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 JANUARY 6, 2020

4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Commemorative
13 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Adam Gopnik on the oldest of stories;
Cover Reprints
keeping the Post posted; a Knausgård of fewer words; Search our extensive
thirty years of “OBEY”; standup-comedy tête-à-tête. archive of weekly
PERSONAL HISTORY covers dating back to
V. S. Naipaul 18 Grief
1925 and commemorate
On the losses that never leave us.
a milestone with a
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Hart Pomerantz 25 Einstein: The Untold Story New Yorker cover reprint.
newyorkerstore.com/covers
ANNALS OF IMMIGRATION
Rachel Nolan 26 Language Barrier
The high stakes of translation for indigenous people.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Sheelah Kolhatkar 32 Embarrassment of Riches
The élites fighting against economic inequality.
PORTFOLIO
Collier Schorr 42 A Boy Like That
with Emily Stokes New moves for “West Side Story.”
FICTION
Jamil Jan Kochai 54 “Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS
Hua Hsu 58 The rise of Asian-American literature.
61 Briefly Noted
MUSICAL EVENTS
Alex Ross 64 Three operas search for new possibilities.
DANCING
Jennifer Homans 66 Noche Flamenca’s ancient art.
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 68 “Little Women.”
POEMS
Donika Kelly 22 “From the Catalogue of Cruelty”
Gerald Stern 56 “Warbler”
COVER
Pascal Campion “Twilight Avenue”

DRAWINGS Jose Arroyo and Rob Kutner, Liana Finck,

Suerynn Lee, Michael Maslin, Elisabeth McNair, Zachary Kanin,
Joe Dator, Roz Chast, Liz Montague SPOTS Filip Fröhlich
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 1
 CONTRIBUTORS
Sheelah Kolhatkar (“Embarrassment of Collier Schorr (“A Boy Like That,”
Riches,” p. 32) is the author of “Black p. 42), a photographer, is at work on a
Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, multimedia dance project called “Ak-
and the Quest to Bring Down the Most erman Ballet.”
Wanted Man on Wall Street.”
Wear our new official hat Rachel Nolan (“Language Barrier,”
to show your love. V. S. Naipaul (“Grief,” p. 18), who died p. 26) teaches Latin-American history
in 2018, published more than thirty at Boston University’s Pardee School
books. In 2001, he was awarded the of Global Studies.
Nobel Prize in Literature.
Katy Waldman (The Talk of the Town,
Donika Kelly (Poem, p. 22) wrote the p. 15), a staff writer, won a 2018 Amer-
poetry collections “The Renunciations,” ican Society of Magazine Editors award
which is forthcoming, and “Bestiary.” for journalists younger than thirty.
She teaches at Baruch College.
Gerald Stern (Poem, p. 56) wrote, most
100% cotton twill. Jamil Jan Kochai (Fiction, p. 54), who recently, the poetry collection “Galaxy
Available in white and black. won an O. Henry award, is the author Love” and the essay collection “Death
of “99 Nights in Logar.” He is at work Watch.” His new book, “Blessed as We
newyorkerstore.com/hats on a collection of stories. Were,” will be published in January.

Lizzie Feidelson (The Talk of the Town, Susan Mulcahy (The Talk of the Town,
p. 17) is a writer and a dancer. Her work p. 14) has published three books. She
has appeared in the Times Magazine is a former editor of Page Six.
and n+1, among other publications.
Hart Pomerantz (Shouts & Murmurs,
Pascal Campion (Cover), an illustrator, p. 25), a comedy writer and performer,
is an art director for animation studios was an employment lawyer in Toronto
in Southern California. for five decades.

THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM

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2 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020
 The Daily Newsletter
THE MAIL
THE GIN CRAZE handle.” Bob serves the concoction to News, culture,
the whole family, and a merry Christ-
Many thanks to Anthony Lane for mas is had by all. commentary,
1
confirming the historical and cultural Nina M. Scott
pedigree of the gin-and-tonic, which I Amherst, Mass. reporting,
and many friends in British-ruled Hong
Kong regarded as more or less the offi- UNREAL humor, and
cial colonial drink (“Ginmania,” De-
cember 9th). Its popularity is a legacy Patricia Marx, in describing her expe-
recommendations.
of the Victorian era, when malaria
plagued the territory. (As Lane points
riences with virtual reality, jokingly
considers moving out of her apartment
Every day,
out, the quinine in tonic water com-
batted the disease.) I used to live in
and into a closet, taking her V.R. head-
set with her (“The Realer Real,” De-
in your in-box.
the colony’s mordantly named “Happy cember 9th). This point touches on the
Valley” area. It was a malarial marsh profound: with advances in virtual-re-
in the nineteenth century, and now it’s ality technology, people may someday
home to a famous horse-racing track find themselves in a world where back
and several cemeteries, where some of yards, spacious living rooms, and spec-
the malaria victims rest. Perhaps more tacular views are less precious. Anyone
gin-and-tonic would have been in who has experienced V.R., even in its
order; Winston Churchill credited the current fledgling form, can appreciate
drink with saving “more Englishmen’s its allure. The reduction in the value
lives, and minds, than all the doctors of physical space has implications for
in the Empire.” everything from real-estate prices to
Chris Gay international politics.
New York City G. Randy Kasten
Angels Camp, Calif.
Lane offers a comprehensive look at
the worldwide love of gin, but he leaves After reading Marx’s fascinating piece
out one particular use of the spirit: folk- on the brave new world of virtual re-
lore says that a regimen of nine gin- ality, I found myself wondering about
soaked golden raisins per day relieves the energy requirements and potential
arthritis pain almost as effectively as environmental impact of the technology.
over-the-counter medications. Some Standard-definition video streaming
have theorized that the juniper berries on Netflix typically uses one gigabyte
in gin combine potently with a sub- of data per hour. A V.R. application,
stance in the raisins. Others say that by contrast, can use many times more.
any pain relief is due to the placebo The Shift Project, a French think tank,
effect. And still others maintain that reported that, in 2018, online video
straight gin will do the trick, no rai- viewing produced a carbon footprint
sins required. comparable to that of Spain. With the
John Huxhold energy costs of V.R. inarguably higher,
Manchester, Mo. developers and users of the technology Sign up at newyorker.com/
should consider the effects on the planet dailynewsletter
Lane mentions Charles Dickens’s ob- before diving in.
servations about gin’s power to allevi- Rebecca Scherzer
ate the misery of London’s poor. One Sausalito, Calif.
example appears in “A Christmas Carol,”
which I read every year. Bob Cratchit, •
Ebenezer Scrooge’s put-upon clerk, Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
combines “some hot mixture in a jug address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
with gin and lemons,” then pours it themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
into “the family display of glass: two any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
tumblers, and a custard-cup without a of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 3

 JANUARY 1 – 7, 2020

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

The lowland gorillas at the Bronx Zoo tend to congregate indoors during the winter rather than roam
around outside in their forest habitat. But, after sunset, their sculptural counterparts illuminate the zoo’s
grounds, as do fanciful renditions of lions, giraffes, zebras, rhinos, elephants, ring-tailed lemurs, cranes,
dolphins, and sea turtles. The Holiday Lights festival—which is back after a twelve-year hiatus—also
features ice-carving demonstrations, costumed characters, and train rides. Its final days are Jan. 3-5.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHEW PILLSBURY

 1
ART
Suzanne Jackson most made in the past decade, constitute
the artist’s solo début in New York.—J.F.
Ortuzar Projects (Through Jan. 25.)
DOWNTOWN In the late nineteen-sixties, Jack-
“Making Marvels” son was a pivotal figure in the burgeoning
Los Angeles art scene: she ran the legendary Barbara Probst
Metropolitan Museum Gallery 32, which exhibited up-and-coming
This immense exhibition features a trove African-American artists including David Higher Pictures
of impossibly opulent European objects Hammons and Senga Nengudi. She is also UPTOWN In early 2000, this German artist
from the mid-sixteenth to the eighteenth a gifted artist herself, as this show of lyri- (who is based in Munich and New York) pho-
century, showcasing the scientific theories cal abstractions reveals. Based in Savannah, tographed herself, using a strobe light and
and technologies of the time—as well as the Georgia, since 1996, Jackson makes both twelve cameras, on a midtown Manhattan
wealth of royal collectors. The parade of paintings and “anti-canvases,” big semi-sculp- rooftop at night. The resulting images—a
curiosities begins with “The Imser Clock,” tural works that suggest theatre scrims and mix of color and black-and-white—are now
ca. 1554-61, which astounded the imperial quilts, using materials as varied as bag net- on view in an installation titled “Exposure
court of Ferdinand I with its representation ting, leather, peanut shells, and paper scraps. #1: N.Y.C., 545 8th Avenue, 01.07.00, 10:37
of planetary positions. A projected montage Even when her surfaces become busy with p.m.” Probst captured herself at the height
of closeup footage shows the complex, gilded overlapping washes of acrylic color and ac- of a graceful jump—as well as her equip-
timepiece in action, ticking and chiming as cumulated textures, they maintain an air of ment, the roof’s parapet, and the glittering
its mechanical figurines rotate. (The show, uncluttered effervescence. But Jackson can city beyond—from a variety of distances and
which might otherwise be weighed down by also convey intense depth, as she does in the angles. The multipart work wraps around
its abundance of inert filigree, is enlivened commanding, burlap-backed “Blues Garden the small gallery to dramatic effect, simulta-
by beautifully produced videos like this one.) + Track/Back-Sea,” from 2010, a jagged work neously bringing viewers close to the artist
Presented among the automata, astrolabes, with a marbled indigo surface. It is almost and stationing them, voyeuristically, in the
and spring-powered models of the universe inconceivable that these impressive pieces, shadows. It’s striking how differently these
are wonders of the natural world. The aston-
ishing Dresden Green, the world’s largest
diamond of its kind, was acquired by August
III of Poland, in 1722, and later set in a fan-
AT THE GALLERIES
tastic ornament for a hat. The Kunstkammer
treasures on view may have been primarily
intended to entertain, and, indeed, delight-
fully garish works like the South German
“Automaton Clock in the Form of Diana
on Her Chariot,” ca. 1610—which shot tiny
arrows as part of an aristocratic drinking
game—still do.—Johanna Fateman (Through
March 1.)

“A New MOMA”
Museum of Modern Art
The Vatican, Kremlin, and Valhalla of mod-
ernism has reopened, after an expansion
that adds forty-seven thousand square feet
and many new galleries. Far more, though
still a fraction, of MOMA’s nonpareil col-
lection is now on display, arranged roughly
chronologically but studded with such mu-
tually provoking juxtapositions as a 1967
painting that fantasizes a race riot, by the
African-American artist Faith Ringgold,
with Picasso’s gospel “Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon” (1907). Some of the rehangs
electrify, notably in the first room of the
permanent collection, where a sequence of The nonprofit Artists Space was founded in SoHo, in 1972, as a refuge
Symbolist work—by the likes of Redon, Vuil- for experimentalists. Cindy Sherman showed her “Film Stills” there for
lard, Ensor, Munch, Gauguin, and Henri the first time, in the late seventies, when she was also briefly the recep-
Rousseau—leaps, after a de-rigueur pause
for van Gogh, to Cézanne, who comes off tionist (who once came to work dressed as a nurse). In 1989, Nan Goldin
more than ever as revolutionary. (The room organized the group exhibition “Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing,”
also has six lyrical ceramics by George E. a cri de coeur deploring the AIDS epidemic, honing the activism she
Ohr, the nineteenth-century “Mad Potter of
Biloxi”—one of several invigorating nods to now directs at the Sackler opioid empire. For forty-seven years, Artists
formerly scanted outsiders.) Piet Mondri- Space has been peripatetic, occupying five different locations. Now, as
an’s “Broadway Boogie-Woogie” (1942-43) commerce dominates conversations about art—and artists need alter-
is freshly recontextualized as an outrigger
to an eye-opening historical show of Latin- native strongholds more than ever—it has found a long-term home in
ILLUSTRATION BY LEONIE BOS

American art, which includes work by the a cast-iron building in Tribeca. Superbly designed by the architectural
ingenious Brazilians Lygia Pape and Hélio firm Bade Stageberg Cox, the two-level space feels at once permanent
Oiticica. The best time to visit the revamped
MOMA is your first, punctuated with re- and provisional; the entrance on Cortlandt Alley, off White Street,
introductions to old artistic companions. sets the perfect liminal tone. The quartet of inaugural shows (through
Masterpieces dulled by overfamiliarity in an Feb. 9) is a hit-or-miss affair—so it goes with experiments—curated by
account that had become as rote as a college
textbook spring to second lives by being Jamie Stevens, with sculptures by Danica Barboza, Jason Hirata, Yuki
repositioned.—Peter Schjeldahl (Ongoing.) Kimura, and, most impressive by far, Duane Linklater.—Andrea K. Scott
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 5
perspectives render one strobe-lit moment: Chris Potter Circuits Trio Gonzalo Rubalcaba Trio d’été

1
alternately glamorous, desolate, or foren-
sic.—J.F. (Through Feb. 8.) Village Vanguard Dizzy’s Club
Chris Potter, thanks to his profuse gifts as a When Gonzalo Rubalcaba débuted before a
saxophonist, could have easily maintained his North American audience, in the nineties, the
position as a mainstream jazz power figure, pianist was far too eager to flaunt the extrav-
NIGHT LIFE but he’s been stretching himself as a player, agant virtuosity he had acquired by way of a
a composer, and a bandleader, juxtaposing vaunted Cuban musical education. He’s since
Musicians and night-club proprietors lead offbeat outfits with his recognized work as calmed down—though his golden touch is still
complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in a post-bop juggernaut. His Potter Circuits intact—and now displays a focussed maturity
advance to confirm engagements. Trio links the leader’s horns of plenty to the that comes from close collaboration with such
shape-shifting textures of James Francies’s exemplars of economical improvisation as the
keyboards and the multidirectional rhythms of late Charlie Haden.—S.F. (Jan. 2-5.)
Regina Carter Eric Harland’s drums.—S.F. (Dec. 31-Jan. 5.)
Jazz Standard Theo Parrish
The jazz violinist Regina Carter has risen to Joseph Arthur
the top of her field by way of dashing technical Nowadays
skills combined with an imaginative fascination City Vineyard at Pier 26 The Detroit dance producer Theo Parrish
with ethnomusicology. Her far-reaching re- If New Year’s Eve traditionally attracts audi- doesn’t purvey house music so much as he
cordings swing from investigations of Southern ences who attend concerts only sparingly, the does the constellation of soul, jazz, and disco
and African roots music and her heritage in first of January must be for the truly commit- that the style was originally built from. His re-
Detroit to a centennial tribute to Ella Fitzger- ted. Enter Joseph Arthur. For the past decade, cordings—see the loose, live-sounding “What
ald. Also playing: The trumpeter Sean Jones the singer, who moonlights as a visual artist You Gonna Ask For,” from last summer—and
(Jan. 2-5) has worked with both the Jazz at and a video podcaster, has kicked off each Jan- unhurried d.j. sets tend to be ruminative but
Lincoln Center Orchestra and the SFJAZZ uary onstage. Arthur is trend-averse; his style always in the pocket. This open-to-close ses-
Collective, two votes of unqualified confidence. of downtown cool may no longer be considered sion is an ideal showcase for his humid dance-
Leading his own quartet, he exhibits his capa- particularly cool, but no matter. He clings to floor magic; Parrish is best experienced at
cious flair as a bracing straight-ahead player of New York rock with the dogged conviction length.—Michaelangelo Matos (Jan. 3.)
conviction.—Steve Futterman (Dec. 31-Jan. 1.) of a true believer.—Jay Ruttenberg (Jan. 1-2.)

Anthony Naples & Four Tet

INDIE ROCK Nowadays
The New Yorker Anthony Naples and the Lon-
doner Four Tet both have wide-open tastes:
they make dance tracks that shimmer like
desert heat and fill their deliberately paced
d.j. sets with whimsical choices. A 2017 set
on Brooklyn’s The Lot Radio ranged from
a steel band covering James Brown to gur-
gling, pitch-bent house. Their latest meeting
should ease dancers back to the post-holiday
grind—and offer a welcome respite from the
workaday.—M.M. (Jan. 4.)

Boyish
Elsewhere
Boyish describes itself as a band that was
created after “feeling the need to start over,
graduating college, and having no idea what is
going on.” Yet on its lone album, “Carnation,”
the fledgling group makes a show of looking
uncertainty straight in the eye in songs that
are confident in their musicality even when
tackling themes of angst and doubt. Some of
that vigor comes from the group’s lead singer,
India Shore, who occasionally abandons the
For a segment of the music world, the back half of 2019 was shrouded vintage warmth of her voice to belt out notes
by the sui-generis songwriter David Berman: his triumphant return from that are raw and full of longing.—Julyssa Lopez
musical hibernation, then, weeks later, his head-spinning suicide. Within (Jan. 4.)
hours of his death, the accolades that often eluded him in life—where
was this man’s MacArthur grant?—poured forth like water bursting Starchild & the New Romantic
from a dam. The Berman tribute taking over Union Pool on Jan. 4, his
ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE WYLESOL

Brooklyn Bowl
birthday, is not the first such event, nor will it likely be the last. Or- Bryndon Cook, the mind and multi-instru-
ganized by the singer’s college roommate and occasional collaborator mentalist behind Starchild & the New Ro-
Gate Pratt, the concert is anchored by musicians who backed Berman mantic, has worked with such heavy hitters
as Solange, Chairlift, and Blood Orange, and
at various stages of his bands the Silver Jews and Purple Mountains, his own music is equally variegated. His latest
including Steve West, Matt Hunter, and Kyle Forester. The spotlight release, “VHS 1138,” stands in stark contrast
falls to a series of guest stars offering renditions of Berman’s bleakly to his effervescent retro-pop album “Lan-
guage,” from 2018; it embraces hip-hop and
funny words, where stray bits of the divine habitually slice through the more subdued tones, which place the shifting
American quotidian.—Jay Ruttenberg qualities of his voice front and center. The

6 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020

 evolution is fitting for an artist who seeks to
work outside the limits of expectation—even OPERETTA
his stage name offers a fluidity between solo
act and band, and between his old-school
influences and his present creations.—Briana
Younger (Jan. 5.)

Motion City Soundtrack

The Paramount
Motion City Soundtrack formed in the late
nineties and began writing the kind of ca-
reening, early-two-thousands Warped Tour
pop punk that encouraged listeners to trade
singing for jaunty scream-alongs. A lot has
happened in the band since then—lineup
changes, breakups, hiatuses—but members
of the most recent iteration have teamed up
for a reunion tour that lets fans relive the
pep of their catchy, somewhat existential past

1
material. They also play Manhattan’s Webster
Hall on Jan. 8.—J.L. (Jan. 7.)

CLASSICAL MUSIC

“Der Rosenkavalier” Four years ago, the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players came under fire
Metropolitan Opera House for the promotional images for its production of “The Mikado,” which
Richard Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” is a featured an actress in yellowface. The work’s defenders claimed that it
gilded fantasy of Vienna—all waltzes and
silver filigree—cross-pollinated with the an- merely used the visual tropes of a fantasized Japan to lampoon the Brit-
tics of comic opera. The balance of the work ish upper classes, while its critics pointed out that satire is no excuse for
often hinges on the performance of the Mar- casual racism. The company, in collaboration with an advisory panel and
schallin, and the soprano Camilla Nylund,
in her company début, gives an exquisite Asian-American theatre professionals, unveiled a new production in 2016,
performance. Painfully aware of the passage which returns to Kaye Playhouse ( Jan. 4-5). Putting its satire where its
of time, Nylund’s Marschallin is philosophical mouth is, the staging frames the action as the origin story of the work itself
about the need to push away her younger
lover, Octavian (Magdalena Kožená, sound- and transplants “The Mikado” back to Victorian-era England—where
ing a bit tense in the role). Golda Schultz the jokes can still be witty, and the music rapturous—with the cast in suits
(a shimmery-voiced Sophie) and Günther and bustle skirts instead of kimonos and Kabuki makeup.—Oussama Zahr
Groissböck (a delightfully boorish Baron
Ochs) complete the principal cast in Rob-
ert Carsen’s production, which swings from
elegance to slapstick to bawdiness; Simon Eric Moe, Adolphus Hailstork, David Taylor, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra
Rattle conducts Strauss’s extravagant score Kevin Puts, and others. In each program, Lev
with contained lyricism.—Oussama Zahr (Jan. Zhurbin, the charismatic violist and composer New Jersey Performing
1 at 7 and Jan. 4 at noon.) better known as Ljova, plays original works Arts Center
for fadolín, a six-stringed instrument that
boasts the range of the violin, the viola, and Clara Schumann (1819-96) was among the
James Moore most of the cello.—S.S. (Jan. 3 at 7, Jan. 4 at nineteenth century’s most formidable mu-
6, and Jan. 5 at 4.) sicians—a prodigious pianist and a skillful
The Stone at the New School composer who was ill served by contem-
James Moore, a guitarist and composer porary custom and a historical record that
greatly admired in local new-music circles, Chopin and Szymanowski favors men. Happily, a handful of mean-
presents a Stone residency that, though ab- ingful tributes have surfaced this season,
breviated, still offers a fair impression of his Brooklyn Historical Society honoring the two-hundredth anniversary of
range. The first evening’s program features Polish art songs don’t enjoy the same popular- Schumann’s birth. To open the New Jersey
Moore’s compositions for drums, strings, ity on concert programs as works from other Symphony’s Winter Festival, Xian Zhang
accordion, and voice. Forever House, Moore’s European traditions; the Brooklyn Art Song conducts the composer’s brilliant Piano
moody art-rock quartet, holds the stage on Society makes its case for their vitality by Concerto in A Minor, with the eloquent
Night Two; on the final evening, Moore joins contextualizing them alongside piano works. Inon Barnatan as the soloist, alongside sta-
his bandmates in the electric-guitar quartet Chopin’s gracious, folk-tinged vocal lines have ple works by Smetana and Prokofiev.—S.S.
Dither to present a première by J. G. Thirl- a cousin in his famous mazurkas, which add a (Jan. 3 at 8.)
ILLUSTRATION BY SARAH MAZZETTI

well, plus additional works.—Steve Smith dash of pianistic flair to Poland’s humble yet
(Jan. 2-4 at 8:30.) proud national dance. Szymanowski’s piano
triptych “Métopes,” inspired by Homer’s New York Philharmonic
Odyssey, has a slippery sense of movement,
Here & Now Festival setting the mood for the coloratura flights of David Geffen Hall
the fanciful “Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princess.” The stylish pianist and versatile conductor
Bargemusic The performers include the singers Sarah Jeffrey Kahane gets the New Year off to an
The good ship Bargemusic greets the New Nelson Craft and Amy Owens and the pianists effervescent start with a blithe mix of works.
Year with new music—specifically, three days Miori Sugiyama, Spencer Myer, and Michael He conducts Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22
of local and world premières composed by Brofman.—O.Z. (Jan. 3 at 7:30.) from the keyboard, then mounts the podium

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 7

for Respighi’s “Trittico botticelliano” and meditation on gun violence, but it contains erous humanity. Arrive early for pre-show live
Haydn’s Symphony No. 96 (“Miracle”).—S.S. no gunshots. Instead, the tension comes from music and to catch clementines and cookies
(Jan. 3-4 at 8 and Jan. 7 at 7:30.) a challenging jazz recording by Don Pullen, tossed by performers to theatregoers, nearly
and from the way the dancers stay together every one.—Shauna Lyon (Through Jan. 5.)
and fall apart. The first cast is all male, but on
“Broken Silence” Jan. 1 an all-female cast gives it a try.—Brian
Seibert (Jan. 1-5.) Greater Clements
DiMenna Center
The rationale behind the title of this new Mitzi E. Newhouse
evening-length piece by the composer and Dorrance Dance In Samuel D. Hunter’s new play, Maggie
improviser Craig Shepard is twofold. As a (Judith Ivey) lives in Clements, an Idaho
member of the globe-spanning Wandelweiser Joyce Theatre mining town that has no more miners and
collective, Shepard hews to an aesthetic in Finishing up its three-week holiday season at is losing its status as a town, too. Resentful
which sound and space are held in a fragile the Joyce, Michelle Dorrance’s bright band of of Californian invaders, locals have decided
equilibrium. But “Broken Silence” also refers tap dancers saves the best for last. In addition to unincorporate: street lights are off, and
to victims of sexual abuse in the Roman Cath- to its new version of “The Nutcracker,” set Maggie, who runs a museum dedicated to
olic Church, whose testimonies are a central to the swinging 1960 Duke Ellington–Billy the area’s mining history, is closing up shop.
part of this meditative chamber work meant Strayhorn arrangement, the company brings She’s ready to move on, especially once Billy
to facilitate contemplation and healing.—S.S. a guest: the veteran clown Bill Irwin. He (Ken Narasaki), a past love, arrives to offer
(Jan. 6-8 at 8:25.) provides the true vaudevillian wit that the her a future, but she’s held back by her son, Joe
super-talented troupe sometimes has to fake. (Edmund Donovan), an isolated and socially
In his charming “Harlequin and Pantalone,” he inept twenty-seven-year-old. The pace of this
Omer Quartet gives the standout company member Warren restrained character study, directed by Davis
Craft a double role of loose-limbed virtuosity, McCallum, is lifelike, if sometimes too slow;
Merkin Hall as both a free-spirited jester and the master Hunter has a classical sense of structure that
Anyone hoping to catch a glimpse of tomor- who oppresses him.—B.S. (Jan. 2-5.) verges on the predictable, and the last half
row’s most promising concert-music attrac- hour could be scrapped. But there is deep,
tions today would be well advised to look complex feeling here, and a standout perfor-
into the “Tuesday Matinées” series at Merkin American Dance Platform mance from Donovan as an overgrown boy
Hall, a dependable incubator for burgeon- desperate to learn to be a man.—Alexandra
ing talent. Here, the Omer Quartet, a young Joyce Theatre Schwartz (Through Jan. 19.)
ensemble with several major honors and Early January is the season for dance show-
accolades to its name, performs substantial cases, timed to coincide with conferences
quartets by Schubert and Beethoven; com- for dance theatres from around the world Halfway Bitches Go Straight
pleting the bill is “Porcupine Wash,” a new who come to New York to find new work to to Heaven

1
piece by the buzzed-about composer Gabriella present. For the general public, this offers a
Smith.—S.S. (Jan. 7 at 2.) chance to consume a tasting menu of dance in Atlantic Theatre Company
a short period of time. This series at the Joyce Stephen Adly Guirgis’s rough-cut gem of a
is made up of four programs, each featuring new play is set in a government-funded half-
two ensembles. Of particular note are the way house for women on the Upper West Side,
DANCE modern-dance troupe Dayton Contemporary run by Miss Rivera (Elizabeth Rodriguez,
Dance Company (Jan. 7 and Jan. 12), the inno- in one of the play’s many sensational per-
vative and socially engaged ODC/Dance, from formances). Among its residents are Queen
New York City Ballet San Francisco (Jan. 9 and Jan. 11), and the Sugar (Benja Kay Thomas) and Munchies
excellent Brooklyn-based hip-hop company (Pernell Walker), black women who handle
David H. Koch

1
Rennie Harris Puremovement (Jan. 10-11), the hostile world by laughing in its face; Rock-
This time of year, Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” all showing recent work.—M.H. (Jan. 7-12.) away Rosie (Elizabeth Canavan), a soft-faced
music becomes ubiquitous. It’s easy to roll white drunk who wants only to be liked; the
your eyes, but, once you sit in the theatre teen-age Little Melba Diaz (Kara Young, an
and hear the first notes of the overture, a actor to watch), a straight-A student who’s
thrill inevitably kicks in. Boris Asafiev, an THE THEATRE been through hell; Betty Woods (the startling
early-twentieth-century Russian musicologist, Kristina Poe), a fleshy recluse who refuses to
called it “a symphony of childhood”: many bathe; and Wanda Wheels (Patrice Johnson
of the sensations we feel as children—fear, A Christmas Carol Chevannes), an elegant, aloof former actress.
extreme excitement, an attraction to things The alpha of the group is Sarge (the astound-
we don’t understand, the desire to grow up Lyceum ing Liza Colón-Zayas), a short, pugilistic,
and the simultaneous desire to remain a child The Dickens classic receives a warm, solicitous butch Iraq veteran, who is in love with Bella
forever—are reflected in the music. The cho- production, directed by Matthew Warchus (Andrea Syglowski), a former stripper trying
reographer George Balanchine understood (“Matilda”) and adapted by Jack Thorne to kick heroin. Guirgis is a wizard at getting
this and made a ballet, in 1954, that is still per- (“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”), with language to flow hot, funny, and fast, and
formed by the company today. In “George Bal- a wild-haired, wild-eyed Campbell Scott as the superb ensemble—beautifully handled by
anchine’s The Nutcracker,” fun and coziness Ebenezer Scrooge. (His father, George C. John Ortiz—matches his skill. In this world of
are tinged with terror, and the world of the Scott, played the role in the 1984 movie.) The broken women, words can be both weapon and
imagination is just as real as the Biedermeier topnotch cast includes the delightful Andrea salve.—A.S. (Reviewed in our issue of 12/23/19.)
furniture and the dancing children.—Marina Martin, impishly foreboding as the Ghost (Through Jan. 5.)
Harss (Through Jan. 5.) of Christmas Past, and the golden-voiced
LaChanze, as a reproachful, Caribbean-in-
flected Ghost of Christmas Present. Scrooge’s Jagged Little Pill
Alvin Ailey misery gets a passionate backstory in scenes
with his drunken, angry father and a lost love. Broadhurst
City Center In a modern twist, when Scrooge decides to This new musical, directed by Diane Paulus,
Alongside Ailey classics and recent imports turn it all around, his ghosts implore action with a book by Diablo Cody, uses the songs
by Camille A. Brown and Aszure Barton, the over fantasy, and the ensuing feast set piece of Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album to paint
final programs of Alvin Ailey American Dance becomes a giddy free-for-all. Tiny Tim is a tableau of white suburban anomie. Mary
Theatre’s City Center season offer a few more played alternately by Jai Ram Srinivasan and Jane Healy (Elizabeth Stanley) is a wife and
chances to see this year’s stellar première, Sebastian Ortiz, both of whom have cerebral mother addicted to painkillers, and her hus-
“Ode,” by the company’s new resident chore- palsy; at a recent matinée, Ortiz brought the band, Steve (Sean Allan Krill), is distant and
ographer, Jamar Roberts. It’s a grief-stricken house down with his natural depiction of gen- addicted to porn. Their adopted daughter,

8 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020

 Frankie (a charismatic Celia Rose Gooding), rock group with some classmates at Christian protest than with the ring of truth.—Anthony
who is black, is a highly principled social-jus- Brothers high school, battles bullies, and im- Lane (Reviewed in our issue of 12/23/19.) (In
tice advocate at school; her brother, Nick presses Raphina (Zara Devlin). Based on the wide release.)
(Derek Klena), is an overachiever crumbling 2016 film written and directed by John Carney
under his parents’ expectant pride. The show’s (who also wrote and directed the film “Once”),
many “issues” include transracial adoption with a book by Enda Walsh (who wrote the Le Bonheur
and rape culture, opioids and bad marriages, book for the stage musical based on “Once”) The happiness alluded to in the title of
catty neighbors and the perils of meritoc- and songs by Carney and Gary Clark, this Agnès Varda’s 1965 drama of adultery in a
racy, bisexuality, and, fleetingly, prayer. If one musical, directed by Rebecca Taichman, is working-class Paris suburb stings with whip-
theme predominates, it’s the inner lives and a bit more sentimental than the movie. But lash irony. A handsome couple, François and
imperilled freedom of women, but the show’s the cast of fourteen (plus one gratuitous live Thérèse (played by the real-life couple Jean-
insistence on making its story ever bigger, rabbit) captures even more winningly the Claude and Claire Drouot), and their two
broader, and more inclusive leaves each of dumb joy of being in a teen-age band, not least young children (the actors’ own) live a life
its women underdescribed and essentially because the actors play their own instruments. of old-fashioned sweetness. He’s a cabinet-
unknown.—Vinson Cunningham (12/16/19) Bob Crowley (costumes) and J. Jared Janas maker and she’s a dressmaker; their sex life
(Open run.) (hair and makeup) build a nice gag in which is active, and their social life is heartwarming.

