol- ternet access in schools and funds to of virtue and success guided the family ogists, hopping airports between New help poor kids take college-test-prep foundation they created, the celebrity- York, San Francisco, London, Hong courses.) “My fellow-Americans,” the studded charity events they hosted, their Kong. “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” President announced. “We have crossed mammoth speaking fees, their promis- was “Das Kapital” for meritocrats. the bridge we built to the twenty- first cuous fund-raising. century.” In 1999, Thomas Friedman published arlier this year, an economist In our conversation, Hillary Clinton “The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Under- named Branko Milanović published spoke of the limits of an “educationalist” standing Globalization.” The book de- Ea book called “Global Inequality: A New mind-set, which she called a “peculiar scribed globalization as supplanting the Approach for the Age of Globalization.” form of élitism.” Educationalists, she noted, Cold War system, but, unlike the Cold It’s a progress report on the “system” that say they “want to lift everybody up”— War, globalization was a product of tech- Friedman heralded. Milanović analyzes they “don’t want to tell anybody that they nological advances and blind economic global economic data from the past quar- can’t go as high as their ambition will forces, not government policies. Fried- ter century and concludes that the world take them.” The problem was that “we’re man’s approach was descriptive, but he has become more equal—poor countries going to have a lot of jobs in this econ- kept slipping into ethics and meta- catching up with rich ones—but that omy” that require blue-collar skills, not physics: the new world he described Western democracies have become less B.A.s. “We need to do something that is turned out to be both inevitable and for equal. Globalization’s biggest winners are really important, and this is to just go the best. His tone was that of a vaguely the new Asian middle and upper classes, right after the denigration of jobs and threatening evangelist: globalization was and the one-per-centers of the West: these skills that are not college-connected.” A a bullet train without an engineer, and groups have almost doubled their real in- four-year degree isn’t for everyone, she anyone who didn’t board right away comes since the late eighties. The big- said; vocational education should be would be left behind or flattened by it. gest losers are the American and Euro- brought back to high schools. The job of government was to explain pean working and middle classes—until Yet “educationalist élitism” describes the merits of globalization to citizens very recently, their incomes hardly budged. the Democratic thinking that took while softening its short-term blows, During these years, resistance to root during her husband’s Presidency. with a light cushion of social welfare globalization has migrated from anar- When I asked her if this had helped and job-retraining programs, until its chists disrupting trade conferences to drive working-class Americans away lasting benefits became available to ev- members of the vast middle classes of the from the Democratic Party, she hedged. eryone (right around the time the In- West. Many of them have become Trump “I don’t really know the answer to that,” she said. “I don’t think it is really useful to focus just on the nineties, because re- ally the nineties was an outlier.” In April, 2000, President Clinton hosted a celebration called the White House Conference on the New Econ- omy. The phenomenal productivity of the New Economy was powered by the goods and services created by the rising young professional class—I.T. engineers, bankers, financial analysts, lawyers, de- signers, management consultants. Bill Gates was a panelist, and Greenspan gave an address. Introducing the assem- bly, President Clinton was euphoric. “I believe the computer and the Internet give us a chance to move more people out of poverty more quickly than at any “Darth? Darth Vader?” supporters, Brexit voters, constituents of ing goods; trade’s role in strengthening herited I.Q., ethnicity, and professional Marine Le Pen and other European proto- other economies, thereby reducing im- success are strongly connected, thereby fascists. After a generation of globaliza- migration flows from countries like Mex- dooming government eforts to educate tion, they’re trying to derail the train. ico. The “popularization of politics,” he poor Americans into the middle class. One of the participants at the 2000 said, keeps leaders from pursuing con- The book generated great controversy, White House conference, and one of troversial but important policies. If the including charges of racism, and some of Friedman’s sources of wisdom in “The Marshall Plan had been focus-grouped, its methodology was exposed as flawed. Lexus and the Olive Tree,” was Clin- it never would have happened. Global- In a more recent book, “Coming Apart,” ton’s final Secretary of the Treasury, Law- ization creates what Summers called a Murray focusses on the widening divide rence Summers. At Treasury, Summers “trilemma” among global integration, between a self-segregated white upper helped design the crisis rescue of the public goods like environmental protec- class and an emerging white lower class. newly globalizing economies of Mex- tion or high wages, and national sover- He concludes that “the trends signify dam- ico, Russia, and South Korea. Summers eignty. It’s become clear that Democratic age to the heart of American community and his immediate predecessor, Robert élites, including him, underestimated the and the way in which the great majority Rubin, pushed free trade and financial power of nationalism, because they didn’t of Americans pursue satisfying lives.” deregulation, and presided over the eco- feel it strongly themselves. Murray lives in Burkittsville, Mary- nomic expansion of the Clinton years. Summers described the current Dem- land, an hour and a quarter’s drive from Time put their faces, along with Green- ocratic Party as “a coalition of the cos- Washington, D.C. It’s a virtually all-white span’s, on its cover, calling them “The mopolitan élite and diversity.” The Re- town where elements of the working class Committee to Save the World.” publicans, he went on, combined “social have fallen on hard times. “The energy Just as Summers received credit for conservatism and an agenda of helping coming out of the new lower class really the nineties boom, he took some blame rich people.” These alignments left nei- only needed a voice, because they are so for the Great Recession. He had helped ther party in synch with Americans like pissed of at people like you and me,” he the Clinton Administration push through Mark Frisbie: “All these regular people said. “We so obviously despise them, we the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which who thought they are kind of the soul of so obviously condescend to them—‘fly- had walled of commercial banking from the country—they feel like there was no- over country.’ The only slur you can use investment banking. In 2000, he sup- body who seemed to be thinking a lot at a dinner party and get away with is to ported a law regulating derivatives that about them.” In 2004, the political sci- call somebody a redneck—that won’t give many critics have called insufcient. Sum- entist Samuel Huntington published his you any problems in Manhattan. And mers has argued, convincingly, that the final book, “Who Are We? The Chal- you can also talk about evangelical Chris- repeal of Glass- Steagall had little bear- lenges to America’s National Identity.” tians in the most disparaging terms—you ing on the 2008 crisis for which it be- He used the term “cosmopolitan élites” will get no pushback from that. They’re came a chief symbol. Still, he strongly to describe Americans who are at home aware of this kind of condescension. And supported Wall Street deregulation, and in the fluid world of transnational cor- they also haven’t been doing real well.” he remains an important figure in the porations, dual citizenship, blended iden- A few years ago, I met a seventy-year- Democratic Party’s alignment with the tities, and multicultural education. Such old widow in southwestern Virginia professional class. people dominate our universities, tech named Lorna. She was a retired school- In July, I went to see Summers at his companies, publishers, nonprofits, en- teacher, living on Social Security, and as vacation home in Massachusetts. When tertainment studios, and news media. we discussed politics she insisted on her I arrived, he had just pulled up—in a They congregate in cities and on the right to use mercury light bulbs, since Lexus—after a morning of tennis. We coasts. Lately, they have become partic- Al Gore lived in a mansion and used a sat on a terrace overlooking Cape Cod ularly obsessed with the food they eat. private jet. Lorna suddenly exploded: “I Bay. Summers described numerous trips The locavore movement, whatever its want to eat what I want to eat, and for that he had made during his years at benefits to health and agriculture, is an them to tell me I can’t eat French fries Treasury to review antipoverty programs inward-looking form of activism. When or Coca-Cola—no way! They want to in Africa and Latin America, and in you visit a farm-to-table restaurant and tell me what to think. I have thought American inner cities. “I don’t think I order the wild-nettle sformato for thirty for myself all my life.” ever went to Akron, or Flint, or Toledo, dollars, the line between social conscious- The moral superiority of élites comes or Youngstown,” he admitted. To Dem- ness and self-gratification disappears. cheap. Recently, Murray has done demo- ocratic policymakers, poverty was foreign Buying synthetic- nitrate-free lunch meat graphic research on “Super Zips”—the or it was black. As for displaced white at Whole Foods is also a way to isolate Zip Codes of the most privileged resi- workers in the Rust Belt, Summers said, yourself from contamination by the pack- dents of New York, Washington, San “their problems weren’t heavily on our aged food sold at Kmart and from the Francisco, and Los Angeles. “Super Zips radar screen, and they were mad that their overweight, downwardly mobile people are integrated in only one way—Asians,” problems weren’t.” who shop there. The people who buy he said. “Blacks and Latinos are about as Summers still supports trade agree- food at Kmart know it. scarce in the Super Zips as they were in ments, including nafta. The problem, Two decades ago, the conservative so- the nineteen-fifties.” Multiethnic Amer- he said, is that few people understand cial scientist Charles Murray co-wrote ica, with its tensions and resentments, the benefits: the jobs created by export- “The Bell Curve,” which argued that in- poses no problem for élites, who can buy

54 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 blocks from where, in 2014, Eric Gar- ner was sufocated by a police officer. ATTRACTION “We have to talk about black folks,” Stamp told me. “Class will always be at She collected men the way a light left on collected bugs. It was an the center of my politics, but if I’m not old story—money, gravity, the right amount of cleavage. And yet the centering black folks at the same time most successful root never stops feeing the seed where it began. The then I’m not going to get free. We’re cars of two drunks decide to kiss, the lit match gives in to the windy not going to change things. We can have feld. Here’s a lesson: When people heard there was an albino deer this populist argument all we want, but in the woods behind our house, they set out the apples and corn. That if we don’t repair the sins of the past— was twenty years ago. The shotgun pellets stuck in our tree continue we could have a bunch of reforms, but their slow ascent. if we’re still being killed it’s going to —Charles Raferty become white economic populism if we don’t have the race stuf together.” Stamp is both a millennial and a stu- their way out. “This translates into a seen, and Dick Cheney is a fan. It suc- dent of the nineteen-thirties—a “Ham- whole variety of liberal positions”— ceeds on every level: the score playing ilton” fan who works with the labor move- Murray mentioned being pro-immi- in your mind when you wake up; the ment. Her ideal, she said, would be to gration and anti-school choice—“in brilliance of its lyrics; its boldness in see “white working-class people stand- which the élite has not borne any of giving eighteenth-century history con- ing beside black folks, saying, ‘Your strug- the costs.” temporary form and in casting people gle is my struggle.’ That’s my dream!” of color who, during Hamilton’s time, This year, Stamp’s dream seems as erhaps the first cosmopolitan were in bondage or invisible. Miranda’s distant as ever, with Trump inciting his élite in American history was Alex- “Hamilton” suggests that the real heirs working-class followers to use violence Pander Hamilton: an immigrant, an ur- to the American Revolution are not Tea against black protesters, and with stu- banite, a friend of the rich, at home in Partiers waving “Don’t Tread on Me” dents on élite campuses issuing sweep- political, financial, and journalistic circles flags but black and Latino Americans ing denunciations of white privilege. of power. Hamilton created the Ameri- and immigrants. All whites are unequal, but some are can system of public and private bank- Miranda’s triumph is itself a coali- more unequal than others. In “Hillbilly ing, and for two centuries he was a hero tion of the cosmopolitan élite and di- Elegy,” J. D. Vance writes, “I may be to conservatives, while his archrival versity. The Hamilton that theatrego- white, but I do not identify with the Thomas Jeferson—founder of the Dem- ers are paying scalpers’ prices to see is wasps of the Northeast. Instead, I iden- ocratic Party—was taken as the cham- a progressive, not the father of Wall tify with the millions of working-class pion of the common man. “State a moral Street. Meanwhile, far from Broadway, white Americans of Scots-Irish descent case to a ploughman and a professor,” Jeferson’s ploughmen are lining up at who have no college degree.” Jeferson once wrote. “The former will Trump rallies. For Democrats, the politics of race decide it as well, and often better than “Hamilton” coincided with an impor- and class are fraught. If you focus insis- the latter, because he has not been led tant turn in American politics. Occupy tently on class, as Bernie Sanders did at astray by artificial rules.” But Democrats Wall Street had come and gone, and while the start of the campaign, you risk seem- now embrace Hamilton for his immi- the ninety-nine and the one per cent ing to be concerned only with whites. grant background and his modern ideas didn’t disappear, black and white came Focus insistently on race, and the Party of activist government. Meanwhile, the to the fore. There was a growing recog- risks being seen as a factional coalition name of the slave-owning, states’-rights nition that a historic President had cleared without universal appeal—the fate of the champion Jeferson has been removed barriers at the top but not at the bot- Democratic Party in the seventies and from Democratic fund-raising dinners. tom—that the Obama years had brought eighties. The new racial politics puts The Hamilton who distrusted popular little change in the systemic inequities Democrats like Clinton in the middle of democracy is now overlooked or ac- facing the black and the poor. This dis- this dilemma. cepted—after all, today’s cosmopolitan appointment, along with shocking vid- The voices of black protest today chal- élites similarly distrust the passions of eos of police killings of unarmed black lenge the optimistic narrative of the civil- their less educated compatriots. men, produced a new level of activism rights movement—the idea, widespread If there’s one creative work that epit- not seen in American streets and popu- at the time of Obama’s election, of incre- omizes the Obama Presidency, it’s the lar culture since the late sixties. mental progress and expanding opportu- hip- hop musical “Hamilton,” whose Nelini Stamp, a New Yorker in her nity in an increasingly multiracial society. opening song was débuted by Lin-Man- twenties, of black and Latino parent- (“Rosa sat so Martin could walk so Obama uel Miranda in the East Room of the age, was an organizer at Occupy. In 2012, could run so we can all fly.”) Many ac- White House, in 2009, with the Obamas the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin tivists are turning back to earlier history in attendance. The show has been uni- jolted her consciousness, and the ac- for explanations—thus the outpouring versally praised—Michelle Obama called quittal of his killer outraged her. She of films, novels, essays, poetry, pop music, it the greatest work of art she’d ever grew up on Staten Island, just a few and scholarly work about slavery and Jim

