PRICE $8.99 JAN.

8, 2018
 JANUARY 8, 2018

4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

15 THE TALK OF THE TOWN

Louis Menand on the words of the year;
Diplo dips out; “Lolita” ’s champion;
convincing ailments; stories the C.I.A. tells.
LETTER FROM CALIFORNIA
Dana Goodyear 20 Exposure
The entertainment business confronts its culture.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Bruce Handy 27 My Year in Celebrity Deaths
PERSONAL HISTORY
Siddhartha Mukherjee 28 Bodies at Rest and in Motion
Watching a father lose his equilibrium.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Evan Osnos 36 Making China Great Again
A newly confident nation embraces a global role.
PORTFOLIO
Davide Monteleone 46 A New Silk Road
with Jiayang Fan Images of China’s infrastructure undertaking.
FICTION
Sadia Shepard 58 “Foreign-Returned”
THE CRITICS
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 67 “Phantom Thread.”
A CRITIC AT LARGE
Louis Menand 69 Learning from the election of 1968.
BOOKS
72 Briefly Noted
POP MUSIC
Carrie Battan 76 The morose sounds of Lil Peep and Lil Xan.
POEMS
Traci Brimhall 33 “Love Poem Without a Drop of
Hyperbole in It”
J. Hope Stein 63 “Central Maze”

COVER
Jorge Colombo “Ferried Across”

DRAWINGS William Haefeli, Victoria Roberts, Ellis Rosen, Roz Chast,

Lars Kenseth, Harry Bliss, Teresa Burns Parkhurst, David Sipress, Emily Flake,
Frank Cotham, Andrew Hamm SPOTS Greg Clarke
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 1
 CONTRIBUTORS
Dana Goodyear (“Exposure,” p. 20), a
staff writer, is the author of “Honey
and Junk” and “Anything That Moves.”
Jorge Colombo (Cover), an illustrator,
photographer, and graphic designer,
has contributed covers to the maga-
zine since 2009.
J. Hope Stein (Poem, p. 63) is the author
of the book of poems “Occasionally,
I Remove Your Brain Through Your
Nose.”
Davide Monteleone (Portfolio, p. 46),
an artist and visual journalist, is a three-
time winner of the World Press Photo
prize.
Jiayang Fan (Portfolio, p. 46) became a
staff writer in 2016. Her reporting on
China, American politics, and culture
has appeared in the magazine and on
newyorker.com since 2010.
Traci Brimhall (Poem, p. 33), an assistant
professor of creative writing at Kansas
State University, most recently pub-
lished the poetry collection “Saudade.”
NEWYORKER.COM
Everything in the magazine, and more.
DAILY SHOUTS
Emma Hunsinger illustrates a
day in the life of the Corporatesens,
a working family.
SUBSCRIBERS: Get access to our magazine app for tablets and smartphones at the
App Store, Amazon.com, or Google Play. (Access varies by location and device.)
2 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
Evan Osnos (“Making China Great
Again,” p. 36) writes about politics and
foreign affairs for the magazine. His
book “Age of Ambition” won the 2014
National Book Award for nonfiction.
Siddhartha Mukherjee (“Bodies at Rest
and in Motion,” p. 28) has published
three books, including “The Emperor
of All Maladies,” for which he won a
Pulitzer Prize, and, most recently, “The
Gene: An Intimate History.”
Carrie Battan (Pop Music, p. 76) is a
regular contributor to the magazine.
Louis Menand (Comment, p. 15; A Critic
at Large, p. 69) has contributed to The
New Yorker since 1991, and has been a
staff writer since 2001.
Sadia Shepard (Fiction, p. 58), a writer
and a documentary filmmaker, is the
author of the memoir “The Girl from
Foreign.”
Anthony Lane (The Current Cinema,
p. 67) has been a film critic for the mag-
azine since 1993.
RIGHT: JAY DOCKENDORF AND KENNY SULE
VIDEO
Phil Young, a Harlem jazz legend,
shares his thoughts about how music
has the power to change lives.
 THE MAIL
BEYOND SNOOPING
Of the many troubling aspects of Sheelah
Kolhatkar’s recent newyorker.com arti-
cle about our lawsuit, with the co-plain-
tiff Chaz Reetz-Laiolo, against Emma
Cline for hacking our online accounts,
we were particularly disappointed by the
dismissal of violations of our privacy as
Cline “snooping on . . . two of the for-
mer couple’s female friends” (“How the
Lawyer David Boies Turned a Young
Novelist’s Sexual Past Against Her,”
December 1st). The screenshot evidence,
collected by the spyware that Cline used
to break into our online accounts—
examples of which are excerpted in our
complaint—shows her opening and
reading our personal e-mails over a pe-
riod of years. It is hypocritical to dismiss
this as mere “snooping” in an article pur-
portedly about threats to Cline’s privacy.
Further, in not addressing more fully the
ways in which Cline and her lawyers have
placed gender issues at the center of their
publicity response to our case, Kolhatkar
marginalized our role in the lawsuit and
the undisputed invasion of our privacy.
Cline’s attorneys at the time threatened
to publicize allegations about our private
sexual lives, claiming that Cline’s suspi-
cions about our sexual conduct excused
her hacking into our accounts and warn-
ing us of “reputational injury” if we did
not back down. We understand the ur-
gency of reporting on efforts to intimi-
date or silence women. However, if Kol-
hatkar and The New Yorker want to report
on the ethics of litigation tactics, rather
than on the facts of our case, we ask that
they consider the ethics of the approach
taken by Cline and her lawyers as well.
Kari Bernard, Shushan, N.Y.
Kristin Kiesel, Oakland, Calif.
1 zation of the various journalists’ roles
HOW DOES A CHILD SUCCEED?
In her piece on the Success Academy
Charter School network, in New York,
Rebecca Mead expresses concern that
“if children are exposed in school to an
authoritarian model of society, that is the
kind of society in which they may
prefer to live” (“Two Schools of Thought,”
December 11th). Most students enrolled
in New York City public schools already
live in communities where the hand
of the state is harsh. The pedagogical
goals that Mead describes—training
students to overcome their impulses and
to conform to a strict code of behavior—
may seem Draconian. But, in neighbor-
hoods where even benign behavior can
lead to dangerous entanglement with the
criminal-justice system, teaching students
the value of following even the most ar-
bitrary rules may be a vital lesson.
Julian Cole Phillips
Brooklyn, N.Y.
As an educational consultant, I’m famil-
iar with the kinds of schools that Suc-
cess Academy represents. Schools that
are focussed on “achievement” (which is
measured mostly by test scores) and on
“discipline” (which usually restricts choice
and movement) tend to serve poor chil-
dren of color in large cities. In wealthier
neighborhoods, progressive education in
the tradition of John Dewey and Deb-
orah Meier is the norm. Many of us in
education have long seen the movement
toward stricter schools in poor commu-
nities for what it is: an approach steeped
in racism. All children thrive in stimu-
lating environments with warm, mature
adults. Education is about giving a child
more respect and care, not less.
Pax Linson
Takoma Park, Md.
1
EDITORS’ NOTE: Andrew Marantz’s
“Main Streamers” (December 11th) in-
cluded a quotation from Tim Pool that
described a disagreement about the Vice
News coverage of protests in Ferguson,
Missouri. That quotation contained sev-
eral errors, including a mischaracteri-
at the event.
•
Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 3
 JANUARY 3 – 9, 2018

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

All pop stars are constructs, but that’s especially true of Shasta Geaux Pop, a glamazon hip-hop icon who
exists, like Tinkerbell, only to the extent that you believe in her and clap your hands. Invented by the
performer Ayesha Jordan and the director Charlotte Brathwaite, who met while working in the Neth-
erlands in 2001, she’s part of this year’s “Under the Radar” festival ( Jan. 4-15), the Public Theatre’s show-
case of the avant-garde, where she’ll be hosting get-down parties on select nights in the Public’s lobby.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PARI DUKOVIC


MOVIES
1
NOW PLAYING
All the Money in the World
The director Ridley Scott reduces the story of the
1973 kidnapping, in Rome, of the sixteen-year-old
Paul Getty, a grandson of the tycoon J. Paul Getty,
then the world’s richest person, to a mere yarn.
Charlie Plummer brings pathos to the role of the
impetuous and feisty teen-ager who manages to
cope with the bumbling criminals who abduct him
but is overwhelmed by the professional gangsters to
whom he’s ultimately conveyed. As Paul’s mother,
Gail Harris, Michelle Williams is focussed and en-
ergetic, and, as J. Paul Getty, Christopher Plummer
(no relation to Charlie), replacing Kevin Spacey by
means of recent reshoots, turns a villainous char-
acter oddly and pleasantly avuncular. Nonetheless,
the cast seems over all unguided, left to their own
devices, as if each were acting alone in a booth,
and the drama is similarly detached and hermetic.
Though there’s a hint of Italian politics, a touch of
family crisis, and a snippet of the elder Getty’s em-
pire-building stuck onto the plot, there’s no sym-
bolic resonance or psychological insight to add to
the curious historical byway or the painful private
ordeal.—Richard Brody (In wide release.)
Call Me by Your Name
The new film by Luca Guadagnino is set in the sum-
mer of 1983. Professor Perlman (Michael Stuhl-
barg) lives with his wife (Amira Casar) and their
seventeen-year-old son, Elio (Timothée Chalamet),
in a secluded Italian house—a private Eden, where
the fruit ripens within reach, ready for the plucking.
The family is Jewish, cultivated, and polyglot; the
whole movie spills over with languages, books, and
strains of music. (The ideal viewer, probably, would
be André Gide.) Into this enchanted place comes an
American called Oliver (Armie Hammer), who is to
be Perlman’s research assistant; you half expect the
intruder to be a serpent, but instead he deepens the
enchantment. Though the story, adapted by James
Ivory from André Aciman’s novel, tells primarily
of the love between Elio and Oliver, Guadagnino
somehow conjures a free-floating rapture, of which
all the characters partake. Even a statue, dredged
from a lake, seems to share in the bliss. What could
have been too rich or too glutinous is leavened by
wit and, later on, by a wintry sorrow. How the film
could have thrived with actors other than Chalamet
and Hammer is hard to imagine.—Anthony Lane
(Reviewed in our issue of 12/4/17.) (In limited release.)
Darkest Hour
How badly we need another Winston Churchill film
is open to question. Nonetheless, Joe Wright’s con-
tribution to the genre is welcome, largely because
of Gary Oldman in the leading role. He seems an
unlikely choice, yet the lightness of his performance
marks it out from other attempts; this Churchill,
oddly quick on his feet, with a hasty huff and puff
in his voice instead of a low, slow growl, suggests
a man in a hurry to fight. None too soon, for we
are in the late spring of 1940, with the German war
machine in full cry and Britain adrift until Chur-
chill, to the alarm of many contemporaries, takes
charge. Wright has a curious weakness for the over-
head shot, be it of the House of Commons or of a
landscape cratered by bombs, and the musical score
sounds too plush by half. But Oldman is braced by
his supporting cast. Kristin Scott Thomas, as Clem-
entine Churchill, is witty as well as stalwart; Nev-
ille Chamberlain, as played by Ronald Pickup, has
never looked graver or more aghast. Best of all is
Stephen Dillane, as Lord Halifax, whom Churchill
called the Holy Fox: cadaverous, principled, desper-
ate for peace, and wrong.—A.L. (In limited release.)
Downsizing
Alexander Payne’s new film stars Matt Damon as
Paul Safranek, a regular guy from Omaha, who reck-
ons that small is beautiful. He and his wife, Au-
drey (Kristen Wiig), decide to take advantage of a
recent technological development that can shrink
them to a height of around six inches. Imagine the
economic benefits! Despite a kink in the plan, Paul
duly finds himself in Leisureland, a community of
mini folk housed in a biodome. However, regard-
less of the blandishments of his grinning neigh-
bor (Christoph Waltz), who views the tiny life as
a chance to party, Paul remains dissatisfied until
he meets a Vietnamese refugee (Hong Chau)—one
of the miniature poor who dwell at the edge of the
dome. The plot stretches further still, to a fjord in
Norway, and to a more utopian brand of existence,
founded on a fear of planetary disaster. No one
could accuse Payne of not thinking big; the movie
is his largest and weirdest to date, a sci-fi eco-satire
that can scarcely bind its mass of themes together.
Damon is ever dependable, but, as his character’s
adventures pile up, the film starts to neglect its ini-
tial conceit. Does size not matter, after all?—A.L.
(1/1/18) (In wide release.)
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
An unlikely story, but a true one, based on Peter
Turner’s memoir. In 1979, as a young actor in Lon-
don, Peter (Jamie Bell) finds himself in the same
boarding house as Gloria Grahame (Annette Ben-
ing), not knowing who she is, or used to be. Years
ago, she won an Oscar, for “The Bad and the Beau-
tiful” (1952), but now she is appearing onstage—
not even in the West End—in a Tennessee Wil-
liams play. She and Peter dance together, go out for
a drink, and start an affair, doing their enraptured
best to ignore the difference in their ages; she takes
him to California and New York. Paul McGuigan’s
film tacks back and forth between this sprightly pe-
riod and the more wretched events of 1981, when
Grahame, now extremely sick, seeks refuge at her
lover’s home, in Liverpool, to be cared for by Peter
and his parents (Julie Walters and Kenneth Cran-
ham). The movie grows dispiriting as she declines,
but the central pairing lends it a touching inten-
sity; Bell, jaunty yet vulnerable, does some of his
smartest work, and Bening, wise enough not to at-
tempt an impersonation, conveys both the feline
fragility and, despite everything, the exuberance of
an extraordinary woman.—A.L. (In limited release.)
From Mayerling to Sarajevo
In 1940, as the Second World War began, the di-
rector Max Ophüls, a German Jew who had fled to
France, filmed, with a romantic champagne froth,
this bitterly ironic drama of how the First World
War got started—specifically, how the progressive
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg
throne, ended up in Sarajevo on that fateful day in
1914. In Ophüls’s telling, the course of history was
changed by Franz Ferdinand’s liberal plan to turn
the Holy Roman Empire into the United States of
Austria—and by his breathless affair with a minor
Czech aristocrat, Sophie Chotek. Ophüls contrasts
the authentic grandeur of inner nobility with the
crushing formalities of the royal court. In his vi-
sion, the passion that binds Franz Ferdinand and
Sophie together gives rise to breathlessly splendid
gestures—whether of defiance or of self-sacrifice—
that soar above the petty protocol of imperial spec-
tacle. The director’s lavish eye for the pomp of
power is untinged with nostalgia; his vision of the
era begins with a phony press release and ends in
disaster.—R.B. (Metrograph, Jan. 5-9 .)
The Greatest Showman
The life and work of P. T. Barnum get Broadway raz-
zle-dazzle and sentiment in this occasionally rous-
ing, visually smooth, emotionally diluted musical,
set in nineteenth-century New York. P.T. (Hugh
Jackman), a tailor’s son, and Charity Hallett (Mi-
chelle Williams), a socialite’s daughter, are unlikely
childhood friends who marry. They have two daugh-
ters and are poor and happy, but P.T. has big dreams,
and he borrows and schemes to realize them. His
circus displays human curiosities who are callously
called freaks by his critics (including a snooty the-
atre reviewer, played by Paul Sparks) but whose hu-
manity and dignity his show brings to light. The
impresario’s confrontations with public hostility, fi-
nancial difficulties, and romantic misunderstandings
form the core of the plot, but another crucial strand
involves his high-society business partner, the play-
wright Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron), who defies his
own family and the conventions of the time by pur-
suing a romantic relationship with one of the com-
pany’s trapeze artists, Anne Wheeler (Zendaya),
a black woman. (What Anne’s brother, played by
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, thinks of the relationship
is never specified.) The director, Michael Gracey,
delivers quick doses of excitement in splashy scenes
but has little feel for the choreographic action, of-
fers scant historical substance, and displays slender
dramatic insight.—R.B. (In wide release.)
Happy End
The joys of family life are brought home to us, once
again, by Michael Haneke, in his first film since
“Amour” (2012). The setting is northern France, in an
area that has become home to many refugees. (Now
and then, though not often enough, they enter the
action from the wings.) In a comfortable house, at-
tended by servants, live the Laurents: Georges (Jean-
Louis Trintignant), the elderly and embittered head
of the clan; his daughter Anne (Isabelle Huppert),
who runs their construction company; and his son
Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz), a surgeon. Also pres-
ent are Thomas’s wife, Anaïs (Laura Verlinden), and
their baby, plus—a new arrival—the teen-age Eve
(Fantine Harduin), his daughter from an earlier mar-
riage. Every relationship we come across feels frayed;
the closest rapport is between Eve and her grandfa-
ther, who compare notes on the harm that they have
inflicted. Many of Haneke’s trademarks are in evi-
dence, not least the ominous use of private recording;
in “Hidden” (2005), that meant videotapes, whereas
here it is cell-phone footage. But the result lacks the
tenacious bite of his finest work, and one can think of
more difficult targets for his unerring aim than the
moral indifference of the rich. In French and En-
glish.—A.L. (1/1/18) (In limited release.)
Hard, Fast and Beautiful
Ida Lupino directed this tough and worldly 1951
drama, about a mother whose ambitions for her
daughter bring the family to grief. Sally Forrest
plays Florence Farley, a teen-age tennis star from
a struggling middle-class family in Santa Monica,
whose mother, Millie (Claire Trevor), envisions
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 5

