AMERICAN JOBS
DRAWINGS Danny Shanahan, Will McPhail, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Matthew Diee, Michael Crawford, Lars Kenseth, Edward
Steed, Joe Dator, Amy Hwang, Emily Flake, Ellis Rosen, P. C. Vey, Paul Noth, William Haefeli, Maddie Dai, Drew Dernavich
SPOTS Pablo Amargo
CONTRIBUTORS
Curtis Sittenfeld (Show Dont Tell, Sherman Alexie (Clean, Cleaner, Clean-
p. 62) has written five novels. She will est, p. 48) is the author of twenty-six
publish her first short-story collection, books, including the memoir You Dont
You Think It, Ill Say It, in 2018. Have to Say You Love Me, which comes
out in June.
Will Mackin (Crossing the River No
Name, p. 55) retired from the Navy in Margaret Talbot (The Addicts Next Door,
2014. His dbut short-story collection, p. 74) has been a staff writer since 2003.
Bring Out the Dog, will be published
next March. Philip Roth (I Have Fallen in Love with
American Names, p. 46) has published
Toni Morrison (The Work You Do, the twenty-nine novels. This fall, the Library
Person You Are, p. 66) has written twelve of America will put out Why Write?,
novels. She received the 1993 Nobel Prize his collected nonfiction from 1960-2013.
in Literature.
Jennifer Egan (The Dinner Party,
Richard Ford (Make-Work, p. 58) is the p. 50) has written several books. Her
author of, most recently, the memoir new novel, Manhattan Beach, comes
Between Them. He has written for out in October.
The New Yorker since 1987.
Carlos Javier Ortiz (Photographs, pp. 48,
Chris Ware (Business or Pleasure, p. 72) has 55, 62), a director, cinematographer, and
contributed twenty-three covers to the documentary photographer, was a 2016
magazine. His next book, Monograph, Guggenheim Fellow.
comes out in October.
Akhil Sharma (The Night Shift, p. 80)
Kaveh Akbar (Poem, p. 69) has a poetry is the author of the short-story collec-
collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, forth- tion A Life of Adventure and Delight,
coming in September. which comes out in July.
SUBSCRIBERS: Get access to our magazine app for tablets and smartphones at the
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6 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
THE MAIL
WHAT MAKES A PARENT? in an international crisis or a national-
security emergency (Comment, May 22nd).
I read with great interest Ian Parkers ar- But the nation is in a state of emergency.
ticle on the contentious custody battle While the public has been distracted by
between a separated gay couple, a case the F.B.I. and congressional investiga-
that has the potential to change the ways tions, Trump has decimated the State
in which the courts dene parenthood Department, and he refuses to ll doz-
and family (Are You My Mother?, May ens of positions, undermining our gov-
22nd). For gay parents, parenthood nec- ernments ability to respond to ordinary
essarily requires an immense amount of needs, let alone crisis-level exigencies. He
planning. There is no accidental preg- is dismantling the E.P.A. and eviscerat-
nancy. In my own experience, mother- ing environmental regulations. The Jus-
hood did not begin the moment my tice Department is rolling back the hard-
daughter was born. It didnt even begin won victories of decades of civil-rights
nine months earlier, at her conception. struggle, and the Department of Educa-
In the case of Circe Hamilton and Kelly tion is abetting initiatives to destroy pub-
Gunn, it was Hamilton who rst insti- lic schools.There is another reason, besides
gated the adoption, and Hamilton who cowardice, that explains the Republicans
continued to pursue it after she and Gunn continued support of Trump: he is doing
separated. Hamilton acted as a mother their dirty work, deconstructing a govern-
during this time, while Gunn distanced ment they deem too costly and egalitarian.
herself from the process. This does not Pat M. Gelb
diminish the intensity of feeling Gunn Oakland, Calif.
has for the child, Abush. However, while 1
Gunn describes her instant connection HOW A SYNESTHETE SEES
with him as having formed when she met
him at Heathrow Airport, Hamilton had I was excited to read Nicola Twilleys piece
become connected to her childif not about how the new sensory-substitution
to Abush specicallymany months ear- devices that were developed to help the
lier. I imagine thatlike me stroking my blind are also changing our understand-
pregnant bellyshe did not need to see ing of sense perception and the brain
her child to be a mother. (Sight Unseen, May 15th).Twilley doesnt
Stephanie Li mention synesthesiain which dierent
Bloomington, Ind. senses are linked togetherbut it might
hold further clues to sensory substitution.
Interested parties, including Gunn and As a child with synesthesia, I saw the
her lawyer, may be attempting to frame colors of avors and odors. Others see
the dispute over custody of Abush as shapes. Ive often guessed that what I ex-
being about gay rights, but its not. Its perienced was due to my visual sense dom-
about money, and about how one wealthy inating my other senses, even when in-
would-be parent can manipulate the appropriate, but Twilleys article shows
courts to grind down a less auent parent. that this is not the case. Still, I wonder
As an attorney, I am saddened by this case. whether studying synesthesia could add
As a gay adoptive parenthell, as a par- to the growing body of knowledge about
ent, periodI nd it deeply disturbing. what it means to see or hear.
David Parker Janet Guerrin
Chapel Hill, N.C. Lewes, Del.
1
THE G.O.P. AND TRUMP
Letters should be sent with the writers name,
Jerey Toobin, in decrying the Republi- address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
cans failure to confront Donald Trump, themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
voices his relief that we have so far avoided any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
the catastrophe of having to rely on Trump of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
Opera that merges the personal and the political is a longtime transatlantic tradition that began with works by
the German Kurt Weill and the American Marc Blitzstein. So is it all that surprising that the operatic adaptation of
Tony Kushners play Angels in America was undertaken by a European master, Peter Etvs? First heard in Paris
in 2004, this powerful work nally gets its New York premire, in a limited run at Jazz at Lincoln Center, starting
June 10, thanks to New York City Opera, which is rebounding smartly under its new director, Michael Capasso.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTAAN FELBER
first three acts, along with the fourth act in its en-
tirety. June 2 at 7. (Metropolitan Museum, Fifth Ave.
CLASSICAL MUSIC
1
at 82nd St. operalafayette.org.)
1
premired in Paris, in 2004, finally receives its Hull directs the production, and Douglas Mar- acle. June 3 at 7. (National Sawdust, 80 N. Sixth St.,
first New York performances this week, thanks tin conducts a full orchestra. May 30 and May 31 Brooklyn. 646-779-8455.)
to the newly revivified City Opera, which of- at 7:30. (Riverside Theatre, 91 Claremont Ave. at
fers it as the closing production of an impres- W. 121st St. 866-811-4111.)
sive sophomore season. Andrew Garland, Wayne ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES
Tigges, and Sarah Beckham-Turner take the The Crypt Sessions: Elizabeth Cree
leading roles, under the direction of Sam Hel- This series thumbs its nose at detractors proclaim- New York Philharmonic
frich; Pacien Mazzagatti conducts. June 10 at ing the death of classical music by staging its shows A music directors final subscription program is
8 and June 12, June 14, and June 16 at 7:30. (Rose in an actual crypt, at the accommodating Church always an opportunity to make a big statement.
Theatre, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th of the Intercession, in Hamilton Heights. The Pu- Alan Gilbert is no exception, and his three culmi-
St. nycopera.org.) litzer Prize-winning team behind the opera Silent nating concerts, held at a troubled time at home
Nightthe composer Kevin Puts and the librettist and abroad, are based on the theme of univer-
New York Philharmonic: Das Rheingold Mark Campbellpreview their new opera, a Gothic salitya project that Gilbert will pursue after
Alan Gilberts final weeks as music director in- murder mystery based on a novel by Peter Ack- his Philharmonic tenure ends. The main part of
clude several high-profile events. One is this of- royd. Puts accompanies the mezzo-soprano Dan- each concert consists of Mahlers Seventh Sym-
fering of Wagners opera, the intermissionless iela Mack and the tenor Joseph Gaines; the perfor- phony, with the ensembles ranks expanded to in-
first chapter of the four music dramas that make mance includes a discussion about the work. May clude musicians from the philharmonic orches-
up the titantic Ring of the Nibelung; it is es- 31 at 7. (Broadway at 155th St. deathofclassical.com.) tras of Berlin, Cape Town, Israel, and Tehran
pecially welcome since the Mets most recent (among others). The first two concerts also in-
production of the set, a critical failure, is very Opera Lafayette: Les Indes Galantes clude bonus music: in the first, from Yo-Yo Ma
much in storage. Eric Owens, one of the Mets The operas of the French Baroque period can and members of his Silk Road Ensemble, and, in
bright spots in the role of Alberich, takes on the sometimes feel like museum piecesall formal- the second, from the trumpeter Wynton Marsa-
lead role of Wotan under Gilberts baton; the ity and high polish, with a focus on mythical char- lis. June 8 at 7:30 and June 9-10 at 8. (David Gef-
cast for this enhanced concert production (di- actersbut Rameaus opra ballet tells four stories fen Hall. 212-875-5656.) In a relaxed conclusion
rected by Louisa Miller) also includes such out- of love in far-off lands. The Francophile company to his tenure, Gilbert leads the orchestras tradi-
standing singers as Jamie Barton (Fricka), Chris- presents a semi-staged concert of excerpts from the tional Concerts in the Parks for the last time as
music director. The series kicks off at Van Cort-
landt Park, in the Bronx, with a festive all-or-
chestral program that features three works cen-
tral to the city and to the Philharmonics history:
Dvoks New World Symphony, Bernsteins
Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and
Gershwins An American in Paris. June 13 at 8.
(Enter at Broadway near W. 251st St. No tickets re-
quired. For more information, see nyphil.org.)
ART
1
Leidy Churchman
From a giraffe giving birth before a desert
mountain range to a video still of a panel dis-
cussion, the American painter seems to choose
of the show is the revolutionary period of the his subjects at random. But pay attention and a
MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES mid- to late fifties, when Rauschenberg, in through-line emerges, not a theme but a chal-
league with Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns, lenge to outdated ideas about appropriation
Museum of Modern Art took the measure of an art world dominated and image circulation in the Internet era. To
Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends by Abstract Expressionism. His Combines underscore his intentions, Churchman mixes
While creating the universe, did God have in kitchen-sink mlanges of painting, sculpture, framed reproductions of art works with his
mind that, at a certain point, a stuffed goat collage, and assemblage, including Mono- own paintingswhich are themselves repro-
with a car tire around its middle would materi- gramabsorbed that movements aesthetic ductions, after all. The small canvas Juliana
alize to round out the scheme? It came to pass, breakthroughs, in dispersed composition and in Art depicts an iPhone displaying a lumi-
in New York, with Rauschenbergs Mono- eloquent paint-handling, while subverting its nous nude portrait of the artist Juliana Hux-
gram (1955-59)goat, tire, and also paint, frequently macho pathos. So, too, did Johnss table. Adding an air of mystery to the paint-
paper, fabric, printed matter, metal, wood, shoe tenderly brushed Flags and Twomblys la- ings layers of mediation, the checklist informs
heel, and tennis ballwhich is now on view in conic scribblings. The shows lead curator, us that this work was co-made by another fig-
an immense retrospective of the protean art- Leah Dickerman, has incorporated first-rate urative painter, TM Davy. Churchmans non-
ist, who died in 2008, at the age of eighty-two. works by those artists, and others. Collabo- chalant diffusion of authorship feels astutely
1
Rauschenbergs work, in mediums that range ration was a regular elixir for Rauschenberg. au courant but also genuine. Through July 28.
from painting and photography to a big vat of He was a performance artist, first and last. (Boone, 745 Fifth Ave., at 57th St. 212-752-2929.)
bubbling gray mud (Mud Muse, 1968-71), is You respond to his works not with an absorp-
uneven, and it lost point and drama in his later tion in their quality but with a vicarious share
decades. For a great artist, he made remarkably in his brainstorming excitement while mak- GALLERIESCHELSEA
little good art. But the example of his nimble ing them. For a time, momentously, what he
intelligence and zestful audacity affected the did caught a wave of history and drove it far- Llyn Foulkes
thoughts and motives, doubts and dreams of ther inland than could otherwise have been This selection of paintings by the L.A.-based
subsequent generations, to this day. The heart the case. Through Sept. 4. master of satirical Americana and cunning op-
tical effects includes renditions of Old Glory
flying over a trash fire, two portraits of Walt
Disney with Mickey Mouse bursting out of his
bloody face, and several riffs on scenic postcards.
The 1984 acrylic The Splash, in particular, is
a near-perfect feat of painterly self-conscious-
ness, in which a few quick strokes of white look
exactly like seafoam without looking any less
like brushstrokes. The show spans four decades
and includes recent work, but the most timely
painting is a 1991 portrait of Clark Kent, wear-
ing a suit and reading the paper, his Superman
guise visible through an unbuttoned shirt. He
sits under a thought bubble that reads Where
did I go wrong? Through June 24. (Zwirner, 533
W. 19th St. 212-727-2070.)
Roxy Paine
The highlights of this American sculptors un-
even but enticing show are his dioramas, coups of
deadpan verisimilitude. Experiment re-creates
an empty bedroom, bathed in yellow light, as if
seen by observers, represented by empty chairs,
through a one-way mirror. (Paine was inspired by
LSD experiments conducted by the C.I.A. in the
mid-twentieth century, which were never pho-
PHOTOGRAPH BYALESSANDRA SANGUINETTI/ COURTESY APERTURE
1
trol. Through July 1. (Kasmin, 293 Tenth Ave., at
27th St. 212-563-4474.)
GALLERIESDOWNTOWN
Barbara Bloom
Each of the literary-minded conceptualists
Gypsy Camp, Mazargues, Marseille is among the photographs taken by Alessandra distilled, sculptural vignettes incorporates a
Sanguinetti in a sojourn to France, in 2016, on view at Aperture through June 29. photographor, rather, begins with one. In-
ART
spired by the meandering, speculative struc- to the gallery owners late stepfather. After high copper box adorned with looping let-
ture of Roberto Bolaos story Labyrinth having the boat cleaned, Harlan cut off its ters made from extremely narrow pipe, most
(published, posthumously, in 2012), in which stern and bow; he stands them up here, like of them spelling out the word wait. The
the author imagined the relationships of a totems, about thirteen feet apart. The ges- other pieces make clear what it is the artist
group of French intellectualsbased on a ture feels at once violent and tendera stoic is waiting for: copper signs on the wall read
vintage snapshot of them together in a caf attempt to grapple with losses too heavy to Trying to Find Grandpa Bunk and In
Bloom likewise extrapolates from fragmen- bear. Other pieces in the show include a wall About Ten Years I Will Go Find My Father.
tary evidence. But she does so spatially, with of handsomely stacked firewood and a row- A pair of pine boxes rest on the floor, one
cool precision, in a series of chic, set-like ar- boat filled with oyster shells. Through June 18. for Kinmont and one, titled Marys New
rangements. She embeds a picture of Vra (JTT, 191 Chrystie St. 212-574-8152.) Home, for his dog. Somehow, the mood isnt
Nabokov typing as her husband watches, an- morbid but, rather, whimsically accepting
other of Joan Crawford reading at a cluttered Robert Kinmont of the inevitable: the Kinmont-shaped box
vanity, and portraits of Christine and La The centerpiece of this delightfully eccentric is labelled The Artist Dreaming. Through
Papin, French sisters who worked together show of recent work by the California art- June 24. (Alexander and Bonin, 47 Walker St.
as maids and murdered their employers wife ist, who turned eighty this year, is a waist- 212-367-7474.)
and daughter, in 1933. Using mirrors, furni-
ture, architectural details, and a gray-scale
palette that echo the black-and-white photo-
graphs, Bloom frames her sources. The ef-
fect is ominously serene, part flight of fancy
THE THEATRE
1
and part forensics. Through June 18. (Lewis,
88 Eldridge St. 212-966-7990.)
Daniel Buren
The gallerydriven from Chelsea by real-es- Urie, in which the corrupt officials of a provin-
tate developmentinaugurates its new Tri- OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS cial town assume a new arrival to be an under-
beca address with a site-specific piece by the cover inspector. (The Duke on 42nd Street, 229
legendary French conceptualist, known for his Animal W. 42nd St. 646-223-3010. In previews. Opens
signature use of stripes. Buren has installed In Clare Lizzimores drama, directed by Gaye June 1.)
forty-four floor-to-ceiling rectangular col- Taylor Upchurch, Rebecca Hall plays a woman
umns, each painted in color on three sides and who starts to experience creeping anxiety in Invincible
in black-and-white on the fourth. The mono- her home. (Atlantic Stage 2, at 330 W. 16th St. In Torben Bettss comedy, at the Brits Off
liths fill the gallerythey even infiltrate the 866-811-4111. In previews. Opens June 6.) Broadway festival, two Londoners who have
officewhich isnt to say that they obstruct moved to a small town during a recession get
it. Instead, they inspire visitors to wander Bella: An American Tall Tale to know their next-door neighbors. (59E59, at
the space, seeking out surprising new vistas Robert OHara directs a new pioneer-era mu- 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200. Previews begin June
of orangey red, deep yellow, and powder blue. sical by Kirsten Childs, about a wanted woman 1. Opens June 13.)
For a lagniappe, arrive on a sunny morning, (Ashley D. Kelley) who flees out West, where
when gels on a skylight cast the same colors her Buffalo Soldier awaits. (Playwrights Hori- Julius Caesar
onto a wall. Through June 24. (Bortolami, 39 zons, 416 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200. In previews. Oskar Eustis directs the Publics first free
Walker St. 212-727-2050.) Opens June 12.) Shakespeare in the Park offering of the sum-
mer, featuring Nikki M. James (Portia), Eliz-
Laura Cottingham Cost of Living abeth Marvel (Antony), Corey Stoll (Bru-
The hilarious, no-budget, feminist film The Manhattan Theatre Club presents Martyna tus), and John Douglas Thompson (Cassius).
Anita Pallenberg Story, from 2000, pays Majoks play, directed by Jo Bonney, which (Delacorte, Central Park. Enter at 81st St. at Cen-
homage to the brooding presence of the in- tells the parallel stories of an unemployed tral Park W. 212-967-7555. In previews. Opens
famous Rolling Stones groupie, played by truck driver who reunites with his ex-wife and June 12.)
artist Cosima von Bonin. Its a gorgeous, if a doctoral student who hires a caregiver. (City
slow-moving, riff on the sexual politics and Center Stage I, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. In Marvins Room
the economics of both rock stardom and the previews. Opens June 7.) The Roundabout revives Scott McPhersons
art world. Its also a lesbian paean to War- 1990 comedy, directed by Anne Kauffman, in
hol, Fassbinder, and Godard, directed by The End of Longing which two estranged sisters (Janeane Garofalo
Cottingham, an artist and cultural critic, in Matthew Perry wrote and stars in this comedy, and Lili Taylor) reunite when one of them is
collaboration with Leslie Singer. For this directed by Lindsay Posner for MCC, in which diagnosed with leukemia. (American Airlines
show, the film plays in the back of the gal- an alcoholic, an escort, and other broken souls Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300. Previews
lery. Vibrant stills, showcasing the other in- converge in a bar. (Lucille Lortel, 121 Christo- begin June 8.)
geniously cast and styled nonactors (includ- pher St. 212-352-3101. In previews. Opens June 5.)
ing the painter Nicole Eisenman, as Keith Master
Richards, the photographer Patterson Beck- Fulfillment Center The Foundry Theatre presents W. David Han-
with, as David Bowie, and Cottingham her- In Abe Kooglers play, directed by Daniel cocks play, a collaboration with the visual art-
self, in the dual roles of Mick Jagger and Aukin for Manhattan Theatre Club, Deirdre ist Wardell Milan, about the widow and the
Brian Jones), are installed at the entrance. OConnell plays a folk singer in the New Mex- estranged son of a black artist famous for his
The camp sensibility of the productionits ico desert who takes a job at a retail shipping radical take on Huckleberry Finn. (Irondale
messy performances, its stolen soundtrack center. (City Center Stage II, 131 W. 55th St. 212- Center, 85 S. Oxford St., Brooklyn. 866-811-4111.
is a pleasure, and Cottinghams prescient cri- 581-1212. Previews begin June 6.) In previews. Opens June 5.)
tique of artists arena-rock aspirations, and
of the markets spectacular demands, holds Ghost Light Napoli, Brooklyn
up. Through June 18. (Artists Space, 55 Walker Third Rail Projects (Then She Fell) created Three daughters in a traditional Italian-Amer-
St. 212-226-3970.) this immersive piece, conceived and directed ican family in nineteen-sixties Park Slope each
by Zach Morris and Jennine Willett, which in- has a secret, in Meghan Kennedys play, di-
Charles Harlan vites audiences into the theatres hidden cor- rected by Gordon Edelstein for the Round-
In 2013, the young Brooklyn-based sculptor ners. (Claire Tow, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200. about. (Laura Pels, 111 W. 46th St. 212-719-1300.
removed the entire front wall of the gallerys Previews begin June 3.) Previews begin June 9.)
former vest-pocket location, so that he could
install a ten-foot length of steel pipe. This The Government Inspector Somebodys Daughter
time, Harlan set his sights on a deteriorat- Red Bull Theatre stages the Gogol satire, di- Chisa Hutchinsons play, at Second Stage
ing twenty-two-foot sailboat, which belonged rected by Jesse Berger and featuring Michael Theatre Uptown, is about an Asian-American
teen-ager desperate for her parents attention. get what they want. Her latest work lands the lacked. When Nora Helmer, Ibsens protago-
(McGinn/Cazale, 2162 Broadway, at 76th St. 212- audience on that list of have-nots. An un- nist, shut the door on her husband, her chil-
246-4422. In previews. Opens June 6.) funny comedy, a pallid social satire, and an dren, and her bourgeois life, it was left to the
implausible drama, it stumbles onto the Jer- audience to wonder what would become of her.
The Traveling Lady sey Shore in the midst of a relationship cri- Here she is again, after so many yearsfifteen,
In Horton Footes play from 1955, directed by sis for Tanya (Ella Dershowitz), an ambitious to be exact. Since leaving her husband, Torvald
Austin Pendleton and featuring Karen Ziemba, bartender, and Graham (Darren Pettie), a (Chris Cooper), Nora (Laurie Metcalf) has dis-
a woman goes to Texas to reunite with her hus- former party starter dazed by the death of covered her own voice and become a popular
band after his release from prison. (Cherry his mother. The arrival of Miranda (Amber feminist writer under a pseudonym. (Condola
Lane, 38 Commerce St. 866-811-4111. Previews Tamblyn), a semi-prostitute with serious Rashad, as Emmy, the daughter Nora left be-
begin June 7.) student-loan debt and a possibly murder- hind, is perfect in every way.) The ideas keep
ous john, complicates the mnage. But Tam- coming, fast and delicious. Although Hnaths
Woody Sez: The Life & Music of Woody blyns Miranda is a femme about as fatale as Nora is free, she, like most of us, is still bound
Guthrie a summer cold. Under Peter DuBoiss direc- to the thing that we can leave behind but never
David M. Lutken devised this musical portrait tion, the rest of the production feels wishy- fully divest ourselves of: family. (Reviewed in
of the Dust Bowl Troubadour, featuring songs washy, too, with the actors (including a re- our issue of 5/8/17.) (Golden, 252 W. 45th St.
like This Land Is Your Land. Nick Corley strained Frank Wood) delivering laugh lines 212-239-6200.)
1
directs. (Irish Repertory, 132 W. 22nd St. 212- for laughs that dont come and laboring after
727-2737. Previews begin June 1. Opens June 8.) tension that never goes taut. (Vineyard, 108 Groundhog Day
E. 15th St. 212-353-0303. Through June 11.) Harold Ramiss 1993 film had it all: an in-
spired performance by Bill Murray, a sweet
NOW PLAYING Derren Brown: Secret romance, and a premise that was both a vehi-
Unlike most of his colleagues in the illusion cle for endless comedic variation and a spir-
Building the Wall and mind-reading business, Brown does not itual brainteaser, akin to a Buddhist parable.