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 55 sum game. “I really don’t know how you ask white people not to be white in the world we’re creating,” Loury said. “How are there not white interests in a world where there are these other interests?” He continued, “My answer is that we not lose sight of the goal of racially transcen- dent humanism being the American bed- rock. It’s the abandonment of this goal that I’m objecting to.” Loury pointed out that the new ra- cial politics actually asks little of sympa- thetic whites: a confession, a reading as- signment. Last August, Black Lives Matter activists met with Hillary Clin- ton backstage at a town hall on drug abuse, in New Hampshire. In a rare mo- ment of candor and passion, Clinton made the case for pragmatism and, above all, legislation. As a camera filmed the exchange, one activist, Julius Jones, spoke of “the anti- blackness current that is •• America’s first drug,” adding, “America’s first drug is free black labor and turning Crow, as if to say, “Not so fast.” The Black and black—the political response tends black bodies into profit.” Jones told Clin- Lives Matter movement reflects this to be equally rigid: genuflection or rejec- ton that America’s fundamental prob- mood. It has achieved reforms, but it was tion. Clinton’s constituency surely includes lems can’t be solved until someone in her conceived not as a reformist movement many voters who would welcome a nu- position tells white Americans the truth but as a collective expression of grief and anced discussion of race—one that ad- about the country’s founding sins. The anger, a demand for restitution of wrongs dresses, for example, both drug-sentencing activists wanted Clinton to apologize. that go back centuries and whose efects reform and urban crime. But identity pol- She replied, “There has to be a reck- remain ubiquitous. It tends to see Amer- itics breaks down the distinction between oning—I agree with that. But I also ican society not as increasingly mixed an idea and the person articulating it, so think there has to be some positive vi- and fluid but as a set of permanent hier- that before speaking up one has to ask: sion and plan that you can move peo- archies, like a caste system. Does my identity give me the right to ple toward.” She asked Black Lives Mat- A new consensus has replaced the more say this? Could my identity be the focus ter for a policy agenda, along the lines sanguine civil-rights view. It’s attuned to of a Twitter backlash? This atmosphere of the civil- rights movement. deep structures and symbols, rather than makes honest conversation very hard, and Jones wasn’t buying it: “If you don’t to policies and progress. Ta-Nehisi Coates’s gives a demagogue like Trump the aura tell black people what we need to do, then best-selling and much praised book, “Be- of being a truthteller. The “authenticity” we won’t tell you all what you need to do.” tween the World and Me,” is now re- that his followers so admire is factually “I’m not telling you,” Clinton said. quired reading for many college fresh- wrong and morally repulsive. But when “I’m just telling you to tell me.” men. His idea of history is static, and people of good will are afraid to air legit- Jones replied, “What I mean to say deeply pessimistic: “The plunder of black imate arguments the illegitimate kind is that this is, and always has been, a life was drilled into this country in its in- gains power. white problem of violence. It’s not— fancy and reinforced across its history, so I recently spoke with the social scien- there’s not much that we can do to stop that plunder has become an heirloom, an tist Glenn Loury, who teaches at Brown the violence against us.” intelligence, a sentience, a default setting University. As he sees it, if race becomes As the conversation ended, Clinton to which, likely to the end of our days, an irreducible category in politics, rather said, “Yeah, well, respectfully, if that is we must invariably return.” Coates’s writ- than being incorporated into universal your position, then I will talk only to ing in “Between the World and Me” has claims of justice, it’s a weapon that can white people about how we are going a stance and a rhetorical sweep that make be picked up and used by anyone. “Bet- to deal with the very real problems. . . . the give-and-take of politics seem almost ter watch out,” he said. “I don’t know how I don’t believe you change hearts. I be- impossible. Somewhere between this jer- you live by the identity-politics sword lieve you change laws, you change allo- emiad and the naïve idea of inevitable and don’t die by it.” Its logic lumps ev- cation of resources, you change the way progress lies the complicated truth. eryone—including soon-to-be-minority systems operate. You’re not going to If racial injustice is considered to be whites—into an interest group. One per- change every heart.” monolithic and unchanging—omitting son’s nationalism intensifies tribal feel- When I asked Clinton about the the context of individual actions, white ings in others, in what feels like a zero- politics of race and class, she said, “It can’t

56 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 be either-or.” She listed recent advances such states as West Virginia, Kentucky, the Times posted an interactive map of made by locked-out groups, including and Ohio. Clinton pounced on Obama’s the country’s “geography of government black people but also women, gays, and speech, calling it “élitist.” benefits.” The graphic showed that the transgender people. “But we also need to She was right. Obama was express- areas with the highest levels of welfare have an economic message”—her tone ing a widespread liberal attitude toward spending coincided with deep-red Amer- said, Come on, folks!—“with an economic Republican-voting workers—that is, he ica. During the Great Depression, the set of policies that we can repeatedly talk didn’t take them seriously. Guns and re- hard-pressed became the base of support about and make the case that they will ligion, as much as jobs and incomes, are for the New Deal. Now many Ameri- improve the lives of Americans.” It was the authentic interest of millions of Amer- cans who resent government most are important to speak to people’s anxieties icans. Trade and immigration have failed those who depend on it most, or who about identity, to address “systemic rac- to make their lives better, and, arguably, live and work among those who do. ism,” Clinton said. “But it’s also the case left them worse of. And if the Demo- Since the eighties, the Republican that a vast group of Americans have eco- cratic Party was no longer on their side— Party has been an unlikely coalition of nomic anxiety, and if they think we are if government programs kept failing to downscale whites (many of them evan- only talking about issues that they are improve their lives—why not vote for the gelical Christians) and business inter- not personally connected to, then it’s un- party that at least took them seriously? ests, united by a common dislike of the derstandable that they would say, ‘There’s Thomas Frank told me recently, federal government. To conservative nothing there for me.’ ” “When the traditional party of working- thinkers, this alliance was more than a class concerns walks away from those political convenience; it filled a moral re- hile the Democrats were be- concerns, even when they just do it rhe- quirement. Irving Kristol, the father of coming the party of rising pro- torically, it provides an enormous open- neoconservatism, was an early apostle of fessionalsW and diversity, the Republi- ing for the Republicans to address those supply-side economics, but he also wrote cans were finding fruitful hunting concerns, even if they do it rhetorically, numerous essays about the need for a re- grounds elsewhere. The Southern states too.” The culture wars became class wars, vival of religious faith, as a way of regu- turned Republican after 1964, when with Republicans in the novel position lating moral conduct in a liberal, secular President Lyndon Johnson signed the of speaking for the have-nots who were world. For ordinary Americans, tradi- Civil Rights Act. West Virginia, how- white. The fact that Democrats remained tional religion was a bulwark against the ever—with a smaller black population the party of activist government no lon- moral relativism of the modern age. Kris- than the Deep South, and heavy union- ger won them automatic loyalty. As com- tol’s pieces in the Wall Street Journal of- ization—retained a strong Democratic munities in Appalachia, the Rust Belt, ciated at the unlikely wedding of busi- character into the nineties. But West and rural America declined, attitudes ness executives and evangelical Christians Virginia hasn’t voted for a Democratic toward government programs grew more in the church of conservatism—a role Presidential candidate since Bill Clin- hostile. J. D. Vance describes working, that perhaps only a Jewish ex-Trotskyist ton, in 1996. Al Gore’s surprising fail- at seventeen, as a cashier in an Ohio could take on. ure there in 2000 was an overlooked grocery store. Some of his poor white The Republicans, long the boring party factor in his narrow Electoral College customers gamed their food stamps to of Babbitt—Mailer’s druggists and re- loss, and a harbinger of the future. Some- buy beer and wine, while talking on cell tired doctors—were infused with a pow- thing changed that couldn’t be attributed phones that Vance couldn’t aford. “Po- erful populist energy. Kristol welcomed just to the politics of race. Culturally, litical scientists have spent millions of it. “This new populism is no kind of blind the Republican Party was getting closer rebellion against good constitutional gov- to the working class. ernment,” he wrote, in 1985. “It is rather To some liberal analysts, this cross- an efort to bring our governing élites to over practically violated a law of nature— their senses. That is why so many peo- why did less afuent white Americans ple—and I include myself—who would keep voting against their own interests? ordinarily worry about a populist upsurge During the 2008 campaign, Barack find themselves so sympathetic to this Obama spoke to an audience of donors new populism.” in San Francisco, and analyzed the phe- words trying to explain how Appala- It was a fateful marriage. The new nomenon as a reaction to economic de- chia and the South went from staunchly conservative populism did not possess an cline: “They get bitter, they cling to guns Democratic to staunchly Republican in “orderly heart.” It was riven with destruc- or religion or antipathy to people who less than a generation,” he writes. “A big tive impulses. It fed on rage and the spec- aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sen- part of the explanation lies in the fact tacle of pop culture. But intellectuals like timent or anti-trade sentiment as a way that many in the white working class Kristol didn’t worry when media dema- to explain their frustrations.” It’s hard to saw precisely what I did, working at gogues—Limbaugh, Drudge, Breitbart, remember that, in 2008, the key constit- Dillman’s.” Coulter, Hannity—came on the scene uents of his opponent for the Demo- In 2009, during the debate over the with all the viciousness of the nineteen- cratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, were health-care bill, one protester at a town- thirties radio broadcasts of Father Cough- working- class whites; indeed, her only hall meeting shouted, “Keep your gov- lin. They didn’t worry when Republican hope of winning the nomination lay in ernment hands of my Medicare!” In 2012, ofceholders deployed every available

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 57 weapon—investigation, impeachment, middle-class Midwestern retirees who the same emerging-markets index funds. Supreme Court majority, filibuster, gov- depended on Social Security had to ig- They might have diferent political views, ernment shutdown, conspiracy theories, nore the fact that the representatives they but they share a common interest in the implied threats of violence—to destroy kept electing, like Paul Ryan, wanted to existing global order. As Thomas Frank their political enemies. In 2007, Kristol’s slash their benefits. Veterans of Iraq and put it, “The leadership of the two parties son, William, the editor of the Weekly Afghanistan returned to Indiana and represents two classes. The G.O.P. is a Standard, sailed to Juneau and met the Texas embittered at having lost their youth business élite; Democrats are a status governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. Kristol in unwinnable wars, while conservative élite, the professional class. They fight thought he’d found just what the Party pundits like Kristol kept demanding new over sectors important for the national needed to win the next election: a tele- ones—but their shared contempt for lib- future—Wall Street, Big Pharma, energy, genic product of the white working class, eral élites kept them from noticing the Silicon Valley. That is the contested ter- an authentic populist. Throughout 2008, Republican Party’s internal conflicts. In rain of American politics. What about Kristol promoted Palin as the ideal run- this way, red states and blue states—the the vast majority of people?” ning mate for John McCain. When Mc- color-coding scheme enshrined by the The political upheaval of the past Cain selected her, Kristol exulted in the networks on the night of the 2000 Pres- year has clarified that there are class di- Times, “A Wasilla Wal-Mart Mom a idential election—continued to define vides in both parties. Bernie Sanders heartbeat away? I suspect most voters the country’s polarization into mutually posed a serious insurgent challenge to will say, ‘No problem.’ And some—per- hateful camps. Clinton, thundering in front of tens of haps a decisive number—will say, ‘It’s thousands of ardent supporters—all the about time.’ ” he inadequacy of this picture be- while sounding like an aging academic That fall, at a diner in Glouster, Ohio, came clear to me in Obama’s first who’d have been lucky to attract a dozen I sat down with a group of women who term.T During the Great Recession, I vis- listeners at the Socialist Scholars Con- planned to vote for Palin (and McCain, ited many hard-hit small towns, exurbs, ference twenty-five years ago. Sanders as an afterthought) because “she’d fit right rural areas, and old industrial cities, and spoke for diferent groups of Americans in with us.” Being a Wasilla Walmart kept meeting Americans who didn’t who felt disenfranchised: young people Mom had become a qualification for high match the red-blue scheme. They might with heavy college debt and lousy ca- ofce—for some, the main one. Palin be white Southern country people, but reer prospects, blue-collar workers who even had a pregnant, unwed teen-age they hated corporations and big-box stores retained their Democratic identity, pro- daughter. Her campaign appearances as well as the federal government. They gressives (many of them professionals) turned working-class whiteness into iden- might have a law practice, but that didn’t who found Obama and Clinton too tity politics: she strutted onstage to the stop them from entertaining apocalyp- moderate. It was a limited and unwieldy beat of Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck tic visions of armed citizens turning to coalition, but it had far more energy Woman.” In her proud ignorance, unre- political violence. They followed the Tea than Clinton’s constituency. strained narcissism, and contempt for the Party, but, in their hostility toward big Initially, Clinton was caught of guard “establishment,” Palin was John the Bap- banks, they sounded a little like Occupy by the public’s anger at the political es- tist to the coming of Trump. Wall Street, or vice versa. They were loose tablishment. She casually proposed her The conservative marriage survived molecules unattached to party hierar- husband as a jobs czar in a second Clin- the embarrassment of Palin’s campaign, chies—more individualistic than the ton Presidency, as if globalization hadn’t which exposed her as someone more in- Democrats, more antibusiness than the lost its shine. One of her advisers told terested in getting on TV than in gov- Republicans. What united them was a me that Hillary’s years in the State De- erning. It rode the nihilistic anger of the distrust of distant leaders and institu- partment had insulated her and her staf Tea Party and the paranoid rants of Glenn tions. They believed that the game was from the mood of ordinary Americans. Beck. It benefitted from heavy spending rigged for the powerful and the con- So, one could add, did her customary life by the Koch brothers and ignored the nected, and that they and their children of socializing with, giving paid speeches barely disguised racism that some Re- were screwed. to, and raising money from the ultra-rich, publican voters directed at the black fam- The left-versus-right division wasn’t whose ranks the Clinton family joined ily now occupying the White House. entirely mistaken, but one could draw a as private citizens. (From 2007 to last When Trump and others began ques- new chart that explained things difer- year, Bill and Hillary earned a hundred tioning President Obama’s birth certifi- ently and perhaps more accurately: up and thirty-nine million dollars; in 2010, cate, Party élites turned a blind eye; the versus down. Looked at this way, the their daughter, Chelsea, married a hedge- rank and file, for their part, fell in behind élites on each side of the partisan divide fund manager.) In 2014, in a speech to Mitt Romney, a Harvard-educated in- have more in common with one another the investment firms Goldman Sachs vestor. The persistence of this coalition than they do with voters down below. A and BlackRock, Hillary Clinton described required an immense amount of self- network-systems administrator, an oil- her solid middle-class upbringing and deception on both sides. Romney, who and-gas-company vice-president, a jour- then admitted, “Now, obviously, I’m kind belonged to a class that greatly benefit- nalist, and a dermatologist hire nannies of far removed, because of the life I’ve ted from cheap immigrant labor, had to from the same countries, dine at the same lived and the economic, you know, for- pretend to be outraged by the presence Thai restaurants, travel abroad on the tunes that my husband and I now enjoy, of undocumented workers. Lower- same frequent-flier miles, and invest in but I haven’t forgotten it.”