the sport as Florence’s way to the wealth, the plea-
sure, and the excitement that she herself was denied.
Then, as Florence begins her rise to fame, Millie—
whose social striving comes through in sublimely
observed details—grasps at her own chance for
wealth and pleasure, too. But Florence’s romance
with Gordon McKay (Robert Clarke), a serious and
independent-minded young man, throws Millie’s
mercenary plans into disarray. Lupino sees Mil-
lie’s relentless drive as resistance to a world of ob-
stacles to a woman’s autonomy, and sees the family
itself as one of the most formidable of those obsta-
cles. The drama spotlights the price that love, in a
time of unquestioned inequities, exacts. Florence
seems truly free only when she’s competing on the
tennis court, and Lupino films her with thrilling,
kinetic angles that suggest the real meaning of her
amateur status—doing what she loves, for its own
sake.—R.B. (Film Society of Lincoln Center, Jan. 4.)
Hostiles
In this drama, set in 1892, the director and writer
Scott Cooper turns a classic Western setup into a
Western-by-numbers. Christian Bale plays the griz-
zled Captain Joseph Blocker, the unwilling leader of
a military convoy accompanying the aged and ail-
ing Cheyenne chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and
his family from a jail in a New Mexico fort to their
Montana homeland. Blocker, a veteran of Wounded
Knee, hates Native Americans but is ordered to pro-
tect Yellow Hawk, who fought there, too, against
him. Early in the journey, the convoy picks up Ro-
salie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), a homesteader who
survived a Comanche raid in which her husband
and children were killed. En route, the men of the
group, including Yellow Hawk, fight for their lives
Kenneth Lonergan’s melodrama “Margaret,” filmed in 2005 but not released until 2011, stars Anna Paquin as an Upper West Side high-school student whose
life is changed by an accident, and by her sense of guilt. Filled with political debate and an air of mortality, it’s one of the great post-9/11 movies.
6 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
MOVIES
against a diverse set of enemies, whites and Native
Americans alike. Cooper dramatizes the relentless
kill-or-be-killed ethos of Western life and the severe
mental and moral toll that it exacts from all who
face it. Yet the bare script seems written by tele-
gram, reducing the characters to pieces on a histor-
ical chessboard, and the portentous pace and lugu-
brious tone of Cooper’s direction take the place of
substance.—R.B. (In wide release.)
I, Tonya
This comedic drama, directed by Craig Gillespie,
offers a detailed, empathetic view of Tonya Harding,
the real-life Olympic figure skater who, in 1994, was
involved in a plot to injure her main rival, Nancy
Kerrigan. (The script, by Steven Rogers, is partly
based on his interview with Harding.) In the film-
makers’ version of the story, Tonya, as a child, is
bullied and beaten by her mother (Allison Janney),
who’s depicted as a brutally judgmental waitress with
big dreams for her daughter—and the adult Tonya
(played by Margot Robbie), a bold and gifted ath-
lete, escapes her mother’s clutches by marrying
Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), who also beats her.
Though Tonya rises brilliantly through the sport’s
competitive ranks, the skating establishment holds
her gaudy taste, rough manners, and rude family
against her. That endemic class discrimination and
the ensuing bad publicity are the backdrop for Jeff’s
scheme to harm Kerrigan—and for the beleaguered
and abused Tonya’s inability to oppose it. The heart
of the movie is its recognition of Tonya’s dependence
on people and institutions that have betrayed her.
But Gillespie’s empathy is mixed with condescen-
sion; much of the movie’s bluff comedy mocks the
tone and the actions of Tonya and her milieu. With
Paul Walter Hauser, as Jeff’s delusional partner in
crime.—R.B. (In limited release.)
Margaret
The writer and director Kenneth Lonergan’s 2011
feature (shot in 2005) is a wildly ambitious strain of
the Upper West Side bourgeois blues; it embraces
big, rich themes and sumptuous tones and moods
with a remarkable scope and nuance. It stars Anna
Paquin as Lisa Cohen, a headstrong private-school
teen-ager whose innocent distraction of a Broad-
way bus driver leads to a fatal accident. Lisa tries
to expiate her guilt by seeking out the victim’s best
friend (Jeannie Berlin, in an electrifyingly exact
yet freewheeling performance). As Lisa’s little
world comes up against the realm of public power
(via brilliant character turns from Stephen Adly
Guirgis, as a police detective, and Michael Ealy
and Jonathan Hadary, as lawyers), the movie rises
to a grand symbolic pitch; it’s a city symphony,
romantic yet scathing, lyrical with street life and
vaulting skylines, reckless with first adventure, and
awed by the intellectual and poetic abstractions
on which the great machine runs. Lonergan’s lon-
ger, three-hour-plus cut expands some plot points
and, above all, emphasizes his nearly metaphysical
vision of New York. The teeming cast includes J.
Smith-Cameron, Matt Damon, Allison Janney, Jean
Reno, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, Kieran
Culkin, and Rosemarie DeWitt—and Paquin im-
pressively stands her ground with them all.—R.B.
(Quad Cinema, Jan. 6, and streaming.)
Molly’s Game
The first film directed by Aaron Sorkin, who also
wrote the script, is dominated by the imaginary
ALAMY
 MOVIES
clatter of his computer keyboard; the quality of
the screenplay takes a back seat to its quantity,
and the direction never brings it to life. Based on
the memoir of its real-life protagonist, the drama
presents Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), a for-
mer Olympic skier and an academic star who puts
off law school, seeks adventure, and ends up run-
ning high-stakes poker games in Los Angeles and
New York—an enterprise that gets her arrested and
charged with federal crimes. Molly’s voice-over,
which runs throughout the film, explains the logic
behind her practical decisions while also detailing
the skills and the wiles of poker players, yet Sor-
kin narrows her analytical intelligence to superfi-
cial flash. The same thing happens to the relation-
ships on which the movie runs—Molly’s connection
to the attorney Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba), who
warily decides to represent her, and to her father,
Larry (Kevin Costner), who pops in like a pater ex
machina to resolve complexities superficially. With
Michael Cera, as an intrepid movie star, and Chris
O’Dowd, as an Irish gambler with a thing for “Ulys-
ses.”—R.B. (In wide release.)
The Post
The new film from Steven Spielberg, like his “Lin-
coln” (2012), is a solidly rousing act of historical
re-creation. Meryl Streep plays Katharine Gra-
ham, the owner of the Washington Post, with Tom
Hanks as its swaggering editor, Ben Bradlee. Most
of the story is set in the early nineteen-seventies,
at a vertiginous time for the nation and its capital.
The so-called Pentagon Papers, obtained by Dan-
iel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), unveil a reluctance,
on the part of multiple administrations, to inform
the public about the true state of the Vietnam War.
When the Times is prevented, by legal injunction,
from publishing the Papers, the Post gets its chance
to step in and continue the job; what will Graham
do, given that further revelations will rock the very
establishment of which she is such a doyenne? The
movie is a little too confident of its own righteous
stand (listen to the strenuous John Williams score),
but the battle between hesitation and decisiveness
is beautifully managed by Streep. With Bob Oden-
kirk, Tracy Letts, Sarah Paulson, Bradley Whitford,
and a lethally smiling Bruce Greenwood, as Rob-
ert McNamara. Delicious period costumes, start-
ing with Bradlee’s striped shirts, by Ann Roth.—
A.L. (12/18 & 25/17) (In wide release.)
The Shape of Water
When it comes to many-layered tales, Guillermo
del Toro is no novice. But even the fantastic beasts
of “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006), stalking against the
backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, could not pre-
pare us for the wild jostling of genres in his latest
film, which is set at the peak of the Cold War. Sally
Hawkins plays Elisa, who is lovelorn, unabashed,
and mute. She lives alone, next door to a commer-
cial artist named Giles (Richard Jenkins), and works
as a cleaner, alongside her friend Zelda (Octavia
Spencer), at a scientific facility. There she finds an
unlikely beau: a scaly creature (Doug Jones) who
has been brought from the Amazon to Baltimore,
where, it is hoped, he may be of use against the Rus-
sians. Elisa teaches him sign language and hatches
plans to spring him from captivity. Given the pres-
ence of musical numbers, dance sequences, and for-
eign spies, plus a surprising frankness about sex-
ual bliss, you would expect the movie to fall apart,
yet it all hangs together, held tight by the urgency
of the characters’ feelings and the easy force of
the magic. With Michael Stuhlbarg, as a sympa-
thetic soul in a white coat, and Michael Shannon,
as the candy-crunching villain.—A.L. (12/11/17)
(In wide release.)
NIGHT LIFE
1
ROCK AND POP
Musicians and night-club proprietors lead
complicated lives; it’s advisable to check
in advance to confirm engagements.
Ja Rule
No criminal charges have so far been filed against
Ja Rule, born Jeffery Atkins, who is a defendant in
some of the civil cases brought against the ill-fated
Fyre Festival. Rule was a partner in the luxury-get-
away festival, which was bested by bad weather and
poor planning last spring; the concerts never hap-
pened, and attendees were left stranded on an is-
land in the Bahamas, some having spent thousands
of dollars on tickets and travel. These days, live per-
formances likely keep Rule’s mind off of his legal
woes. The rapper was a gruff mainstay on pop radio
at the turn of the century, during his three-year run
of smash singles, including “Livin’ It Up,” “Put It
on Me,” and “Between Me and You.” He revisits
these heavy hits and more this week, on the same
day as a scheduled hearing date, Variety reports.
(B. B. King Blues Club & Grill, 237 W. 42nd St. 212-
997-4144. Jan. 4.)
The Killers
The Killers rocketed to fame with their 2004
début, “Hot Fuss,” glistening with synthesizers and
irony, and their knack for mixing classic rock with
eighties-inspired dance music became an instant
trend. After two more catchy LPs, “Sam’s Town”
and “Day & Age,” and relentless touring, the band
members decided, in 2010, to take a break to pursue
solo projects. But the allure of the crowds proved
too powerful, and the Las Vegas foursome returned
in 2012 with “Battle Born,” a radio-ready album of
pristine arena rock. This September brought “Won-
derful Wonderful,” the band’s first record to reach
the No. 1 spot on the Billboard chart; they set out
on a major tour this January, with an early stop in
Brooklyn. (Barclays Center, 620 Atlantic Ave., Brook-
lyn. barclayscenter.com. Jan. 9.)
Mall Grab
At twenty-three, Jordan Alexander, also known as
Mall Grab, is keyed into the lo-fi sounds and the
out-of-nowhere loops that make young crowds shed
their cool and dance. “It’s such an issue these days,”
he told the d.j. outlet Mixmag. “A lot of people
aren’t willing to just enjoy themselves and focus
on the moment—instead, they’re Snapchatting
the whole night.” Alexander came to d.j.’ing at the
age of twelve, by messing around with his father’s
Talking Heads records; by 2008, he was an avid
follower of the influential dance label Ed Banger.
These days, Mall Grab sets are coveted; the New-
castle native makes his Good Room début for what
might be the first great rave of the year. The Queens
rapper and d.j. Nasty Nigel plays in the Bad Room.
(98 Meserole Ave., Brooklyn. goodroombk.com. Jan. 5.)
Ninos Du Brasil
The Italian duo known as Ninos Du Brasil is a rem-
edy for faceless techno lacking in style. Nico Vas-
cellari and Nicolò Fortuni perform lush outsider
techno with amused disregard for music-market
pressures. Their new album, “Vida Eterna,” re-
leased, in September, by the experimental label
Hospital Productions, marries industrial techno
and propulsive Batucada samba with nervy, tribal
post-punk. The composite style is wholly unique,
and well worth checking out at the new venue Else-
where, which has been bringing an expert curato-
rial eye to the edge of Bushwick. (599 Johnson Ave.,
Brooklyn. elsewherebrooklyn.com. Jan. 6.)
RJD2
In 2003, the rapper Jay-Z released the vocals to “The
Black Album” without the beats: an a-cappella album
meant for musicians to remix in their own image.
This produced, most famously, “The Grey Album,”
a mashup of Jay and the Beatles. Elsewhere, fifteen
compositions by the underground producer RJD2
were used for “The Silver Album,” a delightful relic
of the illegal-file-sharing era and the early days of
the concept mixtape. Ramble Jon Krohn came of
age in Columbus, Ohio, and by the early aughts he
was releasing cerebral instrumentals that raked odd
soul and funk records for nerdy samples. Fringe rap
acts like Cannibal Ox and Aesop Rock tapped him
for remixes, as did admen at Saturn, Adidas, and
Wells Fargo—his instrumental “A Beautiful Mine”
1
served as the theme for “Mad Men.” (Brooklyn Bowl,
61 Wythe Ave., Williamsburg. 718-963-3369. Jan. 3.)
JAZZ AND STANDARDS
Ali Jackson
Drummers, Miles Davis once said, can make good
composers—this engagement by the longtime
drummer for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orches-
tra might make a reliable testing ground for the
theory. Jackson, who also finds room for jazz clas-
sics in his repertoire, will front a quartet that in-
cludes the guitarist Peter Bernstein and the bass-
ist Omer Avital. (Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Broadway
at 60th St. 212-258-9595. Jan. 5-7.)
Harold Mabern
A Memphis-born transplant who has retained the
bluesy filigree of his home town in his fluent bop-and-
beyond improvisations, the respected veteran Mabern
will be inviting a slew of guests to the stage during
this engagement, including the saxophonists Eric
Alexander, Vincent Herring, and another Memphis
hero, George Coleman, as well as the trombonists
Steve Turre and Steve Davis. (Smoke, 2751 Broadway,
between 105th and 106th Sts. 212-864-6662. Jan. 1-7.)
Andy Statman
You could call Statman a klezmer musician if classifi-
cations were absolutely necessary, but this Orthodox
Jewish clarinettist and mandolin virtuoso folds so
many odd strains into his sound (for instance, blue-
grass rubbing up against free jazz) that strict cate-
gories and definitions make little sense. He’s a phe-
nomenon that only New York could have produced.
(Barbès, 376 9th St., Brooklyn. 347-422-0248. Jan. 3.)
Ken Vandermark
Becoming a MacArthur Fellow, in 1999, didn’t no-
ticeably change the game plan for this far-seeing
saxophonist and clarinet player; he still makes Chi-
cago his home and remains as committed to the jazz
avant-garde as he has been since his emergence, in
the early nineties. Vandermark’s New York residency
finds collaborative space for such questing players
as Kris Davis, Ikue Mori, and Paal Nilssen-Love. (The
Stone, Avenue C at 2nd St. thestonenyc.com. Jan. 2-7.)
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 7