Inspiredor, more accurately, spookedby pretend that he has supernatural mentalist After all, arent we all repeating the same day
Donald Trumps rhetoric, Robert Schenkkan powers. Hes very up front about using psy- over and over again, trying to find meaning
wrote this dystopian two-hander in a week, just chological manipulation, body language, and in the banal? Credit this fine musical adap-
before the 2016 election. Set in 2019, the play misdirection to bamboozle the audiencethe tation for not simply inserting songs into a
possesses the unsettling chill of a plausible au- ultimate trick is that, even forewarned, you ready-made formula but teasing out new ideas.
gury. Gloria (Tamara Tunie), an African-Amer- still dont see him coming. For his U.S. dbut, The Australian musical satirist Tim Minchin
ican academic, has landed an interview with the British magician turns the theatre into wrote the catchy and cerebral score, his fol-
a white prison contractor, Rick (James Badge his playground. Some of the banter may not low-up to Matilda, with Danny Rubin, the
Dale), now incarcerated for a crime whose be quite as witty as Brown thinks it is, but no original screenwriter, updating the script.
scope the play slowly exposes. We hear about matter: after seeing the show, you may spend As Phil Connors, the weatherman stuck in a
Ricks radicalization as he embraced Trumps nights wondering how the heck he does what time loop on February 2nd, Andy Karl doesnt
xenophobia, and about a new reality where im- he does. The eventual reveal of the meaning re-create Murrays misanthropic euphoria
migrants are held in detention centers. What behind the shows title comes at the end of a who could?but gives the character his own
difference would it have made? Rick says, terrific, lengthy buildup that few will even sardonic stamp. And the director, Matthew
after Gloria asks why he didnt quit. Some- recognize as such. We should count ourselves Warchus, infuses the tale with clever theatri-
body else would have just taken my place. lucky that Brown uses his powers of sugges- cal flourishes, like a vertical car chase. (August
Schenkkan (All the Way) may not be a great tion for good, not evil. (Atlantic Theatre Com- Wilson, 245 W. 52nd St. 877-250-2929.)
stylist, but the play is a terrifying portrait of pany, 336 W. 20th St. 866-811-4111.)
what happens when human decency and the Hello, Dolly!
rule of law both disappear. (New World Stages, A Dolls House, Part 2 In Jerry Zakss fairly standard production of
340 W. 50th St. 212-239-6200.) Lucas Hnaths invigorating ninety-minute the 1964 musical, by Jerry Herman and Mi-
work, directed by Sam Gold, is an irrespon- chael Stewart, Horace Vandergelder (David
Can You Forgive Her? sible acta kind of naughty imposition on a Hyde Pierce) is a sour, money-grubbing mer-
The characters in Gina Gionfriddos plays classic, investing Ibsens signature play with chant from Yonkers. His two young assistants,
(Becky Shaw, Rapture, Blister, Burn) rarely the humor that the nineteenth-century artist Cornelius Hackl (Gavin Creel) and Barnaby
Sales of George Orwells dystopian novel 1984 spiked in the wake of the 2016 election. A theatrical version, created and directed by Robert Icke and Duncan
Macmillan, is in previews at Broadways Hudson Theatre, after originating in England. The cast includes Tom Sturridge, Olivia Wilde, and Reed Birney.
Tucker (Taylor Trensch), head into New York both sides, who bond tentatively and tell jokes are deeply freighted with the events of the
City, where they fall for two women: Irene while haggling over Gaza. At nearly three previous play. Ogbuagu returns as Abasiamas
Molloy (Kate Baldwin), a hatmaker on whom hours, the play provides a journalistic service very American daughter, Jenny Jules takes a
Vandergelder has set his sights, and her assis- without having much to say, ultimately, about turn as Abasiama, and Adepero Oduye plays
tant, Minnie Fay (Beanie Feldstein). But the the conflict itself, aside from a We Are the the child she bore in Sojourners, now thir-
plot turns on Dolly Levi, the matchmaker, and World coda that shows how close we were, ty-six and shot through with hurt. (New York
the show offers ample opportunity for who- once, to peace. (Vivian Beaumont, 150 W. 65th Theatre Workshop, 79 E. 4th St. 212-460-5475.
ever plays the part to showcase her ability to St. 212-239-6200.) Through June 11.)
convey pathos and defiance, grief and comedy.
And who better than Bette Midler to give us Present Laughter Venus
all that? The role isnt necessarily tailor-made This harmless production of Nol Cowards Suzan-Lori Parkss 1996 play, revived for the
for hershes infinitely more complicated 1939 comedy about theatre, pretense, and lies Signature by Lear deBessonet, constructs and
and funnybut she has remade the character should verge on farceand does, at timesbut deconstructs Saartjie Baartman, a South Af-
in her own image: as a scrappy trickster with the director, Moritz von Stuelpnagel, plays it rican woman brought to Europe in the early
needs and vulnerabilities. (5/1/17) (Shubert, 225 safe when he shouldnt. Still, there are bright nineteenth century and exhibited in a loincloth
W. 44th St. 212-239-6200.) spots amid the dullness, and Kevin Kline, Kris- as the Hottentot Venus. Parks shows how the
tine Nielsen, and Kate Burton are performers white male gaze turns an able-bodied girl into
Indecent you look forward to seeing again and again. a freak, a spectacle, a sex object, and finally,
Paula Vogels revelatory playher belated Kline plays the actor and rogue Garry Essen- after the flesh has been melted from her bones,
Broadway dbutbegins in Warsaw in 1906 dine; he cant remember whos loved him, but a scientific curiosity. For all the plays looky-
and ends in Connecticut half a century later, that doesnt matter, because he loves himself looky theatricality and audacious language,
but its as intimate and immediate as a whis- more. As his handy assistant, Monica Reed, Parkss ultimate goal is to afford Baartman her
pered secret. It tells the story of another play, Nielsen does what no one else does better: tries own dignity and desires, to plumb the heart
Sholem Aschs Yiddish drama God of Ven- to make sense of another characters madness. and the mind inside that body. Though deBes-
geance, which toured the theatres of Europe And as Garrys wife, Liz, Burton is a model of sonets production sometimes chafes against
before coming to Broadway, in 1923, and caus- good sense and strong character, poised and the scripts stylistic variety, Zainab Jah, so fe-
ing a scandal, in part because of a passionate maternal. Each of these actors makes Cow- rocious in last seasons Eclipsed, gives a poi-
lesbian kiss. The cast was tried for obscenity, ards language sound fresh and contemporary gnant, spirited performance, with John Elli-
and Asch chose to distance himself from the while understanding that the play has nothing son Conlee as her anatomist lover and Kevin
workall before Nazism overtook the play, its to do with naturalism. (St. James, 246 W. 44th Mambo as a baleful narrator. (Pershing Square
people, and the world it came from. Directed St. 212-239-6200.) Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. 212-244-7529.
with poetry and polish by Rebecca Taichman, Through June 4.)
Vogels play thrums with music, desire, and Rotterdam
fear, and its shrewd about the ways in which Alice, a skittish British expatriate, is finally The Whirligig
America isnt free, and about how art does and ready to tell her parents by e-mail that shes The individual elements of Derek McLanes
doesnt transcend the perilous winds of history. a lesbianbut before she can hit send her scenic design for the New Groups tragicom-
(Cort, 138 W. 48th St. 212-239-6200.) partner of seven years comes out to her as a edy are, for the most part, perfectly effec-
transgender man. A highly appealing cast of tive, such as the upstage wall of windows that
The Little Foxes four, three of whom played their roles on Lon- evoke endless opportunities for eavesdrop-
Long dismissed as ripe melodrama, Lillian dons West End, leaps with aplomb into this ping. The exception is a tree branch on which
Hellmans 1939 play, about a Southern family complication, the fallout from which the play- two characters sit for much of the first act; for
rotten with greed and rancor, has a Greek trag- wright Jon Brittain cleverly arranges over two such a crucial piece of infrastructure, its dis-
edys implacability and the taut plotting of film major Dutch holidays. (The newcomer here, tractingly wobbly and unconvincing. Much
noir. Daniel Sullivans production, for Manhat- Ellie Morris, is spot-on as Alices tempting the same could be said of Hamish Linklaters
tan Theatre Club, is traditional in every respect twenty-one-year-old Dutch co-worker.) Brit- script: the dialogue, which revolves around a
but one: Cynthia Nixon and Laura Linney take tain has a fine ear for how couples argue, and troubled young woman (Grace Van Patten)
turns playing the imperious, steel-willed Re- the director, Donnacadh OBriain, is well at- who has come home to die, is rowdy with life
gina Giddensone of modern theatres great- tuned to the scripts good humor. If the dia- and wonderfully delivered by eight great cast
est creationsand the vulnerable, alcoholic logue sometimes overexplains, this is never members, including an understated Zosia
Birdie Hubbard. While both stars play Birdie a simple issue play but a lively plunge into Mamet and a Rabelaisian Norbert Leo Butz.
along the same lines, each brings very different impossible questions. Among them: Is sexual But the plot is too clever for its own good,
shadings to Regina. Linney portrays the vil- orientation meaningful in the context of last- held together by the sort of tangle of coinci-
lainy with gleeful relish, while Nixon makes us ing love, or is it merely the mechanism that dences that even Shakespeare could just barely
1
fully understand how Reginas anger has been pulls lovers together? (59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. pull off. (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480
fuelled by decades of frustration. Its worth 212-279-4200. Through June 10.) W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200.)
seeing the show twice, if you can. Hellmans
incisive storytelling, her razor-etched insights Sojourners & Her Portmanteau
into womens limited options in a patriarchal Mfoniso Udofia wrote these two plays, pre- ALSO NOTABLE
society, are largely good enough to withstand sented in repertory, as part of a projected nine-
the scrutiny. (Samuel J. Friedman, 261 W. 47th part saga about an extended Nigerian family in Anastasia Broadhurst. The Antipodes Per-
St. 212-239-6200.) America. At the center of Sojourners is Aba- shing Square Signature Center. Through June
siama (Chinasa Ogbuagu), a serious-minded 11. Bandstand Jacobs. Charlie and the
Oslo and heavily pregnant university student in Chocolate Factory Lunt-Fontanne. Come
J. T. Rogerss play, which has upgraded to the late-seventies Houston, surrounded by big from Away Schoenfeld. Dear Evan Hansen
big stage at Lincoln Center, introduces us talkers all jockeying to possess her, includ- Music Box. Ernest Shackleton Loves Me
to the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the ing her irrepressible husband, Ukpong (Hu- Tony Kiser. Through June 11. In & of Itself
Middle East peace process: a married Norwe- bert Point-Du Jour). The first thing you no- Daryl Roth. The Lucky One Beckett. Miss
gian couple who orchestrated the secret talks tice in Ed Sylvanus Iskandars production is Saigon Broadway Theatre. Natasha, Pierre
between Israelis and Palestinians which led how beautifully all the design elements work in & the Great Comet of 1812 Imperial. 1984
to the 1993 Oslo Accords. Played by the ex- concert: Jiyoun Changs imaginative lighting, Hudson. Pacific Overtures Classic Stage
ceptional Jennifer Ehle and Jefferson Mays, Jeremy S. Blooms perfectly calibrated sound Company. The Play That Goes Wrong Ly-
Mona Juul and Terje Rd-Larsen are tight- design, and Jason Sherwoods turntable set. In ceum. Seven Spots on the Sun Rattlestick.
lipped diplomatic professionals, as cautiously the opening moments of Her Portmanteau, Through June 4. Six Degrees of Separation
neutral as their all-gray wardrobes suggest. which takes place decades later, the turnta- Ethel Barrymore. Sunset Boulevard Pal-
(Bartlett Shers staging is Scandinavian in its ble becomes an airport baggage carrousel: an ace. Sweat Studio 54. Sweeney Todd: The
clarity.) Plying their guests with herring and evocative image before any of the actors have Demon Barber of Fleet Street Barrow Street
waffles, they oversee colorful characters from appeared. When they do, their performances Theatre. War Paint Nederlander.
as if heard through a wallbut Slow absolutes hidden in the gray area between longtime collaborator and friend James
crackles open with stomps of kick and dance and soul music, the song suggests Blake, is all muddy blues, far from the
snare drums and a throbbing, hazy siren, the same hand that yanks you onto the duos frostbitten early cuts. Electronic
like a nuclear reactor or something out of dance oor can clutch your palm on the music has mutated since their teen-age
a chase scene in a Matrix sequel. The walk home. days clubbing around London, and,
British production duo specializes in the Mount Kimbie is Kai Campos, from thankfully, theyve adapted along with it.
kind of agile, quiet electronic music fa- Cornwall, and Dominic Maker, from Matthew Trammell
Mothers Day actors cant give onscreen what they dont performances have often been mistaken
already possess within themselves. for camp, and Dunaways own deeply
Joan Crawfords oscreen life, in
In the case of Crawford, the furies of empathetic performance heremiracu-
Mommie Dearest.
her performances are matched by her do- lously channelling Crawfords manner
The director Frank Perry, working with mestic rages; she cleans her house fero- and powersuered the same fate.
his rst wife, Eleanor Perry, and other ciously and disciplines Christina with The movie catches Crawfords desper-
screenwriters, is distinguished mainly by equal ferocity. She wants to give her ate eorts to maintain her youthful looks
his skill at eliciting enticingly orid yet daughter the advantages and the pleasures for the sake of her career, as well as the state
intimately vulnerable performances from that she herself never had, but she also of fear and dependency in which studios
actors. Its no surprise that he made one wants to teach Christina to compete as kept even as great a star as Crawford. One
of the best lms about a Hollywood star she did, and so subjects her to strict rules of Perrys co-writers, Frank Yablans, was
that the industry has yet produced: and harsh punishment. The most famous both the lms producer and a former stu-
Mommie Dearest, from 1981, which example of this is the notorious incident dio head; scenes of backroom intrigue be-
screens June 4 and June 6 in the Quad when Crawford beat her daughter with a tween Crawford and the head of M-G-M,
Cinemas retrospective of the Perrys work. wire hanger. The movies version of the Louis B. Mayer (played by the insinuating
Its the story of Joan Crawfords life and event continues with Crawford inicting character actor Howard Da Silva)in
career, from 1939 to the time of her death, further cruelties in a state of theatrical, which Mayer aunts his absolute rule with
in 1977, seen from the perspective of her self-dramatizing possessionemphasized a velvet bonhomiehave a quietly dread-
daughter Christina, whose memoir Frank by her Kabuki-like mask of cold cream. ful ring of authenticity.
Perry adapted, with three other screen- Perry never shows Crawford on the For all the ordeals that Christina
writers. Faye Dunaway stars as Crawford; set, and never has Dunaway impersonate (played, as a child, by Mara Hobel and, as
the action is centered on Crawfords home any of Crawfords emblematic perfor- an adult, by Diana Scarwid) is shown to
lifein particular, on the troubled rela- mances; rather, Dunaway, portraying the bear, Perry depicts her as strong and dis-
tionship that the actress had with Chris- star in her private life, captures Crawfords cerning. She is seen as having learned the
tina, whom she adopted in 1940. The lm oblivious brutality and relentless intensity, lessons of endurance and competition that
emphasizes the erce, frightening intensity her passionate yet controlled and rock- her mother had hoped to impartand
of Crawfords oscreen character, largely hard presence thats as terrifying when its the writing of her memoir comes o as a
ALAMY
a product of her own hard childhood, and maintained as it is explosive when it crucial part of her struggle.
it brings out a simple and powerful idea: breaks. The real-life Crawfords greatest Richard Brody
ons Aliens (1986). If anyone commands the reflects that of so many smart European ref-
scene, it is Fassbender, playing two roles, who ugees. Their cultured and freethinking ways
Beatriz at Dinner Salma Hayek stars in this follows in the robotic footsteps of earlier syn- inspired stopped-up Englandand, as things
drama, as a holistic healer who becomes a thetic men; even he, however, suffers beneath turn out, the United States, tooto unblock
guest at her wealthy clients dinner party. Di- the burden of the backstory. Was the alien not itself and take up the fight against Hitler and
rected by Miguel Arteta; co-starring Chlo scarier, and more implacable, when we knew for sex, not least by producing effervescently
Sevigny and John Lithgow. Opening June 9. (In nothing of its origins?Anthony Lane (Re ribald entertainments, such as this one, for
limited release.) It Comes at Night Reviewed viewed in our issue of 5/29/17.) (In wide release.) the benefit of spirited yet constrained young
in Now Playing. Opening June 9. (In wide re women. With Reginald Owen as an upper-class
lease.) Megan Leavey A drama, based on the Beauty and the Beast fop who knows Hitler as the author of an out-
true story of a Marine corporal (Kate Mara) Back from the drawing board, into live-action, doors book, My Camp.R.B. (Film Forum,
who worked with the K-9 unit in the Iraq War. comes yet another version of the tale. Disney June 2 and June 10.)
Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. Opening has taken its own animated film from 1991 and,
June 9. (In wide release.) My Cousin Rachel Ra- at vast expense, tried to keep it realor, in the The Commune
chel Weisz stars in this adaptation of a novel case of the actors, half-real. Emma Watson, The Danish director Thomas Vinterberg has
by Daphne du Maurier, about a woman whose whose determined air is not matched by her often turned to group studiesdramas that
relative suspects her of murder. Directed by singing voice, plays the book-loving Belle. She seem like anthropological experiments, bring-
Roger Michell; co-starring Sam Claflin and takes the place of her father (Kevin Kline) as ing people together and noting the ways in
Holliday Grainger. Opening June 9. (In limited the prisoner of the Beast (Dan Stevens), who which they form bonds and pull violently
release.) Wonder Woman Patty Jenkins di- in turn is held captive by a magic spell. Mop- apart. That was the case with The Celebra-
rected this DC Comics adaptation, starring Gal ing and short-tempered, he dwells in his cas- tion (1998) and The Hunt (2012), and it
Gadot as a superheroine who tries to end the tle, attended by living objectsthe clock (Ian happens again with his latest film, set in the
1
First World War. Co-starring Chris Pine and McKellen), the teapot (Emma Thompson), the nineteen-seventies. An architect named Erik
Robin Wright. Opening June 2. (In wide release.) full-throated wardrobe (Audra McDonald), (Ulrich Thomsen) inherits a large house in Co-
and so on. Belles task, of which she seems all penhagen. His first impulse is to sell, but his
too aware, is to fall for the Beast and thus re- wife, Anna (Trine Dyrholm), and their teen-
NOW PLAYING store his proper nature, as a handsome and age daughter, Freja (Martha Sofie Wallstrm
slightly boring prince. The songs from 1991 are Hansen), think otherwise, and a new plan is
An Actors Revenge reheated and dished up anew, together with a hatched. The place becomes a haven for friends
In 1963, the Japanese star Kazuo Hasegawa made batch of fresh numbers, by Alan Menken and and strangers, as well as a testing ground for
his three-hundredth movie, playing the same Tim Rice; the resulting movie, though stuffed the idealistic liberties of the age; when Erik
double role he did in 1935: a Kabuki female with wonders, is forty-five minutes longer falls for a student named Emma (Helene Re-
impersonator and a self-styled Robin Hood. than its predecessor and much less dramat- ingaard Neumann), she is invited by Anna to
On a stage that looks like a glittering ribbon ically lean.A.L. (3/27/17) (In wide release.) join them in the communal home. By Vinter-
it outscopes CinemaScopeHasegawas actor bergs standards, the drama feels meek; theres
character, Yukinojo, plots his revenge on the Bless Their Little Hearts a regrettable subplot about an ailing child, and
men who drove his parents to despair, insan- Billy Woodberrys only dramatic feature to a surprising number of characters linger in
ity, and suicide. Two of these villains, a mer- date, from 1983, looks deeply into the life of the margins. Yet Dyrholms performance is as
chant and a former magistrate, have shown up one family in Watts and plots its crisis in three tough and as truthful as ever, not least when
for Yukinojos opening night in Edo, with the dimensions: race, money, and gender. Char- Anna takes to the bottle and starts to crack. In
ex-magistrates daughter in tow. She falls for lie Banks (Nate Hardman), first seen in an Danish.A.L. (In limited release and streaming.)
the exotic actors androgynous charms, and Yuk- employment office, has been jobless for a de-
inojo realizes that if he wins her heart he can cade and does day labor when he can get it. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
wreak havoc on the ex-magistrates household. His wife, Andais (Kaycee Moore), is the fam- The return of the ragtag outfit that made such
Hasegawas performance as the actor is a mar- ilys main support, but, when its time to give an unexpected impression in 2014here was
vel of sexual ambiguity. (Hes also charming their three lively and helpful young children a Marvel movie that presumed, if only in fits
and funny as the robust bandit.) Throughout, their allowance, she slips the coins to Char- and starts, to spear its own pretensions. The
the director, Kon Ichikawa, succeeds in mak- lie, for him to dole out as the nominal head crew in the sequel is pretty much unchanged:
ing all the world a stage, mixing theatrical and of the household. Working with a script and Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), who is way too goofy
cinematic devices with earthquake intensity. cinematography by Charles Burnett, Wood- to deserve his title of Star-Lord; the mint-
Colors slice into the dark backgrounds of the berry crafts a passionately pensive realism green Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and her semi-ro-
nocturnal scenes like lights flashed at night nearly every scene of action is matched by a botic sister (Karen Gillan); the enormous Drax
through the floor of a glass-bottomed boat. long one in which characters, in observant re- (Dave Bautista), a stranger to the social graces;
In Japanese.Michael Sragow (Anthology Film pose, look back and see themselves reflected a thieving and sadistic critter named Rocket
Archives, June 9.) in societys mirror. Bruised by struggle, Char- (voiced by Bradley Cooper); and Baby Groot
lie seeks comfort with a former girlfriend; An- (voiced by Vin Diesel), formerly a tree. New to
Alien: Covenant dais has it out with him in a terrifying scene of the scene is Ego (Kurt Russell), whose name, it
Ridley Scott returns to the feud between mon- domestic apocalypse, a single claustrophobic must be said, is a ready-made spoilerhe likes
ster and human that he inaugurated in Alien ten-minute take in which a lifetime of frustra- to flaunt his own planet in the way that other
(1979). The new work takes place long before tion bursts forth.Richard Brody (IFC Center.) guys show off their sports cars. The director, as
the events described in that film, though after before, is James Gunn, but, as the plot grinds
the gloomy shenanigans of Prometheus. In Cluny Brown onward, with its compound of the flimsy and
short, we have a saga on our hands. On board Ernst Lubitschs last completed film, from the over-spectacular, and as the finale drags on
the good spaceship Covenant, all is not well: 1946, looks back to the prewar year of 1938 to forever, you sense that the genial balance of
after the captains death, the devout but inef- take stock of the postwar world and to show the first film has been mislaid. When the big-
fectual Oram (Billy Crudup) takes charge. He how it got that way. The story concerns Adam gest laughs arise from a small piece of comput-
and his crew, including Daniels (Katherine Wa- Belinski (Charles Boyer), a Czechoslovakian er-generated wood, where does a franchise go
terston) and a serene android named Walter professor and anti-Fascist, who takes ref- next?A.L. (5/15/17) (In wide release.)
(Michael Fassbender), land on an unfamiliar uge in London and then is invited to an En-
planet, only to realize that hostile creatures glish country manor, where his liberal ironies Hermia & Helena
have beaten them to the punch. The stylized shake up the staid household. He bonds with The fanciful twists of this romantic rounde-
goriness of what ensues is unprecedented for the title character (Jennifer Jones), one of the lay by the Argentinean director Matas Pieiro
Scott, yet the plot, torn between different char- maidsa plumbers nubile niece who likes keep the Shakespearean promise of the title.
acters and writhing with a surfeit of beasts, nothing better than to unblock stopped-up Its centered on a Mulberry Street apartment
lacks the clean lines of the first movie, and drains with one good bang. (Thats just one that serves as an institute for one artistic
there is a doomed attempt, in the final reel, of the movies many gleefully risqu allu- fellow at a time. The story begins with a Bue-
to ape the muscular thrills of James Camer- sions.) Belinskis story, in Lubitschs telling, nos Aires artist named Carmen (Mara Vil-
lar), whos ending her fellowship in the vain sule of events and moodsits a living aesthetic an exotic vacation in Ecuador with her musi-
hope that the programs manager, Lukas (Keith model for revolutionary times.R.B. (BAM cian boyfriend. When he dumps her, she coaxes
Poulson), a standoffish ex-rocker, will leave Cinmatek, May 31-June 13, and streaming.) her mother, Linda (Goldie Hawn), whos di-
with her. Shes replaced by a longtime friend, vorced and solitary, into joining her on the
Camila (Agustina Muoz), whos translating The Lovers trip. Happily enticed by a romance-novel-type
A Midsummer Nights Dream into Spanish. This bittersweet romance thrusts its fertile hunk at the hotel bar, Emily persuades Linda
Camila has a boyfriend back home and an ex and clever dramatic framework into the fore- to come with them on a back-road adventure
in Brooklyn (played by the filmmaker Dustin ground and leaves it undeveloped. Mary and that results in a kidnapping by local bandits.