58 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 Clinton was saying in private what let’s blame immigrants. Right? We’ve got tronized him, but for months they didn’t she can’t or won’t in public. The e-mails to blame somebody—that’s human na- take him seriously. He didn’t sound like hacked from the account of her campaign ture. We need a catharsis.” F.D.R. had a conservative at all. manager, John Podesta, and released by done it by denouncing bankers and other Charles Murray is a small- government WikiLeaks, show her staf worrying over “economic royalists,” Clinton said, her conservative and no Trump supporter passages from her paid speeches that, if voice rising. “And by doing so he told a (“He’s just unfit to be President”), but made public, could allow her to be por- story.” She went on, “If you don’t tell peo- some of his neighbors and friends are. trayed as two-faced and overly friendly ple what’s happening to them—not every “My own personal political world has with corporate America. But when Clin- story has villains, but this story did—at crumbled around me,” he said. “The num- ton told one audience, “You need both a least you could act the way that you know ber of people who care about the things public and a private position,” she was the people in the country felt.” I care about is way smaller than I thought describing what used to be considered After defeating Sanders, Clinton tried a year ago. I had not really seen the great normal politics—deploying diferent to win over his supporters by letting them truth that the Trump campaign revealed, strategies to get groups with varying in- write the Democratic Party platform. It that should have been obvious but wasn’t.” terests behind a policy. Before what Law- is the farthest left of any in recent mem- The great truth was that large num- rence Summers called “the populariza- ory—it efectively called for a new bers of Republican voters, especially less tion of politics,” Lyndon Johnson required Glass-Steagall Act. The internal class di- educated ones, weren’t constitutional a degree of deception to pass civil-rights vide is less severe on the Democratic side. originalists, libertarian free traders, mem- legislation. “It is unsavory, and it always Even Lawrence Summers embraces gov- bers of the Federalist Society, or devout has been that way, but we usually get ernment activism to reverse inequality, readers of the Wall Street Journal edito- where we need to be,” Clinton told her including infrastructure spending and rial page. They actually wanted govern- audience. “But if everybody’s watching, progressive reform of the tax code. But ment to do more things that benefitted you know, all of the backroom discus- Democrats can no longer really claim to them (as opposed to benefitting people sions and the deals, you know, then peo- be the party of working people—not they saw as undeserving). “The Repub- ple get a little nervous, to say the least.” white ones, anyway. Those voters, espe- licans held on to a very large part of this Clinton would be comfortable and pro- cially men, have become the Republican electorate for years and years, even ductive governing in back rooms—she base, and the Republican Party has ex- though those voters increasingly won- was known for her quiet bipartisan eforts perienced the 2016 election as an ago- der whether Republicans are doing any- in the Senate. But Americans today, es- nizing schism, a hostile takeover by its thing for them,” Murray said. “So Trump pecially on the Trump right and the San- own rank and file. Conservative leaders comes along, and people who were never ders left, won’t give politicians anything had taken the base for granted for so long ideologically committed to the things close to that kind of trust. Radical trans- that, when Trump burst into the race, in I’m committed to splinter of.” parency occasionally brings corruption the summer of 2015, they were con- Party leaders should have anticipated to light, but it can also make good gov- founded. Some scofed at him, others pa- Trump’s rise—after all, he was created in ernance harder. Indefatigable and protean, Clinton read the disafected landscape and adapted in her characteristic style—with a policy agenda. She endorsed profit-sharing for employees and declared opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. She demanded stricter enforcement of trade rules that protect workers, and called for more in- frastructure spending and trust-busting. She underscored her commitment to equal pay for women. Publicly, she at- tacked the bloated salaries of the C.E.O.s with whom she privately socializes and raises money. I asked Clinton if Obama had made a mistake in not prosecuting any Wall Street executives after the financial cri- sis. She replied, “I think the failure to be able to bring criminal cases, to hold peo- ple responsible, was one of the contrib- uting factors to a lot of the real frustra- tion and anger that a lot of voters feel. There is just nobody to blame. So if we can’t blame Company X or C.E.O. Y, “Pumpkin spice has been very good to me.” ically, or are they just racists? Do they need to be listened to, or should they be condemned and written of? Clinton, ad- dressing a fund-raising dinner on Wall Street in September, placed “half ” of Trump’s supporters in what she called “the basket of deplorables”—bigots of various types. The other half, she said, are struggling and deserve empathy. Under criticism, she half-apologized, saying that she had counted too many supporters as “deplorables.” Accurate or not, her re- marks rivalled Obama’s “guns and reli- gion” and Romney’s “forty-seven per cent” for unwise campaign condescension. All three politicians thought that they were speaking among friends—that is, in front of wealthy donors, the only setting on the campaign trail where truth comes out. “The judge rejected our appeal, but HBO’s considering it.” In March, the Washington Post re- ported that Trump voters were both more economically hard-pressed and •• more racially biased than supporters of other Republican candidates. But in Sep- their laboratory, before he broke free and in America joins its counterpart in Great tember a Gallup-poll economist, Jona- began to smash everything in sight. The Britain, the Brexit vote; Marine Le Pen’s than T. Rothwell, released survey results Republican Party hasn’t been truly con- Front National, in France; and the Al- that complicated the picture. Those vot- servative for decades. Its most energized ternative für Deutschland party, which ers with favorable views of Trump are elements are not trying to restore stabil- has begun to threaten Angela Merkel’s not, by and large, the poorest Ameri- ity or preserve the status quo. Rather, they centrist coalition in Germany. To Rus- cans; nor are they personally afected by are driven by a sense of violent opposi- sians, Trump sounds like his role model, trade deals or cross-border immigration. tion: against changes in color and culture President Vladimir Putin; to Indians, But they tend to be less educated, in that appear to be sweeping away the coun- Trump echoes the Hindu nationalism of poorer health, and less confident in their try they once knew; against globaliza- Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Even children’s prospects—and they’re often tion, which is as revolutionary and threat- the radical nostalgia of Islamists around residents of nearly all-white neighbor- ening as the political programs of the the Muslim world bears more than a hoods. They’re more deficient in social Jacobins and the anarchists once were. passing resemblance to the longing of capital than in economic capital. The “Reactionaries are not conservatives,” Trump supporters for an America pu- Gallup poll doesn’t indicate how many the political essayist Mark Lilla writes in rified and restored to an imagined glory. Trump supporters are racists. Of course, his new book, “The Shipwrecked Mind: One way or another, they all represent a there’s no way to disentangle economic On Political Reaction.” “They are, in their reaction against modernity, with its cease- and cultural motives, to draw a clear way, just as radical as revolutionaries and less anxiety and churn. map of the stresses and resentments that just as firmly in the grip of historical A generation ago, a Presidential con- animate the psyches of tens of millions imaginings.” This is the meaning of tender like Trump wasn’t conceivable. of people. Some Americans have shown Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Jimmy Carter brought smiling populism themselves to be implacably bigoted, but Again.” Though the phrase invoked nos- to the White House, and Ronald Rea- bias is not a fixed quality in most of us; talgia for an imagined past, it had noth- gan was derided as a Hollywood cowboy, it’s subject to manipulation, and it can ing to do with tradition. It was a call to but both of them had governing experi- wax and wane with circumstances. A sweep away the ruling order, including ence and substantive ideas that they’d sense of isolation and siege is unlikely the Republican leadership. “The betrayal worked out during lengthy public careers. to make anyone more tolerant. of élites is the linchpin of every reaction- But, as public trust in institutions eroded, In one way, these calculations don’t ary story,” Lilla writes. celebrities took their place, and the line matter. Anyone who votes for Trump— The Trump phenomenon, which has between politics and entertainment began including the Dartmouth-educated mod- onlookers in Europe and elsewhere agog to disappear. It shouldn’t be surprising erate Republican financial adviser who at the latest American folly, isn’t really that the most famous person in politics wouldn’t dream of using racial code words exceptional at all. American politics in is the former star of a reality TV show. but just can’t stand Hillary Clinton—will 2016 has taken a big step toward politics There’s an ongoing battle among have tried to put a dangerous and despi- in the rest of the world. The ebbing tide Trump’s opponents to define his support- cable man in charge of the country. Trump of the white working and middle classes ers. Are they having a hard time econom- is a national threat like no one else who

60 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 has come close to the Presidency. Win renewal, especially for a new generation more divided and angrier than most or lose, he has already defined politics so with lowered expectations. Americans can remember. far down that a shocking degree of hatred, In May, at Howard University’s com- More and more, we live as tribes. It’s ignorance, and lies is becoming normal. mencement, the President condemned easier and more satisfying to hunker At the same time, it isn’t possible to the trend on college campuses of disin- down with your cohort on social media wait around for demography to turn mil- viting controversial speakers, and he told than to take up Obama’s challenge and lions of disenchanted Americans into rel- the graduating class, “We must expand get in someone else’s head. What’s strik- ics and expect to live in a decent coun- our moral imaginations to understand ing is the widespread feeling that liberal try. This election has told us that many and empathize with all people who are values are no longer even valuable—a Americans feel their way of life is disap- struggling, not just black folks who are feeling shared by many people who think pearing. Perhaps their lament is futile— struggling—the refugee, the immigrant, of themselves as liberals. the world is inexorably becoming Thomas the rural poor, the transgender person, Hillary Clinton is a strange fit for Friedman’s. Perhaps their nostalgia is mis- and, yes, the middle-aged white guy who this moment. She’s a lifelong institu- guided—multicultural America is more you may think has all the advantages, tionalist at a time of bitter distrust in free and equal than the republic of Ham- but over the last several decades has seen institutions, a believer in gradual prog- ilton and Jeferson. Perhaps their feeling his world upended by economic and cul- ress faced with violent impatience. She is immoral, implying ugly biases. But it tural and technological change, and feels has dozens of good ideas for making the shouldn’t be dismissed. If nearly half of powerless to stop it. You got to get in his country fairer, but bringing Americans your compatriots feel deeply at odds with head, too.” In Dallas in July, at a memo- together to support the efort and be- the drift of things, it’s a matter of self- rial service for five murdered police lieve in the results is harder than ever. interest to try to understand why. Na- ofcers, Obama described how black Clinton lacks Obama’s rhetorical power, tionalism is a force that élites always un- people experience the criminal-justice his philosophical reach. Her authority derestimate—that’s been a lesson of the system in America, and said, “We can’t lies in her commitment to policy and year’s seismic political events, here and simply dismiss it as a symptom of polit- politics, her willingness to soldier on. in Europe. It can be turned to good or ical correctness or reverse racism. To have As she ended our conversation in the ill, but it never completely goes away. It’s your experience denied like that, dis- hotel basement—she had to get to the as real and abiding as an attachment to missed by those in authority, dismissed evening’s fund-raiser—I asked how she family or to home. “Americanism, not perhaps even by your white friends and could hope to prevail as President. She globalism, will be our credo,” Trump de- co-workers and fellow church members talked about reminding voters of “re- clared in his convention speech. In his again and again and again—it hurts. sults,” and of repeating a “consistent story.” hands, nationalism is a loaded gun, aimed Surely we can see that, all of us.” Then, as if she found her own words in- not just at foreigners but also at Ameri- Obama is summoning Americans to adequate, she leaned forward and her cans who don’t make the cut. But peo- a sense of national community based on voice grew intense. “If we don’t get this ple are not wrong to want to live in co- values that run deeper than race, class, right, what we’re seeing with Trump now hesive communities, to ask new arrivals and ideology. He’s urging them to afrm will just be the beginning,” she said. “Be- to become part of the melting pot, and the possibility of gradual change, and to cause when people feel that their gov- to crave a degree of stability in a moral resist the mind-set of all or nothing, which ernment has failed them and the econ- order based on values other than just di- runs especially hot this year. These omy isn’t working for them, they are ripe versity and efciency. A world of heir- for the kind of populist nationalist ap- loom tomatoes and self-driving cars isn’t peals that we’re hearing from Trump.” the true and only Heaven. She went on, “Look, there will always be the naysayers and virulent haters on ate last year, President Obama one side. And there will be the tone-deaf, sat down with his chief speechwriter, unaware people”—she seemed to mean LCody Keenan. Obama told Keenan that, élitists—“on the other side. I get all that. during his final year in ofce, he wanted But it really is important. And the Con- to make an argument for American prog- gress, I hope, will understand this. Be- ress in the twenty-first century. He called speeches are, in part, a confession of fail- cause the games they have played on the it “an ode to reason, rationality, humility, ure. “I’ve seen how inadequate words can Republican side brought them Donald and delayed gratification.” Throughout be in bringing about lasting change,” he Trump. And if they continue to play the year, in a kind of extended farewell said in Dallas. “I’ve seen how inadequate those games their party is going to be address, Obama has been speaking around my own words have been.” After all, under tremendous pressure. But, more the country about tolerance, compromise, Obama has been saying things like this important than that, our country will be and our common humanity. He never ever since he first attracted national at- under pressure.” I asked her if she thought states his theme directly, but it’s the val- tention, at the Democratic Convention that, after the Trump explosion, Repub- ues of liberal democracy. He is reacting in 2004. He was elected President with lican leaders were ready to reckon with to the unprecedented ugliness of Trump, a similar message, though his time in the damage. “I hope so,” she said. “I’m but also to a larger sense that liberal val- ofce has burnished and chastened it. sure going to try to have that conversa- ues are always fragile, always in need of Now, as he says goodbye, the country is tion with them. Yeah, I am.” 

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 61 PORTFOLIO THE VOTE

Fourteen Americans—from red states, blue states, and battleground states—describe why they are voting in a Presidential election for the first time and which candidate they will choose.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KATY GRANNAN

ABIGAIL JACKSON, 18, student, Des Moines, Iowa HILLARY CLINTON

“As the election’s getting closer, it’s like having two of the exact same shirts, but one is a diferent color. Hillary Clinton, she’s not a racist or anything, like Donald Trump, but it seems like she’s just in it to win, because the amount of times I’ve heard the word ‘Trump’ in a Hillary commercial is more than I’ve heard ‘Hillary’ in a Hillary commercial. I haven’t seen a real good ad telling me what she will do. I feel like they’re choosing which voices they want to hear. So Hillary’s choosing to hear the voice of women, and Donald Trump is choosing to hear the voice of white Americans. They’re not listening to the voice of the lower class. They’re not listening to the voice of the L.G.B.T. community.” THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 63 64 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 BAILEY STIFFLER, 18, student, Holts Summit, Missouri DONALD TRUMP

“I guess his standards fit a lot more with mine. I am pro-life, and Donald Trump has said he is pro-life as well, and in that way I agree with him. My entire family is very much a right-wing family. I go to a very small school—I think there’s only about two hundred and fifty in my class, and almost everyone here has come from a very small town, where it’s all very red, very Republican. I’ve seen a few Bernie Sanders bumper stickers, but that’s just about it. Other than that, I’ve not talked to anyone who’s, like, ‘I’m going to vote for Hillary Clinton.’ I find her very untrustworthy. I don’t trust her. You see the whole e-mail scandal, and she’s been caught in multiple lies about it. Honesty is a very big deal to me. That’s my biggest pet peeve. I hate being lied to. And even though she’s not, like, lying to me personally, she’s been caught in a lie, and I don’t want someone like that leading my country.”