1
the boys grow ever more peacockish with each But François falls hard for a pert, uninhibited
scene.—Rollo Romig (Through Jan. 26.) postal clerk (Marie-France Boyer), bringing
Judgment Day drastic change to the domestic order. Varda
fills her frames with riots of color and na-
Park Avenue Armory ture—like Bonnard paintings come to life, and
The human element feels like an afterthought MOVIES with an erotic intimacy to match—and choreo-
in Richard Jones’s staging of Ödön von Hor- graphs physical passion with unabashed but
váth’s dark morality tale, from 1937, at the Park formally controlled delight. She also brings
Avenue Armory. Paul Steinberg’s pharaonic Bombshell abstract forces into view with tactile vigor,
set consists of twenty-five-foot-high slabs Jay Roach’s film is about the fortress of Fox offering a sensual sociology of family and
wheeled around the shiny black floor as styl- News, showing how it was breached from workplace rituals. Meanwhile, her witty vi-
ized trees lurk in the background. At their within by female employees who had had sual allusions to films by her male New Wave
most stunning, Drew Levy’s sound design enough—enough, in particular, of Roger contemporaries serve as both tributes and
and Mimi Jordan Sherin’s lighting combine to Ailes (John Lithgow), who is depicted as the critiques. In French.—Richard Brody (Lincoln
create an almost physical impression of pass- bully-in-chief. Three women, two of them Center, Jan. 4, and streaming.)
ing trains. The over-all effect is breathtaking, based on real people, summon the courage
with the actors often looking like figurines in to lead a rebellion. Megyn Kelly is played by
a giant model. The deliciously arch Harriet Charlize Theron with such precision that she Burning Cane
Harris stands out as a vicious gossip, but the appears, disconcertingly, to be Kelly; Nicole The nineteen-year-old writer and director
performances are haphazard, which defangs Kidman is Gretchen Carlson, who launches Phillip Youmans displays a preternatural ma-
the story (smoothly adapted by Christopher legal action against the company; and Margot turity in this intimately textured, far-reaching
Shinn) of an accidental murderer (Luke Robbie has the tricky task (which she fulfills drama, set in rural Louisiana and centered
Kirby) and townspeople consumed by mob with her usual panache) of portraying Kayla on a middle-aged black woman named Helen
mentality. The extravagant design is never less Pospisil, a fictional figure who represents the (Karen Kaia Livers), who is weary in body and
than entrancing, but we are far from Jones’s many victims of Ailes’s sexual oppression. in soul. She lives alone in a house near cane
2017 masterstroke, “The Hairy Ape.”—Elis­ The movie is combative, hectic, and impa- fields, with an ailing dog as her sole compan-
abeth Vincentelli (Through Jan. 10.) tient, as if it were on deadline to dramatize ion. Her dissolute husband died of AIDS; her
the urgency of its moral cause, and some of son, Daniel (Dominique McClellan), a heavy
the dialogue resounds more with the force of drinker who can’t hold a job, physically abuses
London Assurance
Irish Repertory
The 1841 London première of this broad, lit- ON BROADWAY
erate farce was a great success for the twenty-
year-old Irishman Dion Boucicault. Here, Even when Laura Linney’s characters
Charlotte Moore directs a spirited ten-person
cast of exquisite comic skills, led by Colin are flailing or stubborn, they can’t help
McPhillamy as Sir Harcourt Courtly, a per- sharing the actress’s shrewd intelli-
fect, pompous ass, whose impending marriage gence. The daughter of the playwright
to the young, beautiful Grace Harkaway (Car-
oline Strang) has far more in common with Romulus Linney, she last appeared
the transfer of property than with anything on Broadway in 2017, swapping roles
resembling romance. That angle is covered by night to night with Cynthia Nixon
Grace’s attraction to Courtly’s son, Charles
(Ian Holcomb), and their smart interactions in “The Little Foxes.” She returns to
carry a whiff of the sparring between Shake- Manhattan Theatre Club, this time
speare’s Beatrice and Benedick. The action solo, in “My Name Is Lucy Barton,”
is loaded with mistaken identity, overheard
plans, hiding behind curtains, and dozens of Rona Munro’s adaptation of Elizabeth
asides to the audience, which land, with odd Strout’s novel. Linney plays a woman
sophistication, like the characters’ interior who escaped her impoverished roots
monologues. The entangling of the plot proves
to be more engaging than its unravelling, but in rural Illinois to build a new life as a
the company brings it all to a funny, fizzy writer in Manhattan; during a myste-
ILLUSTRATION BY NHUNG LÊ

conclusion.—Ken Marks (Through Jan. 26.) rious illness, her mother appears at her
hospital bed, dragging her past into
Sing Street her present. The production, starting
New York Theatre Workshop previews on Jan. 4, at the Samuel J.
In Dublin, Ireland, in 1982, the sixteen-year- Friedman, is directed by Richard
old Conor (Brenock O’Connor) assembles a Eyre.—Michael Schulman
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 9
his wife, Sherry (Emyri Crutchfield), while to hang out of reach. Guida makes a break, of a white woman; local law enforcement, pros-
nonetheless asserting his right to raise their fleeing Brazil for foreign lands with a sailor, ecution, and the judiciary—all white—reject
young son, Jeremiah (Braelyn Kelly). Mean- before returning home—rueful, pregnant, and Stevenson’s ironclad exculpatory evidence,
while, Helen’s friend and pastor, the recently alone. She is told, wrongly and cruelly, that her and he and his administrative partner, Eva
widowed Reverend Tillman (Wendell Pierce), beloved Eurídice has likewise gone abroad, Ansley (Brie Larson), are harassed. The di-
is undergoing a spiritual trial that makes him and we are confronted, from then on, with rector, Destin Daniel Cretton, conveys the
judgmental and aggressive. Youmans, who does the agony and the irony of their never quite relentless pressure of the threat of execution
his own cinematography, depicts these harrow- managing to meet. Much of the plot, in truth, faced by McMillian and other inmates (many
ing emotional crises in dramatic fragments is hard to believe, yet the film barely suffers of whom received inadequate counsel)—and
and shadow-drenched, often oblique images; as a result; it feels poised, instead, between a of the injustices endured by the region’s black
they suggest his anguish at a legacy of male fever dream and a fable. In Portuguese.—A.L. residents. While displaying the erratic work-
frustration, violence, rage, and self-destruction (12/23/19) (In limited release.) ings of the law and the crucial importance of
that leaves the region’s women trapped in a journalism, the movie’s legal focus narrows
futile silence.—R.B. (Netflix.) its imaginative scope; the drama, though in-
Just Mercy furiating and moving, sticks to its characters’
This devastatingly affecting drama, based on surfaces.—R.B. (In wide release.)
Invisible Life a true story, reveals outrageous abuses in the
A lengthy, engrossing, and sorrowful fable justice system—ones that have hardly been
from Karim Aïnouz, set mostly in Rio de Ja- redressed. It stars Michael B. Jordan as Bryan Mr. Arkadin
neiro. The action begins in the early nine- Stevenson, from whose memoir it’s adapted. A Acting on a tip from a dying man in Naples,
teen-fifties: the air seems rich in sensual Harvard-trained lawyer, Stevenson moves to a Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden), a small-
and professional promise for the teen-aged small Alabama town in 1989 to review charges time grifter with a Flatbush accent, tracks
Eurídice (Carol Duarte) and her older sis- against death-row inmates—most of whom, like down a feared global potentate, Gregory
ter, Guida (Julia Stockler), yet both of them him, are black. One of them, Walter McMillian Arkadin (Orson Welles), who hires him for a
know that the freedoms they crave continue (Jamie Foxx), has been framed for the murder sensitive job: to investigate Arkadin himself.
The grandee is pained by “a conscience and
no memory at all,” but his conscience doesn’t
prevent the bodies from piling up as Van
IN REVIVAL Stratten, trawling the European underworld,
unwittingly unleashes the century’s political
monsters along with Arkadin’s own intimate
demons. This fractured “Citizen Kane,” built
of frames within frames and mirrors within
mirrors, is aptly brought to life by Welles’s
later style, born of low budgets and high anx-
iety, its grotesque closeups and sharp diago-
nals suggesting worlds and minds askew. In
Welles’s oracular script, Arkadin, a gleefully
orotund storyteller, reveals nothing, but the
film’s love stories—untender tussles—are
sources of bittersweet memories and bad faith:
there, Welles, Lear-like though not yet forty,
confesses all. Released in 1955.—R.B. (IFC
Center, Jan. 3-5, and streaming.)

Uncut Gems
Adam Sandler’s frantic and fidgety perfor-
mance as Howard Ratner, a diamond-district
jewelry dealer scrambling to stave off calam-
ity, provides the emotional backbone for the
brothers Josh and Benny Safdie’s recklessly
audacious and wildly accomplished blend of
crime thriller, family melodrama, and sports
drama. Howard, a compulsive gambler, is deep
in debt to loan sharks, one of whom (Eric
An almost unbearable air of impending doom suffuses Blake Ed- Bogosian) is menacingly insistent. Howard
wards’s drama “Days of Wine and Roses,” from 1962, about a young has left his exasperated wife (Idina Menzel)
San Francisco couple’s descent into alcoholism. (It screens on Jan. 2 at for his employee (Julia Fox) and is trying to
set the whole mess aright with the sale of a
the Quad.) The story is set in motion with an acute view of the era’s smuggled stone, in which a distinguished cli-
sexual politics, particularly in the workplace. Jack Lemmon stars as Joe ent, the professional basketball player Kevin
Clay, a glad-handing public-relations executive who’s ashamed of the Garnett (playing himself), takes an interest.
The supercharged action—from a script by the
near-pimping that his corporate clients demand of him. He drowns his Safdies and Ronald Bronstein—ingeniously
misgivings in drink and aggressively coaxes a client’s secretary, Kirsten intertwines real-world sporting events and
Arnesen (Lee Remick), to join him in giddy oblivion; they rush into a real-life characters (including the Weeknd)
with sharp-eyed scenes from the high-pressure
marriage that lurches along on destructive benders, endangering their gemstone business, the gambler’s tightrope
young daughter (Debbie Megowan) and threatening to drive them walk, and the habits and rituals of suburban
apart. The emotional, physical, and financial torments that ravage their Jewish New Yorkers. The movie’s pinball-rapid
combinations rise to a frenzied pitch that’s
AF ARCHIVE / ALAMY

1
existence are matched by humiliations and recriminations that shatter exhilarating and awe-inspiring.—R.B. (In
their very personalities, and the abrupt editing of Edwards’s shocking limited release.)
images conceals additional horrors that the plot clearly implies; the
movie plays like an extended ad for Prohibition, three decades after For more reviews, visit
it ended.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town

10 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020

 style was architectural and avant-garde. one Friday evening, on a prissy cut of pork
Gotham got a new executive chef last called a “porcelet,” a bone-in chop from
spring, the first since Portale, who left to a milk-fed piglet, which was not partic-
start a restaurant of his own, was hired, ularly flavorful (and, worse, overcooked).

1
in 1984. Victoria Blamey, a forty-year- I absolutely loved a small bowl of
old native of Chile, made a name for caraflex cabbage, a cone-shaped va-
herself by bringing Chumley’s, another riety: the ruffled leaves were at once
TABLES FOR TWO vaunted New York institution, into the meltingly tender and crisp-edged, but-
new millennium. Under Blamey, Go- tery and sweet, crisscrossed with a salty,
Gotham tham’s menu is peppered with exciting garlicky seaweed gremolata and hiding
12 E. 12th St. and eclectic ingredients that convey an pearls of fregola glazed in a tart, fruity
of-the-moment worldliness, including burned-onion broth. But I longed to free
One recent afternoon at the restaurant obscure and highly specific strains of this down-to-earth dish—priced, aston-
formerly known as Gotham Bar & Grill, fruits and vegetables—Castelfranco, ishingly, at thirty-two dollars—from a
a host led me and a friend to a sort of dais ceci neri, celtuce, curry leaf, calamansi. menu with its head stuck in clouds of
at the back of the gargantuan restaurant, Yet the context in which they’re pre- caviar, foie gras (for now) with truffle
which was nearly empty. Each of the two sented doesn’t seem to have changed at gelée, and rib eye for two.
other tables on our little stage was also all, which is a shame, especially given that I get the sense that Blamey might
PHOTOGRAPH BY KYOKO HAMADA FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE

occupied by a pair of women, all of whom the bar for stuffiness has moved signifi- reach the height of her powers in a more
were wearing beige and sporting haircuts cantly lower in the past thirty years. relaxed, unfettered setting, serving her
that you might describe—and my friend “Bar & Grill” has been dropped from humble, homey pea dal and her shiny-
did—as Park Avenue helmets. We had the name, but the dining room, with its crusted whole-wheat sourdough, flecked
quipped, on the way, about being “ladies yellowed parchment-colored walls and with brined pumpkin seeds and black
who lunch,” but suddenly it didn’t seem pleated-parachute light fixtures, looks ex- quinoa, to a different kind of crowd. At
like a joke. The next thing I knew, I was actly the same, except quite a bit worse for dinner, the dining room was populated
ordering a dish called Chicken Supreme. wear. The service is formal and sometimes mostly by large parties that seemed to
Perhaps I shouldn’t have expected stiff; more than one dish is finished with be composed of junior analysts at invest-
different from a restaurant that opened a tiny pitcher of sauce or broth, poured ment banks, bonding on the company
in Greenwich Village more than three tableside for dramatic flourish. card, or wealthy septuagenarian couples,
decades ago, with the goal of translating It’s clear that Blamey has interesting bragging loudly about how long they’d
uptown-calibre fine dining for a down- ideas, but they feel, for the most part, been eating there and complaining about
town address. In the eighties and nineties, choked, at odds with the restaurant’s slow service. (“We want. Our FOOD,”
Gotham’s owners sought to class up the long-held and now outdated identity. The I heard a stately gentleman growl at a
neighborhood with white tablecloths Chicken Supreme may be garnished with hapless busser.) I suppose Gotham has
and the chef Alfred Portale’s tuna tartare. makrut lime, but it’s still a boring breast, always been, and remains, a place for la-
But they also aimed to minimize stuffi- seared, sliced, and served over a sweet dies who lunch. A toast, as Sondheim
ness, to better integrate into the hipper squash purée and beluga lentils. The ap- archly put it, to that invincible bunch.
environs. The loftlike dining room felt rel- pealing flavor combination of Brussels (Dishes $18-$55.)
atively edgy at the time; Portale’s plating sprouts, dates, and tamarind was wasted, —Hannah Goldfield
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 11
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 THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT ern humans. Inside it for all that time ers appear to be what people whose
GOOD OLD DAYS has been a fourteen-and-a-half-foot- business it is to decipher cave paintings
wide image, painted in dark-red pig- call therianthropes, humans with ani-
ll times seem to those within them ment, depicting about eight tiny bipedal mal elements, like heads. These eight,
A uniquely miserable. Even suppos-
edly halcyon historical moments were
figures, bearing what look to be spears
and ropes, bravely hunting the local wild
then, are the earliest known examples
of this mysteriously durable manner of
horrible if you had to live through them: pigs and buffalo. The discoverers of its mythical depiction, which runs forward
the eighteen-nineties in London, which antiquity, a team of archeologists at to Egyptian wall paintings and, for that
now seem a time of wit and Café Royal Griffith University, in Australia, includ- matter, to modern animation. Therian-
luxury, were mostly seen then as deca- ing Maxime Aubert, the chief author thropes, it seems, reflect the symbolic
dent, if you were no fan of Oscar Wilde’s, of an article about the painting in Na- practice of giving to humans the pow-
or as dark and disgraceful, if you were. ture, call it “to our knowledge, currently ers of animals, a shamanistic rite that
The allegedly placid American nine- the oldest pictorial record of storytell- seems tied to the origins of religion, and
teen-fifties were regarded, at the time, ing and the earliest figurative artwork here it is, for the first time, a startup.
as a decade of frightening conformity in the world.” The detailed resolution of the im-
and approaching apocalypse. The very first storytelling picture! ages in the Nature article is at first dis-
But this does not mean that some The first narrative, and it tells one of appointing. Though the buffalo, called
moments can’t be uniquely miserable. the simplest and most resonant stories anoa, are distinct enough, one of the
Ours surely is, with the recent collapse we have: a tale of the hunter and the human figures, we’re told, has “a taper-
of progressive Britain following on the hunted, of small and easily mocked pur- ing profile that possibly merges into the
constitutional crisis of liberal America, suers trying to bring down a scary but base of a thick tail and with short, curved
with so many people around the world vulnerable beast. What’s more, the hunt- limbs splayed out to the side. In our
caught between political polarities, and opinion, this part of the body resem-
with the planet warming daily. No one bles the lower half of a lizard or croc-
has ever improved on Yeats’s expres- odile. It is thus possible that [the the-
sion of indignation after the Great War: rianthrope] represents a composite of
the best lack all conviction, while the at least three different kinds of animals:
worst are full of passionate intensity; a human, an anoa and a quadrupedal
though in our time the best often share reptile.” To this chimerical composite,
the passionate intensity but can’t be one might add the trained eye of an
heard, because the worst have a smart- Australian archeologist, which seems
phone with a Twitter app. necessary to ascertain the full effect.
In the midst of such unease, we tend And yet it’s impossible not to feel
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA

to seek out moments of cheer or just a shudder of communion with these

consolation, and suddenly we have found ancient beings, recounting their hope-
one, in a cave. The cave is in Indone- ful stories of abundance in a time that
sia—the limestone cave of Leang Bulu’ was, certainly, even more unstable than
Sipong 4, on the island of Sulawesi, to our own. (We worry daily about the
be precise—and it was occupied, ac- next good leader; they worried daily
cording to recent findings, more than about the next good meal.) Nor would
forty thousand years ago, by early mod- the storytelling have been the product
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 13
of a merely male hierarchy of hunting. verse contemporaries. Scorsese recently truth is that Scorsese and Coppola are
The patriarchy had little place in caves. wrote, in the Times, that the superhero right, in that it takes a huge effort of
A study sponsored by the National genre, whatever charms it may have, is the disciplined imagination to turn
Geographic Society in 2013 suggests degrading cinema by pulling it away human attention away from daydreams
that three-quarters of the hand sten- from the real world of ambiguity, from of magical powers to the truth of our
cils found on the walls of dozens of the “complexity of people and their con- contradictory natures. Still, there is no
European caves were made by women, tradictory and sometimes paradoxical denying our collective relief when the
and that the paintings alongside them natures, the way they can hurt one an- therianthropes arrive to save the day.
likely were as well. Early man may have other and love one another and sud- Our oldest stories are like our new-
thrown the spears, but early woman denly come face to face with themselves.” est; we look for explanation and hope
made the pictures telling how. Coppola agreed, telling reporters that for a happy ending. People, then and
Significant scientific discoveries do the Marvel-franchise movies are “despi- now, tell tales about the brave things
two things at once: advance the narrow cable” for failing to supply their audi- they are about to do, or just did, or are
field of fact and extend the imaginative ence with “some enlightenment, some thinking of doing, or thought they
field of wonder. Thinking of those im- knowledge, some inspiration.” might do, if they were not the people
ages unspooling in the dark of a cave Yet our oldest picture story seems to they are but had the superpowers we
brings to mind many metaphors, among belong, whether we want it to or not, all wish we had. Our enterprises vary;
them intimations of modern movies. In- more to the Marvel universe than to our entertainments do not. Plans to
deed, the cave painting could be entered Marty Scorsese’s. The therianthropes, bring down the hunt and bring home
as evidence into a key aesthetic and story- with their composite identities, are re- the anoa bacon change; our hopes of
telling argument of today—the debate ally the first superheroes, X-Men united getting it done will never alter. It seems
between the paladins of American film, on the wall for a fight. A human with a good moral to take us through these
Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Cop- the strength of a bull! Another with the difficult days and into the next decade.
pola, and their Marvel Cinematic Uni- guile of a crocodile! Perhaps the deeper —Adam Gopnik

TABLOID FODDER hattan. ‘I think they got it down to 3 ricane.” Reporters would call the desk
POSTIAN DIASPORA days,’ he said.” looking for editors, readers would call
Rushetzky, who is sixty-seven years to complain, tipsters would phone in
old, is about five feet five and has an story ideas. Rushetzky made plenty of
intense gaze and thinning gray hair. outgoing calls, too, occasionally to sleep-
His trimmed mustache, a look popu- ing editors when big stories broke in the
lar when he was a young man, is once middle of the night. “I had calluses on
again in fashion—or so said the Post my fingers from rotary phones,” he said.
hen news breaks inside the world on October 5th, in a story titled “Mil- Sometimes spouses of Post staffers called
W of the New York Post, past or
present, it spreads quickly to Post Na-
lennials Are Bringing Back the Mus-
tache.” He grew up in Bath Beach,
looking for errant husbands or wives,
but Rushetzky is discreet. He knows
tion, an e-mail group of more than twelve Brooklyn, and attended Lafayette High where the bodies are buried, and many
hundred of the paper’s former and cur- School, where Jeffrey Epstein was in of them still owe him money.
rent employees. Myron Rushetzky, once his graduating class. “He did not sign At some point, word got out that, if
a head city-desk assistant at the Post, is my yearbook,” Rushetzky said the other you needed quick cash, Rushetzky would
in charge. He maintains strict criteria day, in his one-bedroom co-op in Wood- come through. From a drawer of a roll-
for topics worthy of one of his blasts: side, Queens. The décor includes Mets top desk in his living room—not far
births, promotions, book events, honors, memorabilia, a poster for “A Chorus from two urns containing the ashes of
and retirements. Also deaths. Line,” and relics from Rushetzky’s long his cats, Isabelle and Haley—he retrieved
Many of Rushetzky’s old colleagues career in journalism. In 1974, as a stu- a yellowing piece of paper, on which he’d
have told their families to notify him dent at City College, he took a side job written the initials of borrowers next to
as soon as they keel over. In recent years, at the Post as a copyboy. He worked amounts of no-interest loans, mostly
some of his e-mails have begun omi- there for nearly forty years, and then from the nineteen-eighties. Repaid loans
nously, as in “Post Nation, we have lost took a buyout. (He asked that his exit had been crossed out. Many were for
another one.” When he announced that package include a Post subscription.) ten or twenty dollars—“In those days,
Carl Pelleck, a cigar-chomping police On display in his apartment is a mock you could get drunk on ten dollars,” he
reporter, had died, many people com- front page—or “wood,” in tabloid par- said—while others were larger. The
mented on how Pelleck had helped them lance—that proclaims, “AFTER TEN Australian-born Post veteran Steve Dun-
when they were rookies. “I got assigned YEARS, WE ALL HAVE MYROMANIA.” leavy borrowed regularly from the Bank
to cover rising milk prices. In Benson- It dates to 1987, when Rushetzky cele- of Myron, but he and Rushetzky had an
hurst,” JoAnne Wasserman, a former brated a decade as a head city-desk as- agreement: if a newspaper strike loomed,
reporter, wrote. “I asked Pelleck how sistant, a pre-Internet position that he Dunleavy would pay him back before it
long the subway was from lower Man- describes as being in “the eye of the hur- began. “I didn’t realize how many peo-
14 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020
ple still owe,” Rushetzky said, peering with Karl Ove, she was just exhausted
at the paper. with being written about,” the author
Since leaving the Post, in 2013, Ru- said. (Karl Ove’s “My Struggle” series
shetzky has been busy with activities described his life—including his mar-
such as the Silurians Press Club (an or- riage to Boström Knausgård, who has
ganization of mostly retired journalists), bipolar disorder—in long-winded, un-
SilverSneakers exercise classes, and Post sparing detail.) “But my book is differ-
Nation, which evolved out of Rushetz- ent,” she said. “I changed so much. The
ky’s birthday list. For four decades, he part where the brother pees in bottles
sent birthday and anniversary cards to so that he doesn’t have to leave his room?
colleagues, friends, and their children. I made that up.” She paused. “Actually,
He bought so many cards that he was I talked to my brother later, and he once
known to staff at Hallmark stores—but had a job where he had to walk down
only those which participated in the so many stairs to get to the bathroom
Gold Crown program, which offers re- that he did pee in bottles. He asked me,
wards to frequent buyers. A birthday ‘How did you know?’”
card that Rushetzky sent to the play- She stood in a bedroom display—a
wright Lanford Wilson, a drinking buddy Linda Boström Knausgård stage strewn with the articles of inti-
from the Lion’s Head bar, is in Wilson’s macy. The careful details, she said, re-
official archive, at the University of Mis- town, she visited the Red Hook IKEA—a minded her of her mother. She lingered
souri. Rushetzky always sent a card to notional Sweden from whose windows by an olive-green cabinet. “I want to
Rupert Murdoch, who, Rushetzky noted, one could see, rising sedately in the rain, paint my study this color,” she said. “I
was born on March 11th, the same day the Statue of Liberty. don’t think it makes you write better,
as Dorothy Schiff, who sold Murdoch “Every couple that comes in here having your walls be one color or some
the Post, in 1976. The boss responded starts to fight!” she said, shaking her other color, but the green is calming.”
with thank-you notes. head. “It’s all the picking out. And in Later, in the cafeteria, she ordered
Now Rushetzky sends birthday greet- the Marketplace area downstairs, where meatballs with lingonberry sauce. “I feel
ings electronically. On his own birthday, you find everything yourself—that’s at home when I eat this,” she said. As a
this past summer, Susan Edelman, a cur- where the real fighting is.” She joined a kid, she liked to accompany her mother
rent Post employee, announced the fact line of shoppers wending their way to rehearsals. Ingrid encouraged her: at
to Post Nation. Good wishes and grat- through the maze of settees and shower nine, Boström Knausgård played one of
itude flowed in from all over. Warren cubbies and office chairs. “Maybe too the von Trapp children in a production
Hoge, who logged a decade at the Post modern,” she said, sizing up a stain- of “The Sound of Music,” and she con-
before joining the Times, wrote,“Myron— less-steel kitchen. She reached down to tinued to act into her late teens. “During
You are truly the national leader we all touch a coffee table. “The surface is very my first year onstage, everything was so

1
believe in.” clean. That is Swedish.” easy,” she said. “The second year, I started
—Susan Mulcahy Boström Knausgård, who is forty- to look at myself: ‘What am I doing
seven, was wearing a black blouse tucked here? Now I have to sing, now I have to
LESS IS MORE DEPT. into a long black skirt, with black tights say this.’ With this self-critic thing start-
POST-STRUGGLE and bright-white sneakers. Her hair is ing, I think it was my first depression.”
dark and short. Her voice—low, melo- She ruminated on her love life. “My
dious—was at odds with her body lan- Struggle” is six volumes and more than
guage: skittish, almost ill at ease. Three a million words. In that light, “Welcome
years ago, after Boström Knausgård sep- to America,” with its valorization of si-
arated from the novelist Karl Ove lence, its poetic compression, and its
Knausgård, she moved to Ystad, in the slightness—the book is a hundred and
he Swedish poet and novelist Linda south of Sweden. This past August, her sixty pages long—feels pointed. “Things
T Boström Knausgård held up a finger.
“Do you hear that buzz?” she asked. “That
mother, Ingrid, died, and, the week of
the funeral, she moved again, this time
would have been different, I think, if Karl
hadn’t gone away into his books,” Bo-
is the sound of IKEA. We are in Hell and into a three-bedroom apartment in a ström Knausgård said. “He is really car-
we will never leave.” Boström Knaus- Stockholm suburb. (She still hasn’t ing about his children, but he was bored
gård was in New York on a book tour; finished unpacking.) being a full-time parent. He thought that
her second novel, “Welcome to Amer- “Welcome to America” commemo- he would like it, but he really didn’t. He
ica,” was recently translated into En- rates Ingrid, but it’s complicated. The would act like he was dying when I got
glish. The book, despite its title, is set semi-autobiographical book follows a home from work. The idea that he could
not in the United States but, rather, young girl, Ellen, who stops speaking. not physically bear to spend time with
within the confines of a Stockholm apart- Ellen’s mother is a charismatic actress. his baby, that his writing was the only
ment, similar to the one in which Bo- Ingrid—also an actress—had mixed important thing—it hurt me.”
ström Knausgård grew up. While in feelings about the book. “After the thing In January, Boström Knausgård will
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 15
relocate to London, where her four chil- “Hope.” “There was nothing here,” you’re not in control of your own behav-
dren live with Karl Ove. Her boyfriend Fairey said. He wore Chuck Taylors, ior after you see a logo?”
of two years will remain in Sweden, she and a jacket embellished with band Logos have defined Fairey’s career.
said, “so this is not easy. We will have pins: Black Flag, the Ramones. “It was As a student at the Rhode Island School
to Skype and phone.” The boyfriend is warehouses, some tags, and some peo- of Design, he screen-printed posters
a Chilean songwriter and guitarist. “He ple who looked strung out.” with the word “OBEY”—now the name
comes up to here”—she indicated her In 2009, the real-estate developer Tony of his clothing company—and the face
shoulder—“and when we first started Goldman asked him to create a mural of Andre the Giant, and plastered them
dating his mother told him, ‘Is she lon- for a building he’d just bought in Miami. all over Providence. He also made stick-
ger than you? She cannot be longer Fairey painted figures such as Aung San ers. “You see the Andre sticker once, it’s
than you!’” (Karl Ove is six-three.) Try- Suu Kyi, the Burmese politician, and his silly and absurd, and maybe you just ig-
ing to describe her boyfriend, Boström own wife, Amanda, on the building. After nore it,” he said. “Then you see it in five
Knausgård began, “He’s . . .” She stopped. Goldman died, in 2012, Fairey returned more places around town, and it really
Then she exclaimed, “He’s nice!” Smil- to paint a new mural, of men whom the starts to nag at you.” He studied Heideg-
ing shyly, she added, “He is consider- developer had admired. Now the wall is ger’s theory of phenomenology—“Ba-
ate. When I am too quiet, he goes, ‘You covered with the faces of David Bowie, sically, the idea that people have become
have to tell me what you’re thinking. I Miles Davis, Andy Warhol, and the Dalai numb to their surroundings and view