Guy Defa), but shes also in love with Lukas. Michael (Debra Winger and Tracy Letts) are Spirited away to Colombia and left to their
Pieiro keeps the action swinging freely be- long-married and long-frustrated suburban own devices, the women try to escape, leading
tween New York and Buenos Aires with bold cubicle jockeys, and both are having affairs. to a series of tribulations that are meant to fur-
subplots and puckish flashbacks, the shimmer- Mary is seeing Robert (Aidan Gillen), a writer; nish comedic situations. But the director, Jon-
ing mysteries of tenuous friendships and the Michael is seeing Lucy (Melora Walters), a athan Levine, has no feel for comedy. Schumer
breathless melodrama of family secrets. Film- dancer; and each is waiting for the right mo- fires off some asides of sharp obliviousness,
ing cityscapes and intimate gestures with avid ment to tell the other that the marriage is but the humor, which may have seemed to fly
attention, adorning the dialogue with deep over. But the impending visit of their son, Joel in a script conference, sinks without a trace.
confessions and witty asides, Pieiro conjures (Tyler Ross), a college student, puts a crimp Only one mercurial stunt, involving two re-
a cogently realistic yet gloriously imaginative in their plans; while waiting to separate, Mary tired American operatives (Wanda Sykes and
vision of youthful ardor in love and art alike. and Michael suddenly rekindle their relation- Joan Cusack), has any glint of wit. With Ike
Co-starring the filmmakers Mati Diop and shipin effect, cheating on their lovers with Barinholtz, as Emilys agoraphobic brother,
Dan Sallitt.R.B. (Film Society of Lincoln Cen- each other. Winger is commanding in action Jeffrey, and Bashir Salahuddin, as the State
ter and Metrograph.) and in repose, and Letts invests his role with Department officer whom he badgers into ac-
gruff energy, but they and the other actors tion.R.B. (In wide release.)
It Comes at Night exert themselves in a voidnone of the char-
This modest science-fiction thriller brings the acters have any substance beyond their func- Stage Fright
hands-on vigor of independent filmmaking to tion in the story. The writer and director, Aza- Alfred Hitchcocks theatre-centered mystery,
a high-concept premise, but the results are in- zel Jacobs, offers a few visual grace notes that from 1950, shows how good actors get away
substantial and impersonal. Its set in a near resonate beyond the plotlines, but his script with murder. Marlene Dietrich plays Char-
future where the human race is threatened by is devoid of imagination. With Jessica Sula, lotte Inwood, a star of the London stage, who
a highly contagious and incurable disease. One as Joels girlfriend, Erin, whose quandaries go recruits her caddish boyfriend, Jonathan Coo-
familymother (Carmen Ejogo), father (Joel utterly unaddressed.R.B. (In wide release.) per (Richard Todd), to help conceal her hus-
Edgerton), and teen-age son (Kelvin Harrison, bands suspicious death. Jonathan, in turn, re-
Jr.)has taken refuge in a sealed-off house in Snatched cruits his steadfast young girlfriend, Eve Gill
the woods. Another familymother (Riley In this leaden comedy, Emily (Amy Schumer), (Jane Wyman), a student at the Royal Acad-
Keough), father (Christopher Abbott), and a retail clerk with delusions of glamour, plans emy of Dramatic Art, to help him slip out of
toddler (Griffin Robert Faulkner)comes to
them for help. The two families cohabit warily
until the spectre of infection causes alarm.
The director, Trey Edward Shults, who previ-
ously made Krisha, a frenziedly realistic tale
of family turmoil, relies on the threat of im-
minent death to reveal both the best and the
worst aspects of family bonds. The cinematog-
raphy by Drew Daniels, with its bold low-light
effects and eerily gliding camera work, main-
tains a mood of dread, and Shults deftly man-
ages the glances and the gazes of silent fears
and unspoken longings. But the film builds its
tension through artificial silences that keep
the characters as blank as chess pieces.R.B.
(In wide release.)
BookCon
This annual convention offers access to a
trove of authors, publishers, and other fig-
ures steeped in the world of books, as well as
presenters in the media and entertainment
industries. For two days, guests can take
in live podcast recordings, Q. & A. panels,
and special screenings. The lineup includes
a roundtable on shipping, the fan-fiction
trope of playing imaginary matchmaker with
characters from books, TV shows, and films;
a presentation from Bill Nye, the Emmy-
award-winning mascot for science who re-
surfaced this year, with two new television
series; and a conversation between the actor
and comedian Kevin Hart, whose book I
Cant Make This Up comes out the follow-
ing week, and the morning-show shock-jock
Charlamagne Tha God. (Javits Center, 655
W. 34th St. thebookcon.com. June 3-4.)
1 AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES
PHOTOGRAPH BY ZACHARY ZAVISLAK FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
skipped the bugs but kept up his reputa- star of the menu, in the delicate ounder turquoise. As it turns out, hes also a big fan of the
tion as an innovator, with uni tostadas, Milanese, lightly fried to a tender crisp, wholesome television dramedy Gilmore Girls
(quirky small town, motormouthed mother-daugh-
bone-marrow salsa, duck carnitas, and a and in a small but mighty Arctic-char ter duo), which emboldened scores of nerdy bru-
now famous corn-husk meringue. Atla, a tostada. Thick curls of raw pink sh sit nettes to embrace their inner Rorys. Boeltes Gilmore
chic new all-day caf, in NoHo, takes a atop a schmear of fresh cheese on a Girls fandom sparked something else: a themed
seasonal cocktail menu, on offer until later this
totally dierent tack: on a menu devised crunchy blue-corn tortilla, showered with summer. Gilmore Girls is very inspiring, Boelte
by Olvera and his head chef, Daniela capers, serrano pepper, and cilantro: a explained. Theres an episode called Cinnamons
Soto-Innes, nothing costs more than Mexican lox and bagel. Wake, and its when they have a wake for the cat,
Cinnamon. How can you not make a cocktail based
twenty dollars, and locals are placated with In the morning, have a caf con leche, on that? Its already got an ingredient in the name!
familiar favorites like avocado toast and with or without cinnamon, and a concha Past menus have been built around old trains and
guacamole. pastry, akin to a Wonder Bread roll with railroads, the state parks of Oklahoma, and Scan-
dinavian black metal. One recent evening, two
But beware, for this is not your average a sugar-crisp angel-food topping. Atlas Gilmore fanatics sampled a Late Night at Lukes:
guacamole. After the great pea-guacamole cool graphics and smooth terrazzo surfaces cachaa, Bruto Americano, sweet vermouth; more
controversy of 2015, it takes cojones to add belie its laid-back, friendly vibe. The other like a Christmassy nightcap than New England
diner fare. The Hep Alien was vegetal and ginny.
mint to an otherwise innocent, chunky night, after 10 p.m., the place was full of An expert mused about incidents of drunkenness
scoop, which arrived, one afternoon, dra- downtowners drinking expert micheladas in the fictional town of Stars Hollow: Lorelei used
matically hidden under an elephant-ear- and margaritas with (wormless) salt and alcohol for justifying bad decisions she would have
made anyway; Rory, to reveal her true snicklefritz
size purple-corn chip. The avocado toast, noshing on guac (with mint), while Sweet self. The millennial waitress weighed in: A lot of
which employed some very sweet cherry Home Alabama played on the stereo. It girls my age are really into the show. Nobody cares
tomatoes, was just as delicious as any of was pretty close to being home in Any- about Seinfeld anymore. The expert, compulsively
connecting the dots, pointed out that a scene from
the hundred others around town. Perhaps where, U.S.A. (Dishes, $8-$19.) the Seinfeld finale was shot on what would become
because everyones doing steak tartare, it Shauna Lyon the Gilmore Girls set.Emma Allen
COMMENT ple lodged in prison, handcued, hun- hired a small army of women to check
THE STRATEGY OF TRUTH gry, and fed through the bars from day every fact. (Add Fact Checking to your
to day by the contemptuous, unpitying list of chores, the founder of The New
oger Ailes died recently, at the age masters of other continents. Yorker instructed an editor, not long af-
R of seventy-seven, during a week
when the ground shook beneath a stum-
Roosevelt had been trying to gain
support for entry into the war in Eu-
terward.) In 1929, Luce hired as an ed-
itor of his new magazine, Fortune, a poet
bling Donald Trump. The two men were rope, but he knew that it was possible named Archibald MacLeish. He had
in many things near: in age and appe- to push too hard. In 1917, to marshal sup- fought in the First World War, then
tites, in temper and coarseness. They port for another war, Woodrow Wilson lived in Paris, where he wrote poems
were also in many things far apart: in in- had created a propaganda department, about places where lay upon the dark-
telligence and energy, in talent and pur- a ction manufactory that stirred up so ening plain / The dead against the dead
pose. Ailes was formidable, Trump brit- much hysteria and so much hatred of and on the silent ground / The silent
tle. Ailess decline began last summer, Germany that Americans took to call- slain. He worked at Fortune until
when he was forced out of Fox News. ing hamburgers Salisbury steaks and 1938. F.D.R. appointed him Librarian of
Trumps fall, if he falls, is still to come. lynched a German immigrant. John Congress in 1939.
And yet at times it has seemed as if the Dewey called this kind of thing the con- Democracy is never a thing done,
two men were Humpty and Dumpty, scription of thought. It was a horses MacLeish said. Democracy is always
tumbling o a wall that theyd built to- bit crammed into the peoples mouth. something that a nation must be doing.
gether, to divide one half of the country The bitterness of that experience deter- He believed that writers had an obliga-
from the other. mined a new generation of journalists tion to ght against fascism in the bat-
The measure of the world they made to avoid all manner of distortion and tle for public opinion, a battle that grew
lies in its distance from the world into error. In 1923, when Henry Luce and more urgent after the publication, in
which they were born, when the ques- Briton Hadden founded Time (their rst 1940, of The Strategy of Terror, by
tion of whether democracy could be de- name for it was Facts), the magazine Edmond Taylor, the Paris bureau chief
fended without violating the freedoms for the Chicago Tribune. Taylor reported
on which it rests was a matter of pained rsthand on the propaganda campaign
debate. Ailes was born in Ohio in May, waged by Nazi agents to divide the
1940. Weeks later, President Roosevelt French people, by leaving them uncer-
gave a commencement address in Vir- tain about what to believe, or whether
ginia. Every generation of young men to believe anything at all. (In Mein
and women in America has questions to Kampf, Hitler had written that most
ask the world, he began. But every now people are more easily victimized by a
and again in the history of the Repub- large than by a small lie, since they some-
ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL
lic a dierent kind of question presents times tell petty lies themselves but would
itselfa question that asks, not about be ashamed to tell big ones.) Taylor
the future of an individual or even of a called propaganda the invisible front.
generation, but about the future of the Roosevelt decided that he could delay
country. He was arguing against Amer- his assault on that front no longer. In
ica Firsters, who wanted the United States October, 1941, he issued an executive
to be an island, a vision he declared to order establishing a new government
be a nightmare, the nightmare of a peo- information agency, the Oce of Facts
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 37
and Figures. He appointed MacLeish the strategy of truththe strategy which opposes use / Theyve made a thing to save / And
to head it. to the frauds and the deceits by which our ene- staked it in and fenced it round / Like a
mies have confused and conquered other peo-
The duty of government is to provide ples, the simple and clarifying truths by which a
dead mans grave.
a basis for judgment, MacLeish insisted, nation such as ours must guide itself. But the A lifetime later, Barack Obama greeted
and when it goes beyond that, it goes strategy of truth is not, because it deals in truth, Roger Ailes at the White House. I see
beyond the prime scope of its duty. devoid of strategy. It is not enough, in this war the most powerful man in the world is
of hoaxes and delusions and perpetuated lies, to
Under his leadership, the oce mainly here, Obama said. Dont believe what
be merely honest. It is necessary also to be wise.
printed pamphlets, including Divide you read, Mr. President, Ailes answered.
and Conquer, which explained how for- Critics called MacLeish nave: win- I started those rumors myself. Other
eign agents weaken a nations resolve by ning a war requires deception. F.D.R., rumors that Ailes helped start include
undermining condence in institutions to some degree, agreed. In June, 1942, he Trumps charge that Obama is not an
like elections and the press, and by rais- replaced the Oce of Facts and Figures American. Also: science is a hoax, his-
ing fears of internal enemies, like immi- with the Oce of War Information. tory is a conspiracy, and the news is fake.
grants and Jews. Still, some reporters sus- MacLeish left, and the agency drifted. Its not always possible to sort out fact
pected that the agency was nothing more Much of the sta resigned in protest. from ction, but to believe that every-
than a propaganda machine, the war- When a former advertising director for thing is a lie is to know nothing. Ailes
time conversion of fact to ction. Mac- Coca-Cola was hired, a departing writer wont be remembered as the man who
Leish was worried, too. In April, 1942, made a mock poster that read, Step right got Trump elected President; he will be
he spoke at a meeting of the Associated up and get your four delicious freedoms. remembered as a television producer who
Press. To counter the strategy of terror, Its a refreshing war. In 1946, the year understood better than anyone how to
he proposed a new strategy: that Donald Trump was born, MacLeish divide a people. And Trumps Presidency,
That strategy, I think, is neither dicult to published a poem called Brave New long after it ends, will stand as a monu-
nd nor dicult to name. It is the strategy which World, about Americans retreat from ment to the error of a strategy of terror.
is appropriate to our cause and to our purpose the world: Freedom that was a thing to Jill Lepore
DIASPORA DEPT. getting ready to preside over the presen- The contestants were arriving. First
SUPER FANS tation of the contestants in the Mrs. Phil- came Lin Cheung, who was dgeting
ippines-USA pageant. It is open to Fil- with her top. Its an old bathing suit
ipino-born club members, provided that that I glued plastic owers on, she said,
they have been married at least once. patting down a gardenia. I didnt want
Blurred Lines blared from speakers; to order a new top, because what if it
families danced and swarmed a buet doesnt t and falls o while Im danc-
table laden with bam-i and pork afri- ing? Lin is a mother of four; she came
n the Trump era, political perfor- tada. The dress code was Hawaiian. to the United States eight years ago from
Ieyemance, like so much else, is in the
of the beholder. Liberals see an Ad-
Carman, who is sixty-two, wore a blue
muumuu and had pinned an orchid in
the province of Cebu. Nodding at a lit-
tle girl nuzzling her waist, she added,
ministration in a tailspin. But Trumps her hair. A former Mrs. Philippines-USA, This is the youngest one, Kissy. I had
base sees it dierently: a recent Pew she moved to New York in 1984, from her with my white husband.
survey showed that, among Republi- Davao City: Its where our President Next, Andrea Simon joined the group.
cans, the Presidents approval rating is once served as mayor! When she was She has been a U.S. citizen since 2011,
eighty-two per cent. young, she said, it had been a crime- but followed the Philippines election
A similar dynamic exists when it infested city. Thank God for Duterte, closely. I prayed for Duterte to win,
comes to Rodrigo Duterte, the President she went on. Now you can nally walk she said, adjusting an uncoperative co-
of the Philippines, whom Trump recently around without fear of being raped and conut-shell bra. Its not like hes kill-
invited to the White House. American mugged. ing innocent people. They are criminals,
newspapers describe a murderous strong- Edita Gialanella, who was Mrs. Phil- and get what they deserve. Carman
man who has ordered thousands of ex- ippines-USA in 2006, chimed in: Be- compared him to a tough but good
trajudicial killings as part of his war on lieve me, he cleaned up the city, she said, father.
drugs. But to Trump, and to many Fil- swaying in a long pink hula skirt. How did they feel about Trump?
ipinos, Duterte is a hero. In a phone call, The conversation was interrupted by I prefer Duterte, Simon said. Lin
Trump congratulated him for doing an the singing of national anthems. The noted that both men are control freaks.
unbelievable job on the drug problem. Star-Spangled Banner prompted about And they are dirty-mouthed, some-
As Joann Carman, the president of the half as many hands-on-hearts as its Fil- one added. (Duterte reportedly called
Filipino Social Club of New York, said ipino equivalent, Chosen Land. ( Tis President Obama a son of a whore.)
recently, Trump and Duterte, they are our joy, when there be oppressors / To Nilda Trinchetta, Mrs. Philippines-
a little bit alike, no? die because of thee.) Carman whispered, USA 2014, raised a st and said, Every-
Carman was at DHaven, a restau- I think everyone is impatient to get back one supports Duterte because of his iron
rant and dance hall in Woodside, Queens, to dancing. hand. Americans dont understand, she
38 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
added, because they dont know what repressibly cocky Kenny Powers, in the Powersbecause its Ridley Scott,
its like to live there. She nudged a man HBO series Eastbound & Down, so Ill have to do it. But he said he
in the buet line: Hey, what do you which he co-created with Jody Hill and saw Tennessee as an homage to the
think of Duterte? Ben Best, McBride wanted, he said, to character Slim Pickens played in Dr.
Allen Cuyugan, who used to work as make fun of a South where you could Strangelove a Southerner, and some-
a journalist in Manila, said, If he were learn an ancient martial art like Tae thing of a child, but not an asshole.
to call right now and give me an order, Kwon Do in a shopping center next to McBride is co-writing the forth-
I would do it! a tanning salon. However, he added, coming reboot of Halloween, and he
The pageant-goers thought it was After Eastbound, every script I would said hed learned that horror is very
sensible for Trump to invite Duterte to get was, like, Youre an asshole. Id fallen similar to comedy, the same mathemat-
the White House. They will negotiate down the asshole well. ics and engineering, except that, instead
peace, Matt Matematico, a retired Con A curly-haired man sauntered up and of punch lines, youre guring how to
Edison worker, said. He is a U.S. citizen, introduced himself as Dr. Ghoul. He place your jumps. McBride is a mem-
but he didnt vote in the last election: wore a lab coat with a rubber hand peek- ber of the Writers Guild, the Directors
1
Both choices were horrible. ing from its pocket, and he spoke with Guild, and the Actors Guild, and now
Jiayang Fan a vaguely Transylvanian accent. he hopes to join the Producers Guild.
Weve been waiting for you, Mc- His company is co-producing Hal-
THE PICTURES Bride said, leaning back expectantly. loween, and, he said, were also pro-
HORROR SHOW Dr. Ghoul grinned and said, Thats ducing Shitheads, with Tracy Morgan
a very seductive way of putting it. Here, and Luke Wilson. What makes them
drink this beverage. Dont worry what shitheads? Theyre just shitheads, plain
I put inside of it. McBride laughed. and simple.
Dr. Ghoul asked why he didnt dunk his Dr. Ghoul returned, and McBride
lemon and lime slices in his club soda. chided him for being late. How do you
McBride jerked his head toward the know? Dr. Ghoul asked.
he actor Danny McBride looked kitchen and said, Those slices sit back From the length of the shadows com-
T around the Jekyll & Hyde Club, in
the West Village, and said, This is where
there in a dish for days.
Have you been back there? Dr.
ing in the entrance, McBride said.
Oh, sure, you have a sundial out
the New York bankers do all the big Ghoul asked, sounding less and less there.
deals, huh? It was shortly after noon, mad-scientist-y. Thats exactly what its McBride asked if any other charac-
and the putatively scary horror-themed like. Then he moved onother diners ters would be visiting. Its just me, 24/7,
restaurantskeletons in top hats, chat- had trickled inpromising to return in Dr. Ghoul replied.
tering mummieswas empty. I worked eight and a half minutes. Because what would be hilarious,
in places like this in Los Angeles, the McBride ate a few bites of his salad, the actor suggested, is if every hour Fran-
actor continued, and I recognize that pushed it away, and said, When I kenstein walked out, ran into a tray, and
disgusting stale-beer stink. met with Ridley, he said that in Alien knocked over a bunch of drinks.
A waiter dropped by and delivered a lms, because these characters rapidly So you dont nd me suciently hi-
rapid spiel: Theres-going-to-be-a- start getting their guts ripped out, he larious? Dr. Ghoul said. He stalked o
crazy-guy-walking-around-dont-make- wanted actors who can quickly con- in a pretend rage.
too-much-eye-contact-and-you-should- vey identiable types. And I thought, Hes gotta be an actor, right? Mc-
be-ne. Unconcerned, McBride ordered Oh, shit, I hope he doesnt want Kenny Bride observed, sympathetically. Some-
a Caesar salad with chicken, then sug- one told me early on: if youre going to
gested that the menu was a missed op- try to make it in Hollywood, take a day
portunity: The names should be more job that doesnt make you want to kill
horror-infused, more The Creature from yourself. I could do this job, just fuck-
the Black Lagoon Wings. He snickered ing with people all day. Id maybe be a
genially. Teen Wolf, with boy clothes on but a
In Ridley Scotts new lm, Alien: wolf face. Id metamorphose, thatd be
Covenant, the latest installment of the my thing.
actually scary horror franchise about Dr. Ghoul, who indeed turned out to
aliens who burst from the bellies of be an actor, named Hunter West, re-
spaceship crew members, McBride plays turned again. So whats on the sched-
a jaunty Southerner named Tennessee. ule for you guys? he asked.
The forty-year-old actor, who grew up Were thinking about hitting Planet
in Virginia, is known for his gallery of Hollywood and then the Rainforest
overcondent Southern men-children. Caf, McBride said. He stood to go, de-
The movies were making fun of a Hee claring, Good work today! On his way
Haw South that didnt really exist any- out, he held the door for an entering
more, he said. Beginning with his ir- Danny McBride couple and said, Welcome to Jekyll &
40 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
Hyde! We hope you enjoy your dining Four sculptures loomed on the at- ists from the Kent area, who, once a year,
experience! bed, wearing tie-down straps. Their use Browns anagama kiln. We all re
He doesnt work here! Dr. Ghoul facial expressions were serene and in- with her, Don Mengay, a potter who
called from the back. Hes barred for scrutable, suggesting absorption in the had taken the train from Beacon, said.
1
life! spectacle of Grays Papaya. People out In the pottery world, shes like the Earth
Tad Friend walking their dogs or lugging grocery Mother to all of us.
bags stopped to ask, What are they? The forklift stopped near the south
DEPT. OF BEAUTIFICATION But mostly the gathering crowd held up entrance to the subway. This is a great
HEAVY cell phones, to document the moment. place for it, Brown said. It needs a lit-
A forklift arrived. It trundled over to tle something.The operator rotated the
a piece called One Leaning on Another, sculpture to face Sleepys. Customers ex-
which depicted a seated adult, with a iting Trader Joes now had a view of two
child crawling up its back. The sculpture bulbous bare bums. The moment the
was raised by its straps and swung gently straps were o, people were all over the
onto the street. The forklift moved to- gurecuddling in its lap, stroking its
he sculptor Joy Brown creates enor- ward the Seventy-second Street subway feet. A barefoot woman in a long orange
T mous bronze humanoid gures, and,
on a recent Monday night, nine of them
station, the bronze dangling like a mu-
tant pendant.Trac stopped as the phone
cloak caressed one mammoth calf.
The Seventy-ninth Street mall re-
arrived in the city on atbed trucks, to zombies followed. ceived Sitter with Head in Hands,
be installed on the Upper West Side. Brown, a tall woman in her sixties, which looks like a big bubble man who
The bodies, zaftig and bald, stand as high wearing jeans and Merrells, followed sat down to gure out what to do next.
as eleven feet tall. Each weighs well over the forklift. She grew up in Japan and An energy consultant, passing by with
a thousand pounds. Theyre like Tele- apprenticed with a master potter there. her dinner date, a corporate attorney,
tubbies that grew up, chilled out, lost She now lives and works in Kent, Con- wondered if the gures had anything to
their headgear, and took up nude sun- necticut. The pieces begin as small clay do with a sculpture in the Time Warner
bathing. New Yorkers would awake to models, and Brown oversees their nal Center, at Columbus Circle, whose ex-
nd them encamped on the medians of fabrication in Shanghai. The Broadway posed penis passersby rub for luck. The
Broadway, from West Seventy-second Mall Association, a nonprot that main- answer was no. Browns pieces are pen-
Street to 166th, as if giants had stomped tains the parklands along the boulevard, isless. Before walking o, the womans
into town overnight and found a nice had arranged for the exhibition. Deb- date said, Homeless guys will be pee-
place to rest. orah Foord, a board member, explained ing on that in no time.
Tell you what, this got more atten- that Browns pieces were perfect for the A fellow wearing headphones and a
tion than the Wienermobile, the driver, sites because theyre big enough to be heavy cross pendant spotted the gure
Mike Jennett, said as he disembarked seen, but too heavy for anyone to walk and crossed the street hollering, Yes!
from his truck at Seventy-second Street, o with. Yes! He stopped at the median and,
around 10 p.m. I couldve drove here Browns friends and relatives had come sensing an audience, waved his cigarette,
naked and nobody wouldve noticed. to watch the installation. Many were art- addressing the phone cameras: When
do you tape art? When do you lm it?
When do you capture it? Is it art? Is ev-
erything art? He winked and moved on.
The sculpture rested on a steel base,
but something about the dimensions felt
wrong. When someone suggested set-
ting the gure ush by the curb, Foord
said, No. Then wed lose some of the
butt crack. A bigger concern involved
tripping. The base stayed.
The group caravanned north, to Nine-
ty-sixth Street. A lone passerby stopped
to watch the crew unload One Hold-
ing Small One, which suggested a par-
ent cradling a toddler. Is this forever?
he asked. Until November, he was told.
By then, it was after one in the morn-
ing. As the forklift advanced, Browns
sister, Carol, looked at the yews border-
ing the plaza and said, Stick it in the
bushes, like Sean Spicer.