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 65 PETER NEWLAND, 20, student, Concord, New Hampshire JILL STEIN

“Most of my friends my age are voting for Jill Stein. I have one or two voting for Clinton. They’re not enthusiastic about it in the slightest. They are voting for Clinton because they don’t like Trump. It’s a fear policy. They’re too afraid to see what it’s going to be like when Trump is President, and they don’t want to risk it. The Clinton family has been active in politics for years now, and they’ve been right in the line of fire the entire time. They’ve been representing America for the past several decades. That’s a problem, because it turns our representative democracy into an oligarchy. It creates this political environment where the same type of people are ruling our government and no change is made.”

JOHNNA PURCELL, 20, student, State College, Pennsylvania HILLARY CLINTON

“There were a lot of Bernie supporters at my school in the primary. It was actually predominantly Bernie supporters here at Penn State. It was difcult at times to be having meetings for Hillary that were less attended than the Sanders meetings. But I stuck with it, because I believe in Hillary. I believe in what she’s fighting for. I believe in the values. This semester, people come up to me on campus and say, ‘Oh, you’re that Hillary Clinton girl. Why should I support Hillary?’ I was appalled by the statements Donald Trump made. I think they speak to a larger pattern in his campaign. The reaction I’m getting from students is largely the same: they aren’t surprised that this tape existed, but it does shock you to hear someone who’s running to be the President of the United States use the ofensive language that he uses, but, more importantly, talk about assaulting women. It was troubling for me, and it was troubling for a lot of young female students.”

66 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 67 DORA PERAZA, 23 (with her mother, Irma Diaz), student, Las Vegas, Nevada (born in Mazatlán, Mexico) HILLARY CLINTON

“My mom met my stepfather around my mom, my parents, and if their love criminals or rapists or anything along a month after we arrived, in 2000. was true and if I had good intentions those lines, it really makes me sad to He’s from El Salvador, and he’s a here in the States. I was only fifteen, know that he doesn’t know the naturalized citizen. When they got so I didn’t understand why they were workers that are currently working for married, in 2008, he was able to grant asking me if I was a drug dealer or if his company. I live in Las Vegas, so my mom legal status, and, since I was my parents were really in love, but obviously there is a Trump hotel here, under eighteen at the time, it’s kind of now I fully understand that those are and there’s a large Hispanic two for one. Have you ever seen the the precautions the United States population that works for his hotels, movie ‘The Proposal’? They takes to give people the right legal and none of those people that work separated me into a diferent room status and allow them to stay here. for his company I would describe as and they asked me questions about When I hear Donald Trump call us criminals or rapists.”

68 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 JOHN VIGIL, 20, welder, Pueblo, Colorado DONALD TRUMP

“A lot of my friends that I work with on the guns away that’s going to be taking the bridge, we all talk about the election away food. We usually go during and who’s voting and who they’re going October. We usually get lucky and get for. A lot of people from what I five elk and four deer, and we split it up. understand are going for Hillary, but The meat lasts a year and the next year everyone I work with on the bridge is comes and we do the same thing over. going toward Donald Trump, and, We use it for everything—we have steaks, honestly, the main reason for it is because we have ribs, we have hamburger. of the Second Amendment. For me, that’s We don’t ever buy cow meat, or cow a big thing. We hunt, and that’s how we hamburger, or whatever. I haven’t had survive. That’s our food. And if you take cow meat for probably four years, honestly.”

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 69 TAYLAURA SIGGERS, 21, student, Cleveland, Ohio HILLARY CLINTON

“Once people know that people care, then they’ll start caring. Everything has a ripple efect. At the Boys and Girls Club, I’ve seen people come in the door and they were so horrible at school or they had a bad attitude, but just by being here a couple of weeks they changed, they started getting better grades at school. It’s something that happens on the daily. If Trump wins, the next four years will look like hell. It will probably be the worst four years ever. I can just see more people being in poverty. Because I know a lot of people survive on, you know, the state—welfare, food stamps, stuf like that. I can see all that being cut out. People got to fight for scraps. I can just see it all. I would be really devastated.”

JOSEPH HERRIOTT V, 20, student, Cleveland, Ohio HILLARY CLINTON

“I think we really, really need to touch on the police brutality in America. I do not think President Obama’s been vocal enough. Police have to earn the meaning behind their name. When I think of police now, I don’t think of protection, and most people around here don’t. I can be in a car with my friends and they see police and they get nervous. Like I said, we’re getting senselessly killed. So if I don’t think you’re going to protect me I’m not going to feel safe even calling you. I would just say to the next President, ‘Show the neighborhood that you care.’ People feel that, whoever gets in the White House, they’ve never been in our type of community, so they’re not going to do anything to help us anyway.”

70 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 71 TERRY HARVEY CYPHER, 64, retired real-estate agent, Lynn Haven, Florida DONALD TRUMP

“I’ve always been an American patriot. I love this country, but I never really trusted politicians. I really did not think my one vote would matter. I was naïve; I was avoiding the situation. I think most politicians—ninety-five per cent of what they say they’re telling you what you want to hear. And that’s sad. But now we’ve got to get the country back straight. Terrorism has come to our shores, as it has come to many countries in Europe, and it scares me to death. I have a grandchild who is three and he’s growing up in this situation, and that really disturbs me. When my ancestors came to America, they came through the proper channels. And I understand now it’s a serious, serious time. There are a lot of innocent people that are stuck in the middle of that. And I am so sorry for them. But we’ve got to keep the borders safe. We’ve got to protect the citizens of our country.”

DE’VANTE YOUNG, 24, student and U.S. Army veteran, San Marcos, Texas GARY JOHNSON

“I came to the conclusion that Trump, who was my original choice, was not the President we need for our country. Gary Johnson, he used to be a Republican, so he has conservative values. He’s not going to hand over trillions and trillions of dollars for people to get, like, fifteen abortions, but he’s liberal enough to understand that every state is its own individual country, in a sense, and that it should make its own decisions. Going to Afghanistan really gave me a more conservative mind-set. Because everyone blindly suggests we do things, especially when it comes to war. But they’re not impacted by it. They’re removed from it. They’re ignorant about what’s really going on overseas. That made me feel like I would prefer someone who’s not trying to be the world police. Being honest with myself, I’m voting for him not in the expectation that he will necessarily win. The way the parties have grown I don’t like. I feel like they’re both cancers for the U.S. They’re not virtuous.”

72 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 73 74 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 CORDELIA WHITE-CLAY, 72, retired nurse, Bacavi, Arizona HILLARY CLINTON

“When I was fifteen years old, I went away to school—a boarding school. I went to Phoenix Indian High School, and I just stayed there during the summer and did some work for people. I never came home. I went on to nursing school and became a nurse. I really wasn’t interested in any kind of politics, but I have friends who are involved, they talk to me about it. I’m watching a lot of news, TV and stuf. And they’re encouraging me to know that my vote will count, and that’s what decided me to get registered. I’m voting for Hillary. She’s doing stuf for poor people. Trump is working for the millionaires. I figured that Hillary would keep some of our programs going; the other guy would cut them of. The Hopi people, most of them aren’t working. That’s the first thing I think she would do for us—create jobs. Young people are turning into alcoholics, drug addicts. It’s really a big problem now. I feel like I’m doing something for the people. I’m doing democratic voting. My vote will count for much.”

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 75 PETER LY N DO N, 21, waiter, Los Angeles, California DONALD TRUMP

“I’m a member of the Beach Goys. ‘racist’ is that every time it gets used it used to people being hostile toward Instead of meeting up on the loses meaning. For the past decade or the way I think. That’s what a lot of Internet, we’ll meet up in bars and two, it’s been used by people on the people on the left don’t realize. It’s shoot the breeze. I wouldn’t say white left as a kill shot. That just kills your not 1959 anymore. You’re the nationalist, because it’s kind of a argument, no matter what you’re establishment. You guys run shit. I’m loaded term. It’s like someone asking trying to say. You’re a racist and on the other side of that. Not to toot you if you’re racist—you know what therefore you’re evil and therefore you my own horn, or whatever. I’m just I mean? So I would reject that term. lose. But I think people are noticing saying it’s actually difcult being a It’s definitely alternative right that it doesn’t work that way minority in that respect. That’s why wing—I would say it’s an alt-right anymore. I’ve had plenty of people I know Trump’s going to win, because group for sure. Nationalist, in that who, even if they just got a whif of there are a lot of disillusioned white we’re nationalist, and definitely my political views, would be people who don’t vote that are voting patriotic. The thing about the word extremely unpleasant to me. I’m just for the first time.”

76 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 NAJLA ABDULELAH, 23, transportation analyst, Marietta, Georgia (born in Baghdad, Iraq) HILLARY CLINTON

“I moved out of Iraq at the end of 2006. I guess we were then seen as political feel that I don’t have the luxury that I moved to Jordan with my mother and refugees, rather than just refugees many others might have to vote for a two siblings, three years into the war. seeking asylum from a war-torn third-party candidate. If that vote that I My elder sister and my father stayed country. It took over a year and a half, cast could even tip the scale by one vote back in Iraq, him because of his job and and then, randomly, the U.N. selected of sand in Trump’s favor, I just did my my sister because of school. We came Georgia for us. I’m voting for Hillary own people a disservice. I did myself a to the U.S. through the U.N. as Clinton, and I say that with hesitation. disservice. The hate that he’s spewing refugees, in November, 2008. It’s a very, She’s not the only one who voted to go and the fear that he’s feeding of are very long process. It only got sped up to Iraq, but she’s the only one that’s so allowing people to believe that what after my father passed away in Iraq, and close to winning the Presidency. I just he’s saying is in fact true. But it’s not.”

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 77 AUSTIN FRANKLIN, 20, coal miner and student, St. Charles, Kentucky DONALD TRUMP

“Recently, in the mine, I’ve been either a hostler, who hangs all the curtains and makes sure the air’s right, or a roof bolter. On a unit, you average around maybe sixteen to twenty people. Everyone is stressing out. Is the mine going to be open after the election? Will we still be working? What’s going to happen? You can feel the tension. I’m for Mr. Donald Trump. I’m not saying that he’s for coal fully, but I’m not for someone who’s going to shut the mines down. If you don’t have a college education, you’re not going to get a job. I feel bad for these guys. You’re 847.2 feet underground. And you have coal, rock, all this stuf above you. And pins. The hole drilled in the roof is what holds it up. The pin is no bigger than a bike handle. You’re sticking it in a hole. How is it holding it up? It’s mind-blowing, really. Everyone thinks coal mining’s dead. I wish people could see it like I see it. Whenever Trump made the statement ‘Make America Great Again,’ it drove me to like him, because I feel that’s his objective. I feel like he’s trying to help out the guys.”

NEWYORKER.COM An expanded portfolio of frst-time voters.

78 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 79 FICTION

80 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY CHLOÉ POIZAT GARLAND me to be someone else. I want you to He said he was getting used to it. He be nothing. That’s metaphysically im- said the doctors were afraid to med- ecause she has a broken heart possible. Oh, go away. dle, in case his eyelids chose to close and then her mother dies, D Years later, when they are no lon- instead. and F take her with them on a ger together, she wonders what it was Both women wondered about Bweekend getaway. The getaway place like for D and F to be thugging her talking. To each other. Why not now, is a honeycomb. Bees stream through around behind them like an extra leg, while there is time? But they didn’t. the streets and the night. Bees hud- up and down the bright boardwalks, The questions she asks me are all al- dling, zooming, gleaming and anxious, in and out of dark shops, where they ternative questions—no matter what bees rolling along like sailors, bees tried on outfits and she wept, past ter- I answer, I’m always half wrong, the licking the barley out of one anoth- races and bars and hooting and sex- younger one thought (that was one er’s beards. D and F are bees, too, and pools and other people’s flyof proto- excuse). Stars do not meet—they would go ahead to guide her on the stream. cols. She’d returned to the rented house explode (was another). The situation The stream is drunk. They stumble to caked with filthy honey and lain on drew this sort of dramatics from her, their rented house. I’ll be fine, she her back on the camp bed. which she confided to a notebook and thinks. At the beach (last day), she looks winced at years later. If conversation Next day they rent bikes. D and F down and thinks, I have my mother’s made itself seem necessary, their prac- swoop of down the bike path. She toes. She is reading only books writ- tice was to sense what the other one pumps hard, grinds to a halt on a dune, ten by people named Margaret, so as wanted to hear and say that. If her bruises her leg, starts again. This hap- to feel close to her. Not too close. Her mother tried ofhandedness (get my- pens forty-five times. I haven’t ridden poor toes. In therapy (try to remem- self some Nembutal, finish us both a bike since I was ten, she explains to ber the good times), she’d come up of ), the daughter smiled tightly and no one. Sweat drips down both sides with the one about the two of them hurried on with dinner. Once in a while of her nose. Even then Dad gave up going to the beach with no brakes on they had a really good laugh. The on me. Two days down, she thinks. the car, her mother saying as they locked corridor where Dad lived was On the porch in the morning, a backed out of the driveway, Well, it’s ofcially Our Golden Mile, in stick-on feral cat dozes by the picnic table while downhill to the water and then we’ll italic letters over the registration desk, D eats muesli and reads aloud from see, and so they had. How they got but her mother called it the Last Lap, Men’s Muscle. Please may I have an- home again she can’t recall. They never and although this was funny enough other, sir (protein supplement). Pho- told her father or brother about going to tell other people on the phone at tos of men who have transferred the to the beach. They tucked it away like night, the daughter made no comment insides of their bodies to the outside a garland at the back of a closet, to to her mother. She did not thank her. by pulling on chains while lightning glance at once in a while when rear- They laughed and stopped, abyss at comes from their heads. Others heft ranging the stuf at the front. their feet. It would be hard to describe, anvils in white shirts and ties. As one or, in later years, believe, how heavy reads Gogol (Nabokov observed), one’s MEXICO was the weight of every single word eyes become “gogolized”—people pas- in those days. To gather enough for a sionate about overcoats begin to ap- t’s not as if they were harmless. sentence meant finding the strength pear in towns that never knew cold or To each other. of a hero of ancient mythology, some snow. Will I perhaps see mega pec ca- I Two people so wired together can Heracles or Theseus, who built the bles romping the rosy lanes of the hon- do harm even with the best intentions. walls of Troy from Cyclopean stones, eycomb today? she wonders. Or no intentions at all. each one bigger than ten normal men To pass the time, she eavesdrops It was a small house and, now that could lift nowadays. Her mother was (café). Are you tempted? I’ve always Dad had “gone to the home,” radiant a fan of space travel and liked the idea been tempted. Well, so, should I? Can’t with silence. At night, they sat in sep- of dying on Mars. They talked a bit we just be free and like this? I think arate rooms, reading, not reading. On about this, now and then, when there it’s crazy unless you’re really, really. Sundays, they called a taxi and went were rockets blowing up on the news, And you see if I lost, then I’d be. I to see Dad. (Neither of them drove. but it led to the dark. didn’t know you felt that way or I Dad used to drive.) Who Dad thought What would they have seen if they’d would’ve said thanks, but. It’s a dif- they were was unclear. He didn’t mind gazed into each other’s depths? But cult situation now. Remember, we visits. The older woman brought grapes they didn’t. Even when doing a task didn’t even recognize the ice-skater. and the younger one smiled idiotically. together, shucking corn, washing him, Oh, I know. A fantasy is not a person. They sat with him in the cafeteria, they looked away. Lack of astonish- But I miss it like a person. And then moving the dishes under his gaze one ment lay between them, slablike, eras- the day ends with a churningly stupid by one as he ate. He didn’t look up. ing something every time it appeared. argument between D and F in the Afterward, they bustled around his To be properly (kill the father!) aston- front courtyard of a restaurant. She room uselessly. It was a room shared ished or astonishable happens more has a chunk of seared tuna stuck in with a man who did not close his eyes, in plays than in life. her throat the whole time. You want ever. The eyelids were dysfunctional. Anyway, one Sunday they were