1
want to know!’” Lama. “Sometimes people ask, ‘Why things in a hazy, muted way”—and the
—Katy Waldman aren’t there any women in it?’” Fairey said. Situationists, who posted Marxist quotes
“The first one was almost all women, around Paris during the 1968 student
MIAMI POSTCARD and I didn’t think about the fact that protests. In 1990, Fairey wrote a mani-
LEGIT this mural was gonna last way longer.” festo titled “The Social and Psycholog-
A Citibank awning jutted out from ical Explanation of Andre the Giant
a mural announcing, “Hello, Beautiful!” Has a Posse.” (He later renamed it “The
Workers strung lights near a makeshift Manifesto”—“snappier,” he said.) It ex-
bar. Fairey’s solo show “Facing the Giant: plained that his art had no meaning and
3 Decades of Dissent” would open that was designed merely to provoke a reac-
night in one of Wynwood’s galleries. “A tion. “The intellectual framework for it
he other day, the artist Shepard lot of people want to enjoy what a place wasn’t just to justify my mischief,” he
T Fairey paid a visit to the Wyn-
wood Walls, a cluster of mural-covered
like this has to offer, but they don’t want
to look at a logo,” he said, regarding an
said. It was to make his stuff go viral.
He also gave his work to select col-
buildings in a formerly derelict part of installation of bottles of Don Julio te- lectors—“friends who were skateboard-
Miami. He first went to the district in quila, one of the opening-night spon- ers, punk rockers, into hip-hop.” They’d
2004, four years before he became fa- sors. “They dismiss things so superfi- slap the stickers on their gear. “Others
mous for creating the graphic poster cially: ‘Oh, Nike underwrote that, so that would see it and go, ‘I don’t know what
of Barack Obama’s face and the word delegitimizes the entire venture.’ Like, that is, but the right kind of people with
the right vibe are representing it.’”
Having graduated from exhibiting on
the outsides of buildings to inside them,
Fairey has a lot of stuff to sell. A gallery
across from the Citi Lounge had doz-
ens of original Fairey art works on the
walls, priced between five thousand and
fourteen thousand dollars. The Obama
“Hope” poster was not among them.
“Everybody knows it,” Fairey said. “It
doesn’t need to be in here.” The poster
made his career, but creating it wasn’t
an entirely positive experience. He ended
up in multiple lawsuits with the Asso-
ciated Press (the source of the photograph
he used for his rendering), and in 2012
he was sentenced to two years proba-
tion and ordered to pay a fine of twenty-
five thousand dollars for destroying and
fabricating legal documents—actions
that he now calls “shameful and embar-
rassing.” Of the over-all project, he said,
“I wish I’d spent more time arguing about ‘Star Wars’ online.” “It was probably a net negative for me.
The emotional and financial cost was Bamford through the window. “Oh, hi!” In her latest sets, she treats the sta-
really extreme.” Bamford called. @nugget_queen_ was bility that she’s found since then as a
He wandered outside and ran into Lena Ceretto, who had described her- kind of Pyrrhic victory. “I don’t have any
the artist Tristan Eaton, who was check- self in her response as a “twenty-two new stuff ” about mental illness, she tells
ing on a mural he’d painted two years year old nanny slash NYU dropout.” She her audiences. “I thought maybe I should
ago (a red-white-and-blue collage of had been making a collage when she worry about that. But then I remem-
women’s faces, called “American Power”). saw Bamford’s tweet. (Bamford almost bered: I’m on antipsychotics, and it’s no
“The paint’s held up nice, given all the always selects the first person to reply. longer possible for me! To! Worry!”
sun it gets,” Eaton said. “Except once, in Florida, it was some- The run-through concluded with a
“Did they clear-coat it?” Fairey asked. body who was ‘Go Trump’ and ‘Make warbling song about coping with loved
“They must have,” Eaton said. They America Great Again,’” she said. “I know ones. (“We’re all menopausal! We just
discussed how reds are always the first we’re all human beings, but I felt like had tequila! Let’s change the subject!”)
colors to fade. Both men live in L.A., that would be a hard one.”) Ceretto applauded.
and Eaton sometimes comes to Fairey’s Ceretto had brought two Polaroid Bamford explained that the one-
studio to make stencils with Fairey’s laser cameras. “Can I hug you?” she asked person coffee-shop show was not all
cutter. “His brain and his laser cutter are Bamford. “I was almost on time, but that different from online dating. (Be-
both very luxurious things to have ac- then I forgot my psych meds.”
cess to,” Eaton said. She ordered a croissant, and Bam-
“I charge three cents for my two ford started her set. “So, uh . . . hello,
cents,” Fairey joked. In the age of hun- Brooklyn!” she began. The espresso ma-
dred-and-twenty-thousand-dollar ba- chine shrieked.
nanas, there are better ways to make When Bamford is addressing one

1
a buck. person, her comedic style—a childlike
—Sheila Marikar speaking voice intercut with squawks,
growls, and a sultry baritone—both soft-
STAGEFRIGHT DEPT. ens and intensifies. She taped her 2012
RUN-THROUGH comedy special, “The Special Special
Special!,” with only her parents for an
audience, in her living room. A 2017 doc-
umentary, “Old Baby,” follows her as she
does her act before audiences of gradu-
ally increasing size: first to her reflec-
tion in a mirror, then to her husband,
he standup comedian Maria Bam- then to a group of neighbors on a side-
T ford sat down in a Brooklyn coffee
shop and waited for someone with the
walk bench, and, finally, to a packed the-
atre. At the Brooklyn coffee shop, she Maria Bamford
Twitter handle @nugget_queen_ to join occasionally directed her rapid-fire pat-
her. “I’m always terrified to meet the ter into the middle distance. Outside fore meeting her husband, in 2012, she
person,” she said. “I look at their Twit- the window, a family in matching puffer went on “at least seventy” online dates.)
ter feed and I think, Oh, boy, I don’t coats peered at her. Dating apps, she said, “kind of helped
know. Because you cannot tell from Bamford was wearing a velour sweater me go, ‘Oh, people are just going to
someone’s social media what they’re and big sparkly earrings, her blond hair show up and be pleasant.’” Generally,
going to be like in person. You just can’t.” streaked with pink highlights. Because the volunteers’ reactions have been pos-
Bamford, who was in town for four of the medications she takes, she has a itive. “I did have one where the guy no-
shows at the Bell House, is known for tremor. (“Weakness is the brand!” she ticeably did not laugh at all,” she said.
her jittery, surreal monologues about shouted during her show the next eve- “But he himself was nice.”
mental illness, and suffers from a com- ning, holding out her quivering fingers.) Ceretto confided to Bamford that
bination of self-proclaimed laziness and Eight years ago, when Bamford was she wanted to try standup comedy her-
performance anxiety, which can make forty-one, she suffered a series of break- self. “I have jokes written down in my
it difficult for her to rehearse. In 2018, downs and hospitalizations. Afterward, notes app,” she said. “It’s O.K. if I do
she began issuing periodic invitations, she wasn’t sure if she’d work again. She’d just, like, five to seven minutes, right?”
on Twitter, for fans who live in cities previously made comedy about the diffi- “Oh, they won’t let you do more than
where she is appearing to meet her for culty of maintaining equilibrium on the three,” Bamford said.
coffee and listen to her run through her psychological margins; a 2007 scripted “I feel like we’re going to do that thing
set before she performs. The previous Web series, “The Maria Bamford Show,” where we talk and talk and never say
evening, she had posted such an invita- depicted her, after a fictional breakdown, goodbye,” Ceretto said.
tion, noting, “As always, there will be moving back in with her parents in Du- “Oh, no, we’re good,” Bamford said,
victual and bev.” luth. “It was my worst fear,” she said. and stood up.
A young woman waved furiously at “Then it ended up happening.” —Lizzie Feidelson
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 17
 and in 1943 he had brought out a little
PERSONAL HISTORY book of his early stories. His subject
was local Indian life; he wrote more

GRIEF
particularly, and with great love, about
Indian ritual. His style in these early
stories was based on Pearl Buck and
A writer reckons with loss. “The Good Earth.” This Biblical style,
and the semi-religious nature of the sto-
BY V. S. NAIPAUL ries, appeared to isolate the Indian com-
munity from the rest of island life, and
I feel now that my father stuck to this
way of writing because it was easier for
him, easier to deal with one commu-
nity, one set of values, and to people his
Biblical landscape. To introduce others
would have been to complicate matters,
as I myself was to find out later, when
I began to write. Now, however, he be-
came bolder; his view became broader,
it took in more of the island, and he
began to look for comedy, which he
hadn’t done before.
These comic stories were among his
best, and almost everything he wrote in
this mood was accepted by the BBC
for the “Caribbean Voices” literary pro-
gram. So it happened that at the end
of his life, and when he was on half pay,
and half an invalid, my father began to
make a little money from his stories.
“Caribbean Voices” asked me to read
one of the stories for them. The fee was
four guineas. This was more or less the
fare from Oxford to London. I was de-
lighted that the story was accepted, and
happy to do the reading. But when I
wrote my father I made rather too much
about the cost of the journey from Ox-
ford. He apologized, though he had
nothing to apologize for. The failing
y father was forty-five or forty-six on my father’s full pay. But my father, was mine, taking away a little of his
M when he had a heart attack. This
trouble with his heart was surprising,
now near the end of things, was pos-
sessed by a strange lightness of spirit. It
pleasure in the modest success of his
story. His letter made me regret my
since for all the years we had known him was as though the heart illness, officially thoughtlessness—it was no more than
as children his trouble was his stomach recognized by doctors and the newspa- that, fealty, but it drove him to spend a
and his indigestion, requiring bottles and per, gave full expression and an extra va- little of the very little money that he
bottles of a particular brand of medici- lidity to the unhappiness he had felt for had on a gift for me. He bought me,
nal stomach powder, which he never had years, with the Guardian, with my moth- with some remnant of his nationalist
the foresight to buy when he was all er’s family, with his poverty, with preju- feeling, an Indian brass vase. The gran-
right, preferring instead during a crisis dice and the British Empire and the un- deur of his sentiment was frustrated by
to send his children on the long walk to happy state of India, and with many other the gift itself. It was too heavy and awk-
the local pharmacy for the powder. things; and it was no longer necessary wardly shaped to entrust to the post
A couple of years after this heart trou- now for him to go over any of the points. office. I don’t think my father had real-
ble, my father was put on half pay by the In this strange lightness of spirit that ized how difficult his gift was, and what
Trinidad Guardian, the newspaper for possessed him, my father turned to the trouble he would have getting it to me.
which he worked. I was in school in En- writing of comic short stories. He had His solution was to pass the vase to a
gland when this happened, and I wor- been writing stories for more than a de- branch of his family. They worked in
ried about the effect of this half pay on cade; he loved journalism, but to be a London (that migration, of which they
my family; things had been bad enough proper writer was his great ambition, were pioneers, had already begun), and
18 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO AMARGO
they were richer and more adventurous a carrier bag for me. I didn’t look at the can never tell beforehand for whom we
than people close to us. The idea was that vase—I wished to match their cool- will feel grief. I never thought, after all
someone from that adventurous family ness—and it was only later, on the train, I had suffered for my father, that I would
branch might, in his own sweet time, on between Paddington and Reading, that be laid low, and almost in the same way,
a trip to London, take that awkwardly I took it out and considered it in the by my younger brother. He was not close
shaped vase over and pass it to me. dim railway light. to me. He wished to appear to be mak-
It was an arrangement that meant I In shape it was classical, like an urn, ing his own way. I had to let him go,
might have to wait quite a while for my wide at the mouth and at the base; and and I got used to the distance.
father’s gift to get to me. My father, his though the idea had immediately to be One morning, thirty years after the
grand gesture made, appeared resigned put aside, it might have been used for death of my father, my telephone rang.
to whatever might happen. In Oxford human ashes. There was no decoration It was my brother’s wife. I asked, in the
I waited, losing faith in the brass vase. on the outside, no roses, no arabesques. common way of courtesy, “What news?”
One day, a telegram came for me The goldsmith or silversmith had been She said, “Bad news, I’m afraid. Shiva’s
from London. Bad news come now. It content to make plain dashes, so to speak, dead.” It did not surprise me. He was a
was from the people with the vase. It with his chisel, and these dashes had drinking man, and I had seen death on
couldn’t have been more brutal. But been allowed to make patterns. his face the previous year, at the funeral
some instinct for drama, some wish to The vase stayed with me for years. I of my younger sister. People there had
serve death in a correct way, had made drew it often, and sometimes attempted— talked about his worrying appearance.
them send a telegram. I knew that the more difficult, this—to render it in wa- They had tried to get him to see a doc-
bad news was the death of my father. It tercolor. Because of this detached study, tor (there were two in the family), but
could be no one else. Still, during the it became in the end only an object, with- he had always refused. The appearance
journey up to London, on the four- out associations; the grief of which it of impending death was more notice-
pound train, I tried in my cruellest way, once spoke so directly was rubbed away, able on him in a television appearance
and always in vain, to imagine other like the grief itself, though that stayed a few days later—so noticeable, in fact,
family members who might have died with me so completely and for so long, I wondered whether the television peo-
and whose death might have warranted waiting to be recalled, that I was able, ple had not been worried by it.
the sending of a telegram. some years later, during the writing of So I was not surprised by the news
By the time I got to London, grief— my first novel, a comedy, very light (but of his death. The pain built up on the
amazingly unknown till then, though full of anxiety for me), to transfer much railway journey to London. By the time
I was twenty-one—had taken me over. of the episode (beginning with the tele- we were passing through Wimbledon
The house was in the Paddington gram) to that quite different book, in a (an ugly terrace in the railway cutting),
area, off the Harrow Road. There was concealment and sublimation of grief. I could recognize from old, even ancient,
no ceremony of welcome, not because This period of disturbance took me experience that, surprised though I was,
of the death, I felt, but more (though I through to the end of my time at Ox- grief had returned to possess me. I had
hardly knew London) because of the ford. I had now to leave, go into the no idea how long it was going to last.
cheerlessness of the area. The death was unknown, and somehow seek to get The first symptom of grief that day
not easy to talk about, and while this started as a writer. The many anxieties was an inability to eat. It was new to
stiff conversation was going on I saw I lived with helped to push grief away. me. It made my grief concrete, and it
on a shelf what I felt sure was my fa- I felt I had been inoculated against grief. lasted all week, disappearing only after
ther’s brass vase. It was unpolished, with- I had drunk that bitterness to the dregs, the cremation. One of the attendants at
out a shine, looking rather neglected. A and since human beings have limited the crematorium, just before the coffin
dry flower stalk—a piece of homemak- capacity I didn’t think I would be able rolled away to be consumed, invited me
ing abandoned and gone bad—added to do so again. to place my hand on the coffin. The
to the feeling of neglect. The vase had The months and years passed. Thirty rites of death were completely new to
been taken over by the house, without years passed. I wrote many books; I be- me; this was the comfort that many be-
regard or relish, and I wondered, while came a writer. My serenity was like a fore me had instinctively sought. It didn’t
we talked, how I might ask about it. A permanent condition. I became more work for me. The coffin was a coffin;
good part of me would have felt relieved and more removed from that awful jour- below my hand, wood was wood.
not to have to ask at all. ney to London, and in the moments Shiva’s wife, speaking of the funeral
When I did ask, as casually as I could, when I thought of it I didn’t think grief arrangements earlier in the week, had
whether the vase came from my father, could come near me again. mentioned the chapel of rest, where
the people in the house, to my surprise, It was a poor way of thinking. We Shiva at some time was to lie. But the
surrendered without a fight. They said are never finished with grief. It is part undertaker’s careful words which she
they had been puzzled by the vase, which of the fabric of living. It is always wait- was using called up fearful pictures: I
had come in someone’s luggage. Now ing to happen. Love makes memories couldn’t go to that chapel.
that I had told them that it was my fa- and life precious; the grief that comes That week of waiting for the cre-
ther’s, and he had sent it to me, they to us is proportionate to that love and mation I spent reading the first of Shi-
said they were relieved. All at once they is inescapable. va’s books. I did so in a state of exal-
became nice in my eyes. They put it in This grief has its own exigencies. We tation. It is perhaps how all writers
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 19
should be read, if we are to seize their the poor creature. Not long after this, in most glad that she couldn’t find her cat.
essence and understand what the writ- a laundry basket near the window, Na- It would have been an awful sight: the
ing meant to them. There was, unex- dira found a tiny kitten who was so young wild dogs of the desert would have torn
pectedly, a description of our father’s that its eyes were still closed. She under- the cat to pieces. The cat was big, but
funeral, thirty-two years before; it was stood then that the poor creature that the desert dogs were bigger, and the cat
shot through with emotion, and taught had been so casually killed was the mother would have had no chance against a
me in some ways how to deal with Shi- of the little kitten, who was probably the ravening pack. If it had got to know the
va’s own occasion. last of the litter. She thought she should area better, the cat might have known
Afterward, at tea in Shiva’s flat, I adopt him. The kitten slept in her bed, how to hide and protect itself. The dogs
talked to my elder sister Kamla. We with Nadira and her two children. He were later shot dead, but that revenge
talked about Shiva as a child; we re- received every attention that Nadira could couldn’t bring back the cat whom she
membered how, shortly after we had think of. She knew very little about an- had known as the tiniest kitten, moth-
moved to our own house, he had once imals, and almost nothing about cats. erless, in the laundry basket. Grief for
swallowed a plum and had begun seri- She must have made mistakes, but the that particular cat, whose ways she knew
ously to choke. Fortunately, our house kitten, later the cat, repaid the devotion so well, almost like the ways of a per-
was next door to a doctor’s office, and with extraordinary love. The cat appeared son, never left her.
he was in attendance that afternoon. He to know when Nadira was going to come And it was only when she came to
swiftly attended to the matter. It was a back to the house. It just turned up, and live with me in Wiltshire—a domes-
small crisis, but we could still, my sister it was an infallible sign that in a day or ticated landscape, the downs seemingly
and I, after all these years, celebrate the two Nadira herself would return. swept every day: no desert here, no wild
little boy’s escape from death, as though This happy relationship lasted for dogs—that she thought she could risk
it were something final. seven or eight years. Nadira decided having another cat, to undo the sorrow
I said to Kamla, expecting some then to leave the city and go and live connected with the last.
solace from her, “And now we have in the desert. She took the cat with her, She went to the Battersea rescue
nothing.” not knowing that a cat cannot easily home. In one cage she saw a very small
She said, “And now we have nothing.” change where it lives: all the extraor- black-and-white kitten, of no great
My sorrow lasted for two years. For dinary knowledge in its head, of friends beauty. Its nose was bruised and it was
two years I mentally dated everything, and enemies and hiding places, built crying. It was being bullied by the big-
even the purchase of a book, by its dis- up over time, has to do with a partic- ger cats in the cage. It was the runt of
tance from Shiva’s death. ular place. A cat in a new setting is half its litter and had been found in a rub-
helpless. So it turned out here. bish bin, where it had been thrown away.
adira was living in Bahawalpur, in She came back one day to her des- Everything about this kitten appealed
N Pakistan. One day, she saw a cat on
the window ledge of her room. It was
ert village and found the people agi-
tated. They had a terrible story. A pack
to Nadira. And this was the kitten that,
after the Battersea formalities, two
looking into the room in a disquieting of wild desert dogs had dragged away friends, Nancy Sladek and Farrukh
way, and she told the servant to get rid the unfortunate cat into a cane field. Dhondy, brought to us.
of the cat. He misunderstood and killed Nadira looked, fruitlessly, and was al- The kitten was absolutely terrified.
It had had an up-and-down life for
many days and had no idea what was
coming next. It tried now to run away,
though there was no place for it to run
to. It dug its little claws into the screen
door and raced up to the ceiling of the
utility room. That was as far as it could
go, and I reached up and brought him
down. Something extraordinary then
happened. It was as though, feeling my
hand, he felt my benignity. He became
calm, then he became content; he was
happy to be in my hand (not much big-
ger than him), so that in a few seconds,
guided by a cat’s instinct alone, he
moved from terror to trust. He ran up
my arm to my shoulder; when I intro-
duced him to some of my lunchtime
guests, he sought to do the same with
them. I knew nothing about cats. But
he was easy to like.
I was asked if he had already been
given a name. He hadn’t, but there was his legs, his body curved) when he got have been cured. So he had his luck;
one that came easily to mind: Augus- up. I loved to see him trotting in grass with medicine (and a vet always on
tus, not because it was a proper cat’s half as high as he was. He jumped beau- hand), over the next ten years, he had
name but because to anyone with a lit- tifully, assessing the height of the bar- his many lucky lives.
tle knowledge of Roman history it fitted. rier and the narrowness of the ledge that If we had known more about cats, we
He had been nervous at the beginning; was to receive him. He was a terrific might have spared him some of those
then he had been confident. But some runner; he liked to pretend there was lives, or we might at any rate have helped
little element of caution remained. some pursuer behind him, and as he ran to lengthen some of them. We would
When I took him in my arms—really he often looked back at this phantom not, if we had known, have entrusted
so very small—to walk him around the pursuer. These athletic gifts came to him to the care of a kindly person who
house plot, he seemed to forget his ear- him when he was very young, hardly knew as little about cats as we did. She,
lier playful character; some extraordi- out of kittenhood. I as- who had taken over Augus-
nary instinct made him tremble with sumed they would be with tus from us for a few days,
panic when I got too close to the bound- him forever. It never oc- very soon found herself in
ary of my plot, though he hardly knew curred to me that gifts that the position we had been
the place. It was another demonstration had matured so quickly in. She had to go away and
of the mystery and wonder of cats. would fade in the same way; didn’t quite know what to
The local vet said,“Cats are rewarding.” I never thought that Au- do with Augustus. What
That was reassuring, but when I went gustus’s old age would be followed was awful. She had
to the pet shop in Salisbury, to find out marred by arthritis. a friend who had, or kept,
a little more, I was cast down. The shop But with cats, so brief is many cats, perhaps even
was full of goods I as yet knew noth- their span, every sign of professionally. It was to that
ing of, and had a smell, not a disagree- vigor invariably comes with house that Augustus was
able one, a little like the smell that came a foreshadowing of decay. Cats, they taken; and so it happened that he, who
from the old-fashioned shops of the say, have nine lives, and even in those had had such a bad start in life, was now,
wholesale merchants in central Port of early days Augustus began to expend after the merest taste of freedom, given
Spain selling (among other things) his lives. His very first life would have a new idea of his destiny.
brown sugar in jute sacks, the sacks set been when, only a few days old, he was Among the cats in this new house
in the shop doorways, full of flies and thrown away in a dustbin. His second, was one who was infected with a bad
bees, the sugar turning liquid in the in our house, was when, having no tutor, virus. He took against Augustus, and
heat and in a few places oozing through no cat he might imitate, he ate or began Augustus had no one to protect him.
the sacking. to eat a mole, and poisoned himself. The Augustus who came back to us
It didn’t take me long to understand Feeling death approaching, he ran away was noticeably different from the cat
that around this simple love of cats was from the house, in order to die in the who had left us. His fur was in a bad
a whole culture I knew nothing about dignity of solitude. This was new to way, and he was clearly unwell. The
and would have to master before cats me. I knew it only from a fading mem- kindly woman who had offered to look
could become fully rewarding. I needed ory of French poetry from the sixth after him knew that there was some-
to know about their sanitary needs; I form: in the poem by Vigny, this was thing wrong. She thought she should
needed to know about litter trays. I how the wolf suffered and died, with- give the fur a shine, to suggest health.
needed to know about their food. There out speaking. It was extraordinary to She rubbed Augustus down with what
was a gadget here that claimed to di- have this poetic grandeur replicated by might have been hair oil. This gave him
vide a cat’s food for the day into four little Augustus, so small, so young, and an unnatural appearance and made him
portions, keeping all the portions re- on my own doorstep, so to speak. look iller than ever. He hated whatever
frigerated and at a fixed time releasing He had travelled far on that hard had been rubbed on his fur, and even
one chilled portion for a lucky cat. journey which he must have intended after he came back to us was trying to
Would I be able to get that thing to to be his last. He had instinctively fol- lick it off.
work? At the end of this knowledge, if lowed the line of the hedge, which The vet took Augustus’s mauling se-
it ever came, there were the cat toys would have concealed him, all the way riously. He thought he should give Au-
which this shop had in abundance: the down to the river. It was as though with gustus a blood test and took him off to
other side of the grimness of cat life, what remained of his intelligence and his surgery for the night. I never liked
the little balls, the lengths of string. That strength he wished now to drown him- the idea of surrendering Augustus to
first afternoon in the pet shop, I doubted self. He was at the end of his tether the surgery. Augustus never liked being
that I would win through to the toys when we found him. He allowed him- in the surgery; his paws sweated with
and games. self to be coaxed back into our hands. fear. But this was an emergency. When
But, with Nadira’s encouragement, I He was crying with pain, making a ter- he came back he looked ravaged. A
persevered, and soon I was able, with rible mewing sound. We took him to patch of fur under his neck was shaved
delight, to follow Augustus’s develop- the house, and the vet came and cured off. That was where the blood had been
ment. I loved to see him sleeping. I loved him in no time with modern medicine. drawn for the test, and it seemed to me
to see him stretch (pressing down on Without the medicine he would not that he would never be whole again,
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 21
that this process of decay would now
never be reversed.
More alarming was the vet’s diagno- FROM THE CATALOGUE OF CRUELTY
sis. The virus that Augustus had been
infected with was a form of feline aids. Once, I slapped my sister with the back of my hand.
The words were awful; they gave the We were so small, but I wanted to know
imagination free rein. It happened,
though, that I was in touch with a neu- how it felt: my hand raised high across
rologist in the United States. Purely by the opposite shoulder, slicing down like a trapeze.
chance he telephoned about this time.
I told him about Augustus and he was Her face caught my hand. I’d slapped her in our
amused. Many cats, he said, had feline yellow room with circus animals
aids, and they often managed to live.
We needed just this little encourage- on the curtains. I don’t remember
ment, and that was how, until the very how it felt. I was a rough child.
end, we lived with Augustus, looking
after him, with the help of the vet, as I said No. I said These are my things.
best we could. Most of our memories I was speaking, usually, of my socks:
of him—trotting, running, always play-
ful—date from this time; we put the white, athletic, thin and already gray
idea of his death away from us, and it on the bottom, never where I left them.
seemed finally not to matter.
We had over the years developed the I was speaking of my fists raining down
painful idea—not with us at the begin- on my brother’s back. My sister’s. Socks.
ning—that Augustus, as a cat, for all the
beauty of his bearing, lived close to the In the fourth grade, in California,
dangers that we had got to know about I kicked Charles in the testicles. At that school,
from living with him: prowling farm
cats, prowling foxes and wild animals. we played sock ball: hit the red playground ball
But Augustus, when things were going with the sides of our hands and ran the bases.
well with him, appeared not to share our
anxiety. He seemed instead then willing I kicked Charles with the top of my foot, caught him
to provoke trouble. He liked walking up in the hinge of ankle. I wanted to see
to the farm and considering the farm
cats from a safe distance. If they turned what would happen. I didn’t believe
nasty, he was able to walk sedately down anything could hurt like it did on TV.
the lane, swinging his hips.
We were nervous about moonlight. Charles folded in half at the crease of his waist.
In the full moon everything showed on My god, I was a rough child, but I believed
the down, and it seemed to us that Au-
gustus could make himself an easy tar- Charles, that my foot turned him to paper.
get if he went out. But that was pre- Later, I kicked my dad the same way,
cisely when Augustus, with his own
hunting instincts revived, wanted to go but he did not crumple. It was summer
out, and he could be so insistent that in Arkansas. What humidity,
sometimes, in spite of what we had been
told by the vet, we let him out, trusting these children, full of water. I hit him
to his canniness to keep him safe. It was also with the frying pan. I hit him
terrible then for us, waiting for him to
come back, and listening for the cat flap, also with the guitar. We laughed later:
which would tell us that he was back Where had the guitar come from? My dad
and safe. It was hard for me to sleep
until I heard the cat flap open and shut.
On a brilliant August night he was from his long night trip; his canniness his strength back, and then make the
let out. He didn’t come back in the had served him well. But on this morn- painful journey to the house. Some time
night. He came back in the morning, ing trip he was badly hurt, and he never would have passed since his accident,
and then, before he could be restrained, really recovered. but he couldn’t be said to have recov-
he went out again. He was pushing his It was his habit when he was hurt on ered his strength. His hindquarters were
luck too far. He had come back safely one of his jaunts to rest somewhere, get collapsing below him; he couldn’t bear
22 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020
 strength. The effect was marvellous. Au-
gustus bounded up the staircase in a
way he hadn’t done for years. It was as
though he had shed his arthritis, and
was a star collapsing. The first thing had become a kitten again. It was too
a dying star does is swell, swallows good to last, and it didn’t. The injection
wore off in a day and Augustus was
whatever is near. He tried to take us again limping up the stairs, step by step.
into his body, which was the house The vet said he would come again
in four weeks. What he didn’t tell us
the police entered. This is how I knew was what he told a neighbor. She knew
he was dying. I’d called the police. about cats and she thought Augustus
was in a bad way. She asked the vet how
What is your name? He tried to put us through much time he gave Augustus. He said
the walls of the house the police entered, six months. I was glad he didn’t tell us
that. It would have made Augustus’s last
which was his body. What is your name? few weeks with us unbearable; would
Compromised: the integrity of a body have appeared to mock all we were doing
to put Augustus on his feet again.
contracting. What is your name, sir? He answered: And so for a little while the vet con-
Cronos. He answered: I’m hungry. He answered: tinued to come, every four weeks, as he
had said, Augustus appearing to revive
A god long dead. He threw up all his children after each visit, but then relapsing into
right there on the carpet. After all, his increasingly bemused state, his intel-
ligence and physical sharpness now things
we were so small, the children. The thing of the past. It seemed wrong for Augus-
about a star collapsing is that it knows tus to be so dependent on the vet’s nee-
dle, which previously he had hated. But
neither that it is a star nor in collapse. we had got used to Augustus’s decline,
Everything is stardust, everything essential. and were not as shocked as we should
have been; we believed in the magic of
What is your name? Everything is resisting the vet’s medicine, and it was easy for us
arrest. Its gravity crushes the children now to live with the hope that one day
that decline would be reversed and Au-
and the cruiser’s rear passenger window. gustus would be himself again.
The officer didn’t know the star’s name. Stage by stage we watched him go
down. He liked to drink water from the
White dwarf ? Black hole? To see: throw the collapsing bathtub taps, but it happened now that
star face first into anything. Face first after the effort of getting into the tub he
forgot why he was there, and was con-
into the back seat. Face first into the pepper tent to stay crouched, doing nothing. The
spray. Face first onto the precinct lawn. day came when we noticed he had stopped
eating. A little while after this discovery
Did you know you could throw a star? Do you we noticed that he had begun to eat or
understand gravity, its weaknesses? nibble at the litter in his tray. This un-
naturalness was very depressing; it seemed
You are in my house. You should already to come from a creature far away from
know my name. us and horribly alone. An item on the
Internet told us that this kind of behav-
ior befell cats who had suffered from what
—Donika Kelly we interpreted as feline aids; it was a
form of anemia. This was what we told
the vet on the telephone. He was reas-
to be touched there, and the vet’s nurses, Augustus had gone among the steers in suring, even jolly. He said that a jab every
standing in for the vet, but not as skilled the neighboring field, themselves await- three months would deal with that.
as the vet, caused him to cry out. He ing slaughter, and had frightened them. We spoke to the vet on the telephone
had received a bad kick from a man or The vet came the next day and gave on Friday. He promised to come on Mon-
an animal; the feeling in the end was Augustus two injections, one to deal day morning at nine. I would have liked
that no man was responsible, but that with his pain, the other to boost his him to come sooner. But the weekend
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 23
was the weekend, and I couldn’t press. problem, the vet said; Augustus might He offered me his hand and I shook it.
Augustus was now supine and forlorn, then have to be kept alive on a drip. It was only later that I thought that good
still not eating, and I wondered how he The kindly vet hadn’t come prepared manners had made us both use strange,
would manage till Monday. With his old for this drastic action. I suppose he had celebratory language at this bad moment,
instinct to hide and die he had crept come on that Monday morning still over the fresh corpse of Augustus.
below a bed, but having got below the thinking about the anemia we had read The woman who worked for me took
bed, and feeling protected by it, he didn’t about on the Internet and passed on to Augustus off my knees, and wrapped him
know what else to do. He remained stand- him. He hadn’t brought the chemicals more securely in his chewed-up towel
ing; it looked odd. Nadira crept below that were necessary to put Augustus down. and some other cloth. She said of the
the bed to talk to him; we had no means He and his nurse went back to the sur- neat bundle she had created, “Like a baby.”
of knowing how much this meant to gery to get those chemicals. They didn’t She meant well, but her words sent one
him. Nadira went below the bed again take long. Augustus stayed where he was, in the opposite direction. Augustus was
in the morning to talk to him. watching and waiting and not under- not at the start of his life; he was one
I thought much about his going standing. It didn’t take me long to decide from whom life had been taken away.
below the bed. It was his last indepen- that Augustus was to be on my lap for Augustus was carried off to the gar-
dent act; it required strength and fore- the final act of his life. Nadira had no den. I didn’t know what had been pre-
sight to jump over or negotiate the hor- wish to witness any part of this act. pared there, but I was soon to find out.
izontal metal strut. I sat on a tall chair. A woman who The vet had given instructions to the
Ever since I had telephoned the vet worked for me put Augustus on my man who worked there, and while we
I had been mentally marking off the knees. A little later, she put a chewed-up were busy with the injections he had
hours before he arrived. The arrival of towel (one of Augustus’s toys) between dug a hole of certain dimensions for
the vet was, in my mind, the moment Augustus and my knees. (Whether she Augustus. The hole was in the grassy
of medicine and magic; this was what did this to comfort Augustus or to save knoll near the gate. Augustus had made
had happened many times before. It my trousers I don’t know.) Augustus, as that knoll his afternoon resting place
never occurred to me that I had really once before, had to be given two injec- over the past year, and it had long be-
been marking off Augustus’s final hours. tions: the first was to send him to sleep; fore been decided that if anything were
The vet and his nurse came a few the second was to take away his life. to happen to Augustus that was where
minutes after nine. Normally, when the The vet took a little of his fur away he would be placed.
vet came, Augustus had to be chased from one of his front paws. The needle It was a correct thing to do, and cor-
and shut in, to keep him in the room. went into that cleared area. Augustus rect, too, to cover his grave with an over-
Now none of that was needed; he sim- gave the merest response, hardly a cry. turned wheelbarrow, to deter wild ani-
ply followed when he was called, with The front paw noticeably relaxed. I mals; but I would have preferred it if he
expressionless eyes. Normally the vet stroked him between the eyes, moving had been cremated, reduced to ashes
was reassuring, with some words about downward from his forehead. It was how and vapor, taken beyond decay, rather
Augustus’s ability to surprise him; when I used to stroke him when he was a kitten, than placed, however reverentially, how-
he was in that mood he sometimes called and I did so to remind him, as I hoped, ever well swaddled, in that damp hole
Augustus “his lordship.” Now he was al- of his mother’s licks. But I had little faith which would eat away his lovely fur and
together more sombre. He made no jokes. in what I was doing at this late stage of his beautiful eyes. I have often prom-
He said with an unusual bluntness that his life. I asked the vet whether Augus- ised myself that I would find out how
Augustus had gone downhill. He put a tus, half doped, would have some idea of long it would have taken his body to
finger in Augustus’s mouth (something my stroking him. He said he thought he perish, to cease to be recognizable. But
we hadn’t done) and said Augustus had would, and this comforted me. I never have; I would have found it very
an ulcer. That could be dealt with, but I stroked him between the eyes until hard to live with the knowledge.
Augustus (because of his viral infection) the vet said he had fallen asleep. Nearly sixty years ago my father died.
was at that stage of decay where if it The second liquid, the one that would In that dark time my younger sister Sati
wasn’t one illness it would be another. put an end to Augustus, was a virulent hit upon a comforting idea. Our father,
We told him that Augustus hadn’t blue, and there seemed to be a lot of it with all his cantankerousness, was a hu-
eaten for two days. He considered that in the syringe. The vet applied it and ap- morist, and Sati’s idea was that during
and then appeared to consider poor, peared to apologize for the length of this time our father was considering the
wasted Augustus again. He said, and his time it took. I suppose he meant that a family grief and having a good laugh.
words sounded brutal, “He’s living off more humane chemical would work more Something like this occurred to me
his tissue.” It was awful to think that quickly. I didn’t think it took long. Quite after the death of Augustus. We saw
while he was with us, and nibbling at soon the vet said it was over. Augustus him everywhere, in the house, the gar-
his litter, this had happened to him. was still warm and heavy on my legs. den, the hedge. My idea was that Au-
In this way, with half-expressed Good manners now took over from gustus was considering everything in
thoughts, we arrived at the fearful con- whatever emotion we felt. I said to the the house which no longer held him:
clusion that Augustus had to be put vet, “You’ve looked after him all his life.” he was considering everything and
down, and the sooner the better. To put The vet said (I believe), “It was a working out in his intelligent way how
it off to next week was to create a greater pleasure.” he should respond. ♦
24 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020
 stick of dynamite signed by Alfred Nobel.
SHOUTS & MURMURS Unable to find a teaching post at any
university, Einstein was forced to take
a job with the patent office in Bern,
Switzerland. While daydreaming about
physics one morning, he inadvertently
accepted a patent for a new version of
the Swiss telephone directory, in which
people were listed not alphabetically but
according to height. He also granted a
patent for a new version of the Bible,
with the answers in the back.
The famous photograph of Einstein
sticking out his tongue was taken during
a brief charitable phase, when he offered
to lick stamps for people suffering from

