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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.

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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.

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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 former 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, precisely 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 operations, 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. In Lingala in “The Lobster” (2015). But that movie was illu- twenty-six-year-old Sean is H.I.V.-positive, hav- and French.—R.B. (In limited release.) minated by a strain of absurdist comedy; the dark- ing been infected at the age of sixteen by one of his ness of the new one, by contrast, feels sadistic and teachers; Nathan, who’s a little older, is uninfected, The Florida Project unrelieved.—A.L. (10/30/17) (In limited release.) having abstained from sex for years. But their dis- Sean Baker’s new film, his first feature since “Tan- cussion of their conjoined medical and erotic his- gerine” (2015), is set in Orlando, where a confident Lady Bird tories is more or less the only substance with which six-year-old named Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) lives As writer and director, Greta Gerwig infuses this the director, Robin Campillo (who wrote the script with her mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), at the Magic comedic coming-of-age drama with verbal virtu- with Philippe Mangeot), infuses their relationship. Castle Motel. Moonee’s friends—occasional part- osity, gestural idiosyncrasy, and emotional vitality. (One powerful arc of the drama involves charac- ners in crime, and fellow hunters of ice cream—in- The loosely autobiographical tale is set mainly in ters’ frequent references to their dwindling T-cell clude Jancey (Valeria Cotto) and Scooty (Christopher Gerwig’s home town of Sacramento, in the 2002-03 counts.) Scenes of the group’s strategic debates Rivera), though she is also on excellent terms with academic year, and centered on Christine McPher- strain for an analytical vitality and a historical res- Bobby (Willem Dafoe), the manager of the motel. son (Saoirse Ronan), self-dubbed Lady Bird, a se- onance that the film leaves mainly unexplored; the (It’s rare, and touching, to see the gentler side of nior at a Catholic high school whose plan to escape vigorous depictions of ACT UP’s heroic confronta- Dafoe.) The first half of the movie is almost plotless, to an Eastern college is threatened by her grades tions with drug companies, insurance companies, and pleasingly dotted with escapades and scrapes; far and her parents’ finances. Lady Bird’s father (Tracy and the French government are played more for from looking down on these kids, let alone askance at Letts), with whom she shares a hearty complicity, spectacle than for substance. (A scene of activists’ them, Baker invites us to look with them, granting us is about to lose his job; her mother (Laurie Met- defiant intrusion into classrooms shows French so- privileged access to their hopeful view of the world. It calf), with whom she argues bitterly, is a nurse who cial conflicts most clearly.) The dramatic focus of seems both natural and sad that, as the plot quickens, works double shifts to keep the family afloat. Liter- the film, on Sean’s physical deterioration, is both and as Halley gets herself into trouble for the sake of ary and willful, Lady Bird joins the school’s musical- agonizing and methodical. In French.—Richard her daughter, this view should grow darker and more theatre troupe, with results ranging from the antic Brody (In limited release.) confused. The result earns a place among the memo- to the romantic. Afflicted with real-estate envy, she rable chronicles of childhood, all the more so because infiltrates the world of rich kids and risks losing true Don’t Come Knocking of its punches of bright color, and the heart-seizing friends; she dates a Francophile rocker (Timothée This bittersweet Western blues, from 2005, directed image with which it ends.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed Chalamet) whose walk on the wild side is comfort- by Wim Wenders from a script by Sam Shepard, is a in our issue of 10/9/17.) (In wide release.) ably financed. Meanwhile, her relationship with minor-key delight. Shepard plays Howard Spence, her mother deteriorates. Deftly juggling charac- an aging star of Western films and a legendary tab- Frank Serpico ters and story lines, Gerwig provokes aching laughs loid troublemaker who wants out: he sneaks off In this documentary, the eighty-one-year-old former with gentle touches (Metcalf’s etched diction nearly the set and finds his mother (Eva Marie Saint, in New York City police officer—whose lonely fight steals the show), but her direction remains self-effac- a performance of remarkably high relief), whom against police corruption, in the nineteen-sixties and ing until late in the film, when several sharply con- he hasn’t seen in more than thirty years. She lets early seventies, is enshrined by Al Pacino’s perfor- ceived scenes suggest reserves of observational and slip a word about his son, whom he has never met, mance in Sidney Lumet’s 1973 drama—tells his own symbolic energy.—R.B. (In limited release.) and he heads for Butte, Montana, to look for him. story on camera for the first time. The director, An- What Spence finds there requires some suspension tonino D’Ambrosio, joins Serpico on a tour of land- LBJ of disbelief—not just his son, Earl (Gabriel Mann), marks from his earlier years, including the Crown The political intricacies and hearty bluster of Rob and Earl’s mother (Jessica Lange) but also a daugh- Heights storefront where his father had a shoe- Reiner’s drama, about Lyndon Baines Johnson’s ter, Sky (the gossamer Sarah Polley), whom he had repair shop (and where the young Frank first encoun- accidental Presidency, help to overcome its wax- with another woman. A viewer’s faith in the mov- tered police corruption) and the Williamsburg build- museum eeriness. The action spans the 1960 cam- ie’s implausible twists is rewarded. Shepard’s sharp ing where, in 1971, he was shot in the head during paign, in which Johnson (Woody Harrelson), then writing memorably delineates the quartet’s quirky a drug bust, under still unexplained circumstances. a Texas senator, hoped in vain to snatch the nomi- struggles to connect, and though Wenders, a for- D’Ambrosio adorns these stories with sidebars that nation from John F. Kennedy (Jeffrey Donovan) at mer master of understatement, overplays the big range from painful (Serpico’s uneasy reunion with the Democratic Convention and was instead asked moments with visual frills, he keeps the outer and Arthur Cesare, one of the officers present at that to be his running mate; Kennedy’s assassination, inner journeys in delicate balance. Despite the film’s fateful bust) to wondrous (Serpico’s discussion of in 1963, which brought Johnson to office; and the false notes, its balladlike moods ring true.—R.B. the original plans for the 1973 movie, which was to early days of Johnson’s Presidency, when he de- (BAM Cinématek, Nov. 4, and streaming.) be directed by John Avildsen and to star Serpico as fied expectations in order to pursue a civil-rights himself). But, above all, Serpico denounces the wall agenda. Joey Hartstone’s script anchors the movie Félicité of silence with which police officers, supervisors, with two conflicts—the enduring hostility that The title character of Alain Gomis’s pain-streaked, and politicians blocked investigation into miscon- Johnson faced from Robert F. Kennedy (Michael richly textured drama is a full-voiced and char- duct—as well as subsequent abuses of police power, Stahl-David), and Johnson’s backroom gamesman- ismatic Afropop singer (played by Véro Tshanda such as the beating of Rodney King, against which ship with Senator Richard Russell (Richard Jen- Beya Mputu) who works in an alleyway night club he has publicly spoken out.—R.B. (In limited release.) kins), from Georgia, who counted on his Southern in Kinshasa. Her fierce independence is put to the cohort to support Jim Crow and instead got outma- test when her son, Samo (Gaetan Claudia), has a mo- The Killing of a Sacred Deer neuvered. Reiner also emphasizes Johnson’s pathos torbike accident that leaves him hospitalized and in Even by the standards of Yorgos Lanthimos, his new as a brilliant power player who felt unloved by the danger of losing his leg. Because of the Democratic film feels like a notably stern and fun-free zone— electorate, and his reliance on his wife, Lady Bird Republic of the Congo’s cash-on-the-barrelhead no surprise, once you realize that it takes its cue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), for counsel and solace, but medical system, Félicité must scrape together a large from Euripides, and, in particular, from “Iphige- the political issues play out in a vacuum; the film’s advance payment in order for Samo to receive treat- nia in Aulis.” There are no gods onscreen, though, portrait of conscience and courage is drawn with a ment, and she duns creditors, beseeches family and and no Greek fleet destined for Troy; instead, we very broad brush.—R.B. (In limited release.)

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 5 MOVIES

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) Anybody hoping that Noah Baumbach might stretch his wings and make a movie about the Roman Em- pire or intergalactic warfare will have to wait. For THE THEATRE now, he stays in his discomfort zone: messed-up modern families in New York. The patriarch of the 1 Marcel + The Art of Laughter Meyerowitzes is Harold (Dustin Hoffman), who OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS aimed to be the great sculptor of his generation and Theatre for a New Audience presents a double missed, though you wouldn’t know it from his man- bill of comic one-acts, featuring the European ner—lordly, intemperate, and blisteringly quick to Actually slapstick performers (and original members take offense. This has not made things easy for his In Anna Ziegler’s play, directed by Lileana of the London troupe Complicité) Jos Hou- sons, Matthew (Ben Stiller), who lives in Los An- Blain-Cruz for Manhattan Theatre Club, two ben and Marcello Magni. (Polonsky Shakespeare geles and makes good money, and Danny (Adam freshmen at Princeton meet at a party and Center, 262 Ashland Pl., Brooklyn. 866-811-4111. Sandler), who does nothing much except fret, or wade into issues of sexual consent. (City Cen- Opens Nov. 1.) for his desolate daughter, Jean (Elizabeth Marvel). ter Stage II, at 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. In Other characters are tossed into the mix: Harold’s previews.) Meteor Shower latest wife, the boozy Maureen (Emma Thomp- Amy Schumer, Keegan-Michael Key, Laura son), and his granddaughter, Eliza (Grace Van The Band’s Visit Benanti, and Jeremy Shamos star in Steve Patten), who, alone in the clan, seems lightened David Yazbek and Itamar Moses’s musical, Martin’s new play, about a dinner party in- by hope and good sense. Baumbach not only finds about an Egyptian police orchestra stranded terrupted by falling space debris. Jerry Zaks time and room for these restless souls but makes in the Israeli desert, moves to Broadway; Ka- directs. (Booth, 222 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. us believe in them as they clash, make peace, and trina Lenk and Tony Shalhoub reprise their In previews.) clash again. The movie is comically intimate with roles in David Cromer’s production. (Ethel their lives, yet it covers a lot of ground. With Judd Barrymore, 243 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200. In Pride and Prejudice Hirsch, as Harold’s rival of old.—A.L. (10/23/17) previews.) Kate Hamill, who previously adapted “Sense (In wide release and on Netflix.) and Sensibility” for the Bedlam company, takes Harry Clarke on another Austen novel; she also plays Lizzy Regular Lovers In David Cale’s one-man thriller-comedy, di- in the Primary Stages production, directed Philippe Garrel, who, at the age of twenty, made a rected by Leigh Silverman, Billy Crudup plays by Amanda Denhert. (Cherry Lane, 38 Com- film in Paris during the turmoil of May, 1968, re- a Midwestern man who moves to New York merce St. 866-811-4111. Previews begin Nov. 7.) visits those times in this intimate epic, from 2005. City and poses as a swinging Londoner. (Vine- Centered on the love affair between François, a yard, 108 E. 15th St. 212-353-0303. In previews.) Rikyu-Enoura young poet (played by Garrel’s son Louis), and The photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto con- Lilie (Clotilde Hesme), a working-class sculp- Junk ceived this piece, part of the Noh-Now se- tor, the drama is as symbolic as it is realistic. Gar- Doug Hughes directs a new play by Ayad Akhtar ries, written by the octogenarian poet Akiko rel films the uprising with a flat theatrical abstrac- (“Disgraced”), about a nineteen-eighties invest- Baba, in which a ghost narrates the tale of tion, turning it into a dimly recalled dream. This is ment banker (Steven Pasquale) attempting a his suicide. In Japanese, with English super- May ’68 minus the politics—an outpouring of de- takeover of a manufacturing company. (Vivian titles. (Japan Society, 333 E. 47th St. 212-715- sire, a yearning for sensual utopia on earth—and, Beaumont, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200. In pre- 1258. Nov. 3-5.) as such, it’s doomed. Garrel shows that the world views. Opens Nov. 2.) after the revolt belongs to practical people with School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls their feet on the ground. If someone other than Latin History for Morons Play this aesthetically radical director said so, it might John Leguizamo’s newest one-man show, in MCC presents Jocelyn Bioh’s play, directed by seem reactionary, but here Garrel gives an original which he recounts his search for a Latin hero Rebecca Taichman, about a teen-age beauty artistic form to his rueful view of his own youthful for his son’s history project, moves to Broad- queen at a boarding school in Ghana who illusions. The cinematographer William Lubtchan- way. Tony Taccone directs. (Studio 54, at 254 longs to enter the Miss Universe pageant. (Lu- sky’s grainy black-and-white images have the feel W. 54th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.) cille Lortel, 121 Christopher St. 866-811-4111. In of cold stone, and, when the pragmatic Lilie chal- previews.) lenges François to get on with his life, the chill of The Mad Ones hard reality is all the more brutal. In French.—R.B. Prospect Theatre Company stages a new mu- Shadowlands (Metrograph, Nov. 5.) sical by Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk, Fellowship for Performing Arts revives Wil- about a young woman torn between following liam Nicholson’s 1990 play, about C. S. Lew- The Square her mother’s path or taking a dare from her is’s relationship with a young American writer Ruben Östlund, the director of “Force Majeure” best friend. (59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279- who developed terminal cancer. (Acorn, 410 (2014), returns, still hellbent on putting us at our 4200. Previews begin Nov. 7.) W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200. Opens Nov. 1.) unease. The beleaguered hero is Christian (Claes Bang), the chief curator at a museum of modern art, in Stockholm. He cuts a dashing figure, dip- lomatic in his rhetoric and sparing with his emotional commitments. That dash is slowly ruined by the plot—nothing tremendous, just a series of wea- rying claims upon his attention. First, his wallet is stolen, and, in trying to get it back, he foolishly issues threats that rebound upon him; second, a one- night stand with a reporter (Elisabeth Moss) becomes an undignified tussle; third, a new work of art, due to be unveiled, triggers a P.R. fiasco; and, fourth, his children—of whose existence we were unaware—come to stay. Östlund is taking clear aim at moneyed complacency, the pretensions of the gallery-haunting crowd, and society’s indiffer- ence to the poor, but none of his targets are hard to hit, and the film loses force as it grinds beyond the two-hour mark. The strongest impact is made by Terry Notary, as a half-naked performance artist, who bounds into a gala dinner and goes ape.—A.L. The intrepid actor David Greenspan performs all the characters in Eugene O’Neill’s nine-act drama

(10/30/17) (In limited release.) “Strange Interlude,” in a Transport Group production at the Irondale Center, through Nov. 18. ROMAN MURADOV BY ILLUSTRATION

6 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017

THE THEATRE

SpongeBob SquarePants unfolds during a close-fought U.S. Open semi- steen isn’t humor-challenged, exactly—he’s A musical based on the anarchic cartoon, with finals match. The ranking player is Tim Porter too self-aware not to know when to make fun direction by Tina Landau, a book by Kyle Jar- (the staggeringly charismatic Wilson Bethel), of himself—but he’s a romantic, and roman- row, and songs by artists including Steven an American golden boy beginning to feel tic feeling guides this intimate spectacle. His Tyler, Sara Bareilles, John Legend, Cyndi Lau- his age. He faces Sergei Sergeyev (a capti- commitment to his subject matter makes the per, and the Flaming Lips. (Palace, Seventh Ave. vating Alex Mickiewicz), a volatile Russian show a kind of sermon, one that he has writ- at 47th St. 877-250-2929. Previews begin Nov. 6.) who’s a decade younger. Under Gaye Tay- ten in order to understand not only himself lor Upchurch’s direction, the match is a nail- but what goes into the making of a self. (Re- State of Siege biter, even as Ziegler pauses to eavesdrop on viewed in our issue of 10/30/17.) (Walter Kerr, At the Next Wave Festival, Paris’s Théâtre de the men’s thoughts, memories, and interac- 219 W. 48th St. 212-239-6200.) la Ville stages Albert Camus’s 1948 allegory, in tions with the women in the stands. Zoë Win- which a character called “the Plague” assumes ters is poignant as Tim’s wife, Mallory, a no- Time and the Conways totalitarian rule over a town recovering from nonsense former athlete, and Natalia Payne is In J. B. Priestley’s 1937 drama (directed by Re- catastrophe. In French, with English superti- delightful as Sergei’s girlfriend, Galina, an all- becca Taichman, in an uneven Roundabout re- tles. (BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 La- nonsense sometimes actress. In ways both vival), Elizabeth McGovern plays Mrs. Con- fayette Ave., Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. Nov. 2-4.) moving and heavy-handed, tennis becomes a way, the widowed but still vibrant matriarch metaphor for life: “The pressure and the fail- of a large English country home. It’s 1919, The Wolves ure and the death and the ambition and the and the occasion is an extravagant twenty- Lincoln Center Theatre transfers Sarah coming up short,” as Tim says. (Laura Pels, 111 first birthday party for her daughter Kay DeLappe’s play, directed by Lila Neugebauer W. 46th St. 212-719-1300.) (Charlotte Parry) and the first reunion of and set at the practice sessions of an all-girls the six Conway children with their mother suburban soccer team. (Mitzi E. Newhouse, 150 Oedipus el Rey since the end of the war. The second act skips W. 65th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.) Fresh out of prison, a young Chicano wants ahead nineteen years, to Kay’s fortieth birth- 1 to go straight, but the only job he can find is day: the Conways have convened to discuss as gang muscle. On the side, he inadvertently their straitened finances, and we observe the NOW PLAYING kills his father, has sex with his own mother, tarnished states of a once hopeful cohort of and eventually loses his eyes. The story has dreamers, culminating in a touching exchange After the Blast the grim ineluctability of a Greek tragedy, be- between Kay and her brother Alan (Gabriel The planet has descended into nuclear winter. cause it is one. You may have recognized the Ebert) on the mystical nature of time. The Surviving humans live in underground war- tale of Oedipus (Juan Castano), here set in a third act returns to the original party, show- rens. Puppies are endangered. And couples still Los Angeles barrio by Luis Alfaro, who zooms ing the seeds of the trouble to come, but the fight. In Zoe Kazan’s tender dystopian play, in especially on the incestuous affair with Jo- point has already been made. The middle sec- at LCT3, Oliver (William Jackson Harper), casta (Sandra Delgado). Oedipus means well tion would be a lovely, complete play all on its an environmental scientist, and Anna (Cris- yet cannot escape his fate, and Alfaro and the own. (American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd tin Milioti), a former journalist, want a baby, director, Chay Yew, draw parallels with the St. 212-719-1300.) but haven’t yet been approved for pregnancy. socioeconomic forces weighing on Latinos To help Anna fill her days, Oliver presents trying to make it in America. As herky-jerky Torch Song his wife with a home-assistance robot in need as the pace can be, the production holds its Harvey Fierstein, a great and storied mem- of training. Gradually, Anna and the bot (an breath during Delgado and Castano’s scenes, ber of the New York theatre scene since the uncredited lump of yellow fuzz, and a break- which are equal parts tender and disquieting. early seventies, wrote and originally starred out star) form an affectionate bond. Under (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555.) in this trilogy, winning two Tony Awards in Lila Neugebauer’s clear-eyed direction, the 1983, for Best Play and Best Actor. In Moisés actors—and the bot—imbue the sci-fi jargon The Portuguese Kid Kaufman’s revival, Michael Urie plays Arnold, and situations with poignancy and emotive Though John Patrick Shanley’s plays have al- a drag queen who falls in love with the emo- truth. The futuristic setting, however plausi- ways employed heartening doses of humor, tionally unavailable Ed (Ward Horton). De- ble, is a beguiling veneer for the play’s real con- this cannonball into broad comedy makes a spite marrying a woman named Laurel (Rox- cerns: how people love and betray and trust and drenching splash but earns few style points. anna Hope Radja), Ed still longs for Arnold, fail, aboveground or under it. (Claire Tow, 150 The play, also directed by Shanley, begins who becomes a foster parent to a young gay W. 65th St. 212-239-6200.) promisingly, in the Providence, R.I., law of- kid named David (Jack DiFalco). Enter Ma fice of Barry Dragonetti (Jason Alexander). (Mercedes Ruehl), a widow who resents Ar- Jesus Hopped the “A” Train His childhood friend and occasional antag- nold for remaking his family in his own queer Stephen Adly Guirgis’s terrific play, first pro- onist Atalanta Lagana (Sherie Rene Scott) image. Standing tall—and made taller by a duced in 2000, could accurately be described as has just buried her second husband and has big wig—Ruehl dominates the production. a sequence of philosophical arguments about come to Barry for real-estate counsel, and While the talented Urie falls back on shtick justice, religion, and the conundrums that perhaps something more. Their relation- to see him through, Ruehl mines her charac- occur at their points of intersection. It’s also a ship is deftly, amusingly delineated, punc- terization for all it’s worth. The story may be propulsive and harrowing prison comedy about tuated by insinuating, insulting appearances dated, but it’s a pioneering work, well han- Angel Cruz, whose shooting of a cult leader, by Mary Testa, as Barry’s mother and secre- dled by Kaufman. (Second Stage, 305 W. 43rd in an attempt to rescue a friend from his in- tary. But the remaining three scenes of this St. 212-246-4422.) fluence, has landed him in protective custody intermissionless play falter, with talky dia- 1 on Rikers Island. There, to his great misfor- logue touching insubstantially on issues of tune, he himself falls under the influence of greed, jealousy, sexual power plays, midlife ALSO NOTABLE Lucius Jenkins, a serial killer who has found crisis, and politics. The pitch is too high, God. The excellent leads of Mark Brokaw’s the stakes too low. (City Center Stage I, at 131 Animal Wisdom The Bushwick Starr. • Come production are all the more impressive given W. 55th St. 212-581-1212.) from Away Schoenfeld. • Hello, Dolly! Shu- that both were late replacements: Sean Car- bert. • The Home Place Irish Repertory. • Illyria vajal’s Angel is heartbreaking in his desperate Springsteen on Broadway Public. • Lonely Planet Clurman. • M. Butter- haplessness, and Edi Gathegi’s Lucius is unfor- In his new solo show, Bruce Springsteen cribs fly Cort. • Measure for Measure Public. • Off gettable, an enigmatic monster who’s almost from his memoir, “Born to Run,” to take us on the Meter, On the Record Irish Repertory. • Of- always on the move inside his tiny cage, but what lesser artists would call “a journey.” The fice Hour Public. • People, Places & Things at his most chilling when he’s perfectly still. words come tumbling out, at his own pace, St. Ann’s Warehouse. • The Play That Goes (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd starting with his poor upbringing—how he Wrong Lyceum. • Strange Interlude Irondale St. 212-244-7529.) was desperate to leave home but ended up, as Center. • Stuffed Westside. • Tiny Beautiful we all do, in one way or another, back where Things Public. • The Treasurer Playwrights The Last Match he started. “Now I live ten minutes away from Horizons. Through Nov. 5. • War Paint Ne- A play with plenty of underspin, Anna where I grew up,” he says, somewhat ruefully, derlander. Through Nov. 5. • What We’re Up Ziegler’s gripping and contemplative drama in one of many amusing disclosures. Spring- Against McGinn/Cazale.

8 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 Soldier’s piano concerto “Jaleo” (with Steven Beck) and works by Gene Pritsker, Dan Coo- per, Mark Kostabi, and others, all performed CLASSICAL MUSIC by the CompCord String Orchestra. Nov. 5 at 1 2:45. (Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. lpr.com.) American Composers Orchestra OPERA turning the favor, with an autumn festival that’s part of the music world’s season-long Fortieth Birthday Gala centennial commemoration of the iconic com- The invaluable ensemble celebrates its legacy Metropolitan Opera poser-conductor. The second of three consec- in a concert (led by George Manahan and by There is a tiny coterie of contemporary compos- utive subscription programs is again led by its conductor laureate, Dennis Russell Davies) ers—including John Adams and Philip Glass—who Alan Gilbert, until recently the Philharmon- that looks backward with music by Bernstein, can say that the Met has performed more than one ic’s music director. At the center is Gershwin’s Ellington (“Black, Brown, and Beige”), Gersh- of their operas; that group now includes Thomas “Rhapsody in Blue,” a work Bernstein adored, win, Kern, and the A.C.O. co-founder Francis Adès. Five years after the company première with the Japanese jazz pianist Makoto Ozone Thorne, and forward with premières by Paola of his opera “The Tempest,” Adès himself con- making his subscription début with the orches- Prestini and Elizabeth Ogonek (“Sleep and ducts the first New York performances of his pun- tra; it’s surrounded by two great Bernstein se- Unremembrance”). Nov. 7 at 7:30. (Rose The- gent new stage work, “The Exterminating Angel,” lections, the saucy little “Prelude, Fugue, and atre, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th after the film by Luis Buñuel. A first-rate ensem- Riffs” (featuring the Philharmonic’s principal St. 212-721-6500.) ble cast—including Audrey Luna, Alice Coote, clarinettist, Anthony McGill) and, to close, 1 Iestyn Davies, Joseph Kaiser, and John Tomlin- the Symphony No. 2, “The Age of Anxiety” son—appears in a production by Tom Cairns, the (with Ozone as piano soloist). Nov. 2 at 7:30, RECITALS librettist who adapted the film for the stage. Nov. Nov. 3 at 2, and Nov. 4 at 8. (David Geffen Hall. 3 at 8 and Nov. 7 at 7:30. • An early high point of For tickets, and information about other Bernstein Gidon Kremer: “Preludes to a Lost Time” Peter Gelb’s tenure, Anthony Minghella’s vividly centennial events, see nyphil.org.) This week, the Baryshnikov Arts Center has cinematic staging of Puccini’s “Madama Butter- the honor of hosting the legendary Latvian fly” still feels clean, fresh, and vital eleven years White Light Festival: violinist, whose visits to New York are all too later. The revival stars Hui He, Roberto Aronica, “The Psalms Experience” rare. His concert is conceived as an “imaginary David Bizic, and Maria Zifchak, whose ravishing The most ambitious undertaking of this year’s dialogue” between the composer Mieczysław Suzuki has been a fixture of the production since festival, this series of twelve hour-long con- Weinberg, whose Twenty-four Preludes (tran- its première. Nov. 2 and Nov. 6 at 7:30. • Also play- certs covers a millennium of responses to the scribed for violin) he will play, and the Lithu- ing: Attempting to cocoon its daring new Adès Biblical Psalms by composers of widely diver- anian photographer Antanas Sutkus, another opera with surefire hits by Puccini, the Met con- gent eras and styles, grouped by themes such powerful witness to life in the Soviet Union, tinues its revival of Franco Zeffirelli’s crowd-pleas- as “Faith” and “Powerlessness and Redemp- whose images will be projected during the ing production of “La Bohème.” Anita Hartig, Bri- tion.” The cycle commences with four concerts performance. Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 at 7:30. (450 gitta Kele, Russell Thomas, and Lucas Meacham by the dependably resplendent Choir of Trin- W. 37th St. bacnyc.org.) take the leading roles; Alexander Soddy conducts. ity Wall Street, conducted by Julian Wachner— Nov. 1 at 7:30 and Nov. 4 at 8. • Zeffirelli’s luxe each spanning centuries, and one (“Justice”) Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and gloriously over-the-top production of Puc- featuring the New York première of a commis- Joseph Haydn not only invented the genre cini’s “Turandot” is also on offer this week, with sioned work, David Lang’s “If I Sing.” Nov. of the string quartet but created a treasury Oksana Dyka in the title role and with Aleksandrs 2 at 7:30, Nov. 4 at 5 and 7:30, and Nov. 5 at 5. of works whose quality has never been sur- Antonenko and Maria Agresta as Calàf and Liù; (St. Paul’s Chapel, 209 Broadway. lincolncenter.org.) passed. The venerable Orion String Quartet Carlo Rizzi. Nov. 4 at 1. (Metropolitan Opera House. celebrates its thirtieth anniversary with an 212-362-6000.) Composers Concordance all-Haydn program spanning twenty-seven 1 The estimable violinist Miranda Cuckson is years of the composer’s mastery. Among the the featured soloist in the première of “The four quartets featured are the early Quartet ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES Unfinished Concerto,” a 1963 work by the great in E-Flat Major (Op. 20, No. 1) and the late swing-jazz violinist Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Quartet in F Major (Op. 77, No. 2, Haydn’s New York Philharmonic (Stuff) Smith, transcribed and orchestrated by last completed quartet). Nov. 3 at 7:30. (Alice With “Bernstein’s Philharmonic,” the orches- Dave Soldier from Smith’s own home record- Tully Hall. 212-875-5788.) tra that Lenny once devoted himself to is re- ing. The wide-ranging program also includes Leila Josefowicz The thrilling violinist, who devotes her career as much to contemporary works as to the classics, performs this week at the 92nd Street Y with her longtime accompanist John Novacek. The program mixes comfort with confrontation: music by Sibelius (“Valse Triste”), Proko fiev (the incen- diary Sonata in F Minor for Violin and Piano), Bernd Alois Zimmermann, and, not surprisingly, John Adams (“Road Movies”). Nov. 4 at 8. (Lex- ington Ave. at 92nd St. 212-415-5500.)

New York Festival of Song: “Take Care of This House” The city’s resident song specialists are getting in on the centennial festivities for Leon- ard Bernstein with a program that samples from his wide-ranging output of vocal music. It’s all here—selections from classics (“West Side Story” and “Candide”), flops (“1600 Pennsyl- vania Avenue”), and genre-melding experiments (“Mass”), along with a complete performance of the 1977 cycle “Songfest.” The company’s co-founders, Steven Blier and Michael Barrett, Pergolesi’s limpidly beautiful “Stabat Mater” will give the Met countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo accompany six young singers. Nov. 7 at 8. (Mer-

ILLUSTRATION BY JASU HU JASU BY ILLUSTRATION a chance to shine, in a White Light Festival collaboration with Jessica Lang Dance. (See also Dance.) kin Concert Hall, 129 W. 67th St. 212-501-3330.)

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 9 to turn climate-change concerns into tangible action. (Seventh Ave. at 57th St. 212-247-7800. Nov. 5.)

NIGHT LIFE Yeah Yeah Yeahs At the dawn of the twenty-first century, three hel- 1 lions in New York City—Karen Orzolek, Nick Zin- ROCK AND POP renaissance, which includes his frequent collabo- ner, and Brian Chase—gathered anthems about rators Kendrick Lamar, the saxophonist Kamasi dates and lovers into an endlessly energetic début Washington, and the bassist Thundercat. Elli- album, entitled “Fever to Tell.” Almost overnight, Musicians and night-club proprietors lead son’s compositions as Flying Lotus are grounded the 2003 record became a landmark for an explo- complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in the melding of frenetic, programmed beats sive new era of rock-and-roll experimentalism. Led in advance to confirm engagements. with glistening jazz motifs, which sometimes by Orzolek (known as Karen O), who refined her evoke his great-aunt Alice Coltrane; his last rec- dance moves by doing knee slides on the floor at Boris ord, “You’re Dead!,” from 2014, is a wide-rang- Shout!, the bygone mod night at Bar 13, the Yeah Last year, this adventurous Japanese avant-metal ing, unpredictable collection that embraces prog Yeah Yeahs also cultivated local acclaim for their trio celebrated the tenth anniversary of its break- rock, R. & B., and Italian film scores. In recent mercurial, mesmerizing live performances. Al- through album, “Pink,” with a worldwide tour and years, he’s been drawn to visual media: in 2012, most fifteen years later, they celebrate the album’s an expansive reissue, which included an extra album’s he released a thirty-four-minute video of anima- long-overdue reissue with a vinyl set and a handful worth of previously unreleased material. The group tion and found footage called “Duality,” and this of live dates, their first in four years. (Kings Theatre, formed in Tokyo, in 1992, inspired by a shared love summer he débuted his first feature, “Kuso,” a sur- 1027 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn. 800-745-3000. Nov. 7.) of the Melvins, Motörhead, and experimental noise realist horror movie that several reviewers were 1 artists like Merzbow, with whom Boris later collab- quick to dub the grossest film ever made. His lat- orated. “Pink” was the band’s seventh album, and est project is a three-dimensional concert expe- JAZZ AND STANDARDS it remains remarkable for both its array of diverse rience, which premièred at a festival in L.A. be- styles—shoegaze, Detroit proto-punk, sludge—and fore this staging at Brooklyn Steel. (319 Frost St., Freddie Bryant & Bruce Barth its powerful, overarching musical unity. The Brooklyn Brooklyn. 888-929-7849. Nov. 6.) Mating two instruments as harmonically charged metalcore band Mutoid Man opens the show. (War- as the piano and the guitar could be dangerous, but saw, 261 Driggs Ave., Brooklyn. 718-385-0505. Nov. 1.) Tanya Tagaq the union of the keyboardist Barth and the guitar- The Inuit tradition of throat singing pits two ist Bryant promises only commingled invention The Breeders women against each other in a back-and-forth and delight. Each is a heady bop-and-beyond im- In the mid-eighties, a young musician named Kim vocal-acrobatics competition. But Tagaq—an Inuk proviser; together, they will offer canny tunes amid Deal answered a classified ad in the Boston Phoenix artist who attended one of Canada’s now shuttered Brazilian and otherwise uncommon jazz pieces. for a female bassist who appreciated Peter, Paul, residential schools, where indigenous children (Mezzrow, 163 W. 10th St. mezzrow.com. Nov. 5.) and Mary and Hüsker Dü, and ended up joining were sent to assimilate into Western culture—had the Pixies, one of the touchstones of the alterna- to take up throat singing on her own. “I grew up Vinicius Cantuária tive era. As that group’s popularity soared, internal with colonialists and priests who didn’t like it, so After three decades of Stateside cult attention, this tensions mounted, culminating in an infamous fax it was kind of banned,” she told the music site the abundantly talented Brazilian singer and guitarist from the lead singer, Black Francis, informing Deal Quietus. “It was seen as being too sensual or too deserves to be better known. Cantuária is a sea- that the band was kaput (though it has since re- demonic, which is, of course, ridiculous. I ended soned songwriter, whose originals slyly tweak the turned, both with and without Deal). This gave her up teaching myself how to do it—and that’s why I conventions of bossa nova and Rio pop, leading more time to focus on the Breeders, best known for ended up singing alone.” Tagaq’s vocal technique him to collaborations with the likes of Arto Lind- their sophomore record, “Last Splash,” from 1993, may have traditional roots, but the music she makes say and Bill Frisell. His crack band includes the pi- a collection of scrappy alt-rock treasures capped is absolutely contemporary, combining shimmer- anist Helio Alves, the electric bassist Paul Socolow, by the slinky single “Cannonball.” Their 2013 re- ing pop, icy electronica, and hardcore punk with the percussionist Marivaldo dos Santos, and the union still hasn’t concluded, to fans’ delight. (Bow- her confrontational, compelling vocals—a dynamic drummer Adriano Santos. (Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, ery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. 212-260-4700. Nov. 5.) that earned her Canada’s venerable Polaris Music Broadway at 60th St. 212-258-9595. Nov. 3-5.) Prize in 2014, for her album “Animism.” At Carne- Flying Lotus gie Hall, she joins a host of musical luminaries, in- George Coleman The electronica musician Steven Ellison is a cen- cluding Patti Smith, Talib Kweli, and Joan Baez, for The tenor saxophonist Coleman may be conserv- tral figure in L.A.’s jazz-indebted instrumental “Pathway to Paris,” a benefit performance intended ing his energy these days, as he reflects on a career that took root in the late fifties, but his force- ful spirit is still very much willing. A stomping album from 2016, “A Master Speaks,” found this hard-bop patriarch doing what he does best—craft- ing lush ballads and giving his all to lively mainstream romps. (Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St. 212- 576-2232. Nov. 2-5.)

Fuerza Puerto Rico! A Jazz Benefit for the Victims of Hurricane María The call went out and the jazz community responded. This worthy benefit will feature musical support from the likes of Branford Marsalis, Dave Douglas, Luis Perdomo, John Scofield, Kurt Elling, Christian McBride, and the event’s organizer, Mi- guel Zenón. (Jazz Gallery, 1160 Broadway, at 27th St., Fifth fl. 646-494-3625. Nov. 1.)