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 81 coming back from a visit to Dad, just some words, other words, would show out which we merely navigate a sea of rounding the corner from the high- up. It was worth a try. Don’t come back convenience with other people? But way onto their own road, a grayish- the way you went, Dad used to say here it is Christmas night in Ohio and brown November day. The taxi turned when they went for a Sunday drive. a crack is beginning to show. I stand onto the gravel section. There were Come a new way. by my mother-in-law with a soggy some grayish-brown grasses pok- dishtowel in hand, pondering the ho- ing up for light from a smear of raw TROUBLE IN PARADISE liness of conversation. She is talking grayish-brown snow—she could see about her last glimpse of Mildred. A them in her mind years later—some y mother-in-law is four feet hospital room. Mildred, laid low by thin, unbeautiful trees, a black ditch. nine. Embracing her, I feel big, one of those cancers that kill you in a Cracking the window let in smells of Mbestial, slightly disloyal; my own mother, weekend, can no longer eat, is suck- root, ash, needle, cold. It was only half- now deceased, was also small. Other- ing on a piece of ice, has a tube up her way through the afternoon, but light wise they are not alike, except for an nose, and when Verna leans over the and life seemed to be leaking out of opinion that I dress badly and am emo- bed to ask if there’s anything she can the day on either side. The visit had tionally obscure, which they would do, Mildred shoots her a look, moves been no worse or better than other have shared. That I ought to be taken the tube aside, and says, Verna, I’d give visits, but, as she sat there watching a somewhere to “shop for clothes” is a the world right now for one of your polished Dad skull wobble atop some hovering threat. Tonight my mother- Martinis. The next day, Mildred is clothes she mostly recognized, her in- in-law and I are doing the dishes. It dead. My dishtowel by now a satu- sides had gone bleak and dangerous. is Christmas night. We are in Ohio. rated oblong, I fold it in three, hop- Now the taxi veered left, past the grave- Her name is Verna. She washes, I dry. ing for a new dry corner. So when did yard, past the old abandoned school- The dishtowel, my last year’s Christ- Mildred pass away? I ask, and Verna house where Dad had once hung his mas gift to her, is printed with car- says, 1965. What is a mortal being? small cap on a peg, past the break in toon cameos of Bloomsbury celeb- A wind, a dream, a shadow, the an- the trees where you could start to see rities. Verna is telling stories about cient Greek poets tell us, but I don’t the lake. Her mother, in the front seat, Mildred, her best friend, who died. say this to Verna. I merely repeat, 1965!, was chatting with the taxi-driver Mildred taught me everything I know, in disbelief. (Clayton) about his arthritis, or his she says. Mildred taught me how to From the other room comes the wife’s arthritis, or Mars. His wife had entertain. I am half-listening, think- sound of TV. It’s a Christmas special worse arthritis than he did and would ing back to drying dishes for my own about war—they’re interviewing a sol- develop the knack of driving with her mother. I recall silence, distemper, and dier from some Army, I think Israeli, knuckles when Clayton died suddenly, impotence on my part. I really wanted whose assignment is to show up at just after Christmas. to talk to her, or hear her talk to me. sites where a woman or a child has In the back seat, she stared out the All the same, I stood beside her at the been killed and plant weapons on window, trying not to listen to the sink night after night, year after year, the body. I wring out my towel. front seat, keeping her thought on in a blaze of shame lest she ask me Everything I want from a mother is stray things—supper, numbers, Christ- an inside question or blurt out some entrail-exhausting, rage-flooded, mas, an art work she heard about once, entrail of her own. Fear of entrails shocked-alive, and structured like a called something like “Horses End- governed us. We both had neurotic shriek. All I have the courage to ask lessly Running.” Had she dreamed bowels. And a kind of continuing un- of her is this convenience. We wipe this? No. Imagined it? Maybe. Was it founded rage. So when I say “wanted down the counter. We hang up towel in Mexico? Yes, it was Mexico! A min- to talk” it’s not quite true. I never and sponge. When I was little I un- iature chessboard, and all the pieces wanted it at the time. I wanted it be- derstood the world to be made of were knights. And Mexico came to fore, I wanted it after, I want it now, paper, and that everyone should step her like an alteration of death to day, I never wanted it at the time. At the carefully or go through the paper. I just the word, just the thought, the lit- time was always the wrong time, and wanted a notation for that, for the tle hooves drumming their way across I was in a rage. Are other families like going-through. I thought, I still think, the two-inch board, the small hearts this? I know I’m setting the bar high, this notation is stored somewhere, storming in the small hot breasts, the but I cannot imagine it was ever the above us in a sort of mist or secret tiny forelocks and fetlocks and with- wrong time to talk in, say, Blooms- layer. I never realized Verna had been ers bright with the dew of a small- bury. But then here is Virginia Woolf carrying the ghost of Mildred at the scale Mexican dawn. Life ran back (from “A Sketch of the Past”): front of her mind for fifty years, like into her from all directions, like a color, We are sealed vessels afoat upon what it impossible antlers. The judgments we and she leaned her forehead against is convenient to call reality; at some moments, bring to bear on one another are not the icy window, suddenly imagining without a reason, without an efort, the seal- very sound, are they? Now Verna is telling her mother about this at sup- ing matter cracks; in foods reality. . . . scrubbing at spots on the stove with per. It was a thing outside them, gal- the hem of her apron. Come on, let’s lant and bellicose and clear—she Was it Virginia Woolf who taught watch TV, I say. I brought a movie. wouldn’t use fancy words like that, but us to adore these floods of reality, with- It’s Lubitsch—you’ll like it. ♦

82 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016

THE CRITICS

BOOKS COMING TO AMERICA

What gets left out of our immigration arguments. BY KELEFA SANNEH

hundred and seventy-four of the judges, asked, “why can’t a state?” publican voters considered immigra- refugees from Syria arrived in In- The court eventually ruled that when tion to be the country’s top problem, and diana,A during the past fiscal year, as it comes to immigrants it is the federal most Americans want immigration to part of President Obama’s stated goal government that has the right to dis- be restricted or kept at current levels, of admitting ten thousand Syrians who criminate, not state governments. Even not increased. In recent years, however, had been displaced by civil war. There now, U.S. immigration rules hold that the leaders most supportive of such re- were organizations in Indiana ready to immigrants “afliated with” the Com- striction have tended to be rather mar- help them, including a nonprofit state- munist Party are “inadmissible.” And ginal figures, like Joe Arpaio, the rene- supported group called Exodus. But the countless prospective entrants are turned gade Arizona sherif, and Tom Tancredo, state itself was less hospitable: the gov- away each year without being given a the former Republican congressman ernor publicly declared the refugees a reason, or the opportunity to ask for one. from Colorado, whose short-lived 2008 security risk, and announced that Indi- What, exactly, are our obligations to Presidential campaign was based on a ana would refuse to reimburse Exodus people in other countries who would promise to stop “uncontrolled immigra- for any costs incurred on the Syrians’ like to come to this one? The argument tion.” Trump was pretty marginal, too— behalf. Exodus sued, and the case was over Syrian refugees is a good example until he wasn’t. David Frum, the former argued before the Seventh Circuit Court of how our political conversation tends Republican speechwriter, is a longtime of Appeals last month, by which point to sidestep this thorny issue. Ironically, supporter of immigration restriction, it had acquired additional political sig- strong opposition from Republicans but no fan of Trump. He once summed nificance: the defendant, Governor Mike made it easier for President Obama to up the immigration debate by para- Pence, was also the Republican nomi- avoid explaining how he had determined phrasing an old description of the En- nee for Vice-President. that ten thousand, not more, was the glish Civil War: “a battle between the During oral arguments, the state’s proper quota for Syrian refugees. Were Wrong but Wromantic and the Right lawyer was subjected to withering ques- there security concerns that prevented but Repulsive.” tions from the judges, who wondered the U.S. from admitting, say, a hundred This year, amid an unusually immi- whether barring Syrians was an efcient thousand? How many Syrian refugees— gration-oriented Presidential campaign, anti-terrorism strategy. (The state cited an estimated five million have fled the a couple of skeptical scholars are trying James Comey, the director of the F.B.I., country’s civil war—would be too many? to arrive at an analysis that is neither who had acknowledged that his agency Obama didn’t have to entertain ques- wromantic nor repulsive. David Miller, faced a particular “challenge” in check- tions like these, airily insisting that “ref- a political philosopher at Oxford, sets ing the backgrounds of Syrian refugees.) ugees can make us stronger,” and claim- out to answer a simple question: What One judge asked, “Are Syrians the only ing, not implausibly, that some of his gives a country the right to control its Muslims Indiana fears?” political opponents seemed to be deficient borders? Trump’s plan to build a grand, But the judges also seemed uncon- in “common humanity.” ocean-to-gulf wall may be unwise, but vinced by the claim that Indiana was in For much of this year, of course, would it be wrong? Hillary Clinton has violation of the Civil Rights Act, which Obama’s chief political opponent was called for “bridges, not walls,” but she, outlaws discrimination based on na- Pence’s running mate, Donald Trump, too, wants the government to control tional origin. The U.S. immigration sys- who captured the Republican Presiden- who gets in. Miller asks when, if ever, a

tem has long imposed national caps, tial nomination by giving voice to a sen- country is obliged to let a foreigner enter, RREZ meant to control not just the size of the timent that many Republican voters ev- and remain. George J. Borjas, an econ- immigrant population but its composi- idently believe, and that few Republican omist—and, as it happens, a Cuban im- tion, too. “If the President can decide, politicians are willing to express: that migrant—has a diferent approach. In- based on national origin, how many ref- immigration is destroying America. A stead of asking what we owe immigrants, ugees there are,” Frank Easterbrook, one 2014 poll found that a plurality of Re- he wants us to think more clearly about ABOVE:LUCI GUTIÉ

84 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 The debate is between “walls” and “bridges,” but both sides would turn away most prospective immigrants. Should they? ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN STAUFFER THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 85 what we’re likely to get in return. Un- for citizens,” he writes. “But less is not thousand unaccompanied minors, who like Trump, he isn’t convinced that im- nothing.” There is, he notes, a widely came over the Mexican border after migration is an existential threat to accepted universal right of exit—regimes fleeing violence in Central America. America, but he is not convinced, ei- that forbid defection are rightly seen as By comparison, only about twelve ther, by politicians’ constant assurances oppressive. But no government recog- thousand Syrian refugees have been ad- that immigration is what makes Amer- nizes a universal right of entry. Miller mitted so far. Overseas, the Syrian ex- ica great. He believes that we should thinks that this makes sense, because odus has been more destabilizing: hun- take up a question that is sometimes liberal democracies must uphold “quite dreds of thousands have entered Greece considered taboo: What if immigration demanding standards of equal treatment and Germany, propelling restrictionist isn’t good for us, after all? for all who reside within their borders.” movements across Europe. Millions have Such treatment might be difcult, arrived in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. hen Trump, at the launch of or expensive. In the United States, all Miller thinks that states are justified in his campaign, mentioned Mex- immigrant children can attend public rebufng refugees only if they impose a icanW “rapists,” he was amplifying a claim school, and anyone accused of a crime “serious cost to social justice and cohe- made by Ann Coulter, the pundit and is entitled to a legal defense, regardless sion.” He does not think it is defensible provocateur. Two weeks before, Coulter of immigration status. In Miller’s view, for states to turn away refugees on the had published a sharp, calculatedly ob- controlling immigration is one way for basis of cultural or religious identity. noxious polemic called “¡Adios, Amer- a country to control its public expendi- And it would be “hypocrisy,” he argues, ica! The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Coun- tures, and such control is essential to de- for a country to bar refugees while wel- try Into a Third World Hellhole.” mocracy. He further suggests that “more coming other, more “desirable” immi- Perhaps the most influential political culturally homogeneous” countries, like grants, because a sovereign state is obliged book of the 2016 campaign, it is full of Japan, have a right to “protect their in- to take seriously the claims of refugees, gruesome anecdotes about sexual as- herited national cultures” by restricting on human-rights grounds. His book en- saults committed by unauthorized im- immigration. For him, borders are vital dorses “a qualified right on the part of migrants. Studies find that immigrants, to democratic self-determination, par- states to close their borders,” but from as a group, commit fewer crimes than ticularly since immigration can change an American perspective his approach natives, but some data sets tell difer- the character of a country—“the ‘self ’ might seem decidedly permissive. ent stories. (One government report in ‘self-determination,’ ” he calls it. Miller Miller’s book can be taken as a re- suggests that, in California, for instance, thinks it is worse for a government to sponse to Joseph Carens, an American unauthorized immigrants are overrep- keep a temporary worker “in limbo” in- political scientist who has settled in Can- resented in the prison population.) In definitely (and so create a “two-caste” ada—a happy beneficiary of the unfair Coulter’s view, that scarcely matters: society) than to enforce immigration re- global immigration system that he would any crime committed by an immigrant strictions in a timely manner. But, in the like to reform. Three years ago, Carens is one crime—and one immigrant— case of refugees, he perceives a double published “The Ethics of Immigration,” too many. She declares that “the rape vulnerability: by applying for asylum, a which defends a simple proposition: of little girls isn’t even considered a crime refugee “makes herself vulnerable” to a “Immigrants belong.” Carens argues that in Latino culture.” (In most of Mexico, state, while imposing on the state a “duty anyone who settles in a new country ac- she notes, children as young as twelve of care.” The state is thereby obliged quires “social membership,” a status that can legally consent to sex with adults.) to accept as many refugees as it can. soon becomes a sufcient basis for de- Just as confidently, she How many is that? In manding citizenship; after a few years, suggests that no one really 2014, just over a million it hardly matters how the immigrant likes mariachi bands. And people became legal per- arrived. (“The moral right of states to she calls for “an immigra- manent residents of the apprehend and deport irregular migrants tion policy that benefits U.S. About two-thirds of erodes with the passage of time,” he Americans.” Like Trump, them were relatives of cur- writes.) who seeks to put “Amer- rent citizens or residents, Where Miller sees borders as sym- ica First,” Coulter believes fifteen per cent were ad- bols of national sovereignty, Carens that the U.S. government mitted on the basis of pro- sees them as monuments to global in- has a duty, too often un- fessional skill, thirteen per equality; in his view, citizenship in a rich fulfilled, to give priority to the well- cent were refugees and asylees, and five Western democracy is “the modern equiv- being of its own citizens. per cent were winners of a global lot- alent of feudal class privilege.” When Miller calls this notion “compatriot tery. (Each year, about fifteen million considering the pleas of refugees, he partiality,” and he argues that it is a people apply for fifty thousand U.S. res- goes even further than Miller, suggest- powerful principle, though one with idency visas.) There were also, of course, ing that we should be ever mindful of limits. His new book is “Strangers in unauthorized immigrants, who both the baleful history of the nineteen- Our Midst” (Harvard), a lean and judi- came and went—for years, estimates of thirties, when many countries—includ- cious defense of national interests. “Jus- this population have held at eleven or ing America—turned away Jewish ref- tice permits us to do less for would-be twelve million. The unauthorized arriv- ugees from Germany. He writes, “We immigrants than we are required to do als in 2014 also included some seventy should always ask ourselves at some