And then I thought, Why not live a little? Paige Williams
THE FINANCIAL PAGE investors-above-all doctrine seems to benets and employee status to its
NO MORE MR. NICE GUY have triumphed over the more inclu- food-delivery people, folded in recent
sive approach. I think whats recent months. Etsy, which allows craftspeo-
is maybe being so completely blatant ple to sell their goods online, and which
about it, Peter Cappelli, a professor became known for its employee perks,
n December, 2015, a new startup and labor economist at Wharton, said. has lost most of its stock-market value
Imarket
called Juno entered the ride-hailing
in New York City with a sim-
When American Airlines agreed to
give raises to its pilots and ight at-
since it went public, in 2015; hedge-fund
investors have been pushing the com-
ple proposition: it was going to treat tendants in April, analysts at a hand- pany to reduce its costs and to lay o
its drivers better than its competitors, ful of investment banks reacted bit- employees. In the case of Juno, accord-
notably Uber, did theirsand do some- terly. This is frustrating, a Citigroup ing to a person familiar with its opera-
thing that was socially responsible, as analyst named Kevin Crissey wrote in tions, the founders sold the company
one of Junos co-founders, Talmon a note that was sent to the banks cli- and agreed to cut its driver stock awards
Marco, told me last fall. In practice, that ents. Labor is being paid rst again. because they couldnt nd new investors
meant drivers would keep a bigger part Shareholders get leftovers. Jamie Baker, to nance its growth. They were stuck
of their fares and be eligible for a form of JPMorgan, also chimed in: We are from an expansion perspective, and this
of stock ownership in the company. But, troubled by AALs wealth transfer of was what had to give, I was told. It
on April 26th, when an Israeli company nearly $1 billion to its labor groups. came with some huge compromises.
named Gett announced that it was buy- Many factors contributed to the
ing Juno for two hundred million dol- troubles of these companies, but Cap-
lars, that changed. The merged com- pelli notes how vociferously the in-
pany is dropping the restricted stock vestment community seems to object
plan for drivers, and those who already to being nice to employees. Its a re-
hold stock are being oered small cash minder that, in the corporate world,
payments, reportedly in the hundred- things are constantly yielding to the
dollar range, in exchange. nance guyswhether they know what
Junos founders had adopted the lan- theyre doing or not.
guage of a doing-well-by-doing-good This xation on short-term stock
philosophy that has spread in the busi- gains is inherently unstable, Cappelli
ness world in recent years. Some call it said. The interesting thing is always
conscious or socially responsible capital- to ask them, Whats the value propo-
ism, but the basic idea is that any busi- sition for employees? Why should these
ness has multiple stakeholdersnot just people work only for the interest of the
owners but employees, consumers, and shareholders? How are you going to
also the communityand each of their get people to work hard? He went
interests should be taken into account. on, I dont think they have an answer.
The idea arose in response to an even When I called a Juno driver named
more powerful principle: the primacy of Those comments were mocked on- Salin Sarder to ask about the latest de-
investor rights. In a new book, The line, but similar sentiments are every- velopments, he was surprised to learn
Golden Passport, the journalist Du where in the nancial establishment. that the Juno stock-grant program had
McDonald lays much of the blame for Both Costco and Whole Foodswhose been cancelled, and blamed his igno-
that thinking at the feet of a Harvard C.E.O., John Mackey, wrote the book rance on the fact that he hadnt checked
Business School professor named Mi- Conscious Capitalismhave been crit- his e-mail. (The company has not made
chael Jensen, whose agency theory, de- icized by Wall Street investors and an- a public statement and did not respond
veloped in the nineteen-eighties, sought alysts for years for, among other things, to my inquiries.) He was, on the other
to align the interests of managers with their habit of paying workers above the hand, pleased to learn that the new Juno-
those of the companys investors. (Gor- bare minimum. Paul Polman, who, as Gett would be honoring the favorable
don Gekko spoke eloquently on its be- C.E.O. of the Anglo-Dutch conglom- commission rate Juno had been oering,
half in the movie Wall Street.) This erate Unilever, has made reducing the at least for a few months. He also had a
alignment led to huge stock-option pay companys carbon footprint a priority, few thoughts about the app-economy
packages for top corporate managers and, recently fought o a takeover bid from business model favored by Silicon Val-
McDonald argues, provided an intellec- Kraft Heinz, which is known for its ley investors. If you are a millionaire and
tual framework that justies doing any- ruthless cost-cutting. all around you is poor, you have no safety,
thing (within the law) to increase a com- Newer platform companies have also Sarder, who comes from Bangladesh,
GOLDEN COSMOS
panys stock price, whether that be ring encountered the phenomenon. An app said. Happiness is there when everyone
workers or polluting the environment. called Maple, which made the nearly has happiness.
In this philosophical tension, the unheard-of decision to oer health Sheelah Kolhatkar
Independence hung framed in our hall- and the farmers indigenous village val- ness was especially strong in the years
way. Born in New Jersey at the start of ues by the pervasive business culture and after the Second World War, when, as
the twentieth century, my mother and fa- its prot-oriented pursuits. These were a high-school student, I began to turn
ther were happily at home in America, writers shaped by the industrialization to the open stacks of the Newark Pub-
even though they had no delusions and of agrarian America, which caught re lic Library to enlarge my sense of where
knew themselves to be socially stigma- in the eighteen-seventies and which, by I lived. Despite the tension, even the
46 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
ferocity, of antagonisms of class, race, Knee, Stephen Vincent Bent had spo- the apportionment of jobs and vocations
region, and religion that underlay the ken as much for a Roosevelt-reared Jew- often divided along religious and racial
national life, despite the conict between ish boy like me as for a wellborn Yale linesall this contributed enormously to
labor and capital that accompanied in- graduate like himself with the poems a childs self-denition, his sense of spe-
dustrial developmentthe battle over guilelessly Whitmanesque opening line: I cialness, and his way of thinking about
wages and hours that was ongoing and have fallen in love with American names. his discrete communit y in the local
at times violent, even during the war It was precisely in the sounding of the scheme of things. Whats more, attun-
America from 1941 to 1945 had been names of the countrys distant places, in ing my senses to the customs peculiar to
unied in purpose as never before. Later, its spaciousness, in the dialects and the each city neighborhood had to have
a collective sense of America as the cen- landscapes that were at once so Ameri- alerted me early on to the perpetual clash
ter of the most spectacular of the post- can yet so unlike my own that a young- of interests that propels a society and
war worlds unfolding dramas was born ster with my susceptibilities found the that sooner or later would provoke in the
not just out of chauvinistic triumphal- most potent lyrical appeal. That was the incipient novelist the mimetic urge. New-
ism but out of a realistic appraisal of heart of the fascination: as an American, ark was my sensory key to all the rest.
the undertaking behind the victory of one was a wisecracking, slang-speaking, A Newark Jewwhy not? But an
1945, a feat of human sacrice, physi- in-the-know street kid of an unknowable American Jew? A Jewish American? For
cal eort, industrial planning, manage- colossus. Only locally could I be a savvy my generation of native-bornwhose
rial genius, and labor and military mo- cosmopolite; out in the vastness of the omnipresent childhood spectacle was the
bilizationa marshalling of communal country, adrift and at large, every Amer- U.S.A.s shifting fortunes in a prolonged
morale that would have seemed unat- ican was a hick, with the undisguisable global war against totalitarian evil and
tainable during the Great Depression emotions of a hick, as defenseless as even who came of age and matured, as high-
of the previous decade. a sophisticated littrateur like Bent was school and college students, during the
That this was so highly charged a his- against the pleasurable sort of sentiment remarkable makeover of the postwar de-
torical moment in America was not with- aroused by the mere mention of Spartan- cade and the alarming onset of the Cold
out its impact on what I was reading and burg, Santa Cruz, or the Nantucket Light, Warfor us no such self-limiting label
why, and it accounted for a good deal of as well as unassuming Skunktown Plain, could ever seem commensurate with our
the authority those formative writers had or Lost Mule Flat, or the titillatingly experience of growing up altogether con-
over me. Reading them served to conrm named Little French Lick. There was the sciously as Americans, with all that that
what the gigantic enterprise of a brutal shaping paradox: our innate provincial- means, for good and for ill. After all, one
war against two formidable enemies had ism made us Americans, unhyphenated is not always in raptures over this coun-
dramatized daily for almost four years to at that, in no need of an adjective, suspi- try and its prowess at nurturing, in its
virtually every Jewish family mine knew cious of any adjective that would narrow own distinctive manner, unsurpassable
and every Jewish friend I had: ones the implications of the imposingly all- callousness, matchless greed, small-
American connection overrode every- inclusive noun that wasif only because minded sectarianism, and a gruesome in-
thing, ones American claim was beyond of the galvanizing magnum opus called fatuation with rearms. The list of the
question. Everything had repositioned the Second World Warour birthright. country at its most malign could go on,
itself. There had been a great distur- but my point is this: I have never con-
bance to the old rules. One was ready Newark Jew? Call me that and I ceived of myself for the length of a sin-
now as never before to stand up to in-
timidation and intolerance, and, instead
A wouldnt object. A product of the
lower-middle-class Jewish section of
gle sentence as an American Jewish or
Jewish American writer, any more than
of just bearing what one formerly put industrial Newark, with its mixture of I imagine Dreiser and Hemingway and
up with, one was equipped to set foot self-characterizing energies and social un- Cheever thought of themselves while at
wherever one chose. The American ad- certainties, with its determined, optimis- work as American Christian or Chris-
venture was ones engulng fate. tic assessment of its childrens chances, tian American or just plain Christian
with its wary take on its non-Jewish neigh- writers. As a novelist, I think of myself,
he countrys biggest, best-known city bors, the progeny of this contiguous pre- and have from the beginning, as a free
T lay twelve miles east of my street in
Newark. You had only to cross two riv-
war Jewish community rather than of
Newarks prewar Irish, Slavic, Italian, or
American andthough I am hardly un-
aware of the general prejudice that per-
ers and an expansive salt marsh by bridge, black sections . . . sure, Newark Jew de- sisted here against my kind till not that
then a third broad river, the Hudson, via scribes well enough someone who grew long agoas irrefutably American, fas-
a tunnel, to leave New Jersey and reach up, as I did, in the citys southwest cor- tened throughout my life to the Amer-
what was then the most populous city ner, the Weequahic neighborhood, in the ican moment, under the spell of the
on Earth. But because of its magnitude nineteen-thirties and forties. Being a countrys past, partaking of its drama
and perhaps because of its proximity Newark Jew in a largely working-class and destiny, and writing in the rich na-
New York City was not the focus of city where political leverage accrued tive tongue by which I am possessed.
my youthful brand of postwar nativist through ethnic pressure, where both his-
(Adapted from an acceptance speech for the
romanticism. torical fact and folkloric superstition sus- National Book Foundations Medal for
In the 1927 poem whose famous nal tained a steady undercurrent of xenopho- Distinguished Contribution to American Letters,
six words are Bury my heart at Wounded bic antipathy in each ethnic precinct, where delivered on November 20, 2002.)
her. At 1 p.m. each weekday, I lost she attended a daily ninety-minute borrowing a generator.
track of my own life when I stepped aerobics class). Years of living as a Although the countess told me
into her tiny marble foyer, its table grandee had encouraged in the countess often how much she liked and admired
laden with embossed invitations from an imperious short-temperedness that me, I was unmistakably a servant.
displaced European royalty. The foyer I recognized, chillingly, as evidence of In this I resembled Fernando, one in
50 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
years, and vanished over the horizon. being responsible. Some of those women
There was a black woman and a were as nocturnal and untrustworthy as
white woman, their names lost to time, rats. Marie had been slapped, punched,
who started on the same day and both kicked, and bitten by former maids.
quit immediately after walking into a Her purse had been stolen three times.
room and nding a dead bull snake And her car stolen once.
sliced into thick pieces and arranged One of the crazier maids had
in weird patterns on the carpet. robbed Naseem at gunpoint. She went
Thered been ve animal sacrices to prison for four years.
in the motel over the years. One of the saddest maids had been
a series of butlers she brought from Seven people had died at the motel. assaulted and strangled by a serial
Spain to serve her meals, his grave, Four from heart attacks, two from over- killer. He was caught after thirty years
mustachioed face worthy of a doses, and one when a woman drunk- of killing poor women and led police
painting by Velzquez. And, like enly fell over the second-oor railing to undiscovered bodies so they
Fernando, I was subject to the countesss and landed head rst on somebody wouldnt lethally inject him.
lacerating critiques. Garlic, which I elses minivan. There were drug addicts and alco-
loved, was low class and, according There had been ten or twelve or holics and women who dowsed their
to her, oozed from my pores for days fteen or twenty-three college stu- cleaning rags with disinfectant and
after I ate it. The miserable bouquet dents whod worked there over the hued those poisonous and intoxi-
of owers I bought for one of her years. Most of them lasted only a few cating fumes into their lungs.
house guests with the small funds weeks. Some lasted a few months, and There were illegal and legal immi-
shed given me for the purchase then quit the job and school at the grants, though Marie didnt care about
provoked a paroxysm of rage that left same time, and walked away into sad their status. Every refugee is a pre-
me in tears. My cowboy boots were lives. But two girls, Karen and Chris- cious child, she thought.
coarse; I hid my gure in unattering tine, kept working while they earned There were maids of every race. Of
clothes. My spelling was atrocious. their bachelors degreesKaren in every color. Of every religion.
And so on. I had a morbid dread of 1991 and Christine in 2000and then At least a dozen women, Muslims,
her anger, but my willingness to absorb moved on to better jobs in better cit- had worn head scarves while they
it was essential to our symbiosis. ies. Marie had attended both of their worked.
Ive forgotten how the countess graduation ceremonies. She never saw Marie suspected that one maid, an
persuaded the Secret Service that Karen again, but shed bumped into Italian woman who had to be taught
her building was safe for the First Christinehome for Christmas with how to use a vacuum, was in the fed-
Lady to dine in. Ive forgotten how her parentsin the local mall one day, eral witness-protection program.
the dinner was cooked. I know that and theyd had a long visit over coee. There were women who cried often
it was served by candlelight, which Christine had married a man, divorced but would never explain their tears.
created a singular intimacy. A near- him, and then married a woman There were women who never
disaster involving an errant ame and named Ariel. stopped talking about their aches and
a feathered cu only added a frisson Shes my soul mate, Christine pains.
to the evening. said. O ver the decades, Marie had
I witnessed none of this. To Marie was somewhat uncomfort- worked with two or three hundred
the countesss ire and baement, able with Christines new lesbian life. women. Shed liked half of them, had
I refused her request that I stay But she shrugged it o and congrat- hated at least fty of them, and had
through the evening to help with ulated her old friend. Marie believed truly loved maybe a dozen.
coats and the dinner service, citing that her own sins were exactly the And then there was Evie, the most
unbreakable plans. Now, almost thirty same as everybody elses sins. beloved, who had transubstantiated
years later, Im more incensed than One of the maids was a man. Hec- into a postcard from Reno. How does
she was: what, in my rudimentary tor. He sang loudly and cleaned the a friend, maybe your best friend, leave
life, could have been more interesting rooms more slowly than any maid ever. you like that?
than the spectacle of that dinner He lasted for six years, then called one Father James, Marie had once
party? I cant recall. All I remember morning and quit without warning. confessed, God is mysterious, sure,
is my visceral wish to escapea But at least he called. but sometimes I feel like people are
feeling I had often during my more Over the years, thirty or forty women even more mysterious.
than two years as her private secretary, had quit without saying a word. Many
until an N.E.A. grant nally allowed of them never bothered to return their uring her second year at the
me to quit. Before the guests began
to make their tentative way up the
maid uniforms or pick up their last
paychecks. Marie feared that some of
D motel, Marie had fallen in love
with the owners son, Amir, who was
countesss dank service stairs, I slipped those women might have been disap- only twenty. He was Pakistani, and
out in my worn cowboy boots and peared by the men in their lives. But knew how to x any machine.
resumed being myself. most of them just didnt care about Marie was fascinated by the thick
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 51
black hair on the back of Amirs hands of any man, let alone one who was still
and ngers. One day, as they ate lunch fully dressed.
together in the supply room, she im- Please, she said. Take o your
pulsively reached out with both of clothes and sit on the towel. On the
her hands and softly stroked the hair chair.
on his. He did as he was told. He sat and
They sneaked into Room 179, the she straddled him.
only one whose door was not visible They met like that for six consec-
from the main oce, and therefore utive days. Then Marie had her day
the room that was rented out the o. When she returned to work, she
least, and they kissed for a few heated learned that Amir had suddenly trav-
minutes. elled back to Pakistan to live with his
He tried to push her onto the bed. fathers parents. She was relieved.
But she shook her head. This is unexpected, Naseem said.
Im so sorry, Amir said, and backed My sons mother, she is a white Amer-
toward the door. I am sorry I kissed ican like you. We divorced after Amir
you. I am sorry if I have oended you. was born. But she has always been
And your husband. good to me. And him. I thought Amir
Amir was a kind man, so he re- only wanted to be American. I am
mained kind even as he was being very sad that he left.
rejected. But she had not been clear Marie worried that Naseem knew
about her reason for saying no, and shed been having sex with his son.
he had misinterpreted her denial. But he probably didnt. After all,
Its O.K., its O.K., she said. I Amir was a very handsome man
meant I dont want to mess up the bed. whod always dated young and pretty
So she grabbed a towel from the brown womenPakistanis, and also
bathroom and put it on a wooden chair. Muslims from other countries, and
Then she quickly took o all her Asian and African women, too. Even
clothes. She had never been that bold. a few Mexican girls, including other
Shed had sex with three men in her maids. But Marie was ten years older
life, but never in a bright room in the than Amir. And she was white and
middle of the day. And shed never plain.
stood so naked and exposed in front Later, when shed nally confessed
NO NAME
Hal, walking point, would have turned
around and smiled, like, Do you believe
were getting paid for this? And I would
BY WILL MACKIN have shaken my head. But now Hal
hardly turned around. And when he
did it was only to make sure that we
were all still behind him, putting one
foot in front of the other, bleeding heat,
our emerald hearts growing dim.
We made steady progress through
the rain until we came to a river. The
river looked like a wide section of eld
that had somehow broken free, that
had, for unknown reasons, been set in
motion. In fact, the only way to tell
river from eld was to stare at the
river and sense its lugubrious vector.
But to stare at the river for too long
was to feel as if it were standing still
and the eld were moving.
Hal called on our best swimmers,
Lex and Cooker, to cross rst. They
removed their helmets and armor.
They kept their ries and pistols.
Cooker tied a loop at the end of a
hundred feet of rope and clipped the
loop to the hard point on Lexs belt.
He hooked himself onto the rope be-
hind Lex, and they set o.
Lex and Cooker waded into the
icy water. Long waves purled o their
knees. Dark voids streamed from their
waists. A third of the way across, they
lay in the water and side-stroked. Their
heads popped up and down on the
surface. Their exhalations wove to-
gether in thick paisley clouds. The
rope sank and oscillated in the cur-
rent. Hugs tied on another hundred
host, Afghanistan: One rainy blighted corn stalks, a soybean shoot feet. Lex and Cooker crawled onto
K night, in March, 2009, we crossed
a muddy eld to intercept a group of
as perfect as a laboratory specimen
oating in a shin-deep lake. Someday,
the opposite bankforty yards across,
and another twenty downriver
Taliban whod come out of the moun- I gured, the sun would come out, the steaming from exertion and cold.
tains of Pakistan. They were walking land would dry, and the farmers would Pair up, Hal said.
west. We were patrolling north to ar- be back to re-stake their claims. That With the rope now anchored at ei-
rive at a point ahead of them, where night, however, theyd taken shelter ther end, the rest of us would cross
wed set up an ambush. The eld was on higher ground, and that entire mis- wearing all our gear. The rst pair
actually many elds, inundated by erable stretch of Khost was ours. Hugs and Pollycarried the helmets
snowmelt and rain. Piles of rocks, laid Electric rain streaked straight down and armor that Lex and Cooker had
by farmers, demarcated the ooded in my night vision. Cold rose from the left behind. They clipped themselves
borders. Every so often wed come mud into my bones. It squeezed the to the rope and walked out. Hand over
across evidence of what had once warmth out of my heart. My heart be- hand, they pulled themselves across the
grown in those elds: an island of came a more sensitive instrument as a river, then heaved themselves onto the
PHOTOGRAPH
BY CARLOS JAVIER ORTIZ THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 55
far shore, where they unclipped and away from the freighter. When I
joined the anchor. Hal and I were next. looked up at Hal standing in the HSAC
Hal hooked himself to the rope ahead in the moonlight, I saw that his usual
of me and marched out into the river. infectious calm had been replaced by
something spookier and more insu-
s far as I knew, the only thing in lar. It was as if hed realized that our
A the world that scared Hal was
water. Which was why hed joined the
ght against the hijackers of the world
would never end, so why continue?
Navy, and become a SEALto con- Five seconds later, though, he came
quer that fear. And, for the most part, to his senses. He ordered Lex to chase
hed been successful. Ninety-nine times down the freighter. He directed Cooker
out of a hundred, he was able to over- to hook the caving ladder onto the
come his trepidation by sheer force of bulwarks. And we followed him up
will. But there remained that one per the side of the ship, ascending through
cent, wherein the invincible core of waves that enveloped us in their cool
Hals fear would reassert itself. velocity and threatened to sweep us
The last time Id seen this happen out to sea.
was September of 2004, on the At- Later, when I asked Hal what had
lantic Ocean, in the middle of the caused him to yell Stop! that night,
night. Wed tracked down a freighter he said that something hadnt felt
fteen miles o the coast of Virginia, right. His answer had seemed credi-
steaming east. Crouched in our High- ble enough, because nothing ever felt
Speed Assault Craft, or HSAC, wed right.
closed in on the massive freighters The trek across the slick and for-
starboard quarter, just aft of the is- saken eld in Khost, for example. Or
land, for a mock raid. It was a train- my hearts reception of the Talibans
ing mission; the hijackers on board mounting despair. Or the river, whose
the freighter were actors, and the water smelled like rust and whose ed-
rounds in our assault ries were paint. dies trapped phosphorescent galaxies
But everything else was real: the cres- of undissolved fertilizer. The river didnt
cent moon, the twenty-foot waves, appear on any of our maps. So, to any-
the darkness between the waves, and one not standing on its ill-dened
the way the moonlight played on their banks or wading out against its wily
quivering peaks. current, that river didnt exist. If we
The freighters gigantic engines were were ever going to turn back, this would
throbbing, their heat shining through have been the time to do it.
the thick steel hull. Waves that at- But I followed Hal into the river
tened along the skin of the ship were up to my knees and then my waist
re-forming perfectly in its wake, as if to a spot about halfway across, where
the freighter werent there. Meanwhile, the current felt stronger at my feet than
Lex, at the HSACs helm, was bringing at my chest. The bottom kept shifting,
us in on a shallow angle, weaving and a dark crease formed on the riv-
through crests and troughs. Cooker, ers surface immediately downstream
standing at the bow with the caving from us. That was where Hal froze.
ladder hooked to a pole, was raising We need to move upstream! I
that pole toward the freighters bul- called.
warks. At twenty feet and closing, I Hal gripped the rope with both
could hear the hiss of the waves slip- hands. Right! he shouted, without
ping down the freighters skin. At ten moving. Then he disappeared below
feet, I could hear the sucking sound of the surface.
wave troughs disappearing under the Standing my ground, I absorbed
ship. That was when Hal yelled, Stop! Hals weight on the tightening rope.
Lex cut the throttles to idle. Cooker Then the bottom gave out, and I went
retracted the pole. We all lay down in under.
the HSAC, anticipating Hals call for It was as if Id sunk into a black
an emergency breakaway, followed by well. Still attached to the rope, I bumped
a banked turn and a high-powered into Hal. The current pushed us to-
retreat over the waves. Instead, Hal gether, back to back, holding us sub-
remained silent, allowing us to drift merged. We fought to unhook ourselves
56 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
while the rope twisted. Hal bucked as junior, and not a day had passed since
if he were trying to break out of a that I hadnt thought about it, or about
straitjacket. His screams were silent, the events leading up to it, beginning
but I felt them in my lungs, and I with the dinner at Coach Z.s house the
watched the silver bubbles rise from night before the game.
his mouth. Coach Z. lived in Ocean City, New
Times before, when Id thought I Jersey, in a gray duplex on the bay side
was going to dielike during that of the island, between an ice factory
ambush in Marjah, on my rst de- and a grass strip from which banner-
ployment, or, two deployments later, towing Cessnas lifted o in summer.
when our helos tail rotor was shot o Hed grown up in Ocean City, gone to
over ShkinId wanted to cringe and Ocean City High School, played cor-
whimper at the coming end. Instead, nerback for the Red Raiders, and been
Id looked to Hal and seen him radi- assistant coach for a decade before be-
ating calm, a calm that had transferred coming head coach. In all that time,
to me so wholly that I wouldnt have Coach Z. said, during the speech that
known the dierence had I passed to he delivered over a spread of baked ziti
the other side. prepared by Mrs. Z., Ive never seen a
Now Hal had run out of air. He team this good, this big-hearted, this
clawed at me in an attempt to propel brave. Never one as touched by destiny.
himself to the surface. In that way, he And with that Coach Z.s voice cracked,
created enough slack in the rope for and he began to weep.
me to unclip. I had to resist the urge to laugh. I
I sank directly to the bottom of looked away and counted backward
the murky hole and kicked o, but from a hundred, so as to avoid insult-
fell short of the surface. Sinking again, ing a man whose only fault had been
I drifted downriver. My armor, my to stare failure in the face and carry
weapons, felt weightless in the numb- its weight for the rest of us. Luckily,
ing cold. I oated through Hals wake: Maz, our team captain, stepped in and
cascades of shear and compression, said, Lets win this one for Coach Z.!
acceleration and stall. I looked up at And everybody cheered Coach Z.!
the surface, trying not to panic. In a in response, over and over.
twist of glowing fertilizer, I saw the Amid the ruckus, I laughed with-
Virgin Mary. out fear of reprisal. Coach Z. laughed,
Doubters, listen: if she can appear at too, while wiping away tears. And I
an underpass in Chicago, if she can ap- took the opportunity to get some-
pear in the bruise on a womans thigh thing else o my chest. To Maz, who
at an E.R. in El Paso, then she can ap- was standing ten feet away, I shouted,
pear in a whirlpool of diammonium Im in love with your girl! He didnt
phosphate, spinning on the surface of hear me. To Gunner, our quarterback,
an unnamed river in Afghanistan. who was standing right next to me, I
Light emanated from her peace- hollered, Im in love with Mazs girl!
ful, benevolent face. Golden roses lay Gunner yelled back, Join the club!
at her feet. She and I communicated Then the cheering died down, and we
telepathically. ate ziti.
