PRICE $8.99 JAN. 25, 2021 JANUARY 25, 2021 4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 11 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Amy Davidson Sorkin on impeaching Trump; mobile sleeping bags; Jacob Collier’s chord crush; sewage studies; shopping at the impound lot. ANNALS OF HISTORY Dorothy Wickenden 16 Civil Wars Three women’s fight for a just America. SHOUTS & MURMURS Sam Lipsyte 26 Waiting for To-Go PERSONAL HISTORY Karla Cornejo Villavicencio 28 Bad Dream The indignities of living undocumented. A REPORTER AT LARGE Luke Mogelson 32 The Storm Inside the insurrection at the Capitol. FICTION Allegra Goodman 54 “A Challenge You Have Overcome” THE CRITICS BOOKS Elizabeth Kolbert 60 The search for extraterrestrial life. 63 Briefly Noted Brooke Jarvis 65 What happens when you breathe. Akash Kapur 68 Seeing past the myth of the Himalaya. Now POP MUSIC Hua Hsu 72 Madlib’s universe of alter egos. hear this. ON TELEVISION Naomi Fry 74 “Pretend It’s a City.” Narrated stories, THE CURRENT CINEMA along with podcasts, Anthony Lane 76 “MLK/FBI,” “Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time.” are now available in POEMS the New Yorker app. Rita Dove 38 “Last Words” 57 “To Be Young” L. S. Klatt Download it at COVER newyorker.com/app Barry Blitt “A Weight Lifted” DRAWINGS David Sipress, Maddie Dai, William Haefeli, Frank Cotham, Robert Leighton, Zachary Kanin, Victoria Roberts, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Meredith Southard, Roz Chast, Elisabeth McNair SPOTS Antonio Giovanni Pinna THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 25, 2021 1 PROMOTION CONTRIBUTORS Luke Mogelson (“The Storm,” p. 32), a Dorothy Wickenden (“Civil Wars,” contributor to The New Yorker since p. 16) has been the magazine’s executive 2013, has written the short-story col- editor since 1996. Her book “The Ag- lection “These Heroic, Happy Dead.” itators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights” will Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (“Bad be published in March. Dream,” p. 28) is the author of “The Undocumented Americans.” Balazs Gardi (Photographs, pp. 32-52) is a photographer based in San Francisco, Barry Blitt (Cover), a cartoonist and an Los Angeles, and New York City. illustrator, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, for work that Elizabeth Kolbert (Books, p. 60), a staff appeared in this magazine. writer since 1999, received the 2015 Pu- litzer Prize for nonfiction for “The Sixth Allegra Goodman (Fiction, p. 54) most Extinction: An Unnatural History.” recently published the novel “The Her new book, “Under a White Sky: Chalk Artist.” The Nature of the Future,” is due out in February. Akash Kapur (Books, p. 68) is the author of “India Becoming: A Portrait of Life L. S. Klatt (Poem, p. 57) has written four in Modern India.” His latest book, “Bet- poetry collections, including, most re- ter to Have Gone: Love, Death, and the cently, “The Wilderness After Which.” Quest for Utopia,” comes out in July. Brooke Jarvis (Books, p. 65) is a contrib- Rita Dove (Poem, p. 38), a Pulitzer Prize uting writer for the Times Magazine. winner and a former U.S. Poet Laure- ate, will publish a new collection, “Play- Adam Iscoe (The Talk of the Town, p. 14) list for the Apocalypse,” this year. She joined the editorial staff of Lapham’s teaches at the University of Virginia. Quarterly in 2020. THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM I K A R A L L E K A S MEDICAL DISPATCH PHOTO BOOTH A N Dhruv Khullar on how ordinary peo- The Greek photographer Ioanna N A O I : ple around the world, from Brazil to Sakellaraki captures the dying art T H G Rwanda, have navigated the pandemic. of professional mourning. I R ; O E H N I M : Download the New Yorker app for the latest news, commentary, criticism, T F E and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008. L THE MAIL Feeling down about THE PATHS NOT TAKEN Urdu, my native language, does not have modals like “could,” “should,” and ____________? I applaud Joshua Rothman for a fasci- “would.” In fact, there is only one word nating look into the attraction of imag- used to signify the possibility of some- (relationships) ining unlived lives (A Critic at Large, thing—shayad. Imagining the hypothet- (your job) December 21st). His piece brought to ical was difficult for me to grasp as an (being isolated) mind the rare pairs of identical twins immigrant child in American schools. (all the negative news) who are reared separately and later re- Samina Hadi-Tabassum united, and thus given a glimpse of an Chicago, Ill. alternative path. In my work as a psy- chology professor specializing in twin I appreciated Rothman’s recognition We can help. Just scan the code research, I was struck by the case of Jack that our imagined lives are a vital part below with your phone or