EINSTEIN: THE UNTOLD STORY

dry-mouth disease. This was a common
local affliction in those days, traced to
a bad run of Swiss cheese. Einstein was
BY HART POMERANTZ lactose intolerant and thus did not suc-
cumb to the illness.
ecause of his poor sense of direc- way to the wall over and over. He never When Einstein got remarried, to his
B tion and his very large head, Albert
Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany,
reached the wall, as Zeno predicted, but
he did break his nose in three places.
cousin Elsa, in 1919, he discovered the
true meaning of relativity. Unfortunately,
in 1879, at the age of two. As a young- Einstein was absent-minded, but he Elsa knew nothing about physics. She
ster, he walked to school every morn- was also practical. He rarely wore socks, thought general relativity was an officer
ing, but, also owing to his poor sense of except on formal occasions, when he in the German Army. Einstein tried to
direction, he attended eight different put them on over his shoes, so as not to explain the theory of relativity to Elsa
schools. He was good at math even as have to tie the laces, which he found by offering the following example: If
an infant. He looked at his parents from burdensome. Marilyn Monroe sat on your lap for an
his crib and wondered how one plus Einstein married Mileva Marić, a hour it would seem like a minute, but
one could possibly make three. brilliant physicist and the only woman if you put your hand on a stove for a
As a child, he showed an interest in in his university class. The couple had minute it would feel like an hour. He
physics and read many books on the sub- two sons, and Einstein wanted to name took her into the kitchen to demon-
ject. He even called his father’s sister Anti- them Positive and Negative, so they strate, and she wisely said, “You first.”
Matter. One of Einstein’s heroes was Sir would stick together. The principle of After Einstein’s death, his brain was
Isaac Newton, who discovered gravity quantum superposition says that a par- removed by a doctor named Thomas
when an apple fell on his head as he lay ticle can be in two places at the same Harvey, who kept it in a jar. He took the
in his garden. Einstein, attempting to time. When Einstein started cheating brain everywhere he went and gave slices
emulate Newton, lay on the grass in his on Mileva, he used that theory as an of it to other scientists to study. When
own garden for ten hours, but nothing alibi. When the marriage deteriorated, Harvey travelled with Einstein’s brain,
happened. He thought that he had dis- because of incessant squabbling, Ein- he booked separate rooms, out of re-
proved Newton’s theory, until his mother stein forced his wife into a contract to spect. He resented that he had to pay
told him there were no apple trees in prevent her from interfering with his full price for Einstein’s room. Once, hag-
their garden. Einstein continued to honor work. The Einsteins’ cleaning lady found gling, he told a clerk, “It’s only a brain,
his hero by eating his special fig cookies a draft of the document, which stipu- for God’s sake. You don’t have to change
every day, as an after-school snack. lated that Mileva would agree the sheets.” When he checked out, he
Young Einstein was always experi- 1. To speak only adverbs.
learned that Einstein had run up a huge
menting. He once swung his cat by the 2. Not to iron her husband’s pants while room-service bill.
tail and noticed that the animal became he was wearing them. Einstein’s executors went through
more elongated the faster he swung 3. Never to bring him a bowl of soup with his desk and found a note, written on
it. The observation had no scientific a fork. a napkin, which said, “Edvard will be
4. That sexual intimacy would be withheld
significance, but it did cause a deep rift except on days beginning with “Z.”
the master of ceremonies when I win
in their previously close relationship. my second Nobel Prize.” In brackets,
At university, Einstein took a course Einstein told Mileva that if she granted he wrote, “E=mc2.” They also found an
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ

in philosophy. He studied one of Ze- him a divorce he would give her the money early draft of Einstein’s most famous
no’s paradoxes, and, being a budding from his Nobel Prize, should he ever win saying. “God does not play dice with
scientist, he went home and experi- one. He later tried to get out of the deal the universe,” it read. “But he does seem
mented with the theory by walking half- by telling her that the prize was only a to enjoy Monopoly.” 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 25
 guage speakers—and then began inter-
ANNALS OF IMMIGRATION preting. There is bottomless demand.
“I could do it three, four, five days a

LANGUAGE BARRIER
week,” Martín, who also works for his
father’s construction company, told me.
“Every day.”
For indigenous people who cross the border, a translation crisis follows. One morning in early December,
Martín was interpreting for a criminal
BY RACHEL NOLAN case in Dublin, east of Oakland. A clerk
signed him in—“Buenos días,” she greeted
him—and then he met the people he’d
be translating for, a Mam husband and
wife who had been the victims of an
attempted home burglary. Through
Martín, the couple sought reassurance
from the judge that their immigration
status wouldn’t be questioned.
Martín accompanied the husband to
the witness box, while the wife waited
in a nearby room. Watching a skilled
simultaneous interpreter is a bit like
watching someone speaking in tongues.
As soon as the judge starts talking, the
interpreter mutters along, not waiting
for the sentence to be over before be-
ginning to translate. Martín relayed the
witness’s answers in a low, steady voice,
in American-accented English.
The testimony turned on the layout
of the kitchen. There are twenty-two
officially recognized Mayan languages
in Guatemala; all of them use relational
nouns instead of prepositions—Mam
uses “head” to say “on top of ”—and they
have complex grammatical rules to de-
scribe bodies in space. The witness
pinched his fingers and dropped them
down to imitate his wife putting cash
in her purse. He worked his eyebrows.
He didn’t look up when the prosecutor
swaldo Vidal Martín always wears Martín, who came to the United asked a question. He was telling his
O the same thing to court: a striped
overshirt, its wide collar and cuffs woven
States with his parents in 1999, when
he was four, was studying to be an en-
story to Martín, the only person in the
room who understood.
with geometric patterns and flowers. gineer when the trickle of Mam speak- When his wife emerged and was
His pants are cherry red, with white ers migrating to the Oakland area, where asked to spell her name, she looked at
stripes. Martín is Guatemalan and he lives, turned into a flood. In 2014, the ground and whispered in Mam, “I
works as a court interpreter, so clerks some sixty thousand unaccompanied will not be able to spell my name. I did
generally assume that he is there to minors crossed into the United States, not go to school to learn how.” But she
translate for Spanish speakers. But any in what President Barack Obama called warmed to Martín, glancing over at
Guatemalan who sees his clothing, “an actual humanitarian crisis on the him as she became more comfortable.
which is called traje típico, knows that border.” A local immigration lawyer told The prosecutor asked, “What is your
Martín is indigenous. “My Spanish is me that at least forty per cent of the primary language?”
more conversational,” Martín told me. children and teen-agers arriving in the “The same language I’m using now,”
“I still have some difficulties with it.” Bay Area were Mam. Martín trained she said. “I only know a little bit of
He interprets English for migrants who with a nonprofit in San Francisco called Spanish.” She does not speak English
speak his mother tongue, a Mayan lan- Asociación Mayab—which offers work- at all.
guage called Mam. shops in translation for indigenous-lan- During the lunch break, Martín and
I went out for burritos. In line, a man
Oswaldo Martín interprets for migrants who speak the Mayan language Mam. in a baseball cap approached. “You are
26 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 PHOTOGRAPH BY ULYSSES ORTEGA
doing a great job in there,” he said. Between April and June, 2018, the lation are not rare. A former volunteer
Martín looked at him, confused. The Trump Administration adopted a “zero- at the South Texas Family Residential
man lifted his cap. “I’m the judge!” tolerance” policy, intended to deter mi- Center, in Dilley, Texas, the nation’s larg-
gration at the southern border. As part est immigrant-detention center, told me
uatemala has a population of fifteen of the policy, parents were forcibly sep- that cases can turn on the difference be-
G million people, forty per cent of
them indigenous, according to the most
arated from their children. That July,
Martín got a call from Asociación Mayab.
tween competent and incompetent trans-
lation. A mother held there told non-
recent census. In the past year, two hun- Lawyers at the border were looking for Guatemalan interpreters that she had
dred and fifty thousand Guatemalan Mam speakers to translate for detained had “trouble” in Guatemala because of
migrants have been apprehended at the migrant families. Martín travelled to the her “blouses,” which sounds innocuous
U.S.-Mexico border. At least half of U.S. Border Patrol Central Processing in English. She meant her huipil, a hand-
them are Mayans, and many speak lit- Center, in McAllen, Texas, which became woven blouse worn by Mayans. She was
tle or no Spanish. According to the De- notorious for holding children in cages saying that she was persecuted for being
partment of Justice, Mam was the ninth made of chain-link fencing. He ended indigenous, but the interpreter didn’t un-
most common language used in immi- up translating for a migrant named Mario derstand or explain. The woman’s claim
gration courts last year, more common Perez Domingo, who spoke “barely any was rejected, and she was deported.
than French. Three Guatemalan Mayan Spanish,” according to his lawyer, Efrén According to a filing by the A.C.L.U.
languages made the top twenty-five: Olivares, of the Texas Civil Rights Project. last August, a father accused of a crime
Mam, K’iche’, and Q’anjob’al. Domingo and his two-year-old was separated from his son without a
The Bay Area is unusual in that Mam- daughter had been picked up by a Bor- Q’eqchi’ translator present. During the
speaking asylum seekers may be able to der Patrol agent who asked for their pa- six-month separation, the child “began
access in-person court interpretation. The pers and then accused Domingo of forg- to forget his family’s native language,
vast majority of indigenous-language in- ing his daughter’s birth certificate. The and he suffered extreme isolation be-
terpretation in the U.S. is done over the agent asked in Spanish if he had “paid cause of his inability to speak Spanish,
phone, by for-profit companies such as for the certificate,” and Domingo said English, or any language common in
Lionbridge and S.O.S. International. yes, because Guatemalans pay a small the shelter,” according to the filing. An-
Credibility is an official factor in a judge’s fee to the civil registry for birth certifi- other boy was separated “due to father’s
assessment of an asylum claim, and much cates. The Border Patrol argued that alleged mental health problems; child
can be lost on the phone. The quality of Domingo had bought it on the black advocates later determined father’s in-
telephone interpretation also varies wildly. market and that the child was not his digenous language may led [sic] to wrong
Martín says that he took the exam to be- daughter, and took her away. (BuzzFeed mental health concern.” By the time
come a Lionbridge translator, and, to test reported on this separation.) U.S. authorities acknowledged that there
the company, invented extra material, a Domingo didn’t have the language was no mental-health problem, they had
cardinal sin for translators. He passed any- skills to explain. Not even Olivares, his deported the father.
way. (Lionbridge declined to comment.) lawyer, could fully understand what had Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U.,
The U.S. government claims to pro- happened. During Domingo’s criminal which brought a lawsuit to stop the child
vide proper translation at all points in the hearing, he was given only a Spanish- separations, told me that, of more than
immigration process, but, in practice, it language translator. On the stand, he five thousand parents separated from
rarely offers Mayan-language translation kept talking about a son who had been their children, at least eight hundred were
at the border or in holding cells. (A taken away. “But he didn’t have a son, deported without them. “A significant
spokesperson from Customs and Border he had a daughter,” Olivares said. number of those were indigenous,” Ge-
Protection said, “We use a third-party By the time Martín got involved, Do- lernt said. His team found that half were
translation service via telephone when we mingo had been transferred from McAl- Guatemalan, and that “ten to twenty per
are unable to communicate due to lan- len, so they talked on the phone. In fewer cent” were from indigenous-majority de-
guage barriers. We do our best to make than five minutes, Martín had the facts partments, such as San Marcos, Huehue-
sure we can communicate accurately, with of the case. I asked if Domingo spoke tenango, and Quiché. (Children were
everyone, throughout their time in our Spanish. “Not to the point where he could taken from their parents before the ze-
custody.”) Until just a few years ago, there really explain himself or be able to un- ro-tolerance policy took effect, and about
was a tendency to treat Mayan languages derstand what was going on,” Martín said. eleven hundred have been taken since it
as “dialects.” A former immigration judge I asked if language was a factor in the was ruled unlawful.) “The indigenous
told me that all her Mayan-language separation, and Martín said, “Definitely.” population was likely the least able to
cases, when they came from Customs and Martín is generally unflappable, but an understand their rights, and may there-
Border Protection, were “listed on the edge of anger came through. “They know fore have been more susceptible to los-
court docket as Spanish.” When Mayan- that they can get away with it.” The fa- ing their children and waiving away their
language asylum seekers can manage some ther was reunited with his daughter only own asylum rights,” Gelernt said.
Spanish, it is often not enough to navi- after taking a DNA test, a month later, Both Olivares and Gelernt believe
gate credible-fear interviews—in which and then both were released. that the system denies basic rights to
migrants must explain why they are afraid Extended detentions or deportations Spanish-speaking asylum seekers as well,
of returning to their home countries. caused by mistranslation or lack of trans- but that difficulties are exacerbated for
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 27
Mayan-language speakers. “The language viet Union: the structure of life has before the descent into the valley of Todos
barrier contributed, at least in part, to a changed, but the people are still there. Santos, there is no running water—
lot of those separations,” Olivares said. All the Mayan languages share a com- women fetch it from wells with plastic
Then there are the deaths. “Kids dying mon root, but most of them are mutu- jugs. Suddenly, you start seeing men in
on the border are Mayan,” Naomi Adel- ally unintelligible. Yucatec Mayan is tonal, cherry-red striped pants watering their
son, the interpreter who trained Martín like Cantonese. K’iche’, the language of vegetable patches.
at Asociación Mayab, told me. Six children the “Popol Vuh,” has six or ten vowels, Nearly everyone in Guatemala has
have died in the custody of the Department depending on the dialect. Mam is pro- some Mayan heritage, but the indigenous
of Homeland Security since Donald duced far back in the mouth and comes are considered a separate group, identified
Trump took office. Five were indigenous. out softly raspy. The variations are not a by language, place of origin, and, for
Jakelin Caal Maquín, a seven-year-old mark of being cut off from external in- women, colorful clothing woven on back-
Q’eqchi’ girl, had a fever that spiked on fluences, the linguist William Hanks told strap looms. (In Todos Santos, the men,
a long bus ride from the New Mexico me, but, rather, a sign of development. too, wear traje.) Mayan people tend to
desert, where she was picked up with her Mayan languages have had four thou- be much poorer than non-indigenous
father, to a Border Patrol detention cen- sand years to ramify. “Mayans have never Guatemalans, the result of a long his-
ter. She died from a bacterial infection been isolated,” Hanks said. In 1990, the tory of oppression and land theft.
that led to multiple-organ failure after Academy of Mayan Languages of Gua- Some Central American migrants to
she received no medical care for ninety temala was formed, and a branching lin- the U.S. have adopted the slogan of the
minutes. Felipe Gómez Alonzo, an eight- guistics tree, showing the common origin post-colonial immigrants’-rights cam-
year-old Chuj boy, died of the flu as he of all Mayan languages, became a sym- paigns in Europe, from the nineteen-
and his father were shuttled between bol of the Pan-Mayan movement. (Mam eighties: “We are here because you were
holding centers. President Trump placed emerged from the trunk about two thou- there.” In 1954, the C.I.A. backed a coup
blame for the deaths on the children’s fa- sand years ago.) There is still debate about that overthrew a President who was over-
thers, who had signed intake waivers stat- which subdivisions should be counted as seeing land-reform measures that in-
ing that their children did not need med- dialects. (A chestnut in the field of lin- cluded expropriating United Fruit’s hold-
ical care. The waivers were in English, guistics: “A language is a dialect with an ings. The coup led to a civil war that
and officials provided a verbal Spanish army.”) The introduction to the Acade- lasted from 1960 to 1996, during which
translation—two languages that the fa- my’s official Mam-Spanish dictionary Marxist-Leninist guerrilla groups tried
thers did not speak fluently or at all. reads, “Language is the backbone of the to topple a series of U.S.-backed govern-
culture and cosmovision of a people.” ments and dictatorships. In the early
ayan Guatemalans have a per- Last summer, I visited Martín’s home eighties, the Guatemalan Army be-
M sistent problem: explaining to peo-
ple that they still exist.The ancient Mayan
town, Todos Santos Cuchumatán, in the
lofty pine mountains near the border
lieved—often wrongly—that Mayans
were susceptible to guerrilla ideology.
cities collapsed in the eighth or ninth with Mexico, one of the coldest parts of Soldiers pillaged indigenous communi-
century, but the Mayan people remained, the highlands. To get there, I drove ties, raped women and girls, and stole
farming corn in small towns. One arche- through seven distinct language groups children who survived massacres, putting
ologist compared it to the fall of the So- in two days. On the mountaintop just hundreds up for adoption. (Guerrilla
fighters also attacked Mayans whom they
believed were informing for the Army.)
The Army burned houses and churches
as well as cornfields—sacred sources of
sustenance for Mayans. Two hundred
thousand people died during the war, the
Western Hemisphere’s bloodiest conflict
of the twentieth century; eighty-three
per cent of them were indigenous.
In Todos Santos, which was then a
small cluster of adobe houses, the Army
openly massacred Mam families, intend-
ing to terrorize the population. Ameri-
can Green Berets helped train a special-
forces unit called the kaibiles, named for
a Mam leader who had evaded capture
by Spanish conquistadors. This unit com-
mitted the worst atrocities of the war. A
Mam man told an anthropologist that,
in 1982, soldiers captured an accused guer-
rilla fighter and summoned the people
“This is just in case I need to find my way out of this relationship.” of Todos Santos to the town square. A
soldier cut the man open from his neck a survival-level job, or joining the gangs.” message was sponsored by the U.S. Em-
to his belly. “Then he took out the liver Interpreters told me that racism and bassy.” Martín told me that CONAMI-
of the poor man,” the witness said. “He even violent discrimination are such in- GUA’s recent efforts to dissuade migrants
grabbed the liver out, and he ate it just grained features of Guatemalan life that included a radio spot in Mam with ma-
like that, in front of the soldiers, in front some Mayan asylum seekers don’t think rimba music. She translated the ad: “Here
of the people. We did not understand.” to mention them in credible-fear inter- in Todos Santos Cuchumatán you can
After the war, a U.N.-backed truth com- views. They have plenty of other reasons excel if you stay and start studying. The
mission found that the Guatemalan gov- to flee: gangs, death squads, domestic trip to the North is very risky and you
ernment had committed “genocidal acts” violence and femicide, disillusionment could encounter death, and then your
against Mayan communities. with a series of corrupt Presidents, and family would have to suffer and cry.”
Interpreters a generation older than climate change, which is drying out Martín admitted that her job is nearly
Martín told me that, when they work on impossible. In her spare time, she vol-
asylum cases, they must confront their unteers with a group that provides free
own traumatic memories. One man trans- translation via phone for Mam-speak-
lated for a woman who had been sepa- ing migrants in the U.S.
rated from her son at the border. He said Other people in town work for the
that it was “living my experience all over for-profit phone-translation services.
again.” The woman described how her The wife of a pharmacist who moon-
son had been pulled from her arms. At lights as an interpreter says that her hus-
first, he was screaming. Then he began band is constantly getting calls from the
hyperventilating, and couldn’t get a sound border in the middle of the night. Os-
out. Then the guards took him away. cornfields—a spiritual as well as an en- waldo Martín said that the services “low-
When the interpreter was ten years vironmental crisis. Guatemalans con- ball” translators—they offered him for-
old, his mother was kidnapped by the found the distinction between “economic ty-five cents a minute for highly skilled
Army. “It was Sunday. I had climbed up migrants” and the types of persecution work—but pay that is low in Oakland
into a tree to play with kites. My aunt that the U.S. requires to grant asylum. is high in Todos Santos.
came out. She’s one of those people with Today, Todos Santos is a tangle of “re- Most people from town who leave
a strong personality, who doesn’t tell you mittance houses,” several stories tall, built for the U.S. try to make it to Fruitvale,
things calmly,” he recalled. “And she of concrete block, with columns and fan- the part of Oakland where Martín lives.
said, ‘Come down out of there. They ciful towers, blue reflective windows, Pedro Pablo Solares, a specialist in mi-
have taken your mom.’” American and Guatemalan flags painted gration and a columnist for the Guate-
Despite the genocide, asylum status along the trim, and ears of corn strung malan newspaper Prensa Libre, travelled
was hard to come by in the U.S., because out to dry on balconies. Most of the throughout the U.S. between 2010 and
Guatemalans were fleeing a regime that houses remain unfinished, with fingers 2014, providing legal services to migrants.
was supported by millions of dollars of of rebar reaching up from the top floor. He found that the “immense majority”
U.S. military aid each year. In 1982, during Migrants send back money in installments of Mayans were living in what he called
the height of state terror, President Ronald and build floor by floor, until they decide ciudades espejo—mirror cities—where mi-
Reagan met with the Guatemalan dic- to come home or are deported. The town grants from the same small towns in
tator Efraín Ríos Montt, who was later runs on remittances: a store selling pens Guatemala have reconstituted commu-
convicted of genocide and crimes against and paper is called Librería California, nities in the U.S. “If you are a member
humanity. (The sentence was overturned and coyote services are available for Span- of the Chuj community and that is your
shortly afterward, under political pres- ish and Mam speakers. In the cemetery language, there are only fifty thousand
sure.) Reagan praised Ríos Montt’s “pro- just outside town, on the day I was there, people who speak that in the world.
gressive efforts” and said that he was “get- a large family was visiting. The son—the There’s only so many places you can go
ting a bum rap on human rights.” only family member who spoke Span- to find people who speak your language,”
Indigenous people fared little better ish—pointed to the raised graves, which Solares told me. He described the mi-
after the signing of peace agreements, are painted red, white, and blue, and told gration patterns like flight routes: Q’an-
in 1996. The country was opened to me, “Those are the ones who died up job’al speakers from San Pedro Solomá
international mining and to palm-oil there.” The graves were decorated with go to Indiantown, Florida; Mam speak-
corporations, which have steadily en- plastic flowers and offerings of bottles of ers from Tacaná go to Lynn, Massachu-
croached on indigenous land, forcing water with the caps unscrewed. setts; Jakalteco speakers from Jaca-
families to move to Guatemala City. María Martín (no relation to Os- ltenango go to Jupiter, Florida.
Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj, a K’iche’ waldo) is the single staff member in
anthropologist and a public intellectual, Todos Santos of CONAMIGUA, a Gua-
wrote in the Guatemalan newspaper El temalan government agency that works
“I grew up my entire life speaking
Mam, and there is no word for asy-
Periódico, “The urban children, cornered with migrants and retornados, a local eu- lum,” Henry Sales, a twenty-seven-year-
into selling on street corners, were left phemism for the deported. Her office is old immigrant from San Juan Atitán,
choosing between an education for the in the town hall, where posters warning told me. Sales and Oswaldo Martín were
poor that could only provide them with against migration are captioned “This at the César E. Chávez branch of the
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 29
public library, in downtown Fruitvale, that Sales teaches in Mam class is “Jun In a courtroom handling family cases,
where they met with other Mam speak- u’j tun tkleti tij qa xjal aj kyaj tun tkub’ children were scrambling over the fur-
ers to work on a Mam-English legal tb’yon ay bix qa tk’awali tu’x txuli/tchmili.” niture and crying. Some migrants didn’t
dictionary. Sales, who came to the U.S. “A paper that saves / protects you have a lawyer, but every case involved
a decade ago, has jobs at several librar- from people who are harming/attempt- an interpreter. The judge, Scott Gam-
ies, translates in immigration court, as- ing to kill you and your children, your bill, told the room, “All these family
sists a linguistics Ph.D. student at the wife / husband.” units have to be heard in a given time.
University of California, Berkeley, and I asked Sales and Martín if Mam This is a high priority for the Attorney
gives Mam classes. He has a radiant speakers generally understood their ex- General.” In 2018, then Attorney Gen-
smile and tends to dress formally, down planation of asylum, and Martín said eral Jeff Sessions imposed strict quotas
to his shined shoes. yes, but he mentioned another problem and performance metrics to speed up
Martín had the idea for the legal dic- cited by nearly everyone I interviewed. immigration reviews. Sessions an-
tionary when he came across a Mayan “A tendency for a lot of indigenous peo- nounced that family-unit cases were to
health handbook, which listed ailments ple is to agree to everything being asked be heard within a year. Critics saw the
in English, Spanish, K’iche’, and Mam. of them in Spanish,” he said, even if it’s move as a way of deporting more peo-
Translation isn’t just words to words; it’s incorrect and self-incriminating. “A lot ple, faster. The change meant that judges
about expressing whole ways of experi- of times they get deported,” Sales said. were required to rule on at least seven
encing the world. There has been a Marianne Richardson, a graduate stu- hundred cases per year, which the Na-
long-running debate in Guatemala about dent at the University of Texas, studies tional Association of Immigration Judges
whether non-indigenous doctors should access to indigenous languages at the has said impinges on due process.
be trained to diagnose and treat “xib’rik- border in Arizona, where many Mayan Judge Gambill repeatedly told asy-
il”—“el susto,” in Spanish—“fright” or migrants cross. She told me that, often, lum seekers and lawyers that he was
“spirit attack,” a common illness among when the Border Patrol asks a migrant sorry their court dates were so soon. The
Mayans that can involve symptoms rang- if he or she speaks Spanish, “the person speed gave the proceedings a feeling of
ing from depression to diarrhea and will just say ‘Sí.’ And they’ll be, like, ‘O.K., hitting a language barrier even when
anemia. According to Mayan cosmol- can I continue in Spanish?’ And the per- there wasn’t one. The judge mentioned
ogy, the malady can be caused by vio- son says, ‘Sí.’ But there’s not really a com- “riders” several times before I under-
lent events, or by the appearance of a prehension check.” She added, “Some stood that he meant children.
“restless soul” who has died in a trau- of them are really intimidated by an au- The day’s session was intended to set
matic way and is unable to find peace. thority figure with a gun and just want future court dates and check if asylum
Sales and Martín speak different di- to do what they’re told.” seekers had changed their address. Mi-
alects of Mam. Though they understand Sales said, “We have been taught grants tend to move frequently, and if
each other, Martín said that Sales’s Mam that, if we don’t speak Spanish, we are they miss a notice to appear they are or-
sounds more like French—airy, with swal- stupid.” He said that, when he first went dered deported. One of the asylum seek-
lowed consonants—while his is more like to school in Guatemala and didn’t speak ers was a woman in an elaborately flow-
Portuguese—choppy and guttural. Even any Spanish, “I couldn’t defend myself.” ered traje, with a hot-pink smartphone
I can hear the difference. In addition to The other kids would say he was dumb, tucked into the sash. Did she speak Span-
the legal dictionary, Sales and Martín and he just answered, “Yes, yes,” with- ish? the judge asked. Her lawyer, Alex-
want to provide workshops in various di- out understanding. “It happened five andra Bachan, said, “She’s going to iden-
alects for Mam translators. The U.S. gov- hundred years ago,” he said. “They came tify herself, but beyond that . . . ” She
ernment does not offer certification tests and told us, ‘You are savages.’” made the gesture for “so-so.”
for Mam interpreters—Martín said that Leonel Pablo, a young man with
he had once been challenged by an op- an Francisco’s immigration court con- gelled hair, ripped jeans, and spotless
posing lawyer for not being certified—
and Sales and Martín believe that learning
S venes in an unmarked skyscraper in
the financial district. On an August morn-
white sneakers, was in court without a
lawyer.The judge asked, through a Span-
more dialects could further “profession- ing, a list of the names for the day’s cases ish-language interpreter, “Do you want
alize” Mam interpreters. was tacked onto the wall of a waiting a Mam translator?” Pablo looked con-
They take notes during asylum in- room: Manzares, Martínez, Mendoza, fused. Then he said, “Sí,” and was quiet.
terviews and court cases, in order to in- Misa. Eleni Wolfe-Roubatis, the direc- During a break, Bachan stepped out-
clude important terms in the dictionary: tor of Immigrant Legal Defense, a non- side with Pablo. When they returned,
“credible fear,” “release,” “gangs,” “stip- profit, told me that about thirty per cent Bachan told Gambill, “I’m probably
ulate,” “persecution.” “What we’ve been of the court’s cases involve Mam speak- crazy, but I’m taking the case.”
doing is try to come up with a defini- ers, but they are hard to pick out. Unlike “Delightfully crazy,” the judge an-
tion of ‘asylum’ and translate that to other Mayan groups, which have distinc- swered. “You are stepping into the gap.”
Mam,” Sales said. tive last names, Mam speakers were named The whole asylum request would have
Their shorthand translation is “To after Spanish people whom they worked to be assembled and argued in three
be held and looked after by the law.” for as semi-enslaved peons. A common months. Pablo was alone in court that
“Qlet tun ley.” last name among Mam people is Pablo, day, but his “rider”—his eight-year-old
A longer, more complete definition for former peons of a certain Don Pablo. son, Hugo—was part of his family unit.
30 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020
 Pablo told me in broken Spanish that
he had tried to secure a lawyer: “I call,
but they are all busy.” On finding Bachan,
he said, “Estoy muy agradecido con mi Di-
osito lindo,” a very Guatemalan way of
saying that he was thankful to his sweet
God. He had come to court that day
planning to represent himself in a lan-
guage he could barely speak.
From court, I walked to the office of
Ilyce Shugall, at the Bar Association of
San Francisco, where she runs the Im-
migrant Legal Defense Program. Shugall
was sworn in as an immigration judge in
2017 but stepped down last March. She
wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times
explaining that, under Sessions’s immigra-
tion rules, she could no longer guarantee
that asylum seekers had the opportunity
to fully present their cases. (In January,
2019, access to asylum was further re-
stricted, when the Trump Administration “We could use more grape-jelly packets over here.”
began to require that many asylum seek-
ers remain in Mexico while waiting for
the disposition of their cases.)
• •
I asked Shugall whether indigenous
asylum seekers got due process. She let ing, that is the culmination of every- drills, Sales gave some background on
out a big sigh. “Sometimes,” she said, thing, and they have an opportunity to Mayan culture. “I don’t call myself La-
and paused. “They were definitely the speak in their language and tell their tino or Hispanic,” he said. “No offense
most challenging for me as an immi- story, which I’m sure is very gratifying to them. But the Spanish have been the
gration judge.” She explained that the for them in many ways, to finally be able enemy.” Sales told us about the biggest
accelerated schedule has disproportion- to explain to someone in great detail event of the year in Todos Santos Cu-
ately affected “rare-language speakers.” why they are where they are right now.” chumatán, a horse-riding festival that
“I wasn’t going to give short shrift to commemorates an anti-colonial rebel-
people who clearly weren’t understand- ne Saturday, I attended a Mam class lion. “The ancestors saw horses for the
ing things,” Shugall said. “It was just re-
ally time-consuming, and I know not
O that Henry Sales teaches at Laney
College, in downtown Oakland. It was
first time when they were enslaved by
the Spanish,” Sales said. They danced,
all judges do that.” Labor Day weekend, but thirty people as an offering, before stealing the horses
Shugall worried less about Mam showed up, a mixture of social workers and escaping into the Cuchumatán
speakers—since groups such as Asoci- and public-school teachers. Dave Rose, Mountains.
ación Mayab can sometimes provide a teacher at Fremont High School, said The festival is a major holiday for the
interpreters—than about the K’iche’ and that he has a total of a hundred and forty Mam. Men wear hats with feathers, to
Q’anjob’al speakers who work as day la- students. “Sixty of them speak Mam,” he represent roosters and a masculine spirit,
borers in the Central Valley. “If you speed said. The other teachers gasped. and gallop through town, past onlook-
up their case, it just doesn’t give them Soon Sales was running us through ers and marimba bands. Martín told me
as much time to find various resources, the alphabet. The letters were familiar that he rode in it for the first time in
like people who can help them with but the sounds were not. There were November. It was his first trip to Gua-
language, and then find counsel, and glottal stops (as in “uh-oh”), and apos- temala in twelve years. He visited fam-
get the documentation they need from trophes that made a little popping noise ily in Todos Santos, and began to set up
their village,” she said. out of the preceding consonant. We partnerships to teach Bay Area inter-
“I found it incredible that people who could barely get out chjonte, “thank you.” preters various Mam dialects via Skype.
come from remote villages in Guate- Sales showed us how to pronounce The trip turned out to be an educa-
mala, do not read or write Spanish or “tz’,” a hard buzz. “It’s not in the books, tion in what Martín called “Mam mo-
English, do not speak Spanish, and are but our elders say the sounds are from dalities and etiquette,” a way of being that
living in rural Central Valley, Califor- the sounds of forests and animals,” he said. is subtly different from that of Califor-
nia, with no transportation, make it to Rose wanted to know how to say nians. “I would describe Mam etiquette
San Francisco for their hearings,” Shugall “You’re late.” Yaj matzuli. “I’m going to as addressing everyone in the room and
said. “As long as you have the proper use that a lot,” he said. not taking up space,” he said. “I’m here,
language interpreter at their final hear- During a break from pronunciation but I’m not here for me—it’s for you.” 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 31
 A REPORTER AT LARGE

EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES
The ultra-wealthy who argue that they should be paying higher taxes.
BY SHEELAH KOLHATKAR

bigail Disney remembers the although it took a year or two. (“These pening, she flew to Los Angeles and

A moment, two decades ago, when

she no longer wanted to fly on
her family’s private plane. Disney is the
things are hard to give up,” she told me.)
And she started advocating for peace
and women’s equality.
met with fifteen or so Disneyland em-
ployees at the Anaheim office of Work-
ers United Local 50, an affiliate of the
granddaughter of Roy O. Disney, who In 2011, she joined an organization Service Employees International Union
founded the Disney company with his called the Patriotic Millionaires, a group that represents about seventy-five hun-
younger brother, Walt, in 1923, and her of wealthy Americans who are concerned dred food-service workers at Disney
father was a longtime senior executive about rising income inequality and who theme parks. “I have a healthy skepti-
there. Abigail’s parents owned a Boe- speak out in favor of policies tradition- cism about the way that unions charac-
ing 737, one of the largest private-air- ally considered to be antithetical to their terize things, so I was not inclined to
craft models on the market, and they economic interests. She began to make simply accept whatever was told to me,”
let her use it for family trips. For many public appearances and videos in which she said.
years, when Abigail was raising her four she promoted higher taxes on the wealthy. Abigail had told the union represen-
children, she would take the plane to She told me that she realized that the tatives that she didn’t want her visit to
Ireland, to visit her mother’s castle. The luxuries she and her family enjoyed were attract publicity, so some of the work-
plane “was like a flying playpen,” Abi- really a way of walling themselves off ers were summoned to the office with-
gail told me recently. “I’ve known the from the world, which made it easier to out being told whom they were meet-
pilot since I was a teen-ager.” One day, ignore certain economic realities. “Com- ing. They sat in a circle and talked about
when her children were older, she took ing face to face with it feels fucking aw- their economic struggles. A full-time
an overnight flight from California to ful,” she said. “That’s why the wealthy hair stylist named Rebekah Pedersen
New York, where she lives. She was trav- have the private planes and the bottle told Abigail that she, too, had often
elling alone, but there was a full staff on service in the back and the limousines slept in her car. Abigail recalled that a
duty to cater to her needs. As she got with the tinted windows.” thirty-year veteran of the park said that
into the queen-size bed and secured the In March, 2018, she received a Face- she had also recently been homeless for
safety belt that stretched across the mat- book message from a custodian at Dis- a time, and that some of the workers
tress, preparing to sleep for the next few neyland who was asking for help. He said that they were on food stamps. (A
hours, an unpleasant feeling came over said that many workers there were barely spokesperson for the company issued a
her. “I couldn’t help thinking about the able to survive on what they were paid, statement saying, “We strongly disagree
carbon footprint of it, and all the fuel,” and that their union was fighting for a with this characterization of our em-
she said. “It just felt so wrong.” fifteen-dollar-an-hour minimum wage, ployees and their experience at Disney.”
It wasn’t the first time that Abigail, without success. The local press had re- The company also said, “Disney has
who inherited part of her grandfather’s cently published several sensational re- made significant investments to expand
fortune, had experienced discomfort ports about Disneyland, including a the earning potential and upward mo-
about her wealth and how little she had story about a sixty-one-year-old night bility of our employees.”)
done to deserve it. As a child, she would janitor at the Disneyland Resort who The president of Workers United
go with her grandfather to Disneyland, had died, alone, in her car, where she Local 50, Chris Duarte, who attended
where she was treated as a special guest. had been living. That year, the Walt Dis- the meeting, told me that he could see
“He loved taking us to the front of the ney Company had reported almost thir- that Abigail was struggling to process
line,” she said. She would hang her head teen billion dollars in profit; the night what she was learning. “She didn’t want
as they marched past other families who janitor was estimated to have been earn- to trash her family name,” he said. “The
had been waiting for rides in the hot ing thirteen or fourteen dollars an hour. company does a lot of good things. But
sun. “I’d say, ‘Grandpa, they hate us,’” “I spent almost a month sitting on to have this ugly thing in the closet—I
she recalled. “And he’d say, ‘I worked so it, thinking, What can I do?” Abigail know it bothered her.” Abigail spent
hard all those years so you could go to told me. She is a shareholder in the com- the next few weeks working on an e-mail
the front of the line.’” As a young adult, pany but has never had a formal role to Bob Iger, the company’s C.E.O. The
Disney forged her own life in New York there, and was wary of interfering in the Walt Disney Company is one of the
City, first as a mother and later as a doc- family business. “It was hard for me to largest and most profitable media busi-
umentary-film producer. She eventu- decide that I could take this on,” she nesses in the world, and in 2018 Iger,
ally stopped flying on the private plane, said. To learn more about what was hap- who that year announced a new streaming
32 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020
Abigail Disney, an heir to the Disney fortune, wants to convince more people that systemic change is needed.
PHOTOGRAPH BY PLATON THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 33
service and who had directed the com- has increased, on average, by nine hun- ing more generous wages. She wrote,
pany’s acquisitions of Marvel, Pixar, Lu- dred and forty per cent since 1978, ac- “You could become the leader of the
casfilm, and 21st Century Fox’s film and cording to one estimate; during the most ethical multi-billion-dollar multi-
TV assets, received almost sixty-six mil- same period, worker pay has risen twelve national business the world has ever
lion dollars in total compensation. That per cent. Income inequality hasn’t been known.” Iger responded a few days later,
was more than fourteen hundred times this extreme since the nineteen-twen- thanking her for her e-mail. He said
the median pay of a company employee. ties. A recent study by the economists that he was proud that there hadn’t been
Although some in the business world Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman any work stoppages during his tenure,
say that Iger deserves his staggering sal- found that, as a result of cuts to estate and he suggested that she follow up
ary because of the company’s financial and corporate taxes, as well as the 2017 with the human-resources department.
success, Abigail found the pay ratio dis- G.O.P. tax bill, the four hundred rich- In June, 2018, a ballot initiative that
turbing. “It is something that the whole est Americans pay a lower over-all tax proposed raising the minimum wage
country is engaged in—shaving every rate than any other group in the coun- to fifteen dollars an hour was intro-
benefit off workers’ lives, making sure try. In a Times Op-Ed, Saez and Zuc- duced in the city of Anaheim. It would
they are living as close to the bone as man wrote, “This is the tax system of apply to all employers in the city, the
is humanly possible,” she said. (Iger has a plutocracy.” largest of which, by far, was Disneyland.
pointed out that his salary was unusu- In Abigail’s message to Iger, she ar- In July, four months before the mid-
ally high in 2018 because of a one-time gued that the company would be dam- term elections, when the ballot measure
stock award that he was granted after aged by reports that some employees was up for a vote, the company agreed
the acquisition of 21st Century Fox and were being paid so little. The press had to increase hourly wages to fifteen dol-
as part of an agreement that he would been reporting rumors that Iger was lars for about ten thousand of Disney-
remain at Disney for three years. His thinking about running for President, land’s thirty thousand unionized work-
annual compensation was $39.3 million. and he had said in an interview that ers, and to raise the wages of its non-
Disney has defended Iger’s compensa- America was “gravely in need of opti- union workers as well. (The measure
tion package, saying that he has “deliv- mism.” (Oprah Winfrey publicly told passed.) Still, Abigail felt dissatisfied.
ered exceptional value for the company, Iger that she would canvass for him in Earlier this year, after some public com-
its shareholders and employees.”) Iowa.) This was an opportunity, Abigail ments that she had made about Iger’s
In the U.S., executive compensation said, for him to set an example by offer- salary—she called it “insane”—were
widely circulated, she decided to go fur-
ther. On Easter, while taking a train to
visit her college-age son, she posted
twenty-two messages on Twitter criti-
cizing the disparities at the company.
“Let me [be] very clear,” the first one
read. “I like Bob Iger. I do NOT speak
for my family but only for myself. . . .
But by any objective measure a pay ratio
over a thousand is insane.” She went
on, “What on earth would be wrong
with shifting some of the profits—the
fruits of these employees’ labor—to
some folks other than those at the top?”
Within two hours, she saw that her
tweets had been viewed half a million
times. “By that night, it was at three
million,” she said. “And I thought, O.K.,
something’s happening.”
She began thinking about how to
translate the viral moment into some-
thing more lasting. “It’s really easy to
reduce someone like me to a crazy rich
girl,” she said. “I needed to find a way
to maintain my credibility and not seem
like I had an axe to grind about Dis-
ney.” Since then, she has testified be-
fore Congress about worker pay, worked
with activist groups fighting for more
“Thank you for your e-mail. I will be out on a walk for the next twenty progressive economic policies, and given
minutes and plan on barking remotely until my return.” dozens of speeches and interviews. Ab-
igail told me that she hopes that the in the Patriotic Millionaires’ main office, mantle the conservative premise and
C.E.O.s of other companies are pay- in downtown Washington, D.C., just a shove it into the dark recesses of the
ing attention. “Have you seen the movie few blocks from the White House. In human psyche, where it belongs.” She
‘Caddyshack’?” she asked. “There’s a go- 2010, Republican tax cuts were about to has a knack for illustrating policy battles
pher, and he pops up every so often.” expire, and it had become clear that Pres- in ways that are both bizarre and mem-
She added, “I’m the gopher. So I’ll con- ident Barack Obama was going to give orable. In one of the Agenda Project’s
tinue to pop up periodically and be the in to lobbying pressure and extend the ads, which she made during a Republican
bane of their existence, because I don’t cuts, even for wealthy people. “I thought push to drastically cut Medicare, an
want them to feel comfortable. They that was horrifying,” Payne told me. “As actor who resembles Paul Ryan, the for-
are participating in a social and eco- did two millionaires I was mer House Speaker, wheels
nomic process that is destroying actual talking to.” Those million- an elderly woman through
human lives. And I’m just not going to aires were Guy Saperstein, an idyllic wooded park be-
go along with it. Especially not with a civil-rights lawyer, and fore steering the wheelchair
my name attached.” David desJardins, an early to the edge of a cliff and
employee at Google. pushing her off; other ads
isney is one of the highest-profile Payne wrote a short open of Payne’s have targeted the
D figures in the Patriotic Million-
aires, which now has more than two
letter, urging Obama to let
the tax cuts expire, and
Tea Party, Mitt Romney, and
antiabortion activists. The
hundred members in thirty-four states: Saperstein and desJardins videos are cheaply made, and
technology entrepreneurs, software en- signed it, as did forty-five a little crude, but they gen-
gineers, Wall Street investors, industri- other people who qualified erate attention.
alists, and inheritors of family fortunes. for the tax cut, including the musician Payne manages the Patriotic Mil-
Although Abigail is best known for her Moby and Ben Cohen, the co-founder lionaires with a similar savvy. Many
criticisms of the Disney company, the of Ben & Jerry’s. Payne called the group members are embarrassed by the group’s
group’s mission was initially a simple the Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal name, for instance—preferring not to
idea endorsed by a half-dozen rich peo- Strength, posted the letter online, and identify themselves as millionaires, be-
ple: “Please raise our taxes.” The mem- sent it out as a press release. It was im- cause it seems tacky, or objecting to the
bers now have the broader goal of pres- mediately picked up by the media, Payne implication that non-members might
suring their wealthy peers to confront said, probably because “lots of wealthy not be patriotic—but Payne is adamant
what they believe are the destructive people say they want to do good in the that it must be kept. “A hundred per
effects of trickle-down economics—the world but fewer of them want to specifi- cent of our members hate the name,
idea, which has driven U.S. policy deci- cally advance the things that would ac- and every time we have a gathering we
sions for several decades and has largely tually bring good in the world but that have thirty minutes set aside so they
been debunked, that reducing taxes on may cost them.” The letter got the at- can bitch about it,” she said. “And then,
businesses and the wealthy will benefit tention of the White House, and Payne at the conclusion of the thirty minutes,
low- and middle-income workers. Mem- was invited to attend Obama’s 2012 Tax I tell them we’re not going to change
bers of the Patriotic Millionaires lobby Day address. the name.” She added, “The brand was
lawmakers and affluent individuals to She began approaching Democratic very intentional. I think the lack of sub-
instead support policies that would, for donors and businesspeople to pitch the tlety in the name is part of the way that
instance, increase the minimum wage idea of an organization focussed on we actually achieve our end goal.” One
and raise taxes on corporations and the three core beliefs: that if people work of the group’s members, Jacqueline
rich. “If you want to change social norms, full time they should be paid enough Boberg, a former technology salesper-
you’ve got to be out there going public to meet their basic needs; that regular son, agreed that it had an odd power.
about your beliefs,” Eric Schoenberg, a people deserve as much political power “Republicans will open the door, be-
former investment banker, said, during as the wealthy; and that rich people cause who wouldn’t?” she said. “You’re
a breakfast that the group held in New and corporations should pay higher patriotic, and you’re a millionaire!” Frank
York, in October. taxes. Payne speaks bluntly about these Patitucci, the owner and C.E.O. of Nu-
Patriotic Millionaires was founded goals. People who support tax cuts for Compass Mobility, an employee-relo-
by Erica Payne, a political strategist who high earners and reductions to social cation firm, told me that the group had
had worked on Bill Clinton’s inaugural programs are “very deliberately attempt- proved a draw with the press. “I joined
committee and had served as the dep- ing to create a permanent underclass,” this organization because it gave me
uty national finance director for the she said. “You want people to suffer the most leverage,” Patitucci said. “You
Democratic National Committee be- and die earlier, because your greed is write a letter to the editor as Joe Blow,
fore getting an M.B.A. from Wharton. more important to you than another it might be ignored. But if you write as
She has long, dark hair and a gleaming human being.” a Patriotic Millionaire you have an op-
smile, and she speaks at a high velocity. Payne also runs the Agenda Project, portunity to make a bigger impact.”
She was a cheerleading champion in a progressive political-advocacy organi- To qualify for the group, members
high school, in North Carolina, and zation that she founded in 2009 and must have an annual income of at least
proudly displays a trophy from that era which she describes as aiming to “dis- a million dollars, or assets worth more
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 35
 the group’s Web site expressing sup-
port for Elizabeth Warren’s proposed
wealth tax, which would impose a tariff
of two per cent on fortunes greater than
fifty million dollars and three per cent
on those above a billion. (Warren re-
cently doubled her proposed billion-plus
tax rate, to six per cent.) The group
helped develop a bill, introduced in the
House of Representatives in Novem-
ber, that would impose a surtax on the
country’s highest earners, and it is work-
ing on other legislation, including a bill
that would raise the estate tax.
In July, the House passed another
bill supported by the Millionaires, called
the Raise the Wage Act, which would
increase the federal hourly minimum
wage to fifteen dollars by 2025 and would
eliminate a law that permits tipped
workers to be paid as little as two dol-
lars and thirteen cents an hour. Judy
“If I had to do it over, I’d mount the python higher on the wall.” Conti, the government-affairs director
of the National Employment Law Proj-
ect, one of the groups with which the
• • Millionaires pushed for the bill, told
me that, before the legislation was in-
than five million dollars. That could say that they are concerned about the troduced, two hundred and three House
include many families who would future of the nation. Some of them feel members had indicated that they would
describe themselves as upper middle that severe inequality fuels corruption support it—fifteen votes short of the
class—who, for instance, own homes and has led to the election of Trump number needed for Democratic lead-
in cities with hot real-estate markets. and other right-wing leaders across the ership to introduce it for a vote.
When I asked Payne how hard it was world. Many of them believe that in- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
to persuade rich people to join, she said, action on inequality could lead to the and other business groups argued that
“I think the last time I checked there kinds of violent street protests recently the bill would kill jobs. Many of the
were about three hundred and seventy- seen in countries like Chile. undecided members of Congress were
five thousand taxpayers in the country The group has produced TV ads and moderate Democrats who supported
who make a million dollars a year in online videos and has sent members to raising the minimum wage but thought
income”—there are now almost half a speak at rallies; before important votes, that fifteen dollars might be too high
million—“and we have a couple hun- it often targets members of Congress and worried about the consequences
dred members.” She laughed. “If you who are likely to be influenced by rich for small businesses in their states. The
ever needed a back-of-the-envelope businesspeople in their districts. In New Patriotic Millionaires, working with
calculation of how many of America’s York State, the group has lobbied to several other organizations, made a
élite are concerned about the basic close the carried-interest tax loophole, list of around thirty undecided House
well-being of their fellow-citizens, that which shields the income of many members and identified those who
should give you a rough estimate.” hedge-fund and private-equity-fund might be especially receptive to busi-
Members include Chuck Collins, the managers, and it has advocated for a ness leaders who supported the bill.
heir to the Oscar Mayer fortune; Ro- so-called pied-à-terre bracket, which The group then contacted those mem-
berta Kaplan, the civil-rights lawyer; would apply to people with part-time bers and their staffs. Conti said, of the
Jeffrey Gural, the real-estate investor; homes. Several members, including Patriotic Millionaires, “They help us
and George Zimmer, the founder of Molly Munger, the daughter of Char- make the business case for the mini-
Men’s Wearhouse. lie Munger, the longtime vice-chair- mum wage and give moderate mem-
It might seem disingenuous for peo- man of Warren Buffett’s firm, Berk- bers a measure of the cover they need
ple to try to change the rules after they shire Hathaway, have spoken in favor to vote yes. They will talk to members
have already amassed fortunes via the of a wealth tax. about how taking the high road is the
old, “rigged” system; some might also In February, Morris Pearl, a former best business strategy, how this is part
see their efforts as a way to generate executive at the asset-management firm of how we invest in our workers, that
flattering publicity or to alleviate feel- BlackRock and the chair of the Patri- when we treat them better they work
ings of guilt. But the group’s members otic Millionaires, wrote an article for better for us—we have less turnover,
36 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020
higher productivity—and when work- ist rentier society similar to France tative Katie Porter, of California, ques-
ers in our community have more money before the Revolution. In an essay in tioning Jamie Dimon, the C.E.O. of
in their pockets they spend it at our Politico, he wrote, “Revolutions, like JPMorgan Chase, went viral. Dimon
businesses.” The bill passed with thir- bankruptcies, come gradually, and then had previously spoken about the many
teen more votes than it needed. When suddenly. One day, somebody sets him- Americans “left behind,” noting that
I asked her how impactful the group self on fire, then thousands of people forty per cent of people in the U.S.
had been, she said, “When you’re look- are in the streets, and before you know earned less than fifteen dollars an hour,
ing for those last votes, it’s micro-tar- it, the country is burning. And then and that the same percentage said that
geting. If they can help deliver two there’s no time for us to get to the air- they didn’t have four hundred dollars
members—and they helped deliver at port and jump on our Gulfstream Vs in savings to deal with an emergency.
least two members—they’re effective.” and fly to New Zealand.” JPMorgan Chase had just reported $9.2
In the past few years, many econo- billion in profit for the first quarter and
eginning in the early eighties, the mists, including Emmanuel Saez and almost thirty billion dollars in revenue;
B remnants of the post-F.D.R. era of
social democracy gave way to the age
Gabriel Zucman, as well as Esther Duflo
and Abhijit Banerjee, of M.I.T., have
Dimon had been paid thirty-one mil-
lion dollars the year before. Porter de-
of Ronald Reagan, which brought de- tried to demonstrate that extreme in- scribed the monthly budget of a hypo-
regulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and equality can be reversed. In the lead-up thetical new employee at a Chase bank
the promise that free-market capital- to the 2020 elections, pundits and pol- in Irvine, California—a single mother
ism would lead to widespread prosper- iticians on the left and right have been who was earning sixteen dollars and
ity. In spite of ample evidence that the asking how best to fix capitalism. In fifty cents an hour. After paying the
new system wasn’t working as antici- January, the Fox News host Tucker Carl- rent for a one-bedroom apartment that
pated, this ideology has dominated eco- son spent fifteen minutes criticizing she shared with her daughter, plus the
nomic policymaking ever since. Sean free-market capitalism as a system that costs of utilities, food, child care, and a
Wilentz, a historian at Princeton, told exploits average people. Polls indicate basic cell phone, the woman, Porter
me, “We live in a world where supply- that the number of Americans who sup- said, had a five-hundred-and-sixty-dol-
side economics, which was always a port some form of socialism has risen lar deficit each month. “My question
fraud, became a religion.” dramatically. In March, during an in- for you, Mr. Dimon, is: How should
After the recession of 2008-09, the terview on “Morning Joe,” the former she manage this budget shortfall while
Occupy Wall Street protest movement Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, she’s working full time at your bank?”
focussed public attention on the finan- who was running for President as a busi- Porter said. Dimon seemed uncomfort-
cial industry and its influence on gov- ness-friendly Democrat, refused to call able; he told Porter that he “would have
ernment. The anthropologist David himself a capitalist. to think about it.”
Graeber, one of the movement’s early More business leaders have begun Dimon chairs the Business Round-
organizers, helped popularize the term to say that inequality has reached dan- table, which represents the C.E.O.s of
“the ninety-nine per cent” to describe gerous levels. In April, Ray Dalio, the America’s largest companies, and, in Au-
everyone who wasn’t among the wealth- founder of the hundred- gust, the group issued a
iest “one per cent,” a tiny group that and-sixty-billion-dollar statement proposing to re-
controls forty per cent of the nation’s hedge fund Bridgewater define “the Purpose of a
wealth. In 2014, the French economist Associates, posted a lengthy Corporation.” The group
Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the essay on LinkedIn in which advised companies to take
Twenty-first Century,” based on a de- he wrote that American into account the interests of
cade of research into the distribution workers in the bottom sixty “all stakeholders,” including
of wealth, became a surprise best-seller. per cent of earners have had customers, employees, sup-
Piketty argued that, without aggressive no income growth, after ad- pliers, and local communi-
taxation, the very wealthy would con- justing for inflation, since ties. Although the statement
tinue to pull further ahead of everyone 1980, while the incomes of was signed by dozens of
else. Abigail Disney told me that, al- the top ten per cent have C.E.O.s, it lacked details or
though she didn’t get through all eight doubled and those of the top one per specific commitments, and some critics
hundred and sixteen pages of the book, cent have tripled. One graphic ranked saw it as an attempt to preëmpt the most
she “certainly got the gist of it, and the wealthy countries in terms of the like- radical proposals from the Democratic
gist of it was really important.” lihood that a child born into the low- Presidential candidates, such as banning
