PRICE $8.99 N O V. 6 , 2 0 1 7 NOVEMBER 6, 2017 4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 17 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Amy Davidson Sorkin on G.O.P. complicity; Claes Oldenburg; Oval Office replicas; Eataly; Sheelah Kolhatkar on Puerto Rico profiteers. DEPT. OF SPECULATION Kathryn Schulz 24 Fantastic Beasts and How to Rank Them What nonexistent beings tell us about ourselves. SHOUTS & MURMURS Yoni Brenner 29 Acceptable Forms of Protest for N.F.L. Players ANNALS OF SCIENCE Nicola Twilley 30 The Exercise Pill The search for a drug to replace workouts. PROFILES Kelefa Sanneh 36 Against the Tide What’s behind Tulsi Gabbard’s unusual stances? LETTER FROM SYRIA Luke Mogelson 46 Dark Victory The Kurdish fighters who retook Raqqa. FICTION Anne Enright 58 “The Hotel” THE CRITICS BOOKS Keith Gessen 62 How Stalin became Stalinist. 66 Briefly Noted A CRITIC AT LARGE Hilton Als 71 The black excellence of Kahlil Joseph. THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 74 “Suburbicon,” “Last Flag Flying.” POEMS Tracy K. Smith 32 “Declaration” Giovanni Giudici 50 “With Her” COVER John Cuneo “A Rake’s Progress” DRAWINGS Kaamran Hafeez, Zachary Kanin, Paul Noth, Edward Steed, Julia Suits, Ellis Rosen, Amy Kurzweil, Roz Chast, Sara Lautman, Amy Hwang, Mick Stevens, Emily Flake, Jason Adam Katzenstein SPOTS Miguel Porlan THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 1 CONTRIBUTORS Nicola Twilley (“The Exercise Pill,” p. 30), Luke Mogelson (“Dark Victory,” p. 46) a frequent contributor to the maga- has been contributing to The New Yorker zine, is a co-host of the podcast “Gas- since 2013. He is the author of the tropod.” She is at work on two books: short-story collection “These Heroic, one about refrigeration and the other Happy Dead.” about quarantine. Anne Enright (Fiction, p. 58) most re- John Cuneo (Cover) has been drawing cently published a novel, “The Green for the magazine since 1994. His col- Road.” She is the inaugural Laureate lection of illustrations “Not Waving for Irish Fiction. but Drawing” came out this year. Hilton Als (A Critic at Large, p. 71), the Amy Davidson Sorkin (Comment, p. 17), magazine’s theatre critic, won the 2017 a staff writer, is a regular contributor Pulitzer Prize for criticism. to Comment. She also has a column on newyorker.com. Anna Russell (The Talk of the Town, p. 18), a member of the magazine’s ed- Kelefa Sanneh (“Against the Tide,” p. 36) itorial staff, previously wrote about arts has been a staff writer since 2008. and culture for the Wall Street Journal. Tracy K. Smith (Poem, p. 32) is the United Keith Gessen (Books, p. 62) teaches jour- States Poet Laureate. Her latest col- nalism at Columbia University and is lection, “Wade in the Water,” is forth- the author of a novel, “A Terrible Coun- coming in 2018. try,” to be published by Viking in 2018. Yoni Brenner (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 29) Kathryn Schulz (“Fantastic Beasts and writes for film and television, and has How to Rank Them,” p. 24), a staff writer, contributed humor pieces to the mag- won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fea- azine since 2007. ture writing. NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more. VIDEO NEW YORKER RECOMMENDS An up-close view of how the Our writers and editors on criminal-justice system works, in their favorite new books, music, a series of eighteen interviews. and television shows. 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.) KITTLER CYNTHIA RIGHT: 2 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 THE MAIL PENCE AND THE PRESIDENCY Marantz’s portrayal seems, at times, to justify his behavior: he was once made Jane Mayer’s piece on Vice-President fun of, so now he makes fun of others. Mike Pence revealed his terrifying But so what if he had eczema? That is personal convictions and his connec- no excuse for becoming a white suprem- tions to right-wing evangelical donors acist! Just as the media should avoid in- (“The President Pence Delusion,” Oc- advertently glorifying mass shooters and tober 23rd). Pence seems to be con- terrorists by giving them attention, the tent to act as President Trump’s pup- media should be wary of how it ap- pet, a facet of his personality that I proaches white supremacists and their wish Mayer had gone into at greater message. length. The puppeteer has only to sug- Kateri Bean gest that it’s time for Pence to per- 1Center Harbor, N.H. form, and he rises to the occasion, no matter how embarrassing or how costly TILLERSON AND IRAN to the country. Take Pence’s recent publicity stunt on Trump’s orders. He In Dexter Filkins’s article on Secretary flew from Las Vegas to Indianapolis of State Rex Tillerson, the Secretary for the Colts–49ers game, but then says that “the modern-day U.S.