Vincent Herring Although the vicissitudes of our era weigh on Her- ring’s mind, his new album, “Hard Times,” exhib- its no diminishment of fervor; the alto saxophonist has an unerring knack for merging technical command with heart-on-sleeve emotiveness. His outfit finds room for the pianist Eric Reed and the Since she was fifteen, Tanya Tagaq has practiced an arresting solo form of Inuit throat singing. She vocalist Nicolas Bearde. (Smoke, 2751 Broadway, be-

returns to Carnegie Hall this week, to perform at the “Pathway to Paris” benefit. tween 105th and 106th Sts. 212-864-6662. Nov. 3-5.) ANDREASSON SARA BY ILLUSTRATION

10 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 DANCE

Dresden Semperoper Ballett Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre This German company, an infrequent visitor, has In her latest work, “Refuge,” Selwyn explores hu- a diverse repertoire with an emphasis on Euro- mans’ shifting environments and their need for pean contemporary ballet. Its Joyce début in- shelter and safety. The dancers stumble, buckle, cludes two pieces by the British choreographer fall, and rise up again within a stage littered with David Dawson, one an excerpt from his updated objects. The set designs are inspired by “Encamp- “Giselle,” and the other a moody duet set to Max ment,” an installation by Francesco Clemente, in Richter’s “This Bitter Earth.” The program also which the artist imagines a modern caravanse- features “Vertigo Maze,” by the Belgian Stijn rai. (Mark Morris Dance Center, 3 Lafayette Ave., Celis—set to Bach, with monochrome costumes Brooklyn. 212-995-9446. Nov. 2-4.) and bare feet—and a world première by the company member Joseph Hernandez. (175 Eighth Calpulli Mexican Dance Company Ave., at 19th St. 212-242-0800. Oct. 31-Nov. 4.) Based in Queens, this troupe of openhearted, generous performers is a local treasure. Its show “The Red Shoes” / Matthew Bourne “Día de Los Muertos” mixes folk styles with a The British choreographer Matthew Bourne little ballet, in a narrative structure like that of has made a stage version of this tale of a dancer a nineteenth-century story ballet, with an eco- who must choose between love and art, based nomically challenged romance and a dreamlike on the film from 1948. New York City Ballet’s trip to an underworld of dancing skeletons. The Sara Mearns will alternate with the longtime costumes are bright, the performances are broad, Bourne dancer Ashley Shaw in the role of the and the music is live. (Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd St. protagonist; American Ballet Theatre’s Marcelo 212-840-2824. Nov. 4.) Gomes takes turns with Dominic North as the man whom she loves but must sacrifice for fame. World Dance Festival (City Center, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. Oct. The first of two ninety-minute programs juxtapos- 31-Nov. 5.) ing geographically distant cultures features Oki- nawan folk dances by the esteemed dancer Junko White Light Festival / Jessica Lang Dance Fisher, acrobatic Tibetan dance, and flamenco by A choreographed oratorio plays to Lang’s the Buenos Aires-born choreographer Sol La Ar- strengths of image and flow. In her staging of gentinita. On the second program, there’s a Korean Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater”—made for the Glim- fan dance by the ensemble Sounds of Korea, plus merglass Festival in 2013 and now reimagined— dances from the Philippine island of Mindanao the two singers (the soprano Andriana Chuch- by the New York-based group Kinding Sindaw, man and the superlative countertenor Anthony and from several regions of Mexico by Ballet Fi- Roth Costanzo) don’t just stand before the Cross; esta Mexicana. (Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave., Brook- they merge in motion with nine dancers. As two lyn. 212-627-1076. Nov. 4-5.) massive tree trunks shift between one crossed position and another, bent bodies express the pain Eiko Otake of Mary at the Crucifixion. Speranza Scappucci After more than four decades as half of a renowned conducts the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. (Rose The- slow-moving duo with her husband, Koma, Eiko atre, 60th St. at Broadway. 212-721-6500. Nov. 1-2.) went solo a few years back. Alone, her presence is even more powerful—frighteningly vulnerable but New York Theatre Ballet also just plain frightening, like a potentially venge- Since moving to the East Village, this enter- ful ghost. “A Body in Places” is what she has been prising chamber ensemble has begun to branch calling her hauntings of sites around the world. out in interesting ways. Its fall season includes Next up is a series of appearances at the Metro- a work by the postmodernist David Gordon, politan Museum of Art, beginning, promisingly, as well as a revival of an early dance-theatre at the Met Cloisters. Later, she inhabits the Met work by the modern-dance master José Limón, Breuer (Nov. 12) and the museum’s Fifth Avenue “La Malinche,” which explores the identity of flagship (Nov. 19). (The Cloisters, Fort Tryon Park. the legendary indigenous woman who became 212-923-3700. Nov. 5.) a translator for Hernán Cortés, and the mother of his child. The company will also perform a “Works & Process” / Tanaquil Le Clercq’s new work by the promising young choreogra- “The Ballet Cook Book” pher Gemma Bond. (Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Many know Tanaquil Le Clercq (1929-2000) as a Church In-the-Bowery, Second Ave. at 10th St. 866- muse to the choreographer George Balanchine— 811-4111. Nov. 2-4.) she originated stylish roles in “La Valse” and “Western Symphony”—as well as his fourth wife. Preeti Vasudevan Partially paralyzed by polio as a young dancer, The gestural storytelling of the classical Indian she went on to various other pursuits, including, form bharata natyam, in which one dancer may in 1967, the composition of “The Ballet Cook play many characters, is normally used to act out Book,” a compendium of stories and recipes fa- ancient myths. But in “Stories by Hand” Vasude- vored by her dance friends. Two of them, Al- van applies these techniques to contemporary legra Kent and Jacques d’Amboise, will discuss subjects, some drawn from her own life. One sec- their relationship with Le Clercq; they will be tion of the work, partially narrated in English joined by the food scholar Meryl Rosofsky and and Tamil, addresses the differences between some New York City Ballet dancers, who will traditional arranged marriages and modern-day talk about their culinary adventures and per- matrimony and divorce. Another grapples with form excerpts from Le Clercq’s repertory. (Gug- a tragic tale within her own family. (New York genheim Museum, Fifth Ave. at 89th St. 212-423- Live Arts, 219 W. 19th St. 212-924-0077. Nov. 2-4.) 3575. Nov. 5-6.)

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 11 A RT

The British visionary Samuel Palmer drew “Oak Tree and Beech, Lullingstone Park,” ca. 1828, using pen and ink, graphite, and watercolor.

Paper Weight vided chronologically into nine sections, Gheyn II, from 1596-1602, which splices they span five hundred years, from a together exquisite realism and outland- Five centuries of drawings hold sway at strikingly modern study of drapery by an ish fantasy, as a toad, a frog, and a drag- the Morgan Library & Museum. unknown German artist, circa 1480, to a onfly share the page with a mutant bird- The almost unbearably excellent show black-and-white Ellsworth Kelly collage, moth. A transfixing 1828 landscape by “Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from 1976, as elemental as an eclipse. the English Romantic Samuel Palmer from the Thaw Collection” begins with The practice of drawing in Europe is features a subtly anthropomorphized a love story. In 1954, the dealer Eugene as old as the lines on the caves at Las- oak that trumps any weirwood on Thaw—the son of a heating contractor caux. But there was a sea change during “Game of Thrones.” It hangs near an and a high-school teacher, from Wash- the Renaissance, when the earliest pieces ingenious nocturne by Caspar David ington Heights—had a prescient assis- on view here were made. Artists began Friedrich, from 1808: the moon in the tant who suggested that he start buying to think with their hands, working high-lonesome landscape has been cut art for himself. He took her advice. He through ideas on paper, rather than out and replaced with a circle of paper also proposed to her. When Clare Eddy merely recording the world. In one sub- for lamplight to shine through. Thaw died, this summer, on her ninety- lime pen-and-ink sketch, from 1450-55, It’s thrilling that these masterpieces third birthday, the couple had been mar- Andrea Mantegna posed the same co- of Western art are here to stay at the ried for sixty-three years. Over time, the lumnar saint in three variations, chang- Morgan. Consider their future. If ca- Thaws’ collection diversified, but Old ing the thrust of his hips, the angle of nonical lines could be blurred, the mu- Master and modern drawings were al- his head, and the height at which he seum might borrow another marvel ways its heart—not to mention how holds a book. The sheet has the imme- from the Thaw collection: a bound Thaw made his money. diacy of a live rehearsal. book of drawings by the Lakota chief A hundred and fifty works on paper— The hit parade proceeds through Black Hawk, from 1880-81 (recently landscapes, portraits, Biblical scenes, Rembrandt, Goya, Picasso, and Pollock shown at the Met). The penumbral still-lifes, interiors, letters from Vincent (and Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, and horse that Georges Seurat let loose with van Gogh—are hanging now (through Matisse). For every blockbuster name his black Conté crayon in 1882, on view Jan. 7) at the Morgan Library & Mu- there’s an unfamiliar astonishment, like here, might be up for a wild ride with seum, the cream of a much larger gift the ink-and-watercolor menagerie by Black Hawk’s “Buffalo Dreamers.”

from the Thaws to the institution. Di- the Netherlandish painter Jacques de —Andrea K. Scott & MUSEUM LIBRARY THE MORGAN COLLECTION; THAW

12 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 1 A RT MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES New Museum like banners, and often incorporating African fab- “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” rics and Amos’s own weavings, they picture ath- Museum of Modern Art Works by forty-two mostly L.G.B.T.Q.-identified letic, dancing, heroic, and comic figures, with “Charles White—Leonardo da Vinci. Curated artists (who range in age from twenty-seven to twisty references to art history and racial im- by David Hammons” sixty-seven), artist teams, and collectives tend to broglios. One adapts a nude photograph of Paul Hammons, New York’s guerrilla chieftain of art, be elegant and ingratiating, temperate, or even a Robeson, taken by Nickolas Muray, in 1926; in delivers a jolt—a passion for drawing that over- little boring—though not unpleasantly so. (A another, Amos appears as Wonder Woman, hold- leaps place and time—with this one-room instal- little boredom may come as a welcome relief to ing up a T-shirt that bears an erotic image by lation on the museum’s masterpiece-intensive our lately adrenaline-overdosed body politic.) Gauguin. Coming to comprehend the artist’s slow- fifth floor. Hanging on two opposing walls, each One rare example of an aggressive affront is a se- burn meanings is like learning to dance. Through painted midnight blue, are a large drawing of a ries of fantastically nasty small works by the re- Dec. 16. (Ryan Lee, 515 W. 26th St. 212-397-0742.) sandwich-board evangelist, by White (a legend- liably dazzling Los Angeles-born, Berlin-based, ary teacher of budding black artists in L.A., in- biracial, transgender artist and performer Vagi- Zanele Muholi cluding Hammons), and a study of drapery on the nal Davis: abstract reliefs that suggest mangled The black-and-white self-portraits in this South lower half of a kneeling figure, by Leonardo. A faces, viscera, and genitalia, painted in a blood- African photographer’s recent series “Somnyama third wall, painted the pale blue of the paper fa- red mixture of substances, including nail polish. Ngonyama” (Zulu for “Hail the Dark Lioness”) vored by Leonardo, bears elaborate astrological The happiest surprise is a trend in painting that may tempt you to trace an art-family tree. On one charts of the two artists. The preposterousness takes inspiration from ideas of indeterminate sex- side are Claude Cahun, Cindy Sherman, and Car- of the exercise is its own reward. Through Jan. 1. uality for revived formal invention. Two painters rie Mae Weems. On the other are the studios, in who stand out are Tschabalala Self and Christina Bamako, Mali, of Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé, Brooklyn Museum Quarles, who rhyme ambiguous imagery of gyrat- meccas of personal style. But such role calls oc- “Roots of ‘The Dinner Party’: History in the ing bodies with pictorial techniques that recall Pi- clude the true power of Muholi’s pictures as a Making” casso, Gorky, and de Kooning. Whether intention- radical act of protest and reclamation, a deeply Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party,” from 1974-79, ally or not, they effectively return to an old well personal response to the colonizing of black fe- a monument of the American feminist art move- that suddenly yields fresh water. Through Jan. 21. male bodies. In “Julile I, Parktown, Johannesburg, ment—and an example of the second wave’s tri- 1 2016,” she reclines as an odalisque, the nude figure umphs and blind spots—found a permanent home of a harem slave favored by so many painters and at the museum ten years ago. This show commem- GALLERIES—CHELSEA photographers. But there’s more than a critique orates the acquisition with a fascinating behind- at play here: the inflated bags that Muholi re- the-scenes look at the project’s genesis, and the Emma Amos clines on refer to masses that were removed from community effort behind its realization. It took The political is poetic for this New York artist, her body during surgery, one she wasn’t sure she a small army of volunteers—accomplished crafts- who, at seventy-nine years old, is absurdly under- would survive. It’s a keystone for the entire proj- people, self-styled scholars of suppressed her- known. Eight large paintings, made across four ect—a woman embracing a history of pain to find story, and novice embroiderers among them—to decades, ring buoyant variations on a theme: freedom. Opens Nov. 3. (Richardson, 525 W. 22nd create the thirty-nine place settings on the trian- “Black Bodies,” as Amos has titled her show. Hung St. 646-230-9610.) gular table, representing a pantheon of female figures from “Primordial Goddess” to Georgia O’Keeffe. (An additional nine hundred and ninety- nine names of notable women are written in gold script on the glazed floor tiles.) In preparatory works—sketches, designs, and test plates—we see the artist refine her technique and develop the signature “central core” imagery of her semi-abstract ceramics—or, as she has jokingly referred to the plates, “vagina china.” Indeed, Chicago deserves the last laugh. For years, “The Dinner Party” was an object of outrage and ridicule, perhaps even more than one of curiosity and reverence, but it endures as a stunningly ambitious experiment. Through March 4.

Museum of Chinese in America “Fold: Golden Venture Paper Sculptures” This beautifully designed exhibition presents a selection of ingeniously crafted paper sculptures, evidence of countless hours of anxious busywork by detained Chinese asylum-seekers. In 1993, the cargo ship the Golden Venture, which was smug- gling several hundred migrants into the United States, ran aground near Rockaway Beach; many of its passengers spent years in prison. Working in the folk-art tradition of zhezhi, the detainees created these often playful, sometimes wistful works to reflect their histories and aspirations. A group of bright sailboats—their hulls composed of meticu- lously folded yellow paper from legal pads supplied by their pro-bono attorneys—bear such glad tid- ings as “Love” and “Beauty.” Several bald eagles, arranged before a banner that reads “Freedom,” convey the hopeful adoption of American sym- bols. Wall texts and videos make deft use of these sculptures as springboards for a larger discussion of immigration policy. Though President Clinton released the final Golden Venture migrants in 1997, the artists featured here chose to remain anony- mous, because, after decades, their legal status in the U.S. remains uncertain. Through March 25.

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 13 A RT

Robin F. Williams In her edgy, lewd, and psychedelic canvases, the young figurative painter presents women in the unlikely, uncomfortable poses of fashion- ABOVE & BEYOND magazine advertising. Williams is particularly interested in the commercial photography of the nineteen-seventies that paid homage to art- historical icons. “Your Good Taste Is Showing”— which gives the show its title—shrugs at Balthus, with a crotch-flashing figure and a yellow cat, as it sardonically advertises cigarettes. (An absurdly lithe model holds one in each hand.) Williams has a painterly gift for contrasts as she shifts between pasty and airbrushed surfaces, auras and hard-edge geometry, and de Chirico weirdness and Thiebaud seduction. Allusions aside, her barbed investigations of the female form are captivating in their own right. Through Nov. 11. Winter Village episode, Larry David visits Rushdie for ad- (P.P.O.W., 535 W. 22nd St. 212-647-1044.) Bryant Park, renovated in 1992 to discour- vice on how to deal with a fatwa. The au- 1 age crime and welcome midtown strollers, is thor can poke fun now, but when he pub- now one of the city’s cherished holiday des- lished his fourth novel, “The Satanic Verses,” GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN tinations, hosting various winter activities in 1988, the reaction from Ayatollah Kho- around its famous seasonal ice rink. College meini was seen as dire and shocking, given Matt Connors Skate Nights offer two-for-one skate rent- the West’s principle of free speech. Rushdie Lovely, jittery new paintings, bolstered by lyr- als with a school I.D., plus themes includ- has since let few pressures limit his work; ical talent and philosophical suspense, affirm ing Mardi Gras and Battle of the Boy Bands. his latest novel, “The Golden House,” takes Connors’s status as a leader in contemporary ab- Scavenger hunts, pop-up retail experiences, veiled aim at modern politics, and at a cer- straction. Each work takes a crack at discovery and the requisite tree-lighting extravaganza tain unlikely politician, through the tale with some variant of strict or wobbly geometry, dot the schedule, along with family-friendly of a New York magnate named Nero Julius dense or scrappy composition, careful or flur- performances. (42nd St. at Sixth Ave. winter- Golden. This week, he appears in conversa- ried touch, and color that seems wrong, but you village.org. Through Jan. 2.) tion with Daniel Alarcón, the author of “The like it. Beauty keeps happening like something 1 King Is Always Above the People,” a collec- glimpsed by chance, neither quite intended nor tion of vignettes filled with vivid characters fully grasped. What Connors is trying to get at READINGS AND TALKS and savvy commentaries on immigration, may be unachievable, but his going for it be- family, and freedom. (1395 Lexington Ave. guiles. Through Dec. 10. (Canada, 333 Broome St. The Center for Fiction 92y.org. Nov. 3 at 7:30.) 212-925-4631.) After a difficult bout with postpartum depression, the academic and writer Mimi Khúc Brooklyn Public Library Craig Kalpakjian sought to change how mental health was dis- This October, New York University’s presi- What if Josef Albers had been a coder who cussed in her community. To that end, she has dent, Andrew Hamilton, attended the com- worked for the C.I.A.? The question arises in put together “Open in Emergency,” a special mencement ceremony for the first graduat- this superlatively bleak exhibition that entwines issue of the Asian American Literary Review, ing class of the school’s Prison Education themes of surveillance, coercion, and control which combines writing, visual art, and in- Program. Ryan Burrell, Roy Burvick, Danis with familiar modes of formalist abstraction teractive elements. Khúc aims to deepen and Flores, Khalan Pendelton, and Vincent (nesting squares, black-on-black monochromes), complicate the narrative around mental ill- Thompson all earned degrees in liberal stud- in works that are computer generated. Kalpak- ness, which she argues is too often framed ies through the program, which began in 2015 jian first gained attention in the mid-nineties, for as an individual affliction, and is too rarely at the medium-security Wallkill Correctional ominous photographs of empty corporate inte- placed in social and cultural contexts. The Facility, in Ulster County, and was backed by riors which relied on software instead of a cam- issue features a pamphlet on postpartum de- a grant from the Ford Foundation. Daniel B. era. One impressive large picture here revisits pression, written and edited by mothers, and Karpowitz, the author of “College in Prison: the subject: an endless cubicle farm, spied from a collection of cathartic letters from daugh- Reading in an Age of Mass Incarceration,” above, is a black-ops mise en abyme. Mounted ters to their mothers on intergenerational has long championed the benefits of such pro- to the ceiling of the long narrow gallery is a ro- traumas. Two contributors, Tanwi Nandini grams, which are taking hold across the coun- tating spotlight, which heightens the “just be- Islam and Wo Chan, join Khúc for this read- try. He discusses his current work as the pol- cause you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not ing and discussion, which includes a round icy director for the Bard Prison Initiative, and after you” mood. Through Nov. 5. (Matsumiya, of tarot using a deck custom-designed for outlines what he sees as a national incentive 153½ Stanton St. 646-455-3588.) the event. (17 E. 47th St. centerforfiction.org. to establish and maintain nontraditional edu- Nov. 1 at 7.) cational spaces. (10 Grand Army Plaza. bklyn- Eddie Martinez library.org. Nov. 4 at 2.) Sixteen hundred pages from the Brooklyn art- Strand Bookstore ist’s sketchbooks are tacked up edge to edge Geoff Klock, a scholar of comic books who is Hunter College on the walls, becoming a background for about working on a book about Hannibal Lecter, When writing his first book, “John Crow’s two dozen paintings in an installation that will argues that the modern, motive-free super- Devil,” the author Marlon James would send change throughout the show. The works are villain finds its archetype in Shakespeare’s drafts to friends for their feedback; later, in mostly abstract: energetic loops, lines, colors, Iago, from “Othello,” who earns the protago- fits of anxiety, he’d sneak onto their laptops and zigzags. Exceptions include images of moc- nist’s trust with the sole intention of betray- and delete the files from their hard drives. casins, a tennis racket, and gonzo figures, as well ing it. At the Strand, Klock delivers a talk that In 2015, James earned the Man Booker Prize as the occasional phrase (“cultural void,” “kin- traces the supervillian’s steps through popu- for his third book, “A Brief History of Seven dergarten macho”). In “Sound Bath,” the largest lar culture, from Iago to the Joker to “Gone Killings,” a historical fiction centered most work here, Martinez silk-screened an enlarge- Girl” ’s Amy Dunne. (828 Broadway. 212-473- prominently on the attempted assassination ment of one sketch onto a six-by-eleven-foot 1452. Nov. 3 at 7.) of Bob Marley, in 1976. Using dozens of tan- canvas, then covered it with jostling red and gled voices and perspectives, the story deftly black boxes filled in with a Crayola twelve-pack’s 92nd Street Y illustrates the nuances of the class spectrum in worth of colors. That may sound frenetic, but in “I don’t think they would have not done it if James’s native Jamaica. Hunter College hosts this context it looks positively stripped down. I’d said no,” Salman Rushdie told Seth Mey- the author in its “Distinguished Writers” talk Through Feb. 4. (The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster ers, of his inclusion in the plot of the latest series. (West Building, Lexington Ave. at E. 68th

St. 212-219-2166.) season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”—in one St. 212-772-4007. Nov. 7 at 6:30.) AMARGO PABLO BY ILLUSTRATION

14 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 F§D & DRINK

1 TABLES FOR TWO strong,” a centenarian named Anastasia BA R TA B Streecha instructed, pinching dumplings shut with practiced rhythm. 33 E. 7th St. (212-677-7160) For as long as anyone can remember, There are many paths to becoming a chef. the menu has consisted of exactly four For Dmytro Kovalenko, who heads the items, all paragons of traditional kitchen at this rustic East Village lun- Ukrainian fare. Besides borscht and va- cheonette, it started with a war. A former reniki, there is holubtsi, a medley of rice Club Cumming businessman and Euromaidan activist in and pork or mushrooms swathed in 505 E. 6th St. (917-265-8006) his mid-thirties, Kovalenko fled the vio- braised cabbage leaves, and kovbasa, or Gay night life in New York, for those seeking some- lence in eastern Ukraine three years ago. sausage, which Kovalenko gets at a nearby thing more hands-on than a civil-rights history In New York, he worked as a dishwasher Ukrainian-run butcher shop and serves tour, greets newcomers as an impenetrable maze. and a line cook before landing at Streecha. with homemade horseradish. Rotating Each turn leads back to the same scene: a club, somewhere on the West Side, where no one has a “You have to be passionate about cook- daily specials include shallow-fried potato last name, poppers abound, and, amid the crush of ing,” he said recently. “Otherwise, it’s pancakes (deruny), wheat berries with bodies, near-identical bartenders, all muscle and really hard and you will quit really soon.” poppy seeds and honey (kutya), and a chiselled jaw, serve as caricatures of a hegemonic hypermasculine ideal. Not so at Club Cumming. Streecha (an old Ukrainian word for block of congealed fish stock (kholodets) The tiny space welcomes a far broader spectrum “meeting”) is easy to miss. It’s situated in that Kovalenko likens to “fish jello.” For of the queer community and overflows with a sense a basement beneath a chiropractor’s office dessert, there are rose-jam doughnuts of inclusive camaraderie. The actor Alan Cumming, a co-owner, named the bar after the parties he began and is demarcated by a blue banner in dusted with powdered sugar (pampushki). throwing in his Broadway dressing room during Cyrillic. The restaurant—which, despite The décor borders on the monastic: the 2014 revival of “Cabaret.” The spontaneity lives appearances, is open to the public—was communal tables, religious icons, a on: in the past month, the closet-size stage has hosted a comically varied series of impromptu conceived about four decades ago (no one wooden dough-rolling machine long re- performances, from a sing-along with Paul McCart- recalls the precise year), as an income- tired from service. Notably, there are not ney to a dance routine by the cast of “Cats.” On a generating project for St. George one but two portraits of Taras Shevchen- recent Friday, a painter was working on a gorgeous, Weimar-esque mural at the entrance. In the back, Ukrainian Catholic Church, up the street. ko—a nineteenth-century Ukrainian poet Daphne Always, the house drag queen, cast off her To this day, all the cooks, including Kova- who was exiled for organizing against the dress and glided through the crowd, wearing only lenko, are volunteers, and the majority of Tsar and mocking his wife. One of his chiffon sleeves and satin panties. “I took a shot of estrogen today. Doesn’t it show?” she said, between the patrons are parishioners. most celebrated works begins with a plea: numbers. Three drinks in, a teetering twentysome- On a recent Friday, just past 7 A.M., “When I am dead, bury me / In my be- thing left most of his Up and Cumming—a frothy while Kovalenko was making beef stock loved Ukraine.” Asked whether he shares high-proof pineapple margarita—spilled on the bar. By then, the hosts of the next party, Witches for borscht, three elderly women sat at a the sentiment, Kovalenko said, “So far, I Against Fascist Totalitarianism, had arrived, and table, folding mashed potatoes and ched- don’t want to go there.” His application for even the straight men were singing along to Daph- dar cheese into rolled-out circles of dough asylum is pending with U.S. Citizenship ne’s lip-synched final set (Future, Natalie Imbru- glia, “Con Te Partirò”). The muralist packed up, for Ukrainian dumplings called vareniki. and Immigration Services. (Dishes $2-$7.) leaving a half-painted Liza Minnelli to gaze out,

PHOTOGRAPH BY KYOKO HAMADA FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE JOOST BY ILLUSTRATION YORKER; THE NEW FOR HAMADA KYOKO BY PHOTOGRAPH “Over here—put in potato—close— —David Kortava smirking, on the besotted crowd.—H. C. Wilentz

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 15

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT to addressing its complicity problem. dropping out as an advantage, saying THE SILENT MAJORITY The Republicans can’t now say that that, for the fourteen months remaining the terms of their bargain with Trump in his term, he would be freer to speak, hen Senator Jeff Flake, Republi- haven’t been fully presented to them. without “the political consideration that Wcan of Arizona, explained why Flake, his voice shaking, used the word consumed far too much bandwidth and he had chosen to denounce President “complicity” or “complicit” several times, would cause me to compromise far too Donald Trump from the Senate floor last noting that he was filled with “regret for many principles.” Tuesday afternoon as being “dangerous the compromise of our moral authority, Flake’s fellow-Arizonan, John Mc- to a democracy,” he cited the moment, and by ‘our’ I mean all of our complicity Cain, another Trump critic who will not in 1954, when Joseph Welch, a lawyer in this alarming and dangerous state of run again, warmly praised his bravery. representing the Army in the Army-Mc- affairs.” He said that “silence can equal Yet, in the days that followed, the lead- Carthy hearings, confronted Senator Jo- complicity.” Finally, he asked, “And what ers of the Party went on with their busi- seph McCarthy, Republican of Wiscon- do we, as United States senators, have ness, as if being charged with selling out sin. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, to say about it?” the Republic for their own personal po- titled “Enough,” Flake recalled how It was a largely moot question in his litical gain were nothing out of the or- Welch’s plain language—“Have you no case, given that he had just announced dinary. No one got notably angry, or acted sense of decency, sir?”—seemed to break that he would not seek reëlection. He as though his or her honor had been the spell of McCarthyism. He had hoped has been a consistent critic of Trump, offended. Immediately after the speech, to do something similar. and this has made him one of the Pres- Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority There are parallels in the two events, ident’s constant targets. Flake would have Leader, said that Flake was a “very fine in that both McCarthy and Trump seem faced a primary challenger next year who man” whom he valued as a “team player,” to have bewitched members of their has the backing of Trump’s former aide and then moved on to procedural mea- party with a promise of power, coupled Steve Bannon, and who was far ahead sures aimed at passing tax cuts, as part with a fear of being the next target, of him in the polls. He tried to present of a large-scale tax-reform bill working whether of a hearing or of a tweet. (And its way through Congress. the man seated next to McCarthy during Admittedly, it had already been a long the hearings, Roy Cohn, became Trump’s day for McConnell. It began when Sen- mentor.) But what was particularly pow- ator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennes- erful about the Welch moment was that see, who is also not seeking reëlection, he was rejecting an offer of complicity appeared on multiple morning broad- from McCarthy. The Senator had just casts to say that the President is “utterly announced, on national television, that untruthful,” and repeated his concern a lawyer in Welch’s firm had once be- that Trump, if not checked, could set off longed to a left-leaning legal organiza- a Third World War. Those remarks came tion, and added that he assumed that as the members of the Republican cau- Welch hadn’t known. Welch had known, cus were heading to a lunch meeting and he said so without hesitation. By with the President about the tax bill. The contrast, when Flake finished speaking, proposed cuts—including a reduction in it was clear that, despite the force of his the corporate tax rate, from thirty-five rhetoric, the spell had not been broken. to twenty per cent—were meant to be

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM BY ILLUSTRATIONS The G.O.P. still has not come close their reward for putting up with tweeted

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 17 mockery and other outrages, and had, that he believes what Trump is saying. His argument that he can better speak McConnell said, unified the Party. Increasingly, though, the Republican out against Trump because he no longer (Trump later called the meeting a “love ranks are filled not just with cynics who has to worry about appealing to the “sub- fest.”) When McConnell was asked about put up with Trump but with true believ- set of a subset,” which makes up the Re- Corker’s remarks, he said only, “There’s ers. Bannon is promoting far-right pri- publican primary electorate, comes haz- a lot of noise out there.” mary challengers in elections across the ardously close to conceding that the On Thursday, Paul Ryan, the Speaker country, with the aim of bringing down electoral route is no longer a worthwhile of the House, had a similar response to the Republican “establishment.” Last or a decent one. Flake’s cry of “Enough” Flake’s address. “I don’t think the Amer- week, the Post reported that the Senate might be taken as “Enough with poli- ican people want to see us here yelling Leadership Fund, a super PAC close to tics”—as a concession that complicity at each other,” he said, thus placing his McConnell, would launch an offensive and political participation are synony- colleague’s anguished appeal on the same against Bannon, in part by funding efforts mous. That’s a dangerous idea, too. plane as Trump’s intemperate rants. Sen- to disparage him personally. The story The country needs people to speak out ator Lindsey Graham, who has been a noted, however, that the PAC would not against Trump, but it also needs Repub- Trump critic, responded to Flake’s attack Trump, thus dodging what the licans as well as Democrats to run against speech by telling the Times that he had G.O.P. really needs: a hard-fought ref- him. That will require people who still come to enjoy dealing with the Presi- erendum on Trumpism. Instead, in a have something to lose to be willing to dent. From this perspective, silence is a number of upcoming primary races, such stake it by putting their names on a bal- virtue. Yet silence speaks, too. Maybe as the senatorial contest in Mississippi, lot. Democracies are meant to be noisy McConnell hopes that, when he finds the candidates are competing to prove places. Perhaps Flake should start think- himself standing next to the President their loyalty to the President. ing about something beyond a series of as he says something preposterous, his This is why Flake’s speech, for all its lame-duck speeches or a lecture tour. What reputation for cynicism will safeguard power, felt incomplete. He raised a call are his plans for 2020? his dignity—that no one will believe to arms—and then sounded the retreat. —Amy Davidson Sorkin

THE ARTISTIC LIFE Oldenburg, who is eighty-eight, swiv- works—many of which he made with ODDS AND ENDS elled around to face the main gallery at his late wife, Coosje van Bruggen—scat- Pace, in Chelsea, where he and Glim- tered around the world like the contents cher were putting the finishing touches of a giant’s junk drawer: a cufflink here, on his new show, “Shelf Life.” It con- a clothespin there. A shuttlecock on one sists of fifteen shelves filled with sculpted shelf resembles a seventeen-foot version objects that have accumulated in Olden- in Kansas City. (A deflated iteration once burg’s studio. “When I find something hung from the ceiling of the Guggenheim.) laes Oldenburg, the artist, leaned interesting, I put it on a shelf,” the art- “I like ordinary objects,” Oldenburg Cback in a rolling office chair and ist said. “At a certain point, it gets full said. “If you have one object meet some considered some sculptures made of can- of things that are interesting. So you other object, which claims to be ordi- vas shopping bags fashioned into mouse start to play with them and put them nary, then you’d have something even ears. He wore a pink shirt and round together.” more extraordinary.” He moved to an- glasses, and was talking to Arne Glim- He rolled over to a shelf that contained other shelf. “That’s a bottle, that’s a piece cher, his dealer, about the first time he’d three stuffed fabric rabbits (in red, yellow, of an automobile tire, and this”—he used mouse ears in his work—on masks, and blue checks), some paper bowling pointed to a brown globule—“is obvi- in a performance piece that took place pins, and an inverted basketball hoop ously something coming out of a tube.” on West Forty-first Street, in 1965. “The made of string and cardboard, with a ball “And these are potato chips,” Glim- people came in, but they were not al- going through it. “These things are all cher said. lowed to sit down. The only ones who mysteries to me,” he said. “I don’t think “Shelf Life” pays homage to Olden- were allowed to sit down were the ones you could get me to explain what’s going burg’s famous early work “Mouse Mu- who were wearing the mask,” he recalled. on there with the rabbit and the—what seum,” as well as to “The Store,” in “There was one person who disagreed, would you call those balls?” which he hawked semi-realistic plas- and that was Marcel Duchamp. He said, “Basketballs?” Glimcher said. ter ice-cream sundaes, blueberry pies, ‘I’m getting old, and I have to sit down.’ ” “Basketballs, yes. Another mystery,” and underwear from a storefront on Oldenburg’s eyes twinkled. Oldenburg said. the Lower East Side. He worked with Glimcher, tall and neat, had a navy There are no explanatory labels in Glimcher for the first time shortly af- sweater tied around his shoulders. “Such “Shelf Life.” (Oldenburg wrote a Seuss- terward, in 1964. an exciting time,” he murmured. “And ian poem for the catalogue: “Making “You went to Paris, you were having then you did the happening in the Green things / What fun! / and things being a show,” Glimcher said. “It was with those Gallery. I remember I had a plate of made, / go away!”) If there were, they pastel slices of salmon.” scrambled eggs that were made out of might note that some of the objects re- “And then we bought—what do you Styrofoam.” call Oldenburg’s enormous public art call it?—the château,” Oldenburg said,

18 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 referring to a house he owned in the inch,” Warlick said, shining a flashlight win and Kurt Andersen. “I was desper- Loire Valley. on the assemblage, which he owns. ate to find an Oval Office for the cover “That was later,” Glimcher said. “Twenty-nine by thirty-six feet. Takes and other photos,” Siegler said. She Goo- “The castle has unfortunately been about six people to handle it.” gled “Presidential homes with Oval sold,” Oldenburg said. “It’s been stand- Warlick, who is sixty-five, owns a Offices.” It turned out that Bill Clinton’s ing there for about five hundred years. company called American Presidential Presidential library had one, “but that’s It’s waiting for the next person.” Experience, which traffics in authen- in Little Rock,” she said. “And most oth- He paused at another shelf. “A lot of tic and fake political artifacts. He grew ers I found didn’t re-create the Oval people don’t think these are cigarettes, up in North Carolina, halfway between Office to scale.” Then she stumbled on but these are cigarettes, ” he said, indi- Asheville and Charlotte, and still lives Warlick’s Web site. “I was, like, Is this cating a pile of soft gray fabric, bundled in the area. “I worked in precinct pol- real?” she said. “I was also worried they with sticks. He considered the work. “It itics as a kid,” he said. “I used to leaflet looks more like a vacuum cleaner.” cars for campaigns. We were Demo- The next shelf contained a garden crats. I loved John Kennedy. I spent my trowel, standing on its tip—like the life working against Jesse Helms. But thirty-eight-foot steel version in the I had to make a buck.” In 1980, he drove Netherlands—and a cardboard pedestal. all night to the Republican National “The cardboard object started as a mon- Convention, in Detroit, to sell Reagan ument for Joseph Beuys,” Glimcher said. buttons: “I stood on the street with my “But nothing came of it,” Oldenburg little blue jacket, my tie, and my board said. He pointed to several stiff leaves, with my buttons. I made more money surrounded by knitted slices of buttered that week than I did in a year working toast. “Those I picked up and dropped for my congressman.” in glue, so they’re very hard.” Warlick opened a memorabilia shop, Oldenburg moved toward one of the called Political Americana—the first of last shelves. “This is a piece that sets out six—in D.C.’s Union Station, in 1989. “Bill to be beautiful—a saw, and this is part Clinton used to come by,” Warlick said. of a golf club. This is, of course, a flower. “He’d buy all my Truman buttons. Hil- Alec Baldwin This is to eat. I tried so many different lary used to buy buttons for him, too.” combinations of these things,” he said. Warlick produced and distributed but- wouldn’t allow us to bring in Alec dressed “Remember, I had two ice creams over tons, posters, and stickers for the Clinton as Trump.” here?” He went on, “I think the ice cream campaign in 1992 and 1996. In 2001, he While Warlick’s company describes its was too—what’s the word for when began buying political artifacts: First Lady mission as offering a “nonpartisan tribute something disappears too soon?” gowns; a limousine that J.F.K. used in Fort to Presidential history,” he doesn’t mask “Vanishes,” Glimcher said. Worth, Texas; Air Force One replicas; his feelings about the current Com- 1—Anna Russell and an Oval Office built by Warner Bros. mander-in-Chief. “Anything I can do to American Presidential Experience help Alec stick it to Trump, I’m happy to,” PROPS DEPT. brings such artifacts to the masses. War- Warlick told Siegler. SPITTING IMAGE lick has acquired or built five Oval Offices Warlick sent her photos of three of his in the past couple of decades; the last one Oval Offices, stored in Los Angeles, in he commissioned cost him sixty thou- Virginia, and outside Atlanta. They vary sand dollars. Three or four times a year, from twelve to eighteen feet in height, he rents one out, for around thirty thou- and from a third of an oval to the full, sand dollars a week. Recent and upcom- three-hundred-and-sixty-degree shape. ing engagements include a Finnish TV “We got the Georgia one,” Siegler said— im Warlick was peering into a dark ad for furniture, a TLC show called “Lit- and at no cost. “All we had to pay was four Jtractor-trailer parked in an airplane tle People, Big World,” and the San Diego thousand dollars to ship it to New York hangar in northeast Georgia. Inside was County Fair. “The Oval Office is the most and back.” She went on, “The pieces look a four-thousand-pound Oval Office, bro- famous office in the world,” Warlick said. like nothing when you get them. Then ken down into pieces—doorways, win- “You can’t tell me about the President’s you put it together and it’s, like, Ta-da! dows, curved walls—along with its at- office in France, or Putin’s, or the Prime Our Trump Oval Office looks exactly like tendant furniture: two sofas, several chairs, Minister’s in England.” his. We didn’t need a portrait of Andrew the Resolute desk, lamps, china, and a In June, Warlick received a call from Jackson; for some of the shots we just put replica of Frederic Remington’s bronze a New York graphic artist named Bon- TV monitors on either side of the desk.” sculpture “The Bronco Buster,” beloved nie Siegler. She was designing a new Warlick loves nothing more than by Ronald Reagan. Also, multiple pho- book, “You Can’t Spell America With- seeing one of his Oval Offices fully as- tomurals re-creating the view outside the out Me: The Really Tremendous Inside sembled and put to use. “We get the car- real Oval Office’s windows in every season. Story of My Fantastic First Year as Pres- pet in, and the gold curtains,” he said. “The office is to scale, down to the ident Donald J. Trump,” by Alec Bald- “We wait until the end to put the flags