visit and Oskar, born in 1933 in Trinidad. Their of our real lives. I spent much of 2020 betterhelp.com/newyorker German Catholic mother and their Ro- in a new routine, often while picturing manian Jewish father divorced when the myself still in my old one. It has been for affordable access to licensed twins were six months old. Jack remained comforting, and perhaps lazy, to con- therapists via phone, video, chat with his father in Trinidad and was raised sider this past year a detour from nor- or messaging. And start by saving Jewish, whereas Oskar went with his mal life. Rothman’s piece reminds us 10% if you sign up now. mother to Germany. He was raised Cath- that there are no such detours. Rather, olic and joined the Hitler Youth. The there is the realization that current events twins, who met in their twenties, ac- do not reflect an aberration but simply knowledged that, had their places been the road we have taken. reversed, each would have grown up em- Elizabeth LaBauve bracing the other’s beliefs. Oklahoma City, Okla. Nancy L. Segal 1 California State University, Fullerton FORKIDSATHEART Fullerton, Calif. I was delighted to see Mark O’Connell’s Rothman observes that the world of article about Cartoon Saloon, the ani- Achilles, the hero of the Iliad, was rel- mation studio that made “Wolfwalkers,” atively uncomplicated. When offered one of my favorite movies of 2020 (“Story two possibilities for his future, Achilles Time,” December 21st). Yet I was some- unhesitatingly chose a short life and en- what irked by the characterization of the during glory over obscurity—a decision company’s animations as specifically for that ancient Greeks would have under- children. “Wolfwalkers” is a visual feast stood and praised. But, in the Odyssey, for all ages: at my local theatre, in the Odysseus speaks with the shade of Netherlands, the evening English-lan- Achilles in the underworld, and Achil- guage screenings, aimed at older viewers, les declares that he would rather be the were generally attended by more people slave of a dirt-poor tenant farmer on (in compliance with COVID restrictions) earth than be king of all the dead. It than were the screenings of the dubbed would seem that the yearning for an- version, intended for children. I wish that other self is not an altogether modern O’Connell had instead used the term phenomenon. “family entertainment,” which would Frederick Sweet better signal the film’s wide appeal. Toronto, Ont. Bibi Queisen Nijmegen, the Netherlands I would be interested to read more from Rothman about how the intersection of • language and culture affects one’s un- Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, derstanding of possible other lives. In address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited my Muslim Indian family, we often say for length and clarity, and may be published in Inshallah, or “God willing,” which re- any medium. We regret that owing to the volume moves human will from life’s trajectory. of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter. In an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, many New York City venues are closed. Here’s a selection of culture to be found around town, as well as online and streaming. JANUARY 20 – 26, 2021 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN A group of penguins in the water is called a raft—on land, they become a waddle. Four species of the flightless birds—chinstrap, gentoo, king, and macaroni—inhabit the Polar Circle exhibit (pic- tured, with gentoos, above) at the Central Park Zoo, whose work supports the protection of animals in the wild. (Advance timed-entry tickets, available via centralparkzoo.com, are required.) Lucky visitors might spot a recent arrival: Marinara, the first macaroni-penguin chick to hatch at the zoo. PHOTOGRAPH BY DEVIN OKTAR YALKIN 1 dominate in Russia. Careerist designers teem in the true story of Mary Jones (superbly played A RT the West, with such fecund exceptions as László by Rowin Amone), a Black trans woman and sex Moholy-Nagy and Kurt Schwitters. Some work worker in New York City, who was sentenced, in will surely be enjoyed for its formal ingenuity 1836, to five years in Sing Sing prison. By setting Garrett Bradley and rhetorical punch. The architectonic and the film’s domestic scenes in Seneca Village, a This filmmaker’s entrancing and unsettling in- typographical razzmatazz of the Austrian-born community of Black landowners (razed in the stallation “America,” now on view at MOMA, American Herbert Bayer affords upbeat plea- mid-nineteenth century to make way for Central was inspired by “Lime Kiln Club Field Day,” a sures; a strikingly sensitive Dada collage by Park), Tourmaline dreams of a freedom for Jones silent feature, from 1914, that’s considered the the German Hannah Höch feels almost over- that the world denied her.