ART
1
MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES
Metropolitan Museum
“David Hockney”
This ravishing survey of Hockney’s six-decade
career is unlikely to make a bigger splash in
New York than it did last year in London, where
almost half a million people lined up to see it
at the Tate Britain. (The Met and the Tate co-
organized the show with the Centre Pompidou,
in Paris.) Still, it arrives as a revelation, a retort
to all the avant-gardist eye-rollers who dismiss
the eighty-year-old British artist as, at best, a
guilty pleasure. The retrospective unfolds over
eight rooms—each so cohesive it’s a show of its
own—as a bracing reminder that beauty and
ideas aren’t mutually exclusive and that great art
is always, in some sense, conceptual. From the
outset, we encounter an artist whose profound
intelligence about picture-making is matched
by his passion for color—and for passion itself.
While he was still a student, at the Royal Col-
lege of Art, in the early nineteen-sixties, Hock-
ney began making explicitly homoerotic work, at
a time when acts of queer love were against the
law. In these paintings, we see the artist move
beyond the gestural abstraction that was de ri-
gueur in the era, and explore the figuration he
would continue to hone to jewel-toned perfec-
tion. A post-graduation trip to L.A., in 1963,
was also a homecoming, as Hockney found his
métier in the city’s sun-dappled swimming pools
(which feature in his most famous works) and
the beefcakes who lounged in and around them.
The show slackens a bit when it lingers on land-
scapes from the nineties, but a cycle of views of
a cerulean-blue terrace in the last room is a joy-
soaked tour de force. Through Feb. 25.
In Catherine Murphy’s quietly beautiful paintings, the everyday tips into the transcendental. The
Freeman gallery opens an exhibition of her new works (including “Becalmed,” above) on Jan. 11.
8 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
Museum of Modern Art
“Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait”
Louise Bourgeois is best known for spiders. Big
ones, like the twenty-two-foot-tall steel marvel
from 1997, now installed in the museum’s atrium.
It hovers protectively over a wire-mesh enclo-
sure housing a mysterious assemblage of bone,
gold, wood, silver, rubber, and glass; it’s draped
with a large fragment of vintage tapestry. The
last material is the most telling: Bourgeois was
born into a family of tapestry restorers in Paris
in 1911. The Brobdingnagian spider is an ambas-
sador for the revelatory exhibition on the third
floor, focussed on the artist’s prints and illus-
trated books. Bourgeois’s prints, though un-
derrecognized, are the alpha and omega of her
œuvre, her first mature medium—and her last.
She made about twelve hundred in her life-
time, most in the nineties and the two-thou-
sands. The show is structured thematically and
loosely chronologically, beginning with deli-
cate, Surrealist-inflected, black-and-white en-
gravings and etchings from the mid-forties,
which conflate bodies and buildings, and cul-
minating in an almost overpoweringly visceral
room of all but abstract etchings, hand-colored
in pinks and reds, made in 2007, when the art-
ist was ninety-six and facing down death. (She
died in 2010, at the age of ninety-eight.) The
series is titled “À l’Infini”—“Into Infinity”—
and it rivals any fearless late work by Guston
or Goya. Through Jan. 28.
MOMA PS1
“Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting”
In one of the New York artist’s iconic per-
formances, “Interior Scroll,” from the nine-
teen-seventies, she unfurled a text from her
vagina indicting the sexism of her experimen-
tal filmmaking milieu. Around the same time,
in a mesmerizing sendup of Action painting’s
macho posturing, Schneemann swung nude,
from a harness, marking the walls with a crayon.
But the artist’s career adds up to much more
than an extended riposte to the insults of the
male-dominated avant-garde, which this sur-
vey makes clear. Moving from her dynamic
abstract paintings of the fifties to her Fluxus-
inspired events and Super 8 films of the sixties
and on to recent installations, schematic draw-
ings, and multichannel videos, the show reveals
Schneemann’s quest for a feminist visual vocab-
ulary to be the unifying force of these disparate
endeavors. In her ongoing series of often hi-
larious lecture-performances, she indexes an-
cient symbols of female sexuality; in grids of
color photographs, from the eighties, she doc-
uments her unorthodox relationship with her
cat; “More Wrong Things,” from 2000, is a fore-
boding tangle of cables and monitors displaying
disaster footage and her own archival perfor-
mance clips. With this decades-overdue retro-
spective, Schneemann is shown to be a crucial
forebear to younger performance-based artists,
and a groundbreaking Conceptualist attuned to
the tactile properties of every medium she takes
on. Through March 11.
Guggenheim Museum
“Art and China Since 1989: Theatre of the
World”
In 1989, military tanks rolled into Beijing’s Tian-
anmen Square and massacred hundreds, if not
thousands, of demonstrators. That violent year
is the starting point for this staggering, illu-
minating, roughly two-decade survey of some
hundred and fifty works by seventy Chinese
artists and collectives. It’s a bitter irony, then,
that protests by animal-rights activists, which
erupted shortly before the show opened, in-
cluded threats of violence against the museum,
leading it to remove two videos and radically
alter a sculpture that was meant to house live
reptiles and insects enacting a brutal eat-or-be-
eaten scenario. This piece, Huang Yong Ping’s
“Theatre of the World” (1993), gives the show its
title and appears at the start, a tortoise-shaped
enclosure under a cagelike bridge, both now
starkly empty. What follows is a thoughtfully
organized, if inevitably overwhelming, array of
paintings, drawings, videos, performance docu-
mentation, sculptures, and installations, as well
as a series of coves in which visitors can hang
out and watch absorbing footage about Chi-
na’s artist-run spaces. Familiar names in the
West—works by the ubiquitous Ai Weiwei ap-
pear throughout—are outnumbered by the lesser
known, such as the Paris-based artist Shen Yuan,
one of the show’s scarce female artists, whose
tender watercolors share the stories of women
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND FREEMAN GALLERY, NY
who worked in Guangdong’s Nanling National
Forest Park between 1957 (the heyday of Com-
munism) and 2005 (after China emerged as a
global superpower). Floating in the center of it
all, suspended from the ceiling, is Chen Zhen’s
sixty-five-foot-long dragon—a spectre of Chi-
na’s preindustrialized past, fashioned from cast-
off bicycles. Through Jan. 7.
Museum of Chinese in America
“Fold: Golden Venture Paper Sculptures”
This beautifully designed exhibition presents
a selection of ingeniously crafted paper sculp-
tures, evidence of countless hours of anxious
busywork by detained Chinese asylum seek-
ers. In 1993, the cargo ship the Golden Venture,