20 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 behind the desk. That makes it.” He and entertainment people.” Also, she said, be proud of our producers,” Kotowska added, “When you sit behind the desk, “gluten-free is a trend that we have no- said. “You worked your butt off.” looking out at the fireplace and sofas, ticed—which is fine, we respect that a “We are working our butts off!” you do get a big head. Like Mr. Trump.” lot.” She rolled her eyes. “But we are Song said. 1—Charles Bethea going to have a lot of gluten in our store. “Why would you put someone else’s We believe there is nothing wrong with it.” label on that?” Kotowska asked. She CASTING CALL Picco called over Amy Deaver, the talked up the philosophy of Eataly, which ORIGIN STORIES founder of Lemon Bird Preserves. “This had revenues of four hundred and sixty- started as a total hobby,” Deaver, who eight million dollars last year. has blue hair, said, lining up little jars of Song smiled wryly. “Are you guys going twelve-dollar pickled peaches and four- to get bought out by Amazon?” he asked, teen-dollar yuzu jam. She explained that a reference to Amazon’s recent acquisi- she used to do fund-raising for arts and tion of Whole Foods. education organizations. “We got out Kotowska looked flustered. “I don’t ome people come to Los Angeles due to traffic and being tired of people,” know,” she said. Swith aspirations for the big screen, she said. “Now we live in the woods.” At Picco’s table, a callback was under others for a choice location in Aisle 2. Picco seemed impressed by Deaver’s way. That morning, David Menkes, a The other day, dozens of purveyors of recall of apricot varieties and cheeses that graphic designer who makes LetterPress, fancy packaged foods gathered on the pair well with her jams. Deaver shrugged. a line of single-origin chocolate bars, had third floor of an open-air mall for a cast- “This is what we have to do to sell now,” so impressed an Eataly buyer that she ing call of sorts. Eataly, the Italian food she said. She held up a jar of smoked cher- contacted him a few hours later and asked empire, which has thirty-eight stores, is ries. “Somebody will say, ‘I love this, but him to come meet Picco. He had been opening its first L.A. branch this month what on earth am I going to do with it?’ ” unloading a truckful of Tanzanian cacao and was looking for local products to At a nearby table, Patrycja Kotowska, beans when his phone rang. “Some fell stock. “It’s kind of a speed-dating situ- who manages Eataly’s cured-meat-and- in my pocket,” he said, handing Picco a ation,” Simona Picco, Eataly’s director cheese section, interviewed Josh Song, brown bean. “The chocolate comes out of U.S. purchasing, said, sitting down at who makes JJ’s snackable beef crisps. when you roast it, but you still get some a folding table. She wore a black leather (The package commands, “Don’t be of that green-banana note.” jacket and held a clipboard with a list of a jerk, try a crisp.”) “A year from now, Picco examined a bar of Menkes’s best- the day’s candidates, which included four where do you imagine your crisps to seller: Ucayali, a dark chocolate named brewers of kombucha. be?” Kotowska asked. after a Peruvian province in the Amazon Beyond tasty samples, Picco was on “Definitely would like to be in a local rain forest. “No one’s ever used this re- the lookout for compelling product nar- Trader Joe’s,” Song said. gion to make good chocolate before,” he ratives, proof that venders “didn’t just “Trader Joe’s!” Kotowska said, alarmed. said. “It’s mostly known for cocaine.” start making jam because there was an “Are you going to do private label for Picco’s eyes widened. opening in that segment of the market,” them?” Private labelling, in which small “Seriously,” Menkes said. He wore a she said. “We really want that passion.” companies make products to be sold white T-shirt and had earbuds around Based on an earlier reconnaissance trip, under a big retailer’s brand name, goes his neck. “The U.S.A.I.D. found out that she anticipated “a lot of former models against the ethos of Eataly. “We like to we were actually helping cacao farmers and said, ‘Hey, do you want to come down?’ ” He spent part of the summer there. “We helped this farm go from three hundred kilograms to thirty tons of cacao per year.” “Bravi!” Picco said. “You basically taught them that there was something else besides cocaine?” “That’s why the U.S. government got involved,” Menkes said. “They were, like, ‘Wow, farmers actually benefit more by doing something legal than illegal.’ ” It’s a story with Hollywood potential, but translating it to the candy aisle is tougher. “The problem with single origin is that most people can’t remember the origins right,” Menkes said. “ ‘Is it Tanzania or Belize that I like?’ They remember the color: ‘Oh, I like the purple one.’ ” “You have something stuck between your teeth.” —Sheila Marikar THE FINANCIAL PAGE Investors Service, which provides according to the Wall Street Journal. DROWNING IN DEBT credit ratings, asked Long to come (Including pension obligations, Puerto to its offices and defend her findings. Rico is now a hundred and twenty- (Her defense was, essentially, “I’m three billion dollars in debt.) looking at the numbers.”) Neverthe- Still, a different group—one that less, the island continued its unsus- has received much less attention— n 2012, Cate Long was working at tainable borrowing for years—and continues to make steady profits from Ithe news service Reuters, where she Wall Street investors kept lending it the island’s sorry state: the many law- wrote a daily column on the municipal- money. By 2017, five years after Long’s yers and consultants advising it on its bond market. Municipal bonds are warning, Puerto Rico’s bond debt had finances. In 2016, President Obama typically a sleepy corner of investing. soared to seventy-four billion dollars, signed legislation allowing Puerto They are forms of debt issued by states, almost a third of which was held by Rico to enter a form of bankruptcy counties, or cities, usually to fund in- hedge funds. Meanwhile, the govern- and creating a financial oversight frastructure projects, such as airports ment was struggling to provide basic board, which in turn hired numerous and highways, and they are generally services to residents. consulting and legal firms to help man- considered a safe investment, paying This pattern of acute decline might age the bankruptcy process and cre- relatively low levels of interest. Find- have continued indefinitely, but, in ate new fiscal plans. ing a compelling story about the mu- September, Hurricane Maria dam- Cate Long left Reuters in 2014 and nicipal-bond market is not an easy now runs a research service for bond- task, so when Long came across a doc- holders. She has been tracking the ument related to an eight-hundred- payments that Puerto Rico has made million-dollar bond sale that Puerto to the law firms and the Wall Street Rico would be undertaking that spring, consultants, and has calculated that she decided to look at the numbers the government has paid nearly three more closely. What she found was hundred million dollars in advisory startling. “I sat down and read it for fees since 2014; she told me that the a couple of hours, and I said, ‘These number is likely to continue growing. people are going to default,’ ” she told Approximately fifty-six million dol- me recently. “It was pretty obvious.” lars has gone to the law firm Cleary In the column she wrote about her Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, L.L.P., analysis, titled “Puerto Rico Is Amer- which also advised Greece and Ar- ica’s Greece,” Long expressed concern gentina on debt restructuring. Forty- about the island’s economic health, call- seven million dollars went to the con- ing it “America’s own Third World sulting firm Alix Partners, for over- country.” At the time, Puerto Rico’s hauling Puerto Rico’s power utility, per-capita income was just $15,203 (less which then failed during the hurri- than half that of Mississippi, the poor- cane. For much of 2017, more than est of the fifty states), and forty-five aged much of the island’s infrastruc- a million dollars a month went to per cent of its residents were living ture, and left a large portion of the McKinsey for “strategic consulting.” below the poverty line. Puerto Rico population without power or water. Millions more have gone to other also had a “massive” amount of debt, The storm was catastrophic; perhaps firms—many of which have political and was issuing even more bonds, which the only positive side effect is that it connect ions—to cover costs that in- mutual funds and individuals were ea- changed the calculus for the inves- clude catering and inflated photo- gerly buying up, in spite of the warn- tors holding the island’s bonds. Be- copying charges. ing signs. In her article, Long seemed fore the storm, investors seemed un- The old investing maxim “Where to charge almost everyone involved, relenting in their pursuit of repayment. there is pain, there is profit” seems to borrowers and creditors alike, with dis- Various hedge funds and mutual-fund hold especially true here. The vultures ingenuousness, incompetence, or both. companies were suing Puerto Rico, profiting from Puerto Rico’s misery “As happened with Greece, bond in- and one another, in federal court, in are unlikely to go hungry; the same vestors continue to buy the debt as- disputes about which debtholders can’t be said for the people who live suming at some point the government could lay claim to the island’s dwin- on the island. For Long, the whole will be bailed out by somebody, some- dling revenue. After the hurricane, it situation feels eerily familiar. “If we where,” she wrote. “Caution, bond in- became painfully clear that these debts don’t come out of this with a new and vestors: There is no European Union would be impossible to repay. In Oc- super-improved Puerto Rico,” she told standing ready to bail out Puerto Rico.” tober, some funds essentially gave up, me, “this has just been a total waste The article sent shock waves through selling off more than eight billion of time.” the investment community. Moody’s dollars’ worth of Puerto Rico bonds, —Sheelah Kolhatkar GOLDEN COSMOS

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 23 In fact, it is not only possible; it is DEPT. OF SPECULATION fun. Take the following list of supernatural beings: __ Angels __ Giants FANTASTIC BEASTS AND __ Demons __ Pegasus __ Dragons __ Centaurs HOW TO RANK THEM __ Pixies __ Unicorns __ Ghosts __ Tooth fairy __ Harpies __ Phoenix They may not exist, but they tell us a lot about the human mind. __ Elves __ Werewolves __ Mermaids __ Vampires BY KATHRYN SCHULZ __ Loch Ness monster __ Genies __ Leviathan __ Zombies Never mind, for now, whether or not you actually believe in any of these creatures. We are interested here not in whether they are real but in to what extent they seem as if they could be. Your job, accordingly, is to rank them in order of plausibility, from most likely (No. 1) to least likely (No. 20). Better still, if you are in the mood for a party game this Halloween season, try having a lot of people rank them collectively. I guarantee that this will produce a surprising amount of con- cord—who among us could rank the tooth fairy above the Leviathan?—as well as a huge amount of impassioned disagreement. The Loch Ness monster will turn out to have a Johnnie Cochran- level defense attorney. Good friends of yours will say withering things about mermaids. What’s odd about this exercise is that everyone knows that “impossible” is an absolute condition. “Possible versus impossible” is not like “tall versus short.” Tall and short exist on a gradi- ent, and when we adjudge the Empire State Building taller than LeBron James and LeBron James taller than Meryl Streep, we are reflecting facts about the world we live in. But possibility and impossibility are binary, and when we onsider the yeti. Reputed to live do you think it is that the yeti exists? adjudge the yeti more probable than Cin the mountainous regions of One of the strangest things about the leprechaun we aren’t reflecting facts Tibet, Bhutan, and Nepal. Also known the human mind is that it can reason about the world we live in; we aren’t by the alias Abominable Snowman. about unreasonable things. It is pos- reflecting the world we live in at all. Overgrown, in both senses: eight or sible, for example, to calculate the speed So how, exactly, are we drawing these ten or twelve feet tall; shaggy. Shy. at which the sleigh would have to travel distinctions? And what does it say about Possibly a remnant of an otherwise for Santa Claus to deliver all those our own wildly implausible, unmistak- extinct species. More possibly an elab- gifts on Christmas Eve. It is possible ably real selves that we are able to do so? orate hoax, or an inextinguishable to assess the ratio of a dragon’s wings hope. Closely related to the Austra- to its body to determine if it could fly. n the fourth century B.C., several lian Yowie, the Canadian Nuk-luk, And it is possible to decide that a yeti Ihundred years after the advent of the Missouri Momo, the Louisiana is more likely to exist than a lepre- harpies and some two millennia before Swamp Ape, and Bigfoot. O.K., then: chaun, even if you think that the like- the emergence of dementors, Arist otle on a scale not of zero to ten but of, lihood of either of them existing is sat down to do some thinking about say, leprechaun to zombie, how likely precisely zero. supernatural occurrences in literature.

24 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY JON KLASSEN On the whole, he was not a fan; in his ing how exactly he did it. His only ad- plausible supernatural creatures are those Poetics, he mostly discouraged would-be vice for making impossible things seem which most resemble reality, the ques- fabulists from messing around with believable was to give them “a sem- tion becomes: which part? them. But he did allow that, if forced blance of truth.” to choose, writers “should prefer a prob- A little more than a hundred years he obvious candidate, at first able impossibility to an unconvincing later, a very different kind of artist got Tglance, is the animal kingdom. Su- possibility.” Better for Odysseus to re- somewhat more specific. Although Walt pernatural creatures are, after all, crea- turn safely to Ithaca with the aid of Disney is best remembered today for his tures, and we infer from them, or im- ghosts, gods, sea nymphs, and a leather Magic Kingdom, his chief contribution pose upon them, all kinds of biological bag containing the wind than for his to the art of animation was not his ex- characteristics. Like their natural coun- wife, Penelope, to get bored with wait- traordinary imagination but his extraor- terparts, they can be organized by taxon ing for him, grow interested in metal- dinary realism. “We cannot do the fan- (cervid, like the white stag; caprid, like working, and abandon domestic life for tastic things, based on the real, unless the faun; bovine, like the Minotaur; a career as a blacksmith. we first know the real,” he once wrote, feline, like the sphinx), or by habitat As that suggests, for a possible thing by way of explaining why, in 1929, he (alpine, like yetis; woodland, like satyrs; to seem plausible it must be reasonably began driving his animators to a studio cave-dwelling, like dragons; aquatic, consistent with our prior experience. But in downtown Los Angeles for night like mermaids). Given this tendency to what makes an impossible thing seem classes in life drawing. In short order, situate unnatural beings in the natural plausible? In a convoluted passage in the the cartoons emerging from his work- world, it seems conceivable that our Poetics, Aristotle tells us that if an im- shop started exhibiting a quality that we judgments about their plausibility might possible thing would “necessarily” re- have since come to take for granted but reflect how well they conform to the quire something else to occur along with was revolutionary at the time: all those constraints of modern biology. it, you should put that second thing in talking mice, singing lions, dancing pup- If that’s the case, our friend the yeti your story, too, because then your read- pets, and marching brooms began obey- should rank very high on the believers will be more likely to believe the first ing the laws of physics. ability scale. So, too, should giants, elves, one. In other words, even something that It was Disney, for instance, who in- unicorns, ogres, imps, sea monsters, and is factually impossible can be logically troduced to the cartoon universe one pixies. By the same token, this biolog- possible, and how closely that logic is of the fundamental elements of the real ical theory would deal a credibility blow followed will affect how plausible a su- one: gravity. Even those of his charac- to angels, demons, fairies, vampires, pernatural being seems. ters who could fly could fall, and, when and werewolves, plus all those creatures There’s a reason Aristotle addressed they did, their knees, jowls, hair, and assembled, as by an insane taxidermist, this advice to writers and artists. Un- clothes responded as our human ones from the separate parts of real species: like most of us, they have practical mo- do when we thump to the ground. mermaids, griffins, centaurs, chimeras, tives for wondering how best to make Other laws of nature applied, too. sphinxes. It would also undermine the imaginary things seem convincing, a Witches on broomsticks got buffeted plausibility of fire-breathing dragons, problem that must be solved as much by the wind. Goofy, attached by his there being no analogue in nature to a for “Vanity Fair” as for “A Wrinkle in feet to the top of a roller-coaster track Zippo. In fact, biological limitations Time.” Accordingly, creative types have and by his neck to the cars, didn’t just cast doubt on dragons in another way done an unusual amount of thinking get longer as the ride started plunging as well, since four legs plus two wings about plausible impossibility. In the downhill; he also got skinnier, which is not a naturally occurring configura- seventeen-nineties, for instance, Sam- is to say that his volume remained con- tion—a bummer also for harpies, griffins, uel Taylor Coleridge set out to write a stant. To Disney, these concessions to gargoyles, and Pegasus. series of poems about “persons and reality were crucial to achieving what If you couldn’t make it through that characters supernatural.” To do so, he he called, in an echo of Aristotle, the paragraph without starting to formulate knew, he had to make the fantastical “plausible impossible.” Any story based an objection, you already know the first seem credible—“to procure for these on “the fantastic, the unreal, the imag- problem with this theory: it invites a lot shadows of imagination,” he wrote, in inative,” he understood, needed “a foun- of quibbling over what is and isn’t bio- a soon to be famous phrase, a “willing dation of fact.” logically feasible. As defenders of the su- suspension of disbelief.” Taken together, Disney’s foundation pernatural will be quick to point out, Coleridge was excellent at inducing of fact and Coleridge’s semblance of many arthropods have six limbs; squids, a suspension of disbelief. That’s why truth suggest a good starting place for skunks, bombardier beetles, and plenty we are as gripped by “The Rime of the any Unified Theory of the Plausibility of other real creatures spew strange Ancient Mariner” as the wedding guest of Supernatural Beings: the more closely things; nature sometimes contrives to re- within the poem who can’t tear him- such creatures hew to the real world, combine old animals in new ways (see self away from the sailor’s tale—even the more likely we are to deem them the half-striped zedonk—part zebra, part though the tale itself is an outrageous believable. But the real world is enor- donkey—or the recent emergence of the one involving a magical albatross, a ter- mous, wildly heterogeneous, extraordi- coywolf: part coyote, part wolf ); and, rible curse, and a ship crewed by ghosts. narily complicated, and, itself, often sur- considering the many kinds of metamor- Yet Coleridge was vague about explain- passingly strange. So if, indeed, the most phoses exhibited by animals—tadpole to

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 25 frog, caterpillar to butterfly, baby-faced hundreds of wings. Demons present And what are we to make of natural- to bearded—how far-fetched is it, really, the same basic difficulties, as do fair- born humans who are able to do super- for a bat to turn into a man? ies, and ghosts defy pretty much every natural things, à la Shakespeare’s Pros- Indeed, some fantastical creatures biological principle: among other prob- pero, Hermione Granger, or that men- seem positively ordinary compared lems, they have no substance, require ace of Camelot Morgan le Fay? with the more byzantine products of no sustenance, and do not decay or die. This last category of being opens four billion years of evolution. Con- Yet given that seven out of ten Amer- up a whole new can of orms. Magical sider the giant oarfish, a thirty-six- icans believe in angels, six out of ten creatures exist in a universe of magical foot-long behemoth with a silver body, believe in demons, and almost half be- powers, which themselves range wildly a bright-red mane, and a tendency to lieve in ghosts, it seems safe to assume in probability and are not evenly dis- hang out in the ocean ver- that, on the scale of plausi- tributed among the population. To un- tically, like a shiny piscine bility, such creatures out- derstand our intuitions about plausi- telephone pole. Or consider rank giants and unicorns. bility, then, we need to look beyond the blue glaucus, an inch- So much for biology as entities to actions. For supernatural long hermaphroditic sea the basis of our unified the- creatures, as for the rest of us, it might slug capable of killing a ory. But we can resolve at be that what matters most is not what Portuguese man-of-war—a least some of these prob- we are but what we do. beast three hundred times lems by modifying our hy- its size—and then storing pothesis slightly. Perhaps we hat do supernatural creatures its poison for later use, in- don’t care how much super- Wdo? In many cases, not much. cluding on humans. natural creatures resemble Somewhat strangely, not every magi- Given so much natural the animal kingdom in gen- cal being has magical powers. Some, extravagance, it’s not surprising that the eral; perhaps we only care how much like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, real and the unreal are sometimes mis- they resemble us. This mirror theory mostly just have chores. Others merely taken for each other. In 1735, when Carl of plausibility would still account for hang around looking unusual; the yeti Linnaeus organized all the species in the high ranking of yetis, which, aside and Nessie just lurk; the Leviathan the world into one vast taxonomy, he from not existing, are not so different lurks, too, largerly; the record is mixed included a section on “Animalia Para- from Homo sapiens. (Back in 2004, when on giants, which in some accounts live doxa”: creatures, common in folklore scientists discovered an extinct species on clouds but in most are just enor- and myth or attested to by far-flung ex- of an unusually small hominid on an mous and crabby. Wraiths only scare plorers, that he felt compelled to item- island in Indonesia, a senior editor at people, centaurs only awe people, and ize yet deemed unlikely to exist. Among Nature took the occasion to speculate unicorns, aside from some healing prop- these were the manticore (head of a that stories about yetis might reflect erties in their horns, akin to the anti- man, body of a lion, spiky tail), the lamia an extinct Himalayan species on the biotics in frog skin, only attract virgins— (head of a man, breasts of a woman, other end of the size spectrum.) The which, power-wise, puts them at the body of a scaly cow), and the Scythian mirror theory would also explain the same level as boy bands. For these and lamb (like a regular lamb, except it grows perceived plausibility of angels and de- many other supernatural creatures, their out of a stalk in the ground)—but also, mons, which, as presented in myth and supernaturalness inheres chiefly in the arrestingly, the antelope and the peli- literature, resemble exaggerated hu- fact (or the non-fact) of their existence. can. Conversely, a contributor to “This mans in our best and worst incarna- Others, however, can do flatly im- American Life” once recounted the ex- tions: moral giants and moral elves. possible things. Fairies, by most accounts, perience of asking a group of strangers And it would explain why vampires can turn invisible, tell the future, and at a party, in all sincerity, whether uni- and werewolves, which should rank shape-shift. Ghosts can shrink, expand, corns were endangered or extinct. One low on the list, what with the impos- time-travel, and walk through walls. sympathizes. Consider the giraffe. Con- sibility of radical metamorphosis, gen- Vampires can command the dead, sum- sider the kangaroo. erally rank quite high. When they are mon storms, control lesser animals like On top of all this, the biological the- not busy sprouting wings and fur, after bats and wolves, and—barring certain ory of plausibility also suffers from a all, such creatures look nearly indistin- interventions with stakes or sunlight— graver problem: its predictive powers guishable from us. live forever. Various other entities can, are faulty. By its logic, many creatures On the other hand, this theory leads through their own powers or via po- that we find highly believable should us quickly into ontological problems: tions, amulets, and spells, likewise instead rank near the bottom of the are we humans more like mermaids, or achieve the unachievable: levitate, tele- list. Angels, for instance, are physio- more like ghosts? Worse, like the bio- port, transmogrify, read minds, talk to logically unlikely: in addition to being logical theory of plausibility, it fails to animals, and, by occult means, charm, able to fly (fine for birds, unheard of account for some of our intuitions about confuse, possess, haunt, hex, heal, or kill. in hominids), they manifest a particu- supernatural beings. Why, for example, Like supernatural creatures, such larly extreme version of the limb prob- would a centaur, which is fifty per cent powers can be ranked in terms of plau- lem, since, per various sources, they human, strike us as less plausible than sibility. Which seems more likely to have not just two but in some cases a unicorn, which is zero per cent human? work: Harry Potter’s apparating ability

26 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 or Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Jedi mind trick? What makes a principle of physics fun- Morgan, of Occidental College, have If you ask me, it’s obviously the mind damental, in this case, is how early in addressed that question. (Full disclo- trick, with its real-life analogies of cha- our cognitive development we acquire sure: my sister, a cognitive scientist at risma and hypnosis, not to mention its it. For instance, we are born with an un- M.I.T., was Shtulman’s postdoctoral failure to defy any major laws of phys- derstanding of object permanence, and adviser, and has worked with McCoy ics. On the other hand, apparating— the two spells that violated it, by con- and Ullman.) Last year, Shtulman and vanishing from one place and appear- juring a frog into or out of existence, Morgan gave people pairs of magic ing in another—strikes me as more were ranked the most difficult. Simi- spells and asked them to determine plausible than time travel, possibly be- larly, we learn in infancy that objects which one in each pair was more diffi- cause we have many ways to move have what developmental psychologists cult. In every pair, both spells violated through space but only one way to move call “kind-identity”—they stay them- the same fundamental principle of through time. selves—which may explain why the physics, biology, or psychology, but each You can play this game forever, with next-hardest spell involved turning a varied in how much it violated a sec- any given set of magical powers. Con- frog into a mouse. The two easiest spells, ondary one. For instance, physics dic- trolling the elements, for instance, seems by comparison, entailed changing a frog’s tates that you can’t walk through any- considerably harder than controlling an color and levitating it, results that reflect thing solid, no matter what it’s made animal (unless, perhaps, it is a cat)— our awareness that both color and lo- of, but also that materials differ with but, if you are going to try to control cation are transient rather than fixed respect to properties like density and the elements, summoning a breeze seems features of the physical world. hardness. So which seems more diffi- easier than turning night to day. If you’re To further plumb our intuitions about cult: walking through a wall made of going to work magic on your own body, supernatural powers, McCoy and Ull- stone or a wall made of wood? becoming invisible seems more plausi- man ran a second study, which asked Overwhelmingly, the subjects chose ble than transmogrifying, perhaps be- the same questions but changed one of stone. They also determined that it cause of the abundance of everyday ways two things: either the target of the spell would be harder to levitate a bowling to conceal ourselves. Yet, if transmog- (Is it harder to conjure a frog or a cow?) ball than a basketball, and harder to rification is going to occur, I’d wager or the extent of its power (Is it harder grow an eye than a toe. Since levitation that it is easier to turn oneself into a to levitate a frog one foot or a hundred is categorically impossible, it shouldn’t wolf than one’s enemy into a toad. feet?). Resoundingly: a cow; a hundred matter that heavier objects, like bowl- As it happens, intuitions like these feet. These findings are striking, since ing balls and cows, are harder to lift. are broadly shared—a fact we know be- levitating something ninety-nine extra But, as Aris totle understood, it does. cause, speaking of implausible things, feet does not violate any additional prin- According to Shtulman and Morgan, two cognitive scientists at the Massa- ciples of physics. Nor does conjuring a that’s because our understanding of chusetts Institute of Technology have cow instead of a frog. So why would causation—our sense of which things shown it. Normally, Tomer Ullman stud- those variants seem more challenging? make other things happen—is not a ies our commonsense beliefs about phys- Happily, two other cognitive scien- series of separate if-then statements ics and psychology, while his colleague tists, Andrew Shtulman and Caitlin but a vast interconnected web, which John McCoy studies judgment and decision-making. Together, however, they figured that looking at how we reason about supernatural powers might shed light on how we reason about the real world. To that end, in 2015 they asked two hundred people, ranging in age from eighteen to eighty-three, to rank ten magic spells in order of difficulty. Since amphibians in magic have roughly the same status as rodents in science, all the spells featured things a sorcerer could do to a frog: conjure it into existence, conjure it out of existence, teleport it, levitate it, change its color, double its size, turn it into two frogs, turn it into a mouse, turn it to stone, and turn it invisible. The results help explain why I am dubious about apparating. Over all, the subjects felt that spells were more difficult when they violated “more funda- “Now imagine how good that would look completely sweated mental principles of intuitive physics.” through on the Twenty-third Street subway platform.” continues to govern our intuitions even we can make do, as my sister did, with to think about things that aren’t real when one particular strand snaps. “Sev- a good reason for why we haven’t found all the time, in ways both everyday and ering one link in a causal network,” they it, a strategy that lends plausibility not momentous. It is what we are doing write, “still leaves the rest of the network only to fairies in their tininess but also when we watch movies, write novels, intact.” And the more links you sever, to ghosts and other creatures capable weigh two different job offers, consider the more powerful—or, put differently, of vanishing. (It also gives us a reason, whether to have children. the less probable—your magic seems. finally, to object to the yeti: if it existed, As that last example suggests, per- we should have found proof by now.) haps the most extraordinary thing about erhaps, then, the solution we seek Alternatively, we can accept attes- this ability is that we can use it to nudge Pis mathematical: tally up all the tation as a form of evidence—which, the impossible into the realm of the real. fundamental principles violated by a across domains, we do all the time, We stare at the sky, watch a seagull bob supernatural creature and its powers since many of our convictions about on a thermal, build wax wings and then and—voilà, we’ll know where it stands the world concern things we ourselves fixed wings and then Apollo XI. We in the hierarchy of likelihood. Call this will never observe. Our sensitivity to dream of black Presidents and female the parsimony theory of plausibility: attestation explains why culture has scientists; we dream, still, of self-driving the fewer laws something violates, the such a potent influence on our intu- cars, a cure for cancer, peace in the Mid- more credible it will seem. The yeti, itions about the supernatural, which dle East. These last things are interest- for instance, doesn’t really violate any wouldn’t be the case if those intuitions ingly like dragons and also interestingly natural laws at all. Vampires, by con- were governed chiefly by biology or unlike dragons, in ways that suggest that trast, violate everything from the fact physics. It is why one community is we may be wise, after all, to treat impos- that things of substance cast shadows more likely to believe in fairies and sibility as something other than an ab- to Meteorology 101. another in zombies, and why, with solute condition. Alone among all the This parsimony theory is simple, el- churches peddling a more palliative creatures in the world, we can think about egant, and, unfortunately, wrong. If it version of Christianity, demons have fantastical things and, at least some of were correct, we’d all find gnomes, declined in plausibility vis-à-vis angels. the time, bring them into being. whose only distinguishing character- And it is why, if you’re European-Amer- Yet, in the end, what’s most remark- istics are diminutiveness, avarice, and ican, you’re more likely to believe in a able is not that our fantasies contain so a preference for living underground, vampire than in the coffin-dwelling, much reality; it is that our reality con- considerably more plausible than ghosts. night-roaming, life-force-sucking Chi- tains so much fantasy. Most of us un- Yet ghosts, despite their utter disregard nese jiangshi, even though, on the basis derstand that our perceptual systems, for biology and physics, persist in seem- of their characteristics, there is not, so far from passively reflecting the world ing highly believable. Part of that might to speak, a lot of daylight between them. around us, actively sort, select, distort, be explained by our existential condi- Patterns of evidence, a grasp of bi- ignore, and alter a huge amount of in- tion: most of us feel that we have a core ology, theories of physics: as it turns formation in order to construct reality self, separate and separable from our out, we need all of these to account for as we experience it. But reality as we body, and most of us find it hard to ac- our intuitions about supernatural be- experience it also departs from actual cept that we will someday cease to exist. ings, just as we need all of them to ex- reality in deeper ways. In actual reality, Part of it, however, might be explain any other complex cultural phe- space and time are inseparable, and nei- plained by one final theory of super- nomenon, from a tennis match to a bar ther one behaves anything like the way natural plausibility. Consider a defense fight to a bluegrass band. That might we perceive it; nor does light, and nor that my sister once mounted on behalf seem like a lot of intellectual firepower does gravity, and, in all likelihood, nor of the likelihood of fairies. Small im- for parsing the distinctions between does consciousness. Yet all the while we possible things, she contended, are more fairies and mermaids, but the ability to go on experiencing space like a map we believable than large impossible things, think about nonexistent things isn’t just can walk on, time like a conveyor belt because they could more easily exist handy for playing parlor games on Hal- we travel on, ourselves as brimming with without us noticing them. That argu- loween. It is utterly fundamental to agency, our lives as mattering urgently. ment isn’t based on our beliefs about who we are. Studying that ability helps That world, the one we inhabit every physics or biology; it’s based on epis- us learn about ourselves; exercising it day of our lives, is a yeti—a fantastical temology. From infancy on, we are ex- helps us learn about the world. A three- thing constructed out of bits and pieces traordinarily sensitive to patterns of year-old talking about an imaginary of reality plus the magic wand of the evidence (in fact, that’s how we acquire friend can illuminate the workings of mind. If we could hand it over to some many of our beliefs about physics and the human mind. A thirty-year-old superior being for consideration, it biology), so it seems reasonable to think conducting a thought experiment about might not even rank very high on the that evidence also determines our judg- twins, one of whom is launched into scale of plausibility. Then again, plau- ments about fantastical beings. space at birth and one of whom re- sibility itself might not rank very high Of course, it also seems unreasonable mains behind, can illuminate the work- on the scale of qualities we prize. Bet- to think that, since it’s unclear how we ings of the universe. As for those of us ter, perhaps, to know that what we feel would find evidence for the existence who are no longer toddlers and will in our happiest moments has some of nonexistent creatures. In its absence, never be Einstein: we use our ability truth to it: life is magical. 

28 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 something multibillionaire, he cannot SHOUTS & MURMURS possibly understand the complex web of corporate sponsors, subtly racist Repub licandonor networks, and overtly racist fans which makes grassroots appeals for social justice so deeply annoying. The player will surrender his luxury car and invigorating workouts for a luxury pri vate jet and interminable tasting menus, capped oﬀ by a twohour argument with the owner’s third wife over the trust fund of his skibumturned“pot entrepreneur” stepson. The owner, for his part, will re ciprocate by also spending the day as a white seventy something multibillionaire.