86 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 point, ‘What would this have meant if we had applied it to Jews fleeing Hit- ler?’ ” This would mean, as Carens con- cedes, that countries are “almost never” justified in turning away refugees.

art of what animates immigra- tion restrictionists like Coulter is Pthe sense that newcomers are being given special privileges. She says it’s crazy to think that “we have to treat immigrants as if they’re black people and we’re mak- ing up for the legacy of slavery.” But Carens thinks we do have a special duty to immigrants; namely, a duty to make them feel like members of society. And he wants politicians to be attentive to the “symbolic meaning” of immigration regulations, which might send a hostile message even if they aren’t inherently •• oppressive. Think of Trump’s Mexican- border wall. His political opponents re- gave unauthorized immigrant children that might be cited by the so-called “xe- acted with horror, as if erecting a bar- the right to enroll in public school. Jus- nophobes and racists” who favored im- ricade were an afront to human rights. tice William Brennan wrote, for the migration restriction. But he shares with But more than twenty-five per cent of majority, “There is no evidence in the many activists, on both sides, a convic- the border is walled of already, and no record suggesting that illegal entrants tion that our current system is unfair. mainstream politician—certainly not impose any significant burden on the Most visas go to relatives, even though Hillary Clinton—has called for the ex- State’s economy.” they are not necessarily the neediest ap- isting walls to be torn down. Trump’s This, indeed, was the conventional plicants or the most constructive po- critics opposed his wall primarily be- economic wisdom then, and, if there is tential residents. Borjas notes that Mex- cause they opposed the message it less consensus about it now, that is due ican immigrants are “disproportionately seemed to be sending: that Mexicans in part to the dogged research of Bor- drawn from the low-skill workforce,” are unwelcome in the U.S. jas, who has been studying the economic and ofers one explanation: the finan- When Miller and Carens talk about efects of immigration from around the cial returns on college education are immigrants, they sometimes seem to time Brennan wrote those words. Bor- higher, relatively speaking, in Mexico be talking about entirely diferent pop- jas arrived from Cuba as a boy, in 1962, than in the U.S., and so those without ulations. Miller often portrays immi- shortly after the revolution, and settled degrees have a greater incentive to cross grants as beneficiaries, emphasizing the with his mother in a Cuban commu- the border. He notes, too, that in 2014 potential price of caring for them. (He nity in Miami and then in Hoboken, working-age natives and immigrants writes from England, where socialized New Jersey. His precipitating insight were employed at almost the same rate medicine is a fact of life.) Carens, by was that diferent groups of immigrants (72.5 per cent and 72.9 per cent, respec- contrast, assumes that immigrants, when bring diferent skills and face diferent tively), even though 28.2 per cent of im- not thwarted by cruel policies, will gen- conditions. Economists, he thought, migrants lacked a high-school diploma, erally make good use of the economic were wrong to assume that new waves compared with only eight per cent of opportunities available; he suggests that of immigrants would assimilate and thrive natives. the costs of immigration will be small, simply because previous ones had. His In theory, an increase in the supply or nonexistent. Similarly, Hillary Clin- new book, “We Wanted Workers” (Nor- of non-diploma workers should lead to ton, who once declared herself “ada- ton), borrows its title from the Swiss lower wages for this group. But econo- mantly against illegal immigrants,” is writer Max Frisch, who once ofered a mists disagree about what happens in now much more likely to enumerate wistful assessment of guest workers: “We practice. David Card, a labor economist the ways in which immigrants, whether wanted workers, but we got people in- known for his research on the minimum authorized or not, enrich the nation’s stead.” Borjas believes that his fellow- wage, studied the Mariel boatlift, which economy; Trump’s proposals, on the economists have done us a disservice by brought more than a hundred thousand other hand, were driven largely by his analyzing immigrants as units of labor, Cubans to Florida in 1980; he found no intuition that immigrants are a drain while ignoring the other ways in which evidence that the influx had lowered on resources. Our laws, too, are shaped they influence their new country. wages in Miami. Borjas argues that Card by assumptions about the economic Borjas, who teaches at Harvard’s Ken- failed to find valid cities to compare impact of immigration. Plyler v. Doe nedy School, described the “pressure” with Miami and that he failed to sep- was a 1981 Supreme Court case that he felt, early on, not to publish research arate out natives without diplomas, who

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 87 were most directly afected. (Some two- more alarmed than usual. “Open bor- ity as the only countervailing force that thirds of the Mariel arrivals had not ders?” he said. “That’s a right-wing pro- can be relied on to oppose it.”) Still, there graduated from high school.) Accord- posal.” He said that it would “make ev- can be something jarring about hearing ing to Borjas’s calculations, the boatlift erybody in America poorer,” and added a committed egalitarian like Sanders de- created a labor “supply shock” that low- that we should focus, instead, on help- fend our profoundly unequal system of ered wages by at least ten per cent for ing “poor people”—meaning, of course, national borders and citizenship. Carens, local natives who lacked a high-school poor people in America. another egalitarian, is bothered by this diploma. Sanders’s characterization of open tension, and seeks to resolve it by advo- Borjas is appropriately skeptical of borders as “right wing” wasn’t without cating open borders as a distant prom- economic claims. He says that part of basis. In 1984, as President Reagan was ise, to be fulfilled only once we have the problem with the immigration de- pushing for immigration reform, the achieved a “significant” reduction in bate is an “overreliance on economic mod- editorial page of the Wall Street Journal worldwide inequality. One politician who eling and statistical findings.” The aca- called for a five-word amendment to seems to agree with him is Hillary Clin- demic literature is complicated and often the Constitution: “There shall be open ton. In an e-mail recently disclosed by contradictory, and all sides have a ten- borders.” This is the rallying cry of the WikiLeaks, she privately told a Brazil- dency to cite the numbers that support open- borders movement, which com- ian banking group, “My dream is a hemi- their ideals. We know that many costs bines faith in free enterprise with a rel- spheric common market, with open trade of caring for immigrants are borne by ative lack of compatriot partiality. Bryan and open borders, some time in the fu- state and local governments, while many Caplan, an economist at George Mason ture.” This—free migration, based on benefits flow to the federal government. University, argues that it is immoral to rough economic parity between coun- But, even then, reliable numbers are elu- condemn countless would-be immi- tries—is essentially the European Union sive. Immigration may make programs grants to lives of hardship in an efort model, although the citizens of Great like Social Security more solvent in the to nudge up wages for Americans who Britain decided, this summer, that the short term. The long-term efect de- didn’t graduate from high school. He parity was a bit too rough and the mi- pends, in part, on how those programs says that we should think of “low-skilled” gration a bit too free. are structured by the time today’s immi- American workers as one more “special In debates over immigration, both grants retire. Though many economists interest” demanding favors from a com- sides tend to make bold pronouncements view immigration as beneficial, Borjas plaisant bureaucracy. about what the natives will or will not suspects that it may well be “a net eco- Some studies suggest that immigra- stand for. In Coulter’s treatise, natives nomic wash” for America, which doesn’t tion inhibits public support for gener- are righteous and aggrieved, desperate mean that there are no winners or los- ous social-welfare programs—which, for for a political leader who’s willing to ers. He argues that one result has been libertarian supporters of the idea, is in confirm what they can see for them- “a substantial redistribution of wealth no way a problem. If a country can’t aford selves. (The book seemed to conjure from workers”—especially low-skilled to welcome anyone who wants to come, Trump’s Presidential campaign into ex- ones—“to firms.” If we really wanted to why not charge a steep entrance fee, or istence.) Miller encourages limited def- “make natives as rich as possible,” he slash government benefits for new arriv- erence to the natives, reconciling him- writes, we would adopt a radical new als, or withhold citizenship? Miller sug- self to the fact that democracies might policy: “admit only high-skill immi- gests that any such arrangement would choose immigration policies that leave grants,” because they do the most to make be damaging to a country’s democratic certain humanitarian goals unmet. Those all of us more productive. But this is not identity and civic life—it would repre- who think that rich countries should what we do. And so, he infers, appeal- sent an abandonment of “liberal princi- admit more immigrants anyway should ing to the economic theory known as re- ples.” Open-borders advocates would at least consider the risk of backlash, es- vealed preference, that must not be what reply that immigration restrictions them- pecially because there are circumstances we want—or, at least, not the only thing. selves constitute such an abandonment; in which immigration can be plausibly they are confident that future genera- linked to disorder or crime. Robert D. ast year, as his insurgent candi- tions will wonder how we ever supported Putnam, the influential political scien- dacy began to gain momentum, such a patently unjust system. tist, found that “immigration and eth- LBernie Sanders sat for an interview with Sanders is not most people’s idea of nic diversity challenge social solidarity Ezra Klein, the editor of the Web site a nativist: he supports citizenship for un- and inhibit social capital,” at least in the Vox. The political world was still figur- authorized immigrants, wants to “reverse short term; the claim that diversity makes ing out what to make of Trump’s immi- the criminalization of immigrants,” and us strong is, as Coulter acidly notes, a gration rhetoric, and Klein wondered calls Trump’s border wall a “boondog- motto, not an empirical fact. She cites whether Sanders, who calls himself a gle.” Like Miller, though, he wants to the presence of Somali refugees in Min- democratic socialist, might have a more ofer a qualified defense of borders that nesota as an example of the costs of im- internationalist perspective. Did he sup- are closed, at least some of the time, to migration, suggesting that the state is port admitting vastly more immigrants, some people. (Perhaps Miller has San- now rife with “child prostitutes and ma- perhaps even embracing a policy of “open ders in mind when he notes that certain chete attacks.” In fact, statistics do not borders”? defenders of borders “fear the power of show a state-wide crime wave, although Sanders interrupted, looking even global capitalism and see citizen solidar- there have been some high-profile attacks.

88 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 In September, a young immigrant from Kenya of Somali descent stabbed ten BRIEFLY NOTED people at a mall in St. Cloud, reportedly while saying something about Allah. Such incidents are more memorable than Blood and Sand, by Alex Von Tunzelmann (Harper). In Octo- statistics, and they can contribute to the ber, 1956, Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egypt; the Red anxiety that erodes support for more Army stomped into Hungary; and President Eisenhower en- immigration. tered the home stretch of his “Man of Peace” reëlection cam- In the U.K., the government’s unwill- paign. Shimon Peres called it “one of the craziest months in ingness to bar refugees entering from history”: nuclear threats were uttered; revolutionaries and Europe helped lead to Brexit, which may strongmen alike beseeched America for help; allies proved yet hasten the end of free travel within perfdious. This thrilling ticktock brings the emotional core Europe. In this country, the rise of Don- of geopolitical maneuvering into dramatic focus, with por- ald Trump may mark the demise of the traits of leaders variously honorable, pigheaded, irresolute, pu- bipartisan immigration consensus; this sillanimous, and susceptible to mood swings. They fret over year, an Open Borders Amendment seems oil dependency and conspire to knock of foreign leaders using even more far-fetched than it did in 1984. “malign doctors, exploding razors, or poisoned chocolates.” How much immigration should the gov- Meanwhile, other people, “ordinary and diverse,” take to the ernment allow? One answer that open- streets, risking life for liberty. borders supporters might ofer is prac- tical, if unsatisfying: as much as it can The Pigeon Tunnel, by John le Carré (Viking). “Spying and novel get away with. writing are made for each other,” the former British intelli- Meanwhile, it is not just Trump who gence ofcer and doyen of espionage lit writes in this enthrall- promises to put America first. Politi- ing memoir. Born David Cornwell, in 1931, le Carré has spent cians of all stripes assure us that their more than half a century traversing the globe, gathering ma- favored policies will make Americans terial for richly textured and psychologically complex thril- stronger together—insisting that it is lers. Here he revisits episodes that have informed his work, possible, after all, to be wromantic and such as conferring with a prominent Russian dissident in full right. But Carens makes a startling as- view of the K.G.B. and mingling with a warlord’s henchmen sertion toward the end of his book. “Ad- in an East Congo discothèque. There are many brushes with mission of refugees,” he writes, “does not death: in a shallow foxhole within fring distance of the Khmer really serve the interests of rich demo- Rouge; at a Beirut checkpoint at the hands of a Kalashnikov- cratic states.” In saying so, he seeks not toting child soldier. to stem the tide but to make it clear that morality requires states to act in ways Moonstone, by Sjón, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria that may not be to their advantage. The Cribb (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Máni, the protagonist of this good news is that voters, too, tend to be dreamlike novel by a cult Icelandic writer, is a young orphan driven by much besides self-interest— living on the fringes of Reykjavík society in the early twenti- if this were not the case, we might al- eth century. He sustains himself on sex and cinema, paid by ready have embraced the high-skilled- men for the former, and spending his earnings on the latter. immigrant program that Borjas says Movies permeate his life: “Sleeping, he dreams of variations would enrich us. Voters seem to like the on the flms, in which the web of incident is interwoven with idea of providing sanctuary to refugees, strands from his own life.” His only approximation of a friend especially if they can be convinced that is a mysterious motorcycle-riding girl who resembles the star the refugees aren’t gaming the system. of the 1915 flm “Les Vampires,” one of Máni’s favorites. The In America, especially, voters respond to story—an elegy of sorts, shadowed by the Spanish-infuenza the sentimental but not fictitious notion pandemic—has the fickering, unreal quality of early cinema. that their country draws immigrants from around the world, all hoping and The Field of the Cloth of Gold, by Magnus Mills (Bloomsbury). expecting to do better than they could The unnamed narrator of this deadpan comic parable about have done at home. Immigration may greed and divisiveness is among the frst settlers of a “Great be, as Borjas puts it, “a net economic Field” by the bend of a river. Peaceful coexistence among early wash,” and yet there are still good and residents unravels when a band of “newcomers” arrives and strong reasons for us to say that we want constructs a trench across the feld—whether for drainage or for more of it. There is, after all, one class defense is uncertain. More settlers arrive, and the tensions among of Americans who stand to gain enor- the feld’s inhabitants escalate, with inevitable results. Mills’s mously from immigration. The only themes are both timeless and timely. “You may think it couldn’t catch is that these Americans are not happen here,” one character observes, “but I assure you it’s Americans at all—not yet.  quite possible, especially if you’re divided amongst yourselves.”