which was smuggling several hundred migrants
into the United States, ran aground near Rock-
away Beach; many of its passengers spent years
in prison. Working in the folk-art tradition of
zhezhi, the detainees created these often play-
ful, sometimes wistful works to reflect their his-
tories and aspirations. A group of bright sail-
boats—their hulls composed of meticulously
folded yellow paper from legal pads supplied by
their pro-bono attorneys—bear such glad tid-
ings as “Love” and “Beauty.” Several bald ea-
gles, arranged before a banner that reads “Free-
dom,” convey the hopeful adoption of American
symbols. Wall texts and videos make deft use
of these sculptures as springboards for a larger
discussion of immigration policy. Though Pres-
ident Clinton released the final Golden Venture
migrants in 1997, the artists featured here chose
to remain anonymous, because, after decades,
their legal status in the U.S. remains uncertain.
Through March 25.
Queens Museum
“Patty Chang: The Wandering Lake”
Since the nineteen-nineties, the American art-
ist has been investigating gendered family roles
and stereotypes of Asian femininity in dead-
pan and visually lush performance-based work.
In this sprawling, essayistic exhibition, which
encompasses video, installation, photography,
and sculpture, Chang documents her travels to
China, Fogo Island, and the fast-shrinking Aral
Sea. Bleak landscapes illustrate catastrophic
geopolitical shifts and provide poetic backdrops
for momentous personal events. In large projec-
tions, we watch Chang wash an abandoned fish-
ing boat and the corpse of a whale; in a video ti-
tled “Que Sera, Sera,” which is more intimate in
both size and tone, she sings to her infant son in
a hospital room where her father lies dying. Ac-
companying a three-part lecture-performance,
which incorporates footage from a trip along
the South-to-North Water Diversion Project,
in China, are dozens of handblown glass objects
that the artist calls “urinary devices,” absurdist
riffs on the plastic bottles she had to use as por-
table urinals during her journey. The piece epit-
omizes Chang’s gift for breathing humor into
her rebellious takes on profound, even heart-
breaking, subjects. Through Feb. 18.
Studio Museum in Harlem
“Fictions”
This lively exhibition, the museum’s fifth in a se-
ries of surveys of new tendencies in art, presents
nineteen emerging artists of African descent. As
the title suggests, many works imagine fantas-
tic or speculative worlds. The painter Christina
Quarles depicts a surreal scene in which slum-
bering figures occupy parallel planes of exis-
tence, delineated by contrasting patterns. Mi-
chael Demps’s nearby sculpture—a tilted obelisk
supported by scaffolding—is inspired by medi-
eval alchemy; its rough, gray surface of candle
wax and electromagnetic crystals will morph in
response to sound waves and humidity during
the show. A few installation works stand out
as anchors, including Allison Janae Hamilton’s
immersive “Foresta,” which conjures a mythical
wood with birch logs, horsehair, and a video of
raindrops projected onto a wall of tambourines.
In Paul Stephen Benjamin’s “God Bless Amer-
ica,” dozens of stacked monitors flash, playing
video clips including Aretha Franklin singing
at Jimmy Carter’s Inauguration and Lil Wayne’s
“God Bless Amerika” video, from 2015, a des-
olate riff on the original song. Benjamin’s lay-
ART
ered meditation on the African-American ex-
1
perience implies that the “fiction” may be that
of social progress. Through Jan. 7.
GALLERIES—UPTOWN
“All Good Art Is Political: Käthe Kollwitz
and Sue Coe”
This crackling show, titled after a quote from
Toni Morrison, displays prints and drawings
by Kollwitz, a German social realist who died in
1945, and Coe, an English antiwar, anti-capitalist,
and pro-animal-rights illustrator who lives in
upstate New York. From opposite ends of the
twentieth century, they prove the capacity of art,
when both impassioned and adept, to dramatize
worldly injustice with fury and flair. Kollwitz
is the more appealing, with a style of masterly
touch and tender pathos, notably in delicately
shaded images of mothers and children indom-
itably bonded in poverty or facing unspecified
threats. Coe makes a burnt offering of her own
fine artistic gifts by cultivating an ugliness to
befit the targets of her rage, including military
and sexual violence and, especially, the horrors
of industrial slaughterhouses, which, starting
in the late nineteen-eighties, she spent several
years researching in person. Both artists have as-
signed themselves an evergreen social mission:
to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the com-
fortable. Through Feb. 10. (Galerie St. Etienne, 24
W. 57th St. 212-245-6734.)
“London Painters”
The American-born painter R. B. Kitaj coined
the term “School of London,” in the nine-
teen-seventies, to describe a socially and pro-
fessionally linked group of artists, most of them
English, who were devoted to the then unfash-
ionable practice of figurative painting. Works by
seven of those artists, made between 1944 and
2014, are on view here, including a wiry ink-on-
paper self-portrait by Lucian Freud and Fran-
cis Bacon’s still shocking canvas “Study after
Velázquez,” from 1950, in which the ghostly out-
line of Pope Innocent X is seen screaming, awash
in blood-red stripes. Staking out turf that edges
even deeper into quasi-abstraction are Leon Kos-
soff ’s brownish cityscape “Stormy Summer Day,
Dalston Lane,” whose thickly painted surface
is a maze of wrinkled ridges, and Frank Auer-
bach’s “Head of J.Y.M. II,” an intimate, largely
black-and-white portrait that induces a rolling
vertigo reminiscent of the best work of Chaim
Soutine. Striking a more joyful note is David
Hockney’s bright back-yard scene “Montcalm
1
Pool, Los Angeles.” Through Jan. 18. (Ordovas, 9
E. 77th St. 212-756-8870.)
GALLERIES—CHELSEA
Lee Krasner
Working in her late husband Jackson Pollock’s
East Hampton studio, often at night, in the
years following his accidental death, in 1956,
Krasner produced twenty-four paintings in a
series she titled “Umber,” five of which are on
view in this small but powerful show. They’re
rough and explosive abstractions in which thick
strokes of black, brown, and off-white jostle
against the edges of the canvas and one another.
While the works clearly suggest an artist try-
ing to externalize grief, there’s a joyful aspect
to them, too. In the center of a brown storm of
brushstrokes spattered with creamy blotches,
titled “Fecundity,” several curving black lines
evoke the expansive feeling of gracefully open-
ing arms. Through Jan. 13. (Kasmin, 293 Tenth
Ave., at 27th St. 212-563-4474.)
“The Estate of General Idea”
General Idea was founded in Toronto, in 1969,
by the artists AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge
Zontal. The group is best known for its work ad-
dressing the AIDS crisis (Partz and Zontal both
died from the disease in 1994), which made novel
use of pop-culture forms, such as replacing the
“LOVE” in Robert Indiana’s famous red, green,
and blue sculpture with the word “AIDS.” This
show introduces viewers to the group’s less well-
known paintings: hard-edged, fluorescent, geo-
metric abstractions that evoke the pixelated sil-
houettes of eight-bit video games. They also
allude to the mystical and political significance
of stepped architecture in ancient societies, from
Mesopotamia to the Mayans, where such struc-
tures were thought to lead to the gods. Exhibited
alongside the paintings are plans for the “The
1984 Miss General Idea Pavilion,” an absurdist
beauty-pageant venue that, per the artists’ lore,
had burned to the ground, leaving only the foot-
print of a ziggurat. Through Jan. 13. (Mitchell-
Innes & Nash, 534 W. 26th St. 212-744-7400.)
“Insiders: Henry Ray Clark and Frank Jones”
Forget the obsolete term “outsider artist.” This
show makes a compelling case for two self-taught
artists as “insiders,” based on their representa-
tions of fantastical interior realms—and because
they were both incarcerated at Huntsville State
Prison, in Texas. Clark, who was imprisoned in
1977, used markers on manila envelopes to de-
pict a pantheon of characters, announced in the
works’ titles—“I Am Vaavka,” “I Am Time”—
with stylized faces at the center of each compo-
sition, surrounded by ornate, geometric borders.
Jones, who served three prison terms between
1941 and 1964, favored skeletal structures against
blank backgrounds. “Melentile House—High
Class People” is characteristic of his style, in
which each line is heavily embellished in red and
blue pencil. The festive appearance of Jones’s
works belie their significance to the artist, who
believed that the act of drawing could trap the
spirits that haunted him. Through Jan. 13. (Ricco/
Maresca, 529 W. 20th St. 212-627-4819.)
“The Shadow Archive: An Investigation Into
Vernacular Portrait Photography”
The first in a multiyear series of shows about
photographs made for commercial or practi-
cal purposes, curated by Brian Wallis, consid-
ers the portrait. Most of the images date to the
nineteenth century; all of them fit into typolo-
gies. Fifteen tintypes of “workers with tools of
their trade” include a barber, a piano tuner, and
a sword swallower; several mug shots attributed
to the California sheriff Thomas Cunningham
are so picturesque that they could be mistaken
for stills from a Hollywood period piece. Pass-
port photographers across Africa take full-length
portraits and cut out the heads, leaving behind
accidental studies of fashion. A mesmerizing
series of such discards, shown here, were taken
against a red background in Gulu, Uganda, and
collected by the Italian-born journalist Mar-
tina Bacigalupo. A found group of forty-eight
color snapshots of migrant farmworkers, each
holding up a paper number—their source is un-
known—takes the idea of identifying documents
in a more chilling direction. Through March 31.
(Walther Collection, 526 W. 26th St. 212-352-0683.)
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 9

DANCE
Caleb Teicher & Company / Bodytraffic
This year’s American Dance Platform, at the Joyce
Theatre, curated by Christine Tschida, opens with
a youthful double bill. Caleb Teicher, one of the
brightest lights in tap today, brings his fun inter­
pretation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and “Meet
Ella,” an innovative swing dance for two men. Body­
traffic, a fresh and fashionable troupe from Los An­
geles, comes with repertory made for the group by
Richard Siegal and Hofesh Shechter, and also a new
piece by Matthew Neenan. (175 Eighth Ave., at 19th
St. 212-242-0800. Jan. 9. Through Jan. 14.)
American Realness
This festival of contemporary dance and per­
formance is as packed as ever, with about a
CLASSICAL MUSIC
1
OPERA
Metropolitan Opera
There’s a reason that the two most famous one­
act operas, Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” and
Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci,” are so often performed
together: they both examine the heartbreak of hav­
ing a fickle lover, the former from a woman’s point
of view and the latter from a man’s. The riveting
French tenor Roberto Alagna does double duty as
the cad and the cuckold in the two works, and he’s
joined onstage by Ekaterina Semenchuk, Aleksan­
dra Kurzak, and George Gagnidze in David Mc­
Vicar’s worthy, if uneven, staging; Nicola Luisotti
conducts. Jan. 8 at 7:30. • Eight years after open­
ing the Met’s 2009­10 season to a lusty round of
boos, Luc Bondy’s rather seamy staging of “Tosca”
is being retired. Equally unsurprising is the person
who has been entrusted with replacing it. David
McVicar has logged more new productions than any
other director of the Peter Gelb era, and he gets an
ace cast—Sonya Yoncheva, Vittorio Grigolo, and
Željko Lučić—to introduce his version of Pucci­
ni’s hair­raising melodrama to New York opera­
goers; Emmanuel Villaume conducts (replac­
ing James Levine). Jan. 3 and Jan. 9 at 7:30 and
Jan. 6 at 8. • Richard Eyre’s production of Mo­
zart’s whirling comedy “Le Nozze di Figaro,” set
in Spain in the nineteen­thirties, provides a dark,
shimmering backdrop for the grownup shenani­
gans going down at the Almaviva estate. An im­
pressive new cast has arrived to sing the second
half of the run, including Ailyn Pérez, Nadine Si­
erra, Isabel Leonard, Mariusz Kwiecien, and Ildar
Abdrazakov; the estimable Harry Bicket is on the
podium. Jan. 4 at 7:30. • The velvet­voiced Ameri­
can mezzo­soprano Susan Graham is accustomed to
high tragedy on the opera stage, but she has taken
full advantage of the two operettas in the Met’s
rotation, Strauss’s “Die Fledermaus” and Lehár’s
“The Merry Widow” (currently playing), to cut
loose a bit. As Lehár’s wealthy and worldly­wise
Hanna Glawari, she’ll hold court among a gaggle
of preening Parisian suitors and fend off designs
on her fortune from a motley cast of characters
10 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
dozen local and world premières and six re­
mounts of notable recent work. Among the
opening offerings are “The Rehearsal Art­
ist,” by the wonderfully imaginative Michelle
Ellsworth, which explores surveillance and so­
cial­science experiments by putting dancers
in a wooden wheel; “Figuring,” an attempt by
the formally rigorous choreographer Moriah
Evans to make internal physical processes ex­
ternally perceptible; and a reprise of “Varia­
tions on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes
from a Life and Other Works by John Bernd,”
the affecting centerpiece of the 2016 Danspace
Project series remembering artists killed by
AIDS. (Various locations. americanrealness.com.
Jan. 9. Through Jan. 16.)
(played by Paul Groves, Thomas Allen, and Tay­
lor Stayton); Ward Stare. Jan. 5 at 8. • The Met has
larded its schedule with sweet and delightful hol­
iday fare. In addition to “The Merry Widow” and
the family­friendly “Magic Flute,” which played
last month, the company is also performing its
English­language version of Humperdinck’s fairy­
tale opera “Hansel and Gretel,” in Richard Jones’s
wonderfully twisted production, suitable for all
ages. Lisette Oropesa and Tara Erraught are the
show’s misbehaving siblings, and the powerhouse
mezzo­soprano Dolora Zajick makes a cameo ap­
pearance as their mother, Gertrude; Donald Run­
nicles. (This is the final performance.) Jan. 6 at 1.
(Metropolitan Opera House. 212-362-6000.)
Prototype Festival: “Acquanetta”
In this 2005 opera by the composer Michael
Gordon, a founder of the Bang on a Can collec­
tive, and the librettist Deborah Artman, details
from the hazy true story of a nineteen­forties
B­movie actress spark a haunting rumination on
identity and stereotypes; it’s the kickoff event
of this year’s essential festival of new and recent
“indie” operas. Daniel Fish directs the world
première of a new chamber­opera version of
the work, with Daniela Candillari conducting
Bang on a Can Opera and the Choir of Trin­
ity Wall Street. Jan. 9 at 7:30. Through Jan. 14.
1
(Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center, 29 Jay St., Brooklyn.
prototypefestival.org.)
ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES
New York Philharmonic
The pianist and conductor Jeffrey Kahane, hav­
ing concluded a distinguished twenty­season
tenure as the music director of the Los Angeles
Chamber Orchestra in 2017, comes to the Phil­
harmonic with a can’t­miss program of canoni­
cal works. He serves as the soloist in Mozart’s
Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major (K. 453),
paces the ardent cellist Alisa Weilerstein through
Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme,”
and concludes with Haydn’s Symphony No. 98
in B­Flat Major. Jan. 4 and Jan. 9 at 7:30, Jan. 5
at 11 A.M., and Jan. 6 at 8. (David Geffen Hall.
212-875-5656.)
New York Philharmonic: “Contact!”
New­music concerts are back at the Phil, and,
under the presidency of Deborah Borda, are likely
to remain a vital part of the orchestra’s activities.
(Esa­Pekka Salonen continues to serve as an ad­
viser to the series.) The upcoming program, per­
formed by members of the Philharmonic at Wil­
liamsburg’s National Sawdust, spotlights five
exceptional young women composers: Ashley
Fure (“Therefore I Was”), Anna Thorvaldsdot­
tir, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Du Yun (who won the
Pulitzer Prize last year), and Fernanda Aoki Na­
varro (the New York première of “Parthenogen­
1
esis”). Jan. 8 at 7:30. (80 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. na-
tionalsawdust.org.)
RECITALS
Brooklyn Art Song Society: “La France III”
The young pianist Michael Brofman’s outfit,
which proudly waves the flag for classical song
in Gotham, is celebrating things French this year.
This concert, which also features such musicians
as the mezzo­soprano Annie Rosen and the bas­
soonist Brad Balliett, offers a sheaf of mélodies by
Berlioz (“Nuits d’Été”), Chabrier, Fauré (includ­
ing “Mandoline” and “Après un Rêve”), and Hahn.
Jan. 5 at 7:30. (Brooklyn Historical Society, 128 Pierre-
pont St., Brooklyn Heights. brownpapertickets.com.)
Bargemusic: “Here and Now”
Winter Festival
The barge’s semi­annual new­music series flour­
ishes again, at a time when other classical concerts
are thin on the ground. This New Year’s program,
full of premières, is appealingly diverse, putting
the spotlight on such admired veteran compos­
ers as Elizabeth Brown (the world première of
“Hope in One Glance”), Scott Wheeler (“The
Singing Turk,” a sonata for violin and piano),
and the trombone virtuoso David Taylor; the
other performers include the clarinettist Alex­
ander Fiterstein, the pianist Beth Levin, and the
shamisen player Yoko Reikano Kimura. Jan. 5-6
at 8 and Jan. 7 at 4. (Fulton Ferry Landing, Brook-
lyn. bargemusic.org.)
Isabel Leonard
Putting aside song cycles and narrative pieces,
there aren’t many composers whose work can sus­
tain an audience’s interest for a full­length song
recital. For American listeners, the exception is
probably Leonard Bernstein, and Leonard, a cap­
tivating mezzo­soprano esteemed at the Met, has
assembled a bold admixture of his witty, emotion­
ally direct, and genre­defying work for her per­
formances at the Park Avenue Armory’s Board
of Officers Room. Jan. 5 at 8 and Jan. 7 at 3. (Park
Ave. at 66th St. armoryonpark.org.)
Music Mondays: yMusic and Gabriel Kahane
Kahane, the genre­crossing singer­songwriter,
joins the expert yet free­spirited young ensem­
ble in a broad range of recent works by such com­
posers as the exciting post­modernist Andrew
Norman (“Music in Circles”) and the mercurial
post­minimalist Timo Andres (“Safe Travels”),
with Kahane performing selections from his own
cycles “Craigslistlieder” and “For the Union Dead”
and an arrangement of Paul Simon’s “Train in the
Distance.” Jan. 8 at 7:30. (Advent Lutheran Church,
Broadway at 93rd St. No tickets required.)