Halftime Reënactments of Classic Scenes ACCEPTABLE FORMS OF from “Gone with the Wind” Because progress cannot be achieved PROTEST FOR N.F.L. PLAYERS until we understand our past, the league encourages players to educate fans— BY YONI BRENNER and themselves—by reliving the pas sion and the romance of the Old South Like many of our fans, we believe that Locking Arms through the timeless characters of everyone should stand for the national an- As demonstrated by more than a dozen Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, Ashley them. . . . The controversy over [players kneel- teams across the N.F.L., players of all Wilkes, and Mammy. Players are en ing during] the anthem is a barrier to having honest conversations and making real progress races locking arms while standing (or couraged to choose scenes at their own on the underlying issues. We need to move standkneeling) during the anthem discretion, although the league rec past this controversy, and we want to do that delivers a powerfully ambiguous mes ommends skipping the part where together with our players. sage: it signals that institutional rac Rhett drops to one knee to propose —N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell. ism in America is a devastating real to Scarlett. Actually, just skip all the Stand-Kneeling ity, but it also suggests that maybe it’s parts with kneeling. A player protesting racial injustice is per already fixed? mitted to kneel during the anthem, pro Reverse Psychology vided that he demonstrates a vertical Twitter Boycott If the sight of darkskinned players posture, that his left knee maintains a The league strongly supports the right kneeling during the anthem provokes minimum angle of a hundred and eighty of a player to abstain from sharing his racially fuelled vitriol among white degrees, and that his right knee main indignation over the latest police shoot N.F.L. fans, won’t not kneeling “trick” tains a minimum angle of a hundred and ing/neoNazi rally/mass disenfranchise the same fans into a serious and mu eighty degrees (i.e., standing). If the ment of black voters via Twitter, Insta tually respectful dialogue about racial kneeling (standing) player chooses, he gram, and other socialmedia platforms injustice? And, even if it doesn’t, it’s may further protest by placing his right until such time as racial justice is worth a shot, right? palm just a smidgen to the right or the achieved and/or after the Super Bowl. left of his heart, in order to represent the Playing Football smidgen of discord separating our great Sock Puppets The N.F.L. believes that sometimes nation from racial harmony. A player protesting racial injustice is the best protests are the simplest. Per permitted to wear one (1) sock puppet haps the most powerful statement Raised Fist on his right hand to “sing along” to the that a player can make is to continu A player protesting racial injustice is national anthem in a humorous—but ously collide with other players for permitted to raise his right fist during respectful—way. To avoid being con sixty minutes—risking catastrophic the anthem, as long as the fist is in fused with a raised fist, the sock pup injury and irreversible brain trauma— side one of those oversized foam fin pet must be held at chest level or be with frequent commercial interrup gers. In a gesture of solidarity, foam covered by an oversized foam finger, tions. The N.F.L. strongly supports fingers will be supplied by owners, free which, as previously mentioned, will the right of all of its players not named of charge, and emblazoned with a va be provided by owners free of charge. Colin Kaepernick to express their riety of funny catchphrases, including First Amendment rights by play “Sock it to me,” “Talk to the hand,” Owner for a Day ing football until such time as racial and “Bazinga!”—you know, just to keep Until a player walks (or is chauffeured) justice is achieved and/or after the

LUCI GUTIÉRREZ LUCI things light. a mile in the wing tips of a white, seventy Super Bowl. 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 29 as we sat down to talk, Evans, a trim ANNALS OF SCIENCE sixtysomething in a striped polo shirt, removed a knee brace from a coffee table, making room for a mug of peppermint THE EXERCISE PILL tea; he was trying to soothe his stomach, having picked up a bug while hik- A drug to give you a workout’s benefits without the sweat. ing in the Andes. Evans began exper- imenting with 516, as the drug is BY NICOLA TWILLEY commonly known, in 2007. He hoped that it might offer clues about how the genes that control human metabolism are switched on and off, a question that has occupied him for most of his career. Mice love to run, Evans told me, and when he puts an exercise wheel in their cage they typically log several miles a night. These nocturnal drills are not simply a way of dealing with the stress of laboratory life, as scientists from Leiden University, in the Netherlands, demonstrated in a charming experiment conducted a few years ago. They left a small cagelike structure containing a training wheel in a quiet corner of an urban park, under the surveillance of a motion-activated night-vision camera. The resulting footage showed that the wheel was in near-constant use by wild mice. Despite the fact that their daily activities—foraging for food, searching for mates, avoiding preda- tors—provided a more than adequate workout, the mice voluntarily chose to run, spending up to eighteen minutes at a time on the wheel, and returning for repeat sessions. (Several frogs and slugs also made use of the amenity, possibly by accident.) The molecular changes caused by physical exertion are still poorly understood. Still, as the example of Lance Arm- strong Human makes clear, sometimes t was late summer, and the gray tow- occasional waddle toward a bowl brim- exercise alone is not enough. When Iers of the Salk Institute, in San Diego, ming with pellets of laboratory standard Evans began giving 516 to laboratory shaded seamlessly into ocean fog. The “Western Diet,” which consists almost mice that regularly used an exercise austere, marble-paved central court- entirely of fat and sugar and is said to wheel, he found that, after just four yard was silent and deserted. The south taste like cookie dough. The mouse was weeks on the drug, they had increased lawn, a peaceful retreat often used for lethargic, lolling in a fresh layer of bed- their endurance—how far they could Tai Chi and yoga classes, was likewise ding, rolls of fat visible beneath thin- run, and for how long—by as much as devoid of life, but through vents built ning, greasy-looking fur. Lance Arm- seventy-five per cent. Meanwhile, their into its concrete border one could de- strong Mouse had been raised under waistlines (“the cross-sectional area,” tect a slight ammoniac whiff from more exactly the same conditions, yet, despite in scientific parlance) and their body- than two thousand cages of laboratory its poor diet and lack of exercise, it was fat percentage shrank; their insulin re- rodents below. In a teak-lined office lean and taut, its eyes and coat shiny as sistance came down; and their muscle- overlooking the ocean, the biologist it snuffled around its cage. The secret to composition ratio shifted toward so- Ron Evans introduced me to two spec- its healthy appearance and youthful en- called slow-twitch fibres, which tire imens: Couch Potato Mouse and Lance ergy, Evans explained, lay in a daily dose slowly and burn fat, and which pre- Armstrong Mouse. of GW501516: a drug that confers the dominate in long-distance runners. Couch Potato Mouse had been raised beneficial effects of exercise without the In human terms, this would be like a to serve as a proxy for the average Amer- need to move a muscle. Fun-Run jogger waking up with the ican. Its daily exercise was limited to an Exercise has its discomforts, after all: body of Mo Farah. Evans published his

30 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY JACK SACHS initial results in the journal Cell, in 2008. tive in treating diabetics, the pharma- ers abandoned theirs. Since then, he This year, he showed that, if his cookie- ceutical industry’s most lucrative mar- has developed a less potent version that dough-scarfing mice were allowed to ket. Willson’s team tested 516, first in a he hopes will also be less toxic. exercise, the ones that had been given test tube and then on middle- aged, obese And 516 is not the only “exercise 516 for eight weeks could run for nearly monkeys, and the results were exciting. pill” in development. At the University an hour and half longer than their drug- “We got this dramatic increase in good of Southampton, on England’s south free peers. “We can replace training cholesterol, and a commensurate de- coast, I met with a chemical biologist with a drug,” he said. crease in the bad kind,” he told me renamed Ali Tavassoli, a lanky, youthful The drug works by mimicking the cently, noting that 516 also lowered forty-two-year-old with a chilled-out effect of endurance exercise on one insulin levels and triglycerides. The demeanor, which gives way to geeky particular gene: PPAR-delta. Like all combination of effects made 516 seem enthusiasm when he starts explaining genes, PPAR-delta issues instructions like a promising treatment for what’s the particulars of protein interactions. in the form of chemicals—protein-based known as “metabolic syndrome,” a clus- Tavassoli came across his drug, Com- signals that tell cells what to be, what ter of symptoms—including obesity, pound 14, more or less by chance, while to burn for fuel, which waste prod- high blood pressure, and high blood designing a way to screen a new class ucts to excrete, and so on. By binding sugar—that is a precursor to heart dis- of cancer drug, and he still seems some- itself to the receptor for this gene, 516 ease and diabetes. More than a third of what bemused by the fact that his lab reconfigures it in a way that alters the adult Americans are estimated to have is now a front-runner in the race to messages the gene sends—boosting the metabolic syndrome, which made 516’s develop an exercise pill. In a recent signal to break down and burn fat and potential profits seem rather attractive. paper, he and his colleagues showed simultaneously suppressing instructions GlaxoSmithKline took the drug all the that Compound 14 caused the blood- related to breaking down and burning way through Phase II clinical trials in glucose levels of obese, sedentary mice sugar. Evans’s doped mice ran farther, humans, successfully demonstrating that on a high-fat diet to approach normal in part because their muscles had been it lowered cholesterol levels without any levels in just a week, while melting away told to burn fat and save carbohydrates, problematic side effects. five per cent of their body weight. It which meant that they took longer to But, in 2007, GlaxoSmithKline de- works, he explained, by fooling cells “hit the wall”—the painful sensation cided to shelve 516. The company was into thinking that they are running out encountered when muscles exhaust their about to embark on Phase III trials— of energy, causing them to burn through glucose store. the large, expensive, double-blind, more of the body’s fuel reserves. In dozens of other ways, 516 trig- placebo-controlled trials that are re- Meanwhile, in Boston, Bruce Spie- gers biochemical changes that take place quired for F.D.A. approval—when the gelman, a Harvard cell biologist, has when people train for a marathon— results of a long-term-toxicity test discovered two potent exercise hor- changes that have substantial health came in. Mice that had been given mones. One of them, irisin, turns met- benefits. Evans refers to the compound large doses of the drug over the course abolically inert white fat in mice into as “exercise in a pill.” But although of two years (a lifetime for a lab ro- mitochondria-packed, energy-burning Evans understands the mechanism be- dent) developed cancer at a higher rate brown fat, and Spiegelman said that hind 516’s effects at the most minute than their dope-free peers. Tumors he’s seen evidence that it may also boost level, he doesn’t know what molecule appeared all over their bodies, from levels of healthy proteins in the area of triggers that process naturally during the tongue to the testes. The results the brain associated with learning and exercise. Indeed, one of the most sig- made GlaxoSmithKline’s decision all memory. He is now researching a third nificant challenges facing anyone who but inevitable. If a large dose of the compound, and when I visited his lab wants to develop an exercise pill is that drug seemed to increase the risk of he invited me to look through a mi- the biological processes unleashed by cancer at the end of a mouse lifespan, croscope at a petri dish of sleek, round physical activity are still relatively mys- the only way to conclusively prove that muscle fibres—a kind of mouse tar- terious. For all the known benefits of even a lower dose would not have a tare—awaiting treatment with the a short loop around the park, scientists similar effect on humans would be to chemical. They were twitching spas- are, for the most part, incapable of ex- run a seventy-year trial. Without that modically. “It’s spontaneous,” Spiegel- plaining how exercise does what it does. proof, the F.D.A. would likely judge man said, as I recoiled. “The mem- the potential risks of taking the drug branes are electrically active, and it’s he compound 516 was developed to be greater than the actual dangers almost like static on a radio. They just Tin the late nineties, in the laborato- of high cholesterol. fire occasionally.” The experiment— ries of GlaxoSmithKline. Its creator, a Elsewhere, however, work on 516 effectively, exercise in a dish—is an chemical biologist named Tim Willson, persisted. Because Willson, in 2001, efficient way of screening a large num- was in charge of a research group tasked had published his description of the ber of chemicals before selecting the with prospecting for chemicals that could chemical’s structure and clinical effects, most promising candidates for trials bind to the PPAR-delta receptor. The other labs were able to synthesize the on intact mice. search had been prompted by an earlier chemical for research use. Ron Evans I noticed that the fibres were a deep discovery: compounds that bound to a began his work on 516 at Salk the same red, almost like raw tuna, and Spiegel- similar gene receptor were highly effec- year that GlaxoSmithKline’s research- man explained that this is a familiar

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 31 property of slow-twitch muscle, the fat-burning, fatigue-resistant kind called upon during endurance train- DECLARATION ing. Fast-twitch muscle, which is more powerful but tires quickly, and which He has runs on carbohydrate, is pinker. The piscine comparison is not incidental. sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people. During his research, Spiegelman discovered that tuna have a mutation in a gene that plays an important role in He has plundered our— determining muscle-fibre ratios. As a result, all the muscle in tuna is slow- twitch, which is the reason for the dis- ravaged our— tinctive color and meaty texture of a tuna steak. Spiegelman is now collab- orating with other researchers with the destroyed the lives of our— goal of inserting the tuna version of that gene into easily farmed fish, such as carp or salmon, in order to “tunafy” taking away our— them and thus ease demand for wild bluefin. Although Spiegelman, Evans, and abolishing our most valuable— Tavassoli study different compounds, they have all followed what could be described as the metal-detector method and altering fundamentally the Forms of our— of exercise-pill development: scanning thousands of chemicals in order to find one or two that convey some of the difference in protein structure between of exercise, told me. “The driver sits at benefits of exercise. Other researchers the before and after samples. They found the front and drives the bus, and the are tackling the problem from the op- more than a thousand changes, of which conductor hops on and off the bus and posite direction—attempting to doc- only ten per cent can be explained by climbs up and down the stairs taking ument all the biochemical reactions current medical science. For anyone tickets and getting people to their seats.” that exercise unleashes, which will cre- wanting to develop an exercise pill, these Of the thousands of drivers and con- ate a sort of road map for drug devel- new data are both promising and daunt- ductors working on London’s buses at opment. Next year, the National Insti- ing. “You know, people talk about ex- the time, the vast majority were men, tutes of Health will embark on an ercise mimetics,” James said. “But what and most came from a similar social ambitious five-year study to measure are you going to mimic?” background. The only substantial differ- every major molecule changed by ex- ence between them, in aggregate, was ercise in approximately three thousand he red double-decker buses of Lon- their daily activity levels. people of both sexes and all age groups, Tdon are famous around the world. Morris spent hours on buses, mon- and with a variety of preëxisting fit- Less well known is the fact that the itoring how much time the drivers spent ness levels. Maren Laughlin, who is first quantitative, systematic medical sitting (ninety per cent of their shift, leading the program, explained that study of exercise took place aboard on average) and counting the numbers the technology to create a molecular them. In the late nineteen-forties, a of steps the conductors climbed each snapshot of the human body in mo- young British epidemiologist named day (between five hundred and seven tion has only become available in the Jerry Morris was looking through the hundred and fifty). Then, with the help past decade. “We’ve studied human postmortem folios of a hospital in the of Britain’s newly established National metabolism for many, many years, but East End when he noticed an alarm- Health Service, he went through the almost always at rest,” she said. It is as ing increase in the frequency of heart busmen’s medical records. Morris was if our knowledge of how the brain works attacks during the first half of the twen- stunned by how powerfully the data had come from observing only people tieth century. Others had seen the same bore out his initial hypothesis: the sed- who were asleep. trend but nobody had an explanation. entary drivers were almost twice as likely In Australia, a biologist named David Morris, however, suspected that the as the mobile conductors to drop dead James recently took the first step in this frequency of heart attack might cor- of a sudden heart attack. He followed direction, studying muscle biopsied relate with sedentary occupations, and up with what he described as an “epi- from four young, healthy men before so he turned to the double-decker bus. demiology of uniforms”—a painstak- and after ten minutes of flat-out cycling “If you’ve been to London, then you ing comparison of the waist size of trou- on an exercise bike. James and his know,” Bill Hayes, a writer and pho- sers issued to both groups, at every colleagues itemized every measurable tographer who is at work on a history age—which established that drivers

32 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 the body, it would be a good thing.” Until the Victorian era, when sport- ing activity came to be regarded as a moral safeguard against dissipation, In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for vigorous exercise was still cautioned against, particularly in the case of Redress in the most humble terms: women. It was thought to lead to strain, fatigue, and even untimely death. Our repeated Of course, for most people, through most of human history, not moving Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. has not been an option. The illustrated exercises in “De Arte Gymnastica” were aimed at Renaissance princelings; the We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration feudal peasants laboring on the nobil- ity’s vast estates could hardly avoid and settlement here. sustained and strenuous activity. Only since industrialization, which made physical exertion a choice rather than —taken Captive a necessity, have scientists begun to quantify its virtues—and, in the pro- on the high Seas cess, to increase the burden of guilt on those who fail to squeeze in enough to bear— of it around the constraints of their sedentary jobs. —Tracy K. Smith In the sixty years following Mor- ris’s pioneering work, the benefits of exercise have been measured in study were significantly bulkier around the man well, he must also take exercise.” after study. Researchers soon silenced midsection than their conductor peers. By contrast, medieval Europeans tended any remaining doubts over Morris’s Morris later confirmed a similar cor- to regard the body as a vessel for sin, findings, repeatedly demonstrating that relation in postal workers, with seden- and exercise as a distraction from the physical activity helped reduce deaths tary counter clerks showing a much more important work of improving from heart disease and stroke. Subse- higher incidence of cardiovascular dis- the soul. “The spirit flourishes more quent studies—examining, variously, ease than postmen, who did their rounds strongly and more actively in an infirm twins, the Amish, Danish workers on foot or by bike. and weakly body,” the twelfth-century forced to take the elevator, and Dal- When the papers presenting these French abbot St. Bernard of Clairvaux las students prescribed bed rest— findings appeared in The Lancet, Mor- assured his followers. Avicenna, a Per- showed that a lack of exercise was tied ris’s conclusion—that exercise was med- sian scientist whose view of bodily to the early onset of more than forty ically important and that its absence health was substantially more enlight- chronic diseases or conditions, from resulted in death and disease—was met ened than that of his European con- constipation and colon cancer to de- with surprise and even disbelief. “Puz- temporaries, took an intermediate pression and diabetes. Today, more zling,” the Aberdeen Evening Express view—advocating moderate exercise than a hundred thousand published declared, noting that Morris’s studies but warning of the dangers posed by papers testify to the connection be- failed to take into account what were its heating effects and its capacity to tween exercise and health. Barely a then generally accepted risk factors for spread preëxisting impurities through- week goes past without a headline heart attack, such as a temperamental out the body. linking exercise to stronger bones, a propensity toward “nervous strain.” There also seemed to be some con- reduced risk of dementia, the ability Mainstream medical wisdom held that fusion about what exercise actually to learn new languages, and, of course, heart attacks were most likely the re- was. Hayes mentioned “De Arte Gym- better sex. Countless institutions, insult of high blood pressure, and that nastica,” a 1569 treatise by an Italian cluding the World Health Organiza- physical activity had nothing to do nobleman named Girolamo Mercuri- tion and the Centers for Disease Con- with either. ale, which is considered the first book trol, recommend at least a hundred Up to this point, historical attitudes on sports medicine. The forms of ex- and fifty minutes of exercise a week. toward exercise had varied, according ercise Mercuriale discussed included Such is the weight of medical evidence to Hayes. The Ancient Greeks were being a passenger in a boat rowed by that, if something could be developed fans. Plato, a former competitive wres- someone else. “It’s kind of sweet,” to safely mimic the benefits of exer- tler, praised the mental-health benefits Hayes said. “He believed that because cise, it would likely be the most valu- of physical exertion, and Hippocrates it causes movement and movement able pharmaceutical in the world. Yet, wrote, “Eating alone will not keep a had an effect on the humors within at the same time, the sheer range of

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 33 those benefits suggests that it is un- don’t yet understand. Nonetheless, that, of all the deaths in Europe in 2008, likely that any single drug could have Evans, James, and Spiegelman are all seven per cent could be attributed to such wide-ranging effects. confident that legal drugs mimicking inactivity—more than twice as many some of the effects of exercise are on as were caused by obesity. “So which he real problem, according to Ron their way, sometime within the next ten is better for those people?” Willson, TEvans, lies in the term “exercise,” to fifteen years. Ali Tavassoli, the South- the original developer of 516, asked me. which is too general to be useful. “You ampton researcher, is more skeptical. “Being told—again—to exercise for have to be more granular about it,” he “Newspapers, the media—they always thirty minutes a day, or taking a pill?” told me. He suspects that a mere hand- get me in to be the cynical Brit on this One could respond with another ful of biochemical pathways will prove one,” he said, laughing at the gung-ho question: Why can’t humans just be to be responsible for the majority of attitude of his American colleagues. more like mice? Why do so many of us exercise’s benefits. Among the current His main work lies in cancer research, choose to skip exercise in favor of watch- field of exercise-pill competitors, Evans and he is all too aware that dramatic ing TV or catching up on e-mail? I is the closest to the finish line. He has changes in cell metabolism are linked talked to Theodore Garland, a biolo- set up a company, Mitobridge, to take to the growth of tumors. His fear is gist at the University of California, Riv- his improved version of 516 to market; that artificially increasing the rate at erside, who has studied variations in this summer, it launched Phase I tri- which muscle cells burn energy cannot voluntary physical activity between spe- als in humans. help but have long-term consequences cies. He pointed to theories that much The F.D.A. doesn’t currently recog- elsewhere in the body. “Not all of them of human development has been mo- nize metabolic syndrome, let alone lack are going to be good news,” he said. tivated by the imperative to conserve of exercise, as a disease. Anyone who All drugs have risks: the issue is energy, and suggested that, over evolu- wants to market an exercise pill must whether the possible benefits make the tionary time, different species tend to therefore get it approved as a treatment risks worthwhile. For someone with develop neurochemical reward systems for a disease that does meet the F.D.A.’s Duchenne, taking 516 would make per- that make movement more appealing, criteria, in the hope that, once it is on fect sense. There are a handful of other or less, based on their survival needs. the market, its use will spread to en- contexts where a short course of an Instead of designing a pill to replace compass a wider range of conditions. exercise pill could be extremely useful. exercise in humans, Garland favors a Evans pointed out that statins were Astronauts, for example, routinely spend different pharmaceutical solution. “Per- initially approved, in the late eighties, two hours a day exercising on equip- sonally, I’ve been more interested in the specifically for people who had had a ment designed to mitigate muscle at- possibility of drugs that would make heart attack; three decades later, they’re rophy and bone loss caused by low grav- us more motivated to exercise,” he said. routinely prescribed for tens of mil- ity, but they still return to Earth after lions of people who have only high a six-month space-station stint with taste for exercise, I gradually real- cholesterol. With this example in mind, mild osteoporosis and significantly A ized, was something that all the pill Mitobridge is testing its drug as a treat- weakened muscles. Other people for researchers had in common. Spiegelman ment for Duchenne Muscular Dystro- whom an exercise pill might be a gam- follows a strict regimen of kickboxing, phy, an incurable genetic disease that ble worth taking include patients re- running, and lifting weights. Tavassoli is affects one in five thousand covering from surgery or a surfer and rock climber; Evans and males, causing their mus- attached to a ventilator. James are cyclists. Willson is a triathlete, cles to break down and Then, there are the elderly. who recently completed his eleventh leading inexorably to death After the age of forty, all Half Ironman. “I train because that’s at an average age of twenty- of us, even the athletic, lose part of the way I live,” he said “It’s part six. “The economics of get- about eight per cent of our of my personality. I love that discipline ting a drug approved make muscle mass each decade, of having to exercise regularly.” Taking Duchenne a good target,” with a further fifteen-per- a pill, he said, would feel like cheating. Evans said. “It’s a disease cent decline between the “In a lot of people’s eyes, the devel- for which there are no good ages of seventy and eighty. opment of an exercise pill is a bad thing,” drugs, and the kids who The resulting frailty can be Evans said. “They say we’re trying to have it will all die young. That’s an eas- lethal: nearly half of seniors hospital- undermine exercise in America.” The ier sell to the F.D.A.” ized for a hip fracture never go home. more accurate charge is that Evans’s re- Even if everything goes smoothly, The cost-benefit analysis becomes search may redefine exercise—for bet- however, 516 is multiple trials and sev- murkier in the case of the estimated ter and for worse—in much the same eral years away from reaching the mar- eighty per cent of American adults who way that other fields of metabolic re- ket. And although Evans is convinced do not get their recommended hun- search have gradually redefined food. that his improved version of the drug dred and fifty minutes of exercise each During the nineteenth and twentieth is safe, any molecule that affects met- week. From a public-health perspec- centuries, as scientists discovered vita- abolic processes is necessarily interact- tive, physical inactivity is one of the mins, minerals, and phytochemicals, ing with a variety of other molecules most significant problems of the twenty- “food” was transformed into “nutrients.” throughout the body, in ways that we first century. One recent study found That conceptual shift paved the way for

34 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 dietary pyramids, labelling laws, the rise of so-called superfoods, and even wholesale food replacements such as Soylent. In the coming years, as research provides us with new ways of understanding and quantifying physical activity, our relationship with exercise will surely change. A morning jog will be reclassified as a good source of beneficial chemicals; sports may be redesigned to optimize their molecular outcomes. A scientific understanding of the parts may well come at the expense of appre- ciating the immeasurable whole.

lthough 516 has not been approved Aas a drug, plenty of people are taking it. Once the structure of a new compound has been published, chemical-supply laboratories are free to synthesize it for sale, “for research purposes only.” 516 is easy and relatively cheap to make, and it is readily available online. The earliest adopters were élite athletes looking for an edge. The World Anti-Doping Agency added 516 to its list of prohibited substances in 2009, and testing for it is now routine. Since then, at least six professional cy- “If a tree falls in the forest and hits a certain individual, clists have been suspended after being would he still be able to testify?” caught taking the drug. More recently, 516 has become popular among the kind of men—and they are almost all •• men—who frequent messages boards with names like “Think Steroids,” “Swol to start running with her, but his bulk a twenty-milligram bottle of 516 arrived, HQ ,” and “Juiced Muscle.” All across made him hesitate. Still, he signed up taped into a sealed Tyvek envelope. It this peculiar corner of the Internet, for a five-kilometre race, mostly to sup- was about the size of the complimentary guys whose avatars typically feature port her. He started taking 516 five days shampoo you get in hotels and con- headless selfies in body-building poses before the race. “I was just planning to tained a cloudy white liquid with a faint are dosing themselves with 516 and walk a good bit,” he wrote. “But I actu- smell of nail-polish remover. A label in- sharing their reactions—usually anon- ally ran with her the entire time. It blew structed me to “see accompanying in- ymously, using such screen names as my mind how good I felt.” formation”—there wasn’t any—for dos- Macho313, nofatchix, and Big Beef. Iron Julius still takes 516, although age instructions. Below that were two I joined a couple of forums to ask lately he has noticed a decrease in the contradictory phrases: “Rx only” and these men about their experiences using drug’s quality. “I’m a volunteer firefighter “Not for human consumption.” 516. Most were unwilling to talk, let so stamina at times is very important,” I called Tim Willson, the drug’s de- alone be identified, but eventually a he explained. “If you research, many signer, to ask whether he would take it. member of the MuscleChemistry.com police and firefighters are on some form “No,” he said, without hesitation. I con- forum agreed to correspond with me, of performance-enhancing substance tacted the other researchers and found on the condition that I refer to him only as the jobs are sometimes physically that none of them had ever taken an ex- by his online handle, Iron Julius. He demanding.” Iron Julius told me that ercise pill, in any form. I put the bottle told me that he lived in a small town around a third of the people he sees at to one side of my desk while I pondered in the South and was a father of three. the gym are using 516, without any side not only the advisability of ingesting a He began taking the drug sometime in effects that he’s heard about. When I likely carcinogen but also the fact that I 2012, having heard about it on another asked whether he would recommend actually enjoy exercise and get plenty board. “It wasn’t yet very popular but it, his response was, “Hell yeah man, of it. Since then, the bottle has sat on the little info there was made it sound try it. It don’t mess with hormones and my desk, undisturbed. During the past like something I might like,” he wrote. it increases performance.” month, its contents appear to have de- Iron Julius’s wife had been nagging him So I ordered some. A few weeks later, veloped a faint, yellowish tinge. 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 35 An Iraq veteran and the first Hindu in Congress, Gabbard is a compelling figure. When she was elected, Rachel Maddow said, “She is on th

PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER BOHLER PROFILES AGAINST THE TIDE

What’s behind Tulsi Gabbard’s unconventional politics?

BY KELEFA SANNEH

hen Tulsi Gabbard arrived action figure, fabulously out of place at Lihue Airport, on the Ha- among her besuited colleagues. “She’s Wwaiian island of Kauai, she almost straight from central casting, was greeted with a lei made of vibrant if you need a heroine,” Van Jones, the plumeria flowers, a small bottle of co- progressive activist, says. Trey Gowdy, conut water, a bagful of mangoes, and the South Carolina Republican, is a profusion of alerts on her phone. It one of her closest friends in Con- was Memorial Day, and Gabbard had gress. He first spied her on the House agreed to speak at a ceremony honor- floor, sitting on the Republican side ing veterans at a local military ceme- of the aisle. “This sounds terrible to tery. Many of the people there would say, but it’s also true—you know, she’s be her brothers and sisters in arms: Gab- cute,” he says. “So if you’re sitting on bard has served, since 2003, in the Army that side, and it’s a boring speech, National Guard, in which capacity she you’re going to notice.” The night after completed a tour of duty in Iraq. And Gabbard was elected, Rachel Mad- almost all the people there would be dow made a prediction on MSNBC: her constituents—in 2012, Gabbard was “She is on the fast track to being very elected to the United States Congress, famous.” representing Hawaii’s Second District, On the way to the ceremony, Finn which includes all of the Hawaiian ar- stopped at her house so that Gabbard chipelago outside Honolulu, the capi- could change into her military uni- tal. Gabbard found her local field rep- form, which she had brought along, resentative, Kaulana Finn, gave her a in a dry cleaner’s bag, as carry-on lug- hug, and climbed into her car. “As soon gage. Finn gave her a motherly ap- as I land here, I get text messages from praisal. “Do you have your headpiece?” people saying, ‘I heard you’re on Kauai— she asked, then corrected herself. “Par- what are you doing?’ ” Gabbard said, don me. I don’t know the proper ter- grinning. “I don’t think it’s possible to minology for military gear.” do anything here without everybody Gabbard chuckled and offered the knowing about it.” right word: “Cover.” She had hers, and All politicians must act as if they soon she was standing at solemn atten- enjoy patriotic ceremonies, but Gab- tion at the Kauai Veterans Cemetery, bard is one of the few who seem as if where the graves were sprigged with they were not acting. She is thirty-six, American flags and a local Junior and has a knack for projecting both R.O.T.C. troop was lining the entrance. youthful joy and grownup gravitas. It was a hot but breezy day, with birds Her political profile is similarly hy- chirping and a few wild chickens strut- brid. She is a fervent Bernie Sanders ting among the tombstones. There was supporter with equally fervent bipar- a podium flanked by wreaths in front of tisan tendencies—known, roughly a tiled mural depicting a mournful beach equally, for her concern for the treat- scene: a line of battlefield crosses, two ment of veterans and her opposition empty boots, an upright rifle, pastel clouds to U.S. intervention abroad. She is in the distance. also a vegetarian and a practicing Gabbard began with a personal trib- Hindu—the first Hindu ever elected ute to those whose service had cost to Congress—as well as a lifelong them their lives. “Like so many of you, surfer and an accomplished athlete. I woke up this morning with a heavy On Capitol Hill, she is often regarded heart,” she said. “Remembering that id, “She is on the fast track to being very famous.” as a glamorous anomaly: a Hawaiian time in training, or downrange, when

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 37 things were so crappy that all you could When Gabbard entered politics, “Tulsi is great,” one man said. “She’s do was laugh, know that we had each she was only twenty-one, and in those really good on the positions.” other, and embrace the suck. We re- early years she was a social conserva- “Most of them,” a woman replied. member that last roll call, when their tive, pro-life and active in the fight “She’s a riddle to me.” name was called with no response.” against same-sex marriage. She is now She talked about how she had never pro-choice and pro-same-sex-mar- n a steamy summer day in Washing- seen her father cry until the day she riage: on these and other issues, she Oton, Gabbard was shuttling between came home, unharmed, from Iraq. Any- has evolved enough to be almost— her office, in the Longworth Building, one sitting close enough might have but not quite—at home in the con- and the House floor, where her presence noticed that her eyes were gleaming. temporary Democratic Party, which was urgently but irregularly required, for But she also sounded a note of polit- is increasingly progressive, particu- votes. In keeping with congressional tra- ical protest. “Too often we have found, larly on issues of gender and sexual dition, she has filled her office with me- throughout our country’s history, we orientation. The exact nature and ex- mentos of her home state, including a have people in positions of power who tent of Gabbard’s political evolution plaque, at the receptionist’s desk, bearing make offhanded comments about send- is not easy to apprehend, especially a friendly but blunt message: “ALOHA ing a few thousand troops here, fifty since Hawaii is not known for polit- SPIRIT REQUIRED HERE. IF YOU CAN’T thousand there, a hundred thousand ical centrism. It is, by some measures, SHARE IT TODAY, PLEASE VISIT US SOME there, intervening militarily here, or the bluest state in the country: in last OTHER TIME.” Gabbard flies back to Ha- starting a war there—without seem- year’s election, Hillary Clinton beat waii whenever she gets a long enough ing to understand or appreciate the Donald Trump there, sixty-two per weekend, but she has come to enjoy her cost of war,” she said. “If our troops cent to thirty per cent, her biggest vic- circumscribed and frenetic existence in are sent to fight a war, it must be the tory anywhere besides the District of Washington. She lives across the Anacos- last option. Not the first.” Columbia. Many of those Clinton tia River, on the city’s southeastern edge, Friends and supporters sometimes voters were unhappily surprised when, with her sister, Vrindavan, who is a U.S. describe Gabbard as “poised,” which less than two weeks after the election, marshal, and Vrindavan’s husband, whose may also be a way of acknowledging Gabbard agreed to meet with Trump responsibilities include the preparation of that she is not particularly sponta- to make her case for a noninterven- vegetarian meals. When Gabbard is in neous. She engages audiences with a tionist foreign policy. A few months town, she finds that she can spend days voice that is slow, reassuring, and later, she flew to Syria and met with in constant motion, meeting and voting faintly hypnotic. Her resting expres- Bashar al-Assad, who is presiding over and meeting some more, while hardly ever sion is a sympathetic smile, and she a brutal civil war; she and he seemed leaving the warren of federal buildings. has perfected an effective double-hug to agree that the United States should Even her daily recreation is there: she is technique: a warm, long embrace when not intervene to stop it. a member of the famously tough bipar- she meets someone, and an even lon- Earlier this year, a handful of im- tisan workout group led by Markwayne ger one when saying goodbye, as if to passioned progressives gathered in Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, who signal that something meaningful has downtown Honolulu for an event happens to be a former professional mixed- transpired. “We love you, Tulsi,” some- known as Resist Trump Tuesday, in martial-arts fighter. one called out when she finished. which they visited their senators and Like all congressional offices, Gab- “I love you, too,” she called back. Congress members—all Democrats— bard’s receives a steady and variegated In Gabbard’s telling, her comfort and urged them to fight harder. They stream of guests: curious visitors, hopeful with crowds is the result of hard work, got a friendly reception at the office of advocates, aggrieved constituents, old and a philosophical breakthrough. She Senator Brian Schatz, and one partic- friends. On this morning, she had a brief was unusually shy as a girl, but even- ipant presented some red flowers at the discussion with a couple of missile-defense tually she realized that her anxiety was office of Senator Mazie Hirono, who experts and then rushed over to the Cap- not just inconvenient but indefensi- has been battling kidney cancer. But at itol for a series of uncontroversial votes ble. She remembers thinking, “If all Gabbard’s office the staffer who met on sex trafficking. The chamber was mainly of my fears are coming from selfish them was warier: he read a list of her deserted, except for the tourist galleries, thoughts, then that kind of defeats the recent legislative positions, including which were full of families, none of whom, whole point of what I want to do.” So her support for a fifteen-dollar mini- it seemed, had been warned about the she trained herself to talk to strang- mum wage, then listened politely as day’s agenda. “These votes are separated ers, to “share that aloha with them.” they expressed their concerns. (They by two minutes,” Gabbard said. “So, if In the Hawaiian language, “aloha” can wanted a more vigorous congressional you’re not paying attention, you can end be a salutation or a valediction, but it investigation into Russian collusion up voting wrong on a bunch of things.” also refers to a spirit defined in state with Trump’s campaign, legalization of Gabbard does not consider herself to law as “the coordination of mind and sex work, action on climate change, be especially loyal to any leader or fac- heart within each person.” (Hawaiian funding for the arts.) As they spilled tion. “No one from the D-triple-C”— officials are directed to “give consid- back out into the hallway, they were, the Democratic Congressional Cam- eration to the ‘Aloha spirit’ ” as they for the first time all afternoon, express- paign Committee—“came and recruited discharge their duties.) ing ambivalence. me to run for Congress,” she says. “So