-Iran re- left almost immediately, after football lationship is now almost forty years old,” players peacefully protested in the way dating from the 1979 seizure of the they’d declared they would: by taking American Embassy (“The Breaking a knee during the national anthem to Point,” October 16th). But the Iranians express their opposition to police vi- have had reason to be wary of Ameri- olence, racial injustice, and Trump. can intervention for longer than that. After walking out of the game, Pence In 1953, the United States and England then flew back across the country, to planned and executed a coup to over- Los Angeles. His brief appearance was throw the democratically elected gov- nothing more than a gesture designed ernment of Iran. So when the Iranians to appease a tempestuous President, got rid of the Shah, in 1979, perhaps and it cost the taxpayers money, too. they had 1953 in mind. It seems obvious that Pence’s “iron- The Obama Administration’s Iran clad” evangelical and conservative be- nuclear deal opened the door to West- liefs take a back seat to doing the Pres- ern investment in Iran and to building ident’s bidding. relationships with Iranian moderates. Jerry Oliver Unfortunately, Tillerson goes on to say, 1Sequim, Wash. “I can only tell you that we’re taking a dramatically different approach to Iran.” COVERING WHITE SUPREMACY It may be worth noting that his for- mer company, ExxonMobil, has no cur- Andrew Marantz handles the presen- rent operations in Iran. Hence, a hard- tation of the white supremacist Mike line policy on Iran won’t hurt Exxon, Enoch’s life story tactfully, but I worry and will probably make doing business that publishing articles like this will only there more difficult for competing oil encourage others to follow in Enoch’s companies. destructive footsteps (“The Birth of a Lee Shahinian, Jr. White Supremacist,” October 16th). Al- Los Altos, Calif. lowing Enoch to take center stage, pre- cisely because of his disturbing view- • points, gives him a new platform from Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, which to spew his hate. This is exactly address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited what most white supremacists want: for length and clarity, and may be published in attention and a means to share their any medium. We regret that owing to the volume views. Yes, Enoch is a human being, but of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter. THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 3 NOVEMBER 1 – 7, 2017 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN Writing under censorship in Soviet-dominated Poland, Stanisław Lem turned to the fantasies of science fiction to offer radical critiques of modern life. His novels inspired many filmmakers, and the series of Lem adaptations screening Nov. 1-11 at Anthology Film Archives includes the most famous of them, Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris,” along with Steven Soderbergh’s version of the same book and the Czech director Jindřich Polák’s “Ikarie XB-1,” which Stanley Kubrick watched while planning “2001: A Space Odyssey.” REPUBLIC ARCHIVE, FILM CZECH THE NATIONAL COURTESY find ourselves in a modern hospital, where Ste- ven Murphy (Colin Farrell) performs heart op- erations, and in his well-appointed home, which MOVIES he shares with his wife, Anna (Nicole Kidman), 1 and their children, Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and Bob (Sunny Suljic). Their suspiciously ordered exis- NOW PLAYING friends, and—in the most devastating scene—barges tence is invaded by Martin (Barry Keoghan), age into the gated house of a local grandee, whose help sixteen, who is linked to an error in Steven’s past, comes at a high price. Meanwhile, Félicité begins a and who, like a prophet, foretells a vengeful ca- BPM (Beats Per Minute) fragile romance with Tabu (Papi Mpaka), a rowdy lamity. As in classical tragedy, the fate that looms This intermittently affecting but occasionally sim- but resourceful night-club patron. The movie is is not to be avoided, except by further disaster— plistic drama, about the ACT UP movement in a virtual documentary of city sights and moods, namely, the sacrifice of a family member. Lanthi- France in the nineteen-nineties, alternates between and also a bitter exposé of a country without a so- mos handles this tough material with implacable collective action and intimate life. It’s centered on cial safety net. Blue-toned dream sequences and care, and the cast, especially Kidman, makes the one couple, Nathan (Arnaud Valois) and Sean (Na- classical-music interludes suggest counter-lives of most of the deadpan mood that he favors, here as huel Pérez Biscayart), who meet in the group. The idealistic aspirations, private and public.