THE THEATRE
“Mugen Noh Othello” plays at Japan Society, Jan. 11-14, as part of the “Noh-Now” series.
Othello, Masked
A renowned Japanese director translates
the Shakespeare tragedy into Noh.
Satoshi Miyagi is a fifty-eight-year-
old director from Chiyoda, Tokyo. In
this part of the city, there are a num-
ber of religious edifices, including the
famous Yasukuni Shrine and the main
cathedral of the Japanese Orthodox
Church. Growing up, Miyagi had a
great interest in rakugo, or “fallen
words,” a form of theatre where a sin-
gle actor sits more or less in stillness
and tells a comic story, sometimes
with sentimental overtones. Looking
at photographs of rakugo players, one
can imagine the performer as a wor-
shipper, or as a priest. Miyagi studied
aesthetics at the University of Tokyo;
he also started a theatre company and
performed as an actor. After college,
he worked with classical texts like
“Electra,” and he and his actors—with
another company he started—toured
not only in Japan but also in India and
Pakistan. What audiences seemed to
respond to—and continue to respond
to in Miyagi’s work—was his interest
in reshaping or reimagining Western
ILLUSTRATION BY RUNE FISKER
texts via Japanese theatrical traditions.
Miyagi’s new work, “Mugen Noh
Othello” (at Japan Society, Jan. 11-14),
is based on Shakespeare’s at times
overwhelming tragedy about the cor-
rosive—indeed, maddening—effects
that power can have on human beings,
leading them to imagine that they are
gods. Artists as great as Orson Welles
and Daniel Craig have immersed
themselves in the play, and Miyagi
will stage it in a Noh context, with his
actors in masks, set to live music. In
a recent essay, the painter David Salle
discussed how transfixed he was by
Noh dramas on his first trip to
Japan—they are tragedies with music.
Mugen Noh stories often take place
after the protagonists have died: lives
lived in the past. In Shakespeare, there
are many deaths and ghosts. In a way,
one could think of “Othello” as an
excavation of sorts; the dead are al-
ways with us, as is the treachery of
language. One of the more unforget-
table moments in Sam Gold’s recent
production of the play came when
Craig, playing Iago, was found out,
and the actor curled up in a kind of
fetal position and said, “I shall speak
no more”: words had made him and
undone him.
It will be interesting to see what
Miyagi does with the politics in
“Othello,” and with place. Shakespeare
set his play in Venice, and there is mist
there, just as there is mist and mystery
in Japan. As the world gets smaller
and more dense and fascinating, cul-
turally speaking, we look to artists like
Miyagi to chart wonderful new the-
atrical territory, making it strange and
familiar, all at once.
—Hilton Als
1 OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS
Ballyturk
Enda Walsh wrote and directs this metaphysical
comedy, in which two men confined in a room per-
form frenetic rituals set to eighties pop songs and
spin tales about a fictitious Irish town. (St. Ann’s
Warehouse, 45 Water St., Brooklyn. 718-254-8779.
Previews begin Jan. 9.)
Cardinal
Anna Chlumsky and Stephen Park star in Greg
Pierce’s play, directed by Kate Whoriskey, in
which a woman trying to reinvigorate her small
Rust Belt town clashes with an entrepreneur.
(Second Stage, 305 W. 43rd St. 212-246-4422. Pre-
views begin Jan. 9.)
Disco Pigs
John Haidar directs a twentieth-anniversary
revival of Enda Walsh’s play, featuring Evanna
Lynch and Colin Campbell as dissolute teen-age
friends who call each other Pig and Runt. (Irish
Repertory, 132 W. 22nd St. 212-727-2737. Previews
begin Jan. 5. Opens Jan. 9.)
John Lithgow: Stories by Heart
The actor performs a one-man storytelling eve-
ning, re-creating tales by Ring Lardner and P. G.
Wodehouse. Daniel Sullivan directs the Round-
about production. (American Airlines Theatre, 227
W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300. In previews.)
Mankind
Robert O’Hara (“Bootycandy”) wrote and di-
rects this dystopian comedy, about a male cou-
ple (Anson Mount and Bobby Moreno) dealing
with pregnancy in a world where women have
gone extinct. (Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd
St. 212-279-4200. In previews. Opens Jan. 8.)
“Under the Radar” Festival
The Public Theatre’s festival of new work re-
turns for its fourteenth year, with participants
including Cuba’s Teatro el Público, the singer
Nona Hendryx, the drag queen Dickie Beau,
the tech-theatre artist Andrew Schneider, and
The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik. For the full pro-
gram, visit publictheater.org. (Various locations.
212-967-7555. Opens Jan. 4.)
Until the Flood
Dael Orlandersmith wrote and performs this
monologue, directed by Neel Keller, examin-
ing the shooting of Michael Brown by Darren
1
Wilson, in Ferguson, Missouri. (Rattlestick, 224
Waverly Pl. 212-627-2556. Previews begin Jan. 6.)
NOW PLAYING
The Children
In Lucy Kirkwood’s gentle, frightening, and sur-
prising play, Rose, a retired nuclear physicist, ar-
rives at the crooked cottage where her former col-
leagues Robin (Ron Cook) and Hazel (Deborah
Findlay) now live. A Fukushima-like disaster
has overwhelmed the plant where they all once
worked, irradiating parts of the English country-
side. Rose (the astonishing Francesca Annis) has
a scheme to put it to rights, recruiting older work-
ers to undertake the dangerous cleanup and spare
the younger ones. Directed by James Macdonald,
first for London’s Royal Court and now for Man-
hattan Theatre Club, “The Children” is a drama
of moral responsibility. Maybe this makes the
play sound deadly. In fact, it’s an ethical thriller,
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 11

a passionate and beautifully acted inquiry into
the messes we make—of our lives, of a reactor’s
core, of the downstairs toilet—and into our will-
ingness to tidy them again. (Samuel J. Friedman,
261 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200.)
Farinelli and the King
While Claire van Kampen’s play is lovely to look
at and sometimes to listen to, it’s not really a play.
Beautifully directed by John Dove, the story con-
cerns Spain’s Philippe V (Mark Rylance, doing
his apparently audience-captivating whimsy), a
“mad” king whose lunacy is calmed, somehow,
by a castrato singing star named Farinelli (acted
by Sam Crane and sung by Iestyn Davies), who
is much admired by the King’s consort, Isabella
Farnese (Melody Grove). Of course, there are the
usual court intrigues that show, directly and indi-
rectly, that Phillipe is a kind of political genius,
but he is made for finer stuff than ruling. Mov-
ing to the country, in Act II, with Farinelli, the
King, and Isabella—they make a fine little band—
the play employs a number of genres at once,
but there is no amount of style that can cover up
the script’s lack of substance. It’s a show without
purpose. (Belasco, 111 W. 44th St. 212-239-6200.)
Junk
Ayad Akhtar (“Disgraced”) is a playwright who
seems the most energized when he has big is-
sues to dive into, and what could be juicier than
Wall Street greed and maleficence? The year is
1985, and Judy Chen (a superb Teresa Avia Lim)
is a business journalist covering new financial
strategies that are redefining the idea of capital
in America. Robert Merkin (Steven Pasquale)
embodies those changes: sleek as a shark, he’s
the head of an L.A.-based bank that’s been very
aggressive about hostile takeovers. Merkin lives
in a world where guilt is a burden and loyalty is
an inconvenience: money is, as Chen says, “the
thing.” Directed by Doug Hughes, this slick pro-
duction of a thin play features twenty-three ac-
tors, so there’s not a lot of room for character
development. But, in a way, that doesn’t matter:
sometimes it’s fun just to sit there and get off on
the testosterone and the swiftness of the action,
like most of the play’s guys do. (Vivian Beaumont,
150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200. Through Jan. 7.)
Meteor Shower
At eighty intermissionless minutes, this intelli-
gent and surprising work about marital life and
modern-day repression, by the writer and per-
former Steve Martin, moves at a fast clip, pro-
viding many laughs and “Aha!” moments along
the way. The plot centers on two couples—or are
they?—who get together to drink a little wine
and watch a celestial event in Ojai, California.
Trouble ensues as social decorum gives way to
the id. The director, Jerry Zaks (“Hello, Dolly!”),
cares about his actors, and he appears to have
done a great job making them all feel cared for,
from the comedians Amy Schumer and Keegan-
Michael Key—in their Broadway débuts—to the
stage pros Jeremy Shamos and Laura Benanti,
who’s never been sexier or funnier. (Booth, 222
W. 45th St. 212-239-6200.)
Once on This Island
A calypso fairy tale just this side of treacly, Lynn
Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s 1990 musical tells
the story of Ti Moune (the big-voiced newcomer
Hailey Kilgore), a peasant girl whose island, in
the French Antilles, is divided by skin color and
class. When a boy (Isaac Powell) crashes his car
in her village, she nurses him back to health. He
12 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
THE THEATRE
turns out to be an aristocrat, but can Ti Moune’s
love conquer all? Michael Arden’s warm, hand-
crafted revival doesn’t overplay the Disney cli-
chés—the musical, based on Rosa Guy’s novel
“My Love, My Love,” repurposes the “Little
Mermaid” myth—but instead frames the action
as a tale told to a little girl (Emerson Davis) in a
hurricane-blasted Caribbean slum. The show may
share its ingénue’s lovelorn heart, but its biggest
moment belongs to Alex Newell, who scales vocal
heights as the draggy Goddess of the Earth. (Cir-
cle in the Square, 235 W. 50th St. 212-239-6200.)
The Wolves
Since its New York première, with the tiny
Playwrights Realm company last fall, Sarah
DeLappe’s play about teen girls on an indoor
soccer team has been on quite a voyage: an en-
core run, acknowledgment as a Pulitzer Prize fi-
nalist, and now a transfer to Lincoln Center The-
atre. You might say that “The Wolves” has gone
to Nationals. DeLappe and the director, Lila
Neugebauer, have an uncanny grasp of the girls’
ambitions, fears, and desires (often so intricately
melded as to be indistinguishable). Despite being
identified only by their jersey numbers, the play-
ABOVE & BEYOND
Three Kings Day Parade
For many New Yorkers, the holiday season doesn’t
end with the calendar year. El Día de los Reyes, which
celebrates the adoration of Jesus by the Three Wise
Men, gives children one last chance for gifts, on the
twelfth day of Christmas. For the fortieth annual
Three Kings Day Parade, in East Harlem, families
are invited to join a morning procession through the
neighborhood, starting on the corner of 106th Street
at Lexington Avenue and ending at 115th Street at
Park Avenue. Attractions include camels, puppets,
musical performances from local bands, and tradi-
tional Puerto Rican food. El Museo del Barrio, which
hosts the parade, offers free admission throughout
the day. (1230 Fifth Ave. elmuseo.org. Jan. 5 at 11 A.M.)
Grand Central Holiday Train Show
At this annual train show, now in its sixteenth year,
the M.T.A.’s history is brought to life with scale
models of classic red subway cars, double-letter
trains, and even commuter-rail cars that race past
iconic stops and dart through labyrinthine tunnels.
1
The show is open to the public seven days a week
through Feb. 4. (New York Transit Museum Gallery,
89 E. 42nd St. grandcentralterminal.com.)
READINGS AND TALKS
Mast Books
Jordan Stein and Jason Fulford have combed
the pages of the short-lived countercultural
ers, portrayed by actresses who brilliantly capture
teen-age mannerisms, quickly acquire endearing
personalities and individual voices. DeLappe ap-
plies a delicate touch to such tricky subjects as
body anxiety, the complicated nature of female
friendships, the formation of identity, and even
mortality. Life is never far from the pitch for
1
these Wolves. (Mitzi E. Newhouse, 150 W. 65th
St. 212-239-6200. Through Jan. 7.)
ALSO NOTABLE
The Band’s Visit Ethel Barrymore. • Bright Col-
ors and Bold Patterns SoHo Playhouse. Through
Jan. 7. • Bulldozer: The Ballad of Robert Moses
Theatre at St. Clement’s. Through Jan. 6. • Cruel
Intentions Le Poisson Rouge. • The Dead, 1904
American Irish Historical Society. Through
Jan. 7. • Hindle Wakes Clurman. • Latin History
for Morons Studio 54. • The Parisian Woman
Hudson. • Pride and Prejudice Cherry Lane.
Through Jan. 6. • Shadowlands Acorn. Through
Jan. 7. • SpongeBob SquarePants Palace. • Spring-
steen on Broadway Walter Kerr. • Twelfth Night
Classic Stage Company. Through Jan. 6.
newspaper the San Francisco Oracle (1967-
69) and collected the best of its run in a new
book, titled “Where to Score.” The excerpts
bring into focus a youth culture that began in
the late nineteen-sixties, when American ad-
olescents of all classes abandoned their fam-
ilies in search of a new life style, which they
found in Haight-Ashbury. Between kitschy
classified ads for session musicians and head
shops are clippings from distraught parents
trying to reach stray children long off the
grid. Stein, a curator, and Fulford, a visual
artist, launch the collaborative book before
a screening of the 1971 film “Taking Off,” an
early Hollywood attempt at capturing, and
skewering, the hippie moment. (66 Avenue A,
mastbooks.com. Jan. 4.)
92nd Street Y
On the Netflix series “Master of None,” Lena
Waithe plays Denise, a sidekick of sorts to
ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO AMARGO
Aziz Anzari’s Dev. Waithe also wrote the
show’s Emmy-winning Thanksgiving-themed
episode, and has now developed her own se-
ries, “The Chi,” a coming-of-age show set in
Chicago. She marks its début, on Showtime,
this week with a special screening and a con-
versation about her experiences as a writer
and actress with the radio host Charlamagne
Tha God. (1395 Lexington Ave. 212-415-5500.
Jan. 9 at 7:30.)