38 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 my situation may be different from oth- and peace.” The endorsement unnerved having to answer the question of whether ers, who have relied heavily on Party sup- some of Gabbard’s allies, who assumed she would have accepted such an offer. port from the beginning.” Gabbard was that Clinton would be the nominee. “Some Gabbard says that she and Trump a long shot when, in 2012, she decided of my friends and colleagues were look- talked mainly about foreign policy; as a to compete in the Democratic primary ing at me as though I had just—they were candidate, he had suggested, however in- against Mufi Hannemann, the popular preparing for my death, essentially,” Gab- consistently, that he would curb military former mayor of Honolulu. So she sent bard remembers. They told her, “When interventions. Gabbard recalls that she a small army of volunteers across the is- she”—Clinton—“wins, you’re going to found the meeting encouraging. “I walked lands, planting lawn signs and lining the suffer for many, many years.” (At least two out thinking that there may be some op- roads with placards, running a campaign potential fund-raisers abandoned Gab- portunity to work with this Administra- based less on policy than on personality. bard; in an e-mail, which was forwarded tion to shift our foreign policy in a more People who supported Gabbard then to John Podesta and subsequently made positive, less destructive direction,” she have a hard time remembering now what public by WikiLeaks, they accused her of said, and then paused. “Less hopeful, the issues were. One local Democratic being “disrespectful to Hillary Clinton.” ) now.” In April, after Trump ordered an activist was drawn to her mainly because When Clinton won the nomination, attack on a Syrian airfield, Gabbard ac- she seemed like “a bright, fresh voice.” it posed a problem for Gabbard, until cused him of behaving “recklessly,” and Gabbard won the primary by twenty per- someone came along to solve it: Donald suggested that he had fallen under the centage points, and then ran all but un- Trump, whose victory insured that San- influence of “war hawks.” More often, contested in the general election, against ders supporters would pay no substantial though, she has seemed reluctant to an- a token Republican opponent. price for having abandoned Clinton. Gab- tagonize Trump. Given the overwhelm- At the 2012 Democratic National Con- bard says that she was “shocked” when ingly Democratic makeup of her district, vention, Gabbard praised President Trump won, and “concerned, in so many this approach cannot be explained by Obama, a fellow-Hawaiian, and Vice- ways.” But, while some of her friends spent electoral calculation, and it has compli- President Joe Biden, along with their weeks fighting depression, she had a more cated her relationship with some of the wives, as “the strongest advocates our mil- levelheaded reaction. “I’m a pretty prag- grassroots activists who might otherwise itary families could ever have.” But, once matic person,” she says. “It was, like, ‘O.K., be inclined to support her. in office, she declined to play the role of there’s a lot at stake. We are where we When Gabbard appeared in Syria, last reliable ally. Not long after she was sworn are—let’s figure out how we move for- January, many wondered whether she was in, she joined with Republicans to vote ward.’ ” And so, when Steve Bannon called carrying a message to Assad from Trump. for a short-term spending bill that most and asked her to meet with Trump, at She says that she was not, and that she of her Democratic colleagues opposed. Trump Tower, she accepted. (The Hill re- didn’t even tell the incoming Adminis- (She said that she wanted to insure un- ported that Bannon “loves Tulsi Gabbard,” tration that she was going there. She met interrupted funding for the military.) And and that he viewed her as someone who twice with Assad, who wanted to con- in 2015 she went on Fox News and ac- “gets the foreign policy stuff, the Islamic vince her of the threat posed by groups cused the Obama Administration of not terrorism stuff.”) Gabbard insists that she like ISIS and Al Nusra. She travelled with recognizing that “Islamic extremists are never considered the possibility—which her husband, Abraham Williams, a cin- our enemy.” By then, she was building a seemed plausible, in those unpredictable ematographer, who made a couple of stark nationwide profile: in 2013, the Demo- days—that Trump would offer her a po- but stylish videos of the trip: Gabbard cratic National Committee had appointed sition in his Cabinet. Her claim is not en- talking to university students in Damas- her vice-chair, a role that marked her as tirely believable, but it spares her from cus, assuring them that she wants to stop a rising star. But, later in 2015, as the Pres- idential primaries drew near, she called for additional Democratic debates, a position that seemed to put her at odds with the Hillary Clinton campaign and, not coincidentally, with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the D.N.C. chair. According to Gabbard, the committee retaliated by disinviting her from the first debate; Was- serman Schultz contended that Gabbard “was not uninvited,” but that she had been asked to focus on the candidates, not on the process. A few months later, Gabbard resigned her D.N.C. position so that she could en- dorse Clinton’s opponent Bernie Sanders; she argued that Clinton was a committed military interventionist, and that San ders was more trustworthy on “issues of war you go to?” This is a complicated question for Gabbard, who is not quite a native Hawaiian. She was born in Ameri- can Samoa and moved to Hawaii in 1983, when she was two. She was both a tom- boy and a nerd, a combination that caused her no problems in the local schools, because she didn’t go to one: Gabbard was mainly homeschooled. Her first political passion was environmentalism, an interest derived from her first recreational passion, which was the ocean. She lives on Oahu’s east side, and whenever she is home she likes to start her day on the water. On the morning after Memorial Day, she and Williams woke up before “You lose your phone again, Rusty?” dawn and drove to an unmarked beach so that they could take paddleboards out to an island they like. As the sun rose, •• they ate mangoes and lychees on the sand. Williams, who is twenty-eight and so- the United States from supporting “ter- Gabbard should not be in Congress.” licitous, monitored a group of tourists rorist groups”; Gabbard touring the rub- Gabbard is a member of the House nearby, making sure they didn’t get too ble of a destroyed church with a local pas- Foreign Affairs and Armed Services com- close to a monk seal and her pup, play- tor, who said that Christians were being mittees. But she is still trying to build sup- ing in the surf. targeted by “rebels” loyal to the Islamic port for her signature piece of legislation, One of Gabbard’s friends describes State. The videos conveyed the impres- the Stop Arming Terrorists Act, which her parents, fondly, as “fuckin’ hippies,” sion that these outsiders had brought chaos would prohibit federal funding for “Al and it was her father who encouraged to Syria, and that the only path to peace Qaeda, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, and ISIL, her to turn her interest in the ocean into was to put down the insurgency. Upon or any individual or group that is affili- a political cause. Politics was a family vo- her return, Gabbard gave an interview in ated with, associated with, cooperating cation: Carol Gabbard, Tulsi’s mother, which she intimated that she and Assad— with, or adherents to such groups.” Its won a seat on the State Board of Edu- who is known to viciously punish dis- main aim, as Gabbard describes it, is to cation in 2000. For a decade, Mike Gab- sent—had negotiated an agreement to force the C.I.A. to stop aiding militants bard was Hawaii’s leading opponent of bring democracy to Syria. “I challenged in Syria. The current version of the bill the gay-rights movement, an energetic him, and talked to him about having fair has fourteen co-sponsors, eight Republi- and often brusque activist who stood and open elections, objective international cans and six Democrats, but it has not re- ever ready to denounce what he called observers, and making it so that the Syr- ceived a vote. Gabbard’s interest in for- “the radical homosexual agenda.” In 1999, ian people can determine the future of eign policy sets her apart from other after one of the main characters on the Syria for themselves,” she told a reporter. ambitious Democrats, many of whom teen drama “Dawson’s Creek” was re- “And these are things that he agreed to.” have difficulty articulating a clear position vealed to be gay, Mike Gabbard flew to Gabbard’s trip was widely regarded on Syria, and virtually all of whom would North Carolina, where the program was as a political disaster; Adam Kinzinger, rather attach themselves to the kinds of filmed, to lead a protest. a Republican congressman from Illinois, domestic issues—stopping Trump, fight- In 2002, when Tulsi Gabbard was called Assad a “mass murderer,” and ac- ing poverty, combatting discrimination— only twenty-one, she ran, as a Dem- cused Gabbard of having “legitimized that thrill the Democratic base. In this ocrat, for the Hawaii State House of his genocide against the Syrian people.” and other ways, Gabbard’s counterintui- Representatives, alongside another After reporters revealed that the trip tive approach can make her seem unusu- first-time candidate: her father, who had been funded by a pair of Leba- ally principled, or maybe just unusual. The sought and won a seat on the nonpar- nese-American businessmen with ties United States has been prosecuting a war tisan Honolulu City Council. She is to a pro-Assad political party, Gabbard on terror for more than sixteen years; Gab- eager, now, to explain that she and her agreed to repay her travel costs. And yet, bard is one of vanishingly few Democratic father had entirely separate political instead of distancing herself from this politicians who are eager to talk about it. lives. “He was talking potholes and episode, she has embraced it. In April, trash and sewage, and I was talking after a sarin-gas attack in Syria, Gabbard ne afternoon in Hawaii, as Gabbard about education and environment and said that she was “skeptical” of claims Omade her way to visit a Filipino- other issues,” she says. “We’d see each that Assad’s government was to blame. American veteran at home, she explained other every now and then.” In fact, the Howard Dean, the former D.N.C. chair, that locals sometimes identify one an- two Gabbards co-founded a pair of responded on Twitter, “This is a disgrace. other by asking, “What high school did nonprofit organizations: Stand Up for

40 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 America, a patriotic pro-military group, marriage. “Experiencing as a woman, Diwali, the grand Hindu festival of lights, and the Healthy Hawaii Coalition, firsthand, the impacts of countries that and has cultivated a close relationship which promoted environmentalism, are acting as moral arbiters for their peo- with Indian-Americans. In 2014, she and which secured a government grant ple—it really caused me to rethink the travelled to India, where she met with to send Gabbard into schools dressed as positions I held,” she says. This realiza- the controversial Prime Minister Nar- a pollution-fighting superhero named tion was well timed, because it enabled endra Modi, who has become a politi- Water Woman. her to win a Democratic primary in a cal ally, and she is now a co-chair of the In her first political incarnation, Gab- state that was increasingly blue. (Mike Congressional India Caucus. bard balanced liberal environmentalism Gabbard, who is now a state senator, de- With her brown skin, black hair, and with a pronounced conservative streak. fected from the Republican Party and Hindu name, Gabbard is sometimes In 2003, she voted against a bill to oblige became a Democrat in 2007.) At a meet- mistaken for an Indian-American. (She hospitals to “provide emergency contra- ing in 2012, she apologized to L.G.B.T. is named for the holy-basil plant, also ception immediately” to survivors of sex- activists in Hawaii for “very divisive and known as tulasi, a sweet-smelling herb ual assault, because it did not contain a even disrespectful” things she had said. that appears in the Bhagavad Gita as “conscience clause,” to allow providers But Gabbard has seemed unusually an offering to the Lord.) “Hindu,” of with a religious objection to opt out. She conflicted about sexual orientation, an course, refers to her spiritual orienta- supported government surveillance issue on which young Democrats are typ- tion, not to her national origin, but she efforts, warning that the “demand for ically united and enthusiastic; she has is often described as “Hindu-Ameri- unfettered civil liberties” could make the been inclined to tolerate same-sex mar- can,” a formulation that blurs the line nation vulnerable to terrorists. And she riage but not to celebrate it. “Just because between faith and identity. Gabbard has joined her father’s battle against what that’s not my life style, I don’t think that grown more comfortable talking about she called “homosexual extremists.” In government should make sure that ev- her faith, which she barely mentioned 1998, Mike Gabbard had successfully erybody else’s life styles match my own,” earlier in her political career. But she pushed for an amendment to the Ha- she told me, over the summer. Perhaps has resisted telling the story of her spir- waii State Constitution, to permit the her views are still evolving, because in a itual journey. This summer, when I asked legislature to ban same-sex marriage, recent conversation she said that “gay her about the teacher who led her to which it did. Six years later, Tulsi Gab- marriage should be celebrated.” Hinduism, Gabbard grew evasive. “I’ve bard led a protest against a bill that would The new version of Gabbard is bet- had many different spiritual teachers, have legalized civil unions for same-sex ter suited to the era of Bernie Sanders, and continue to,” she said. couples. That same year, in the Hawaii whose Our Revolution group endorsed “There’s not one that’s more impor- State House, she delivered a long, fierce her. (She was also chosen to be an inau- tant than the others?” speech against a proposed resolution gural fellow at the Sanders Institute, “No,” she said. But there is, in fact, a meant to target anti-gay bullying in pub- founded by Bernie’s wife, Jane Sanders.) teacher who has played a central role in lic schools. She objected to the idea of She supports single-payer health care her life—a teacher whom Gabbard re- students being taught that homosexual- and a fifteen-dollar minimum wage; her ferred to, in a 2015 video, as her “guru ity is “normal and natural,” and worried 2016 critique of Clinton, as too close to dev,” which means, roughly, “spiritual that passing the resolution would have corporate and political élites, now sounds master.” His name is Chris Butler. the effect of “inviting homosexual- less like apostasy and more like the con- advocacy organizations into our schools n 1965, an elderly Indian man known to promote their agenda to our vulner- Ias A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Pra- able youth.” bhupada arrived in America, and soon As Gabbard was settling into her po- began singing and preaching in Tomp- litical career, in 2003, she did something kins Square Park, in New York’s East surprising: she joined the National Guard, Village. For reasons that resist secular and, when her brigade was shipped to explanation, Bhaktivedanta drew a crowd, Iraq, she volunteered to go, even though and the crowd grew into something new: her name was not on the mandatory- the Hare Krishna movement, which in- deployment roster. She served as a medical- ventional wisdom of a changing Dem- troduced Westerners to the five-hundred- operations specialist on a base in the Sunni ocratic Party. Gabbard is also a symbol year-old Hindu tradition known as Triangle, and also as a military police of demographic change: she is from Ha- Gaudiya Vaishnavism. The Hare Krishna officer, before attending officer-candidate waii, where nonwhites make up about devotee became, for a time, a familiar school in Alabama, where she excelled; three-quarters of the population, and she figure, and sometimes a figure of fun: a a second deployment took her to Kuwait. is the product of an interracial marriage— young white man with a shaved head She often cites her time in the Middle her father is Samoan, and her mother is and an orange-sherbet robe, chanting East when asked to explain her political white. Gabbard is, prominently, a reli- ceaselessly and carrying an armload of reinvention. By the time she ran for Con- gious minority, the first representative to books to sell. The Beatles’ record label gress, in 2012, Gabbard was presenting swear the oath of office on the Bhaga- released a Hare Krishna single, and herself as a more or less orthodox pro- vad Gita, a central Hindu text. She re- George Harrison wrote “My Sweet Lord” gressive, pro-choice and pro-same-sex- leases yearly holiday videos celebrating under the group’s influence. (Although

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 41 Harrison was never initiated into the swers to some very puzzling questions. tude to him, for the gift of this wonder- movement, Bhaktivedanta once praised In 1984, he published “Who Are You? ful spiritual practice that he has given to him as “humble, meek, polite, and de- Discovering Your Real Identity,” which me, and to so many people.” vout.”) From 1965 until his death, in 1977, used examples from science to argue that A number of those people have busi- Bhaktivedanta taught and travelled materialism was false, and that the self nesses. One of Butler’s followers is Wai constantly, while corresponding with was real—and eternal. (Krishna and the Lana, a yoga entrepreneur who is also seekers all over the world. Bhagavad Gita are mentioned only in his wife. Her company, which produces By the early seventies, his message passing.) He recorded a series of televi- yoga videos, has helped fund the Sci- had reached Hawaii, where Chris But- sion specials, in which he resembled a ence of Identity Foundation. Another ler was a young yoga teacher hip young college professor person who seems to be a follower is and surfer. Butler, the son of on a couch, surrounded by Joseph Bismark, the co-founder of a a prominent doctor and an- inquisitive students. global multilevel-marketing company tiwar activist who had come One of those students called QNET, whose products include a from the mainland, was was Mike Gabbard, who had small disk meant to protect users from something of a prodigy: a been interested in Hindu- “the harmful effects of electrosmog.” (A self-styled guru who began ism since the nineteen- decade ago, Indonesian police, alerted attracting followers soon seventies: he once corre- by Interpol, reportedly arrested Bismark after he dropped out of col- sponded with Bhaktivedanta, on charges of fraud; the charges were lege. Even so, Butler was asking for advice on estab- eventually withdrawn.) awed by Bhaktivedanta, who lishing a temple, and Tulsi Unlike Bhaktivedanta, whose every had a knack for making ancient Indian Gabbard’s name reflects the family’s pre- utterance seems to have been recorded texts sound like sensible instruction existing spiritual commitments. When for posterity, Butler has carefully con- manuals. In his annotated translation the Gabbards moved to Hawaii, in 1983, trolled his public appearances, and has of the Bhagavad Gita, readers could they joined the circle of disciples around essentially stopped talking to the media learn how to be pleasing to Lord Krishna Butler. Tulsi Gabbard says that she began in recent decades. But he agreed to talk by eschewing meat and spicy food learning the spiritual principles of Vaish- with me, by telephone, about his teach- (which could “cause misery by produc- nava Hinduism as a kid, and that she grew ings and his star pupil. Butler will be sev- ing mucus in the stomach”), by work- up largely among fellow-disciples, some enty next year, but he still speaks with the ing hard, by chanting his name—small, of whom would gather on the beach for boyish, wondrous voice of a mind-blown tangible steps that could bring a devo- kirtan, the practice of singing or chant- surfer, enriched by a trace of the clipped, tee close to the divine. ing sacred songs. Gabbard pursued a spir- singsong accent that, in Hawaii, provides In 1971, Bhaktivedanta came to Ha- itual education: as a girl, she spent two a form of local cred. He often interrupts waii, and Butler, who was twenty-three, years in the Philippines, at informal schools himself to chuckle, or to interject his fa- met him, and made a trade: he turned run by followers of Butler. vorite rhetorical question: “Right?” all of his disciples over to Bhaktivedanta, Gabbard recalls her childhood as lively Although Hindu identity plays an and in exchange gained a new name, and freewheeling: she excelled at mar- important role in Gabbard’s career, the Siddhaswarupananda, which marked him tial arts and developed a passion for gar- term itself has a complicated history: it as an initiated disciple and a prominent dening; she was a serious reader, encour- is often used as a catchall for widely vary- figure in the growing Hare Krishna aged by her parents. But a number of ing spiritual practices on the Indian sub- movement. It was not always an easy re- Butler’s former disciples recall a harsher, continent, and it is neither universally lationship. At times, Bhaktivedanta ad- more authoritarian atmosphere. Defec- accepted nor reliably defined. “In the monished Butler for non-orthodox tors tell stories of children discouraged Bhagavad Gita, where is the mention of teaching, and Butler questioned Bhak- by Butler from attending secular schools; ‘Hindu’?” Bhaktivedanta once asked. But- tivedanta’s insistence that initiates shave of followers forbidden to speak publicly ler, too, finds the term constricting. “I’m their heads and wear robes. about the group; of returning travellers not a Hindu, I’m not a Christian, I’m After Bhaktivedanta’s death, Butler quarantined for days, lest they transmit not a Buddhist, I’m not a Muslim,” he no longer had to choose between devo- a contagious disease to Butler; of devo- says. “I’m an eternal spirit soul—an atma, tion and independence. As the Hare tees lying prostrate whenever he entered part and parcel of the supreme soul.” (His Krishna movement fractured, Butler cre- the room, or adding bits of his nail clip- followers have generally avoided the term; ated his own group, now known as the pings to their food, or eating spoonfuls Mike Gabbard describes himself as a Science of Identity Foundation, and of sand that he had walked upon. Some Catholic, notwithstanding his ties to the amassed a tight-knit, low-profile net- former members portray themselves as foundation.) But Butler recognizes the work of followers, hundreds or perhaps survivors of an abusive cult. Butler de- usefulness of a concise, recognizable label, thousands of them, stretching west from nies these reports, and Gabbard says that especially in politics, and so he suggested Hawaii into Australia, New Zealand, and she finds them hard to credit. “I’ve never to Gabbard a compromise: “I told her, Southeast Asia. Butler deëmphasized heard him say anything hateful, or say ‘Why don’t you use the phrase “transcen- age-old Indian texts and practices, pre- anything mean about anybody,” she says dental Hinduism”?’ ” (Indeed, during a senting himself instead as a smart and of Butler. “I can speak to my own per- recent conversation in the congressional curious guy who had figured out the an- sonal experience and, frankly, my grati- dining room Gabbard did precisely that.)

42 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 Gabbard and Butler both say that the more than a dozen candidates for local and that we seem to have limited our- foundation is a resource, not a religious races. The group presented itself as a selves to working with people who were organization; there is no official hierar- multifaith coalition of conservative- of Eastern spiritual disciplines, neglect- chy, and therefore no system of account- minded reformers, but in 1977 the Ho- ing many of the people we could probability, besides Butler’s own conscience, nolulu Advertiser published a three-part ably work with in the more established and the conscience of those who are de- exposé identifying I.G.G. as an initia- Western- oriented churches.” voted to him. In one lecture, he acknowl- tive created mainly, or entirely, by disci- The publisher of Valley Isle was a busi- edged the potential for skepticism, offer- ples of Butler. One candidate told the nessman named Rick Reed, who was ing followers his version of Pascal’s wager. newspaper that discretion was part of elected to the State Senate in 1986. That “If I’m not the representative of God, his political strategy. “I know for a fact year, Reed, who had worked for a local and you dovetail your will with mine, that, if I said I was a Hare Krishna, the prosecutor, was accused of leaking then your life is destroyed,” he said. “And first thing people would think was I had confidential state documents in order to if I am the representative of God, and a shaved head, bells on my feet, and I discredit a Democratic politician; Reed’s you don’t dovetail your will with mine, bothered people at the airport,” he said. ex-wife told the Advertiser that Butler then your life is wasted.” “To communicate, I have to keep the had been part of the plot. (Both Reed And yet he allows that he does have doors open.” In Valley Isle, a newspaper and Butler denied it.) In 1992, Reed chal- “disciples,” who call him Jagad Guru, or based in Maui and friendly to Butler, lenged Daniel Inouye, the old lion of Ha- “teacher of the world.” “What the Jagad Bill Penaroza, one of the leaders of the waiian politics, for his seat in the U.S. Guru title conveys is that what’s being initiative, announced that the group— Senate, and the campaign brought more taught is not just for a certain group of which hadn’t got any of its candidates scrutiny to Reed’s relationship with But- people,” Butler says. “It’s something that elected—was “restructuring.” Penaroza ler. Reed had previously referred to But- everybody can appreciate, and it’s for peo- didn’t identify Butler as its leader, but ler as his “spiritual adviser,” but he told ple all over the world.” A guru, Butler once he did concede that he had some in- the Advertiser that there was “no evidence explained, is supposed to be “a bona-fide fluence. “There was an interesting con- I have ever been a member of a Hare representative of the Supreme Lord.” In versation with a friend of mine who I Krishna organization, or of Independents commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, Bhak- consider to be a very spiritually advanced for Godly Government.” Reed lost the tivedanta emphasized that submission was person, whose name is Siddha Swarup election, but he successfully fended off crucial to spiritual advancement. “A spir- Swami,” Penaroza said. (He was using the Federal Election Commission, which itual master should be accepted in full sur- a version of Butler’s initiated name, investigated a Christmas video he had render,” he wrote, “and one should serve Siddha swarupananda.) “He said he filmed in the Philippines and distributed the spiritual master like a menial servant, thought we were a little too self-righteous, in Hawaii, allegedly in an attempt to without false prestige.” Butler is sensitive to the perception that he is an authoritarian; he prefers to talk about himself as a student and a follower, rather than as a teacher and a leader. “My teacher loves me,” he said. (He was referring, in the eternal-spirit present tense, to Bhaktive- danta.) “It’s a relationship of love. And so the students of such a loving guru will love their teachers—it’s natural that you will love that person.” Not coincidentally, he speaks lovingly of Gabbard, whom he’s known virtually all her life. As a girl, he remembers, she had “a real gravity and se- riousness that was way beyond her years.” Nowadays, Butler regards Gabbard with fatherly pride, likening himself to a music teacher watching a star pupil excel. “He’s taught one of his students cello,” he says. “And he sees that, oh, this student of mine is now playing cello in the philharmonic orchestra. And it’s beautiful.”

abbard is not the first disciple Gof Butler’s to enter politics. In the late seventies, a rather opaque group called Independents for Godly Govern- ment appeared in Hawaii and fielded “The problem is there’s no engine. Just a mysterious plot device.” cal tendency—her instinct toward bi- partisanship—is, Butler says, entirely in keeping with what he teaches. But he says that he does not tell her, or any other disciple, how to vote. “That sense of aloha, or love for others, and the desire to work for the well-being of others—that’s a successful politician, from a spiritual perspective,” he says. “But as far as positions on different issues that come before politicians? That is something that every individual has to deal with on their own.”

hen asked about Hinduism, Gab- Wbard often talks about anti-Hindu bigotry. One of her prime examples is Kawika Crowley, her Republican opponent in the 2012 election, who told CNN that he thought Gabbard’s Hinduism conflicted with the American system of government. (Crowley, a smokers’-rights ¥¥ activist who lived in his minivan, lost the election by nearly sixty percentage points.) In an essay about her faith that beguile the state’s sizable Filipino-Amer- Tamayo happens to be the uncle of she sent to me, Gabbard compared her- ican population. The F.E.C. ultimately Gabbard’s first husband, Eddie Tamayo, self to John F. Kennedy, who sought to ruled that the video was a legitimate (if whom she married in 2002 and di- reassure voters who were worried by his dubious) business venture, and that the vorced four years later—partly, she says, Catholicism; he promised to discharge ninety-thousand-dollar loan Reed had because of the stress of serving over- the duties of the office “without regard received to produce it was not, therefore, seas. Both of Gabbard’s parents worked to outside religious pressures or dictates.” an unlawful campaign donation. in Rick Reed’s office. And the loan But there is no simple way to distin- In Gabbard, Butler’s movement finally Reed received to make that Christmas guish between the religious “dictates” seems to have produced a widely appeal- video came from Richard Bellord, that might make voters nervous and the ing politician, with a national profile. whose son, Rupa Bellord, recently mar- religious “values” that politicians—par- And there are links between Gabbard’s ried Gabbard’s sister and roommate, ticularly Christian politicians—so fre- political operation and those of I.G.G., Vrindavan. Richard Bellord himself quently pledge to uphold. It would be going all the way back to Bill Penaroza: used to be married to Wai Lana, the absurd to expect Gabbard to make po- in 2015, Gabbard hired Penaroza’s son, yoga instructor who is now Butler’s litical decisions without reference to the Kainoa Penaroza, to be her chief of staff, wife; Abraham Williams, Gabbard’s spiritual path that she has walked all her even though he had virtually no politi- husband, has helped film her videos. life. After all, her determination to seek cal experience. Gabbard, like her prede- (Williams’s mother, Anya Anthony, is agreement outside her party is, in no cessors, firmly rejects the idea that she Gabbard’s office manager in Washing- small way, a product of that path, and is part of a political initiative tied to her ton; she sits behind the “ALOHA SPIRIT” quite possibly a laudable one. Gowdy, spiritual leader. “It’s a whole lot of con- sign.) Wai Lana’s company is run by a the South Carolina Republican, likes to jecture,” she told me. She offered a hy- longtime Butler associate named Sunil tell Gabbard that she is “the most Christ- pothetical comparison. “Senator Brian Khemaney, who is also a business as- like member of Congress,” a compli- Schatz, from Hawaii—he’s Jewish,” she sociate of Joseph Bismark’s. Khemaney cated sort of compliment that says some- said. “His chief of staff is Jewish. So there helps run Gabbard’s outreach to the thing about the way we try to reconcile must be some great plan of the Jewish Indian-American community; he ac- spiritual traditions that are ultimately community in Hawaii to advance this companied her on her 2014 trip to India. incommensurable. Jewish leader and those around him?” One person familiar with Gabbard’s It is possible, though, to discern some- The difference is that the world of operation describes an office divided thing more specific than all-purpose aloha Butler’s disciples is relatively small and between disciples and non-disciples: in the shifting political priorities of But- dizzyingly interlinked. Reed’s video of “Everyone wondered who was in the ler’s followers. In the nineteen-eighties, Christmas in the Philippines begins group and who wasn’t. It was taboo— Butler excoriated same-sex desire; he with a visit to Toby Tamayo, a long- people in the group didn’t talk about wrote, for instance, that bisexuality was time employee of the group who helped it, so no one knew for sure.” “sense gratification” run amok, and warned run a Butler-affiliated school there. Gabbard’s most pronounced politi- that the logical conclusion of such

44 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 hedonistic conduct was pedophilia and sador about economic partnership and Democratic Party that is increasingly bestiality. (He declared, with striking cer- security coöperation. This was Gab- secular and increasingly partisan. tainty, that “an increasing number of bard’s kind of crowd: friendly and rel- Gabbard doesn’t seem too frustrated women in the United States keep dogs atively nonpartisan. One of the first by the stalled progress of her signature for sexual reasons.”) Reed, Mike Gab- questioners began by establishing her- bill, the Stop Arming Terrorists Act; bard, and other political candidates as- self as a committed fan. “Congress- in political terms, it may be more effec- sociated with him tended to echo these woman, I was really hoping you would tive as a blocked bill—a symbol of the pronouncements. Nowadays, Tulsi Gab- get a Cabinet position in Trump’s Ad- intransigence she wants to battle—than bard takes a different view, and Butler ministration,” she said. “Now I’m hop- as an enacted law. And although she seems to have deëmphasized the issue: ing for the day when I can vote for you remains relatively reluctant to criticize there is no mention of homosexuality on in the Presidential election.” the President, or even to mention his the foundation’s Web site, or in his re- Gabbard smiled and shook her head name, she has found plenty of chances cent teachings. Gabbard says that she at the suggestion. But, in October, she this year to voice her disagreement with and Butler have discussed same-sex mar- went to Iowa to appear at a Democratic “the Administration.” Still, in the cur- riage—“perhaps, a while ago.” She says, fund-raiser, a sign that she is thinking rent climate Gabbard is aware that “It’s something that we don’t agree on.” about the 2020 caucuses, and that she Democratic voters are drawn to politi- In recent decades, Butler has pre- is one of dozens—or perhaps hun- cians who seem to be leading the re- sented himself less as a Hare Krishna dreds—of Democratic politicians who sistance to Trump and the Republicans, dissident and more as a member of a think they have a chance to be elected rather than searching for ways to work loosely connected worldwide Vaish- President. For now, she is on the list of with them. Many of her supporters be- nava movement. To explain how he fits possible candidates, though not the lieve that, eventually, the mood will in, Gabbard e-mailed me “The Gene- short list; her relatively conciliatory at- change. “At some point,” Van Jones says, alogical Tree of Theistic Vedanta,” titude toward Trump seems to have di- “the country’s going to be tired of peo- which depicts dozens of great teach- minished her profile among the kind ple whose only qualification is that they ers from across the centuries, most of of Democrats who start thinking about hate the other side.” them Indian; Butler occupies a secure primary contests three years in advance. Gabbard, more than most politicians, but modest place, at the end of a thin But if Gabbard joins the field she will is a celebrity. (At the airport in Kauai, branch. By forging relationships with almost certainly be the most interest- she was stopped by a T.S.A. agent, who Modi and other Indian leaders, Gab- ing candidate in it. One question is wanted a photograph with her. “This is bard has made herself a prominent am- whether her life story will turn out to my perfect week,” he said. “My son got bassador of American Hinduism, and be too interesting—too unusual—for married—and I get to meet you!”) And she may be bringing Butler’s previously her own good. she has one of the most important qual- obscure movement closer to the global Former disciples of Butler tend to ities a politician can have: an uncanny Hindu mainstream. Last year, when be extraordinarily bitter about the time ability to make people believe in her, even the Indian government announced the they spent in spiritual service to him, if they don’t agree with her. One of her winners of its annual Padma Awards, and extraordinarily suspicious of his longtime fans on Oahu is Linda Wong, only two non-Indians were included. motives. This suspicion extends to some who hosted fund-raisers during Gab- One was a former U.S. Ambassador. of the people who have supported Gab- bard’s first congressional campaign, and The other was Wai Lana. bard but find themselves troubled by who has grown used to fielding ques- Gabbard’s relationship with India the ambiguous role that Butler and his tions about her various acts of political is also a strategic alliance: she has de- followers have played in Hawaiian pol- insubordination. “She makes a move, but fended Modi’s political organization, itics. Nine years ago, another promis- then I get the phone calls: ‘What is she the Bharatiya Janata Party, which cham- ing politician had to figure out what to doing?’ ” Wong says. “I say, ‘I don’t know pions the view that India is—and do about a spiritual leader who became what she’s doing, but I know she’s thought should remain—an essentially Hindu a magnet for criticism: as a candidate, it through.’ ” nation. In 2013, she opposed a resolu- Barack Obama defended his pastor, the Depending on the day, and the mood tion on “religious violence” in India Reverend Jeremiah Wright, until, finally, of the country, Gabbard’s stubbornly that was seen as a veiled criticism of he abandoned him. But Wright repre- personal approach to politics can seem Modi, and she suggests that, whatever sented only a small slice of Obama’s life, either refreshing or discomfiting. When the problems faced by India’s Muslim whereas Gabbard’s life would be un- she talks about her passion for “ser- minority, they can’t compare with the recognizable without Butler’s influence. vice,” she is speaking the language of tribulations of religious minorities in Decades ago, her father tried, with some politics and the military and faith all many Muslim countries. This summer, success, to make common cause with at once. She is talking about her de- she came to New York to participate Mormons, evangelicals, and other peo- termination, which is obvious, and her in an Indian-American business forum. ple of faith who shared his opposition aims, which aren’t, always. “She’s got a She had the bad luck to appear after to same-sex marriage. His daughter is servant attitude, a servant’s heart,” But- Anil Kapoor, the garrulous Indian far more politically skilled, but her task ler says. “Whether she’s in politics or movie star, but she seemed entirely at is also far more difficult: she must find anything else, she’s going to take that ease, chatting with the Indian Ambas- a way to make common cause with a same servant’s heart with her.” 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 45 LETTER FROM SYRIA DARK VICTORY

Kurdish revolutionaries helped the U.S. expel ISIS from Raqqa. Will we soon abandon them?

BY LUKE MOGELSON

Female ﬁghters for the Syrian Democratic Forces, who are on the front lines of the war against the Islamic State in Syria. Many have “joined to protect other women” from Islamists who subject women to repression and rape.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAURICIO LIMA n August, in the living room of an cratic Union Party’s militia, the Y.P.G. tle is famous among Syrian Kurds, partly abandoned house on the western After a day of training, she was issued a for the heroic action of another female I outskirts of Raqqa, Syria, I met with Kalashnikov. fighter, twenty-year-old Arin Mirkan. Rojda Felat, one of four Kurdish com- Felat expected to fight the regime. At the time, Felat and Mirkan were on manders overseeing the campaign to wrest But, as the anti-government demonstra- the same side of the hill. isis militants the city from the Islamic State, or isis. tions evolved into an armed rebellion were closing in on them with tanks com- Wearing fatigues, a beaded head scarf, and insurrections broke out in major cit- mandeered from Assad’s forces. Mirkan, and turquoise socks, Felat sat cross-legged ies, Assad withdrew nearly all the troops Felat recalled, “put a lot of grenades on on the floor, eating a homemade meal he had stationed in the predominantly her chest and snuck under a tank and that her mother had sent in a plastic con- Kurdish north. The Democratic Union exploded herself.” tainer from Qamishli, four hours away, Party allowed the regime to maintain Mishtanour Hill fell to isis, but Ko- in the northeast of the country. In the control of an airport and of administra- banî didn’t. The U.S. intensified its bomb- kitchen, two young female fighters washed tive offices in downtown Qamishli. Arab ing, and air-dropped weapons and med- dishes and glanced surreptitiously at Felat opposition groups decried the arrange- ical supplies; Iraqi Kurdish soldiers, along with bright-eyed adoration. At forty years ment as part of a tacit alliance between with some moderate Arab rebels, rein- old, she affects a passive, stoic expression Assad and the Kurds. Islamist rebels forced the Y.P.G. By late January, 2015, that transforms startlingly into one of began launching attacks in northern isis had been pushed back. The Y.P.G. unguarded felicity when she is amused— Syria, and the Y.P.G. went to war against capitalized on its momentum and re- something that, while we spoke, hap- them. “Many Kurdish families brought claimed swaths of the countryside. pened often. She had reason to be in good their daughters to join,” Felat told me. Felat was assigned to command forty- spirits. Her forces had recently completed “Many women signed up.” She described five fighters, and then three hundred. an encirclement of Raqqa, and victory her female compatriots as “women who When I pressed her for the accomplish- appeared to be imminent. had joined to protect other women” from ments that had occasioned her promo- The Raqqa offensive, which concluded extremists and their sexist ideologies. tions, she reluctantly allowed, “I was good in mid-October, marks the culmination By mid-2014, isis had become the at strategy.” By chance, it was the week of a dramatic rise both for Felat and for largest Islamist rebel group in Syria. It before Eid al-Adha, and I could not help the Kurdish political movement to which seized Raqqa, a mostly Arab city that lies marvelling at how swiftly the besieged she belongs. For decades, the Syrian some forty miles south of the Kurdish had become besiegers. I asked Felat state—officially, the Syrian Arab Repub- region, and declared it the capital of its whether any of the women whom she’d lic—was hostile to Kurds. Tens of thou- self-proclaimed caliphate. isis then fought with in Kobanî were still with her. sands were stripped of citizenship or dis- pushed into Kurdish territory, and by Oc- She shook her head. “Five were killed,” possessed of land; cultural and political tober thousands of militants—armed she said. “Two were wounded. The oth- gatherings were banned; schools were with tanks, mortars, machine guns, and ers went back to their families.” Felat did forbidden to teach the Kurdish language. suicide vehicles—had reached Kobanî, a not mention having been injured her- Qamishli, Felat’s home town, has long city on the Turkish border. Although the self, but I later met a fighter who recalled been a center of Kurdish political activ- United States bombarded isis from the sharing a hospital room with her while ity. In 2004, during a soccer match, Arab air, the militants quickly captured several they were both recovering from shrap- fans of a visiting team threw stones at key neighborhoods, and raised their flag nel wounds. Kurds, causing a stampede; a riot ensued, on a hill visible from Turkey. Recep Tayyip The Y.P.G. presents itself as the an- during which Kurds toppled a statue of Erdoğan, Turkey’s President, announced, tithesis of isis. Not only does it aggres- Hafez al-Assad, the father and prede- “Kobanî is about to fall,” and isis vowed sively recruit women into its ranks; it cessor of Syria’s current President, Bashar. that its members would celebrate the promotes democracy and religious plu- Government security forces subsequently coming holy week of Eid al-Adha by ralism. Like many of her comrades, Felat killed more than thirty Kurds. Amid the praying in Kobanî’s mosques. has decided never to leave the Y.P.G., or crackdown, a new Kurdish opposition The Y.P.G. fought back, deploying marry, or have children. Her younger group, the Democratic Union Party, or- small, lightly armed units throughout brother, Mezul, who joined the Y.P.G. ganized and recruited clandestinely. Kobanî’s streets. Felat was put in charge after she did, was killed by a roadside In 2011, when anti-government proof eleven other women. Some, like her, bomb in 2013. Felat, who identifies as a tests began spreading throughout Syria, were former students; some were pro- nonpracticing Muslim, said that she has Felat was studying Arabic literature at fessionals; some were wives and moth- sworn on Mezul’s blood to devote her Hasakah University. The daughter of a ers. Apart from their rifles, they had one life to the Y.P.G. Although the battle for poor farmer, she’d begun her studies late, machine gun and one rocket-propelled- Raqqa is over, she, like most Syrians, “for economic reasons,” she told me. grenade launcher. “There were people who foresees more fighting to come. Along with several dozen other students, didn’t even have a Kalashnikov,” Felat Felat left the university and returned to told me. “They had to share.” When I wo thousand isis militants and hun- Qamishli. Within a week, Felat, who’d asked her where she was when isis de- Tdreds of Kurds died in the battle of harbored ambitions of attending Syria’s clared that it would conquer the city be- Kobanî. It took months to extricate the national military academy and becoming fore Eid al-Adha, she answered, “I was bodies from the wreckage. Locals say an Army officer, had joined the Demo- fighting on Mishtanour Hill.” The bat- that the town’s feral cats, rummaging