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 89 This is not just a psychological mis- BOOKS fortune but, more pressingly, a politi- cal one. Because we don’t speak the same language as our neighbors, we RETURN TO BABEL can’t see their point of view, and there- fore we are more likely to rob them The rise and fall of Esperanto. and kill them. For thousands of years, people have BY JOAN ACOCELLA taken this matter quite seriously. Ambitious organizations such as the Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church made sure that their members, whatever their mother tongue, learned a second, common language. More recently, various think- ers have considered constructing uni- versal languages from scratch. Schor gives a colorful summary. In the sev- enteenth century, Francis Bacon pro- posed that our written language switch to something like Chinese ideograms, bypassing words altogether, and John Wilkins, the first secretary of the Royal Society, proposed a new language with two thousand and thirty characters. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz said that we should use a pictographic system, a little like Egyptian hieroglyphs. In the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- turies came the rise of nationalism and, with it, linguistic nationalism, which held that the particularity of language was in fact an advantage, not a problem. Johann Gottfried Herder claimed that a people’s lan- guage contained its spiritual essence. Wilhelm von Humboldt believed that language, mediating between the mind and the world, actually created a peo- ple’s identity. s the book of Genesis tells it, they begin to do: and now nothing will be re- The language called Esperanto was strained from them, which they have imagined God had no sooner made a cove- to do. born of such considerations, and one nantA with the survivors of the Flood, Go to, let us go down, and there confound more—the so-called Jewish question. agreeing that He would never again their language, that they may not understand Esperanto’s creator, Ludovik Lazarus try to drown humankind, than they did one another’s speech. Zamenhof (1859-1917), a short, sparkly- something new to annoy Him. Settling So the LORD scattered them abroad from eyed, chain-smoking ophthalmologist, thence upon the face of all the earth: and they on a Mesopotamian plain, they made left of to build the city. was a Jew, and, as he wrote to a friend, bricks and mortar, and began building this made all the diference: “My Jew- a tower whose top, as they planned it, According to Esther Schor, in her ishness has been the main reason why, would reach to Heaven—that is, to new book, “Bridge of Words: Espe- from earliest childhood, I gave myself where God lived. God did not fail to ranto and the Dream of a Universal completely to one crucial idea . . . the notice what they were doing: Language” (Metropolitan), this famous dream of the unity of humankind.” And the LORD came down to see the city story, of the Tower of Babel, repre- By this he may have meant that Jews and the tower, which the children of men sents a sort of second original sin. “If were broader in outlook. In any case, builded. mortality is what it is like to live after he felt that they needed to be. In the And the LORD said, Behold, the people is Eden, misunderstanding,” she writes, town where Zamenhof grew up— one, and they have all one language; and this “is what it is like to live after Babel.” Białystok, now in Poland but at that time part of the Russian Empire—the Esperanto’s founder hoped it would foster universal peace. population, he wrote, “consisted of four 90 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY MIGUEL PORLAN diverse elements: Russians, Poles, Ger- dictate of conscience is that we should mans, and Jews; each spoke a diferent do unto others as we would have them language and was hostile to the other do unto us. “All other instructions,” elements.” He went on, “I was brought Zamenhof declared, “are only human up as an idealist; I was taught that all commentaries.” men were brothers, and, meanwhile, in The objective of Zionism had been the street, in the square, everything at to find for the Jews a safe place, where every step made me feel that men did their separate culture could survive un- not exist, only Russians, Poles, Ger- harmed. Zamenhof ’s objective was to mans, Jews.” open up Judaism, so that it would no In fact, the Russians, Poles, and Ger- longer require either separateness or mans did see eye to eye on one thing: protection. “Instead of being absorbed they all disliked the Jews. In 1881, this by the Christian world, we shall ab- sentiment set of a great wave of po- sorb them,” he said. “For that is our groms in Russia, which, in turn, gave mission, to spread among humanity rise to Zionism, the efort to get the the truth of monotheism and the prin- Jews out of harm’s way by relocating ciples of justice and fraternity.” Then them to what was said to be their prom- everybody could be Jewish! ised land, Palestine. Zamenhof was in For this to happen, though, all his twenties when all this happened, human beings would need to be able and for a while, before devoting him- to speak to one another. There had to self to the cause of Esperanto, he was be a shared, universal language. Hence an enthusiastic Zionist. He spent more Esperanto. than two years modernizing Yiddish, converting it to the Latin alphabet, re- e started work on it early. At vising the spelling, and constructing a his nineteenth-birthday party, in grammar, the first Yiddish grammar H1878, he surprised his guests by giving ever recorded. (He did this while he each of them a small dictionary and a was in medical school. Zamenhof grammar of a new language he had in- was one of those nineteenth-century vented. He then made a speech in the notables—Balzac, Dickens, Pasteur, language, and taught his friends a hymn Freud, Marie Curie—who seem to in its honor: have slept only about three hours a Malamikete de las nacjes night. In his adult years, when he was Kadó, kadó, jam temp’está! head of the Esperanto movement, he La tot’ homoze in familje balanced this with a full-time ophthal- Konunigare so debá. mology practice. He also had a wife Let the hatred of the nations and three children.) Fall, fall! The time is already here; In time, Zamenhof became disillu- All humanity must unite sioned with Zionism. Indeed, he turned In one family. away from all movements defined by ethnic or national identity. “Every na- To Zamenhof ’s disappointment, most tionalism presents for humanity only of his friends forgot about his linguis- the greatest unhappiness,” he wrote. tic innovation once they left the party. He deplored the Jews’ claim that God That was when he drifted into Zion- had made a covenant with them ex- ism. But eventually he returned to the clusively—that they were a chosen peo- project with renewed purpose. In 1887, ple. He wanted Judaism purged of all he self-published his “Unua Libro,” or narrowness. Let the Jews keep some “First Book,” a primer on the proposed of their nice things, their High Holi- language, with explanatory materials days and the stories and the poetry in in Russian. It contained a pronuncia- their Bible. But, as for theology and tion guide, a dictionary, and a gram- ethics, they should confine themselves mar, plus translations of the Lord’s to the teachings of Rabbi Hillel (first Prayer, an excerpt from the Hebrew century B.C.), which, according to Bible, a poem by Heine, and other Zamen hof, consisted of just three prin- items. He called the language the ciples: that God exists and rules the lingvo internacia, but people soon world; that He resides within us as our began referring to it as Esperanto, after conscience; and that the fundamental the nom de plume that he had given

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 91 himself as the book’s author, Doktoro you didn’t have to wait for permission: Esperanto (Doctor Hopeful). Esperantists were invited to construct He said later that he wanted his lan- words, and they did. Schor, trading im- guage to be “unlimitedly rich, flexible, provisations with another Esperantist, full of every ‘bagatelle’ that gives life comes up with elmuri—“to take some- to language,” but, above all, he wanted thing out of a wall”—for getting cash it to be easy to learn, and that is how from an A.T.M. he promoted it. He claimed that even The compounds give Esperanto a uneducated people could master it in playful, almost childlike, character. (So a week. Maybe he was right, if the peo- do some of the roots. “Toast” is toasto.) ple were Western, because Esperanto Something else they call to mind is is closely based on Indo-European Dr. Frankenstein’s creature, stitched to- languages, or the ones that Zamenhof gether from so many parts—an ear knew best. Though he eventually ac- here, a nose there. Schor, a professor quired almost a dozen languages, his of English at Princeton, is the editor mother tongues were Russian and Yid- of “The Cambridge Companion to dish (which is related to German), and Mary Shelley.” She points out the con- he learned German and French at an nection, and she seems to think that early age from his father, who was a Zamenhof may have experienced some- language teacher. thing like Dr. Frankenstein’s amaze- Esperanto does not stray far from ment when he saw what he had cre- those sources. It has an alphabet of ated. She quotes a letter in which Za- twenty-eight letters, in Latin script. menhof tells a friend that, in using About three-quarters of the words are Esperanto, he eventually stopped trans- derived from Romance languages; most lating in his head and began to think of the remainder are based on Ger- in the language. Suddenly, he says, it manic languages. The phonology, or “received its own spirit, its own life, its sound system, is fundamentally Slavic. own definite and clearly expressed phys- The language is very simple. There is iognomy.” Oh, my God, it’s alive! almost no distinction between mascu- As for how it sounded, there have line and feminine nouns. With some been some rude remarks. William Alden, exceptions, common nouns used as sub- the London correspondent for the jects end in “-o” (singular) or “-oj” (plu- Times, described it as “a sort of Italian ral), and adjectives modifying them end gone wrong in company with some in “-a” (singular) or “-aj” (plural). Most Slavonic tongue.” But that was in 1903, adverbs end in “-e.” Verbs are not ad- when probably no one yet spoke it justed for person or number: “I sing” confidently. If, today, you go to You- is mi kantas; “you sing,” vi kantas; “they Tube and listen to people who have sing,” ili kantas. Verb endings change spoken Esperanto from early child- with tense, but only once. No matter hood, you will hear something that who sang or will sing—I, you, we, sounds vaguely Eastern European and, they—the verb is always kantis (past) though unmusical, perfectly O.K. or kantos (future). In “Unua Libro,” Zamenhof ofered ut Zamenhof did not put together about nine hundred roots, and although Esperanto in order to show that he added some more later, Esperanto Bhe could invent a language. He was remains a language with a very small trying to achieve world peace. As usual, pantry of staples. This frugality, its most he gave his project a rather naïve col- basic trait, is then tempered by its sec- oration. In “Unua Libro,” he inserted ond most basic trait, its agglutinative a page printed with eight identical cou- nature—the construction of words by pons—one for you and seven, presum- the incessant addition of prefixes and ably, to distribute to friends—on which sufxes to the roots. “Jet lag” is horzo- you promised that if ten million other nozo: hor (“time”) plus zon (“zone”) people agreed to learn the new lan- plus ozo (“illness”). A samideano is a guage you would, too. You were sup- fellow-Esperantist, someone who has posed to sign the coupon and send it the “same idea” as you about Zamen- in. Zamenhof was disappointed to re- hof ’s creation. These words can now ceive only a thousand responses. be found in Esperanto dictionaries, but Within two years of the original,

92 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 Russian publication of “Unua Libro,” posing and fortifying a deep vein of it had been republished in German, anti-Semitism. When the Esperantists Hebrew, Yiddish, Swedish, Latvian, gathered for their conference, Dreyfus Danish, Bulgarian, Italian, Spanish, still had not been exonerated, and it French, and Czech. There were two did not help the movement’s cause that English editions. In 1908, a Universal Zamenhof was Jewish. The conference Esperanto Association was established, committee asked to see the text of but even before that Esperantists had Zamenhof ’s keynote address. “Through begun holding international congresses the air of our hall mysterious sounds every year. By the time of the first con- are travelling,” he had written, “very gress, in 1905, there were Esperantists low sounds, not perceptible by the ear, as far afield as Argentina, Algeria, but audible to every sensitive soul: the Australia, and French Indochina. For sound of something great that is now a while, there was a campaign to make being born.” He ended with a prayer Esperanto the ofcial language of to the spirit of brotherhood that, under proceedings at the League of Nations the banner of Esperantism, would unite and even to establish an Esperanto- humankind: “To thee, O powerful in- speaking state, to be known as Amikejo corporeal mystery,” etc. (“friendship place”), in Neutral Mo- A French Esperantist, a lawyer resnet, a tiny territory that at that named Alfred Michaux, described the time was on the border of Belgium committee’s reaction: “One can hardly and Germany. Pioneering Esperan- grasp the wonderment and scandal of tists began teaching the language to these French intellectuals, with their their children, and a first generation Cartesian and rational spirit, represen- of native speakers sprang up. Among tatives of lay universities and support- their number was George Soros, the ers of secular government, accustomed son of a prominent Hungarian law- to and identified with freethinking and yer who had helped found an Espe- atheism, when they heard this flaming rantist literary journal in Budapest. prayer.” They told Zamenhof to revise Soros used the occasion of the 1947 his speech and to drop the prayer. “Tear- congress, in Bern, to escape to the ful, isolated, apprehensive, he refused West. to change the speech,” Schor writes, But the history of Esperanto has but he deleted the final stanza of the been far from smooth. The movement prayer, which proclaimed that Chris- was divided from the start. Esperanto tians, Jews, and Muslims were all chil- attracted leftists and freethinkers of dren of God. Meanwhile, the confer- various stripes—Goebbels called it “a ence leaders were doing all they could language of Jews and communists,” not to keep the bad news of Zamenhof ’s entirely inaccurately—and the ma- ethnic origins out of the press. One of jority of those people, like Zamenhof, the organizers, Louis Émile Javal, him- conceived of the language as an ethi- self a Jew, later wrote proudly that only cal program. But many others were in- one of the seven hundred articles about terested in it primarily as a linguistic the congress mentioned that Zamen- novelty. French intellectuals, in par- hof was Jewish. ticular, were put of by Zamenhof ’s On the surface, the congress was a brotherhood- of-man efusions, as be- great success. Almost seven hundred came clear at the first international people attended. There were concerts congress, in 1905, which was held in and banquets. Stalls sold Esperanto- Boulogne-sur- Mer. themed pencils, pens, plates, and even At that time, France was still in the a liqueur—Esperantine. Zamenhof ’s grip of the Dreyfus afair. A decade speech received a loud ovation. (One earlier, the French Army, trying to cover wonders how many people under- a security leak, had arrested a Jewish stood it.) But the occasion cannot ofcer named Alfred Dreyfus, tried have seemed a triumph to Zamenhof. him for treason, and sentenced him to Not only did the Congress Commit- life imprisonment. From the begin- tee pressure him to tone down his ad- ning, it was suspected that Dreyfus dress; it also issued a declaration that had been framed, and the resulting moral commitments had no bearing conflict tore French society in two, ex- on Esperanto. The movement was an