Am I saved? I asked, bubbles tick- Maz was a fullback, the type who
ling my lips. preferred to block so that others might
No, Mary said. score. He was a born leader and an all-
How come? I asked. around good guy, the likes of whom I
Saving you would require a mir- wouldnt encounter again until I met
acle, and youve already used yours, Hal, years later. Maz, like Hal, made
she said, not unkindly. me feel as though I were part of some-
thing larger than myself. And, like
he miracle in question had occurred Hal, he made me want to be a better
T the morning of Saturday, Decem-
ber 8, 1984, on a football eld in Dept-
person.
Back then, I had this wooden base-
ford, New Jersey, during a playo game ball bat, driven through with heavy
for the Group III State High School nails, that I called the Morningstar.
Championship. I was a second-string Nights, Id sneak out the back door
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 57
ON THE JOB BY RICHARD FORD
MAKE-WORK
when Lyndon Johnson made it a set the scythe or the sickle or some
showcase program of the Great Society, other vicious instrument into motion.
by which poverty and social injustice I was demonstrating the skills. See, I
would be eradicated from our land. said, looking tfully up at them out of
In Arkansas, however, the the dense bosk. Make short strokes.
Neighborhood Youth Corps was Aim for the base of what you want to
a piata from which those same cut. Conserve your energy. Focus your
government ocials meant to get their eorts. Dont ail. Be careful of whos
mitts on a shower of federal dough, behind you. (All sound advice for
a laughably innitesimal portion of most occupations.) Now, I said,
which was earmarked to provide low- wiping stinging sweat out of my eyes
income (read: black) kids with work and gaping. Whos ready to try it?
experience, which wouldit was dearly Hardly any of them were, a fact that
hopedkeep them in school and out they expressed by mutely continuing
of the states hair. It was the summer to watch me. One, sometimes two
n the summer of 1967, I took a job of the Detroit riots and nine months the younger boyswould step
IYouth
working for the Neighborhood
Corps in Little Rock. It was
before the murderous spring of 68.
Trouble was hotting up again in Dixie.
forward as if their feet hurt, take
whatever implement I was holding
not a job I wantedjust one I could My jobto the extent that it could out to them, and merely stare at it,
get. I was living in my mothers be denedwas to tutor twelve as though it were a weapon they were
apartment. She had assured me that I decidedly un-uniformed teen-age better o not having in their hands.
was welcome there. But I would need boys in the complex art of manual Now and then, theyd try a tentative
to work and bring in money if I brush clearing, performed under swipe with the blade or an awkward
meant to stay. I had worked at some the tormenting summer sun of central down-cut with the axe. Then theyd
job, been gainful at some mode of Yahoo. The state of Arkansas, it laugh and look around at their buddies,
employment, every single day since seemed, owned a lot of vacant land roll their eyes, and hand the job back
I was twelve. Not to work, not to in Little Rock, which, surprisingly, it to me for more demonstration.
have a job, and to be idle was an wasnt using. Over time, this land had These were not stupid boys. They
unrecognized human state in my succumbed to sucker weeds and briars werent being paid much, if anything.
family. We were working people. and red-brush saplings, all of which, it Only helped. The fact that I had a
That summer I was twenty-three. was determined, badly needed clearing. job that depended on them and
I had a second-rate college degree. Id Or, at least, could be clearedby was intended to keep them out of
just spent a dicult year teaching someone. Use of the land wasnt mischief and assure social justice and
junior high and coaching baseball in contemplated. Only clearing it. Much cure poverty conferred no mission on
inner-city Flint, Michigan. I was, I work done in the world is like this their lives. At their tender ages, they
believed, spiritually fatigued and virtually meaningless. Make-work. had already seen thingsmany
needing time to rest and reect. Id Though not for me make-work. I thingsthat I hadnt. They recognized
have been happy to stay home and was managementtasked and poorly hard, pointless, idiotic toil when they
read Flaubert. But that was not on paid to get down among em and saw it. Possibly their fathers were
oer, as the saying goes. impart the skills of swing-blade, of practicing it that same hot summer
The name Neighborhood Youth scythe, of axe and hatchet, of shovel day. All of it might come to them
Corps might summon up visions and come-along. All things I knew soon enough. But, until then, this was
of clean-cut boys in spruce khaki about. My men, a dozen skinny ne work for me to do.
uniforms, standing at attention on a black kids between sixteen and And in that way the summer
CHRISTOPH NIEMANN
parade ground while a government eighteen, took a skeptical view of of 67 passed: with me down in the
ocial reads a proclamation dispatching how these lessons would be put into underbrush, showing these black kids
them to do what needs to be done for practice. They stood in a lank group how work was done, while they calmly
the good of all. The Corps may even around me, coolly observing me as I looked on, waiting for their futures
have been intended to work that way waded into the thickets and sweatily to arrive.
58 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
of my parents house on the mainland Sure, I said. all that we knew about the universe
and carry the Morningstar along re Nat lived on the north end of the up to that point.
roads through the Pine Barrens. This island, in a development called the We held hands as I drove her home.
was during the casino boom, when Gardens, where there were no mail- When I dropped her o, it was still
new developments seemed to spring boxes. Where, I supposed, letters and dark. I parked at the far end of the
up weekly. Finding one, Id stroll its packages oated down under little school lot and watched the sunrise
winding streets, and Id admire the rainbow parachutes. The Gardens had from inside my car. Condensation
houses set back in woods, with moths reecting pools, lemon groves, and fogged the windshield. I wiped a spot
orbiting porch lights, the smell of wild footbridges. It had terraces, verandas, clear so that I could see the locker-
honeysuckle, and the tic-tic-tic of mid- and pavilions. As we drove past these room door. At 6:30, Coach Z. un-
night sprinklers. Along the way, Id things, Nat seemed not to notice. At locked that door and propped it open
pass perfectly good mailbox after per- a four-way stop, she leaned over and with a dumbbell. Mazs blue pickup
fectly good mailbox. kissed me. arrived a few minutes later, followed
Id destroy one of those mailboxes We drove past her house, across by Gunners Firebird. Soon everybody
with the Morningstar. Then Id de- the wooden drawbridge at the north was showing up. I entered the locker
stroy the next mailbox, and the next. end of the island, and onto the sand- room with the crowd. I wanted to yell
And if, between mailboxes, I came bar where the White Deer Motel what had happened with Nat. I wanted
across a parked car, Id bash its tail- stood. The eponymous deer, made of to shout that love conquers all. In-
lights and shatter its windshield. And, cement and painted white, had lost stead, I donned my sour pads and red
at the end of all this, Id look down an antler. The room cost ten bucks. jersey in silence. I laced up my cleats.
the street at what Id done with some The bed was cupped and creased like And I carried my white helmet onto
satisfaction. Id feel as though Id put a fortune-tellers palm. Nat and I spent the bus that would deliver us up the
in a good nights work. the next few hours generating what Black Horse Pike to Deptford.
The next morning, however, Id be felt like an interstellar transmission. It was a defensive game, as pre-
ashamed. Like the people who I knew One that explained, via tiny modula- dicted, scoreless at halftime. At the
were cursing mewaking up to nd tions, who we were, what music we beginning of the third quarter, Dept-
their mailboxes mangled, their tail- liked, what languages we spoke, and ford sacked Gunner in the end zone
lights bludgeoned, their windshields
caved inId wonder, Who would do
such a thing, and why?
Mazs girl was a cheerleader, of course,
and, therefore, present at Coach Z.s
house the night before the big play-
o game in Deptford. Because shed
helped Mrs. Z. in the kitchen, I gured
that she was the one whod burned the
cheese on top of the ziti just the way
I liked it. I gured that it was some
sort of secret communication between
the two of us. Imagining what that
might mean made the muscles of my
jaw seize with desire.
Her name was Natalie, Nat for
short. She was wearing a tiny blue
dress and white heels.
After the ziti, everyone drifted into
the back yard. Coach Z. was already
out there, jingling change in his pocket,
looking up at Cassiopeia. Seeing him
lost in thought made me want to laugh
again, which made me wonder again
what the fuck was wrong with me. So
I turned around and walked the other
way, through Coach Z.s house. Right
outside the front door, I ran into Nat,
standing on the porch with those legs.
She looked cold.
Can you give me a ride home?
she asked.
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 59
for a safety. With three seconds left buzzed like a tuning fork. A chubby
in the game, the score was still 20, ref with his whistle in his mouth
Deptford, with us on oense deep in jogged on a diagonal after the skinny
our own territory. Nat was cheering kid, who was still all alone.
as if this were the most important
thing in the world. As if shed forgot-
ten all about what wed done the night
Y ou remember, right? the Vir-
gin Mary asked me.
before. Out on the eld, there seemed Of course, I said, a little surprised
to be some confusion in our huddle. that she hadnt just read my mind.
Maz called a time-out. Then the Holy Spirit that had in-
Coach Z. brought everybody in fused that twist of undissolved fertil-
oense, defense, special teams, and izer on the surface of the river van-
second string. Listen to Maz, he ished. And, with it, Marys warmth
said. Maz, crouching at the center of and light and the golden roses at her
the huddle, talked us through a trick feet. I was left to drown, numb with
play while drawing arrows in the grass. cold, without regrets. Then I bumped
Looking over the huddle, I saw Nat. into a rock and snagged on another.
She raised a sign with Mazs number I crawled onto the rivers far shore,
written in glitter. She cheered her and I was saved.
beautiful fucking head o. I looked Lex splashed up to me. Shh, he said,
past her to the distant end zone. The because I was heaving loudly, and we
sun broke through the clouds and were close, theoretically, to the Taliban
shone down on the uprights like some- patrol. Lex whispered into his radio, Its
thing holy. F.S., which stood for Fuckstick, which
Seriously, it was like a picture on was what Hal called me, usually just jok-
the cover of a program for the funeral ing around. Hes O.K.
of a kid who had played football his Lex splashed away, downriver. I
whole life and loved the game and stood, readjusted my goggles, and saw
died in a tragic accident much too what was happening: my teammates
young, and now here you were, stued on either side of the river, anchoring
into a coat and tie, sitting in a church the rope. Others in the river, hooked
pew, looking at that picture, as if you to the rope, diving and surfacing. Still
were supposed to imagine the dead others walking up and down the banks
kid on this eld in the sky, scoring with their ries pointed at the sur-
touchdowns left and right. Only, the face, sparkling creases, eddies, and
sunbeams shining through the clouds points where the dark water parted
over that football eld on a cold Sat- around rocks. Hal must have un-
urday morning in Deptford, New Jer- clipped, too.
sey, in 1984, were real, and I heard the I turned to face the eld, which was
voice of God. no less shitty on that side of the river,
You want a miracle? God asked. though the rain had stopped. My gog-
The huddle broke with a loud, gles clicked and whirred, trying to bring
sharp clap. Our team took the eld. the darkness into focus. I walked into
Coach Z.s knees exed under the that darkness, half expecting to nd
weight of our imminent defeat. Hal walking the other way. Like he
Please, I said to God. had that night in Marjah, after wed
All right, He answered. But just been separated by the ambush. Or that
this once. day in Arizona, during our HALO re-
So it happened. The curtain was fresher, when nobody had seen his
pulled back. A giant, heavenly nger chute open, and we were all looking
poked around among the cogs, and in the sagebrush on the windward side
the curtain slid back into place. Some of the drop zone for his body, and hed
skinny kid, whose name I forget, was popped out on the leeward side, car-
sprinting down the sideline, headed rying his chute like a pile of laundry.
for pay dirt. No one was even close Eventually, I stopped walking and just
to him. Nat, crying tears of joy, hugged stood in the mud, allowing its cold to
the other cheerleaders, girls whose rise into me.
purity shed called into question as we I felt the Taliban out there still,
lay naked at the White Deer. My heart their hearts transmitting something
60 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
more elemental than despair. Some- clouds refused to break. Rain wired
thing more akin to chaos. the air in bright laments.
Digger had taken over in Hals ab- The Taliban appeared in the east
sence. I heard him, over the radio, at rst, as a low cluster of stars. Then
making the report back to Higher. as phantoms. Then as men with heat
Roger, Higher said. rising o their backs like creeping
Thats it? I thought. Fucking Roger? ames. They walked in a shapeless
I wanted to get on the radio and formation, bunching up and stretch-
tell Higher that a guy like Hal doesnt ing out, because without night vision
just fall in a river and die. But then I they couldnt see one another. They
was afraid that saying those couldnt see themselves.
words might make them All we had to do was
true. Perhaps that was why stand perfectly still, in a line
Higher hadnt said any- parallel to their direction of
thing, either. We were in movement, at a range of no
this gray area, status-wise, more than thirty yards, and
where nobodyd thrown out wait for them to walk right
an M.I.A. or a DUSTWUN. in front of us. Then wait for
Where no one at Higher Diggers sparkle, which would
had directed anyone to open be our signal to open re.
Hals dead letter to gure This wasnt our rst time
out who his next of kin were and what running an intercept on a Taliban pa-
their wishes might be, as far as noti- trol across a muddy eld at night. In
cation went. Hals ex-wife, Jean, for fact, it was our seventh. During the
exampleat her desk on the third course of our previous six intercepts,
oor of the insurance buildingwho wed developed and rened this tactic.
wanted her dad to break the news. Or The enemy would walk right in front
Hals son, Max, in high school, in an of us, and Hal would choose one man.
unidentied classroom, with or with- Not the leader, he had explained, whose
out the friends he might have wanted mind had been made up. And not the
by his side. The letter containing that dumb-ass in the back, either, whod never
information remained sealed in a box, know any better. But a man in the mid-
with everyone elses. dle. A man who understood what was
Say intentions, Higher asked happening well enough to have doubts.
Digger. A man who, having walked this far
As Digger considered his options, through darkness, cold, and rain, was
it started raining again, in reverse it no longer sure where he ended and the
seemed, as if the rain were coming up night began.
from the ground to ll the clouds. Such confusion registered on night
Im gonna leave a squad here to vision. When Hal found this man, he
search and take the rest to intercept, would light him up with sparkle. The
Digger radioed back. man wouldnt know, because the spar-
I was relieved when Digger put me kle was infrared; it operated on a fre-
on the intercept. The river was dizzy- quency that the naked eye couldnt de-
ing, even with my back to it. I wanted tect. So, as far as Hals chosen man or
to distance myself. I wanted to make any of the other Taliban knew, they
it a thing I could look back on. were still walking in the dark. They
Digger called Lex, whom he was were still on their way to their desti-
putting in charge of the rescue eort. nation. Meanwhile, Hals sparkle would
Lex looked at Digger the way he used reect o the mans wide-open eyes
to look at Hal. As if he had no idea and shine back out like some special
what came next. knowledge.
Let me know, Digger said. That would be the man wed spare.
Then we walked away from the That would be the man whod drop
river, northbound. The sounds of the to his knees in the mud and, in the
rescue, already quiet, fell away, and cloud of gun smoke, raise his hands
the heat signatures of the rescuers in surrender. That would be the man
dimmed. Soon enough, behind us was whod tell us who he was, where hed
no dierent from in front of us. The come from, and why.
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 61
62 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY CARLOS JAVIER ORTIZ
FICTION
t some point, a rich old man though the temperature wasnt much said, Im thinking about how the En-
milkman or the iceman. The pleasure She would re me, and I would lose conversation with my father I have
of being necessary to my parents was the freedom the dollar gave me, as never considered the level of labor
profound. I was not like the children well as the standing I had at home to be the measure of myself, and
in folktales: burdensome mouths although both were slowly being I have never placed the security of
to feed, nuisances to be corrected, eroded. She began to oer me her a job above the value of home.
66 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
smoke into my apartment completely when my ability to edit his work was In the kitchen, as Dorothy waited to
separate? probably the thing he liked and hated set her six-pack in the refrigerator, the
Je shrugged. Maybe not to her. most about me. Also, hed begun dating girl-woman in front of her, whose name
an undergraduate named Brianna. was Cecilia, abruptly whirled around
here had been some question as to It was dark out, and on the bridge and hissed, Can you please get the fuck
T whether the after-party would still
happen, in light of so many people
across the river I ended up walking next
to Bhadveer, about fteen feet behind
out of my space bubble?
Dorothy and I joined a conversation
mourning their second-year funding, Dorothy and Je. Can you fucking be- in progress among ve people, and it soon
but word circulated in the auditorium lieve it about Larry? Bhadveer asked. emerged that one of them, Jonah, was the
lobby that it was on. Before we walked Wait, is Larry a Peaslee? third Peaslee. Jonahs mother had starred
over, Dorothy, Je, Bhadveer, and I Yeah. Remember that piece of shit in a popular nighttime soap opera in the
stopped at a convenience store. he wrote about the Nazi soldier? eighties, and, to a one, Jonahs stories
Im not drinking tonight, I told And who else is one? I asked. featured autoerotic asphyxiation, which
Dorothy. You mean besides the guy who has Id been unfamiliar with and had to have
She was closing the glass door of a two thumbs and loves blow jobs? Bhad- explained to me by Dorothy. But Jonahs
refrigerator, and she frowned and said, veer had made sts and was pointing autoerotic-asphyxiation descriptions
Why not? with his thumbs at his face. were artful, and the news that he was a
It was the way that the man with the You got one? I said. Peaslee didnt oend my sense of justice.
cult following had opened the beer on- If youre trying to conceal your The group of us speculated about
stage combined with my new knowl- surprise, try a little harder. Did you who the fourth Peaslee was, and the
edge of Lorraines daughter, and I would get one? consensus was Aisha, who was one of
have told Dorothy this under dierent I havent actually seen todays mail, two black people in the entire program,
circumstancesI told her everything but I doubt it. and who was in her late thirties and had
but it seemed like too much to get into, I bet you were in the running, he formerly been an anesthesiologist. She
with Je and Bhadveer waiting at the said, which seemed both chivalrous rarely came to parties, which I respected.
cash register. I said, So I dont throw and like something he wouldnt have I couldnt stay away from themwhat
myself at Doug. said if he werent a recipient. if something juicy happened and/or
But if you dont drink you wont Thanks for the vote of condence. Doug was in the mood to reunite? It
throw yourself at anyone else, either. Well, at least one Peaslee has to was also technically possible that the
Lets hope, I said. Doug and I had be female, right? he said. And there fourth Peaslee was a woman named
barely spoken since the rst week of Oc- arent that many of you. This was true. Marcy, who was in her early thirties,
tober. Following our breakup, wed com- Of our cohort of twenty-two, seven were married, and had a two-year-old kid
municated only through typed critiques girls or women or whatever we were sup- who was always sick. However, it was
of each others workour professor re- posed to call ourselves and one anoth- widely understood that Marcy was a
quired the critiques to be typedand erI myself was inconsistent on this terrible writer; more than once, Id heard
Dougs to me were one intellectually dis- front. the suggestion that her acceptance into
tant paragraph under which he wrote, I said, So you, Larry, and two we the program had been a clerical error.
Best, Doug, which always made me dont know. I was in the living room, perched side
think, How can someone who came in- by side on a windowsill with Bhadveer,
side me sign his critiques Best? My rogram parties were often weird when three girl-women converged in a
critique to him after our breakup was
three single-spaced pages, and, in the
P sometimes they took place at a farm-
house that a group of students rented a
group hug that lasted, and Im not ex-
aggerating, ve minutes. These were the
sense that my comments concerned his few miles out of town, and sometimes at- only women in my year besides me, Dor-
story, they were impersonal, but in the tendees did acid, so it wasnt that uncom- othy, Aisha, and Marcy. There was a fair
sense that his story was autobiographi- mon for, say, a twenty-three-year-old poet amount of space around them, so that
cal and he knew that I knew thished who had grown up in San Francisco and everyone along the rooms periphery
told me about the shing trip with his graduated from Brown to be found wan- bore witness to the hug, which I as-
stepfather that it was based onthey dering in his underwear in a frozen corn- sumed was part of the point. In the rst
were not impersonal. (I think this would eldand I could tell as soon as we ar- few seconds of the hug, I thought, O.K.,
be a lot more compelling if the protag- rived that this party was going to be extra for sure none of you are Peaslees, which
onist showed greater self-awareness and weird. A second-year named Chuck was gave credence to the Aisha theoryor
took responsibility for his role in the boat standing by the front door, holding a Pez could it be me? Was there any chance?
sinking.) After that, I didnt write him dispenser topped by a skull, and as peo- Should I leave to go check my mail?
any critiques. I wasnt going to know- ple entered he oered them a candy, say- and as the hug approached the thirty-
ingly give him bad advice, but I didnt ing, as it landed in their palms, Memento second mark I thought, For Gods sake,
want to bestow on him another act of mori. By some mixture of intuition and we get it, youre strong females who
love. Or I did want to bestow on him strategically looking around, I knew im- support one another, even when the
acts of loveall I wanted was to be- mediately that neither the man with the system has screwed you, and after a full
stowbut it was too painful to do so cult following nor Doug was there. minute I was grimacing and I hated
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 67
all three of them, even though under I stared at him for a few seconds. Because then hell help you get
normal circumstances I hated only one, Thats ridiculous. published.
who was very performatively virtuous Name a book. Ill wait. First of all, I said, still murmuring,
and often insisted on telling you about Virginia Woolf was a babe. Of the I would never give a blow job to a man
the meaningful conversations she had many foolish things I said in graduate in his forties. Well, not until Im in my
had with janitors or homeless people or school, this is the one that haunts me the forties. Or at least my late thirties. Sec-
about the healthy, nourishing whole- most. But I didnt regret it immediately. ond of all, you seem really obsessed with
wheat bread shed baked that afternoon. Bhadveer shook his head. Youre blow jobs tonight.
Bhadveer said, Im trying to deter- thinking of that one picture taken when Flaherty, Im always obsessed with
mine whether observing group hugs she was, like, nineteen. And its kind of blow jobs.
makes me more or less uncomfortable sideways, right? To obscure her long I rolled my eyes. You should thank
than participating in them. face. Why the long face, Virginia? me for setting you up for that.
If you were participating, at least I named a writer who had nished Bhadveer tapped his beer bottle
you could cop a feel, I said. our program two years before we ar- against my plastic cup of water. Thank
I like the way you think, Flaherty. rived, who was rumored to have received you.
Bhadveer always called me by my last a half-million-dollar advance for her Was I imagining it, or had the ques-
name. Then he said, Are Genevieve rst novel. Have you seen her in real tion just arisen of whether Id ever give
and Tom in an open marriage? Gene- life? Bhadveer asked, and I admitted I a blow job to Bhadveer? Was he semi-
vieve was a second-year poet, and hadnt. He said, She does the best with ineptly irting or simply sharing his sin-
Tom was her husband, who worked a what she has, but shes not beautiful. cere thoughts?
normal-person job, possibly in I.T. Then he added, Dont take this the I said, Are you already hammered?
Not that I know of, I said. Why? wrong way, but there tends to be an in- Yes, he said, but it was hard to
Because shes totally macking on verse relationship between how hot a know which narrative this information
Milo tonight. Look. Now that Bhad- woman is and how good a writer. Ex- supported.
veer pointed it out, I saw that, across hibit A is George Eliot. We were quiet, and I began listen-
the room, Genevieve and a rst-year Thats literally the dumbest idea Ive ing again to the man with the cult fol-
named Milo were sitting extremely close ever heard, I said. lowing, who was describing a recent
together on a couch, talking intensely. Its because you need to be hun- dog-sled trip in Alaska hed written
I said, Is her husband here? gry to be a great writer, and beautiful about for a mens magazine.