That year, the entrepreneur Nick est economic quartile would move into stock buybacks and mandating that em-
Hanauer, one of the first investors in the top quartile; the U.S. was second to ployees have a voice in selecting a com-
Amazon, gave a TED talk called “Be- last, ahead of only China. Dalio warned pany’s board of directors.
ware, Fellow Plutocrats, the Pitchforks that, if capitalism wasn’t drastically Over lunch at a vegan restaurant in
Are Coming.” After describing his mul- changed, the U.S. would have “great Manhattan, Morris Pearl, a sturdy, un-
tiple homes, his yacht, and his private conflict and some form of revolution flappable man with a crown of white
plane, Hanauer argued that the U.S. that will hurt everyone.” hair, who was wearing a windbreaker—
was at risk of becoming a neo-feudal- On April 10th, a video of Represen- he likes to travel around Manhattan
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 37
by bicycle—told me that he decided ting on the sidelines, you’re effectively be truly wealthy. “People are trying to
to dedicate himself to the Patriotic adding to the problem,” Pym said. come up with the right kind of lan-
Millionaires full time soon after mak- In mid-August, members of the Pa- guage,” he said. “Five hundred thou-
ing a business trip to Athens in the sum- triotic Millionaires gathered for one of sand is ‘affluent,’ two million is ‘rich,’
mer of 2013, during Greece’s economic the first meetings of the organization’s and ten million is ‘mega rich.’” Every-
crisis. He had been a member of the California chapter, at the Fremont Hills one agreed that it was a tricky issue.
Patriotic Millionaires for some time, Country Club, between San Francisco Pearl spoke about some of the group’s
and had become so vocal about his view and San Jose. Charles Simmons, a for- recent victories, including its work help-
that top earners should be paying higher mer executive at Sun Microsystems and ing to influence votes on the Raise the
taxes that his day job, at BlackRock, NetApp, had arranged for the use of Wage Act. “Ideas that seemed crazy,
where he specialized in valuing com- the space. He told me that his recent such as a tax on wealth, are now part
plex bonds, had become a bit awkward. experience as a math tutor for high- of the conversation, and our members
He had travelled to Athens to meet with school students in the poor community can take some credit for pushing the
a group of international bankers who of East Palo Alto, along with Trump’s needle in that direction,” he said. “I
were trying to assign values to the de- election, had spurred him to become think our group, guided by our staff of
faulted loans of a Greek bank that was more politically active. Simmons and seventeen people, is helping our mem-
seeking a bailout from the International about fifteen other people took seats bers speak out and make their voices
Monetary Fund. At a lunch meeting around a banquet table decorated with heard, letting them explain that, no,
one day with the bankers, he was re- white orchids. The first item on the all you guys who read Ayn Rand and
turning from the dessert table when he agenda was the multimillionaire-surtax couldn’t find Chicago on a map actu-
noticed a commotion on the street below. bill, which was expected to be intro- ally don’t know quite as much about
“I thought at first it was a parade,” he duced in the House. The tax would in- what it’s like to be rich as a bunch
said. “Then I realized it was a demon- clude a ten-per-cent surcharge on all of actual Patriotic Millionaires who
stration in front of parliament.” He went income above two million dollars, rais- founded businesses, who funded start-
on, “I turned around and looked at these ing the top tax rate from thirty-seven ups, and who met payroll.”
twenty bankers, worrying about their per cent of income to forty-seven per After lunch, I spoke with William
capital and liquidity issues. I wondered cent. It would also apply to investment (Buz) Battle, a technology executive
if I was really doing anything to help income, including capital gains and div- who told me that he had been raised in
people in Greece.” idends, addressing what many tax ex- a Republican household but that the
Pearl also recalled a family vacation perts see as a crucial weakness in the Trump Administration had driven him
on Paradise Island, in the Bahamas, at current laws. Pym had prepared a fact to the left. “With the way we’re headed,
a resort staffed by low-wage workers. sheet about the bill, along with a list of we need to do more. I need to do more,”
One of his children said that the only talking points that members could use he said. I asked him what worried him
people who seemed to enjoy their jobs to promote the tax. most. He glanced at his wife, Anne, who
there were the trainers who worked “I have a marketing point,” Blaine was standing next to him. “We could
with the dolphins. “I hadn’t thought Garst, an early Apple employee, with a have—I don’t want to say it, but, riots,”
about it until my kids bushy white beard and a he said. “ ‘Social unrest’ may be a bet-
brought it up,” Pearl said. long ponytail, said. “Instead ter way of putting it. We’re making life
“I don’t want our country of saying ‘multimillionaires,’ bad for a lot of people. And it’s getting
to end up like South Af- why not say ‘megamillion- frigging nasty.”
rica. If you recall, apartheid aires’? You don’t want to in- Could inequality in the U.S. really
did not end well for the rich clude farmers who have two become so severe that it leads to social
people or the poor people.” million dollars of land. It’s upheaval? I asked the Stanford histo-
about perception.” Garst’s rian Walter Scheidel, the author of the
or its first nine years, the comment set off a discus- 2017 book “The Great Leveler: Violence
F Patriotic Millionaires
operated out of Washing-
sion about who qualified as
rich. There was a quick ex-
and the History of Inequality from the
Stone Age to the Twenty-first Century,”
ton and New York.This year, change about the threshold which argues that violence has been the
the group expanded to the West Coast, for the “0.1 per cent,” which someone “single most important means” of re-
in part to attract more members from said was around thirty-two million dol- ducing, or levelling, wealth and income
the technology industry. Kelsea-Marie lars, and the “0.01 per cent,” which an- inequality throughout history. In his
Pym, the group’s executive director, other person said was seven hundred book, Scheidel goes back to the end of
pointed out that California has been at million or eight hundred million dol- the Ice Age, when nomadic hunter-
the forefront of implementing the kinds lars. Alan Davis, who runs a family foun- gatherer tribes settled into permanent
of economic policies that the group wants dation, said that, although polling has dwellings, which for the first time al-
to see enacted nationally. “Our goal is shown that people consider five hun- lowed for the accumulation of wealth
to begin to challenge the wealthy to un- dred thousand dollars in income to be that could be passed on to heirs. His
derstand that inequality is at such a de- rich, two lawyers living together in an research suggests that inequality is
stabilizing level right now that, by sit- expensive city on that sum might not inextricably linked to civilization.
38 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020
 America’s wealthy élites, when dis-
cussing class-based rebellion, often
invoke the French Revolution. But,
Scheidel said, that kind of disruption
is fairly rare. He noted that levelling
happens much more often because of
the collapse of a state, such as the fall
of the Roman Empire; because of deadly
pandemics, like the black death of the
thirteen-hundreds, which killed so many
people that there were labor shortages
and workers’ wages went up; and be-
cause of mass-mobilization warfare,
such as the two World Wars. The French
may have resolved some of their eigh-
teenth-century economic injustices with
the guillotine, but in many other coun-
tries across Europe the ruling classes
retained power until they were dislodged
by the turmoil of the First World War.
Scheidel told me that the extreme “I don’t understand it—no matter how much I drink coffee, play
political polarization in the U.S. is likely on my phone, refresh my e-mail, look up things online, go to
to continue but that the Patriotic Mil- the kitchen for snacks, message my friends, scroll through Twitter,
lionaires’ fears of violence are probably and play with the cats, I still can’t get any writing done.”
misplaced. “If they’re worried about
wholesale collapse and people with
pitchforks coming after them, history • •
does not give any indication that that
is around the corner,” he said. “States off a few of her tattoos, including a There is no reason why I should give a
are too powerful. States are too good at peace dove on the inside of her wrist. shit about poor people.” As an under-
monitoring dissent. The rich are rich She has a slightly defensive way of graduate at Yale, she was swept up in
enough to not put themselves in dan- talking about the comforts she enjoys. leftist movements on campus. “At first,
ger.” Scheidel said that America’s élites She sent her four children to private it was about being among the cool peo-
should be more concerned about their schools, but she doesn’t have a driver. ple,” she admitted. A woman gave her
quality of life. He talked about orga- She wears unremarkable clothes. More a T-shirt featuring Che Guevara and
nized crime, citing Brazil and other than once, she cited the Kardashians as the words “Viva Los Sandinistas,” the
countries where members of the upper a family who feels no shame about Nicaraguan socialist political party that
classes employ armed guards and worry “throwing their money around.” the U.S. had tried to overthrow by back-
that they or their children might be kid- Disney told me that she had spent ing the right-wing Contras, leading to
napped. “That reduces your ability to much of her early life feeling detached a decade of civil war in Nicaragua. She
enjoy your wealth in a civilized way,” he from her family, both culturally and wore it constantly. “By the time I grad-
said. “You’d still have your stuff, but you’d politically. “They were Red-baiters,” uated from college, I understood that
be limited in your ability to make full she said. “Whenever two workers stood Ronald Reagan was not a good person,”
use of it. If I were rich, I’d probably be together and had a conversation, that she said. “And my parents worshipped
worried about getting to that point.” was communism.” In 1941, when the the ground he walked on, so that be-
Disney animators unionized and went came a very painful thing.”
n September, I met Abigail Disney on strike, Walt and Roy took it per- At twenty-one, she gained access to
I at her office in Manhattan, just a few
blocks from where she lives. The walls
sonally, and Abigail told me that the
two men were resentful about it until
part of her inheritance—between ten
million and twenty million dollars—
are covered in framed photographs— they died. She said that they practiced and made what she called a “conscious
of her children; of the Irish castle, which a paternalistic form of capitalism, want- decision” to live apart from her family.
she now owns; and of meetings that ing to take care of their employees on “All of my college life and all of my
she has had with the likes of Hillary their own terms. twenties were spent in a painful process
Clinton, Barack Obama, and Meryl Her parents were conservative. “My of separation,” she said. “I would de-
Streep. A sign on her desk reads “Fem- mother was Fox News before there was scribe it as no less than agonizing.” One
inist AF.” Disney has an alert, serious Fox News,” she said. When I asked Dis- of her brothers remained with the fam-
face and light-brown hair that falls in ney about her own politics, she said, “I ily, in Los Angeles, but Disney moved
unruly curls; she was sitting cross-legged really don’t know why I care about this. to New York, where she got a Ph.D. in
on a pink faux-leather couch and showed I really shouldn’t, given my upbringing. English literature at Columbia. She said
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 39
that her parents were embarrassed and at the Tribeca Film Festival. One of its badly.” When I asked her whether the
angered by her politics. Her father died lead characters, Leymah Gbowee, won Disney Company would be a part of it,
in 2009, and her mother in 2012. the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. she declined to answer.
Her thirties were spent raising her Last year, Disney put together a bid When Erica Payne tracked Disney
children. Disney said that, when she to buy what was left of the Weinstein down one day and urged her to join the
was in her mid-forties, “I thought, I Company as it prepared to file for Chap- Patriotic Millionaires, Disney said to
have no résumé. Why would anyone ter 11 protection. The deal didn’t go herself, “That’s exactly how I want to
ever take me seriously? I understood through, and instead she co-founded a use the currency that I have.” She has
myself to be a person who had no value.” company called Level Forward, which become one of the group’s most out-
She tried to start a career as a filmmaker, funds film, theatre, and TV productions spoken members. In December, 2017,
but no one gave much consideration to led by women and people of color; the she appeared in a video attacking the
a Disney heiress. In 2007, she started a company’s first projects included in- Republican tax bill. In July, 2018, she
production company, Fork Films, which vestments in critically acclaimed Broad- hosted, with the minister and activist
makes movies with a social-justice focus, way shows like “What the Constitu- William Barber, a Patriotic Millionaires
and the following year she produced tion Means to Me,” the 2019 revival of media conference call to celebrate the
her first documentary, “Pray the Devil “Oklahoma!,” and “Slave Play.” She said passage of the minimum-wage bill in
Back to Hell,” about a group of women that she is working on a documentary the House.
who helped bring an end to the Libe- “about economic inequality and the re- She sometimes exaggerates. In an
rian civil war. The film won several lentless march over the last fifty years interview with Yahoo News this past
awards, including Best Documentary toward treating workers incredibly July, she said that Disney employees
had been so underpaid that they were
forced to “forage for food in other peo-
ple’s garbage,” a claim that she later re-
tracted. At a time when political activ-
ists are expected to live according to
their values, Disney’s role as an ultra-
wealthy spokesperson for the under-
class makes her a target of vitriol. In
late September, someone tweeted at her,
“Boy do I despise virtue signaling rich
liberal hypocrites living off the money
earned by their far better ancestors. Bet
you live in a luxury apt in NYC! Why
don’t you renounce your corporate gran-
dad’s money and give it ALL away! You
never will . . . HYPOCRITE!”
Disney and I discussed another Pa-
triotic Millionaires member, Chuck
Collins, the Oscar Mayer heir, who, in
1985, at the age of twenty-six, gave his
inheritance away to various environ-
mental and civil-rights organizations.
In Disney’s twenties and early thirties,
she had considered doing the same.
“Honestly, the only reason I didn’t do
it was that I was chicken,” she said. “I
wish I was a more courageous person.”
Over time, she told me, her wealth has
grown, and she’s been able to give away
much more than she would have if
she’d donated it all back then. (She said
that her net worth is a hundred and
forty million dollars, and that she has
given away around sixty-five million
dollars. The number is hard to verify;
she said that much of it was in the form
of grants to social-justice-oriented film-
makers and to organizations that work
with low-income populations.) She
pointed out that her name and wealth at a table near the front of the room, waking up from a “fifty-year fever dream”
are what enable her to talk about pov- her brow furrowed, scribbling notes on of market-driven economic policy. After
erty in the first place. If she were an a stack of papers that contained the text her speech, Lapham presented her with
unknown person with less money, she of her speech. She wore a navy-blue a plaque bearing a quote attributed to
said, TV networks wouldn’t invite her dress with white skulls printed on it, the aboriginal artist Lilla Watson: “If
on the air. her tortoiseshell glasses sliding down you have come to help me, you are wast-
I asked her how she felt about the her nose. Others in the room were help- ing your time. But if you have come be-
pledge that billionaires such as Buffett ing themselves to rice and beans, but cause your liberation is bound up with
and Bill Gates had signed, promising to Disney told me that she was too ner- mine, then let us work together.”
donate at least half of their fortunes to vous to eat. Instead, she drank a few Later that night, Disney boarded a
philanthropic causes. “I’ve given away glasses of Chardonnay. Fi- JetBlue flight back to New
much more than fifty per cent of my net nally, shortly after 9 p.m., York. She had been run-
worth, and I don’t intend to stop,” she three hours into the pro- ning from meeting to meet-
said. “And, frankly, if you’re a billionaire ceedings, she was intro- ing since early that morn-
and only want to give away half of your duced by Mike Lapham, a ing, pulling a pink Wonder
fortune, something is wrong with you.” tall, wiry man who heads Woman suitcase behind her.
Disney is wary of the idea that the gen- U.F.E.’s Responsible Wealth On the flight, she started
erosity of individual rich people can solve project. Lapham spoke talking about how we got
society’s problems. Anand Giridhara- about Disney’s support for to the current moment in
das, the author of “Winners Take All: preserving the estate tax, American politics, naming
The Elite Charade of Changing the and how she had helped figures ranging from Mar-
World,” has argued that much philan- push for a millionaire tax tin Luther King, Jr., to Mar-
thropy does far more to boost the rep- in New York. “She’s passionate, she’s garet Thatcher and Milton Friedman.
utations of the donors than it does to fearless, she’s fierce,” Lapham said. “She’s She recalled a conversation that she’d
help create a more just society. Such gifts an inspiration to so many other rich had, in 2013, with David Keene, who
also tend to come with generous tax people to become class traitors.” was the president of the National Rifle
breaks, meaning that taxpayers are un- As the audience applauded, Disney Association from 2011 to 2013. Disney
derwriting the donations that get hedge- climbed onstage, clutching her notes. had asked him what he was proudest
fund moguls’ names put on wings of art “I love every single person in here,” she of. He told her, “We flipped the script
museums and hospitals. Instead, Disney said. “I came from a place that shouldn’t on guns in America.” She took heart in
wants to convince more people that sys- have led me here, and, every time I find the simplicity of his answer: if the script
temic change is needed. “I get messages myself being led here one way or an- could be flipped one way, then surely it
like ‘You don’t know what you’re talking other, it feels so good to be alive. I just could be flipped back. She said that
about, you’ve never worked a day in your want to thank all of you for the work groups like the Patriotic Millionaires,
life!’” she told me. “And I’m, like, You’re that you do, and the way that the work and people like Erica Payne and Chuck
making my point! I’ve never worked a that you do gives me meaning.” For a Collins, “are tiny little ants in this fight”
day in my life, and look at me! I’m sit- moment, the room was quiet, and there in terms of their total resources. But
ting here in total comfort. You can work was a sense, as there sometimes is when the other side is selling “a load of bull-
all your life and you will never find your- Disney is talking about her wealth and shit,” she said. “If what you’re selling is
self where I am today.” She said that she her ambitions, that she might have mis- bullshit, then you need a shovel, and if
doesn’t blame people for being resent- read the room. But Disney, who is mostly what you’re selling is truth you really
ful: “I will always be sort of an alien an- aware of the unease she causes, tries to only need a teaspoon.”
thropologist looking at poverty from my use it to her advantage. She looked into She spoke admiringly of the activ-
very rarefied air.” the crowd and said, “Now I’m going to ists who populated the social-justice
start the official part of my speech, and world. “If I feel good, that doesn’t un-
n September, I joined Disney at a I want to watch you all squirm when I dermine the credibility of what I do,”
I dinner to celebrate the twenty-fifth
anniversary of United for a Fair Econ-
say it. Are you ready?” She paced in a
small circle, then leaned toward the au-
she said. “And I do feel good doing it.
I am the happiest rich lady you will ever
omy, a nonprofit, co-founded by Chuck dience. “I’m riiiich,” she intoned. She meet.” Why, I asked Disney, did she
Collins, that works on economic-jus- paused before asking, “Did I make you have faith that things would get better,
tice issues. The dinner was held in the all really uncomfortable?” The shame when there was so much evidence to
community room of the Old South attached to such an admission, she the contrary? “I always keep coming
Church, on Boylston Street, in Boston. said, has motivated rich people to iso- back to the idea that you just keep in-
After a guided meditation and a rap- late themselves from the rest of soci- vesting in the future,” she said. “Despair
and-saxophone performance by the trans ety: “In their hearts, they know that would be easier if I were less comfort-
activist and musician Jay-Marie Hill, something is inherently wrong with able. But, if I were to lose my hope,
Disney was to be presented with U.F.E.’s what they have, as compared with what where does that leave the people around
inaugural Class Traitor Award. everybody else has.” She said that she me? I feel a responsibility. I don’t know
For most of the evening, Disney sat was hopeful that the country was finally how to do it any other way.” ♦ 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 41
 PORTFOLIO

A BOY LIKE THAT

Reimagining “West Side Story” for the twenty-first century.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY COLLIER SCHORR

hen “West Side Story” débuted, in sure, that the dance inspired the video for her

W 1957, critics praised its lush, synco-

pated score, by Leonard Bernstein;
its sardonic lyrics, by Stephen Sondheim; and
song “Countdown.”)
Madison Vomastek, who plays a Jet named
Velma, has never danced a piece by Robbins,
the profane energy of Arthur Laurents’s script. but she has loved De Keersmaeker’s work ever
But the choreography of Jerome Robbins, who since she saw “Rosas” online, when she was
also directed the musical, was its greatest rev- thirteen. At a recent rehearsal, De Keersmaeker
elation: his finger-snapping gang members suggested borrowing some of the “Rosas” ges-
seamlessly combined ballet moves with the tures for the Jets. “My heart burst open!” Vo-
body language of the street. In the subsequent mastek said.

COSTUME DESIGN BY AN D’HUYS; MAKEUP AND TATTOO DESIGN BY ANDREW SOTOMAYOR; HAIR DESIGN BY MIA M. NEAL
six decades, some critics have suggested that The new “West Side Story” is set in the
the show’s portrayal of gang warfare was a bit present day. Vomastek noted of the choreog-
romantic. Others have noted that the creators raphy, “The one key difference I notice is the
weren’t versed in Latino culture. Nevertheless, snapping—it’s gone.” Zuri Noelle Ford, who
whenever “West Side Story” was revived on plays another Jet, Anybodys, explained that
Broadway, the Sharks and the Jets moved ex- some gang members now carry iPhones. One
actly as Robbins had imagined them. dancer in each gang captures onstage action
So when it was announced that a new Broad- with a Steadicam; the footage is displayed on
way production would open in February, staged a screen behind the performers. The Jets, Ford
by the Belgian director Ivo van Hove, it came said, are no longer all white: “It’s a group of
as a surprise that the revival would feature cho- white and black and mixed people. It’s 2020,
reography by the avant-garde formalist Anne you know?” The Jets’ movements incorporate
Teresa De Keersmaeker. The longtime head of house and hip-hop—“things that were cre-
a heralded dance school in Brussels, De Keers- ated in this country,” Ricky Ubeda, who plays
maeker designs meticulous, geometric dances Indio, said.
that often consist of movements repeated in a The Sharks, like most of the actors play-
loop. She has a Bach obsession. She is not an ing them, are of Latino descent; their dances
obvious choice for “West Side Story.” have Afro-Caribbean inflections. Yesenia
And yet, as several members of the new Ayala, who plays Anita, grew up in a Colom-
cast recently explained, De Keersmaeker, like bian family outside Charlotte, North Caro-
Robbins, has a knack for fusing formal move- lina. She told me that van Hove has worried
ment and everyday gesture. Her piece “Rosas more about perpetuating Latin stereotypes
Danst Rosas,” from 1983, is a portrait of pent-up than she has. “That’s just how we are,” she
frustration: four young women in gray gym said. “I love salsa dancing. I love to be loud.
clothes, sitting on wooden chairs, slump over I talk with my hands a lot.” She shrugged.
theatrically, whip back their hair, and tug at “You can’t take that away.”
their sleeves, exposing their shoulders. (Be-
yoncé has acknowledged, under legal pres- —Emily Stokes

Dharon E. Jones, a student at Ithaca College, plays Action, a member of the Jets.

42 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020

Members of the Sharks, led by
Anita, played by Yesenia Ayala.
Typically, the women in “West
Side Story” are “in skirts, and
very sassy and flirtatious,” Ayala
said. This production, she said,
asks, “Why do we have to be sexy?
Can’t we just be powerful?”
Above: Sheldon True, who plays Toro, a Shark. Right: Sharks and Jets surround
Bernardo, played by Amar Ramasar. The Sharks’ movements have elements of salsa and
Afro-Caribbean dance.
Left: Marlon Feliz, who plays Estella, a Shark. Above, top row: Jennifer Gruener, Michelle
Mercedes. Bottom row: Madison Vomastek, Zuri Noelle Ford. All four women play Jets. Ford
said of her character, Anybodys, “She walks the line between femininity and masculinity.”
Above: Isaac Powell stars as Tony, the latter-day Romeo. Right: Shereen Pimentel, who plays
Maria, performs “A Boy Like That / I Have a Love” with Ayala. Following page: The Jets carry
the bodies of Tony and Riff, played by Ben Cook.
 FICTION

54 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY MAX GUTHER

 irst, you have to gather the cash he labored for many years until it broke about prayer, the Quran, Pashto, Farsi,