TABLES FOR TWO
The Loyal
289 Bleecker St. (212-488-5800)
The Loyal, a handsome, highly polished
new brasserie—which appeared on
Bleecker Street just as Matt Umanov Gui-
tars, open since 1965, took its leave—is
charmingly eager to please. The chef, John
Fraser, who has shown that he has a per-
suasive way with vegetables at Nix, Nar-
cissa, and Dovetail, here crowds enough
indulgent items onto the menu to chal-
lenge one’s duty to decorum. Because you
oughtn’t have bar snacks, raw bar, and
PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID WILLIAMS FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
appetizers along with pasta, sides, and an
entrée, you might just start with a cock-
tail—perhaps a Flood Gates, a gentle,
citrusy take on a Negroni, with Meyer
lemon—and then let the server guide you.
That way, you’ll probably end up with duck
tots—sturdy potato cuboids burnished
beyond golden, tossed in duck fat, aioli on
the side—which are all you really need.
But there’s much more. You might start
with the raw bar, which could mean the
“half lobster,” smaller than it sounds, and
too bad, because you’ll want more than five
bites of lobster meat tossed with a tomato-
and-chive dressing that tastes like summer.
Appetizers include a lovely little dish of
radishes atop a smoked-trout gribiche, and
a slab of Hudson Valley foie gras the size
of a stick of butter, larded with chicken
liver and bacon and poured over with a
port-wine glaze. Mushroom carbonara,
F§D & DRINK
which sounds like the ideal winter splurge,
involves clunky noodles as thick as udon
and too al dente. But the sliced duck breast
was perfect on a recent night, with rust-
colored, crispy skin, accompanied by a lus-
cious farro, leek, and Parmesan porridge.
For those who will go straight for the
burger, the Loyal’s is a fine specimen. (It
comes with duck tots.) It’s massive, with
a soft pink center and topped with Comté
cheese and a complicated-sounding “22-
step tomato”—a whole fruit so unwieldy
that it’s easier to just remove it. There’s
also a spa-worthy black sea bass, straight
from the Riviera, with olives, fennel, and
tomato broth, and an addictive crown of
salty-sweet, crunchy-soft Parker House
rolls that are definitely unnecessary and
utterly worth it.
Fraser has said that his inspiration for
the Loyal was the American tavern, but
the white tablecloths and elegant serving
pieces—scallop-edged china, dainty silver
bowls, gravy boats galore—evoke some-
thing closer to Aunt Sukie’s parlor. Sub-
tly hilarious wall illustrations, of lobsters
in button-downs, cabbages on leashes,
and cavorting carrots, cows, and people,
shift the tone to playful, a mood matched
by a dessert called Sundae Set and Candy
Shop. Served on a silver tray, it feeds at
least four, and once you run out of ice
cream there’s enough candy left to carry
you through the week. Go on, get the
sundae. (Entrées $22-$36.)
—Shauna Lyon
1 BAR TAB
The Footlight
465 Seneca Ave., Queens
It often feels like the city is boiling over with aspir-
ing talents. Every night, much of that excess spills
into outer-borough spots like the Footlight, a new
dive in Ridgewood. Early-career artists sometimes
need a liquid leg up, and patrons and performers
alike are encouraged to carry their pints of beer and
cider from the bar, through swinging double doors,
into the venue space, where rows of stackable chairs
and a stage await them. A well-attended event show-
casing women and gender-nonconforming artists
called “Am I Write, Ladies?” featured Cerebral
Pussy, who has cerebral palsy and who undressed
for her “Tiny Tim” burlesque act. She received
especially supportive applause from Sky Cubacub,
a gender-nonconforming fashion designer who had
recently dressed Pussy for a show at the Whitney.
Cubacub went outside for air at intermission, fol-
lowed by several other audience members, most of
whom then ordered glasses of whiskey before head-
ing back to their seats for an essay about eating
habits, read over acoustic guitar. On another night,
a clutch of hopeful psychics gathered around their
teacher after a two-hour lesson in tarot. “I don’t
always ask my clients what their sign is, but usually
I can tell,” she explained to her astonished pupils.
Minutes later, an open-mike session began, and a
rapt group beheld a tap dancer in red tights and a
black tutu, moving her hands with erotic flair to
Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time.”
Another participant spent much of his set running
the microphone cable between his thighs and mum-
bling half-formed thoughts. “Don’t let our lack of
any response fool you,” one host said, searching for
a compliment to sum up his performance. “That
was truly abstract.” —Neima Jahromi
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 13
 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT
WORDS OF THE YEAR
f language, as Emerson said, is fossil
Ia plastic
poetry, then “youthquake” seems like
bone. “Youthquake” is the ver-
bal concoction recently declared Word
of the Year (the year being 2017) by the
experts at Oxford Dictionaries. They
define it as “significant cultural, politi-
cal, or social change arising from the
actions or influence of young people.”
The actions and the influence of young
people not being unusually notable or
effectual during the past year, you might
wonder whether the Oxonians are con-
fusing 2017 with 1967. Actually, “youth-
quake” dates from 1965, when it was coined
by the fashion industry. But Oxford says
that the incidence of “youthquake” spiked
around the time of the British elections
last June, when the Conservative Party
did worse than expected and a surge of
votes for Labour was attributed to high
turnout among younger voters.
Given that Labour did not win a ma-
jority, and Brexit remains in progress
under the auspices of a Conservative
Prime Minister, it’s a little hard to know
what the quake part was. “Youthquake”
has also been criticized, in Britain, as
the kind of word that someone sitting
at a desk, such as a headline writer, might
ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL
come up with, a word that no one would
use in speech. People prefer to have their
neologisms boil up unbidden from
the global electronic soup—like, for in-
stance, “milkshake duck,” one of the
runners-up to “youthquake.” (You can
Google that one. And is it a word, or is
it a meme?) Nevertheless, we are assured
that “youthquake” is “a word on the move.”
Other usage professionals have
chosen their own Words of the Year,
2017 edition, and the honorees have a
similarly wonky character: “populism”
(Cambridge Dictionary), “feminism”
(Merriam-Webster’s), and “complicit”
(Dictionary.com). According to Mer-
riam-Webster’s, “feminism” was the most
searched-for word in its online dictio-
nary, up seventy per cent from 2016. But
who in 2017 needed to be told what “fem-
inism” means? Upon searching, these peo-
ple would have learned from Merriam-
Webster’s that the definition of “feminism”
is “the theory of the political, economic,
and social equality of the sexes.” Some
number of them were probably relieved
to learn that it is still just a theory.
On the whole, 2017 was not a great
year for the English language. Reality
is running ahead of our vocabulary. For
one thing, no good terms have emerged
to describe the current state of politi-
cal affairs. What is the ideology of this
Administration? It is not social con-
servatism or neoliberalism, and it is
certainly not populism (though it may
be faux populism). “Nationalism” seems
to be the default term, but that does
not capture the freebooting and bully-
ing behavior of everyday political life.
Normal terms do not apply. We are liv-
ing in a down-is-up, war-is-peace world.
It may be that, in the language of
politics, a few words are ready to be
cycled out. Some of these are words
that ended up on the losing side. It is
a good bet that Americans will not be
hearing “diversity” or “together” much
in the next Presidential election.
In the lexicon of commentary, some
terms have suffered serious semantic ero-
sion and could be dropped. “Normaliza-
tion” once meant making the deviant
conform to the ordinary, but it now means
the opposite, accepting the deviant as
the new ordinary. “Pivot” used to mean
“turning one’s attention to,” as in “Obama’s
pivot to China.” It now means some-
thing more like “faking it for political
effect”—as in “My God, Trump is not
pivoting!” (It turned out he didn’t be-
cause he couldn’t.) It would be nice to
see if we can live without “double down,”
which now seems to mean “refuse to ac-
knowledge the obvious.” And “breaking
news”: isn’t that a redundancy?
Arguably, the Word of the Year is
not a word at all. It’s an alphanumeric
character, #. The President speaks in hash-
tag, but so do the President’s opponents,
and so does, for example, the #MeToo
movement. Like most major shifts in
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 15
communicative modes, # democratizes,
while freaking out traditionalists, who
worry, not wrongly, about the loss of am-
biguity and complexity. But, look, some-
thing is being said, and it’s being read.
With all the damage that’s being done
to the social fabric, in matters ranging
from race relations to income inequal-
ity, to name just two areas where the na-
tional leadership seems not only deter-
mined to make things worse but weirdly
excited about it, fretting over the state
of the language seems like an indulgence.
Fossil poetry or not, words are tools, and
what matters is the job that they are
being made to do. Still, language is a
commons. It’s a resource that we share,
and the resource is impoverished when
words are redefined, weaponized, or oth-
erwise co-opted and bent out of shape.
A good candidate for Word of the
Year in this category is “fake.” “Fake”
once meant “counterfeit” or “inauthen-
tic,” like a fake Picasso or a fake birth
DEPT. OF HUSTLE
DIPLODOCUS
aparazzi had staked out the en-
P trance to the Bowery Hotel on a
recent Monday evening, waiting for a
bankable boldface name to emerge. But
when Diplo came out to wait for the
car that would take him to Rincon Cri-
ollo, a Cuban joint in Queens, the paps
showed no interest.
This placed the d.j., E.D.M. pro-
ducer, and Major Lazer front man in
a situation not unlike the kind regu-
larly faced by the title character of the
TV show “What Would Diplo Do?”
In the show, which airs on Viceland
TV, Diplo, played by James Van Der
Beek, deals with the daily humiliations
of being an E.D.M. superstar who is
actually a talentless poseur. “I hate it,”
Diplo said, of watching himself. He
doesn’t mind that it makes fun of him
(one of his managers came up with
the premise), but he thinks it could be
funnier.
What would “What Would Diplo
Do?” do in this situation? Leave its
16 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
certificate. It is now used to mean “I
deny your reality.” “Hoax” is used with
the same intention. (“Alternative facts,”
another phrase associated with reality
denial, seems to have been mocked out
of existence.)
Many Americans were shocked to hear
their beliefs characterized as “fake sci-
ence” or “fake news.” Those Americans
thought that they understood what counts
as evidence, what counts as reason, what
counts as an argument. Suddenly, the
rules changed. In national politics, you
no longer need evidence or reason. You
no longer need to make an argument.
You need only to assert. If your assertion
is questioned, you need only to repeat it.
“Fake” and “hoax” are the “abraca-
dabra”s of the Trump world, words recited
to make inconvenient facts disappear. In
most of life after nursery school, “abra-
cadabra” doesn’t work, because it stops
fooling other people. For grownups, as a
rule, saying something doesn’t make it so.
hero hanging in an awkward agony of
unrequited thirst for photographers’
attention? What Diplo did was put
his arm around a passing street per-
son, a remnant of the old Bowery, in
a gesture that finally attracted the at-
tention of one paparazzo, who took a
few listless snaps.
Diplo was born Thomas Wesley
Pentz, in Tupelo, Mississippi, and grew
up near Daytona Beach, Florida. He
now splits his time between Los An-
geles and Las Vegas, although he isn’t
Diplo
This is not true of Presidents, however,
grownup or not. Presidents are legally
empowered to make what comes out of
their mouths a reality for other people.
This President has realized that he can
say literally anything and someone will
pop up to explain it, or explain it away.
“When I use a word, it means just
what I choose it to mean,” Humpty
Dumpty says to Alice. How can you
make a word mean so many different
things? Alice asks. “The question,”
Humpty Dumpty replies, “is which is to
be master, that’s all.” George Orwell said
the same thing. Meaning, at bottom, is
about power. “Truth,” Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr., once said, is “the majority
vote of that nation that could lick all
others.” A disagreeable thought, but not
an inapposite one in 2017.
Later on, of course, Humpty Dumpty
had a great fall. Something to look for-
ward to in 2018. Happy New Year.
—Louis Menand
home much—he was on the road for
about three hundred days in 2016,
performing at Coachella as Diplo, his
solo d.j. brand; as Jack Ü, his collab-
oration with Skrillex; and as a mem-
ber of Major Lazer, his three-man
d.j. troupe.
He was in town to talk up “Give
Me Future,” a documentary about a
2016 Major Lazer concert in Havana.
At thirty-nine, Diplo is “a bona-fide
hustler,” to borrow a phrase from “Paper
Planes,” the 2007 hit he created with
M.I.A., whom he once dated. He made
his name, and also some trouble for
himself on Twitter, by splicing together
different Caribbean dance-music cul-
tures at clubs and on mixtapes.
“It was cool when it was under-
ground, but when it got big I became
a target,” he said. Critics accused him
of cultural appropriation. “Culture is
meant to be fused,” he said. “That’s
how culture moves. It’s complicated,
but I don’t fucking care.” What Diplo
does on his E.D.M. hits, which include
Jack Ü’s “Where Are Ü Now” and
Major Lazer’s “Lean On,” is not al-
ways clear, but he helped create the
conditions in which such E.D.M. acts
as the Chainsmokers and Martin Gar-
rix have flourished.
“I’m not mad at the Chainsmokers,”
he said, looking out the car window
as he passed through Corona. “I’m a
little jealous of them, to be perfectly
honest.” Like the enormous sauropod
from which he took his name (there’s
a diplodocus tattooed on the under-
side of his right arm, the only untanned
part of him showing), Diplo has to
worry about going extinct—as a brand.
“I don’t want to be, like, an aging d.j.
That’s not very cool.” Hence “Give
Me Future.”
Diplo always wanted to make films.
He won a scholarship to Temple Uni-
versity, which got him out of Daytona
Beach, but he dropped out and d.j.’d
parties in Philadelphia instead, to make
money. Major Lazer’s Cuban adven-
ture was a natural evolution in Diplo’s
efforts to bring dance music to places
rarely or never visited by touring acts.
“Pakistan was a crazy show,” he said of
a 2016 gig in Islamabad, explaining that,
for security reasons, the venue could be
announced only the day before the con- “Perfect. Kate and Eli are suckers for bold graphics.”
cert. “It was one of the most beautiful