48 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 among the corpses, began to go bald; birds lost their feathers. Today, white placards stand amid rubble and outside damaged buildings, marking places where Kurdish fighters were killed, and listing their names in black and red paint. Many of the names belong to women. On a street downtown, two waist-high Plexi- glas boxes are installed in the middle of a sidewalk that has been carefully rebuilt around them. Inside the boxes, debris and broken asphalt are preserved. At first, it’s hard to tell what else the boxes contain. Then you notice the remains of two female fighters who were killed there: tufts of dust-caked hair still rooted to gray, desiccated flaps of scalp. A few blocks away, at a local institution known as the Commission for the Martyrs, the high walls of an expansive gallery are covered with hundreds of ¥¥ framed portraits of slain Kobanî natives. When I visited recently, the pictures obscure American political theorist—a networks of community councils, where ended midway across one wall. Scaffold- Communist turned libertarian socialist all “cultural identities can express them- ing had been erected, and dozens of new named Murray Bookchin. The œuvre of selves in local meetings.” frames were stacked on the floor. A vol- Bookchin, who died in 2006, is vast and The P.K.K. had always included unteer told me that the memorial was a dense (a typical title is “The Philosophy female guerrillas; the longer Öcalan work in progress; organized chronolog- of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical remained in prison, however, the more ically, it hadn’t yet caught up to 2017. At Naturalism”). Öcalan was particularly preoccupied with feminism he became. a far end of the gallery, faded portraits, influenced by Bookchin’s advocacy of In a 2013 manifesto, “Liberating Life,” from the nineties, showed local residents “libertarian municipalism”: the proposi- he writes that “the 5,000-year-old his- who had died in Turkey while fighting tion that citizens, instead of attempting tory of civilization is essentially the his- with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or to change, overthrow, or secede from op- tory of the enslavement of women,” and P.K.K. Pointing at one image—a pale pressive capitalist governments, should argues that no genuine political eman- girl with cropped hair and a determined build confederations of “popular assem- cipation can happen without first achiev- stare—the volunteer said, “My sister. She blies” that can function as a parallel sys- ing gender equality. left before I knew her.” tem within existing states. In 2004, one The P.K.K. adapted to Öcalan’s evolv- The Democratic Union Party and the of Öcalan’s German translators wrote to ing ideas with surprising facility. But over Y.P.G. grew out of the P.K.K. Though Bookchin—then eighty-three and bed- the years many of its members, seeking it is a matter of dispute precisely how ridden, with osteoarthritis, in Vermont— refuge from the Turkish authorities, de- involved the P.K.K. remains in their ac- to inform him that Öcalan was deter- camped to Iraq’s remote Qandil Moun- tivities, the organizations share the same mined to “implement your ideas.” tains, where there was little society to objectives and beliefs. In the seventies, a Bookchin confessed to the translator that revolutionize. Öcalan’s vision seemed Turkish university dropout, Abdullah he wasn’t really familiar with Öcalan. destined to remain the utopian fancy Öcalan, founded the P.K.K. as a Marxist- “Thanks to our parochial press, Ameri- of—as Bookchin called himself—“an old Leninist movement committed to the cans are barely informed about Kurdish radical.” But then the Democratic Union creation of an independent Kurdish state. affairs,” he wrote. Party came into possession of most of The group launched an insurgency that Öcalan, who remains imprisoned, has northern Syria. mainly targeted Turkish security person- published many pamphlets. In 2011, he nel but also murdered Turkish civilians released “Democratic Confederalism,” t a rally in Kobanî this summer, and Kurdish adversaries. in which he repudiates the pursuit of an Ahundreds of residents congregated In 1997, the United States added the independent Kurdish state, on the ground at a traffic circle, around a thirty-foot- P.K.K. to its list of foreign terrorist or- that nation-states are inherently repres- tall statue of a Kurdish female fighter ganizations, and two years later the Cen- sive, sexist, and complicit in the deprav- with enormous white wings. Made from tral Intelligence Agency helped Turkish ities of “the worldwide capitalist system.” iron and fibreglass, the statue towered agents capture Öcalan. Placed in solitary He also discusses the peril of Middle over two tanks that isis had used in its confinement on a prison island off Is- Eastern nations’ being defined by reli- failed assault on the town. Now on- tanbul, he did what many people would gion or ethnicity. As an alternative, lookers straddled the tanks’ cannons. A do: he read. He became fascinated by an Öcalan suggests creating decentralized Y.P.G. soldier poured black oil from a

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 49 plastic water bottle onto handmade torches, and distributed them to people. Traditional Kurdish songs blared WITH HER through an industrial sound system installed in the bed of a pickup truck. With her it was difficult. But not to regret Children and teen-agers danced. the word “heart,” that June so far away, It was August 14th, the eve of the teeth like hard pearls in a clumsy kiss, thirty-third anniversary of the P.K.K.’s the timid hand, the considered modesty. first attacks against the Turkish government. The conflict has left some forty She was little more than a fool, today with thousand people dead, mainly Kurds. At retrospect you would say she asked too much, some point, the music stopped, and a and she asks a lot less of you who now repeats: woman climbed into the truck, wielding five thousand in a hotel and in a car two, with the mouth. a megaphone. “No life without our leader!” she shouted. —Giovanni Giudici “Long live Apo!” everyone cried, using (Translated, from the Italian, by Karl Kirchwey.) a nickname for Öcalan. In Kurdish parts of Syria, Öcalan is hard to escape. His image appears on dred of them; according to the Penta- vehicles, to join Kurdish fighters pa- billboards, flags, walls, phones, pins, post- gon, most had been killed, abducted, or trolling the Syrian-Turkish border. “This ers, and patches; usually he is depicted relieved of their weapons by Islamists. A needs to stop,” Erdoğan declared, add- with a warm smile beneath a paintbrush C.I.A. initiative, which eventually cost ing that the presence of American flags mustache. He tends to look avuncular more than a billion dollars, sponsored in a “terrorist” convoy had “seriously sad- and professorial, and is rarely shown with anti-government rebels. In 2015, when dened us.” a weapon. In January, 2014, the Demo- Russia intervened in Syria, on behalf of The S.D.F., however, was the only cratic Union Party promulgated a char- Assad, it effectively neutralized these rebel force capable of removing isis from ter based on Öcalan’s concept of demo- units with air strikes. its capital. And though Raqqa does not cratic confederalism. Meant to lay the Although the Y.P.G. was prevailing have a large Kurdish population, Kurd- groundwork for “a society free from au- militarily, the Obama Administration ish fighters were prepared to help cap- thoritarianism, militarism, centralism remained leery of it. Turkey, a nato ture it. Rojda Felat told me, “There were and the intervention of religious author- member that allows the U.S. to conduct a lot of discussions. But all of them were ity in public affairs,” the charter estab- air strikes over Syria from one of its mil- about what our role would be, not whether lished three autonomous cantons in Ro- itary bases, does not distinguish between we would play a role.” java, as the Kurdish region in northern the Y.P.G. and the P.K.K., which it con- The U.S. has not only ignored Tur- Syria is known. Each canton would be siders an existential threat. At this year’s key’s objections; it has bolstered the Kurds composed of councils overseen by a gen- Aspen Security Forum, General Ray- diplomatically. In Aspen, General Thomas eral assembly. The charter recognized mond Thomas, the head of the U.S. Spe- explained, “They wanted a seat at the the equal status of religions, languages, cial Operations Command, recounted table, and because they had been branded and minority groups—Arabs, Syriacs, telling Y.P.G. leaders, in late 2015, that as P.K.K. they could never get to the Chechens, Armenians, and Yazidis. It if they wanted meaningful American table.” According to Thomas, U.S. diplo- also mandated that women comprise at support they had to change their “brand.” mats have pushed for the S.D.F.’s involve- least forty per cent of every governing Thomas went on, “With about a day’s ment in national peace talks that could body, institution, and committee. In an notice, they declared that they were the determine the future of the country. echo of Bookchin’s extensive writings on Syrian Democratic Forces. It was a stroke And yet none of the Kurdish fighters social ecology, protecting the environ- of brilliance to put ‘democracy’ in there.” I met described the Raqqa campaign as ment was deemed a “sacred” duty. Soon after the S.D.F. was conceived, a a political quid pro quo. For them, it was After the Y.P.G.’s victory in Kobanî, U.S. aircraft parachuted a hundred pal- a necessary phase in an ambitious, life- it continued liberating towns from isis, lets of weaponry to its Arab contingents, long revolution. and increasingly collaborated with Arab and Obama dispatched Special Opera- fighters and Christian militias. The global tions Forces to train and advise them. ne afternoon this summer, near a anti-isis coalition, led by the U.S., offered The Trump Administration has dou- Ofront line in West Raqqa, I sat in limited air support. The battlefield suc- bled down on the strategy. In May, Trump a requisitioned residence with Ali Sher, a cesses of the Y.P.G. contrasted starkly approved a plan to arm Syrian Kurds in thirty-three-year-old Kurdish commander with the generally hapless efforts of the S.D.F. directly, and deployed several with a handlebar mustache and the tra- American proxies elsewhere in Syria. By hundred marines and Army rangers to ditional Y.P.G. uniform: camouflage mid-2015, a five-hundred-million-dollar support them. Around this time, Turk- Hammer pants and a colorful head scarf Pentagon program intended to train and ish jets bombed sites in Rojava, report- tied back pirate-style. Before the war, equip more than five thousand anti-isis edly killing twenty Y.P.G. members. The Sher sold clothes in a market in Kobanî. fighters had produced only about a hun- attack prompted U.S. troops, in marked He joined the Y.P.G. when isis attacked

50 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 the city; after the battle, he made the for Yazidis, who are not Muslim, and into ruined residential neighborhoods, same blood oath as Rojda Felat. “I have after its militants in Iraq seized Mosul, we passed gutted husks of cars and buses, nothing else,” he told me. “I don’t have a in 2014, they attacked Shingal. Thou- levelled buildings, and a depot littered wife. I don’t have children. I don’t even sands of Yazidis were slaughtered; thou- with the twisted remnants of blown-up have a car.” sands of women and girls were abducted construction equipment. When I asked Sher what he was doing and forced into sexual slavery. Those Inside the city, the devastation was in Raqqa, he said, “Don’t think we are who escaped made for a mountain range apocalyptic. Block after block of tall fighting only for Rojava. We’re not sol- that looms over the town and extends apartment towers had been obliterated. diers—we’re revolutionaries.” into Rojava. P.K.K. and Y.P.G. fighters Every building seemed to have been Two young women walked into the opened a corridor from the mountains struck by ordnance: either destroyed en- room, and Sher greeted them enthusi- into Syria. Sick and elderly Yazidis were tirely, scorched black by fire, or in a state astically. One was a P.K.K. fighter from evacuated. Able-bodied men and women of mid-collapse, with slabs of concrete Turkey. (“Leave me alone,” she said when were brought to training camps, formed hanging precariously from exposed rebar I tried to interview her.) The other had into an armed militia, and sent back to and twisted I-beams. Bulldozers had been Sher’s first commander in Kobanî. fight isis. plowed a path through heaps of cinder “During the training, he was very tired,” A short and stocky twenty-seven- blocks, felled power poles, and other de- she said with a laugh. Her nom de guerre year-old Yazidi named Zardesht, who’d tritus. Up ahead, missiles hit: a whistle, was Çîçek 23. In Kurdish, •”•ek means been trained and armed in Rojava, said then a crash, then a dark plume. Smoke “flower.” Twenty-three comes from the of the Syrian and Turkish Kurds, “They and dust roiled over rooftops. name of a gun that she used on Mishta- saved us. They gave their blood to pre- A melee broke out as soon as we nour Hill. She told me that she, too, had vent our extermination.” stopped. It was unclear who was in devoted herself to the Y.P.G. Zardesht and more than a thousand charge. Amid arguments about which “Think about this society,” Sher said. other Yazidis fought alongside the P.K.K. teams should go where, some fighters “If you’re married here, what can you and the Y.P.G. on the outskirts of Shin- were herded inside a building while oth- give your children? Clothes? Food? Even gal until November, 2015, when Iraqi ers piled into a Humvee, which then slaves have clothes and food. When you Kurdish forces and a heavy U.S. bomb- sped off toward an abandoned children’s are resisting oppression and injustice, you ing campaign helped them take back hospital that they were meant to cap- are fighting for more than just your own the town. Countless P.K.K. and Y.P.G. ture. I joined a group of fighters gath- small family. You are fighting for your flags were raised across Shingal. “We ered on the ground floor of the build- big family—society.” started to trust in their ideology, because ing. Most of them were from Tabqa, a The frontiers of the society for which we thought that these beliefs would help city about twenty miles to the west. They Sher and Çîçek 23 are fighting have ex- us to protect our people,” Zardesht told had joined the S.D.F. when it liberated panded considerably since they defended me. “Now we are trying to apply the Tabqa, in May. After seventeen days of Kobanî. On March 17, 2016, the Demo- same council system in Shingal as the training from U.S. soldiers, they told me, cratic Union Party announced the cre- Kurds have in Rojava.” When the Raqqa they had been given Kalashnikovs and ation of a “democratic federation” in Ro- offensive began, Zardesht and about sent to the front. Some of them looked java, with the S.D.F. serving as its military. forty other Yazidi militia members— extremely young. One boy, Joresh Akool, A draft constitution was soon put for- half of them women—vol- must have been about four- ward. It largely preserved the canton struc- unteered to take part. teen. (He hesitated when I ture, and included a mechanism for in- “We are ready to sacri- asked his age, then said that corporating other parts of Syria into its fice our lives for the ideas he was seventeen.) Smok- federal system. of Abdullah Öcalan,” Zar- ing a cigarette and wearing Sher and Çîçek 23 shared the expec- desht said. a ski vest, despite it being tation that once isis had been expelled well over a hundred degrees, from Raqqa the area’s citizens would vote lthough most of the Akool told me that he was to join the new federation. They hoped Acommanders in Raqqa the only member of his fam- that Raqqa residents, having endured the were Kurds, most of the ily left in Syria—everyone Draconian rule of isis, would be open to troops were Arabs. A few else had fled to Turkey. “My the diametrically contrary values cham- days after speaking with Ali Sher in mother keeps telling me to come,” he pioned by Öcalan, from secularism to gen- West Raqqa, my translator and I fol- said. “She says if I come she’ll find a wife der equality. “When we liberate areas from lowed two pickup trucks, crowded with for me.” The men around him laughed. isis, we start a revolution in the mentality about twenty Arab fighters, through the Several of the Arab fighters wore of the people,” Sher said. “This is the most southern fringes of the city. (Arab units patches featuring the face of Abdullah important part.” of the S.D.F. are entirely male.) As the Öcalan. When I asked them what they The assertion might have sounded trucks traversed a ravaged dirt road along thought about his ideas, however, they quixotic, if not for some men who were the wide and calm Euphrates River, seemed indifferent. Many of them had sitting in the room with us. They were through overgrown orchards and battled the regime at the beginning of Yazidis from Shingal, a town in Iraqi sunflower gardens, the fighters cried out, the war. Akool told me that one of his Kurdistan. isis harbors a special disdain “We are from Raqqa!” Turning north brothers had been killed in Aleppo while

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 51 The campaign to liberate Raqqa from ISIS has left it virtually uninhabitable. Much of the city is covered in mines.

fighting Assad’s forces. “That was a long strike, which should have detonated any a grenade dropped by an isis drone. time ago,” he said. It wasn’t, really—about improvised explosive devices that isis had Another afternoon, on a street in East three years—but I knew what he meant. planted inside. A report came over some- Raqqa, where the S.D.F. had pushed into It was before isis created its caliphate, one’s radio: two men were dead, several the city’s old quarter, breaching a huge before Russian and U.S. involvement, wounded. The injuries included lost limbs. mud-mortar wall from the eighth cen- and before the S.D.F. The vast majority of S.D.F. fighters tury, I watched an armored bulldozer re- Despite the Arab fighters’ lack of in- who were killed in Raqqa were Arabs, turn from clearing some rubble nearby. terest in the Kurdish social revolution, and most of them were killed by blasts. Snipers had pierced the bulldozer in they said that they planned to remain in Firefights were rare. While I was there, three places, and it leaked a black trail the S.D.F., even after the Raqqa offen- at least, very few isis militants seemed of oil in the dirt. The driver was a fifty- sive, as long as it continued to oppose to be defending the city. The leadership seven-year-old Arab from Hasakah— isis. “Wherever there is isis in the world, was thought to have escaped south, to the city where Rojda Felat had attended I will fight them,” one of them said. “I’ll the province of Deir Ezzor. The problem college. Before joining the S.D.F., he’d go to America to fight them.” He wanted now was the confounding proliferation worked on construction projects. Now revenge for the indignities that isis had of mines that isis had left behind—and his main responsibility was excavating made him suffer, and for his friends and the S.D.F.’s inability to deal with them. mines with the bulldozer’s blade, often relatives who had been killed. He said, In Mosul, where isis had recently exploding them in the process. One blast “When isis came to Tabqa, they arrested been defeated, the Iraqi Army had re- had shattered a window in the cab. us and gave us Islamic instruction in the lied on an extensive fleet of American Front-line units carried sacks full of prison. They collected all the children tanks and mine-resistant armored per- jury-rigged bombs: softball-size amal- and forced them to do military and Ko- sonnel carriers. But the U.S., in an effort gams of homemade explosives, packaged ranic training.” to appease Turkey, has strictly limited its in plastic wrap and spiked with six-inch We hadn’t been talking long when the supply of matériel to the S.D.F. The five fuses. At least one bomb was thrown into Humvee returned with several men look- thousand troops fighting in Raqqa had every building that the fighters planned ing stunned and battered. Upon enter- access to only fifteen Humvees. Ali Sher’s to enter, in order to set off any mines in- ing the children’s hospital, they’d trig- men and another unit—two hundred side. This precautionary measure, how- gered a mine. “We thought it was safe,” and fifty fighters, in total—shared one ever, insured the destruction of what- one of them said, explaining that a coa- of the Humvees, and shortly after I met ever structures had managed to evade lition jet had hit the hospital with an air them it was disabled for a few days by aerial bombardment—and it wasn’t even

52 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 foolproof. Before the Arab fighters from they claimed: Assad’s intelligence agents would assume administration of the city. Tabqa had entered the children’s hospi- were said to enjoy free rein in the Kurd- When I visited its interim offices, in tal, they had deployed ten such bombs. ish quarter. That April, however, the a town forty miles north of Raqqa, doz- Four days after the incident at the Y.P.G. in Aleppo formally allied itself ens of people had crowded outside the hospital, I visited the surrounding area. with the opposition. door of a senior councilman, Omar Al- The Humvee I was in stopped next to a In 2015, Halal left Aleppo and joined loush. Inside, Alloush, a rotund, gray- Toyota pickup truck with Iraqi plates the campaign against isis in northern haired, chain-smoking Kurdish lawyer and a Russian machine gun mounted in Syria after his father, who was also in from Kobanî, was talking with two men: the bed; it had been compressed beneath the Y.P.G., was killed near Kobanî. Ac- an S.D.F. official, in a suit, and an Arab a building pancaked by an air strike. Next cording to Halal, an Arab member of his sheikh, in a kaffiyeh and traditional white door, in a second-floor bedroom of a father’s unit betrayed his comrades, re- robes. The sheikh, Farris Horan, served once luxurious home, I met three mine- moving the firing pin on their sole ma- on a committee for the Raqqa Civil removal technicians—the first I’d seen chine gun while they slept. The next day, Council that acted as a liaison to Raqqa’s in Raqqa. isis militants ambushed the position, Arab tribes. An S.D.F. fighter had acci- They were preparing to sweep the killing all thirteen Kurdish fighters sta- dentally shot an Arab civilian, and, after hospital for a third time. “The first time tioned there. “This man had been in my meeting with the leaders of the victim’s we went in, we found about twenty mines,” father’s unit for two years,” Halal said. tribe, Horan was negotiating financial one of them, a bearded Arab in gold- “They trusted him. He’d said he wanted compensation. Once the two men had rimmed sunglasses, told me. They had to help the Kurds.” settled the issue and left the room, Al- no formal training: their primary qual- Whether or not the story was true, loush, speaking of the Arab tribes, told ification for the job appeared to be their Halal believed it. I asked him how he me, “They don’t necessarily believe in willingness to do it. The man with the felt about commanding Arabs now. He our ideology. But they see a future with sunglasses was coiling rope tied to a grap- nodded toward the broken window, be- us. That’s why they joined us.” pling hook. Whenever they found an yond which explosions and sniper fire By “us,” he did not mean only the I.E.D., he explained, he placed or tossed had been sounding. He said simply, “A Raqqa Civil Council. Alloush had helped the hook near its triggering device, paid lot of them are brave and fighting in a found a political arm of the S.D.F. that out the rope, and pulled. Their other tool strong way.” Then, seeming to recognize is responsible for managing the envis- was a plastic mirror that had been Scotch- the irony of his situation—or, in any case, aged expansion of the democratic fed- taped to a paint roller. A second techni- seeming to recognize that I found it eration beyond Rojava. “We believe in a cian proudly showed me how a pole at- ironic—Halal added, “We think that new constitution for Syria,” Alloush told tached to the roller’s handle extended man did what he did for money. isis paid me. Every community that the S.D.F. and collapsed, enabling them to see him to do it.” As Joresh Akool had told liberated from isis would be urged to around corners. isis had dug a tunnel me, 2014 was a long time ago. join the federation. “Maybe some places into the hospital’s basement. “That last In Aleppo, certainly, a lot had changed. will be autonomous,” he said. “Federal air strike was trying to damage it,” he After regime soldiers killed Akool’s system, noncentral system—this deci- said. “We heard on the radio that isis brother, moderate Arabs in the opposi- sion will come from the people. We have wants to capture some of us alive.” tion were gradually vanquished by Isla- to wait and see how they’ll vote.” In another bedroom of the house, I mists, and so the Y.P.G. switched sides. A few days later, my translator and I found the ranking commander for the Last December, Kurds helped Assad’s gave Horan a ride to a village about ten area, a Kurd, sitting on a box spring be- forces retake the city. miles east of Raqqa, across a black ex- neath a shattered window that over- panse of volcanic sand flats. The village, looked the hospital. Twenty-one years he deep grievances that many Arabs which hugged the banks of the Euphrates, old, diminutive, and clean-shaven, with Tharbor toward isis have brought was in an area called Karama, and Horan a line of pale scalp on the side of his about their unlikely collaboration with had been invited to attend a ceremony head where a bullet had grazed him, he the disciples of Abdullah Öcalan. But it in which Karama’s largest Arab tribe introduced himself as Vietnam Kobanî. is not clear if this temporary military al- would announce its endorsement of the His real name was Khairee Halal. Be- liance will translate into an enduring po- Raqqa Civil Council. In the car, Horan fore the war, Halal had been a barber in litical one after isis has been purged from said, “They were the main tribe support- Aleppo. When Y.P.G. fighters arrived Syria. In Raqqa, the Kurds seem deter- ing isis around here. Even now, a lot of in the city and set up a militia in the mined to try to strengthen the bond. This them are still with isis. But others are Kurdish quarter, he joined them. As April, a delegation of a hundred and ten with us. So it’s complicated.” Aleppo became divided between regime displaced natives of the city—techno- In March, when the S.D.F. took forces and rebel groups, the Kurds were crats, teachers, attorneys, and other pro- Karama, hundreds of villagers retreated caught between the two sides. “We were fessionals—established the Raqqa Civil to Raqqa with isis. Some were forced not with either,” Halal told me. “We Council, a governing body modelled on to go; some had been recruited as mili- were just defending our neighborhood.” the regional assemblies of the new dem- tants and went willingly. Among those I spent a month in Aleppo in 2013, and ocratic federation in northern Syria. Once who stayed in Karama, twelve hundred men many Arab rebels I met there believed Raqqa was secure, the delegation declared, had joined the S.D.F. They were now that the Kurds were not as neutral as the council, which has U.S. backing, fighting their former neighbors and

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 53 relatives on the front lines in Raqqa. In- When isis came to Karama, in 2014, Abu than the military stuff. Our main objec- deed, Horan said, the brother of the Jihad urged Tobat to stay away. “I told tive is to send a new man back to society, sheikh hosting the day’s ceremony had him, ‘There’s no future with them.’ We and in this way to build a new society.” joined isis, and was a high-ranking offi- argued a lot.” Abu Jihad claimed that The instructor’s classes were intel- cial within the caliphate. many people in Karama fell under the lectually ambitious. “I explain the fed- In the village center, five long tents sway of isis simply because “there were eralist project,” he said. “I begin with stood in a field beside a concrete water no schools—there was only the Sharia the whole history of federalism, from tower lying on its side. (isis had sabo- instruction.” He added, “isis filled all the before the term existed, when it started taged it.) Under the tents, hundreds of young people’s minds with their ideas. in Greece. We talk about the Romans, Arab men, representing forty-odd tribes My brother was one of them.” Tobat re- about Columbus discovering America, from Raqqa Province, sat on treated with the isis mili- and about the first American Congress carpets, watching several tants to Raqqa, and one day and the colonies. Then I explain the sys- sheikhs mingle with one an- he sent envoys home to re- tem here in Rojava, which is not a nation- other, as well as with Kurd- cruit fighters. “I called him state but a mixing of different commu- ish members of the S.D.F., and told him, strongly, not nities.” The class lasts six hours a day many of whom were women. to do that again,” Abu Jihad for twenty days. Arab conscripts take When one of the two co- recalled. “I said, ‘You made workshops in the Kurdish language twice chairs of the Raqqa Civil your decision. Now you have a week. Council entered the tent— to fight alone.’ That was the The instructor didn’t mention Öcalan Laila Mustafa, a twenty- last time we spoke.” Still, to me, but when the graduation cere- nine-year-old Kurdish en- Abu Jihad insisted that mony began and conscripts marched gineer, wearing black jeans and boots, Tobat was “a good person.” In Raqqa, he across a dirt parade ground to the bleat- her hair in a ponytail—the sheikhs stood said, Tobat had “helped many people” by ing of a brass band, they chanted, “No to shake her hand. standing up for them against less fair- life without Apo!” Omar Alloush, the Kurdish senior minded isis officials. Abu Jihad said that “Who’s our leader?” a Kurdish female councilman, presided over the ceremony. most of the local men who’d joined isis instructor shouted. He stood before the tribesmen and pas- were redeemable. “A lot of them want to “Apo!” sionately condemned isis, the Assad re- come back,” he told me. “But isis won’t Later, in a speech, the female instruc- gime, and anti-government rebels not let them.” tor invoked the anniversary of the P.K.K.’s belonging to the S.D.F. Only the S.D.F., I asked him if these men would be first attacks on the Turkish government: he said, “aims to end the Syrian crisis welcomed by his tribe if they somehow “This month was a holy month, because and build a new democratic Syria.” Other escaped. we are continuing the path that was Kurdish leaders followed with similar “Absolutely.” started by Öcalan.” speeches, vowing to spread their revolu- And Tobat? Did he want to come back? After the ceremony, a Kurdish poet tion to the entire country. “I don’t know,” Abu Jihad said. He recited some of his revolutionary verse, The head of the main tribe in Karama, studied the prayer beads in his hands, and musicians performed traditional who was known as Abu Jihad, stepped then told me, “I’m sure he will leave them Kurdish songs. While talking with a forward. An older man with a pock- and return to us.” Kurdish instructor, I remarked on the marked face, he was, compared with the dozens of abandoned mud-mortar dwell- Kurdish speakers, conspicuously tepid. he Raqqa Civil Council’s forgiv- ings scattered throughout the camp, which He thanked people for coming and mum- Ting attitude toward former isis appeared to have once been a village. bled, “We are ready to be with you.” sympathizers, and its deference to Arab “Arabs used to live here,” he said. Alloush stood up again. “Out of re- tribal structures, contrasted strikingly “What happened to them?” I asked. spect for everyone who is here today,” with what I saw in Rojava. In the “They left with isis.” he said, the S.D.F. would release fifty majority- Kurdish cantons, winning Arab “Where are they now?” local families who, suspected of having support is not essential, and indoctri- “Nobody knows.” especially close ties to isis, had been nation seems to be more the goal. All In late 2015, after a two-month inves- held in a nearby camp for internally dis- men in Rojava between the ages of eigh- tigation, Amnesty International accused placed people. The news was greeted teen and thirty, regardless of their eth- the Y.P.G. of forcibly displacing Arabs with loud applause. nicity, must serve at least ten months in northern Syria, and of razing Arab After an elaborate lunch was served, in a kind of national guard. In a camp villages there. According to Amnesty, the I spoke privately with Abu Jihad. He told outside Kobanî, I attended a gradua- attacks constituted a “campaign of col- me that before isis arrived “there were tion ceremony for some five hundred lective punishment of civilians in villages no radical beliefs” in Karama. “No one conscripts, who’d just completed basic previously captured” by isis, or in places thought like that, not even the people training. Most of them were Arabs. “where a small minority were suspected who ended up joining isis.” This included When I asked one of the instructors— of supporting the group.” A subsequent his younger brother, Tobat. Abu Jihad nearly all of whom were Kurds—what U.N. commission, which investigated said that Tobat had opposed the Assad the training entailed, he said, “We really more recent allegations, found “no evi- regime, but was not particularly religious. focus on the mentality, the beliefs, more dence to substantiate claims that Y.P.G.

54 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 or S.D.F. forces ever targeted Arab com- lines was almost impossible to obtain. “paying an unacceptable price.” The co- munities on the basis of ethnicity.” More than once, I was told that I couldn’t alition went on to escalate its bombing. At the camp, Kurdish instructors never go somewhere, only to find out later that Many of the coalition’s strikes on left my side, and I had difficulty meet- U.S. soldiers had been in the area, or that Raqqa originated with front-line revo- ing Arab conscripts. Finally, I sat down bombardment from coalition planes and lutionary Kurdish commanders like Ali with a young man named Malik Mo- artillery had taken place nearby. U.S. Spe- Sher. At all times, Sher carried an iPad hammad, and asked him what he thought cial Operations Forces ran a field hos- on which was installed a satellite map of of his training. pital in Raqqa that treated wounded Raqqa. The map allowed him to pin- “It’s useful,” Mohammad said. S.D.F. fighters; when I went there and point the G.P.S. coördinates of any struc- The reply felt unconvincing. Like most asked if anyone would speak with me, I ture by touching its image on the screen. Arab conscripts, he would probably spend was aggressively confronted by half a He could radio the coördinates to a the next ten months performing menial dozen armed Americans, one of whom tactical-operations center and request duties, away from his family. Although said, “Absolutely not.” He confiscated that the structure be targeted by coali- sixty new graduates had been selected to my phone and demanded its password. tion missiles, mortars, rockets, or artil- become officers, all but two were Kurds. (I didn’t give it to him, and he eventu- lery. Usually, Sher told me, his requests When I asked Mohammad to elab- ally returned the phone.) An older Amer- were approved. The numerous air strikes orate, he glanced timidly at several Kurd- ican, with a graying beard and a ball cap, I witnessed each day in Raqqa seemed ish conscripts hovering around us. Then told me, “For you, information is a good incongruous, given the apparent paucity he said, “They teach us about the im- thing.” He then explained that, for se- of isis fighters there. One day, Sher’s portance of a free society. But if we were curity reasons, it was better if nobody unit moved its line forward by five blocks, free we’d be able to choose whether or not knew that they were there. Several sol- capturing forty buildings in the process. to serve” in the national guard. diers escorted me to my car, and for the While they were completing the opera- Many Kurds also dislike the conscrip- next two days the S.D.F. shut down the tion, I talked to Sher, who told me that tion policy. But the Democratic Union entire area to reporters. nobody had shot at them the whole time. Party, despite its lofty charter and con- No doubt the security concerns were According to the latest intelligence, he stitution, has shown little patience for legitimate. But the efforts to limit media said, between five and six hundred isis dissent. While the Party was consolidat- coverage in Raqqa, by both the Ameri- fighters remained in Raqqa. I asked him ing power in northern Syria, rival figures cans and the Kurds, might also have been what all the bombing was for. in the Kurdish opposition were arbi- tied to the controversial way that the “Snipers,” he said. “And mines. Some- trarily imprisoned; others were killed, or campaign was conducted. According to times it’s just one guy.” went missing. In 2013, Y.P.G. fighters the watchdog group Airwars, the coali- The U.S. has largely disparaged crit- shot and killed three Kurds protesting tion deployed some twenty thousand icism of its strikes. The coalition’s com- the detention of anti-Assad activists. The munitions during the Raqqa offensive mander, Lieutenant General Stephen leader of an alliance of Kurdish political and killed more than thirteen hundred Townsend, recently wrote that assertions parties that are wary of the P.K.K. has civilians, including at least two hundred by groups like Airwars “are often unsup- been forced into exile. In March, more and fifty children. Thousands were in- ported by fact.” Omar Alloush, of the than a dozen offices belonging to groups jured. In August, the U.N. High Com- Raqqa Civil Council, was similarly opposed to the Democratic Union Party missioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad dismissive about civilian casualties. He were forcibly shut down. Al Hussein, declared that civilians were told me, “There are only two kinds of

he Syrian civil war has produced Tmany strange bedfellows. But it’s especially curious that Öcalan’s revolution, which strives to eliminate “capitalist modernity,” has made its recent ad- vancements under the patronage of the United States. In Rojava, Kurds often refer to Donald Trump as Bâvê şoreş—“Fa- ther of the Revolution”—and in Kobanî there is a kebab restaurant called Trump, with the President’s visage painted on its window. I met a Y.P.G. fighter who’d named his infant daughter America. During the Raqqa offensive, U.S. Spe- cial Operations Forces were deployed throughout the city, but they avoided journalists. The S.D.F. also severely re- stricted the press. Reporters were assigned minders, and access to active front “God, you know what? You’re sweet, but I just got out of a long thing.” people left in Raqqa—isis and thieves. who did some tests and told us he had commanded to stand against “our ene- Otherwise, why haven’t they left yet?” stomach cancer. But there’s no medicine mies in Turkey.” From the perspective of At the time of this conversation, an or anything in Raqqa, and isis won’t let U.S. interests, however, once isis has been estimated twenty thousand civilians were people leave to find a hospital. So I just defeated in Syria the utility of Kurdish still trapped in Raqqa; attempting to es- brought him home, and he died.” fighters will diminish significantly. If a cape was extremely dangerous. isis snip- This echoed previous conversations direct conflict broke out between Turkey ers often shot at fleeing civilians, and I’d had. The day I went to Karama, Far- and the S.D.F., it is difficult to imagine many others were killed or maimed by ris Horan, the tribal liaison, had pointed the U.S. employing force against its nato mines. S.D.F. commanders told me that out a village on the way. His cousin had ally. It is equally difficult to imagine the isis used civilians as shields, putting them lived there with her husband, a sheikh. S.D.F. withstanding a Turkish incursion, on the rooftops of buildings they occu- After they had a son, she invited friends unless it were supported by U.S. airpower. pied. Two primitive aid stations treated over to celebrate. Horan said that the In mid-October, isis holdouts in wounded civilians in Raqqa. At both of coalition must have mistaken the party Raqqa were granted safe passage out of them, I was told that the vast majority of for an isis gathering. An air strike hit the city. According to Omar Alloush, the patients had stepped on mines while try- the house, killing eleven people, includ- Kurdish senior member of the Raqqa ing to reach the S.D.F.’s front line. (When ing Horan’s cousin and her baby. In the Civil Council, two hundred and seventy- I asked the American with the graying car, Horan brought out his phone and five Syrian isis members “turned them- beard if the field hospital treated civil- showed me a photograph of the boy, selves in to their tribes, in exchange for ians, he replied, “That’s not our mission.”) purple- faced and swaddled in white blan- forgiveness.” (Although some of those After coalition air strikes took out kets. The sheikh survived. I asked Horan who surrendered came from Karama, the two bridges over the Euphrates, in Feb- what the sheikh was doing now. “He has home of Abu Jihad, his brother Tobat ruary, the main option for fleeing civil- a unit in the S.D.F.,” Horan said. “He was not among them.) ians was to hire a smuggler with a boat. coördinates directly with the coalition.” This fall, S.D.F. fighters and regime The next month, the coalition dropped I expressed incredulity. forces have been racing for control of leaflets over Raqqa with a warning: “Do “All people here want right now is to isis’s last bastion, the province of Deir not use ferries or boats. Air strikes are be finished with isis,” Horan told me. Ezzor. The S.D.F. recently captured a coming.” Lieutenant General Townsend “They will accept almost anything if they large oil field there. The Assad regime, told the Times, “We shoot every boat we can just get rid of isis.” backed by Russian air power, is fight- find,” adding, “If you want to get out of ing in the provincial capital. A direct Raqqa right now, you’ve got to build a he willingness to countenance phone line connects the command cen- poncho raft.” TAmerican crimes because of more ters of the U.S. and Russian militaries One would think that the killing of egregious ones committed by isis, Rus- in Syria, so that they can avoid inad- civilians, along with the total demoli- sia, and the regime, speaks to how trag- vertent clashes. Nonetheless, the coalition of Raqqa’s infrastructure, might risk ically tolerant some Syrians have grown tion says, Russian planes have targeted alienating residents, or turn them against of what might once have appalled them. S.D.F. positions, wounding fighters. their would-be liberators. For some, It might also reveal a fear that U.S. in- Even as the Democratic Union Party surely, this is the case. But others whom volvement in Syria will be short-lived. has embraced the U.S.-led coalition and I spoke with exhibited a remarkable— One day, in a waiting room in Kobanî, forged alliances with anti-government and heartbreaking—forbearance from a stranger handed me his phone to show rebels, it has tried to reach an accom- judgment. In South Raqqa, I met Ahmed me some Kurdish text that he’d typed modation with Assad. Crude from Almoo, an S.D.F. fighter who had crossed into Google Translate: “We love Amer- northern Syria’s abundant oil fields, the Euphrates, in a boat, two months icans so much I hope you do not give up which the Democratic Union Party earlier. Almoo was fifty-six but looked on us.” The sentiment was repeated by largely controls, is exported in tanker decades older. I’d noticed him standing many others I met in northern Syria, es- convoys to Damascus, and an overland guard outside an Arab unit’s position pecially by Kurdish members of the S.D.F. route links Rojava to regime-controlled one morning, and was struck by the sight Their worry is understandable. Amer- Aleppo. The Kurdish quarter in Aleppo of a man so wizened and fragile wear- ica’s partnership with the S.D.F. still in- has been granted semi-autonomy, and ing a uniform and holding a Kalash- furiates Turkey. In July, Turkey’s state regime soldiers still guard the adminis- nikov. He told me that he’d been a news agency published a map identify- trative buildings that the government butcher in Raqqa. To pay his smuggler, ing ten undisclosed U.S. bases in Ro- was allowed to keep after withdrawing he’d sold all the equipment from his java, and the Turkish military began shell- troops from Rojava. shop and the furniture from his home. ing a Kurdish district there. Turkish Outside Rojava, Bashar al-Assad’s His brother, who couldn’t afford to join officials announced, “We will never allow military position is as strong as it has him, had been killed by an air strike. All the establishment of a terror state along been in years. He has described the au- the same, Almoo had not hesitated to our borders.” tonomous Kurdish cantonments as “tem- join the S.D.F. “I suffered a lot from Many Kurdish fighters I met in Raqqa porary structures,” and he has never isis,” he explained. He blamed the group said that they were ready to fight the equivocated about his intention to bring for the death of his son. “He started feel- Turkish Army next. At the graduation the entire country back under his con- ing sick, and we took him to a doctor ceremony in Kobanî, the conscripts were trol. Robert S. Ford, the former U.S.

