PRICE $8.99 MAR. 13, 2017 MARCH 13, 2017 5 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 27 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Jelani Cobb on how the Constitution could change; Who’s Jim?; Egyptian satire in New York; protest in Beverly Hills; an immigration musical. LETTER FROM BUFFALO Jake Halpern 32 A New Underground Railroad How refugees escape to safety. SHOUTS & MURMURS Sarah Hutto 41 Sadness Lamp F.A.Q. ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS Alec Wilkinson 42 The Polymath Jack White—label owner, upholsterer, rock star. A REPORTER AT LARGE Adam Davidson 48 Donald Trump’s Worst Deal Did the Trump Organization break the law? PROFILES Ariel Levy 58 Secret Selves Catherine Opie’s portraits of community. FICTION Anne Enright 68 “Solstice” THE CRITICS BOOKS Joan Acocella 71 Angela Carter, feminism’s great mythologist. 75 Briefly Noted A CRITIC AT LARGE Anthony Lane 77 Jane Austen’s final, unfinished novel. POP MUSIC Amanda Petrusich 80 The eclectic folk-pop of Maggie Rogers. THE THEATRE Hilton Als 82 A downtown production of “Sweeney Todd.” THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 84 “Kong: Skull Island,” “Raw.” POEMS Meghan O’Rourke 55 “Navesink” Robert Pinsky 64 “Branca” COVER Carter Goodrich “Opening Night” DRAWINGS P. C. 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He is a co-founder and a for- month, and is based on her New Yorker mer host of NPR’s “Planet Money.” article “Thanksgiving in Mongolia.” Rebecca Mead (The Talk of the Town, Jake Halpern (“A New Underground p. 30) has been a staff writer since 1997. Railroad,” p. 32) is the co-creator of “My Life in Middlemarch” is her lat- “Welcome to the New World,” a graphic est book. narrative about Syrian refugees, which runs regularly in the Times. Alec Wilkinson (“The Polymath,” p. 42), a regular contributor, is the author of Anne Enright (Fiction, p. 68), the cur- ten books, including “The Protest rent Laureate for Irish Fiction, is the Singer” and “The Ice Balloon.” author of several books, including, most recently, “The Green Road.” Joan Acocella (Books, p. 71) has written for the magazine since 1992 and be- Jelani Cobb (Comment, p. 27) teaches came the dance critic in 1998. in the journalism program at Colum- bia University. Anthony Lane (A Critic at Large, p. 77; The Current Cinema, p. 84), a film critic Robert Pinsky (Poem, p. 64) is the au- for The New Yorker since 1993, is the thor of, most recently, the poetry col- author of “Nobody’s Perfect.” lection “At the Foundling Hospital.” Carter Goodrich (Cover) is a writer, an Sarah Hutto (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 41) illustrator, and a character designer has contributed humor pieces to for feature animation. He is currently newyorker.com, McSweeney’s, and The at work on the children’s book “No- Rumpus. She is working on a novel. body Hugs a Cactus.” NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more. VIDEO POETRY BOT Jia Tolentino on poetry as a Go to newyorker.com/poetrybot to refuge, and finding meaning in find out how to receive a poem from Tracy K. Smith’s “Solstice.” our archive every day. SUBSCRIBERS: Get access to our magazine app for tablets and smartphones at the App Store, Amazon.com, or Google Play. (Access varies by location and device.) DYLAN-ROBBINS SKY LEFT: 2 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 13, 2017 THE MAIL MATTERS OF FACT studies may suffer from confirmation bi- ases of their own, believing that the du- Elizabeth Kolbert’s review of three books plication process in the scientific method about the psychology of human reason- will uncover any incorrect theses. But ing will help readers understand the in- the fallibility of this assumption comes transigence of Trump supporters in the to light when Kolbert writes that the au- face of facts, but I’m a bit annoyed that thors Jack and Sara Gorman “probe the psychologists are getting a lot of new gap between what science tells us and mileage out of ideas that philosophers what we tell ourselves.” Of course, “sci- have held for many years (Books, Feb- ence” doesn’t tell us anything. Scientists ruary 27th). As if we need data to prove do. And, presumably, they are no less that human reason has its limits! For human than the rest of us. more than fifty years, philosophers have Bernard P. Dauenhauer argued that each of us has what Willard Montgomery, Ohio Van Orman Quine called a “web of be- lief,” and that we accept or reject a be- The experiments that Kolbert references lief on the basis of how well it fits into do reaffirm the existence of confirmation this web. Beliefs at the center are en- bias, but they don’t appear to factor in trenched, because changing them would whether the respondents actually care require rebuilding large parts of the web, about being right, or feel that any harm while those on the periphery can be eas- might come as a result of being wrong. ily altered or ignored. We do not hold The stakes in these studies are low, but beliefs one at a time; rather, we assess there’s a far better crucible in which to them in a group, because they are logi- examine decision-making dynamics: jury cally connected. If we let one go, we have deliberations. Jurors must assess evidence, to let others go as well. judge the credibility of witnesses, and de- If we apply this idea to present poli- cide whether to stick to their guns when tics, the Trump supporter has a web of faced with disagreement from fellow- belief around Trump, including that he jurors. These can be visceral, intimate dis- is a “straight shooter,” that he “tells it like cussions, sometimes with the life of an- it is,” that he is treated unfairly by the other human being hanging in the balance. media, and so on. When a voter is pre- There’s scant scientific analysis of real- sented with a fact that does not fit into life jury deliberations, as researchers are his web, he rejects it in order to hold on mostly barred from studying them. But, to other entrenched beliefs. It takes more working in the public defender’s office than data to change people’s mistaken in Colorado, I find it telling that what ideas about vaccines and guns—there has become known as the Colorado must also be a story that connects, in method of jury selection in capital cases some important way, to people’s webs of entails, among other things, impressing belief. on jurors the enormous burden they are Sharon Schwarze, Professor Emerita of taking on when they decide to condemn Philosophy, Cabrini University someone to death. Bias may never be Wayne, Penn. eradicated, but people think a lot harder when they feel a personal stake in their Kolbert discusses studies which “demon- decision. strate that reasonable-seeming people Gary Chandler are often totally irrational.” This work Denver, Colo. identifies that people have a tendency “to embrace information that supports • their beliefs and reject information that Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, contradicts them.” Psychologists call this address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited “confirmation bias.” Many people re- for length and clarity, and may be published in fuse to entertain the possibility that the any medium. We regret that owing to the volume scientists who create and oversee these of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter. THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 13, 2017 3 MARCH 8 Ð 14, 2017 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN Growing up in Detroit in the nineteen-eighties, Carl Craig was relieved of the burden to invent. D.j.s like his mentor, Derrick May, had already hatched techno, leaving the teen-ager to toy with its lofty limits. Since 1991, when Craig released his first EP, “4 Jazz Funk Classics,” he has rethought the cavernous 808 drums of his city’s sound; his 2013 record “Masterpiece” included sparse, ambient tracks inspired by David Lynch. On March 11, Craig’s “Detroit Love” party returns; as is underground custom, coördinates will be announced the day of. PHOTOGRAPH BY WHITTEN SABBATINI 1 OPENING Actor Martinez Reviewed in Now Playing. Open- MOVIES ing March 10. (In limited release.) • Kong: Skull Is- land Reviewed this week in The Current Cinema. Opening March 10. (In wide release.) • Personal Shopper Kristen Stewart stars in this thriller, di- rected by Olivier Assayas, about a Parisian movie star’s assistant who tries to conjure the spirit of her dead brother. Opening March 10. (In limited release.) • Raw Reviewed this week in The Cur- rent Cinema. Opening March 10. (In limited re- lease.) • Who’s Crazy? Reviewed in Now Playing. Opening1 March 10. (Film Society of Lincoln Center.) NOW PLAYING Actor Martinez Nathan Silver and Mike Ott’s film is a spinning prism of fiction and nonfiction that tosses off iri- descent glints of melancholy whimsy.