By all indications, no. women arent hungry. Go ahead and Wait, I murmured to Bhadveer.
I scanned the room, and beyond it contradict me. Clarice Lispector.
the front door, which every minute or Joan Didion, I said. Alice Munro. Bhadveer looked momentarily
two opened to admit more people. Louise Erdrich. But providing coun- confused then shook his head. He
Doug isnt here, either, if thats who terexamples felt distasteful rather than said, Clarice Lispector was nothing
youre really looking for, Bhadveer said. satisfying. I stood. I could pretend that special.
Have you heard that Im going to rell my cup,
everyone thinks the fourth
Peaslee is Aisha?
but really I just want to get
away from you.
D oug isnt coming tonight, Dor-
othy said. I just heard from Har-
Bhadveer made a scong As I walked out of the old that hes afraid you got a Peaslee, and
noise. living room, the group hug he doesnt want you rubbing it in his
Why not? I said. nally broke apart. face.
Other than because her Wow, I said. How attering and
work sucks? he man with the cult insulting.
I was genuinely sur-
prised. Aishas work doesnt
T f ollowing had arrived
and was surrounded by a
I was on my way to tell you its O.K.
for you to drink after all when I suddenly
suck. Anyway, Larrys work crowd in the dining room. I realized how to x my story. I should shift
sucks, and they gave him a Peaslee. stood near a platter of program-spon- it all to the omniscient point of view.
Im not saying shes dumb, Bhad- sored cheese. I could get no closer to him Dont you think? Then I can include
veer said. She got through medical than eight feet, not that I would have the innkeepers backstory, and people
school. Shes just not a good writer. tried to speak to him directly, anyway. wont be distracted wondering how the
I furrowed my brow. Is the subtext Its tin lunch pails at Yaddo, he servants know all those details about him.
of this conversation racial? was saying. The picnic baskets are at Dorothy had been working on the same
It wasnt, but it can be if you want. MacDowell. story since August. It was set in Virginia
Enlighten me, oh suburban white girl. Someone nudged me. I heard he in 1810, it uctuated between twenty
He took a sip of beer and added, Aisha likes getting blown by young women, and twenty-six pages long, and every sen-
is gorgeous, right? Bhadveer murmured. Maybe you should tence in it was exquisite. As a whole,
I nodded. volunteer. however, it lacked momentum. Several
Great literature has never been pro- Why would I do that? I mur- times, she had revised it signicantly,
duced by a beautiful woman. mured back. and it always turned out equally exquisite
68 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
Indeed, they barely looked up, and in-
sofar as they did Im not sure they recog-
WHAT USE IS KNOWING ANYTHING IF NO ONE IS AROUND nized me. Genevieve and her husband
soon got divorced, and eventually she and
What use is knowing anything if no one is around Milo married, and later they became born-
to watch you know it? Plants reinvent sugar daily again, and now they have sixsix!chil-
and hardly anyone applauds. Once as a boy I sat dren. Although I havent seen either of
in a corner covering my ears, singing Quranic verse them for years, I have the sense that I was
present at the big bang of their family, ex-
after Quranic verse. Each syllable was perfect, but only cept for the fact that Im guessing their
the lonely rumble in my head gave praise. This is why family doesnt believe in the big bang.
we put mirrors in birdcages, why we turn on lamps At the bottom of the staircase, I saw
Bhadveer again. Arundhati Roy? I said.
to double our shadows. I love my body more I no longer had any idea if I was joking.
than other bodies. When I sleep next to a man, he becomes His expression was dismissive. Dont
an extension of my own brilliance. Or rather, he becomes pander.
an echo of my own anticlimax. I was delivered
round midnight, the party started
from dying like a gift card sent in lieu of a pound
of esh. My escape was mundane, voidable. Now
A dwindling. Some people were danc-
ing to Brick House in the living room
I feed faith to faith, suer human noise, complain and a participant in the group hug was
about this or that heartache. The spirit lives in between crying in the kitchen, but a steady stream
of guests were leaving. The knowledge
the parts of a name. It is vulnerable only to silence that I wouldnt be hungover the next
and forgetting. I am vulnerable to hammers, re, morning was so pleasing that at inter-
and any number of poisons. The dream, then: to erupt vals I actively savored it, like a twenty-
into a sturdier form, like a wild lotus bursting into dollar bill Id found in my pocket.
Really, why did I ever drink?
its tantrum of blades. There has always been a swarm I was talking to Cecilia, she of the
of hungry ghosts orbiting my bodyeven now, space bubble, when one of the people
I can feel them plotting in their luminous diamonds who lived in the house, a woman named
Jess, approached me and said, Is it true
of fog, each eying a rib or a thighbone. They are youre sober?
arranging their plans like worms preparing When I conrmed that I was, she asked
to rise through the soil. They are ready to die if Id drive the man with the cult follow-
with their kind, dry and sti above the wet earth. ing to his hotel. She said, You can take
Kaveh Akbar my car, and Ill pick it up tomorrow.
In the living room, she introduced
and equally lacking in momentum. ature has never been written by a beau- me to him. She said, Ruthie will be
Sure, I said. I dont see why not. tiful woman. your chaueur.
Im going to go try. Dorothy made a face. Aishas not He bowed clumsily.
Now? beautiful, she said. Jesss car turned out to be a pale-blue
Dorothy nodded. Honda sedan with a plastic hula-girl gu-
In another lifeif I were still in here was a line outside the rst-oor rine hanging from the rearview mirror. I
collegeI would have protested. But
here it was understood that work, in
T bathroom, so I went upstairs and
opened the door to one of the bedrooms
wondered, of course, if the man would try
to elicit a blow job. But from our rst sec-
whatever fashion and on whatever sched- that I knew had a bathroom. A stand- onds alone together I could tell he wasnt
ule you managed to produce it, took ing light in the bedroom was on, and going to, and I was both relieved and
precedence over everything else. This is atop the mattress Genevieve and Milo faintly, faintly insulted. Other than the
the lesson of graduate school I am most the married second-year poet and the fact that I was driving, the situation re-
grateful for. Want to get breakfast to- rst-year who wasnt her husbandwere minded me of when I was in high school
morrow? I said. You can tell me how lying with their limbs entangled, mak- and got rides home from dads after
it went. ing out. If Id been drinking, I probably babysitting.
Denitely, Dorothy said. But call would have apologized and backed away. Are you a rst- or second-year? the
me tonight when you get your mail. No But being sober when everyone else man asked as I turned onto the street
matter what time it is, call me. seemed increasingly drunk was like wear- that ran along the park.
Bhadveer said he thinks Aisha is too ing a cape that made me invisible. Surely First, I said.
beautiful to be a good writer, I said. He it didnt matter if I quickly peed adja- The man chuckled a little. Dare I
was just expounding on how great liter- cent to Genevieve and Milos foreplay? ask if youre a Peaslee?
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 69
Because I didnt want to bore a suc- Are you familiar with the narcissism I laughed. Thats a totally subjec-
cessful writer with the details of my un- of small dierences? tive question.
received mail, I said, Im not. Peaslees I can probably infer what it is, Do you think youre a good writer?
didnt exist when you were in the pro- but no. Would you enjoy your work if some-
gram, did they? Freud stole the concept from an one else had written it?
No, they did, he said. It was only English anthropologist named Ernest Yes, I said. I would.
fourteen years ago that I graduated Crawley. It explains the inghting among Thats important. Hold onto it. Oh,
from here. And I was a Peaslee. Not groups whose members have far more and dont marry anyone from the pro-
to boast. The man had written six in common than not. Ive always thought gram. If you do, youll both end up cheat-
books, more than one of which had that if any two students in the program ing. Hell, if youre a writer, youll prob-
been nominated for major prizes. His were co-workers at a big company, ably cheat on whoever you marry. But
work had been translated into many theyd become close friends. Theyd be you might as well decrease your odds.
languages, and he was a tenured pro- thrilled to nd another person who cares Being the driver was making me feel
fessor at a prestigious school in Cali- about what they care about, who thinks like a kind of program ambassador, and
fornia. As we crossed the river, he about things instead of just sleepwalk- it was in this capacity, as I stopped at
chuckled again and said, Fourteen ing. But when youre in the program the last light before the hotel, that I said,
years probably sounds like a long time theres such an abundance of kindred Is there anything you need that you
to you, doesnt it? Someday, it wont. spirits to choose from that those same dont have? I meant a toothbrush, but
The car was silentI did and didnt two people might be mortal enemies. as soon as I said it I wondered if Id
believe himand he said, Do you like I thought of the performatively vir- oered him a blow job.
the program? tuous woman from the group hug and He seemed sad, though, and not lech-
I love it, I said. I mean, some peo- then of Bhadveer. After tonight, was erous, when he said, Sweetheart, there
ple are annoying. But even the annoy- Bhadveer on my shit list or were we arent enough hours in the day to tell
ing onestheyre usually annoying in about to start dating? you all the things I need and dont have.
interesting ways. Are you a good writer? the man asked.
BUSINESS OR PLEASURE
72
73
Jacey Chalmers, whose father died from a heroin overdose, lives with her grandmother, in Martinsburg. Down the street is a couple with
74 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
A REPORTER AT LARGE
THE ADDICTS
NEXT DOOR
West Virginians fighting to save opioid
abusersand their townfrom destruction.
BY MARGARET TALBOT
ve adopted children whose parents were addicts. Across the street, a woman lives with her two nephews; their mother is an addict.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY EUGENE RICHARDS
ichael Barrett and Jenna say. The kids arent stupid. They know burg. Like the vast majority of resi-
Tara Mayson, Tina Stride, and Lisa Melcher run the Hope Dealer Project, which helps addicts find a spot in rehab.
sound labored, then stops altogether. had told me that family members had That evening, he dealt with one more
Barrett began preparing a Narcan dose. grown oddly comfortable with E.M.T. O.D. A young woman had passed out
Generally, the goal was to get people visits: Thats the scary partthat its in her car in the parking lot of a
breathing well again, not necessarily to becoming the norm. The man stood 7-Eleven, with her little girl squirm-
wake them completely. A full dose of up, and then, swaying in the doorway, ing in a car seat. An older woman who
Narcan is two milligrams, and in Berke- vomited a second time. happened on the scene had taken the
ley County the medics administer 0.4 Were gonna take him to the hos- girl, a four-year-old, into the store and
milligrams at a time, so as not to snatch pital, Barrett told the girlfriend. He bought her some hot chocolate and
patients high away too abruptly: you could stop breathing again. Skittles. After the young woman re-
didnt want them to go into instant with- As we drove away, Barrett predicted ceived Narcan, Barrett told her that
drawal, feel terribly sick, and become that the man would check himself out she could have killed her daughter, and
belligerent. Barrett crouched next to the of the hospital as soon as he could; most she started sobbing hysterically. Mean-
man and started an I.V. A minute later, O.D. patients refused further treat- while, several guys in the parking lot
the man sat up, looking bewildered and ment. Even a brush with death was were becoming agitated. They had given
resentful. He threw up. Barrett said, rarely a turning point for an addict. the woman C.P.R., but someone had
Couple more minutes and you would Its kind of hard to feel good about called 911 and suggested that they had
have died, buddy. it, Barrett said of the intervention. supplied her with the heroin. The men
Thank you, the man said. Though he did say, Thanks for wak- were black and everybody elsethe
78 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
overdosing woman, the older woman, parents generally get their kids treated, and fourteen per cent less likely to re-
the cops, the ambulance crewwas he said. But, in families with a lot of ceive such prescriptions after surgery
white. The men were told to remain at chaos and money problems, kids dont or traumatic injury.
the scene while the cops did background get help. But a larger factor, it seems, was the
checks. Barrett attempted to defuse the In 2010, Purdue introduced a refor- despair of white people in struggling
tension by saying, Hey, you guys gave mulated capsule that is harder to crush small towns. Judith Feinberg, a profes-
her C.P.R.? Thanks. We really appre- or dissolve. The Centers for Disease sor at West Virginia University who
ciate that. The criminal checks turned Control subsequently issued new guide- studies drug addiction, described opi-
up nothing; there was no reason to sus- lines stipulating that doctors should oids as the ultimate escape drugs. She
pect that the men were anything but not routinely treat chronic pain with told me, Boredom and a sense of use-
Good Samaritans. The cops let the opioids, and instead should try ap- lessness and inadequacythese are
men go, the young woman went to the proaches such as exercise and behav- human failings that lead you to just
E.R., and the little girl was retrieved ioral therapy. The number of prescrip- want to withdraw. On heroin, you curl
by her father. tions for opioids began to drop. up in a corner and blank out the world.
But when prescription opioids be- Its an extremely seductive drug for
eroin is an alluringly cheap alter- came scarcer their street price went dead-end towns, because it makes the
H native to prescription pain med-
ication. In 1996, Purdue Pharma intro-
up. Drug cartels sensed an opportu-
nity, and began ooding rural Amer-
worlds problems go away. Much more
so than coke or meth, where you want
duced OxyContin, marketing it as a ica with heroin. Daniel Ciccarone, a to run around and do thingsyou get
safer form of opiatethe class of pain- professor at the U.C.-San Francisco aggressive, razzed and jazzed.
killers derived from the poppy plant. School of Medicine, studies the her- Peter Callahan, a psychotherapist
(The term opioids encompasses syn- oin market. He said of the cartels, in Martinsburg, said that heroin is a
thetic versions of opiates as well.) Opi- Theyre multinational, savvy, border- very tough drug to get o of, because,
ates such as morphine block pain but less entities. They worked very hard while it was meant to numb physical
also produce a dreamy euphoria, and to move high-quality heroin into places pain, it numbs emotional pain as
over time they cause physical cravings. like rural Vermont. They also kept wellquickly and intensely. In tight-
OxyContin was sold in time-release the price low. In West Virginia, many knit Appalachian towns, heroin has
capsules that levelled out the high and, addicts told me, an oxycodone pill now become a social contagion. Nearly ev-
supposedly, diminished the risk of ad- sells for about eighty dollars; a dose eryone I met in Martinsburg has ties
diction, but people soon discovered that of heroin can be bought for about ten. to someonea child, a sibling, a girl-
the capsules could be crushed into pow- A recent paper from the National friend, an in-law, an old high-school
der and then injected or snorted. Be- Bureau of Economic Research con- coachwho has struggled with opi-
tween 2000 and 2014, the number of cludes, Following the OxyContin re- oids. As Callahan put it, If the lady
overdose deaths in the United States formulation in 2010, abuse of prescrip- next door is using, and so are other
jumped by a hundred and thirty-seven tion opioid medications and overdose neighbors, and people in your family
per cent. deaths decreased for the rst time since are, too, the odds are good that youre
Some states became inundated with 1990. However, this drop coincided going to join in.
opiates. According to the Charleston with an unprecedented rise in heroin In 2015, Berkeley County created a
Gazette-Mail, between 2007 and 2012 overdoses. According to the Centers new position, recovery-services cor-
drug wholesalers shipped to West Vir- for Disease Control, three out of four dinator, to connect residents with rehab.
ginia seven hundred and eighty mil- new heroin users report having rst Yet there is a chronic shortage of beds
lion pills of hydrocodone (the generic abused opioids. in the state for addicts who want help.
name for Vicodin) and oxycodone (the The Changing Face of Heroin Use Kevin Knowles, who was appointed to
generic name for OxyContin). That in the United States, a 2014 study the job, told me, If they have private
was enough to give each resident four led by Theodore Cicero, of Washing- insurance, I can hook them right up.
hundred and thirty-three pills. The ton University in St. Louis, looked at If theyre on Medicaidand ninety-ve
state has a disproportionate number of some three thousand heroin addicts in per cent of the people I work with are
people who have jobs that cause phys- substance- abuse programs. Half of its going to be a long wait for them.
ical pain, such as coal mining. It also those who began using heroin before Weeks, months. He said, The num-
has high levels of poverty and jobless- 1980 were white; nearly ninety per cent ber of beds would have to increase by
ness, which cause psychic pain. Mental- of those who began using in the past a factor of three or four to make any
health services, meanwhile, are scant. decade were white. This demographic impact.
Chess Yellott, a retired family practi- shift may be connected to prescribing West Virginia has an overdose death
tioner in Martinsburg, told me that patterns. A 2012 study by a University rate of 41.5 per hundred thousand peo-
many West Virginians self-medicate of Pennsylvania researcher found that ple. (New Hampshire has the second-
to mute depression, anxiety, and post- black patients were thirty-four per cent highest rate: 34.3 per hundred thou-
traumatic stress from sexual assault less likely than white patients to be sand.) This year, for the sixth straight
or childhood abuse. Those things prescribed opioids for such chronic year, West Virginias indigent burial
are treatable, and upper-middle-class conditions as back pain and migraines, fund, which helps families who cant
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 79
ON THE JOB BY AKHIL SHARMA
during a recruiting event, Id gleefully home. I knew that what I was oering
debate with the bartender whether my interviewers was pain porn, but
I should drink the Johnny Walker playing my audienceespecially
Blue or some rare Talisker. playing them with a stereotype that
The fact that I knew nothing had caused me anger and hurt in the
was immediately clear. After a pastlled me with delight. I was
few interviews in which I saw my so excited as I told my stories that I
interlocutor ick his eyes over sometimes even half believed them.
my rsum and register that I had Before the lies, the people who
no relevant experience, I decided interviewed me had rarely revealed
to start lying. what they felt; now they laughed
I began telling interviewers that and sighed along with what seemed
throughout high school and much like recognition, almost as if they
of college I had worked night shifts were seeing their own hardships
at 7-Elevens and gas stations. I came in my tales. That was the sort of
here was no reason for the up with this lie because I was Indian self-pitying, self-aggrandizing
T investment bankers who
interviewed me to hire me. I knew
and was used to being seen through
stereotypesused to being asked if I
wretches we were.
I started getting callbacks. I
nothing about nance and wasnt spoke English or if I was studying to was own to New York for daylong
even really clear as to what bankers be a doctor. The reason I chose this interviews, in which eventually I
did; all I knew was that they wore particular lie was that people love would come up against someone who
snazzy suits and looked coolly the hardworking-immigrant-who- didnt care about my time at 7-Eleven.
impatient. My reason for wanting makes-good narrative. It allows them All that this manit was invariably
to be a banker was simple: I was a to feel that they live in a benign, a manquite reasonably cared about
student at Harvard Law School, and meritocratic world, and to believe, was whether I could make his life
I gured that, instead of working in a back-channel way, that they easier by getting work done. Hed ask
very hard as a corporate lawyer, I are deserving of their success. Also, me what method of valuation could
might as well work the same amount bankers work bone-crunching be best massaged to show an earnings-
in nance and make even more money. hours. In my night-shift history, accretive merger in a nancial model.
Many of my fellow-students appeared my interviewers would see evidence Hed ask about the dierence between
to be thinking the same thing; as I that I was a tireless employee. nancial and tax accounting. Usually,
remember, almost a third of the people During the interviews, as I told the sort of person who asked such
I knew who were graduating in my my story, I would almost pop out questions was an associate or a junior
year applied to become bankers. of my chair with nervous exultation. vice-president, who worked closely
To interview with the less I had a gift for inventing details. with the nitty-gritty of nancial
prosperous investment banks, we Id discuss how scary it was to work modelling. Inevitably, that person
waited in the then mangy hallways nights at a 7-Eleven, how a group of would tell the powers that be,
of the Sheraton Commander Hotel, young men would come in and begin Hey, this guy is an idiot!, and I
in Cambridge. For the bulge-bracket stealing and Id be afraid to confront would be rejected.
rms, like Goldman Sachs and them. Or Id describe how many Finally, one day, I was in New
Morgan Stanley, we met in hospitality layers of clothing I had to wear as York for a series of interviews and
suites at the Charles and tried to a gas-station attendant during the the junior vice-president I was
hide our anxiety. When I am winter; how hookers would hang out supposed to see was called into a
nervous, I become giddy and happily at the gas station to solicit customers; meeting. I knew right then that I
CHRISTOPH NIEMANN
talkative. In the hospitality suites, I how my clothes smelled of hot dogs would be oered the job. When I got
stationed myself by the sushi platters by the end of a 7-Eleven shift; how, the call, I accepted on the spot. I was
and oered advice on what was around four in the morning, the smart enough to understand that I
especially delicious. If there was an alcoholics showed up to buy beer had got lucky. Do you know when I
open bar at some expensive restaurant because they had run out of liquor at get the signing bonus? I asked.
80 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
aord a funeral pay for one, ran out of Knowles wonders if Procter & Gam town, he said. Thats its identity. But
money. Fred Kitchen, the president of ble, which is opening a manufacturing whats the industry now? Maybe it
the West Virginia Funeral Directors plant in the area this fall, will have a will be drug rehab.
Association, told me that, in the fu similar problem.
The Eastern Panhandle is one of
neral business, we know the reason
for that was the increase in overdose
deaths. He added, Families take out
the wealthier parts of a poor state. (The
most destitute counties depend on coal
Iandnturned
the past several months, I have re
to Martinsburg many times,
spoken with many addicts there. I
second mortgages, cash in 401(k)s, and mining.) Berkeley County is close learned the most about the crisis, how
go broke to try and save a son or daugh enough to D.C. and Baltimore that ever, from residents who werent drug
ter, who then overdoses and dies. many residents commute for work. users, but whose lives had been irrevo
Without the help of the burial fund, Nevertheless, Martinsburg feels iso cably altered by others addiction.
funeral directors must either give away lated. Several people I met there ex Lori Swadley is a portrait and wed
caskets, plots, and cremation services pressed surprise, or sympathy, when I ding photographer in Martinsburg.
and risk going out of businessor, told them that I live in D.C., or po When I looked at her Web site, she
Kitchen said, look mothers, fathers, litely said that theyd like to visit the seemed to be in demand all over the
husbands, wives, and children in the capital one of these days. Like every area, and her photographs were lovely:
eye while theyre saying, You have noth other county in West Virginia, Berke her brides glowed in afternoon light,
ing to help us? ley County voted for Donald Trump. her highschool seniors looked pol
Michael Chalmers is the publisher ished and condent. But what drew
artinsburg, which has a popu of an Eastern Panhandle newspaper, me to her was a side project she had
M lation of seventeen thousand, is
a hilly town lled with brick and clap
the Observer. It is based in Shepherds
town, a picturesque college town near
been pursuing, called 52 Addictsa
series of portraits that called attention
board row houses. It was founded in the Maryland border which has not to the drug epidemic in and around
1778, by Adam Stephen, a Revolution succumbed to heroin. Chalmers, who Martinsburg. It was clear that Swad
ary War general. The town became a is fortytwo, grew up in Martinsburg, ley had a full life: her husband, Jon,
depot for the B. & O. Railroad and and in 2014 he lost his younger bro worked with her in the photography
grew into an industrial center domi ther, Jason, to an overdose. I asked him business, and they had three small chil
nated by woollen mills. Interwoven, why he thought that Martinsburg dren, Juniper, Bastian, and Bodhi. Her
established in the eighteennineties, was struggling so much with drugs. Web site noted that she loved fashion
was the rst electricpowered textile In my opinion, the desperation in and gardening, and included this dec
plant in the U.S. The company be the Panhandle, and places like it, is a laration: Im happy that youve stum
came the largest menssock manufac social vacancy, he said. People dont bled upon our little slice of heaven!
turer in the world, and at its height, feel they have a purpose. There was The 52 Addicts series seemed like a
in the nineteenfties, it employed a shame element in smalltown cul surprising project for someone so busy
three thousand people in Martins ture. Many drug addicts, he explained, and cheerful.
burg. The Interwoven factory whistle are trying to escape the reality that We met one day at Mugs & Muns,
could be heard all over town, sum this place doesnt give them anything. a cozy coee shop on Queen Street.
moning workers every morning at a He added, Thats really hard to live Swadley is thirtynine, tall and slen
quarter to seven. In 1971, when the withwhen you look around and you der, and she looked elegant in jeans, a
mill closed, an editorial in the Mar see that seven out of ten of your friends charcoalcolored turtleneck, and high
tinsburg Journal mourned the passing from high school are still here, and boots. She and her husband had moved
of what was once this communitys nobody makes more than thirtysix to Martinsburg in 2010, she told me,
greatest pride. In 2004, the last wool thousand a year, and everybodys just looking for an aordable place to raise
len mill in town, Royce Hosiery, ceased bitching about bills and watching these children close to where she had grown
operations. crazy shows on reality TV and not up, in the Shenandoah Valley. Soon
Its simplistic to trace the towns opi doing anything. after they arrived, they settled into a
oid epidemic directly to the loss of in The Interwoven mill, derelict and subdivision outside town, and Swad
dustrial jobs. Nevertheless, many resi grand, still dominates the center of ley started reading the Martinsburg
dents I met brought up this history, as Martinsburg. One corner of it has Journal online. She told me, Id see
part of a larger story of lost purpose been turned into a restaurant, but the these stories about addictionwhether
that has made the town vulnerable to rest sits empty. Lately, theres been it was somebody whod passed away,
the opioid onslaught. In 2012, Macys talk of an ambitious renovation. A po and the family wanted to tell their story,
opened a distribution center in the lice ocer named Andrew Garcia has or it was the overdose statistics, or what
Martinsburg area, but, Knowles said, a plan, called Martinsburg Renew, ever. Many of the stories were writ
the company has found it dicult to which would turn most of the mill ten by the same reporter, Jenni Vin
hire longtime residents, because so into a rehab facility. Todd Funkhouser, cent. She was very persistent, andI
many fail the required drug test. (The who runs the Berkeley County His dont know what the word for it is
void has been lled, only partially, by torical Society, showed me around very in your face, Swadley said. You
people from neighboring states.) one day. Martinsburg is an industrial could tell she wanted the problem to
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 81
be known. Because at that time it
seemed like everybody else wanted to
hide it. And, to me, that seemed like WADE IN THE WATER
the worst thing you could do.