56 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 A sniper for the Syrian Democratic Forces. On October 19th, the S.D.F. announced that it had reclaimed Raqqa from ISIS.

Ambassador to Syria, recently wrote in cifixions. Now a huge banner showing a for the Middle East. One day in Raqqa, Foreign Affairs that Assad “will proba- smiling Öcalan was unfurled. Y.P.G. flags in September, I met a twenty-two-year- bly succeed.” Ford continued, “That flew. “My heart was jumping for joy,” old fighter named Shilan, who was wear- means the United States will have to Rojda Felat said recently. “We thought it ing fatigues, Chuck Taylors, and a cal- abandon any hopes of supporting a sep- would be much more difficult.” She noted, culator watch. She told me, “The men arate Kurdish region or securing respect “One time, on the front lines, the enemy we are fighting against treat women like for human rights and democracy.” In attacked and the men took a step back— animals. They make them slaves, they his view, “when the Syrian government but the women didn’t. When the men rape them. As a woman, I have to fight and Kurdish forces inevitably fight,” it saw them, they started fighting again.” these men.” would be “a mistake” for the U.S. to “step Hundreds of female Kurdish fighters, isis is spectacularly misogynist, but in on behalf of old allies.” from various units around the city, con- Kurdish society can also be sexist, Shi- On October 19th, in a ceremony at gregated in the square. Nesrin Abdul- lan pointed out. She said that joining the Naim Square, in the center of Raqqa, lah, the commander of an all-female Y.P.G. and battling isis was, in part, a the S.D.F. announced that the city had branch of the Y.P.G., gave a speech com- means of transcending limitations that been “liberated.” This feels like a misno- memorating the thirty female fighters would otherwise define her life at home: mer. The coalition’s air campaign has left who had been killed during the offen- “Your family tells you that you can’t wear Raqqa an uninhabitable wasteland. More sive. “Women have freed themselves of certain clothes. When you go out, peo- than three hundred thousand civilians the exploitative male regime in politi- ple say you have to stay with your hus- have been displaced. In September, Omar cal, social, cultural, and military aspects,” band. You’re not free. Nobody listens to Alloush told me that he’d met with U.S. Abdullah declared. “We dedicate the you. Here, you have the right to your State Department officials who’d pledged liberation of Raqqa to all the women of opinion. Men care what you have to say. American financial help for the rebuild- the world.” They want to put you in the front. It’s ing of Raqqa’s infrastructure, power Whatever the Kurdish revolution is possible to have your place.” plants, schools, and water and sanitation or isn’t, and however sincerely its adher- I asked her whether she could imag- systems. “Until now, this is only words,” ents have sought to implement their ine being a civilian again, when the war he said. “They have given nothing.” ideals, its commitment to women’s rights in Syria ends. From where we stood, it All the same, the event at Naim Square cannot be dismissed. For many women felt like a frivolously hypothetical ques- was celebratory. Under isis, the square in the Y.P.G., the revolution is, above tion, but Shilan answered right away. had been the site of beheadings and cru- all, an unprecedented feminist endeavor No, she’d never go back. 

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 57 FICTION

58 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY TIM ENTHOVEN y that time, she had flown from ing. The far lights were switched off— hands. The men stepped off the walk- Dublin to New York, then over you could not see the edges of the huge way and went to the next, which came B to Milan, for a disastrous day fol- hall, and there was no one to ask which to life as the one behind them slowed. lowed by a long trot down to Gate D09, way to go. No cleaners, no security, no Perhaps she could do the same. She could where nothing was happening. There passengers pulling luggage or pushing fire one of these things up and sail past were no passengers, just a lone, slightly trolleys in hijabs or shorts or travelling the soldiers as they sailed along on the accusatory woman in uniform, who said shawls. No announcements were being other side. But there was a gun. And she that the flight had been cancelled since made. The airport was closed. Even the was not sure that the machine would yesterday and she would have to route voice of the revolving door was silent, start for her. The soldiers proceeded from through—and here her mind went blank, the one that told you in alternating—in one to the next. Their hats were white the way you blank on the name of a per- revolving—languages not to push the and they had light-green shirts under son at a party—although some part of door. She checked the signs in turn until dark-green flak jackets. When they got her brain must have known, because she she came to the one she was looking for: onto the walkway beside her, she stopped turned and walked back the way she had a stick figure lying in a narrow bed, with on the motionless floor and waited for come, past the Segafredo franchise, the “Hotel” written underneath, then re- them to pass. The men turned slightly Swatch counter, past two Italian men peated in another language, which must as they were carried beyond her. shopping for sunglasses at a little spin- have been French—“Hôtel.” “Hotel?” she said. ning stand, down to the new gate, the “O.K., O.K., O.K.,” she said under One of them laughed a little, the number of which was circled on her new her breath as she obeyed the sign and one with the gun. The other indicated boarding pass. And it must have been pulled her faithful roller bag past a row over his shoulder, in the direction they noted somewhere, this layover in Ger- of deserted car-rental counters. “O.K., had come. many, or Switzerland, or Austria (the O.K., O.K.,” as she overtook a stilled “Ein bisschen weiter. You must go a signs, when she arrived, were all in Ger- walkway, wondering in which direction little fuurthher.” man), she just forgot it—she must have it moved when it went. After a gap, there “Thank you,” she said, thinking the forgotten it several times, she was too was another walkway, and then another; accent was so soft that she must be some- busy hating Italian airlines, and maybe they continued into the distance in a where southern. Perhaps she had landed all Italians, her mind kept snagging on broken line. Far ahead, a churning sound in Switzerland. that cancelled flight, those two hand- signalled one of them obstinately roll- At the end of the corridor, there was some men, each turning to admire his ing past its bedtime. As she got closer, a set of glass doors and, beyond them, own reflection in the other’s dark glasses. she could see the stainless-steel pathway bold orange street lamps lighting starkly When the plane landed, she followed moving, and the black rubber handrail shadowed bushes, a deserted blue road, the other passengers along the jet bridge, moving, but they seemed to be sliding and, on the other side of it, a big, beau- up an escalator, and down a glass-walled in different directions and her foot was tiful hotel. She could imagine it: the feel corridor, and zigzagged over and back almost on the thing before she realized of carpet under her roller wheels, dark through an empty baffle, with no queue that it was coming against her. She jinked wood, huge flowers scenting the air, a re- to contain. She showed her passport to to the side and made her way upstream ceptionist to say, “There will be a shut- a tired official sitting high in a cubicle, toward another sign, pointing left, and tle to departures at 4:45 a.m.” A shower. who did not ask if she knew what coun- another corridor, with a curved roof, like A bed. try she was trying to get into so late at the fuselage of a plane, and this one was Or not a hotel. The building was a night. There should be a sign, she thought. so long she could not see the end of it. warehouse, or a kind of hangar. That was A few bags circled on the carrousel, but There were moving walkways on both also possible. she left them to it, and walked between sides of her now, and none of them She closed her eyes for a moment, bare steel tables, out through sliding doors moved. She could hear the rasp of her then opened them again, ka-thick ka- into this new place. coat sleeve against her coat and the reg- thick ka-thick, putting one foot in front The last few passengers veered around ular clicking of her faithful bag over the of the other on the solid-seeming floor. her toward the big revolving doors: men, floor tiles: ka-thock ka-thock ka-thock. The doors were in front of her now. They mostly, going home to warm beds while There were no more signs. would open when she was very near. She she stood looking at a hotel voucher and In the distance, a motor lurched into would pass through them into the night a boarding pass for a flight that would action and she started, so the click of her air and, across the road, a smiling woman leave in four hours. Or in five hours. wheels went out of synch. It was like a behind a counter, a key card to press Sometimes her smartphone took a little key change. Ka-thick ka-thick ka-thick, against a numbered door, a little light while to catch up with the time zone, but against the low hum of the walkway that that clicked green. she was pretty sure the flight would leave was slowly rolling toward her. The dark- Or no hotel. Outside, across the road, in five hours, minus one hour’s check-in ness at the end of the corridor yielded was just another queue she had to join, time. Boarding 05:55 at Gate 19. She two men, jolting a little as they were con- a straggling line of people with their bags. would need to be back here, in the air- veyed along like toy men—or toy sol- Some of them were sitting down on the port, in four hours exactly. diers, indeed, because they wore peaked concrete of the street, where weeds grew When she looked up from her calcu- caps and one of them had a large gun, out of the cracks, and men in green uni- lations, the exit door had stopped revolv- which he held across his front with both forms walked two by two, tapping the

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 59 of time, because the airport—in whatever town this is—is really quite effi- ci ent. And, oh, breakfast does not start till six, so there will be croissants in the lobby. There will be no croissants, she knows that now. Outside the door, there is no vend- ing machine for the people in the line, to spiral out a Twix or a bottle of water. “Where is your passport?” a soldier says. “It does not work without the visa. Who gave you this boarding card? Oh dear, that does not apply, that boarding card, it will not get you on a plane anymore.” And the babies are crying now, so never mind the croissants—she just needs to get through this line, all these people layered up in their cheap clothes, who are so shuffling and slow, and she unzips her bag to get her shawl, because it is cold. And, instead of a receptionist, there is a man with a gun, who is so bored “I went the entire day without any human interaction.” he is out of his mind with boredom. He adjusts his crotch to the left, hoists •• his belt—he has to shake out the hand that is clutching the stock of his gun— and he checks out the tits of the stocks of their guns, as if to reassure their with old sweat, and the smell is the set- women in line; he is checking tits all HK416Cs, as if to remind their HK416Cs tled smell when you have been through night, because he is so bored he just that they were still here. And the people dirty and come out the other side—a wants to fuck somebody now. He in this line were wearing too many clothes: week after, a month after—when you are pushes a girl when he is moving her they had overcoats and cheap parkas, car- no longer rank, just stale. Because the along, he shoves her a little, and it is digans on top of cardigans; they had bits line has been there for a long time, wait- important not to catch this man’s eye; of cloth dangling off them, scarves and ing to get into the shelter of the build- it is really important to keep looking shawls, and one of them was wearing a ing that is across the road, a square block at the floor. So never mind the cotton blanket, which was not clean. that does not look like a shelter, apart sheets—she just wants the soft gaze from the fact that it has a roof. And in- of her own man, the soft gaze of her utside the airport there is no hotel, side this building, with its high, small son. She wants to kiss her mother, be- Ono numbered door that opens on a windows, there is, of course, another line, cause she is afraid her mother is in room with a bed where she can sit and and more soldiers, who are sometimes a the line somewhere up ahead, in the then lie back, prizing each shoe off with little disgusted by the smell, and some- sleeping block, perhaps, that is beyond the toe of the other foot, so that one shoe times a little pissed off, sometimes bored, this block, sitting on a bunk bed, or and then the other drops to the carpet. patting their gunstocks impatiently be- in the endless line that stretches out No pillow she can bury her face in and cause you are anxious and slow. Because along the chain-link fence, a line that then roll back from, afraid she might fall you need to go to the toilet, and that lasts for weeks and months and years. asleep fully dressed, afraid she might drool means leaving the line, which is such a And her mother is very patient, but into her own hair. No. There is just this hassle, and sometimes when you come she is also old. line of people who need a shower, and back to the line there is actual human She is so close to the doors that there is no shower—you can see it in shit on you, on your shoe or on the hem she is afraid she will bang into the their faces—there is no hope of water, let of your coat, because there is no money, glass. She is afraid they will not open, alone soap, let alone the shower stall she there is no necessity, under the circum- and she is afraid of what is on the has been craving so hard, with beige stone stances, to clean the toilet floor. other side. The hotel was just a joke walls and a granular, slip-free floor, a flat and she is lost. She does not know the showerhead as big as the bottom of a eyond the automatic door there is name of the country she is in, and she bucket, soap that smells of bergamot, or- Bno smiling receptionist, in a qui- no longer knows where to go. ♦ ange blossom, green tea. There is just etly cut suit of hotel blue, to tell her rubbing your face so that the dirt comes that, yes, her flight is on schedule, the NEWYORKER.COM off in needle-thin rolls of black dust mixed shuttle will be there before five, plenty Anne Enright on finding a fiction for the times.

60 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017

THE CRITICS

BOOKS STATE OF TERROR

A historian explains how Stalin turned Stalinist.

BY KEITH GESSEN

s there any point to another Stalin bi- ance on the map of the post-Soviet re- lectual historian and ardent cold war- Iography? Before the opening of the publics—in part, as scholars have pointed rior), it was totalitarian in content. The old Soviet archives, three decades ago, out, because of the “indigenization” pol- key theoretical concept was “speaking the best historians mastered the limited icy instituted by Lenin and Stalin—has Bolshevik,” by which Kotkin meant not available sources and proceeded to fill in also prompted a lot of productive work only the rote language people used to the gaps through inspired guesswork. In on the experiences of the Soviet periphery. navigate the bureaucracy but also the addition to genuine insight, this guess- One of the most influential of the more evocative language—of “shock work sometimes involved cross-Atlantic post-Soviet books was the Princeton work,” “capitalist encirclement,” and, psychoanalysis, including speculations historian Stephen Kotkin’s “Magnetic above all, “building socialism”—that peo- on how Stalin was swaddled as an in- Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization” ple increasingly used to understand them- fant, and could reach the point of imagin- (1995), a study of the steel city of Mag- selves and their lives. ing his thoughts and putting them in nitogorsk, the U.S.S.R.’s answer to Pitts- Two decades later, Kotkin has seem- quotation marks. burgh, as it was constructed in the shadow ingly reversed field and produced . . . a But the archives—while curbing these of the Ural Mountains in the early Stalin biography. Entering a crowded excesses, settling old arguments over the nineteen- thirties. The book was a sharp- marketplace, the book makes its mark precise number of people shot by Sta- elbowed intervention in the decades-old through its theoretical sophistication, re- lin’s secret police during the Terror (an debate between “totalitarian” historians, lentless argumentation, and sheer Stakhan- astonishing six hundred and eighty-one who saw in the Soviet Union an omnip- ovite immensity: two volumes and two thousand six hundred and ninety-two), otent state imposing its will on a de- thousand closely printed pages in, we’re and showing definitively that it was Sta- fenseless populace, and “revisionist” his- only up to 1941. (A projected third vol- lin who signed the execution orders— torians, who saw a more dynamic and ume should take us through the war and have not radically altered anyone’s over- fluid society, with some portion of the to Stalin’s death, in 1953.) Kotkin also at- all conception of what sort of person population actually supporting the re- tempts to answer the chief philosophi- Stalin was, or what sort of regime he gime. Kotkin’s synthesis was influenced cal question about Stalin: whether the presided over. The Bolsheviks, we’ve by the philosopher Michel Foucault, who monstrous regime he created was a func- learned, sounded behind closed doors spent several semesters at Berkeley, where tion of his personality or of something exactly the way they sounded in public. Kotkin was a graduate student. Foucault inherent in Bolshevism. They were what we thought they were. had argued that power did not reside ex- Stalin was born Joseph Dzhugashvili In the post-Soviet era, the most in- clusively or even primarily with the state in 1878 in Gori, Georgia, on the periph- teresting work on the Stalinist period but was disseminated like a web over a ery of the Russian Empire. His father has been social history, far beyond the society’s institutions. This insight, ap- was a hard-drinking cobbler whose re- Kremlin walls—the study of what one plied to the Stalinist era, was transfor- lationship with Joseph’s mother, Keke of its leading practitioners, Sheila Fitz- mative. Yes, the regime tried to impose Geladze, came to an end when the boy patrick, in her book “Everyday Stalin- its will and its ideas on the population, was around six years old. This was a finan- ism,” called “ordinary life in extraordi- as the totalitarians had claimed; but also, cial blow to the family, but Keke learned nary times.” With a slight lowering of as the revisionists had counter-claimed, how to make dresses and managed to the ideological temperature, there has the population was an active participant keep Joseph, her only child, in the class- been far more willingness to see in the in and interpreter of this project. With room. He studied first at the local theo- Soviet experiment not just horror and its attention to everyday life, “Magnetic logical school, then at the illustrious theo- death but good intentions, contradic- Mountain” was revisionist in form; with logical seminary in Tiflis (now Tbilisi). tions, and commonalities with Western its emphasis on ideology (Kotkin’s other Historians have long wondered

modernity. The appearance or reappear- inﬂuence was Martin Malia, the intel- whether the eventual mass murderer JOHN ST. TODD ABOVE:

62 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 Stalin set harvest quotas that farmers couldn’t meet; later, during the Terror, he set execution quotas that oﬃcials exceeded.

ILLUSTRATION BY HENNING WAGENBRETH THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 63 could be discerned in the Tiflis seminar- were bespectacled Jewish intellectuals enemy), arrived at the Finland Station, ian. The answer appears to be no. Joseph’s than that Stalin was particularly thug- in St. Petersburg, and announced his rad- childhood was pretty ordinary for that gish. Perhaps the most telling detail found ical opposition to the current govern- time and place. His father beat him, but in the archives about the young Stalin ment and to the war. Six months later, that was standard; he was poor, but rel- comes from a tsarist secret-police char- in October, Bolshevik workers, soldiers, atives and neighbors helped out; he was acterization that has him behaving “in a and sailors seized the central telegraph an outstanding student, and a leader at highly cautious manner, always looking and the bridges, arrested the government, his school, but he did not stage show tri- over his shoulder as he walks.” He was and declared Soviet power. For the next als of any of his classmates. (On swad- careful, well organized, and totally com- four years, they waged a civil war against dling, the jury is still out.) mitted. His various activities landed him all their enemies, including the newly Young Joseph grew restless at the sem- in prison several times and finally earned independent states to the south and west. inary and was expelled after a series of him, in 1913, a sentence to Siberian exile, Kotkin’s first volume, “Stalin: Para- minor infractions, including the discov- where he remained until the fall of the doxes of Power, 1878-1928,” published three ery in his possession of a large cache of tsarist autocracy, in February, 1917. years ago, situated the Soviet experiment anti-monarchical literature. He had de- The sudden collapse of the monarchy amid the broad sweep of European his- cided to become a revolutionary, not a that had ruled Russia for three hundred tory. The revolution was a Russian phe- priest, but he remained, for the rest of years led to chaos. Russia immediately nomenon, yes; but it was also a response his life, a voracious and attentive reader. became, as one participant put it, “the to the forms of mass politics and total He rose through the ranks of the Geor- freest country in the world.” The politi- war that shook Europe in the first two gian revolutionary movement, impress- cal prisoners were free; the Pale of Set- decades of the twentieth century. By re- ing Lenin, then in European exile, with tlement was obliterated; and the inde- ducing the Russian Empire to near- his strident articles and his intrigues pendence-minded peoples on the Russian starvation, the First World War created against rival socialist factions. As a re- periphery—including the Poles, the Balts, the opportunity for the Bolsheviks to seize bellious youth at the seminary, he had the Georgians, and the Ukrainians—were power. But Kotkin makes clear that the adopted a nickname, Koba, after an out- no longer captive. As the great literary war’s slaughter fields also confirmed the law character from a popular nineteenth- critic Viktor Shklovsky, then serving in Bolshevik view that the capitalist- century Georgian novel, and he was an the Russian Army in Persia, put it, “The imperialist system was plunging the world effective sometime organizer of the “ex- show ‘Russia’ was over; everyone was hur- into suicide—and lowered the price, in propriations”—often of bank wagons rying to get his hat and coat.” Unfortu- everyone’s eyes, of human life. transporting cash—with which the rev- nately, nobody had called off the First The other notable aspect of the in- olutionary movement tried to finance it- World War, and Russia was still fighting ternational situation was what came to self. The British journalist and historian the Central Powers. The post-February be called “capitalist encirclement.” After Simon Sebag Montefiore, in his vivid governments—shifting coalitions of lib- the Bolsheviks took power and pulled “Young Stalin,” depicted him as a “gang- eral gentry and socialist reformers—de- out of the war, Russia’s former allies ster godfather” and “prolific lover.” cided, fatefully, to stay the course. joined the civil war on the side of the Kotkin has no patience for this sort Confusion reigned among the many anti- Bolshevik Whites. British forces of thing. “Stalin had a penis, and he used revolutionaries returning to St. Peters- landed in the north; British and French it” is about the extent of his commen- burg (then Petrograd), including Sta- forces landed in the south; a Czech bat- tary on Stalin’s romantic ex- lin. With the help of a talion, trying to return home via the ploits, and neither does he mild-mannered Bolshevik Trans-Siberian Railway, ended up con- have any interest in Stalin named Lev Kamenev, Sta- quering a swath of western Siberia. None as a gangster godfather. Sta- lin quickly wrested control of these forces fought very hard, and by lin’s primary contribution of the Party mouthpiece, 1920 they were mostly gone. But their to the movement, Kotkin Pravda, from the younger, intervention convinced the Bolsheviks maintains, was through his less experienced Vyacheslav that the capitalist powers would not rest organizing work and his Molotov, and proceeded to until Communism was dead. After the pen—it was to sign an arti- advance a moderate agenda: civil war, Stalin watched with trepida- cle he wrote on socialism to remain in the war and tion as European governments were over- and nationalism that he even to seek rapprochement thrown by small groups of determined came up with “Stalin,” after the Russian with the other socialist parties. Lenin, plotters. In Italy, in 1922, Mussolini was word for “steel.” Young Stalin developed then in Switzerland, began bombarding made Prime Minister after merely threat- a clear, catechistic style, and was adept Stalin with instructions to take a tougher ening to march on Rome. In Poland, a at boiling down complex ideas into sim- line: no war and no socialist coalition. few years later, Józef Piłsudski took War- ple binaries and folksy fables. That he Stalin, thinking Lenin out of touch, ig- saw. Romania, Hungary, the Baltic was a little rougher around the edges nored him. It wasn’t until April that states—all fell under the sway of right- than some of the bespectacled Jewish in- Lenin, having negotiated with the Ger- wing dictatorships, and all were deeply tellectuals who filled the ranks of the mans to provide him safe passage back hostile to Soviet power. early Russian socialist movement was to Russia (the Germans realized that he A key argument in “Paradoxes of Power” more a testament to the fact that they might have a destabilizing effect on their revolved around Stalin’s relationship to

64 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 Lenin. Stalin played an important but secondary role in the October Revolu- tion; the starring roles were unquestion- ably Lenin’s and Trotsky’s. Lenin was a brilliant, once-in-a-generation strategist, tacking right when others tacked left, at- tacking when they retreated, always keeping his end goal in view. Trotsky was a magnificent orator, one of the best pro- pagandistic writers of the twentieth century, and completely fearless. He led the Petrograd Soviet—the representative body for the workers and soldiers of the empire’s capital—in the crucial months before the revolution, and then built from scratch the Red Army that won the civil war. Kotkin argues that a leftist revolution of one kind or another was likely to take place in Russia in 1917, but there did not have to be two of them, and the second did not have to be of the radical Communist variety. “The Bolshevik putsch could have been prevented by a “Yes, chocolate’s O.K. in moderation. Next question?” pair of bullets,” Kotkin writes: one each for Lenin and Trotsky. None for Stalin. •• And this is Stalin’s biographer! Still, when it came time to build a mass party that could administer a pow- was more categorical: “Stalin is too rude, other historians. Some of them pointed erful state, Lenin found himself depend- and this defect, although quite tolerable out that the recent Russian originator ing more and more on Stalin. It turned in our midst and in dealing among us of the testament-forgery thesis, on out that Stalin had a genius for man- Communists, becomes intolerable in a whose work Kotkin relied, was an un- agement—for setting up clear lines of General-Secretary.” Lenin hoped his let- apologetic Stalinist. For a historian who authority and for inspiring and organiz- ter would be read aloud at the next Party prizes evidence as much as Kotkin does, ing people. Anyone who’s ever spent any Congress. Instead, it was read in small it seemed an unnecessarily extravagant time around leftist revolutionaries, or group sessions, where it could be more claim. The pugnacious Kotkin has not just members of a fractious community easily controlled, and not published in backed down, however; in Volume II, garden, will recognize how valuable such the Soviet Union until after Stalin’s death. the testament appears again as “Lenin’s skills might be. In 1922, Lenin created a Here again the opinionated Kotkin supposed testament.” new post expressly for Stalin: General enters the arena. The testament is a key But Kotkin has a second and more Secretary of the Communist Party. document not only because of its dra- convincing answer to the question of But doubts about their relationship matic nature—Lenin, on his deathbed, the succession: Stalin was, quite simply, would haunt Stalin throughout his rule. rejecting Stalin—but because it seems to the man most qualified for the job. His critics, led by Trotsky, never tired of address one of the central questions about Trotsky claimed that Stalin was adept reminding him of his secondary role in the revolution: Did it lead inexorably to at manipulating the bureaucracy, and the Bolshevik Revolution. They also Stalin? If the answer is yes, that tells you meant this as an insult. In fact, these never let him forget a document that all you need to know about this revolu- were the skills necessary to govern a Lenin drafted in late 1922 and early 1923, tion. If the answer is no—if there were modern state, and they explain why Sta- shortly before he became incapacitated other, more humane and democratic paths lin had already won so much power by his third stroke, in which he urged for the revolution to take—then the whole while Lenin still lived. Trotsky did not that Stalin be removed from his post. question requires more thought. have the talent for the dull work of ad- “Comrade Stalin,” Lenin wrote, or dic- Kotkin’s answer is twofold. The first ministration. Even in exile, he was con- tated, “having become General-Secre- is to allege that the testament was a stantly undermining his allies and ar- tary, has concentrated boundless power forgery cooked up by Krupskaya. Kot- guing with his friends. In Kotkin’s in his hands, and I am not sure whether kin believes that Lenin was too inca- unsentimental appraisal, Trotsky was he will always be capable of using that pacitated to have composed the docu- “just not the leader people thought he authority with sufficient caution.” In an ment in any legitimate way. Krupskaya was, or that Stalin turned out to be.” addendum to the letter, apparently after must have interpreted it, as one would So much for Trotsky. But might an incident in which Stalin chewed out a Ouija board. This was the one claim things still have turned out differently? Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin in the first volume that really rankled The second half of Kotkin’s first volume

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 65 describes the struggle for succession BRIEFLY NOTED after Lenin’s death, in 1924. It was deeply intimate: the men Stalin would eventually murder had known him for years, Refuge, by Dina Nayeri (Riverhead). At the age of eight, going back to the revolutionary under- Niloo, the protagonist of this poignant, agile novel, fled Iran ground. Inside the politburo, at the very with her mother and brother for the United States; her fa- top of the Communist hierarchy, the ther stayed behind. Niloo sees him only four times in the old revolutionaries had arguments that next twenty years, each visit more painful than the last, as were both heated and personal. At one he remarries and succumbs to opium addiction. After Niloo meeting, Trotsky stood up and accused marries a Frenchman and moves to Amsterdam, she begins Stalin of being the “grave digger of the to feel increasingly alienated from her husband and from revolution.” Stalin grew red in the face their neighbors, and becomes involved with a community and left, slamming the door. At another of recent Iranian immigrants “whose accents are still fine meeting, it was Trotsky’s turn to storm and whose memories of home are clear and unwarped.” out and slam the door, though in this Nayeri’s prose is sometimes overwrought, but her explora- case, Kotkin writes, the door was “a mas- tion of the exile’s predicament is tender and urgent. sive metal structure not given to de- monstrative slamming. He could only We Shall Not All Sleep, by Estep Nagy (Bloomsbury). Set against manage to bring it to a close slowly, un- the backdrop of the McCarthy years, this novel explores the wittingly demonstrating his impotence.” turbulent relationship between two families who have sum- A distinguished previous biographer, mered in Maine for generations, and are related through mar- Robert C. Tucker, once confessed to riage, but who now rarely mingle. The action, some of which fantasizing that one of Stalin’s comrades occurs in flashback, is dramatic: a father leaves his young son would assassinate the Great Leader: on an outlying island overnight, to toughen him up; a fam- “Sometimes in the quiet of my study I ily patriarch is dismissed from the C.I.A. under murky cir- have found myself bursting out to their cumstances; a woman breaks off a burgeoning sexual rela- ghosts: ‘For God’s sake, stab him with tionship with the husband of her dead sister, who was driven a knife, or pick up a heavy object and to suicide by an anti-Communist witch hunt. Nagy deftly bash his brains out, the lives you save captures the way a political atmosphere of mistrust and ma- may include your own!’ ” In the nineteen- nipulation can color even the most private interactions. twenties, assassination wouldn’t have been necessary; a concerted effort by Goethe, by Rüdiger Safranski, translated from the German by Stalin’s opponents, especially with Le- David Dollenmayer (Liveright). In this expansive biography, nin’s testament in their pockets, could Safranski, a philosopher and historian, mixes narrative and easily have unseated him. They were too commentary with the great poet’s own words, from cele- timid to do it, but also, Kotkin con- brated verse to obscure correspondence. Safranski’s strength cludes, they just didn’t realize what Sta- lies in his ability to blend artistic analysis with swift, sharp lin would become. They had had some renderings of various artists, thinkers, pietists, lovers, and intimations: they knew he could be rude, plundering soldiers who shaped Goethe. His portrait of the and they even knew he could be psy- prolific genius leaves the reader with lasting awe, even envy. chologically cruel. During his Siberian Goethe “could never regard his writing as work, even when exile, he had briefly lived with Yakov he pursued it with exhaustive devotion,” Safranski writes. (Yashka) Sverdlov, a fellow-Bolshevik “It was simply too easy for him.” and later the titular head of the Soviet government, but the two broke up house The Hue and Cry at Our House, by Benjamin Taylor (Pen- because Stalin refused to do the dishes guin). A brush with history looms over this memoir: in and also because he had acquired a dog November, 1963, the author, then a sixth grader in Fort and started calling him Yashka. “Of Worth, shook hands with President Kennedy mere hours course for Sverdlov that wasn’t pleas- before his assassination. Confining his narrative to the year ant,” Stalin later admitted. “He was that followed, Taylor evokes both the era and the awkward- Yashka and the dog was Yashka.” More ness of his younger self—asthmatic, gay, and displaying early significant was Stalin’s activity during signs of Asperger’s. He comes across as comically harried the civil war. When he went to the city by fate; his self-pity leads to vengeful fantasies and out- of Tsaritsyn (later renamed Stalingrad), bursts, as when he hurls a chair at a doctor who suggests on the Southern Front, to try to turn surgery to rectify his penchant for walking on tiptoe. He the tide for the Bolsheviks, he imme- finds comfort in imaginative rituals, such as holding a fu- diately caused a mess by fighting with neral for a bookmark, and his hero is Huck Finn, for his the tsarist-era officers who were saving embrace of an “adulterated nature.” the Red Army from defeat, and then

66 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 pursuing (and executing) supposed en- killed millions—but, in the aftermath of laks were arrested and exiled, and some- emies of the people. the war, Lenin performed one of his pat- times shot. Their property was confis- And yet Stalin’s fellow-Bolsheviks ented strategic reversals and declared a cated. Then the definition of “kulak” couldn’t see whom they were dealing New Economic Policy, or NEP, which expanded. There were not two million with. During the period of collective partially legalized private enterprise and well-off farmers in the impoverished leadership that followed Lenin’s death, eased up considerably on the peasants. U.S.S.R. in the late twenties. And yet one group allied with Stalin to oust As a result, ten years after the October that’s how many were arrested for being Trotsky; the next allied with Stalin to Revolution most of the land in the So- such. By the end of collectivization, five oust the first group. And so on. There viet Union was in private hands. million people had been “dekulakized.” could indeed have been another path For Stalin, this could not stand. In The slaughter of livestock, the mass for the Bolshevik Revolution: the very the arguments during the power strug- arrests, and the requisition of vast quan- naïveté, idealism, and lack of guile gles of the nineteen-twenties, he had tities of grain led, inevitably, to short- demonstrated by so many of the Old used his support for the NEP to isolate ages. A cold spring and a dry summer Bolsheviks remains a testament to their its left-wing critics, notably Trotsky, but in 1931 meant disaster. Local and regional decency. Kotkin proposes a series of in- once he’d consolidated his power he be- bosses pleaded with Stalin to relax the terlocking arguments to explain the came a critic, too. He believed that an- grain-requisitioning quotas, but he was Stalinist outcome: the conspiratorial ri- other European war was coming, and stinting about it; he believed that the gidity of Bolshevism; the state’s total that, in order to survive it, backward Rus- peasants were holding out on him. Long domination of life in the absence of sia would have to industrialize. “We are after all the grain had been beaten and private property; the peculiar personal- fifty to a hundred years behind the ad- tortured from them, Stalin still thought ity of Stalin; and the pressures of geo- vanced countries,” he declared in 1931. that they had hidden reserves. People politics. An attempt by very determined “We must make good this gap in ten began to starve. When they tried to leave people to carry out radical change in a years. Either we do it, or they will crush their villages and head for the cities, where huge country was never going to be us.” Rapid industrialization would re- the grain that had been taken from them without bloodshed. And the worldwide quire that peasants deliver grain to the was turned into bread, they were blocked financial crisis and the instability in Eu- state on a set schedule; it would also re- by armed detachments; when they tried rope were going to make for a difficult quire that many peasants become indus- to break into the government silos where decade, no matter what. But nothing trial workers. The U.S.S.R. needed large, their requisitioned grain was kept, they foreordained the extent of the violence. mechanized farms, like those in the were shot. Parents ate their children. Be- United States. And the independent, fore it was over, between five and seven otkin’s first volume closed in 1928, landowning peasantry was a threat. “Ei- million people would die of starvation Kwith Stalin, having consolidated his ther we destroy the kulaks as a class,” and disease. Nearly four million of those power, making a rare trip to Siberia to Stalin said in 1929, using the term for deaths were in Ukraine, where the fam- launch what would become his war rich or greedy (“fist-like”) peasants, “or ine was accompanied by arrests and ex- against the peasants. The second volume, the kulaks will grow as a class of capi- ecutions of the nationalist intelligentsia; “Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941,” talists and liquidate the dictatorship of more than a million were in sparsely pop- opens in the same place. But something the proletariat.” ulated Kazakhstan, whose traditionally has happened in between. The Stalin of The tragedy of Stalin’s agricultural nomadic farmers were annihilated. Given the first volume was reacting to external collectivization unfolded in stages. In the the destruction in Kazakhstan, Kotkin stimuli, in a more or less reasonable man- summer of 1929, more than twenty-five rejects out of hand the argument that ner. The Stalin of the second volume has thousand “politically literate” young Bol- the famine was specifically Ukrainian. lost his mind, and is fully in control. sheviks fanned out from Moscow to the “The famine was Soviet,” he writes. But As Kotkin argued in the first volume, nation’s rural areas, charged with setting he does not underestimate the catastro- the October Revolution was actually two up the new collectives. In the villages, phe. The huge loss of life, during peace- separate revolutions. One was the revo- they encountered fierce resistance. Most time, destabilized the country, and the lution in the cities, the storming of the peasants had no wish to give up their Party. For the first time, there was seri- Winter Palace, the fight for the Krem- livestock and be herded to giant farms; ous criticism of Stalin in the Party ranks, lin. The other, wider revolution took place they began, en masse, to slaughter their and talk of removing him. By then, it in the countryside. There peasants who livestock and eat it. When Bolsheviks was too late. had for hundreds of years been subju- came to demand their grain, the peas- gated and brutalized by the landed gen- ants shot them—more than a thousand otkin’s Stalin is a workaholic. He is try rose up and chased them off their were killed in 1930 alone. In some ways, Ka tireless reader, not just of books lands. They then reapportioned the land this resembled the back-to-the-people but of the endless reports he receives among themselves and got to work farm- movement of the nineteenth century, in from his ministries and deputies and, ing it. During the civil war, the Bolshe- which young progressives had been sent most of all, from his secret police. Kot- viks had staged periodic raids on the to the countryside to be with “the peo- kin compares him favorably with the he- countryside to extract grain for the cit- ple,” and the people had rejected them. donistic Mussolini and the late-sleeping ies and the war effort—leading, eventu- But this time the progressives returned Hitler. The Führer’s hands-off tyranny ally, to an immense famine in 1921 that with machine guns. The so-called ku- has led to a historians’ debate about his