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 93 fault. “For sheer dirtiness of fighting the feuds between the inventors of various of the international languages would take some beating,” George Orwell once wrote. His Aunt Nellie had a lover who headed the Esperanto movement for some years in the twen- ties and thirties, and Orwell spent a lot of time with them in Paris during that period. Dirty fighting, if pro- longed, does not necessarily make for good reading. Of course, there was fighting in Esperanto’s early years, too. What could be more distasteful than the French Esperantists’ treat- ment of Zamenhof ’s Jewishness? But that whole thing reads like a novel, at least in Schor’s hands—she is a lively writer—and Zamenhof is a real hero, whom she clearly loves. By contrast, many of the people who came after him were the sort of nasty little dem- agogues whom one tends to find bat- tling one another to the death for con- trol over small, marginal movements, often on the left. Esperanto saw no end of sects, schisms, secessions, coups. •• Members set up rival languages: Ido, Arulo (later renamed Gloro), Poliespo. “endeavor to spread throughout the en- ference after that, in Cambridge, in These sound like something out of tire world the use of this neutral, human 1907, he said flatly that Esperanto would “Gulliver’s Travels.” language,” the committee said. “All “become a school for future brotherly When the Esperantists weren’t at- other ideals or hopes tied with Espe- humanity.” In the end, he had decided tacking one another, they were being rantism by any Esperantist is his or her that if the others wanted to regard Es- attacked from the outside. Zamen- purely private afair.” This was the exact peranto as a neutral business that was hof had hoped that the United States opposite of what Zamenhof intended. their private afair. Through various would become the headquarters of The whole point of his Esperanto— disputes and difculties, backslidings Esperanto. This made sense to him: what he called its interna ideo—was to and recoveries, he remained faithful to America was already multiethnic. There teach the brotherhood of man. his interna ideo for the remaining years the Esperantists would not have to Still, he capitulated. He could never of his life. fight tribalism the way they had to in stop his ears to the argument that his They weren’t many. As early as his Europe. But that was part of the prob- universalist values, by sounding Jew- forties, he began to sufer cardiac symp- lem: many Americans felt that they ish, would put people of Esperanto— toms. He died, of heart failure, in 1917, were multiethnic enough, thank you. indeed, that his mere Jewishness, never at the age of fifty-seven. It is good that Many were also perfectly happy to em- mind his values, was a burden to the he quit the scene early. Zamenhof was brace nationalism, as they are today. movement he had created. But his exactly the kind of person that the Third So, between the two World Wars, coöperation could not last. In the same Reich would set itself to eliminate. And most Esperantists remained in Cen- year as the Boulogne congress, there by dying before they took over he also tral Europe and the U.S.S.R. (also was another spate of pogroms. Prepar- spared himself the experience of see- in Japan). There, though they were ing his speech for the next interna- ing his children die. His son was shot steadily persecuted, their movement tional conference, in Geneva, in 1906, by the Nazis in 1940. Both of his daugh- managed to survive. Indeed, this pe- Zamenhof described the events in his ters were sent to Treblinka and did riod seems to have been the high-water home town of Białystok. “Savages with not return. mark of Esperanto, though, even then, axes and iron stakes have flung them- its principles were so contested and selves, like the fiercest beasts, against he story of Ludovik Zamenhof revised that it’s hard, at times, to figure the quiet villagers,” he said. “They and the language he invented oc- out which version of Esperanto Schor smashed the skulls and poked out the cupiesT the first third of Schor’s book, is talking about. eyes of men and women, of broken old and it is by far the best part. That the The fall of the Soviet Union, by men and helpless infants!” At the con- rest falls flatter is not really Schor’s letting the steam out of Communism,

94 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 greatly weakened the Esperanto move- funny, brilliant Leo”—and wept daily, ment. In the twenty years following “sometimes most of the day.” Like the the end of the U.S.S.R., the Universal conference diaries, this material feels Esperanto Association’s membership like something she decided to give us fell by nearly sixty per cent. Equally when she suspected that we’d be miss- important was the year-by-year ex- ing Zamenhof. pansion of English-language training. But she pulls herself together and If Zamenhof felt that we needed an ends on a strong, high note, taking on international language, we now more a number of what she calls myths about or less have one, though it’s not the Esperanto: that its intent was to stan- one Zamenhof wanted. More recently, dardize us all, that it had its heyday the rise of the Internet has changed and is over with. Above all, she attacks the profile of Esperanto, albeit in am- the idea that the Boulogne Congress biguous ways. On the one hand, it has Committee tried to force down Zamen- made the Anglicizing of international hof ’s throat: that Esperanto is essen- communications ever more unstoppa- tially nonpolitical. ble. Next to English, Esperanto looks I don’t think she had to tell us that like a very small thing. On the other this was mistaken. To readers today, hand, the Internet has made this small Esperanto may look quite political, thing much easier to learn. One no and not necessarily in an appealing longer has to join organizations or sub- way. It may look like the family-of-man scribe to journals or attend congresses. idea that had been sold to the unfor- Since 2002, the Web site Lernu! tunate over the centuries, to discour- (“Learn!”) has taught Esperanto to age them from complaining that they people coming from thirty diferent hadn’t got a very good seat at the fam- mother tongues. ily table. In particular, it may seem di- Schor isn’t certain how she feels rectly opposed to the identity politics about this. She is faithful to Zamen- that many have now embraced, in order hof, to the idea that Esperanto is not to end those injustices. They are not so much a language as the bearer of part of the family of man, they say. an idea. To absorb the idea, she says, They are part of the family of women one must subscribe to the journals and or African-Americans or gay people, go to the conferences. One must afli- and never mind individualism and ate—meet Esperantists, talk to them. case-by-case judgment. But Schor be- She does, and she takes us with her. lieves that it is precisely this division— In the book are four chapters describ- the great political quarrel of our time— ing her visits to congresses in Hanoi, that Esperanto may be able to heal, Havana, Iznik (in Turkey), and Biały- by reconnecting us, through a com- stok. But, again, it’s not easy to figure mon language, to a shared earth. out how she feels, or to what extent People are apt to make fun of other she is actually afliating. At one con- people’s habit of talking about the ference, she lists the subgroups pres- weather to their neighbors in the el- ent: the gay Esperantists, the Green evator. They shouldn’t make fun. By Party, the vegetarians, the pacifists, invoking the one thing that we know the cat lovers. She describes the slogan- we have in common with others, we bearing T-shirts—“Vivu! Revu! Amu! ” throw a rope across the divide, assert- (“Live! Dream! Love!”)—and the ing that, whatever our diferences, we “gray-braided elders dressed more or do share something: when it rains on less like John the Baptist.” one of us, it’s going to rain on the other The scene is a little like science fic- one, too. Schor quotes the Spanish Es- tion—a collection of radicals from the perantist Jorge Camacho: “Esperanto sixties who didn’t “sell out”—and it’s continues to give me something . . . quite witty, until, after a few pages, it which I don’t find anywhere else, an isn’t. Schor may have sensed this, be- irrational sense of directly belonging cause she starts unloading personal to the world.” A language in common, matters: how her interest in Esperanto a few words that we can say to one coincided with a life crisis, during the another or, even if we don’t learn the course of which she split up with her words, an awareness of the interna ideo: husband of thirty years—“kind Leo; it’s something, a hook. 

THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 95 ogy. She had come in contact with the MUSICAL EVENTS Spectralist school of composers, the likes of Gérard Grisey and Tristan Mu- rail, who were analyzing the acoustic SOUND WAVES properties of sound and deriving mu- sical structures from them. Saariaho’s In New York, the oceanic music of Kaija Saariaho and Gérard Grisey. work, like theirs, moves between ex- tremes of pure tone and noise, often BY ALEX ROSS finding a cryptic beauty in the middle zone. The opening gesture of “L’Amour de Loin” is exemplary: from a deep, shuddering B-flat a complex chord of overtones accumulates, seeming to re- sound not only in space but within the mind. We have entered the conscious- ness of the troubadour Jaufré Rudel, who, in the first scene, is seen compos- ing a chanson and contemplating un- achievable love. Many scores in Saariaho’s catalogue, and not just the theatrical ones, are visually suggestive, with titles allud- ing to light, water, gardens, and night. At the Armory, the Philharmonic cap- italized on that painterly quality by creating a multimedia Saariaho expe- rience, consisting of four pieces in un- broken succession: “Lumière et Pesan- teur,” or “Light and Gravity”; “d’om le vrai sens,” or “Man’s True Sense,” a clarinet concerto; “Lonh,” for voice and electronics; and “Circle Map,” for orchestra and electronics. Pierre Audi, the new artistic director of the Armory, handled the production, encourag- ing the soloists—the clarinettist Kari Kriikku and the soprano Jennifer Zet- lan—to wander through the Armory’s n the nineteen-seventies, when form “La Passion de Simone,” her or- open space. The composer and video the Finnish composer Kaija Saari- atorio in honor of Simone Weil. Axiom, artist Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Saaria- Iaho was studying at the Sibelius Acad- the Juilliard new-music group, will ho’s husband, provided a beguiling emy, in Helsinki, she had spells of par- play a Saariaho program on Decem- stream of medieval and abstract im- alyzing insecurity. Her teacher, Paavo ber 12th. And, on December 1st, her ages, which were shown on a large Heininen, told her to stand before a opera “L’Amour de Loin” (“Love from screen above the orchestra. The Phil- mirror ten times a day and say, “I can Afar”), an entrancing tale of doomed harmonic played brilliantly under Esa- do it.” Indeed, she could. Saariaho, who medieval love, enters the repertory of Pekka Salonen, Saariaho’s former class- is now sixty-four, has been a major the Metropolitan Opera. mate at the Sibelius Academy. force in contemporary music for de- Saariaho may have had her crises of The danger with this sort of pre- cades, and by the end of the fall sea- doubt, but from the start she knew sentation is that it might distract from son in New York her work will have what she wanted. Her elemental idea, musical values. “d’om le vrai sens,” been as ubiquitous as Beethoven’s. The which can be found in dozens of her though, is already semi-theatrical in New York Philharmonic recently pre- scores, is an oceanic expanse of sound, conception. It is based on the series of sented a Saariaho evening at the Park one that shifts before one’s ears and fifteenth-century tapestries known as Avenue Armory. On November 19th quivers with hidden life. She first cap- “The Lady and the Unicorn,” in which and 20th, the International Contem- tured it in Paris, in the early eighties, a woman of high station is seen in the porary Ensemble and students from when she was based at ircam, Pierre company of a unicorn, a lion, a mon- the Mannes School of Music will per- Boulez’s center for music and technol- key, and other creatures, in allegorical depictions of the five senses. The clar- Saariaho’s work moves between extremes of pure tone and noise. inettist, making use of multiphonics 96 THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY SIMONE MASSONI (techniques to produce multiple tones ose, savage brass utterances fleshing varieties of musical time. He liked to at once), conjures the animals with bel- out the lines “Look at your eyes. They imagine time on vastly diferent scales: lowing, squawking, chattering, and are small, / but they see enormous as humans experience it (normal); neighing sounds. (Unicorns neigh, things.” Presenting Rumi in overlap- as whales experience it (expanded); it turns out.) The soloist is directed ping media—the written word, the and as birds and insects experience it to move about the venue, and, at the speaking voice, projected translations, (compressed). “Vortex” begins with end, a number of violinists join him. musical transpositions—might have an insectoid fury of arpeggios, and a Kriikku—another member of the po- resulted in a muddle, but the produc- subsequent piano solo borders on hy- tent Sibelius Academy crew of the sev- tion instead achieved an uncanny tri- perkinetic free jazz. The middle sec- enties and eighties—threw himself into angulation: in keeping with the title, tion, in severe contrast, is an exercise the role, at times playing one-handed elusive presences were mapped from in extreme deceleration. Descending and almost dancing. Kriikku has been various angles. We never see Rumi’s patterns on the piano give the feeling electrifying every time I’ve seen him “enormous things,” but we certainly of a staircase that goes down and down perform, whether in Magnus Lind- hear them. without ever reaching the bottom, and berg’s “Kraft,” at the Ojai Festival, the other instruments melt away into or in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, at t sounded so fresh, it was just rustlings and breathing sounds. At the Mostly Mozart. His physicality com- unbelievable,” Saariaho has said very end, the score approaches total plements Saariaho’s otherworldly aura. “Iof the music of Grisey, whose explo- stasis—the still point at the center of “Circle Map,” which was written in rations of inner worlds of sound pro- the vortex. 2012, takes inspiration from poems by foundly influenced composers of re- De Keersmaeker’s staging began Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian cent decades. He died lamentably with an arresting coup de théâtre. The mystic. The dominant image in Bar- young, at the age of fifty-two, in 1998: instrumentalists, from the Belgian en- rière’s video is a hand executing Per- his final work, “Quatre Chants Pour semble Ictus, played the first part alone; sian calligraphy; the electronic com- Franchir le Seuil,” or “Four Songs for then the dancers performed a silent ponent of the score includes recordings Crossing the Threshold,” is a fearsome sequence that, one gradually realized, of Rumi being recited in Persian, which meditation on the end of a life and the matched the preceding music. After undergo considerable manipulation. end of the world. Grisey is well known that, the borders between dancing and The lines that translate as “Walk to in the new-music world but somewhat playing blurred: the musicians were in the well, / Turn as the earth and the obscure outside of it. Although Alan constant motion, and the pianist Jean- moon turn” emerge as a deep, guttural Gilbert has sporadically promoted him Luc Plouvier somehow executed his blur, almost like avant-garde heavy- at the Philharmonic, it was left to a part while dancers wheeled his instru- metal vocals; at other times, the voice musically attuned visitor—the Flem- ment to and fro. At times, the cho- is little more than a breath. The or- ish choreographer Anne Teresa De reographic gestures—leaps, skips, pir- chestra traverses a similar range. Epi- Keersmaeker, appearing with her com- ouettes, and the like—struck me as sodes of ethereal stillness—a gentle pany, Rosas, at bam—to arrange what too pedestrian, but the distribution tangle of flutes, a swish of cymbals, a may have been the composer’s high- of bodies onstage, particularly in the glistening of harp, piano, and celesta— est-profile event in New York to date: spiralling stampede of the final sec- give way to more sharply delineated a dance piece based on “Vortex Tem- tion, mirrored Grisey’s cosmic chaos. gestures, such as strutting syncopated porum,” a forty-five-minute sound- The great thing was simply to see it chords in the piano or throbbing pulses scape for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, played, before a rapt, tense crowd. in the drums. cello, and piano. When the right frame is found, al- An opulent climax arrives in the The title, which means “vortex of legedly difcult modern music be- penultimate movement, with grandi- times,” signals Grisey’s fascination with comes second nature. 

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THE NEW YO R K E R , OCTOBER 31, 2016 97 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three fnalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Peter Kuper, must be received by Sunday, October 30th. The fnalists in the October 17th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the fnalists in this week’s contest, in the November 14th 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

“Well, if it isn’t the Gym Reaper.” Anna Kadyshevich, Brooklyn, N.Y.

“I see fashion’s dead, too.” “Let’s not mistake his confidence for leadership.” Mitch Wertlieb, South Burlington, Vt. Michael Shainline, Denver, Colo.

“Let me guess, Casual Friday the 13th?” Susannah Plunkett, New York City