It turned out that thirteen of Swad- One of the women greeted me.
leys friends had died of opioid over- I love you, she said. She didnt
doses. I said that it seemed like an ex- Know me, but I believed her,
traordinarily high number, especially And a terrible new ache
for someone who was not an addict. Rolled over in my chest,
She agreed, but there it was. All thir- Like in a room where the drapes
teen were young menSwadley had Have been swept back. I love you,
met most of them when she was in her I love you, as she continued
early twenties, and she had been a tom- Down the hall past other strangers,
boy back then. The rst time she heard Each feeling pierced suddenly
that a friend had died, she had been By pillars of heavy light.
photographing a wedding for some I love you, throughout
mutual friends. They were sitting The performance, in every
around a bonre at the end of the day. Handclap, every stomp.
When Swadley spoke of a crazy hor- I love you in the rusted iron
ror lm that she and a guy named Jer- Chains someone was made
emy had made in high school, some- To drag until love let them be
body mentioned that he had recently
died, from a heroin overdose. Swadley
felt like shed been punched in the gut.
She threw up, and wrecked her car on she started photographing addicts in re- Tabby to stop using. When I called
the way home. covery. In her introduction to the series, Tiany, she told me that she had re-
At the time, Swadley was hanging on Instagram, she wrote about her friends cently lost a second sister to heroin.
out with her old crowd in bars and who had died and about Martinsburgs Swadley hopes that her photographs
restaurants every weekend. One by one, lack of rehab centers. She found the will someday be displayed all around
the group dwindled. Many of them towns culture of denial enraging. townin coee shops, restaurants, per-
the preppy boys, the hippie boys For the rst few portraits, Swadley haps the library. She wants a public
got into heroin eventually, she said. reached out to her subjects, but soon reckoning with the stories shes col-
They tried to help one another, but we people started coming to her. She took lected. The whole point of this proj-
were in our twentieswe had no clue. their pictures, asked them about their ect is to show naysayers out there that
Shed call rehab places on friends be- lives, and told their stories in a para- people do recover, she said. They are
half and have to tell them that the price graph or so. There are now two dozen good people. I want to show people
was staggering, and that in any case it images in the series. they deserve a chance. I want it in peo-
might be six months before they could In one of the portraits, an E.R. nurse ples faces, so they see that it could be
be admitted. As the overdoses piled up, hugs her daughter, Hope, from whom their neighbor, or their best friend.
she was appalled to nd that some- shed been estranged. They had recon-
times she had trouble keeping track of nected at the hospital, when the nurse ne day, Swadley told me about a
which friends were dead.
The funerals had a peculiar aspect.
saw Hopes name listed as a patient in
the emergency room. Swadley photo-
O local eort against heroin addic-
tion, called the Hope Dealer Project.
The parents didnt want anyone to graphed a Martinsburg woman named It was run by three women: Tina Stride,
know how it had happened, and they Crystal, whod been hit by a car one who had a twenty-six-year-old son in
tried to keep the friends out, she said. night when she was walking to her deal- recovery; Tara Mayson, whose close
At the services for one frienda ers house; Crystal was now clean, but friend had gone through periods of ad-
sweet, goofy guy with shaggy blond she was conned to a wheelchair. A diction; and Lisa Melcher, whose son-
hairSwadley and her friends got woman named Tiany posed holding in-law had died of an overdose, and
close enough to the casket to see that a snapshot of her younger sister, Tabby. whose thirty-two-year-old daughter,
his hair had been shorn, so that he Both women had started o on pills Christina, was struggling to overcome
looked clean-cut. She went on, It Tabby had developed a problem after heroin addiction. All three had known
was clear that his mother didnt want a gallbladder operation left her with a addicts who wanted to get clean but
us there. It was understandableshe thirty-day supply of medsand then had no place to go. Last fall, like car-
didnt know if any of us had been sup- became heroin addicts. Tiany had re- pool moms with a harrowing new mis-
plying him. ceived treatment, but Tabby had fatally sion, they had begun driving people to
One day, Swadley decided that she overdosed while she was waiting for a detox facilities all over the stateany
needed to write down all thirteen names, rehab bed. Swadley took the portrait in place that could take them, sometimes
before she forgot one. In January, 2016, a park where Tiany had once begged as far as ve hours away. The few with
82 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
met near an apartment complex that
Melcher manages, and drank mochas
Unclasped and left empty that she had bought at McDonalds.
In the center of the ring. Melcher, who is fty-three, with abun-
I love you in the water dant blond ringlets and a warm, husky
Where they pretended to wade, voice, told me that she loved ower ar-
Singing that old blood-deep song ranging and renishing old furniture
That dragged us to those banks activities that would be occupying her
And cast us in. I love you, days more often if there werent a her-
The angles of it scraping at oin crisis. Stride, who is forty-seven,
Each throat, shouldering past wore her hair in a ponytail and had
The swirling dust motes curly bangs; Mayson, who is forty-six,
In those beams of light had long, sparkly nails.
That whatever we now knew At one point, Stride said, Please
We could let ourselves feel, knew dont think Im rude, as she picked up
To climb. O WoodsO Dogs her phone to read a text.
O TreeO GunO Girl, run Hes in! she cried. He made it!
O Miraculous Many Gone The women cheered.
O LordO LordO Lord They had spent the previous day
Is this love the trouble you promised? working on behalf of a woman and her
twenty-one-year-old son, a heroin ad-
Tracy K. Smith dict. He had private insurance, so they
had signed him up for rehab in New
Hampshire. We had a plane ticket
private insurance could get rehab any- system, they believe theyre O.K., ready, and they were ready to go to the
where in the country, and the Hope Stride said. And theyre not. Thats airport, Stride said. I left them, and
Dealer women were prepared to sug- just getting the poison out of their bod- then the mother called me and said,
gest options. But most people in town ies. So we try to explain to them, No, My sons lips are bluehes overdosed.
had Medicaid or no insurance at all, you need to go through rehab, and learn What do I do? Stride became teary.
and such addicts had to receive treat- why you are using, and learn how to And I said, Call 911. Im coming right
ment somewhere in the state. Currently, ght it. Some will do it. Some wont. back over.
the detox facility closest to Martins- And then our issue becomes how were Stride went on, So he was in the
burg is about two hours away. going to nd them a bed in rehab. If hospital, and then his mom reached
Stride works full time at the Gen- beds are all full, a lot of times they out to me late last night and said,
eral Services Administration, in Wash- come back here to Martinsburg, be- Hes been released. First question I
ington, but spends up to twenty-four cause they have nowhere else to go. asked is Where is he?, because were
hours a week giving rides to drug users. Stride tries to keep those clients under afraid hes going to run. And she said,
The other two focus on reaching out constant watch. That addict brain is Instead of putting him on a plane,
to addicts and families. Stride noted, telling them, You know what you need, can we drive him? Because I want to
I have to talk to the addict, or the cli- and its right herego get it. know he makes it. And I said, Yes,
entthats what we try to call them Stride usually drives clients to a you can. So they are driving eight
all the way to that detox center. Be- detox center immediately after pick- hours to take him to his detox. Detox
cause theyre sick. And we pass hospi- ing them up. But once she had to keep was good to goso we know for the
tals all the way, and theyre begging, a woman overnight at her home, be- next seven to ten days hes safe. After
Just take me therethey can help me! cause a bed wasnt available until the that, the man was set to go to Flor-
But they really cant, the hospitals. morning. She told me, All I said was ida, to attend a thirty-day program
When Stride and her client arrive Please, dont rob me. Im here to help that Stride respected.
at a detox facility, nurses are waiting at you. But I guess if you are gonna rob Melcher said, Praise God, he made
the door. At that point, Stride said, me theres not a whole lot I can do it, and the women all nodded.
theyre, like, What do you mean, youre about it. This young lady had to go Mayson, who works at the Depart-
leaving me? She went on, Theyre through the nightshe was so sick, ment of Veterans Aairs and has two
scared, because now its reality. They she didnt sleep. I tried to stay up, but adult children, said that the Hope
know theyre not going to get their I knew I had to drive four hours to the Dealer women had become like sisters.
dope or their pills. For them to walk detox place, and four hours back. So I When one of them has a hard day, she
in those doors, that takes a lot. Theyre slept some. We were up at 4 a.m., and can count on one of the others to tell
heroes to me. at the detox place at eight. And shes her to rest and rechargeor, as Melcher
After ve to ten days in detox, pa- doing good nowshe calls me to touch often says, to breeeathe.
tients are released. When our clients base sometimes. As mothers, they felt that they had
get clean and the drugs are out of their The Hope Dealer women and I a particular ability to communicate
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 83
with women who needed help with the loudspeaker to attend a birth. There with several state and county agencies,
their addicted children. Stride said, I was no question in Aldiss mind that started investigating ways to make nal-
remember when I rst found out my he would become a doctor, too. He oxonethe generic name for Narcan
son was an addict. I was devastated. I spent most of his career in Asia and more widely available, in the hope of
didnt know who to turn to, who I could Africa, as a U.S. Navy physician and as saving people in the throes of an over-
trust. And I worked and worked to nd a medical ocer with the State De- dose. Aldis attended a talk on the sub-
my son a place, and thats rough. Hear- partment. He retired in 2001. He and ject by the centers deputy director, Herb
ing No or We cant take him today, his wife, Pheny, a medical technolo- Linn, and afterward he told him, Lets
but we can take him a week from today. gist, bought the house where hed lived not study this anymore. Lets just start
No, you need to take him now. My sons as a small child, in Shepherdstown. a program. Linn recalls, I told him,
gonna die. So now, when moms reach They lled it with art and antiques, ac- Just do it! You could actually prescribe
out to us, were, like, Weve got this. quired two Jack Russell terriers, and it to your patients.
Melcher said, When youre in that prepared for a quiet life lled with vis- Aldis taught his rst class on ad-
space? Oh, my gosh, you can hardly its from their two daughters and the ministering Narcan on September 3,
breathe, youre a cryin mess. grandkids. 2015, at the New Life Clinic. Nine days
Stride nodded and said, So when But Aldis soon became aware of the later, a woman whod attended the
we come in and say, Mom, were gonna opioid epidemic in the Eastern Pan- class used Narcan to revive a pregnant
take care of your child, I dont care if handleseveral people hed hired to woman who had overdosed at a motel
that child is fty years oldyou see work on his house were good fellows where they were both staying. During
a relief. who were also addicts. When I started the next few weeks, Aldis heard of ve
On May 21st, I received an e-mail to see it, I could not look away, he told more lives saved by people whod at-
from Melcher, informing me that Chris- me. He took a job at the New Life tended the class.
tina, her daughter, had fatally overdosed Clinic, in Martinsburg, where he could In his seminars, Aldis addresses why
on heroin. Christina, she said, had com- prescribe Suboxone, one of the long- addicts lives are worth saving. That
pleted rehab several times, and had term treatments for opioid addiction. might seem self-evident, but at this
been clean for ninety days before re- He found it enormously frustrating point in the opioid epidemic many
lapsing. Melcher refused to hide the that addicts were often urged to quit West Virginians feel too exhausted
fact that Christina had lost her battle heroin cold turkey or to stop taking and resentful to help. People like Lori
with addiction, but added, When Suboxone (or methadone or naltrex- Swadley and the Hope Dealer women
a child passes away, the last thing a one, the other drugs used to treat ad- and John Aldis must combat a wide-
mother wants to say is that the child diction and counteract withdrawal spread attitude of Leave em lie, let
was an addict. Melcher plans to con- symptoms). In his view, this was wholly em die. A community sucked dry by
tinue her volunteer work, in honor of unrealistic. Most addicts needed what addiction becomes understandably
Christinas beautiful but tortured life. is known as medication-assisted treat- wary of coddling users, and some lo-
ment for a long time, if not the rest of cals worry that making Narcan easily
A CRITIC AT LARGE
BY JAMES WOOD
met W. G. Sebald almost twenty he sounded, encouraged thus by a glit- of his that deal directly with that catastro-
II interviewed
years ago, in New York City, when
him onstage for the PEN
ter in his eyes, and by a slightly sardonic
fatigue in his voice.
phe: The Emigrants, a collection of
four semi-ctional, history-haunted bi-
American Center. Afterward, we had During dinner, he returned some- ographies; and his last book, Austerlitz
dinner. It was July, 1997; he was fty- times to that mode, always with a deli- (2001), a novel about a Jewish Welshman
three. The brief blaze of his interna- cate sense of comic timing. Someone at who discovers, fairly late in life, that he
tional celebrity had been lit a year be- the table asked him if, given the enor- was born in Prague but had avoided im-
fore, by the publication in English of mous success of his writing, he might be minent extermination by being sent, at
his mysterious, wayward book The interested in leaving England for a while the age of four, to England, in the sum-
Emigrants. In a review, Susan Sontag and working elsewhere. (Sebald taught mer of 1939, on the so-called Kindertrans-
(who curated the PEN series) had force- for more than thirty years, until his death, port. The typical Sebaldian character is
fully anointed the German writer as a in 2001, in Norwich, at the University of estranged and isolate, visited by depres-
contemporary master. East Anglia.) Why not New York, for sion and menaced by lunacy, wounded
Not that Sebald seemed to care about instance? The metropolis was at his feet. into storytelling by historical trauma.
that. He was gentle, academic, intensely How about an easy and well-paid se- But two other works, Vertigo (pub-
tactful. His hair was gray, his almost mester at Columbia? It was part ques- lished in German in 1990 and in English
white mustache like frozen water. He tion, part attery. Through round spec- in 1999) and The Rings of Saturn, are
resembled photographs of a pensive tacles, Sebald pityingly regarded his more various than this, and all of his four
Walter Benjamin. There was an atmo- interlocutor, and replied with nave sin- major books have an eccentric sense of
sphere of drifting melancholy about cerity: No, I dont think so. He added playfulness.
him that, as in his prose, he made al- that he was too attached to the old Nor- Rereading him, in handsome new
most comic by sly self-consciousness. I folk rectory he and his family had lived editions of Vertigo, The Emigrants,
remember standing with him in the foyer in for years. I asked him what else he and The Rings of Saturn (New Di-
of the restaurant, where there was some liked about England. The English sense rections), Im struck by how much fun-
kind of ornamental arrangement that of humor, he said. Had I ever seen, he nier his work is than I rst took it to
involved leaves oating in a tank. Se- asked, any German comedy shows on be. Consider The Rings of Saturn (bril-
bald thought they were elm leaves, which television? I had not, and I wondered liantly translated by Michael Hulse),
prompted a characteristic reverie. In En- aloud what they were like. They are in which the Sebald-like narrator spends
gland, he said, the elms had all but dis- simply . . . indescribable, he said, stretch- much of the book tramping around
appeared, ravaged rst by Dutch elm ing out the adjective with a heavy Ger- the English county of Suolk. He
disease, and then by the great storm of manic emphasis, and leaving behind muses on the demise of the old coun-
1987. All gone, all gone, he murmured. an implication, also comic, that his short try estates, whose hierarchical gran-
Since I had not read The Rings of Sat- reply suced as a perfectly comprehen- deur never recovered from the societal
urn (published in German in 1995 but sive explanation of the relative merits of shifts brought about by the two World
not translated into English until 1998), English and German humor. Wars. He tells stories from the lives of
I didnt know that he was almost quot- Joseph Conrad, the translator Edward
ing a passage from his own work, where, omedy is hardly the rst thing one FitzGerald, and the radical diplomat
C
ABOVE: BRIAN REA
beautifully, he describes the trees, up- associates with Sebalds work, partly Roger Casement. He visits a friend,
rooted after the hurricane, lying on the because his reputation was quickly asso- the poet Michael Hamburger, who left
ground as if in a swoon. Still, I was ciated with the literature of the Holo- Berlin for Britain in 1933, at the age of
amused even then by how very Sebaldian caust, and is still shaped by the two books nine. The tone is elegiac, mued, and
90 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
Comedy isnt usually associated with Sebald, but an eccentric sense of playfulness runs through his four major books.
ILLUSTRATION BY SETH THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 91
yet curiously intense. The Hamburger passage. The secret of the comedy lies ing job in the German department at
visit allows Sebald to take the reader in the paradox of painstaking exagger- the University of Manchester. He ar-
back to the Berlin of the poets child- ation (as if the diner were trying to rives in the city of Manchester in the
hood, a scene he meticulously re-creates crack a safe, or solve a philosophical early morning. As his taxi rolls past rows
with the help of Hamburgers own conundrum), enforced by Sebalds calm of uniform houses, which seemed the
memoirs. But he also jokily notes that control of apparently ponderous dic- more run down the closer we got to the
when they have tea the teapot emits tion (operation). It is the same at the city centre, Sebald reects on the fate
the occasional pu of steam as from guest rooms of the Saracens Head, in of this mighty place, one of the engines
a toy engine. Harleston, where the mirror makes the of the Victorian age, now more like a
Elsewhere in the book, Sebald is occupant look strangely deformed, necropolis or mausoleum. The narra-
regularly provoked to humorous indig- and all the furniture seems to be tilt- tor is met at the door of his small hotel,
nation by the stubborn intolerability of ing, so that the narrator is pursued even called the Arosa, by its owner, Mrs. Irlam,
English service. In Lowestoft, a Suolk while asleep by the feeling that the who is wearing a pink dressing gown
coastal town that was once a prosper- house was about to fall down. that was made of a material found only
ous resort and is now impoverished and In The Emigrants, Sebald lovingly in the bedrooms of the English lower
drab, he puts up at the ghastly Albion seizes on eccentric British materials and classes and is unaccountably called can-
hotel. He is the only diner in the huge contraptions. The narrator and his wife dlewick. (That unaccountably called
dining room, and is brought a piece of dine at the home of Dr. Henry Selwyn, candlewick is a nice example of how
sh that had doubtless lain entombed the food pushed into the dining room Sebald and his English translators often
in the deep-freeze for years: on a serving trolley equipped with hot- contrived to make of his prose a strange,
The breadcrumb armour-plating of the sh plates, some kind of patented design homeless melody, neither quite English
had been partly singed by the grill, and the prongs dating from the Thirties. Later in the nor quite German but some odd mix-
of my fork bent on it. Indeed it was so dicult book, Sebald tells the moving story of ture of the two.)
to penetrate what eventually proved to be noth- how, in 1966, he gave up Germany for Mrs. Irlam is a kindly soul, and
ing but an empty shell that my plate was a hid- England. He was a twenty-two-year- quickly brings him, on a silver tray, an
eous mess once the operation was over.
old graduate student, who had studied electric appliance of a kind I had never
Evelyn Waugh would have been in Germany and Switzerland, and was seen before, called a teas-maid. This
quite content to have written such a now on his way to take up a junior teach- was an ungainly machine, popular at
the time, that contained a clock and
an electric kettle; it could wake you up
with morning tea. Sebald approaches
this cozy English object with mock-
solemn gingerliness, as if he were an
anthropologist presenting one of his
exhibits. He places a large photograph
of the relic at the center of his page,
and notes that the lime-green phos-
phorescent glow of the clock face was
familiar to him from childhood:
That may be why it has often seemed, when
I have thought back to those early days in Man-
chester, as if the tea maker brought to my room
by Mrs. Irlam, by Gracieyou must call me
Gracie, she saidas if it was that weird and
serviceable gadget, with its nocturnal glow, its
muted morning bubbling, and its mere pres-
ence by day, that kept me holding on to life at
a time when I felt a deep sense of isolation in
which I might well have become completely
submerged. Very useful, these are, said Gracie
as she showed me how to operate the teas-maid
that November afternoon; and she was right.
CIVIL WARS
come out, and it is clear that her
politics have been part of its gesta-
tion. The God of Small Things was
Arundhati Roy returns. about one family, primarily in the
nineteen-sixties, and though it in-
BY JOAN ACOCELLA cluded some terrible events, its sor-
rows were private, mued, personal.
By contrast, The Ministry of the Ut-
most Happiness is about India, the
polity, during the past half century
or so, and its griefs are national. This
does not mean that Roys powers are
stretched thin, or even that their char-
acter has changed. In the new book,
as in the earlier one, what is so re-
markable is her combinatory genius.
Here is the opening of the novel:
At magic hour, when the sun is gone but
the light has not, armies of ying foxes un-
hinge themselves from the Banyan trees in
the old graveyard and drift across the city like
smoke. When the bats leave, the crows come
home. Not all the din of their homecoming
lls the silence left by the sparrows that have
gone missing, and the old white-backed vul-
tures, custodians of the dead for more than a
hundred million years, that have been wiped
out. The vultures died of diclofenac poison-
ing. Diclofenac, cow aspirin, given to cattle
as a muscle relaxant, to ease pain and increase
the production of milk, worksworkedlike
nerve gas on white-backed vultures. Each
chemically relaxed milk-producing cow or
bualo that died became poisoned vulture
bait. As cattle turned into better dairy ma-
chines, as the city ate more ice cream, butter-
scotch-crunch, nutty-buddy and chocolate-
chip, as it drank more mango milkshake, vul-
tures necks began to droop as though they
were tired and simply couldnt stay awake.
Silver beards of saliva dripped from their
beaks, and one by one they tumbled o their
branches, dead.
NO, WE CANNOT
to keep out the Drifters and the stu-
pidest people, the Shamblers, who dont
know how to tie shoes or button but-
The new pessimism comes of age. tons; they wander around, naked and
barefoot. Thanks, in part, to the di-
BY JILL LEPORE culty of clothing, there is a lot of sex,
random and unsatisfying, but there are
very few children, because no one knows
how to take care of them. (The jacket
copy bills this novel as the rst book
of the Trump era. )
Or: Machines replaced humans,
doing all the work and providing all
the food, and, even though if you leave
the city it is hotter everywhere else,
some huy young people do, because
they are so bored, not to mention that
they are mad at their parents, who do
annoying things like run giant corpo-
rations. The runaways are called walk-
aways. (I gather theyre not in a terri-
bly big hurry.) They talk about revolu-
tion, take a lot of baths, upload their
brains onto computers, and have a lot
of sex, but, to be honest, they are very
boring. Or: Even after the coasts were
lost to the oods when the ice caps
melted, the American South, defying
a new federal law, refused to give up
fossil fuels, and seceded, which led to
a civil war, which had been going on
for decades, and was about to be over,
on Reunication Day, except that a
woman from Louisiana who lost her
whole family in the war went to the
celebration and released a poison that
killed a hundred million people, which
doesnt seem like the tragedy it might
ere are the plots of some new dys- along with decorative skin grafts and have been, because in this future world,
H topian novels, set in the near fu-
ture. The world got too hot, so a wealthy
tattoos, there being so little else to
do. There are no children, but the
as in all the others, theres not much
to live for, what with the petty tyrants,
celebrity persuaded a small number of celebrity who rules the satellite has the rotten weather, and the crappy sex.
very rich people to move to a make- been trying to create them by tortur- It will not give too much away if I say
shift satellite that, from orbit, leaches ing women from the earths surface. that none of these novels have a happy
the last nourishment the earth has to (We are what happens when the ending (though one has a twist). Then
give, leaving everyone else to starve. seemingly unthinkable celebrity rises again, none of them have a happy be-
The people on the satellite have lost to power, the novels narrator says.) Or: ginning, either.
their genitals, through some kind of in- North Korea deployed a brain-damaging Dystopias follow utopias the way
stant mutation or super-quick evolu- chemical weapon that made everyone thunder follows lightning. This year,
tion, but there is a lot of sex anyway, in the United States, or at least every- the thunder is roaring. But people are
since its become fashionable to have one in L.A., an idiot, except for a few so grumpy, what with the petty tyrants
surgical procedures to give yourself a people who were on a boat the day the and such, that its easy to forget how
variety of appendages and openings, scourge came, but the idiots, who are recently lightning struck. Whether we
measure our progress in terms of wired-
Liberal and conservative dystopias do battle, in proxy wars of the imagination. ness, open-mindedness, or optimism,
102 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL ZENDER
the country is moving in the right di- Laputa, Gulliver visits the Academy of
rection, and faster, perhaps, than even Lagado, where the sages, the rst pro-
we would have believed, a reporter for gressives, are busy trying to make pin-
Wired wrote in May, 2000. We are, as cushions out of marble, breeding naked
a nation, better educated, more toler- sheep, and improving the language by
ant, and more connected because of getting rid of all the words. The word
not in spite ofthe convergence of the dystopia, meaning an unhappy coun-
internet and public life. Partisanship, try, was coined in the seventeen-forties,
religion, geography, race, gender, and as the historian Gregory Claeys points
other traditional political divisions are out in a shrewd new study, Dystopia: A
giving way to a new standardwired- Natural History (Oxford). In its mod-
nessas an organizing principle. Nor ern denition, a dystopia can be apoca-
was the utopianism merely technolog- lyptic, or post-apocalyptic, or neither, but
ical, or callow. In January, 2008, Barack it has to be anti-utopian, a utopia turned
Obama gave a speech in New Hamp- upside down, a world in which people
shire, about the American creed: tried to build a republic of perfection
only to nd that they had created a re-
It was a creed written into the founding
documents that declared the destiny of a na- public of misery. A Trip to the Island of
tion: Yes, we can. It was whispered by slaves Equality, a 1792 reply to Thomas Paines
and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards Rights of Man, is a dystopia (on the
freedom through the darkest of nights: Yes, we island, the pursuit of equality has reduced
can. It was sung by immigrants as they struck everyone to living in caves), but Mary
out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed
westward against an unforgiving wilderness: Shelleys 1826 novel, The Last Man, in
Yes, we can. . . . Yes, we can heal this nation. which the last human being dies in the
Yes, we can repair this world. Yes, we can. year 2100 of a dreadful plague, is not dys-
topian; its merely apocalyptic.