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 67 actual participation in the crimes of his the Soviets really did build a steel indus- nist, in 1934. There was the fact that regime, and to Ian Kershaw’s famous try and an auto industry; they constructed Trotsky, exiled since 1929, remained a pop- concept of “working towards the Führer”; canals and railroads; they mined nickel ular figure among the Spanish Commu- that is, anticipating his wishes in the ab- in the Arctic and gold in the Far East nists fighting in that country’s civil war. sence of direct orders. No such confu- and coal in the Donbass. Some of this Most significant, from Stalin’s perspec- sion can exist with Stalin. “One comes work was done by Gulag slave labor; the tive, was that he really did have critics away flabbergasted,” Kotkin writes, “by rest was done by poorly paid workers liv- within the Party. He had critics because the quantity of information he managed ing in tents and makeshift dormitories. he was not Lenin. He had not almost to command and the number of spheres It was done with tremendous inefficiency single- handedly built a revolutionary in which he intervened.” Stalin adjusted and loss of life. But it was done. The So- party and then led it to power in the the grain quotas during collectivization, viet Union started making trucks and world’s largest country. And he made mis- or refused to; he read novels, attended tanks and airplanes. When the time came, takes. He urged the Red Army to cap- plays, suggested changes to new films; these turned the tide of the war. ture Lwów in 1920, contributing to the and he edited the interrogation proto- Kotkin walks us to the threshold of loss of Poland; he urged the Chinese Com- cols of accused enemies of the people, Stalin’s Terror slowly. It had no single munists to ally with the Nationalists, re- adding, deleting, urging further lines of cause; the causes were cumulative. There sulting in thousands dead; most fatefully, questioning as well as methods for get- was the stress, throughout the nineteen- he refused to allow European Commu- ting answers (“Beat Unshlikht for not twenties, over Lenin’s testament. There nist parties to ally with social demo- naming the Polish agents for each region”). was the calamity of collectivization and crats—a decision that helped propel Adolf Meanwhile, as the Western world was the opposition it engendered inside the Hitler to power. As Kotkin points out, gripped by the Great Depression, the Party. There was the suicide of Stalin’s “In no free and fair election did the Nazis Soviet Union was industrializing at a wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, in 1932, and ever win more votes than the Commu- rapid pace. The five-year plans laying out then the assassination of his close friend nists and Social Democrats combined.” the targets for the Soviet economy were Sergei Kirov, the young Party boss of Len- On top of all these failures was the full of exaggerations and fantasies, but ingrad, by a deranged former Commu- sheer, maddening difficulty of governing such a huge country. Kotkin’s Stalin is obsessed with statecraft. He continues to read Lenin, arguing with him in his mind. He is the ruler of a vast, nom- inally socialist empire, but none of the socialist sages have much advice for him—none had thought beyond the revolution. How is he to make sure that he is obeyed? How to make sure that his subjects are loyal? How to keep the state from being taken over (as Trotsky said had happened) by an entrenched, self- seeking bureaucracy? Like collectivization, the Terror proceeded in stages. The first victims were the Party higher-ups who had supported the Trotskyist opposition, or failed to support collectivization. They were accused of plotting to assassinate Stalin, or of being foreign spies. From the archives we now have transcripts of Central Com- mittee (CC) sessions like this one, from October, 1937: Comrade Stalin has the floor. Stalin: The first question concerns mem bership in the CC. During the period between the June Plenum and the present Plenum sev eral members of the CC were removed from the CC and arrested: Zelensky, who turned out to be a Tsarist secret police agent, Lebed’, Nosov, Piatnitsky, Khataevich, Ikramov, Krin itsky, Vareikis—all together 8 persons. . . . In addition, during this same period 16 persons “… and if anyone here suspects that the algorithm that put were removed from the CC as candidate mem these two together might be flawed, speak now …” bers and arrested: Grinko, Liubchenko—who shot himself to death, Yeremin, Deribas—who at seventy-five thousand nine hundred lin had to keep the killing going because turned out to be a Japanese spy, Demchenko, and fifty, but this was eventually increased otherwise he would never be secure. Kalygina, Semenov, Serebrovsky—who turned to three hundred and fifty-six thousand The numbers are hard to fathom. Ac- out to be a spy, Shubrikov, Griadinsky, Sar kisov, Bykin, Rozengol’ts—who turned out to one hundred and five. In fact, the num- cording to the best current estimates, be a GermanEnglishJapanese spy. ber shot under the order was closer to Stalin was responsible for between ten Voices: Wow! four hundred thousand. That same sum- and twelve million peacetime deaths, in- mer of 1937, the N.K.V.D. issued a se- cluding victims of the famine. But the Those arrested were then tortured: ries of orders against ethnic communi- most hands-on period of killing was the forced to remain standing for days on ties in the U.S.S.R. that were thought Terror of 1937 and 1938. At its height, end; beaten with fists, sticks, lamps. Their to be vulnerable to entreaties from the fifteen hundred people were being shot eyes were gouged out and their eardrums country’s enemies. Ethnic every day. Most of the vic- punctured. Some died from these beat- Germans and Poles bore the tims were ordinary citizens, ings or were crippled; others were shot brunt of this, again in the caught up in a machine that afterward. Some survived and entered hundreds of thousands. was seeking to meet its quo- the Gulag. The best known of the Bol- These two “operations”— tas. But the Communist shevik higher-ups were subjected to gro- targeting anti-kulak/anti- Party, too, was devastated— tesque public trials, the transcripts of Soviet persons and the “na- in many provinces, first sec- which were duly translated and circu- tionalities”—made up the retaries, second secretaries, lated around the world. Western leftists bulk of the million and a third secretaries all gone. racked their brains to figure out why the half arrests and nearly seven Entire editorial staffs were Old Bolsheviks confessed to crimes they hundred thousand exe- erased. The officer corps of could not possibly have committed. Ar- cutions carried out in 1937 and 1938. the Army was devastated. Five hundred thur Koestler, in his novel “Darkness at What was Stalin thinking? Could he of the top seven hundred and sixty- seven Noon” (1940), depicted an old revolution- possibly have believed that he had this commanders were arrested or executed; ary who decides to confess as a final ser- many enemies or that his old friends thirteen of the top fifteen generals. “What vice to the revolution. In some cases, this were all British spies? No one knows. great power has ever executed 90 per- impulse may have played a part: Kotkin But Kotkin refers repeatedly to Stalin’s cent of its top military officers?” Kotkin describes how Lev Kamenev, Stalin’s old editing of the interrogation transcripts, asks. “What regime, in doing so, could Pravda co-editor, and Grigory Zinoviev, which he then circulated to members of expect to survive?” Yet this one did. Kot- who with Stalin and Kamenev had formed his inner circle. Apparently, Stalin was kin, like Tucker before him, finds him- a ruling troika during Lenin’s final ill- trying to make a point: he had been warn- self fantasizing about someone assassi- ness, were dragged out of their prison ing of spies in their midst, and now here nating Stalin. No one dared. They feared cells in 1936 for a meeting with Stalin; was proof. He made certain that the oth- for their lives, of course, but it was also he urged them to confess, for old times’ ers were up to their elbows in blood, just in the nature of the Terror that people sake. But they were also aware that their as he was. He would solicit their opin- hoped, until it was too late, that the wave families were being arrested, and must ions; they would call for executions, as would pass them by. Those who survived have hoped to spare them. they knew they were expected to. When the Gulag described how Communist The first phase of the Terror was seen anyone asked for the highest measure, inmates were always sure that others were by some as an intra-Party affair. Farm- Stalin would inevitably approve. Here is guilty, that they alone were innocent. At ers who had been forced off their land a typical telegram from Stalin to one of night in the cells, they dreamed of Sta- by commissars shed no tears when they his associates, from July, 1937: lin—of meeting the leader and convinc- saw those commissars being arrested. ing him of their innocence. The Terror soon dramatically expanded, J.V. Stalin to A.A. Andreev in Saratov The Terror, which had started in early The Central Committee agrees with your however. One of the genuine shocks proposal to bring to court and shoot the former 1937, ended in the fall of 1938, with the in the archives was the discovery of workers of the Machine Tractor Stations. removal of the head of the N.K.V.D., N.K.V.D. order No. 00447, from July Stalin Nikolai Yezhov. He was blamed for “ex- 1937, “On the operation for the repres- cesses,” and eventually executed. Some sion of former kulaks, criminals, and Vyacheslav Molotov, now Stalin’s of the people who’d been arrested were other anti-Soviet elements.” In three neat faithful henchman, later said of the now released. The interrogators beat Ye- columns, the order set quotas for execu- purges, “It is doubtful that these people zhov’s underlings into confessing that tions and imprisonments by region (the were spies, but they were connected with he had ordered them to beat confessions third column gave the total). Four thou- spies, and the main thing is that in the out of others. And the secret police kept sand to be shot in the Sverdlovsk region, decisive moment there was no relying arresting and killing people; Isaac Babel, six thousand to be sent to prison or to on them.” The suspiciousness of the re- for example, was arrested in May, 1939, the Gulag. One thousand to be shot and gime was a murderous projection of its and shot eight months later. thirty-five hundred imprisoned in the own self- criticism. The more tyrannical In addition to everything else the Ter- Odessa region. Local authorities could Stalin became, the more people had cause ror did, it greatly weakened the country’s and did ask that these numbers be in- to doubt him, and the more likely it be- international position. Stalin’s justified creased; the original order set executions came that they would abandon him. Sta- fear of the coming war made this war

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 69 only more likely. The French and the Brit- of an imminent German invasion. De- in the purges—had yelled at him, in the ish, contemplating a stand against Hitler spite the ravages of the Terror, his anti- aftermath of the disappointing Finnish over Czechoslovakia in 1938, did not feel Nazi spy network was still the best in campaign of the year before, “You’re to they could count on the now depleted the world. Hitler issued a top-secret order blame for this! You annihilated the mil- Red Army. Worse still, the Terror made for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion itary cadres.” Stalin an unacceptable ally for the Brit- of the U.S.S.R., in mid-December of Kotkin also points out that, in fact, a ish in 1939. Kotkin shows that Stalin’s first 1940. Within two weeks, Stalin had an major mobilization of Soviet forces had choice in the months before the war was accurate description of the operation on taken place throughout 1941. There were not Hitler but Chamberlain. He sent de- his desk. In the months to come, as the nearly three million troops on the west- tailed terms to Britain for a military al- Germans moved much of their Army ern border—a fearsome defense, but vul- liance. Chamberlain was not interested, and Air Force and logistics staff to the nerable. Stalin was afraid that Hitler and Kotkin, refusing the benefits of hind- border, he received more and more warn- would use the slightest pretext to launch sight, doesn’t blame him. Stalin had just ings, and disbelieved them all. an invasion, and warned his forces to do murdered hundreds of thousands of his He trusted no one, including his spies. nothing provocative. Hitler, of course, own citizens, staged show trials of his for- When, in May, 1941—just six weeks be- was going to launch an invasion anyway. mer comrades, and carried out purges of fore the invasion—Pavel Fitin, the head Stalin’s morbid suspiciousness and lack putative socialist allies in Spain. Hitler of N.K.V.D. foreign intelligence, brought of scruples had kept the country out of would eventually overtake him, but as of him the most credible reports to date the European war for almost two years— 1939 Stalin had killed more people by far. that the invasion was on its way, Stalin two years more than Tsar Nicholas II He was, as Kotkin says, “an exceedingly blew up. “You can send your ‘source’ from had managed with the previous war. But awkward potential partner for the West- the headquarters of German aviation to now time was up. ern powers.” And then, on top of all the his fucking mother,” he shouted. “This Kotkin’s second volume ends in Sta- killing, the Soviets were also socialists is not a source but a disinformationist.” lin’s office in the Kremlin on June 21, who had repudiated tsarist-era debts. The fact that Stalin had executed so many 1941, a Saturday, the eve of the Ger- Tired of waiting for the British to re- of his previous intelligence chiefs—in man invasion. His two top command- spond to his entreaties, Stalin invited the the case of military intelligence, the last ers—Semyon Timoshenko and Giorgy German foreign minister, Joachim von five—did not encourage his intelligence Zhukov—deliver their assessment, Ribbentrop, to Moscow. They quickly officials to talk back. As Fitin, who later based on the testimony of a German agreed to a non-aggression pact and to organized the spy network that infil- defector in the frontier district, that an the carving up of Eastern Europe. The trated the Manhattan Project, remarked invasion is truly imminent. Stalin is agreement was signed by Ribbentrop and of Stalin’s blowup, “Despite our deep skeptical, but in Timoshenko and Zhu- Stalin’s new foreign minister, Molotov. knowledge and firm intention to defend kov, after the bloodletting at the top A week later, Hitler’s troops crossed the our point of view on the material re- of the armed forces, he has finally found Polish border; two weeks later, the Red ceived by the intelligence directorate, we capable people whom he can trust. He Army crossed the Polish border from the were in an agitated state. This was the allows them to issue an order for fron- other side. The Soviets captured and ex- Leader of the Party and country with tier troops to man their battle stations ecuted fifteen thousand Polish officers in unimpeachable authority. And it could and disperse the Soviet Air Force away the Katyn forest and other sites. On the happen that something did not please from the border. German side, the Einsatzgruppen began Stalin or he saw an oversight on our part, The order was too late. By the time assassinating Polish officials and intel- and any one of us could end up in a very it went out, German saboteurs (real ones) lectuals, and soon forced Stars of David unenviable situation.” had crossed the front lines and cut off onto the clothing of Polish Jews. This is the standard narrative of the communications. Most frontier officers months leading up to the invasion, and, heard nothing. Many would die that itler and Stalin never met. The clos- once again, Kotkin helpfully complicates night in their beds. The Soviet Air Force Hest they came was a pair of meet- it. For one thing, in addition to the ac- was destroyed on the ground. In the next ings that Molotov had with Hitler in Ber- curate warnings, Stalin was also receiv- few months, the Germans would kill or lin, in November of 1940. Molotov took ing inaccurate ones, many of them placed capture much of the Soviet Army, gob- a tough line. He demanded to know what there deliberately by the Germans. The ble up most of Ukraine, lay siege to Len- Hitler’s “New Order” would mean for Eu- most effective lie—because it was the ingrad, and approach Moscow. In the rope and Asia, and what German troops one Stalin most wanted to believe—was territories that they captured, which in- were doing in Finland and Romania. Ac- that the German troop buildup at the cluded most of the old Pale of Settle- cording to Hitler’s translator, “No foreign border was a bluff that would culminate ment, the Einsatzgruppen would begin visitor had ever spoken to him in this way in an ultimatum from Hitler, perhaps for the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. It had in my presence.” Stalin enjoyed his surro- a long-term “lease” of Ukraine. Stalin been a terrible decade that saw famine gate’s truculence, but the visit may have could then stall for time. That his officer kill millions, and their countrymen en- hastened the end of the alliance. Hitler corps was not yet ready was no secret to slave, imprison, torture, and murder mil- found it insulting, and felt that it untied Stalin. Even the longtime loyalist Kli- lions more. But for Stalin, and for most his hands. ment Voroshilov—Stalin’s minister of of the people who lived in his empire, Stalin soon began to receive warnings defense and an enthusiastic participant the worst was yet to come. 

70 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 black excellence. (“Never accept medioc- A CRITIC AT LARGE rity” was one of his credos.) The son of a Brazilian mother and a black Ameri- can father, he grew up in Sacramento and NOW’S THE TIME met his wife, Faith Childs-Davis, as a student at Loyola Marymount Univer- The filmmaker Kahlil Joseph plays hide-and-seek with his legacy. sity. The pair moved to Seattle, where they reared their two sons: Kahlil, born BY HILTON ALS in 1981, and Noah, born in 1983, both of whom went on to careers in the arts. Noah became a curator and painter whose canvases bring to mind David Lynch’s un- chartable twilight world, and Kahlil (under the professional name Kahlil Joseph) the creator of intellectually and emotionally dense short films showcasing black excellence, strangeness, and history, who has worked for artists and commercial clients including Knowles, Shabazz Pal- aces, Kendrick Lamar, and Kenzo. Jo- seph was originally the sole director of Knowles’s 2016 visual concept album, “Lemonade.” (She later reconfigured it to include multiple directors.) Joseph draws very little distinction between his commercial work and the art that he produces on his own. A true auteur, he displays his particular sensibility in pieces ranging from a commercial for the British telecommunications company O2, starring Gary Oldman, to “Wildcat,” a short film about black cow- boys in Grayson, Oklahoma. Joseph often shoots in black-and-white, which emphasizes the blackness of his subjects’ skin. His actors and models sit staring at the camera, iconic in their stillness. Or he observes them in slow motion, walking away from the camera, as if they were tired of being seen. A master of lack excellence is a thing. People— ground Museum, in Arlington Heights, sound, he allows the dialogue and the Bfrom Beyoncé Knowles to Venus a mostly Latino, black, and Asian neigh- music in his movies to drop out and and Serena Williams to folks you borhood near central Los Angeles. The then return at unexpected moments, cre- haven’t heard of—are into it. It’s less a museum, which is not at all underground— ating a sometimes heart-stopping jux- movement than a standard: believers the name evokes the strength and the re- taposition between what we hear and set the bar high not only for themselves sistance of the Underground Railroad— what we see. It’s as if Joseph’s visual but also for others who share their vi- was founded, in 2012, by an artist couple: world were a vinyl record, complete with sion, especially when it pertains to black Noah and Karon Davis. Noah was scratches that make the needle skip, history, stories, and style. Black excel- motivated in part by his father, Keven thereby changing the flow of things. lence harks back to an earlier time, when Joseph Davis—an extremely intelligent Now Joseph has made his most per- hardworking, aspirational parents told and charismatic attorney and an advo- sonal film to date, the twenty-three- their kids, “Don’t make us go up to that cate for the rights of young artists— minute “Fly Paper,” which is part of his school,” meaning, Don’t mess up, do who challenged him to bring museum- installation “Shadow Play,” at the New better than great, and never let “them” quality exhibitions to inner-city residents. Museum through January 7th. The (the goyim, those ofays) see you sweat. Before his death, in 2012, at the age film features Joseph’s father, who in Several years ago, Knowles encoun- of fifty-four, from a brain tumor, Keven 2001 moved to New York to practice tered the black excellence of the Under- Davis was an outspoken proponent of sports and entertainment law, and who was named one of Sports Illustrated’s Joseph, at the New Museum, for the opening of his installation “Shadow Play.” “101 Most Influential Minorities” in

PHOTOGRAPH BY NATHAN BAJAR THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 71 2003. Keven Davis’s protective, albeit Contemporary Art entered into a part- the work of unconventional contem- open stance is one of the pleasures of nership with the Underground Mu- porary masters, such as Apichatpong “Fly Paper.” There he is, chatting with seum, and now, in addition to Noah and Weerasethakul, whose films can cut the musician and entrepreneur Fab 5 Karon Davis’s strong and evocative work, from one narrative to another and Freddy on a street in Harlem. Joseph the museum shows pieces by a roster of another, without foregrounding or shot the footage from a distance. Still, contemporary artists, including Kara explanation, helped release Joseph as Davis talks to Freddy, he becomes not Walker, Kerry James Marshall, David from Western ideas of how to tell a a ghostly presence but proof of the so- Hammons, and William Kentridge. story. Instead, he began to ask him- lidity of black masculinity. Davis and Joseph spends as much time as he self what story he could tell from his Freddy sport overcoats that shield them can at the museum, and does not shy perspective, and his community’s. against the chill of a city that, histori- away from questions about his father Black life and black culture weren’t cally speaking, has been as intolerant of or his brother; neither is ever far from linear; they had been interrupted too black men as it has been shaped by them. his thoughts or his conversation. It was many times by violence, prejudice, di- You can’t hear what Davis and Freddy while Joseph was mired in the loss of saster, and compromise. And there are saying, but you don’t need to: their his brother that Knowles, who had ap- was the flip side: the juicy original- bodies and their gestures tell us that they proached him about working on other ity that emerged from those bad days share a language, the complicated, flow- projects before, though nothing had and funky nights. How best, then, to ing language of black men in cities. quite gelled, spoke to him about mak- create on film a black aesthetic that ing a film linked to her new album, a represented the hope, the highs, and few years before Noah Davis died, story of infidelity, the gathering and the losses of a twenty-first-century A of cancer, in 2015, at the age of shattering of trust. “Lemonade,” which New Negro? thirty-two, he found the row of store- was set against the backdrop of Hur- To learn more and to share what fronts in Arlington Heights that he re- ricane Katrina, had to be shot on a he was discovering about his medium, conceived as the Underground Mu- tight deadline. With the support of his Joseph got in touch with other male seum, a sixty-thousand-square-foot wife and producer, Onye Anyanwu, Jo- artists of color, such as the director compound that also contains a book- seph went to New Orleans to start and cinematographer Arthur Jafa. store, a bar, and a garden. But when he filming. They took their newborn Then, in the mid-aughts, he was hired tried to borrow work from other insti- daughter, Zora (named after Zora Neale as an assistant to the black photog- tutions no one would lend to him. In Hurston), with them. rapher and filmmaker Melodie Mc- response, for his first show, “Imitation Daniel. Working at the Directors Bu- of Wealth,” in 2013, he made replicas of ike his parents, Joseph attended reau, a commercial and music-video pieces by famous artists such as Mar- LLoyola Marymount, where he stud- production company in L.A., Joseph cel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, Robert ied film and other subjects. (He never learned on the job: he shot behind- Smithson, and Dan Flavin. His audac- graduated.) It was a course on Asian the-scenes footage and interviews for ity paid off: in 2015, L.A.’s Museum of cinema that changed his life. Viewing Sofia Coppola (whose brother Roman had founded the bureau), and filmed B-roll for that artist of disjunction Terrence Malick, while absorbing what McDaniel had to impart: the importance of representing the black world and the female world in ways that were free of ideology. From the start, Joseph drew on distinctly American and African imagery to produce work in which faces and bodies were the narrative. When he made music videos, the songs were used less to support the visuals than to provide a frame for them to bounce off or dismantle. In “Until the Quiet Comes,” a 2012 piece that he made for the experimental d.j. and musician Flying Lotus—Kara Walker included it in “Ruffneck Constructiv- ists,” a significant show she curated at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, in 2014 —we see several of the motifs that Joseph would revisit in “Lemonade”: the suspension and play of time and the fractured without first having made “Lemon- narrative, slow, illusory, and true. ade.” “Fly Paper,” which was inspired Joseph’s version of “Lemonade” ad- by the black-and-white tones of the dresses grief and sisterhood. There Harlem photographer Roy DeCar- are no big production numbers, no ava, doesn’t so much recycle themes violence against the male oppressor. from “Lemonade” as incorporate them: In the version that Knowles eventu- there is the split between what we can ally released, Jonas Åkerlund directed see and what we can’t; there are all the video for the song “Hold Up.” In those lost spirits, like Keven Davis it, we see the artist in a full-length and Noah Davis, literally cut into the gown, with big hair and heels, smash- here and now. The dialogue is mini- ing car windows. In Joseph’s version, mal. We see a black-and-white shot Beyoncé crouches in a ruined fort, of an older black man, Bob Fosse’s bent low by sadness. More images great star Ben Vereen (who happens follow: women of color gather in a to be Karon Davis’s father). Vereen kitchen. They are preparing a feast. observes the black bodies coming to- They cut vegetables and bake bread, ward him on a street in Harlem. “I then set a long banquet table on a went out to take a walk,” he says, and lawn. You can hear natural sounds— the journey begins. Vereen climbs a crickets, wind—as the women take flight of stairs, and at the top we find their seats in extravagant finery. The a younger man who dances his way feast is both metaphorical and real: along the walls, as Vereen strikes an they are feasting on life—and on the attitude, walks as if he were dancing, lives of their colored sisters. There dances while he walks. Later, there is something spooky, seductive, and are scenes of today’s Talented Tenth: profound about Joseph’s footage of the singer Lauryn Hill in an impro- Knowles; he seems to have burrowed vised jam session; the writer Sharifa into her soul, into the soul of the sad- Rhodes-Pitts at a shoot with the co- ness that she and he were feeling at median Alzo Slade. We’re behind the the time. It is a collaboration based scenes of the movie we’re watching. on the aesthetic truths of blackness The past cuts a swath through the re- and of mourning: Who are we if we ality of the present: a shot of Keven lose the people we have loved, and with staples in his head after surgery, who have loved us? Noah walking in the park with a After Knowles saw Joseph’s cut of friend. The sun is setting. Where have “Lemonade,” she chose to go in an- all these figures, all the love, gone? other direction, and to involve addi- Joseph is playing hide-and-seek with tional directors in the project. She his legacy, so much black excellence kept some of Joseph’s work, but lay- gone but ever alive. The past reso- ered it with her pop take on life, a nates in the present: Ben Vereen and cleaner narrative line, and a dose of his phantom younger self; Keven Davis revenge. One can see Knowles’s prob- and his son. lem: she isn’t in every frame of Jo- Joseph concludes the film with a seph’s film, and, like most stars, she reference to another genius of the in- wants to be seen, if only to know that terrupted narrative: the documentary she counts. Instead, Joseph filmed her director Chris Marker, whose “Sans emotion, the loss of love, what life Soleil” (1983), is an urtext on film as takes away, and what it leaves us fragments, film as journey. In “Fly with—the heartbreak, the shimmer Paper,” after the parade of disparate and the gloom, the haunting. lives bound together by aesthetics, politics, belief, and love has ended, lthough Knowles has allowed the screen goes dark. The world has A Joseph’s version of “Lemonade” stopped. The excellence is gone. But to be shown in museums, she hasn’t the blackness onscreen is as rich and approved his screening it in other textured as skin. And that’s when we contexts. Black excellence, however, hear a woman, in calm voice-over, can’t be stopped, and, in a way, Joseph quoting from “Sans Soleil”: “If they could not have created a work as per- don’t see happiness in the picture, at sonal and powerful as “Fly Paper” least they’ll see the black.” ♦

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 73 Wrong. They’re going to chloroform the THE CURRENT CINEMA whole family, and, in Rose’s case, overdo the dosage. The next thing you know, she is out of the picture, and Margaret, AMERICAN CONFLICTS who must have gone to see “Vertigo” the year before, steps smoothly into her shoes. “Suburbicon” and “Last Flag Flying.” And so to the second chunk of story, which concerns another married cou- BY ANTHONY LANE ple, the Mayerses (Leith M. Burke and Karimah Westbrook), who happen to wo films in one sounds like a bar- a wife called Rose, who has a sister called be black, and who move in, with their Tgain. Philip Kaufman could have Margaret, and both of them—one blond, son, Andy (Tony Espinosa), alongside made a movie about Chuck Yeager and the other brunette—are played by Juli- the Lodges. (The movie is grounded the race to snap the sound barrier, and anne Moore. Rose and Gardner live with in part on a real-life case, that of the another movie about the Mercury space their young son, Nicky (Noah Jupe), in Myers family, who arrived in Levittown, program and the hot-dog fellows who Suburbicon, a haven so upbeat and sun- Pennsylvania, in 1957.) The mailman is signed up for it. Instead, the two proj- blessed that, in spirit, at least, it surely astounded. The street is appalled. The ects were mashed together to form abuts Lumberton, North Carolina, the whole community is in an uproar, and, “The Right Stuff ” (1983). For Kaufman, setting for “Blue Velvet” (1986). Even before you know it, a rabble gathers outside the Mayers house, and the night- time sky is lit by furious fires. Suburbi- con might as well be populated exclusively by Klansmen; not a voice is raised in the Mayerses’ favor, although the two kids, Nicky and Andy, unschooled in hostility, make friends across the fence. Taking a wild guess, I get the feeling that, in Clooney’s opinion, the United States, in the epoch of Eisenhower, had a problem with racism. Jeez, who knew? The film’s indignation is clearly fuelled by the rancor that has persisted into the epoch of Trump, but there’s a hitch. So repelled is Clooney by the response of white suburbia to African-Americans, and so keen is he to insure that we share his outrage at what they endured, that he quite forgets to be interested in them. George Clooney’s new film sees malevolence in mid-century suburbia. We learn next to nothing about Mr. and Mrs. Mayers (their first names are a mys- as for George Clooney and his latest the waving fireman, from the start of tery), nor do we listen to their conver- film, “Suburbicon,” which he directs David Lynch’s film, is mirrored in Cloo- sations. The wife is charged twenty dol- but does not act in, what counts is the ney’s prologue, a cheery faux commer- lars for a carton of milk by the manager quality of the mashing. cial for Suburbicon. of a supermarket, and she hangs up her The principal chunk of the movie As a seasoned moviegoer, you know washing outside with a bevy of protest- comes from a script by Joel and Ethan what to expect. Whenever your gaze is ers banging drums and crowing, only Coen which had reportedly been sitting led down ranks of immaculate houses, feet away, but, while her dignity in the around, unclaimed, since the late nine- from lawn to shining lawn, you brace face of such taunts is noble, that’s all we teen-nineties, before being rescued by yourself for a glimpse of the dark un- know of her. It’s purely in relation to Clooney. (He and the Coens share the derbelly of middle-class America. (Any- white contempt, in other words, that she screenwriting credit with Grant Heslov, body wishing to see the belly itself, or is granted dramatic presence. To say that who collaborated with Clooney on clinging to the now scandalous notion she and her husband are a backdrop “Good Night, and Good Luck” (2005), that some folks who dwelt in the belly would be going too far, but the black “The Ides of March” (2011), and other led decent and untraumatized lives, will plot and the white plot scarcely touch. projects.) This consists of a sour little have to rely on a secret stash of sitcoms.) Is that what Clooney intended? parable about man’s inhumanity to man. And here comes the darkness. “Nicky, Meanwhile, next door, Gardner’s The year is 1959, and the man in ques- there are men in the house,” Gardner nightmare mounts. Gradually, you real- tion is Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon), whispers one night, adding, “They’re ize that he’s in debt to the Mob for un- whose name sounds like a motel. He has going to take what they want, and leave.” paid loans, and the Mob, in the shape

74 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY RYAN HESHKA of various heavies, has come to collect. bloodied and bowed, for instance, ped- lousy bar and drinks leftover beer for Getting punched in the nose, so hard alling pitifully away from us, into the breakfast; Doc (Steve Carell), a sad that your spectacles break, is one thing, night, on a child’s bicycle. I like to think sack who did time in jail; and Rever- but to be punched like that in your office, that the Mayerses watch him go, won- end Mueller (Laurence Fishburne), as Gardner is, takes white-collar suffer- dering what on earth possessed them to whose nickname, long ago, before God ing to a new level. No one is more plau- move to this place, where the locals are found him, was Mauler. They were to- sible than Damon at playing battered either bigots, snobs, or crooks—the only gether in Vietnam, where something heroes with their backs against the wall, spot in the land of the free, it turns out, happened that left them scarred with yet even at his most thuggish, in the where there is absolutely no one to love. guilt; now Doc, whose son has died in Bourne films, he held fast to a rueful in- Iraq, asks his comrades-in-arms to ac- tegrity. “Suburbicon,” however, strips him nce you have seen “The Last De- company him from Dover Air Force of that, too, leaving us with the rare Otail,” Hal Ashby’s great film of Base to Arlington, for the burial. That, Damon character for whom we can’t be 1973, you’ve seen it forever. It hangs at any rate, is the plan. bothered to root. Not that the rest of around in your head, with its foul-lipped If you missed the opening credits, the cast is any different. Pretty much ev- yakking and the tang of its sensations, would you guess that “Last Flag Fly- eryone is shown to be venal and crabby, mustard-sharp; the fifty-cent sausage ing” was directed by Richard Linkla- with the exception of the Mayerses and sandwiches that the characters chomp, ter? His best work is angled forward; young Nicky, who spends the movie standing up, may be the tastiest food “Dazed and Confused” (1993) and “Ev- being either baffled or freaked out, as if ever dished up onscreen. The screen- erybody Wants Some!!” (2016) are a good slug of mental punishment might play, by Robert Towne, tells of two petty thronged by the young, who lean in ex- beat some crabbiness into the lad and, officers ( Jack Nicholson and Otis pectation toward the future, whereas you know, help him to join the crew. Young) who are ordered to transport the pals in the new film are up to their The most vigorous presence is that a lumbering sailor (Randy Quaid) from creaky knees in middle age. The mood of Oscar Isaac, who sidles in as an insur- Norfolk, Virginia, to Maine, where he is forlorn, shrouded in retrospective re- ance-claims investigator, wrinkling his will serve eight years in the brig for gret, which is hardly Linklater’s forte, nose at the goings on in the Lodge res- trying to steal forty bucks from a char- and Doc’s yarn about a Vietnam brothel idence, and gingering up the movie ity box. He is eighteen years old. (“It’s like going to a friend’s house. And as it begins to sag. Fatally, though, you Only for a few shambolic days do then you have sex with the friend”) is still don’t care whether he survives or we join the lives of these men, yet we no match for the scene in “The Last dies; comeuppances are handed out, as feel that we know them, down to their Detail” where the virginity of the thiev- seems only fair, but there’s nothing es- underwear, and we ask ourselves what ing sailor, on his final free night, is taken pecially gratifying in the allocation of will become of them, and how the kid as deftly as a wallet. That wintry tale justice. There is a strong whiff of “The will survive his stretch in the slammer. remains hot with comic aggression, and Ladykillers” (2004), in which the Coen An answer of sorts is given by “Last Nicholson, noisily potent, reminds you brothers revived the chicanery of the old Flag Flying,” which is not really a se- of Cagney; Cranston, in “Last Flag Ealing comedy while managing to lose quel to “The Last Detail” so much as Flying,” seeks out the same terrain, but every dram of its charm. “Suburbicon,” a variation on original themes laid his crudeness is more of a crotchety likewise, though it winds up strewn with down by Ashby and Towne. The year act, and the journey concludes on a corpses, mislays the furtive allure that is 2003, and, again, there are three main glum conservative note. Some stories true black comedy demands. Only oc- guys—not the same guys, but roughly need not be told again.  casionally does an image strike a lyri- kindred spirits. Two used to be in the cal blow and yield the creepy effect Marines, the other in the Navy. There NEWYORKER.COM that Clooney is aiming for—Gardner is Sal (Bryan Cranston), who runs a Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 75 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by P. C. Vey, must be received by Sunday, November 5th. The finalists in the October 23rd contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the November 20th 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

“It’s a lot to digest.” Monica Brooks, Houston, Texas

“Can I tell you about a few items that aren’t on the menu?” “I didn’t get it at first, either. Then it hits you.” Don Culver, Windermere, Fla. Jane Cerhan, Rochester, Minn.

“Wait till you see the check.” Tracey Furtado, Gorham, N.H.