F to preorder the game at the local

GameStop, where your cousin
works, and, even though he hooks it
his body for good, and even though his
doctor has forbidden him to work in
the yard, owing to the torn nerves in his
a new job, new classes, exercise, bas-
ketball, jogging, talking, guests, chores,
homework help, bathroom help, fam-
up with the employee discount, the neck and spine—which, you know from ily time, time, because usually “Mad-
game is still a bit out of your price range your mother, were first damaged when villainy” does the trick.
because you’ve been using your Taco he was tortured by Russians shortly Open the brown paper bag and toss
Bell paychecks to help your pops, who’s after the murder of his younger brother, the kush your cousin has stashed with
been out of work since you were ten, Watak, during the Soviet War—he is your game because he needs a new smok-
and who makes you feel unbearably out here clawing at the earth and its ing buddy since his best friend gave up
guilty about spending money on use- spoils, as if he were digging for trea- the ganja for God again, and he sees you
less hobbies while kids in Kabul are sure or his own grave. as a prime target, probably because he
destroying their bodies to build com- Spotting you only four feet away thinks you’ve got nothing better to do
pounds for white businessmen and war- from the sliding glass door, he gestures with your time or you’re not as religious
lords—but, shit, it’s Kojima, it’s Metal for you to come over, and though you as your brothers or you’re desperate to
Gear, so, after scrimping and saving are tired and sweaty, with your feet ach- escape the unrelenting nature of a cor-
(like literal dimes you’re picking up off ing and the most important game of poreal existence, and, God damn, the
the street), you’ve got the cash, which the decade hidden inside your under- physical map of Afghanistan that comes
you give to your cousin, who purchases wear, you approach him. with the game is fucking beautiful.
the game on your behalf, and then, on He signals for you to crouch down Not that you’re a patriot or a nation-
the day it’s released, you just have to beside him, then he runs his dirty alist or one of those Afghans who walk
find a way to get to the store. fingers through his hair until flakes of around in a pakol and kameez and play
But, because your oldest brother has his scalp fall onto his shoulders and the tabla and claim that their favorite
taken the Civic to Sac State, you’re haul- his beard. singer is Ahmad Zahir, but the fact that
ing your two-hundred-and-sixty-pound This isn’t good. nineteen-eighties Afghanistan is the
ass on a bicycle you haven’t touched When your father runs his hands final setting of the most legendary and
since middle school, and thank Allah through his hair, it is because he has artistically significant gaming franchise
(if He’s up there) that the bike is still forgotten his terrible, flaking dandruff, in the history of time made you all the
rideable, because you’re sure there’ll be which he forgets only during times of more excited to get your hands on it,
a line if you don’t get to GameStop early, severe emotional or physical distress, especially since you’ve been shooting at
so, huffing and puffing, you’re regret- which means that he is about to tell Afghans in your games (Call of Duty
ting all the Taco Bell you’ve eaten over you a story that is either upsetting or and Battlefield and Splinter Cell) for
the past two years, but you ride with horrifying or both, which isn’t fair, be- so long that you’ve become oddly im-
such fervor that you end up being only cause you are a son and not a therapist. mune to the self-loathing you felt when
third in line, and it’s your cousin him- Your father is a dark, sturdy man, you were first massacring wave after
self who hands you the game in a brown and so unlike you that, as a child, you wave of militant fighters who looked
paper bag, as if it were something ille- were sure that one day Hagrid would just like your father.
gal or illicit, which it isn’t, of course, it’s come to your door and inform you of Now, finally, start the game.
Metal Gear, it’s Kojima, it’s the final your status as a Mudblood, and then
game in a series so fundamentally a part your true life—the life without the fter you escape from the hospital
of your childhood that often, when you
hear the Irish Gaelic chorus from “The
weight of your father’s history, pain,
guilt, hopelessness, helplessness, judg-
A where Big Boss was recovering
from the explosion he barely survived
Best Is Yet to Come,” you cannot help ment, and shame—would begin. in the prequel to the Phantom Pain,
weeping softly into your keyboard. Your father asks you where you were. you and Revolver Ocelot travel to the
For some reason, riding back home “The library.” brutal scenes of northern Kabul Prov-
is easier. “You have to study?” ince—its rocky cliffs, its dirt roads, and
You leave the bike behind the trash You tell him you do, which isn’t, its sunlight bleeding off into the dark
cans at the side of the house and hop technically, a lie. mountains just the way you remember
the wooden fence into the back yard “All right,” he says in English, be- from all those years ago, when you vis-
and, if the door to the garage is open, cause he has given up on speaking to ited Kabul as a child—and although
you slip in, and if it’s not, which it isn’t, you in Pashto, “but, after you finish, your initial mission is to locate and ex-
you’ve got to take a chance on the screen come back down. I have something I tract Kazuhira Miller, the Phantom
door in the back yard, but, lo and be- need to talk to you about.” Pain is the first Metal Gear Solid game
hold, your father is ankle deep in the Hurry. to be set in a radically open-world
dirt, hunched over, yanking at weeds When you get to your room, you environment, and you decide to post-
with his bare hands the way he used to lock the door and turn up MF Doom pone the rescue of Kazuhira Miller
as a farmer in Logar, before war and on your portable speaker to ward off until after you get some Soviet blood
famine forced him to flee to the western mothers, fathers, grandmothers, sisters, on your hands, a feat you accomplish
coast of the American empire, where and brothers who want to harp at you promptly by locating and massacring
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 55
an entire base of Russian combatants.
Your father, you know, didn’t kill a
single Russian during his years as a mu- WARBLER
jahideen in Logar, but there is some-
thing in the act of slaughtering these The dead warbler started to sing
Soviet N.P.C.s that makes you feel con- as she whom I love
nected to him and his history of warfare. bent down to pick him up with two reluctant fingers,
Thinking of your father and his small maybe the small finger (of the left hand)
village, you head south to explore the curling, as at dinner,
outer limits of the open world in the and carry him home
Phantom Pain, crossing trails and des- and quietly put him
erts and mountain passes, occasionally into a see-through plastic bag
stopping at a checkpoint or a military as she did for salmon and roast chicken and pie.
barracks to slaughter more Russians,
and you find yourself, incredibly, skirt- I want to say “alas poor warbler”
ing the city of Kabul, still dominated but warblers die too,
by the Soviets, and continuing on to of disease, of age, of accidents,
Logar, to Mohammad Agha, and when as all birds do.
you get to Wagh Jan, the roadside-
market village that abuts the Kabul- And like all birds
Logar highway, just the way you re- they sing when they’re buried,
member it, you hitch your horse and in this case in the freezer,
begin to sneak along the clay com- a cold graveyard,
pounds and the shops, climbing walls two cartons of ice cream,
and crawling atop roofs, and, whenever one vanilla, one dulce de leche,
a local Afghan spots you, you knock to remember him by.
him out with a tranquillizer, until you
make it to the bridge that leads to the He was lifelike stiff and unapologetic
inner corridors of your parents’ home and he sang from time to time, dead or not,
village, Naw’e Kaleh, which looks so a “rising trill,” as the book says,
much like the photos and your own in the upper levels where the worms are.
blurred memories from the trip when
you were a kid that you begin to be- —Gerald Stern
come uneasy, not yet afraid, but as if
consumed by an overwhelming sense
of déjà vu. in the dark and you realize that you’ve You extract the kush from the trash,
Sneaking along the dirt roads, past been playing for too long. and, because you have no matches or
the golden fields and the apple or- You’re blinking a lot. lighter, you put hunks of it in your mouth
chards and the mazes of clay com- Too much. and you chew and nearly vomit twice.
pounds, you come upon the house You notice that your room is a mess Return to the game.
where your father used to reside, and and that it smells like ass and that you’ve Hiding in your grandfather’s mul-
it is there—on the road in front of your become so accustomed to its smell and berry tree, you listen to your father and
father’s home—that you spot Watak, its mess that from the space inside your his brother discuss what they will eat
your father’s sixteen-year-old brother, head, behind your eyes, the space in which for suhoor, thereby indicating that it is
whom you recognize only because his your first-person P.O.V. is rooted, you— still Ramadan, that this is just days be-
picture (unsmiling, head shaved, hand- Ignore the knock. fore Watak’s murder.
some, and sixteen forever) hangs on It’s just your little sister. Then it hits you.
the wall of the room in your home Get back to the game. Here is what you’re going to do:
where your parents pray, but here he There is a bearded, heavyset man before your father is tortured and his
is, in your game, and you press Pause beside Watak, who, you soon realize, is brother murdered, you are going to tran-
and you set down the controller, and your father. quillize them both and you are going
now you are afraid. You pause the game again and put to carry them to your horse and cross
Sweat is running down your legs down the controller. Logar’s terrain until you reach a safe
in rivulets, in streams, your heart is Doom spits, “His life is like a folk- spot where you can call a helicopter and
thumping, and you are wondering if lore legend. . . . Why you so stiff, you fly them back to your offshore platform:
sniffing the kush as you did earlier has need to smoke more, bredrin. . . . In- Mother Base.
got you high. stead of trying to riff with the broke But just as you load your tranquil-
You look out the window and see war veteran.” lizers your brother bangs on your door
your brother walking toward the house It seems to you a sign. and demands that you come out, and
56 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020
after ignoring him for a bit, which only the doorway of a room filled with women, through your hair, and saying your name,
makes him madder and louder, you shout as if to protect them, and, after you aim the way he is saying it now, as if it were
that you are sick, but the voice that comes your tranquillizer gun and send Watak almost a question.
out of your mouth is not your own, it into a deeper sleep, your grandmother, “Zoya?” he says and, when you do
is the voice of a faraway man imitating a lifelong insomniac, rises from her not reply, nothing else.
your voice, and your brother can tell. toshak and strikes you in the shoulder Keep going.
He leaves, and you return to the game. with a machete and calls for the men Russians chase you on the ground
From the cover of the mulberry tree, in the house, of whom there are many, and in the air, they fire and you are
you aim your tranquillizer gun, but you to awaken and slaughter the Russian struck once, twice, three or four times,
forget that you’ve got the laser scope ac- who has come to kill us all in our sleep. and there are so many Russians, but
tivated, and Watak sees the red light The damage from the machete is your horse is quick and nimble and
flashing on your father’s forehead and significant. manages the terrain better than their
they’re off, running and firing back at Nonetheless, you still have the strength trucks can, and you make it to the ex-
your tree with rifles they had hidden to tranquillize your grandmother, pick traction point, in a hollow of the Black
underneath their patus, and you are up Watak, and climb back onto the roof Mountains, with enough time to sum-
struck twice, so you need a few mo- while all your uncles and cousins and mon the helicopter and to set up a pe-
ments to recover your health and, by the even your grandfather are awakened and rimeter of mines, and you hide your fa-
time you do, they’re gone. armed and begin to fire at your legs as ther and his brother at the mouth of a
Your brother is back, and this time you hustle along, bleeding and weary, to cave, behind a large boulder the shape
he has brought along your oldest brother, the spot where your father rests. of a believer in prostration, where you
who somehow is able to shout louder With your uncle on one shoulder lie prone with a sniper rifle and begin
and bang harder than your second-old- and your father on the other, you leap to pick off Russian paratroopers in the
est brother, and they’re both asking off the roof into the shadows of an distance, and you fire at the engines of
what you’re doing and why you won’t apple orchard. the trucks and ignore the tanks, which
come out and why you won’t grow up The men are pouring out onto the will reach you last, and it is mere mo-
and why you insist on worrying your roads and the fields, calling upon neigh- ments before your helicopter will ar-
mother and your father, who you know bors and allies, and, because the or- rive, and, just as you think you are going
gets those terrible migraines triggered chard is soon surrounded on all sides, to make it, your horse is slaughtered in
by stress, and now your oldest brother it seems certain that you will be cap- a flurry of gunfire and your pilot is
is banging so hard you’re afraid the door tured, but you are saved by, of all things, struck by a single bullet from a lone
will come off its hinges, so you lug your a squadron of Spetsnaz, who begin to rifleman, and the helicopter falls to the
dresser in front of it as a barricade and fire on the villagers, and in the confu- earth and bursts into flames, killing
then you go back to your spot in front sion of the shoot-out, as the entire vil- many Russians, and giving you just
of the TV, and you sit on the floor and lage is lit up by a hundred enough time to rush into
press Play. gunfights, each fight a mi- the cave, into the heart of
crocosm of larger battles the Black Mountains.
t night, under cover of darkness, and wars and global con- With your father on one
A you sneak toward your father’s
compound, and you scale the fifteen-
flicts strung together by the
invisible wires of beloved
shoulder and your uncle on
the other, and with the
foot-high walls of clay and crawl along men who will die peacefully lights of the Soviet gunfire
the rooftops until you get to the high- in their sleep, you make dying away at the outer
est point in the compound, where your your way out of the orchard, edges of your vision, you
father stands, on the lookout for in- passing trails and streams trudge deeper into the dark-
coming jets and firebombs, and you and rivers and mulberry ness of the cave, and though
shoot him twice in the back with tran- trees, until you reach your you cannot be sure that your
quillizers and, as he is falling, you catch horse and ride out of Wagh Jan, to- father and his brother are still alive, that
him in your arms, your father, who, at ward an extraction point in the nearby they haven’t been shot in the chaos, that
this time, is around the same age that Black Mountains. they are not, now, corpses, you feel com-
you are now, and in the dark, on the But now, at the door, is your father. pelled to keep moving into a darkness
roof of the compound that he will lose “Zoya?” he is saying, very gently, the so complete that your reflection be-
to this war, you hold him, his body still way he used to say it when you were a comes visible on the screen of the tele-
strong and well, his heart unbroken, and kid, when you were in Logar, when you vision in front of you, and it is as if the
you set him down gently on the clay so got the flu, when the pills and the I.V. figures in the image were journeying
that the sky does not swallow him. and the home remedies weren’t work- inside you, delving into your flesh.
Climbing down into the courtyard, ing, when there was nothing to do but To be saved. 
you go from chamber to chamber, spot- wait for the aching to ebb, and your fa-
ting uncles and aunts and cousins you’ve ther was there, maybe in the orchard, NEWYORKER.COM
never met in real life, and you find Watak maybe on the veranda, and he was hold- Jamil Jan Kochai on the intimate alienation of
near the cow’s shed, sleeping just behind ing you in his lap, running his fingers video games.

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 57

 THE CRITICS

BOOKS

EXCLUDE ME IN
In the seventies, a group of Asian-American writers decided it was their turn.

BY HUA HSU

n August of 1972, the Times reporter come over in their teens and later to set-
I Ralph Blumenthal was working on
an article about theatre in New York’s
tle here and American born Chinaman
[sic] have nothing in common, cultur-
Chinatown. He was focussing on the ally, intellectually, emotionally.” Ching
challenges faced by performers who had reprinted their back-and-forth in Bridge,
recently emigrated from Hong Kong a magazine based in Chinatown that he
and Taiwan.They were shut out of main- helped oversee. As its title suggested,
stream productions, and the grassroots Bridge set out to explore the diasporic
theatre scene was still maturing. Blu- bonds of the Chinese in America. Al-
menthal’s editor asked a colleague named though Chin had explored Chinatown
Frank Ching, who presumably knew a in his plays and in a documentary, he
bit more about that part of town, to look also wanted to be recognized as some-
the piece over. Ching felt that Blumen- thing different. He and his friends were
thal cast the broader Chinese-American sketching out the contours of a new
population as foreign. He recommended identity that had emerged in the late
some more interesting artists to Blu- sixties: Asian-American.
menthal, who ended up including a par- Identity politics offers a voluntary
enthetical mention of an up-and-coming response to an involuntary situation.
playwright named Frank Chin. Ching Power structures beyond our grasp sort
likely believed that he was doing a favor us according to categories not of our
for Chin, whose “Chickencoop China- own choosing, predestining us to be
man” had opened at the American Place seen in a certain way by (as Ching might
Theatre months earlier. At the very least, put it) “the average person.” Choosing
Ching must have felt that he had helped to call oneself an Asian-American,
sneak an edgier name into an otherwise rather than answering to “Oriental,”
drab roundup. But Chin was furious to makes the most of an imposition. It
be included at all. offers some people a ready-made sense
Chin, who considered himself a fifth- of purpose, short-circuiting the power
generation Chinese-American, wrote of an epithet imposed from without.
Ching a letter complaining about see- Students and activists in California in-
ing his name in Blumenthal’s piece along- vented this term in the late sixties, in-
side the “Chinese from China.” Ching spired by Black Power and similar move-
didn’t understand why Chin felt so ag- ments among Native Americans and
grieved, and responded that “the aver- Chicanos, and those involved in Third
KEN GAETJEN; ABOVE: SERGE BLOCH

age person’s” conflation of newer immi- World Liberation. They ultimately

grants with those who had been in emphasized what connected different
America for generations was “under- Asian-immigrant communities and
standable,” a reflection of ignorance but their struggles: efforts to resist gentrifi-
not of outright racism. Their interest in cation and alleviate poverty, the anti-
Chinatown was something to work with. war movement, stereotypes about Asians
Chin disagreed. “As far as I’m concerned,” as passive or perpetually foreign. The
he replied,“Americanized Chinese who’ve term implied a set of shared historical Jeffery Paul Chan, Frank Chin, Lawson
58 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020
Fusao Inada, Shawn Wong, and Chan’s daughter Jennifer, photographed near San Quentin State Prison, in Marin County.
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 59
conditions. Where to go next was an of Chinese descent. Yet he actually knew of writers stands in for a social wave
open question. very little about the Chinese-American that’s about to crest. “The New Negro:
Chin and Ching weren’t the first experience. His editor, a white man, fed An Interpretation,” edited by Alain
people to debate the merits of Asian- him details that he plugged into his do- Locke and published in 1925, captured
American assimilation, though Chin mestic drama. Successes like these em- the excitement, possibility, and com-
might have been the first to put this bodied what Chan and Chin termed plexities of the Harlem Renaissance by
debate in such colorful terms. He felt “racist love,” their lively framing of the offering a cross-sectional taste of all
that many Chinese-American writers model-minority myth. American read- the work being produced under its
were interested in being “prizewinning ers accepted Asian authors, Chan and banner. Decades later, the Black Arts
poodles” answering the beck and call Chin argued, as long as they conformed Movement became synonymous with
of “the master race.” What’s more, he to stereotypes of social passivity. the anthology “Black Fire,” published
thought the literature that Bridge oc- The Four Horsemen had no inter- in 1968 and edited by Amiri Baraka
casionally published was “shit.” “If the est in being loved, especially by white and Larry Neal. Following the cultural
purpose of BRIDGE is to bind me to people. Chin, in particular, was sensi- movements of the sixties, publishers
the immigrants,” Chin wrote, “I’m not tive about grammar and the gatekeep- became increasingly interested in such
interested in being bound.” ers’ ideas of “good English.” When an collections as they began exploring ways
Chin felt bound, instead, to other editor asked to tidy some grammatical to reach new and younger audiences.
writers who were eager to explore this errors, he called her the “great white The party where the Four Horsemen
new identity. One of his early advocates bitch goddess priestess of the sacred had met was for Reed’s “19 Necroman-
was the black writer Ishmael Reed. Chin white mouth.” To follow the guidance cers from Now,” a 1970 collection show-
had befriended Jeffery Paul Chan and of mainstream American culture, he casing multicultural writing that was
Shawn Wong, and, in 1970, the three thought, was to accede to self-hatred. formally and substantively radical.
met Lawson Fusao Inada at a party that He wanted the freedom to write in a Anthologies are an assertion of crit-
Reed hosted. Chan and Wong wrote “badmouth” style full of slangy extrav- ical mass: We are here. They give emerg-
fiction; Inada was a poet. Alongside their agances, the frenetic energy of someone ing communities shape, a name, a kind
own writing, they dug for older works, forging armor out of junk. of portability. It’s hard to imagine con-
scouring libraries and used-book stores Chin, Chan, Inada, and Wong temporary feminism without the vi-
for predecessors. They felt as though shopped an anthology to major publish- sionary collections published in the
American culture had wrecked their ing houses. “It isn’t enough to celebrate early eighties by Kitchen Table: Women
brains, leaving many of their peers awash it (the writing) merely because it is by of Color Press, like “This Bridge Called
in self-contempt. In the process of ex- Asian American writers,” one publisher My Back: Writings by Radical Women
cavation and creation, they were testing told them, suggesting that they keep of Color,” edited by Cherríe Moraga
out their own theories of what this new only the “least ethnic” pieces; the col- and Gloria Anzaldúa, and “Home Girls:
identity could mean. Reed called them lection wasn’t “commanding” enough. A Black Feminist Anthology,” edited
the Four Horsemen of Asian-American Others expressed interest in terms that by Barbara Smith. Yet, as greatest-hits
literature. Chin, Chan, Inada, and Wong felt condescending. Reed offered them collections, they are canon-building
founded the Combined Asian Ameri- a chance to approach Asian-American by nature. Defining a scene requires
can Resources Project in order to pre- culture with the irreverence he brought you to make an argument about all
serve the literary history that they were to the black experience. He published those who will be left out, too. So
piecing together. They soon felt that them in his “Yardbird” anthologies, and anthologies also announce: We are the
they had found as much as anyone had. in 1974 his friend Charles Harris, the ones you should regard, not them. At first,
Besides, they were less interested in head of the newly established Howard the mere gesture of naming a new
uncovering historical precursors than in University Press, published “Aiiieeeee! community perhaps sufficed. Before
starting something new. In the fifties An Anthology of Asian-American Writ- “Aiiieeeee!,” there were other antholo-
and sixties, writers like C. Y. Lee and ers.”“Asian America,” Chin, Chan, Inada, gies, like Kai-yu Hsu and Helen Palu-
Betty Lee Sung had tasted success, be- and Wong wrote in the book’s preface, binskas’s “Asian-American Authors”
coming models of hardworking Asian- “so long ignored and forcibly excluded (1972) and David Hsin-fu Wand’s
Americans dealing with identity crises. from creative participation in Ameri- “Asian-American Heritage” (1974),
They took for granted the task of can culture, is wounded, sad, angry, which described a community negoti-
successful assimilation; they did not swearing, and wondering, and this is his ating the “Asian tradition of their an-
ask why, or on whose terms. The Chi- AIIIEEEEE!!!” This sound was “more cestors and the American tradition of
nese writer Lin Yutang, who first lived than a whine, shout, or scream. It is fifty their current homeland.”
in the U.S. as a graduate student at years of our whole voice.” “Aiiieeeee!” featured some of the au-
Harvard, had experienced American thors who appeared in these previous
success in the thirties as a kind of spokes- nthologies offer us previews of books. But it was far more polemical,
person for Chinese manners and civili-
zation. In 1948, he published “China-
A how society is changing. A com-
munity has consolidated; a movement
far more focussed on patrolling the
borders than on examining the com-
town Family,” one of the first novels has distinguished itself from what came monalities shared by those safely within
about Chinatown written by someone before. Perhaps this emerging cohort them. To be Asian-American, the ed-
60 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020
itors wrote, was to possess a “sensibil-
ity.” It was something that you under-
stood instinctively as a consequence of BRIEFLY NOTED
growing up in America, without any
real relationship to Asia beyond what 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, by Elif Sha-
one gleaned from “the radio, off the fak (Bloomsbury). Imagining the life behind a newspaper
silver screen, from television, out of story—the discovery of a murdered prostitute in a dump-
comic books, from the pushers of white ster in Istanbul—this kaleidoscopic novel celebrates the vi-
American culture.” The “Aiiieeeee!” ed- brancy of its protagonist, Leila. She flees her home city to
itors didn’t care much about represen- escape sexual abuse only to be sold immediately into sex
tation in the crude demographic sense, work. During the final moments of her life, Leila revisits
which could be tokenizing. They had memories of loss and love; afterward, her five closest friends
particular scorn for the “yellow goons” give her the burial she deserves. Although Leila’s life is
promoting perspectives that were “ac- suffused with tragedy, Shafak focusses on her loyalty and
tively inoffensive” to the white main- charm, on the joy that she finds in her relationships, and on
stream. They bristled at how Asians the eccentricities of Istanbul.
were often described as having an “inner
resource,” some primordial connection Agent Running in the Field, by John le Carré (Viking). The
to the centuries-old civilizations of a prolific eighty-eight-year-old author’s latest novel, a tense
mystical Orient long idealized in the story laced with nostalgia, tackles Brexit, Russian electoral
West. This was why, they thought, interference, and President Trump, “Putin’s shithouse cleaner.”
Asian-Americans were always de- Nat, a pro-European journeyman spy in his late forties, con-
scribed as having a “dual heritage” or siders Britain to be in “free fall,” but when he takes charge
“dual personality,” and thus as being of a rundown substation that manages Russian defectors he
part alien, even after having been here continues his job of convincing others to betray their own
for generations. country in favor of one in which he has little faith. The
As the scholar Tara Fickle notes young people in his orbit provide foils to his pursuits: his
in her foreword to a new edition of nineteen-year-old daughter considers patriotism “a curse on
“Aiiieeeee!” (University of Washington mankind,” and his badminton partner follows up their matches
Press), the book has been remembered with diatribes against Britain’s and America’s journey “straight
almost exclusively for its brash intro- down the road to institutional racism and neo-fascism.”
ductory essays. Alongside the provoc-
atively vague definition of Asian Amer- Unbelievers, by Alec Ryrie (Belknap / Harvard). By the time
ica, the essays are full of bold claims, Nietzsche proclaimed that God was dead, this book argues,
some of which have aged poorly. “Asian- the “emotional shape” of unbelief was long in place, and with
Americans are not one people but sev- it the forces that disseminate Western secularism. Ryrie
eral—Chinese Americans, Japanese traces the root of religious skepticism to the anger, the anx-
Americans, and Filipino Americans,” iety, and the “desperate search for certainty” that drove think-
the editors wrote in the preface. (So ers like the religious poet John Donne to grapple with church
much for Korean-Americans or Viet- dogma. They did not always manage to hold on to their
namese-Americans, say.) And these faith, and their probing undermined religion from within.
groups, according to the editors, had The currents of atheism were stirred not by the levelheaded
collectively published “fewer than ten philosophers of a later era but by these seekers’ struggle, and
works of fiction and poetry.” occasional failure, to “doubt wisely.”
The excerpted works that followed
were far more eclectic than the open- Sleeveless, by Natasha Stagg (Semiotexte). These essays ex-
ing polemics suggested. This was es- amine the white bourgeois milieu of present-day tastemak-
pecially true of the fiction written in ers in downtown New York, with detours into adjacent top-
the forties and fifties, in pursuit of ics, such as music festivals and influencers. Stagg’s depictions
horizons that were forgotten once their of the worlds of art, fashion, media, and night life draw on
authors were absorbed into latter-day both cultural theory and deadpan personal anecdote, and are
categories of identity. There are a few notable for a sense of distance and ambivalence. The lives
pages from John Okada’s “No-No Boy,” she evokes—devoted to that most chimerical, evanescent
a slow-building 1957 novel about a quality “cool”—play out in a ceaseless round of nebulous
young Japanese-American who, after achievements and vapid, exclusive parties. They seem empty,
the Second World War, is searching sad, and interesting, in equal measure. In one account, Stagg
for a way to express his psychological recalls a stint consulting for a tech startup whose executives
anguish. We get a taste of the early keep asking if given celebrities are cool. “Um, cool? Depends
disenchantments that propel Carlos on, like, your audience,” she replies.
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 61
Bulosan’s “America Is in the Heart,” a nese tradition and what is the movies?” obscure some of the original questions
1946 novel that tracks the gradual po- Kingston’s publisher designated that had animated the “Aiiieeeee!” ed-
litical awakening of a migrant laborer “The Woman Warrior” as nonfiction, itors. Kingston’s writing was expansive
from the Philippines as he bounces even though the book’s stories involve and generous, making anything feel
around the West Coast. An excerpt time travel and the supernatural. It possible, while “Aiiieeeee!” was seen as
from Louis Chu’s “Eat a Bowl of Tea” appeared during a period when pub- border patrol. But the debate “Aiiieeeee!”
is full of the lewd humor that made lishers had become interested in pre- initiated was ultimately not about the
the novel, from 1961, such a striking viously marginalized voices, particu- real versus the fake. It was about the
depiction of Chinatown life. One of larly ones that might educate a broader, marketplace—its power to anoint, its
the most intriguing pieces is “Rough white mainstream. Kingston’s book capacity to ossify the ephemeral thing
Notes for Mantos,” a lyrical essay about gorgeously blurred the line between that your literature is trying to articu-
queer desire masquerading as a short historical and first-person perspectives. late in the first place.
story. It was written by Russell Leong It felt raw and intimate, expanding the Kingston, like Chin, was born in
but was published under the name reader’s sense of what it meant to write 1940 and was raised in California. But,
Wallace Lin. memoir. Her book relied on “talk-story,” where Chin described himself as a
“Aiiieeeee!” was fairly successful, re- a kind of improvisational storytelling fifth-generation Chinese-American,
viewed by The New Yorker and Rolling technique that allowed her to shuttle Kingston was the daughter of immi-
Stone, as well as Bridge, where a writer back and forth between the banal, grants. Part of the reason “The Woman
named Bill Wong wondered who, ex- everyday life of Californians in the Warrior” was so palatable to main-
actly, the book was for. He felt that the mid-century and Chinese heroines of stream readers was that it could be
editors’ attempt to define Asian Amer- bygone epochs. “The Woman Warrior” read as a story of the traumas associ-
ica in such “limited” and “arcane” terms won the National Book Critics Circle ated with immigrant assimilation. Per-
would confuse most people. For better Award in the category of nonfiction. haps these wounds might even com-
or worse, “Aiiieeeee!” set the terms for It’s been a presence on college cam- pel a young woman to retreat into
debating the community’s parameters puses ever since. folktales, to rewrite odes of the dis-
for decades. The editors believed that Kingston’s success presented a co- tant past. Family bonds, the psychol-
Asian-Americans could move forward nundrum. Her book was dense and ogy of immigrant households, estrange-
politically only once they realized how disorienting, coy and lyrical, bearing ment from the mother tongue: these
the art and culture around them had little resemblance to the bland Asian- became the defining themes of Asian-
stunted their imaginations: if you gained American best-sellers of previous de- American literature, in part because
a popular audience, you were probably cades. Her Asian-American critics, they were market-tested.
a sellout. Later generations read their like Jeffery Chan and Benjamin Tong, When, in 1991, Chin and his col-
bluster as embittered rage. But they accused her of inauthenticity, willfully laborators decided to publish a new
wanted to start conversations, not close mistranslating Chinese stories and anthology of Chinese- and Japanese-
them. At least, this was the initial hope. customs to appeal to a white reader- American writing, titled “The Big
“We know each other now,” ship. They were frustrated Aiiieeeee!,” Chin contributed an open-
they wrote, referring to an by how she catered to pop- ing essay, “Come All Ye Asian Amer-
emerging sense of solidar- ular appetites for ethnic ican Writers of the Real and the Fake.”
ity among young and old autobiography. Frank Chin The wounded masculinity that had
Asian-American writers. argued that first-person been on the fringes of “Aiiieeeee!” was
“It should never have been writing was a vestige of now more pronounced. And one sure
otherwise.” Christian conquest, when way of earning Chin’s scorn as a “fake”
heathens would demon- was by finding a big audience or win-
n 1976, Knopf published strate their worth by par- ning awards, as had David Henry
I Maxine Hong Kingston’s
first book, “The Woman
ticipating in stories of
self-discovery and con-
Hwang (whose Tony-winning play,
“M. Butterfly,” premièred on Broad-
Warrior: Memoirs of a sciousness. He described way in 1988) and Amy Tan (whose
Girlhood Among Ghosts.” She had a “The Woman Warrior” as “another in best-selling novel “The Joy Luck Club”
lot in common with the “Aiiieeeee!” a long line of Chinkie autobiographies appeared in 1989). It’s not that the Four
editors, including a wariness toward by Pocahontas yellows blowing the Horsemen had failed in their own ca-
the American culture that had di- same old mixed up East/West soul reers. Chin won prizes and accolades
minished their sense of possibility: struggle.” This kind of self-represen- for his plays and novels, and he was
“Chinese-Americans, when you try to tation, he argued, was a Western con- the subject of a 2005 documentary.
understand what things in you are struct, and its focus on Chinese mi- Inada was named the poet laureate of
Chinese, how do you separate what sogyny, or the “icky-gooey evil” of Oregon in 2006. Chan continued to
is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, Chinese culture, was a self-indulgent write fiction and teach literature at San
insanities, one family, your mother play to please white readers. Francisco State University, where he
who marked your growing with stories, Chin and Kingston’s conflict un- had started an Asian-American-studies
from what is Chinese? What is Chi- folded over years. In time, it came to program. And Wong published two
62 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020
acclaimed novels, “Homebase” (1979)
and “American Knees” (1995). But their
successes didn’t reshape popular cul-
ture the way Tan’s “Joy Luck Club” did.
Asian-American literature was grow-
ing, even as the ranks of the “Aiiieeeee!”
hard-liners were shrinking. Kingston
rarely acknowledged Chin’s aggression,
though she did publish a novel, “Trip-
master Monkey: His Fake Book,” in
which she tried to understand the psy-
che of an angry young Chinese-Amer-
ican man from the Bay Area who hap-
pens to be a playwright. If he’s sending
me hate mail, Kingston later said, I’m
sending him love letters.