shows I ever did. Kids were crying.”
The Havana show occurred during
what was something of a Prague Spring
for Western culture imports in Cuba.
“We were the first,” Diplo said, noting
that the Rolling Stones had followed
them. “But we thought we would be
the first of many—the beginning of all
these Cuban music festivals. People
don’t want to go to Mexico, it’s not safe.
In Cuba, it’s extremely safe. There’s zero
crime.” Donald Trump’s election, eight
months after the concert, effectively
ended Havana’s nascent festival scene.
In the restaurant, Diplo asked not
to be seated facing the mirrored back
wall. “I don’t want to see my face,”
he said.
A waiter brought a menu. “The ac-
tual food in Havana was pretty bad,”
Diplo said, studying the selections.
“They just didn’t have anything. Salt
and ketchup is hard to find. You had
to put hot sauce on everything.”
“Do you have mangú?” he asked the
waiter. “It’s a big bowl of rice, meat,
and cassava mixed together.”
“That’s Dominican,” the waiter said.
It was another “What Would Diplo
Do?” moment. Diplo did not miss a
beat. He ordered the cassava and gar-
lic instead.
—John Seabrook
1
• •
INK
HOT TYPE
ne recent afternoon, Walter Min-
O ton, the ninety-four-year-old for-
mer president of G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
sat in the study of his house in Saddle
River, New Jersey, and reminisced about
the controversial novels he championed
in his youth and the trials of getting them
into print. Minton was dressed in slacks
and a cardigan, with a thinning head of
white hair; he still wears the trim, boxy
beard that he adopted mid-career. He
was thirty-one when he took over Put-
nam’s, in 1955, and the shelves of his liv-
ing room offer a higgledy-piggledy tour
of his route through twentieth-century
publishing, from John le Carré to Mario
Puzo to Scott Turow.
Of all his writers, Minton said, the
most difficult was Norman Mailer. “Mailer
was a quite ordinary writer type, until he
got angry,” he said. “Then he was a differ-
ent kettle of fish.” Minton had admired
Mailer’s début novel, “The Naked and
the Dead,” and when he heard that the
novelist had a manuscript, “The Deer
Park,” that no publisher would touch be-
cause of a passage involving oral sex, he
pursued it. Bennett Cerf, a co-founder
of Random House, phoned to dissuade
him: “Cerf said, ‘Walter, I know you’re
young, but if you publish this book, you’ll
bring down the great veil of censorship.’ ”
Minton laughed.“We published it and
ran ads: ‘The Book Six Publishers Re-
fused to Bring You!’ ”
Mailer and Minton, Second World
War veterans a year apart in age, shared
a pugnacious streak. “Check this out,”
Minton said, pulling down a copy of “The
Deer Park,” inscribed by its author. “To
Ernest Hemingway,” it read. “I am deeply
curious to know what you think of this—
but if you do not answer, or if you answer
with the kind of crap you use to answer
unprofessional writers, sycophants, brown-
noses, etc, then fuck you, and I will never
attempt to communicate with you again.”
He shook his head. “Mailer asked me to
get this to Hemingway. I told him I mailed
it to Cuba and it came back ‘Addressee
Unknown.’ ” Mailer, who referred to Min-
ton as “very bold,” once called him “the
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 17

Walter Minton
only publisher I ever met who would
make a good general.”
Emboldened by “The Deer Park,”
Minton followed with a bigger coup:
“Lolita.” A long list of American pub-
lishers too timid to issue the book had
forced Vladimir Nabokov, at the time a
little-known émigré writer, to turn to
Maurice Girodias, whose Paris-based
Olympia Press churned out erotic pot-
boilers. Minton got hold of an excerpt
of the novel, via the unlikely agency of
an exotic dancer named Rosemary
Ridgewell, in whose living room he once
fell asleep after a night on the town. “I
woke in the middle of the night and
there was this story on the table. I started
reading. By morning, I knew I had to
publish it.”
Visits to Paris ensued, to deal with
the mercurial Girodias, as did a flight
to Cornell during a storm to woo
Nabokov. Minton saw the novel as a
marketer’s dream. “It had a reputation
of being very sexy, though it really wasn’t,
and a lot of publishers who wouldn’t
bring it to you, because it was too ‘dirty.’
To me, that was an opportunity!” Sure
enough, when Putnam’s released “Lo-
lita,” in August of 1958, Orville Prescott,
in the Times, called it “repulsive . . . high-
brow pornography”—and the novel
zoomed to the top of best-seller lists.
After “Lolita,” Minton poached Gi-
rodias’s list for Terry Southern and Mason
Hoffenberg’s bawdy comedy “Candy”
and also published “Memoirs of a Woman
of Pleasure,” better known as “Fanny
Hill,” John Cleland’s 1749 chronicle of
erotic adventure. When Putnam’s pub-
18 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
lished “Fanny Hill,” in 1963, New York
City officials suppressed the book for
obscenity (the publisher was eventually
vindicated by the Supreme Court).
Mailer, in a letter, affectionately addressed
Minton as a “litigious prick.”
“I honestly didn’t see anything wrong
with those books,” Minton said. “None
of them!”
In 1975, Putnam’s was acquired by
MCA, and Minton was forced out—
whereupon, at fifty-five, he became a
law student at Columbia. He talked about
what killed the publishing industry he
had known: the rise of agents, the in-
fluence of Hollywood. “Traditionally,
publishers and editors talked to their au-
thors,” he said. “When the agents came
along, that became much rarer. Now
you went to lunch with them.”
Nabokov referred to Minton’s house,
a 1960 Colonial with tall white columns,
as “the house ‘Lolita’ built.” Minton
looked out his study window and watched
a family of four deer that had made its
way into the back yard. “See that buck?
He sends the does out first. He won’t
stick his neck out.” He paused. “You can
1
learn a lot from watching those deer.”
—Rand Richards Cooper
IN THE WINGS
SAY “AHHH”
atalie Wilder was sitting on a couch
N in a greenroom, using her iPhone
to apply for a part in a film. Back in June,
she starred in a one-woman play, “Fresh
Hell: The Life and Loves of Dorothy
Parker,” at the Oldcastle Theatre Com-
pany, in Bennington, Vermont. In an
hour, she was going to reprise a differ-
ent solo role, one of dozens she’s per-
formed multiple times in recent years.
“Today, I have lower-back pain,” she said,
as she scrolled through her calendar.
Wilder has shoulder-length brown
hair and was wearing jeans and a tur-
tleneck sweater. That afternoon, she was
working as a so-called standardized pa-
tient, or S.P.—someone who has been
trained to portray specific symptoms or
illnesses, so that medical students can
practice on a living person without ac-
cidentally making things worse. “The
most interesting cases are probably the
psychiatric ones,” she said. “And for one
case I had to learn to use makeup to
draw heroin tracks on my arm.” The
greenroom (which actually was green)
was in a building at the Albert Einstein
College of Medicine, in the Bronx.
Wilder checked the time; in a little while,
she would need to swap her regular
clothes for a hospital gown.
Wilder’s boss that day was Anna Lank,
who is the managing director of C3NY,
an organization that supplies S.P.s to
medical programs throughout the met-
ropolitan area. Lank is in her early six-
ties. “I have a degree in theatre from
U.C.L.A., and I did the whole thing—
summer stock, Off Off Broadway, Off
Broadway, whatever—but I had to stop,
because I was having fertility treatments,”
she said. She got into standardized-pa-
tient work as a way to supplement an
unreliable income from the stage, and
then made a career of it.
“Most of my S.P.s are actors,” she
said, as she ran down her cast list. “Na-
talie is married to Patrick, who’s also
here today—they met when they were
in a play in Vermont. Erin has a mas-
ter’s in Shakespeare and is teaching a
stage-combat class. Nadine is a grandma
and a singer. Megan acts, and she and a
partner do workshops for kids at which
they teach manners. I think of them as
my theatre troupe.”
S.P. work figures in a 1998 “Seinfeld”
episode, “The Burning,” in which Kramer,
with help from a cigarette and a maroon
smoking jacket, dramatically describes
the romantic entanglement that resulted
in what the medical students examin-
ing him are eventually able to identify
as gonorrhea. Kramer’s performance is
funny but unrealistic: standardized pa-
tients are standardized. Their characters
are based on tightly circumscribed bi-
ographies, which are developed in col-
laboration with medical-school faculty.
“An actor who would not be good at
this is someone who wants to act, you
know?” Lank said. “You have to be at ease
in imaginary circumstances, and be able
to re-create things time after time in a
reasonable way that’s not robotic, and ac-
tors are very good at that. But anyone
who wants to give too much informa-
tion or withhold too much information—
those are not the ideal people to employ.”
 A little later, in a room at the far end
of a hallway, Lank gave an introductory
lecture to four third-year M.D.-Ph.D.
candidates, who were about to spend the
afternoon individually examining eight
different S.P.s. Medical students usually
say that working with imaginary patients
is more nerve-racking than working with
real ones, partly because the sessions are
videotaped and partly because examin-
ing people who aren’t really sick forces
the students to be actors as well. Lank
said, “The best, most valuable advice I
can give you is to think, I am a doctor,
this is my patient, I’m curious about
what’s going on and how I can help. The
minute you flip into This is fake, these
are actors, nothing’s really wrong—that’s
not going to help.”
An additional source of anxiety is
that S.P.s are, in effect, adjunct medi-
cal-school instructors. They’re trained
to give detailed feedback about the way
they’ve been treated, with the long-term
goal of helping doctors improve their
notoriously uneven record as listeners,
empathizers, and non-interrupters—
a job that becomes more difficult as the
students become more experienced.
“The first-years take it all in, and
they’re so happy about it,” Lank said.
“And the second-years are the best. But
then, in the third year, they begin doing
rounds, and they start to cut corners, be-
cause, hey, that’s what real doctors do. So
we have to try to bring them back.” Train-
ing has an effect on S.P.s, too. “You be-
come much more discriminating in your
caregivers,” Lank continued. “I have two
knees that are not God-given, and the
physical exam was dreadful. It was, like,
Seriously, you would not pass my courses.”
“We like to say that we’re using our
1
acting powers for good,” Wilder said.
—David Owen
TRADE MAG
CLASSIFIED
Sandome spy stories will be forever
confined to memory, locked safes,
invisible ink. But for others there’s
a quarterly journal called Studies in In-
telligence, published by the Central In-
telligence Agency. “Every profession has
its own literature,” Andres Vaart, the pub-
lication’s editor, said the other day. Since
1955, when it began, intelligence officers
have filled its pages with analyses of old
spy operations, book reviews, and tales
of derring-do. “We have some great writ-
ers here,” Vaart said. “Studies is where
they get to speak their minds.”
Vaart, who typically works off-site, in
northern Virginia, was at the C.I.A.’s
headquarters, in Langley, to discuss the
journal’s latest issue with his boss, Peter
Usowski, the director of the C.I.A.’s Cen-
ter for the Study of Intelligence. They
were seated at a wooden table in a win-
dowless room. Usowski was wearing a
suit, but Vaart had a jauntier look, with
a white turtleneck under an Argyle
sweater-vest. Outside, snow dusted the
wings of a decommissioned spy plane in
the parking lot.
Vaart riffled through a pile of back
issues. One featured an article titled
“Cold War Spy Fiction in Russian Pop-
ular Culture”; another was called “Sput-
nik and U.S. Intelligence: The Warning
Record.” Vaart said, “We want to be of
the moment.”
“In the aftermath of Snowden, we
published a piece on the psychology of
leaks,” Usowski said. With a touch of
embarrassment, Vaart confessed that
the journal’s most-read piece was one
from 2007: “The C.I.A.’s Role in the
Study of U.F.O.s.” (In sum: the agency
looked for proof of flying saucers, but
didn’t find any.)
Vaart talked about the cover story he’d
commissioned for the latest issue, to com-
memorate the fiftieth anniversary of the
Tet Offensive. The story was by Ray-
mond Lau, a retired C.I.A. officer who’d
served in the Marines during the Viet-
nam War. In January of 1968, Lau was
ambushed in Hue during the offensive
and was trapped for days behind enemy
lines, hiding out in a pigsty. Vaart de-
scribed the piece as “gripping.”
Usowski chairs the journal’s editorial
board, whose sixteen members, current
and former intelligence officers, consider
submissions. They were lukewarm at first
on Lau’s Tet story—not enough spy craft.
(They’d had the same response to a piece
about a former operative’s journey to
China during the Second World War;
one board member dismissed it as “just
a travelogue.”) But Vaart had argued that
the Tet story had intelligence value, es-
pecially for paramilitary types in Afghan-
istan and Iraq. “As an intelligence officer
abroad, you just don’t know what kind
of life-threatening situations you’re going
to face,” he said.
Before becoming the journal’s editor,
Vaart was a China analyst at the C.I.A.
He’d also done editorial work, of a kind.
For two years, he helped to write the
President’s Daily Brief for George H. W.
Bush; he knows what it feels like to labor
over a passage, only to have a superior
hammer the prose into bland P.D.B. style.
“That can be demoralizing,” he said.
When asked about President Trump’s
disparaging remarks about the C.I.A.,
Vaart was evasive. “It hurts to see our
business denigrated at any time,” he said.
“I think, definitely, there’s a feeling among
a number of folks that the way intelli-
gence is treated by others in the public
can be very disappointing and mislead-
ing and downright makes one angry.”
The new issue of Studies was almost
ready to go to press. A review board was
still scrutinizing the Tet piece to make
sure that it didn’t contain any state se-
crets. (Each issue appears in classified
and unclassified forms—a classified ver-
sion was already up on government Web
sites.) After that, hard copies would go
out to the journal’s roughly five hundred
subscribers (subscriptions are free—costs
are covered by taxpayers). Several copies
would also be catalogued down the hall,
in the C.I.A. library.
One of the librarians showed a vis-
itor around. She wore a “Star Wars” lan-
yard and horn-rimmed glasses.“This is
what we’re interested in at the moment,”
she said, pointing toward a glass dis-
play case. It contained books on Iran
and North Korea—a mix of academic
works (“Iranian Entrepreneurship: De-
ciphering the Entrepreneurial Ecosys-
tem in Iran and in the Iranian Dias-
pora”), contemporary histories (“Under
the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader:
North Korea and the Kim Dynasty”),
and travel guides. “We love ‘Lonely
Planet,’ ” she said. A nearby shelf
overflowed with DVDs. Apparently,
spies not only like writing about their
craft; they enjoy watching dramatiza-
tions of it. “Yes, we have all the Bond
movies,” she said. “And there’s always a
wait list for ‘Homeland.’ ”
—Nicholas Schmidle
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 19