That was the lightning, the ash of The dystopian novel emerged in re-
hope, the promise of perfectibility. The sponse to the rst utopian novels, like
argument of dystopianism is that per- Edward Bellamys best-selling 1888 fan-
fection comes at the cost of freedom. tasy, Looking Backward, about a so-
Every new lament about the end of the cialist utopia in the year 2000. Look-
republic, every column about the col- ing Backward was so successful that
lapse of civilization, every new novel it produced a dozen anti-socialist, anti-
of doom: these are its answering thun- utopian replies, including Looking
der. Rumble, thud, rumble, ka-boom, Further Backward (in which China
KA-BOOM! invades the United States, which has
been weakened by its embrace of so-
utopia is a paradise, a dystopia a cialism) and Looking Further For-
A paradise lost. Before utopias and
dystopias became imagined futures, they
ward (in which socialism is so unques-
tionable that a history professor who
were imagined pasts, or imagined places, refutes it is demoted to the rank of jan-
like the Garden of Eden. I have found itor). In 1887, a year before Bellamy, the
a continent more densely peopled and American writer Anna Bowman Dodd
abounding in animals than our Europe published The Republic of the Fu-
or Asia or Africa, and, in addition, a cli- ture, a socialist dystopia set in New
mate milder and more delightful than York in 2050, in which women and men
in any other region known to us, Amer- are equal, children are reared by the
igo Vespucci wrote, in extravagant let- state, machines handle all the work,
ters describing his voyages across the At- and most people, having nothing else
lantic, published in 1503 as Mundus to do, spend much of their time at the
Novus, a new world. In 1516, Thomas gym, obsessed with tness. Dodd de-
More published a ctional account of a scribes this world as the very acme of
sailor on one of Vespuccis ships who had dreariness. What is a dystopia? The
travelled just a bit farther, to the island gym. (Thats still true. In a 2011 epi-
of Utopia, where he found a perfect re- sode of Black Mirror, life on earth in
public. (More coined the term: utopia an energy-scarce future has been re-
means nowhere.) Gullivers Travels duced to an interminable spin class.)
(1726) is a satire of the utopianism of Utopians believe in progress; dys-
the Enlightenment. On the island of topians dont. They ght this argument
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 103
out in competing visions of the future, happiness than most other heydays of
utopians oering promises, dystopians downheartedness. The Internet did not
issuing warnings. In 1895, in The Time stitch us all together. Economic growth
Machine, H. G. Wells introduced the has led to widening economic inequal-
remarkably handy device of travelling ity and a looming environmental cri-
through time by way of a clock. After sis. Democracy appears to be yielding
that, time travel proved convenient, but to authoritarianism. Hopes, dashed
even Wells didnt always use a machine. is, lately, a long list, and getting longer.
In his 1899 novel, When the Sleeper The plane is grounded, seat backs
Awakes, his hero simply oversleeps in the upright position, and we are
his way to the twenty-rst dying, slowly, of stupidity.
century, where he nds a Pick your present-day
world in which people are dilemma; theres a new
enslaved by propaganda, dystopian novel to match
and helpless in the hands it. Worried about politi-
of the demagogue. Thats cal polarization? In Amer-
one problem with dysto- ican War (Knopf ), Omar
pian ction: forewarned El Akkad traces the United
is not always forearmed. States descent from grid-
Sleeping through the lock to barbarism as the
warning signs is another problem. I was states of the former Confederacy (or,
asleep before, the heroine of The Hand- at least, the parts that arent underwa-
maids Tale says in the new Hulu pro- ter) refuse to abide by the Sustainable
duction of Margaret Atwoods 1986 novel. Future Act, and secede in 2074. Trou-
Thats how we let it happen. But what bled by the new Jim Crow? Ben H.
about when everyones awake, and there Winterss Underground Airlines (Lit-
are plenty of warnings, but no one does tle, Brown) is set in an early-twenty-
anything about them? NK3, by Michael rst-century United States in which
Tolkin (Atlantic), is an intricate and clev- slavery abides, made crueller, and more
erly constructed account of the aftermath inescapable, by the giant, unregulated
of a North Korean chemical attack; the slave-owning corporations that deploy
NK3 of the title has entirely destroyed the surveillance powers of modern tech-
its victims memories and has vastly di- nology, so that even escaping to the
minished their capacity to reason. This North (on underground airlines) hardly
puts the novels characters in the same oers much hope, since free blacks in
position as the readers of all dystopian cities like Chicago live in segregated
ction: theyre left to try to piece together neighborhoods with no decent hous-
not a whodunnit but a howdidithappen. ing or schooling or work and its the
Seth Kaplan, whod been a pediatric on- very poverty in which they live that
cologist, pages through periodicals left defeats arguments for abolition by hard-
in a seat back on a Singapore Airlines ening ideas about race. As the books
jet, on the ground at LAX. The period- narrator, a fugitive slave, explains, Black
icals, like the plane, hadnt moved since gets to mean poor and poor to mean
the plague arrived. It confused Seth that dangerous and all the words get murked
the plague was front-page news in some together and become one dark idea, a
but not all of the papers, Tolkin writes. cloud of smoke, the smokestack fumes
They still printed reviews of movies and drifting like lthy air across the rest of
books, articles about new cars, ways to the nation.
make inexpensive costumes for Hallow- Radical pessimism is a dismal trend.
een. Everyone had been awake, but theyd The despair, this particular publishing
been busy shopping for cars and pick- season, comes in many forms, includ-
ing out movies and cutting eyeholes in ing the grotesque. In The Book of
paper bags. Joan (Harper), Lidia Yuknavitchs nar-
rator, Christine Pizan, is forty-nine,
his springs blighted crop of dys- and about to die, because shes living
T topian novels is pessimistic about
technology, about the economy, about
on a satellite orbiting the earth, where
everyone is executed at the age of fty;
politics, and about the planet, mak- the wet in their bodies constitutes the
ing it a more abundant harvest of un- colonys water supply. (Dystopia, here,
104 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017
is menopause.) Her body has aged: If Rands Anthem in 1937, and George
hormones have any meaning left for Orwells 1984 in 1949. After the war,
any of us, it is latent at best. She ex- after the death camps, after the bomb,
amines herself in the mirror: I have a dystopian ction thrived, like a weed
slight rise where each breast began, and that favors shade. A decreasing per-
a kind of mound where my pubic bone centage of the imaginary worlds are
should be, but thats it. Nothing else utopias, the literary scholar Chad
of woman is left. Yuknavitchs Pizan Walsh observed in 1962. An increasing
is a resurrection of the medieval French percentage are nightmares.
scholar and historian Christine de Much postwar pessimism had to do
Pisan, who in 1405 wrote the allegor- with the superciality of mass culture
ical Book of the City of Ladies, and, in an age of auence, and with the fear
in 1429, The Song of Joan of Arc, an that the banality and conformity of
account of the life of the martyr. In the consumer society had reduced people
year 2049, Yuknavitchs Pizan writes on to robots. I drive my car to supermar-
her body, by a torturous process of ket, John Updike wrote in 1954. The
self-mutilation, the story of a twenty- way I take is superhigh, / A superlot is
rst-century Joan, who is trying to save where I park it, / And Super Suds are
the planet from Jean de Men (another what I buy. Supersudsy television
historical allusion), the insane celeb- boosterism is the utopianism attacked
rity who has become its ruler. In the by Kurt Vonnegut in Player Piano
end, de Men himself is revealed to be (1952) and by Ray Bradbury in Fahr-
not a man but what is left of a woman, enheit 451 (1953). Cold War dystopi-
with all the traces: sad, stitched-up anism came in as many avors as soda
sacks of esh where breasts had once pop or superheroes and in as many
been, as if someone tried too hard to sizes as nuclear warheads. But, in a
erase their existence. And a bulbous deeper sense, the mid-century overtak-
sagging gash sutured over and over ing of utopianism by dystopianism
where . . . life had perhaps happened marked the rise of modern conserva-
in the past, or not, and worse, several tism: a rejection of the idea of the lib-
dangling attempts at half-formed pe- eral state. Rands Atlas Shrugged ap-
nises, sewn and abandoned, distended peared in 1957, and climbed up the Times
and limp. best-seller list. It has sold more than
Equal rights for women, emancipa- eight million copies.
tion, Reconstruction, civil rights: so The second half of the twentieth
many hopes, dashed; so many causes, century, of course, also produced liberal-
lost. Pisan pictured a city of women; minded dystopias, chiey concerned
Lincoln believed in union; King had a with issuing warnings about pollution
dream. Yuknavitch and El Akkad and and climate change, nuclear weapons
Winters unspool the reels of those and corporate monopolies, technolog-
dreams, and recut them as nightmares. ical totalitarianism and the fragility of
This move isnt new, or daring; it is, in- rights secured from the state. There
stead, very old. The question is whether were, for instance, feminist dystopias.
its all used up, as parched as a post- The utopianism of the Moral Major-
apocalyptic desert, as barren as an old ity, founded in 1979, lies behind The
woman, as addled as an old man. Handmaids Tale (a book that is,
among other things, an updating of
utopia is a planned society; planned Harriet Jacobss 1861 Incidents in the
A societies are often disastrous; thats
why utopias contain their own dysto-
Life of a Slave Girl). But rights-based
dystopianism also led to the creation
pias. Most early-twentieth-century dys- of a subgenre of dystopian ction: bleak
topian novels took the form of political futures for bobby-soxers. Dystopian-
parables, critiques of planned societies, ism turns out to have a natural an-
from both the left and the right. The ity with American adolescence. And
utopianism of Communists, eugeni- this, I think, is where the life of the
cists, New Dealers, and Fascists pro- genre got squeezed out, like a beetle
duced the Russian novelist Yevgeny burned up on an asphalt driveway by
Zamyatins We in 1924, Aldous Hux- a boy wielding a magnifying glass on
leys Brave New World in 1935, Ayn a sunny day. It sizzles, and then it
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 105
smokes, and then it just lies there, dead keted to adults has an adolescent sen- a literature, even a pulp literature, of
as a bug. sibility, pouty and hostile. Cory Doc- political desperation? Its a sad com-
Dystopias featuring teen-age char- torows new novel, Walkaway (Tor), mentary on our age that we nd dys-
acters have been a staple of high-school begins late at night at a party in a der- topias a lot easier to believe in than
life since The Lord of the Flies came elict factory with a main character utopias, Atwood wrote in the nineteen-
out, in 1954. But the genre only really named Hubert: At twenty-seven, he eighties. Utopias we can only imag-
took o in the aftermath of Vietnam had seven years on the next oldest par- ine; dystopias weve already had. But
and Watergate, when distrust of adult tier. The story goes on in this way, what was really happening then was
institutions and adult authority our- with Doctorow inviting grownup read- that the genre and its readers were
ished, and the publishing industry ers to hang out with adolescents, look- sorting themselves out by political
began producing ction packaged for ing for immortality, while supplying preference, following the same path
young adults, ages twelve to eighteen. neologisms like spum instead of spam to the same ideological bunkersas
Some of these books are pretty good. to remind us that were in a world thats families, friends, neighborhoods, and
M. T. Andersons 2002 Y.A. novel, close to our own, but weird. My fa- the news. In the rst year of Obamas
Feed, is a smart and erce answer to ther spies on me, the novels young Presidency, Americans bought half a
the Dont Be Evil utopianism of Goo- heroine complains. Walkaway comes million copies of Atlas Shrugged.
gle, founded in 1996. All of them are with an endorsement from Edward In the rst month of the Administra-
characterized by a withering contempt Snowden. Doctorows earlier novel, a tion of Donald (American carnage)
for adults and by an unshakable suspi- Y.A. book called Little Brother, told Trump, during which Kellyanne Con-
cion of authority. The Hunger Games the story of four teen-agers and their way talked about alternative facts,
trilogy, whose rst installment appeared ght for Internet privacy rights. With 1984 jumped to the top of the Am-
in 2008, has to do with economic in- Walkaway, Doctorow pounds the azon best-seller list. (Steve Bannon is
equality, but, like all Y.A. dystopian c- same nails with the same bludgeon. a particular fan of a 1973 French novel
tion, its also addressed to readers who His walkaways are trying to turn a dys- called The Camp of the Saints, in
feel betrayed by a world that looked so topia into a utopia by writing better which Europe is overrun by dark-
much better to them when they were computer code than their enemies. A skinned immigrants.) The duel of dys-
just a bit younger. I grew up a little, pod of mercs and an infotech goon topias is nothing so much as yet an-
and I gradually began to gure out that pwnd everything using some zeroday other place poisoned by polarized
pretty much everyone had been lying theyd bought from scumbag default politics, a proxy war of imaginary
to me about pretty much everything, infowar researchers is the sort of thing worlds.
the high-school-age narrator writes they say. They took over the drone Dystopia used to be a ction of re-
at the beginning of Ernest Clines eet, and while we dewormed it, seized sistance; its become a ction of sub-
best-selling 2011 Y.A. novel, Ready the mechas. mission, the ction of an untrusting,
Player One. Every dystopia is a history of the lonely, and sullen twenty-rst century,
Lately, even dystopian ction mar- future. What are the consequences of the ction of fake news and infowars,
the ction of helplessness and hope-
lessness. It cannot imagine a better fu-
ture, and it doesnt ask anyone to bother
to make one. It nurses grievances and
indulges resentments; it doesnt call
for courage; it nds that cowardice
suces. Its only admonition is: De-
spair more. It appeals to both the left
and the right, because, in the end, it
requires so little by way of literary,
political, or moral imagination, ask-
ing only that you enjoy the company
of people whose fear of the future
aligns comfortably with your own. Left
or right, the radical pessimism of an
unremitting dystopianism has itself
contributed to the unravelling of the
liberal state and the weakening of a
commitment to political pluralism.
This isnt a story about war, El Akkad
writes in American War. Its about
ruin. A story about ruin can be beau-
tiful. Wreckage is romantic. But a pol-
I dont knowI think we should look for funnier car insurance. itics of ruin is doomed.
per cent of the worlds population dis-
appeared, without explanationbut its
ON TELEVISION not a thriller. Its not a science-ction
show, either, despite supernatural ele-
KEVINS GATE
ments; its not a puzzle narrative, like
Lost, Lindelof s previous show. Its
stranger: a deep dive into something like
The joyful final days of The Leftovers. the social chaos that the Hopi refer to
as koyaanisqatsi, a life out of balance. It
BY EMILY NUSSBAUM shows us intimate griefmidlife divorce,
a childs death, mental illnesslit by the
are of worldwide cataclysm. Its about
the apocalypse, taken personally.
The rst season, which was adapted
from a novel by Tom Perrotta, struck
many viewers, not unreasonably, as a huge
downer. It was gorgeous and ambitious,
but watching could feel like listening to
Portishead while on codeine, recovering
from surgery. (Which Ive done; it has
its charms.) A switch ipped in the sixth
episode, a wrenching, witty gem called
Guest, which focussed on Nora (played
by Carrie Coon), a woman who lost her
entire family in the Departure. Guest
had a dreamlike plotNora, who works
for the Department of Sudden Depar-
ture, realizes that her identity has been
stolenthat felt newly condent, imag-
istic and musical. In the second season,
the show levelled up again, injecting dark
humor and a rude visual playfulness,
much of it the contribution of directors
like Mimi Leder. Now, in Season 3, The
Leftovers has become the everything
bagel of television, defying categoriza-
tion. Its at once intimate and epic, giddy
and gloomy, a radical emotional intoxi-
cant. Its still a hard sell. You try telling
people that a drama about dead children
and suicidal ideation is a hilarious must-
watch, then get back to me. But, as an
online acquaintance put it, its gone from
a bummer to a bummer party.
The nal season is set seven years
n 1966, at an event protesting the not to see duplicates of civic turmoil ev- after the Departure. The characters are
Ia quiet
Vietnam War, Anne Sexton read, in
voice, Little Girl, My String-
erywhere, in satire and melodrama, in
sitcoms and superhero fantasies. People
mostly still living in Jarden, Texas, a
spiritual-seeker tourist trap. Theres the
bean, My Lovely Woman, a meditation joke that Veep is a documentary; maybe suicidal town chief of police, Kevin Gar-
on her daughters eleven-year-old body. The Americans is, too. But Damon vey ( Justin Theroux); Nora, now his long-
As Adrienne Rich recalled it, Sextons Lindelof s The Leftovers, in its third term girlfriend; Kevins ex-wife, Laurie
poem stood out from the mens diatribes and nal season on HBO, is a dierent (Amy Brenneman), who, with her new
against McNamara, their napalm poems, sort of show of the moment: it reects husband, John (Kevin Carroll), runs a
their ego-poetry. By evoking, indirectly, global anarchy, but soulfully, through an con game to comfort mourners; and the
wars victims, the poem reframed the aesthetic side door, as Sextons poem did. preacher Matt (Christopher Eccleston),
question of what makes art political. Its about a world crisisthe aftermath who is writing a new New Testament,
Right now, its hard for TV viewers of the Sudden Departure, in which two with Kevin in the lead role. The Guilty
Remnant, a cult that followed around
Kevin Garvey, the chief of police, dies and is resurrected multiple times. the survivors, has been wiped out by a
108 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY RUNE FISKER
government drone strike. But there are gure of sensitivity. In The Leftovers God Only Knows. We give the peo-
rumors that a new disaster is on the way: penultimate episode, The Most Pow- ple what theyre too chickenshit to do
a second Flood. Soon, our characters are erful Man in the World (and His Iden- themselves, Patti, who in this reality
o to Australia, on a shambolic road trip, tical Twin Brother), we get not one is Kevins Defense Secretary, explains.
hunting gods and gurus. Kevin but two: a fragile man imagin- What they elected us for. We give
A set of bizarre plots center on the ing the burden of power. them what they want. And they want
characters often desperate search for The episode, directed by Craig Zobel, to die.
faith. Theres a popular theory, which is a bookend to International Assas- Its a scene that is The Leftovers
leaps virally from person to person, that sin, a standout episode from Season 2, in a nutshell, erasing the line between
Kevin must die and be resurrected, to which was also directed by Zobel. Like personal and global annihilation, pre-
prevent the apocalypse. (Hes already that one, The Most Powerful Man is senting war as a kind of cosmic ner-
died and been resurrected multiple times.) packed with absurdist humorand, in vous breakdown. The episode climaxes
Theres a sinister team of Dutch scien- a rarity for the show, it addresses pol- in a dazzling, almost soothing silvery
tists who oer mourners a chance to join itics directly. In International Assas- vision of missiles falling over Mel-
their loved ones, aided by Mark Linn- sin, Kevin, who had taken a lethal dose bournepart Dr. Strangelove, part
Baker, playing himself, the one member of poison, woke up in an alternate uni- The Last Wave. But it also includes
of the sitcom Perfect Strangers not to verse, maybe Heaven, maybe a halluci- Kevin conding to his twin, We fucked
Depart. One episode features what may nation, although it resembled a luxury up with Nora, as if they were having
be HBOs only non-gratuitous orgy, on hotel. He entered through a bathtub. beers together. Theres a sense, here
a ferry of kinky cultists who worship a Then, step by symbolic step, he came and elsewhere, that the show is a phan-
hyper-fertile lion named Frasier. to terms with the angry spirit of Patti, tasmagoric meditation on the terror
False prophets clearly fascinate Lin- a Guilty Remnant leader, who killed inherent in having a family at all, not
delof; Lost s best arc, the life story of herself in front of him. In this mirror because you might lose them but be-
the wannabe prophet John Locke, was universe, though, Patti was running to cause you almost certainly will. As a
all about whether being conned by your be President of the United Statesand Louis C.K. routine about marriage put
dad set you up to be conned by God. Kevin had to assassinate her. it, best-case scenario, you watch your
The Leftovers is full of grifters, too, The Most Powerful Man in the best friend die and youre left alone.
among them Kevins father, Kevin, Sr., a World (and His Identical Twin Brother) Kevins dream-death is only one of
manipulative narcissist with a prophets repeats these motifs, then torques them. endless images of suicide on The Left-
beard. Theres also a bully who calls him- Kevin dies again and becomes an as- overs: Nora has a prostitute shoot her
self God, and who hands out business sassin again. Hes seeking closure for a in the chest, shock therapy after she
cards like a put-upon celebrity. The slip- dierent relationship, after an ugly loses her children; Kevin pulls plastic
periness of perception is everyones pitch: breakup with Nora. The episode starts bags over his head, then tears them o
when conspiratorial thinking pervades in a bathtub. But this time the scene at the last minute; Laurie appears to
the world, doors open for storytellers, a is a real-life memory: Kevin and Nora drown herself, accidentally on purpose.
theme that, in the age of Pizzagate, feels soaking, irting, the lovers as twins, at On another show, this obsession might
very modern. And yet the show itself the height of their love. Theyre ban- seem grotesque, self-indulgent. But the
never feels like a con. For all its baroque tering about death, about how they power of The Leftovers is its capac-
contours, its wild musical score (this year, should handle each others corpse. ity to embrace taboo impulses without
the selections range from A-ha to Avinu Kevin insists that he be stued; Nora judgment: to show radical faith, ex-
Malkeinu), it never feels ironic or gim- says thats ne, as long as she can put tended mourning, or hallucinatory para-
micky. Its central motif is feverishly sin- a beard on him. Im the one who has noia not as pathological but as human,
cere: the key gure of Kevin, who keeps to have sex with that abomination, she deserving of a gentle eye. The show is
on dying and coming back to life, our jokes. Its a tender reverie that frames full of tenderness for every character
own personal Jesus. what follows: a dream about the end who imagines seizing some control, even
of intimacy, folded into one about the if that means writing his or her own
n an era of TV tough guys, Kevin is end of the world. ending.
Irather
fascinatingly atypical. Hes reactive
than active, a labile, intensely
After the leap, Kevin discovers that
his afterlife now has an even more ab-
Critics havent seen the nale yet, but
for once the landing doesnt seem to mat-
emotional man who is shredded by his surd twist: this time, he is both an as- ter. The Leftovers could end with an
own inability to discern whats real. sassin and the Presidenthis goal is hour-long monologue about how critics
Dened by his relationships, he jumps to kill himself. As if in some supernat- misread Lost and Id be satised. In
from a divorce into a rebound relation- ural thriller, Kevin stalks this bearded daily life, hearing someone elses dream
ship. His is by far the most objectied second self, using his unique biomet- is a burden, but here its a gift. Or maybe
body on the show: his abdomen is rics (his penis) to unlock the Presi- its more that The Leftovers itself has
treated almost as a special eect, and dential bunker. Then he commits sui- felt as absorbing as a dream, the art you
the camera lingers on Therouxs per- cide, in a brazenly literal metaphor, by ee into during hard times. Its not real,
plexed eyebrows as though they were clawing the nuclear fail-safe key from but you want to stay as long as you can.
a landscape of misery. Hes a fetish his twins chest, to the upbeat pop of Ill be grieving when we wake.
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 5 & 12, 2017 109
The narrative is a complex mecha-
nism. On the one hand, there is the
THE CURRENT CINEMA villainess, Victoria Leeds (Priyanka
Chopra), who is a drug dealer and a
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Im more of a rat person. So when are you two taking the plunge?
Farley Helfant, Toronto, Ont. William Anderson, St. Louis, Mo.