arlier this year, John Okada’s es-

E tate was embroiled in a dispute
with Penguin Classics, which repub-
lished “No-No Boy” as part of a set of
early Asian-American literary works.
(I wrote the introduction to one.)
Okada died in 1971, unaware that his
book had been discovered by a younger
generation. The “Aiiieeeee!” editors
• •
brought it back into print themselves
in 1976, helping Okada’s family trans- sult. Decades after “The Woman first read the anthology in college, a
fer the copyright to the University of Warrior,” the canonical experience of time when we cultivate our sense of
Washington Press three years later. The Asian-American life remains the first zealous singularity by rejecting the
case was eventually resolved, and Pen- generation’s negotiation of the immi- same in a previous generation. The
guin stopped publishing the American grant household. It’s what gives suc- book seemed overly earnest. Revisit-
edition. But the dispute echoed some cessful films such as “Crazy Rich ing it today, I was struck by how fa-
of the complications of ethnic litera- Asians” and, on a smaller scale, “The talistic the editors sound, positioning
ture’s acceptance as part of the cultural Farewell” a footing in America, even the Asian-American as the ultimate
mainstream. though they take place mostly in Asia. underdog, forever denied the possi-
Minority writing has always as- But has the balance of power actually bility of literary voice. They can’t see
sumed a kind of antagonism, a prefab been disturbed? The enshrinement of the vast energies that will one day
agony about being invariably misun- the Asian-immigrant narrative still gather in their wake, under the ban-
derstood. This part of “Aiiieeeee!” still crowds out alternative visions of Asian- ner of Asian-American literature, or
feels resonant. Yet if you look at the American difference. And narratives the possibility that markers of differ-
upper strata of literary culture—the of upward mobility can be part of how ence will come to distinguish, rather
books published and reviewed and “minority” literature joins the majors. than limit, a writer. “Aiiieeeee!” is a
given prizes—it feels as if diversity In 2010, the cultural critic Ilan Stavans manifesto suffused with tragedy, a
won. Diversity has been honored as a was asked about his work as the gen- struggle against isolation. As part of
principle, and it has become more eral editor of “The Norton Anthol- Okada’s biographical sketch, the edi-
prevalent as a marketing strategy. As ogy of Latino Literature.” Stavans tors excerpt a letter that he had sent
Asian-American literature grew over seemed to feel that there was a great his publisher. “Providing my efforts
the decades, and the study of it was symbolic importance to this legend- are unsuccessful,” he wrote, “I pray
professionalized, the reckless, almost ary publisher recognizing an over- equally fervently that there is another
punk attitude of “Aiiieeeee!” came to looked lineage of writing in America. like myself who is creating a similar
seem antiquated. Its editors, convinced He wrote, “It is a book that all middle- work which will find its way into pub-
that acceptance was impossible, had class Latinos need, proof that we’ve lication.” There were others out there.
been drawn to the idea of perpetual made it: We’ve arrived.” But you can’t choose who or what fol-
marginalization. It’s telling that Stavans named the lows, whether it’s “Aiiieeeee!,” or Max-
If cultural capital accrues around middle class, a suggestion that full as- ine Hong Kingston—a legacy that is
authors and books that appease our similation is achieved through repre- cultish and obscure, or one where it
appetite for inclusion, our classrooms sentation. The “Aiiieeeee!” editors, by turns out that you wrote a great Amer-
and bookstores are better off as a re- contrast, never imagined “arriving.” I ican novel, after all. 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 63
 plaud itself for having acknowledged
MUSICAL EVENTS contemporary reality and then scurry
back to the safe space of the past. I

QUEENS OF THE NIGHT

wonder, though, whether a slow sea
change might be in progress. “That
was my life,” a woman said to a friend
Three new operas: “The Snow Queen,” “Heart Chamber,” and “Orlando.” after Czernowin’s opera. It is not a
comment you hear often at “Don Gio-
BY ALEX ROSS vanni” or “Tosca.”
“The Snow Queen” is outwardly
the most traditional of the three new
operas. It is based on the mighty fairy
tale by Hans Christian Andersen, which
has undergone dozens of adaptations,
including, tenuously, “Frozen,” the an-
imated film and Broadway musical.
Abrahamsen and his co-librettist, Hen-
rik Engelbrecht, hew more closely than
most of their predecessors to the An-
dersen original. This is not surprising,
given that they are Danish artists tak-
ing hold of a Danish classic. The story
pivots on the shattering of a mirror,
manufactured by a troll, that magnifies
the worst in people and hides the good.
A boy named Kay, having caught sliv-
ers of the mirror in his eye and his
heart, falls prey to the allure of the
Snow Queen, who takes him on her
sled and entraps him in her ice king-
dom. Gerda, Kay’s childhood friend,
must undergo various fantastical far-
northern adventures before she can
save him.
The trickiest challenge in making
a new version of “The Snow Queen”
is how to handle the title character,
who all too easily exemplifies the ste-
reotype of the cold, predatory female.
Abrahamsen upends that dynamic by
“ I fnothing,”
you dare nothing, you can change
the Austrian composer
in contrast to a Viennese season that
features women dying of consumption,
choosing to give the role to a male
singer—at the première, the formida-
Olga Neuwirth recently told the mag- flinging themselves off buildings, and ble Danish bass-baritone Johan Reu-
azine Profil. “In the moment of paral- riding horses into funeral pyres. ter. It would seem that the malignity
ysis and the resulting decay, there is Notwithstanding the conservatism of the troll is inhabiting the Snow
always the possibility of bringing some- of the opera business, many top houses Queen’s form. Unfortunately, Francisco
thing about.” Neuwirth was address- offer a world première every season or Negrin, who directed the inaugural
ing the creative stasis at international two. On a one-week swing through production, obscured this insight by
opera houses, where a few dozen ca- Europe in early December, I caught subsuming the role into a confusing
nonical pieces are heard with numb- three such productions: Hans Abra- multipart character called the Univer-
ing frequency. The reactionary outlook hamsen’s “The Snow Queen,” at the sal Being, who does not appear in the
of these institutions is evident in the Royal Danish Theatre, in Copenha- libretto or the score. With its blandly
fact that operas by female composers gen; Chaya Czernowin’s “Heart Cham- abstract set and kitschy L.E.D. light-
remain unusual. Neuwirth’s “Orlando,” ber,” at the Deutsche Oper, in Berlin; ing, the staging did little to flesh out
a radical feminist adaptation of Virginia and “Orlando.” One suspects that, in Andersen’s world.
Woolf ’s novel, recently had its première many cases, commissioning work plays No matter: Robert Houssart, con-
at the Vienna State Opera. It stands a palliative role: a company can ap- ducting the Royal Danish Orchestra,
exulted in the kaleidoscopic gorgeous-
The composers Hans Abrahamsen, Chaya Czernowin, and Olga Neuwirth. ness of Abrahamsen’s score. The com-
64 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY ELENI KALORKOTI
poser belongs to a Danish new­music when the baritone answers the phone the context of the 1968 social revolu­
tradition that has refashioned simple­ and accepts the idea of going for a tions, the end of the Cold War, and the
seeming tonal materials into a lan­ walk. This nondescript exchange un­ age of the Internet. Orlando also has
guage of gleaming freshness. “The leashes an apocalyptic inundation from a child, who adopts the language of
Snow Queen,” like prior Abrahamsen the orchestra—one of several episodes transgender activism. The dangers of
works, has textures that shine and marked “Sound surge / flood” in the resurgent fascism and environmental
dance before the ears, with strings is­ score—with brass bellowing stento­ catastrophe do not go unnoticed. A
suing harmonics high in their range, rian tones and a pianist pummelling narrator intones, “The more the world
brass rumbling in the lower registers, the keyboard with his hands and arms. turns in a direction Orlando doesn’t
and blurred triads in the middle range. We experience the terror, as well as want it to go, the greater the urge for
More surprising are passages of child­ the joy, of intense love. (At the première her to write.”
like innocence—for example, a eupho­ performances, instrumental roles were Neuwirth, who came of age in the
nious chorus of singing flowers—and taken by members of Ensemble Nikel, punk scene of the nineteen­eighties,
episodes of polyrhythmic orchestral favorite collaborators of Czernowin’s.) has the virtue of extreme unpredict­
exuberance, as in Kay’s wild sleigh ride “Infinite Now” contains a similar all­ ability, her music characterized by a
with the Queen. This magnificent score enveloping storm, suggestive of war’s controlled wildness and purposeful in­
deserves to travel the world; in a suit­ chaos. Here the storm is internal, and stability. The “Orlando” score runs the
ably cinematic guise, it could conquer within a minute or two it fades, across gamut from Elizabethan vocal polyph­
the Met. an expanse of sustained chords, into ony to post­punk assault; in later
near­silence, with a single voice emit­ scenes, a drummer, a saxophonist, an
f “The Snow Queen” extends the ting isolated, high­pitched peeps. The electric guitarist, and a keyboardist are
I medium’s long­standing attachment
to fable and legend, Czernowin’s “Heart
spoken dialogue that follows is, again,
mundane: “Cold tonight. . . . The days
wheeled onstage. The writing for di­
verse ensembles is brilliant through­
Chamber” nods to the modern tradi­ are shorter.” But the sensuous, breathy out, but the first act feels considerably
tion of Zeitoper—“now opera,” or opera texture beneath the voices indicates a more cohesive than the second, which
of the moment. Composers of the nine­ transformation. sometimes lapses into the style of a
teen­twenties pioneered the trend, re­ The challenge in staging such a sweeping PBS documentary. (The voice
jecting mythic trappings in favor of piece is to make visible this disparity of Winston Churchill is present on
ocean liners and foxtrots. “Heart Cham­ between outer appearance and inner the soundtrack to a bizarre degree.)
ber,” for which Czernowin wrote her feeling. Claus Guth, who directed the The libretto, meanwhile, loses the ad­
own libretto, tells of a contemporary Deutsche Oper production, seemed vantage of Woolf ’s prose as it pro­
love affair infiltrated by anxieties and concerned more with the exterior side. gresses into the modern period. A
hesitations. In an early scene, the so­ He and the design team presented al­ thought like “More stories have to be
prano sings, “Hey! Pick up your phone! luring visuals—a staircase outside an told about all of us” is welcome, but it
Are you home?” Later, the baritone apartment complex was the dominant needs more poetry in it.
sings, “You can’t just suddenly close up image, often with figures moving in Nonetheless, the world première
like that.” The feeling is less of two slow motion—but they had the look was a startling and memorable night.
souls being joined in eternal love than of a chilly, clinical art film about the The mezzo­soprano Kate Lindsey gave
of two individuals negotiating the in­ disaffected bourgeoisie. Those inte­ a stupendous account of the title role,
tersection of their separate lives. rior storms went largely unremarked. executing hyper­elegant coloratura as
At first glance, Czernowin, an Is­ Even so, Patrizia Ciofi and Dietrich confidently as she did agitprop ora­
raeli native who teaches at Harvard, is Henschel gave vibrant, nuanced per­ tions. Polly Graham directed with an
an unlikely composer for such a proj­ formances of the lead roles, and the eye toward glamorous spectacle; Rei
ect. Much of her work has tended to­ composer­conductor Johannes Kali­ Kawakubo, of Comme des Garçons,
ward images of primordial upheaval tzke marshalled an opulently raging provided handsomely garish costumes.
and elemental change. Her previous orchestra. Matthias Pintscher, in the pit, found
operas, “Pnima” and “Infinite Now,” the connecting threads in Neuwirth’s
conjured scenes of twentieth­century
catastrophe: the Holocaust in the for­
“O rlando” was the most ambitious
of the three operas, and, perhaps
polyglot score. Then, there was the
veteran downtown­New York per­
mer, the First World War in the latter. inevitably, the most problematic. It at­ former Justin Vivian Bond, who in the
She avoids familiar harmonic signposts tempted to be mythic and modern in nineteen­nineties won cult fame as
and is inclined toward spectacularly equal measure. Woolf ’s novel tells of part of the slash­and­burn cabaret act
vivid eruptions of instrumental and an Elizabethan nobleman and poet Kiki and Herb. Anyone who saw that
electronic sound. The wonder of “Heart who abides through the centuries and duo sow chaos in small clubs could
Chamber” is how she uses her radical migrates from the male gender to the only laugh in happy disbelief as Bond,
sonic palette to evoke the stream of female. Neuwirth and her co­librettist, in the role of Orlando’s child, took to
consciousness beneath the surface of Catherine Filloux, made the sensible the storied Vienna stage to shout, “Fuck
ordinary life. decision to extend the story into the the patriarchy!” Something had been
The most astonishing passage comes present day, so that we see Orlando in dared, and something had changed. 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 65
 poems by refugee children; and two tra-
DANCING ditional, partially improvised solos,
including Barrio’s. But these parts are

SONG OF EXPERIENCE
so artfully stitched together that the
performance—which takes place on a
stripped-down stage, with dark, Goya-
Noche Flamenca gets deeper with age. esque lighting and only a few chairs for
props—feels like something much sim-
BY JENNIFER HOMANS pler: a gathering of dancers and musi-
cians. For two hours, and not a moment
of lag, we are given a tremendous show.
The setting is designed to take us
back to flamenco’s misty origins, which
lie with persecuted Roma people who
came from India, some of whom settled,
in the fifteenth century, in reclusive slums
and cave dwellings in Andalusia, in
southern Spain. But flamenco, an art of
the dispossessed, also drew from musi-
cal and poetic traditions of Arabs and
Sephardic Jews victimized in the expul-
sions and the forced conversions of the
Spanish Inquisition—not to mention
from African and Caribbean music and
dance, which were imported, exported,
and reimported in the Atlantic slave
trade. It was influenced by outcasts, too,
including peddlers, prostitutes, and im-
poverished women hired to weep at fu-
nerals. Its suppressed eroticism may owe
something to restrictive Roma and Cath-
olic sexual mores: today, it’s hard not to
see in it a kind of feminine revenge for
the cult of virginity. Flamenco’s music
and dance were later also shaped by bal-
let and the commercial culture of glitzy
urban night clubs and music halls, and
by foreigners who saw in flamenco some-
thing exotic, erotic, oriental. Even Fran-
The setting of “Entre Tú y Yo” takes us back to flamenco’s misty origins. co’s regime, which initially favored folk
forms that were seen as safer, eventually
oledad Barrio has a way of entering pitches and sways in a dance that would promoted flamenco as a part of Spain’s
S the stage like an animal circling her
prey. She is a flamenco dancer, so her
be almost witchlike were it not for the
rigor of her flamenco stance.
tourist industry.
One of flamenco’s touchstones, em-
back is arched in a majestic serpentine This tour-de-force solo was the cul- braced by Noche Flamenca, is the poet
curve, her arms and hands an ornamen- minating dance in Noche Flamenca’s and playwright Federico García Lorca,
tal filigree. This is not a glamorous diva “Entre Tú y Yo,” at the Joyce Theatre, who was executed in 1936, during the
in a ruffle-trained gown but a woman in November. The company, which Bar- Spanish Civil War. In the twenties, he
cut from plain black cloth, buttoned rio founded with her husband, Martín set out to reclaim the ancient origins of
high, fully covered. We can see from the Santangelo, in 1993, is based in New flamenco’s “deep song.” He did not in-
slight sag of her jawline that she is not York and will perform “Entre Tú y Yo” vent the idea of duende—a kind of de-
young anymore—a fact that, if anything, in Philadelphia in January, before re- monic spirit that could possess a musi-
adds to her power. As the musicians turning to the city in March, to perform cian or a dancer—but he was among
strum, pick, beat, clap, and sing, her heels “Antigona” at La Mama. The program the first to attach it to flamenco. Duende,
break into staccato rhythmic patterns. notes tell us that “Entre Tú y Yo” com- he wrote, is like a muse or an angel,
Finally, she dives into a low, plunging prises short pieces choreographed by except that it is an emissary of “black
turn, and all decorum falls away. Her Santangelo: erotic vignettes inspired by sounds,” with “wings of rusty knives,”
hands clutch and flay, she squats with the Viennese writer Arthur Schnitzler’s which “smashes styles” and “leans on
legs wide as in childbirth, and her body play “La Ronde”; a dance based on human pain with no consolation.” Bar-
66 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY CRISTINA DAURA
rio grew up in Madrid, amid stories of Jasiel Nahin—who answers with a bat- sionist) is a dancer who seems to know
her family’s suffering during the Civil tery of syncopated heel stamps and flips everything. In his dance, a traditional
War—her grandfather was imprisoned his jacket off one shoulder, like a form known as soleá por bulerías, he tack-
by the Franco regime—and it was Car- bullfighter, setting his youthful bravura les sophisticated syncopations, arms
los Saura’s 1981 dance film based on Lor- against her knowing sensuality. flying, body akimbo, angrier, funnier,
ca’s “Blood Wedding” that inspired her We hear the ancient-sounding masked, unmasked—a man in the throes
to dance professionally. “scorched throat,” as Lorca would put of himself. He can unleash a fury of heel
Despite its mixed and wide-ranging it, of Manuel Heredia, an older, bard- stamping or, just as mysteriously, turn
sources, flamenco often sees itself as like Gypsy singer, with a thick beard an open palm into a question: Is this
a bloodline. The “Entre Tú y Yo” pro- and long frizzy hair. In one number, he really all there is?
gram notes tell us that many of Noche hurls his lament at the dancer Marina Then comes Barrio’s soleá, another
Flamenca’s musicians are Gypsies (a Elana, pulling her into his cavernous traditional form. Over the years, I have
term proudly used in flamenco circles) emotion. (“Your body has to be the throat seen Barrio perform this dance many
or were taught from childhood by An- of the singer,” Barrio has said.) Then, times, but rarely with such heartbreak.
dalusian masters. But a number of fla- there is Elana’s sensual duet with a blue Her performance is different each night,
menco artists have been non-Gypsies or satin dress—a sharp contrast to Barrio’s but it is never, as she put it to me, “a
foreigners. One of the company’s danc- plain black attire. Elana begins on the vomit of emotion.” There are key emo-
ers is Argentine; another is American. floor, crumpled beneath a pile of ruffles. tional gestures, and also precise rules and
Santangelo is part Argentine and part As she rises, her bare back to us, she signals between dancers and musicians.
American Jew; Barrio is Spanish but not pulls the lavish dress up onto her body, They play off one another, making
Gypsy. She says that many Spaniards, fitting herself into its curves and work- split-second decisions that steer the
because of the brutal history stretching ing its long train into a lyrical dance, an music, the song, and the dance. The cues
from the Inquisition to Franco’s fascist image recalling John Singer Sargent’s are complicated; the more often the
regime, know little about their ancestry. 1882 painting “El Jaleo.” dancers perform the dance, the better
Santangelo told me that one of his teach- As for Barrio, she is everywhere, even they get. Which means that, for a dancer,
ers, the famed Manuel Santiago Maya, in her absence. She leaves plenty of heel duende is not only a mystical inspiration.
known as Manolete, used to wear a Star stamping—and the dress—to Elana, It is the work of experience—of aging.
of David. When Manolete was asked who, at times, feels like an avatar of Flamenco is punishing on the back
why, he responded, “I don’t know—my Barrio’s younger self. It is an impression and the knees, and Barrio, who was born
grandfather wore it.” affirmed in a dance that Barrio and Sant- in 1964, doesn’t train as intensively as
The music in the show is the work angelo choreographed for the two she used to. Instead, she swims. She
of Santangelo and the guitarists Eu- women. The duet is one of the few of comes to the stage, she told me, present
genio Iglesias and Salva de María. Much the vignettes to break with the flamenco in the moment, asking only, “What can
of it is based on traditional forms, but form. In it, Barrio and Elana are dressed, I do?” There is pain, which partly ex-
not all. The performance opens, for ex- twinlike, in tight black pants and shirts. plains the anxiety that the audience
ample, with a flamenco version of “His- At one point, Barrio touches Elana, and senses as Barrio circles the stage, and
toria de un Amor,” a lyrical popular song later they hold each other’s head in an the touch of fear before she plunges into
by the Panamanian songwriter Carlos anguished grip. These are startling mo- her dance. She is figuring it out on the
Eleta Almarán, used in the 1956 film of ments, because flamenco, for all its erot- spot. “If I can’t raise my leg up, then I
the same name by the Mexican direc- icism, does not abide touching. At the look around for a deeper solution,” she
tor Roberto Gavaldón. When, in the instant of contact, the sexuality of the told me. “Some nights it is there. Oth-
show, Carmina Cortes’s hoarse, guttural form weakens and dissipates. Barrio has ers I am searching for the entire dance
sound tears through the melody’s smooth said that she was drawing on Ingmar and never find it.” She is not looking for
fabric, we know we have begun. Bergman’s film “Persona,” with its fa- a way to disguise or face-lift movements
In flamenco, rhythm is everything. tally merged identities. Whatever the she can no longer perform as she once
The guitars lead, joined by hand clap- psychological connotations, what we see did. Instead, she allows herself to squat
ping, finger snapping, cajón (a box drum), is an engrossing struggle over a dance and wail, to go inside her own body and
heel stamping, and vocal call and re- that must be passed on—but not yet. take what’s there. The result is paradox-
sponse. One of the most astonishing ical: the less she can do, the more her
numbers in the show is a castanet solo t its core, flamenco is not about range expands. She told me, “I’d rather
by the percussionist David (Chupete)
Rodriguez, who sits alone, center stage,
A couples or love or sex. It is an im-
provised solo form about individual fan-
have a house with three objects than
with a hundred. You can make a design
in a pool of light. He makes the casta- tasy and inner life. The second half of with three things and know them well.
nets chase, chatter, love, argue, fight, “Entre Tú y Yo” begins with youth. Nahin A hundred things is not so easy. What
dance—he builds from pure rhythm a and Elana each perform a terrific solo are they there for?” As I watched Bar-
complicated and humorous drama. full of the joy of technical mastery. Then rio searching for her dance, I found my-
Reyes Martín, glorious in a tight red the elders take over, and the deepest self thinking what a relief it is, at a time
dress that maps her mature and volup- dancing begins. Antonio (El Chupete) of interminable newness, to hear some
tuous figure, sings and teases the dancer Rodriguez (the brother of the percus- ancient, and aging, voices. 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 67
 night, with Jo lamenting an earlier flare
THE CURRENT CINEMA of hot temper. Marmee is unsurprised:
“You remind me of myself.”
HOME COMFORTS “But you’re never angry.”
“I’m angry nearly every day of my life.”

“Little Women.” This exchange is taken, almost ver-

batim, from the book—one of those
BY ANTHONY LANE raw and startling moments which cast
a shadow of perplexity on its reputa-
omposing herself, and pausing to ated act, however fleeting, and Jo, you tion for sweetness and light. Fury, Al-
C gather her wits, Jo March (Sao-
irse Ronan) waits at the door of an
could argue, is best understood in mo-
tion. Alcott claimed, of her own youth,
cott tells us, is an inherited trait; Mar-
mee reveals that she was schooled by
office. Then she takes the plunge and that she “fell with a crash into girl- her mother, long ago, in what we would
enters a world of men. She has come hood,” and movies, let’s face it, are made call anger management, and hopes that
to see a newspaper editor named Dash- for crashing. When I think of Katha- Jo, in turn, will master her own wrath.
wood (Tracy Letts), hoping to sell him rine Hepburn’s Jo, in George Cukor’s What emerges from Gerwig’s movie,
a story. She claims to be a go-between, delectable “Little Women” of 1933, what though, is a strong sense, such as Al-
bringing the work of a friend, but a I remember is not her chatter, as rau- cott would not have dared to admit,
that indignation is not just the natural
lot of women but their rousing right.
In a war-wearied society, as in the tight
embrace of the Marches, there is much
to be angry about. It’s one thing to be
a little woman because you are not yet
grown; quite another to be belittled by
the larger world.
The difficult matter of that growth,
and of how best to represent it in the
short span of a movie, has tested ev-
eryone who has sought to wrestle Al-
cott’s novel onto the screen. Amy, the
youngest of the sisters, is especially
tricky, since she has to progress from
the age of twelve or so (a precocious
twelve, but still) to the status of a wife.
In Mervyn LeRoy’s effort, of 1949, Amy
was quietly promoted to the rank of
Not all sweetness and light: Greta Gerwig adapts the March sisters’ story. second youngest—a wise precaution,
perhaps, given that she was played by
glance at Jo’s inky fingers proclaims her cous as a raven, but her impromptu Elizabeth Taylor. In the more intense
as the author. As Dashwood takes the fencing match in a drawing room, or retelling of 1994, directed by Gillian
manuscript and crosses out page after the galumphing rumpus she makes Armstrong, the character was split into
page, her spirits droop, whereupon he when, at her mother’s call, she clatters two, with Kirsten Dunst handing over
confounds her by accepting the tale for down the stairs. to Samantha Mathis once the curtain
publication. Such is Jo’s delight that, Ronan is less loud than Hepburn, came down on Amy’s childhood.
on leaving the office, she doesn’t—or but she has inherited some of her hus- In the latest film, she is played by
can’t—walk home in a manner befit- tle and bustle, and anyone who admired Florence Pugh, whose star, from “Lady
ting a young lady. She runs. Ronan in the title role of Gerwig’s “Lady Macbeth” (2016) to “Midsommar” (2019),
So begins “Little Women,” a new Bird” (2017) will note a similar fixity of has continued to rocket. (Next spring,
adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s purpose in her portrayal of Jo. Also, she will battle through “Black Widow,”
novel. The writer and director is Greta when she appears within the same frame as Scarlett Johansson’s sister. A slight
Gerwig, and, if you reckon that mov- as Laura Dern, who plays Marmee, they change of tone from the Marches.) Pugh
ies have muscle memories, cast your genuinely look like mother and daugh- is twenty-three but seems older, with
mind back to Noah Baumbach’s “Fran- ter, with their long, grave features, and her frightening poise and the pass-me-
ces Ha” (2012), in which Gerwig, as the you can see Marmee wondering, as every a-smoke throatiness of her voice, and
heroine, hared along the streets of New parent does: If I spy so much of myself while the innocence of Amy, equipped
York. The rhetoric of liberation, how- in my child, is that cause for hope or with long blond braids, is a stretch for
ever grand, is no match for the liber- fear? They sit together on the floor, at her, the willful tenacity presents no prob-
68 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY BIANCA BAGNARELLI
lem. So urgent, indeed, is the thirst for ment. No less wrenching is the sight alarming, as weddings adjoin funerals
experience that rages in Ronan and Pugh, of Margaret O’Brien, the Beth of the and tantrums melt into firelit peace,
under Gerwig’s command, that the other 1949 movie, setting off to thank a rich but what the mixture yields is a kind
actors who complete the March quar- old man for the gift of his piano; with of creed: a faith in the fullness of lives
tet—Emma Watson as Meg, and Eliza her starched frock, and her solemn de- that might be deemed unexceptional.
Scanlen as the vulnerable Beth—are meanor strangely close to tears, she The movie’s outward gaze is radical,
doomed to make less of an impression. could be Alice in Wonderland, and the no question, yet it refuses to scorn the
That is never an issue for Meryl whole film, robed in Technicolor, re- comforts—of ingrained habits, and of
Streep, and she is on suitably beady form tains a picture-book enchantment. home—that are honored by the con-
as Aunt March, who believes that a pro- Gerwig’s innovations are something servative imagination. Such equipoise
pitious marriage to a man of means re- else. The costumes, designed by Jacque- is almost as rare in cinema as it is, God
mains, like it or not, the most reliable line Durran, are a triumph of the home- knows, in politics, and right now, though
way in which a gentlewoman can sur- spun: a plausible patchwork of things we can’t foretell whether time will be
vive and thrive. Being Streep, though, borrowed, mended, or handed down. cruel or kind to Gerwig’s “Little Women,”
she manages to hint—with a gleam in Jo, scribbling in the attic, has clearly it may just be the best film yet made by
her penetrating gaze, and a clairvoyance raided a drawer in a rush, wanting only an American woman.
that Alcott, again, would scarcely have to be warm. And, if there’s a National As with all good Americana, violence
allowed herself—that an alternative state Waistcoat League, this movie could be is never far away. This is a family flick,
of affairs, in a less tightly laced future, its mascot; nifty examples are sported with a PG rating, but many a pinch and
may prove worthy of deliberation. Not by Jo, Laurie (Timothée Chalamet), the a punch are delivered by the March clan
that Aunt March will live to see it. handsome neighbor whom she loves so (“I really did want to hurt you,” Amy
dearly that she doesn’t need to marry says to Jo, who forbade her a trip to the
ome viewers, I suspect, will be saggy him, and his sad grandfather (Chris theatre), and Jo, offered an arm by Lau-
S with foreboding, like reluctant
guests (“Must we meet the Marches,
Cooper), whose mansion lies within
strolling distance of the March house-
rie as they take the air, responds with a
manly thwack. Whether such blows are
again?”), as they wend their way to “Lit- hold. As for Professor Bhaer (Louis landed in Alcott’s text is hardly the point,
tle Women” over the festive period. Yet Garrel), whom Jo finds as her fellow- for this is not only a film of the book
wend they will, because the saga of Jo lodger when she moves to New York, but also, more stirring still, a film about
and the gang will simply not release its I’m afraid that I failed to notice his the book. What Jo ends up producing,
grip, so crowded and occasionally so waistcoats, so charmed was I by the au- for the demanding Dashwood, is a sum-
unbearable are the emotions packed dacity of the casting. On the page, he mation of all that we have observed; she
into this plain tale. The new film may is a porky middle-aged German. (Lau- writes the film into being, so to speak,
be the umpteenth dramatization of the rie says, “I consider him a trump, in the mothering the facts and the multiple
book, but so what? I’m already looking fullest sense of that expressive word.” fates of her loved ones into fiction. At
forward to ump plus one. Yikes!) In the film, he becomes an ar- the climax, we see the story being
Every version has its virtues. It’s so- dent French smolderer. It’s like order- printed, stitched, bound in leather, and
bering to reflect that Cukor’s “Little ing bratwurst and getting coq au vin. handed to Jo, as if she, not Alcott, were
Women” is nearer in time to the Civil But Gerwig’s coup is chronological: the author of “Little Women.” She stands
War than it is to us; it could conceiv- to and fro she darts across the years, there smiling, her restlessness finally
ably have been seen by an eighty-year- chopping the plot into flashbacks and quelled—proud, content, composed. 
old whose father had died in the conflict, flash-forwards, and keeping us on our
and the ghost of loss and frailty seems toes. (The darting is easier to follow on NEWYORKER.COM
to dawdle on the fringes of the merri- a second viewing.) The results can be Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose
three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Mort Gerberg,
must be received by Sunday, January 5th. The finalists in the December 16th contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the January 20th issue. Anyone age thirteen
or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

“ ”
..........................................................................................................................

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“Please watch your small step.”

Joel Nelson, Goleta, Calif.

“I’m sorry, I just assumed you’d want to go up.” “I was stationed at CVS during the war on drugs.”
Daniel Pankratz, Huntington Beach, Calif. Charlie Wollborg, Detroit, Mich.

“After the top floor, you’re on your own.”

Deane Nesbitt, Longmeadow, Mass.
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