LETTER FROM CALIFORNIA
EXPOSURE
In the wake of scandal, can Hollywood change its ways?
BY DANA GOODYEAR
“ I ’m calling it the Purge,” a friend
who works in Hollywood told me,
a few days into the post-Weinstein era.
Off the top of his head, he listed half
a dozen men in the entertainment busi-
ness whose behavior, he hoped, would
no longer be condoned. In the weeks
to come, they started toppling, joined
by others, in a seemingly never-ending
cascade, the world’s longest domino
trick. The morning-news anchor, the
worldly talk-show host, the animation
genius with the awful shirts, “feminist”
men, liberals, tortured artists, moguls,
icons, “bad boys,” funny guys, even the
folksy curmudgeon from public radio:
they are being fired; stepping down;
“It’s like a patient’s flatlining and you’ve got to shock it back,” one executive said.
20 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
awkwardly apologizing, engendering
ridicule and pique; or defending them-
selves and inviting rage. Then, like a
backward rapture, they disappear, with
the tacit or expressed acknowledgment
that this is not their time.
Amy Ziering, a documentarian who
has made films about sexual assault in
the military and on college campuses
and is now at work on one about Hol-
lywood—suddenly, funding has mate-
rialized—told me, “I’m stunned. I keep
reading the headlines, thinking, Am I
reading the Onion or the New York
Times? ‘Man Accused of Assault and
Fired!’ It’s surreal.”
Early in November, a headline about
someone suspended for sexual harass-
ment caught my eye. Looking at the
photo, I recognized him from a local
playground; our kids are close in age.
It was Andrew Kreisberg, who over-
saw several DC Comics shows at
Warner Bros., for Greg Berlanti. The
comments following the story were
damning—about the companies in-
volved, about the culture of silence and
denial, and about Kreisberg’s behavior,
which allegedly included subjecting fe-
male colleagues to belittling remarks
and uncomfortable physical situations.
But the most memorable contribution
came from a commenter called Andrew
Kreisberg, who provided an index to
these disturbing and exhilarating times,
a Polaroid we can refer to if we one day
want to remember what life was like
during the fall of 2017:
Nobody has accused me of rape like
Weinstein.
Nobody has accused me of drugging them
like Guillod.
Nobody has accused me of groping like
Landesman.
Nobody has accused me of abusing minors
like Spacey.
Nobody has accused me of exposing my-
self like Louis CK.
Nobody has accused me of asking for fa-
vors in exchange for work like Ratner.
Kreisberg denies conducting himself
inappropriately at work (and also main-
tains that the comment in his name was
written by someone who had assumed
his identity). In any case, by the end of
the month, the studio had fired him,
citing a commitment to a “safe work-
ing environment.” Brett Ratner, who
also, until recently, had a close business
relationship with Warner Bros., disputed
allegations of misconduct and filed a
defamation suit against a woman who
accused him of rape. Under pressure,
he has stepped away from his projects
with the studio, and he no longer has
an office on the lot. Harvey Weinstein,
Kevin Spacey, and David Guillod, who
all issued denials, have faced professional
repercussions, and police in various
jurisdictions have opened criminal inves-
tigations against them.
In response to the proliferating
accusations in Hollywood, the Los An-
geles District Attorney’s office has es-
tablished a sex-crimes task force, and
the police department has assigned five
pairs of detectives, including experts in
ILLUSTRATION BY ANNA PARINI
reviving cold cases. So far, twenty-seven
investigations have been opened, includ-
ing at least one involving minors. “It’s
a moment of reckoning and a moment
of soul-searching, in which people must
reassess and meaningfully adjust their
behavior,” a former studio head told me.
“It’s a wrenching time of ripping the
Band-Aid off and realizing that there
is a deep wound that we all have to take
some responsibility for creating—for
complacency, if not complicity. I’m hor-
rified that these things must have gone
on on my watch. I can say, ‘Well, I didn’t
know.’ But that’s no longer acceptable.”
The reckoning disorients even those
most attuned to the system’s dysfunc-
tion. Angela Robinson, who directed
the recent movie “Professor Marston
and the Wonder Women,” and is black
and gay, likens the experience to being
in a dive bar when someone suddenly
flips a switch. “All the lights are off and
it’s sexy and dark and the music’s going
and it creates a whole kind of fantasy,”
she said. “I feel like somebody turned
the lights on, and it’s, like, ‘Ahh! Gross.’ ”
The churn of gossip and angst and
exultation is unrelenting—text chains
hectic with exclamation points, calls to
old colleagues, Deadline Hollywood
constantly refreshing with a new claim
or consequence. “It is all this town is
talking about,” a veteran female televi-
sion writer told me. “Every meeting,
every lunch, anywhere you go. I went
to a birthday party at a fancy showrun-
ner’s house, walked into the kitchen,
and six white dudes—showrunners, ac-
tors, and agents—were standing in a
circle having a come-to-Jesus about
sexual harassment, like, ‘I looked down
into my soul to ask myself, Have I done
anything wrong?’ ”
An already uncertain business has a
new variable: Who is safe to work with,
and who might blow up tomorrow?
(Rotten Apples, a recently launched
Web site, provides a database of shows
and movies and their affiliations with
those accused of misconduct.) “All peo-
ple want to know is, Who’s next and
what happens? How long do these peo-
ple stay off the playing field, are they
done for good, does this provide op-
portunities for women, is this perma-
nent, temporary, what?” a television ex-
ecutive said. “Is this an overreaction?
Should all doors literally be glass? No-
body knows how to act now. The rules
have been so changed.”
The former studio head told me, “In
staff meetings, in writers’ rooms, in cast-
ing sessions, how you greet somebody
in a restaurant, the language you use—
every nuance has been impacted.” Un-
less someone’s father just died or you
are best friends, no one is hugging any-
more. “Unwanted hugs” featured in an
apology issued by Pixar’s John Lasse-
ter and, unforgettably, in the details that
emerged about his behavior. (“He was
inappropriate with the fairies,” hugging
them too long, a former Pixar execu-
tive told Deadline.) Cathy Schulman, an
Oscar-winning producer and the pres-
ident of the advocacy group Women in
Film, said that lately, when she walks
into a man’s office and tries to close the
door, he objects. “It’s happened at least
ten times in the past two months,” she
told me. “And there are constant apol-
ogies in meetings—‘I didn’t mean that
to sound gendered.’ Fumbling over lan-
guage to be careful to say ‘he,’ ‘she,’
‘they’—not everything ‘he.’ But not nat-
urally. As in, ‘Whoever gets this job, he
should—they should—she should . . . ’ ”
In a historically male-dominated
business, the burden of earning accep-
tance has shifted with fearful speed.
“Everyone’s tiptoeing,” a male comedy
producer told me. “ ‘You know I’m one
of the good guys, right? You’ll put in a
good word with the matriarchy for
me?’—as we gloriously flip into the re-
verse ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ society.” Every
phone meeting includes a mandatory
detour into conscientious talk about
what repulsive lowlifes the perpetrators
are and how it’s about time, and if there’s
some collateral damage so be it, it’s just
a fraction of what women have endured,
et cetera. The assistants—young and
often female, the presumed inheritors—
are listening on the line. No one wants to
get caught on the wrong side of history.
he actress came to Hollywood
T with her mother when she was
three, after her father gave his secre-
tary a fur coat for Christmas and her
mother demanded a divorce. The ac-
tress was a year older than Shirley Tem-
ple, a year younger than Jane Withers.
She could remember lines. On her
third day in Los Angeles, her mother
took her to a casting call, where she
met Judy Garland and got her first role.
Upon signing a contract at Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer, the actress became a
player in Louis B. Mayer’s stable. “If
you worked for Mr. Mayer, you didn’t
just lollygag,” she says. “I was loaned
out to everybody. ‘Altruistic’ would not
describe him. If you were under con-
tract to him, you were like a piece of
chattel. You were supposed to bow and
scrape and curtsy. Mr. Mayer was, in
his own mind, godlike.” In the course
of the next thirteen years, she appeared
in a hundred and ten films, alongside
Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Merle Ober-
on—as the little-girl version of all the
big-name stars. Bette Davis was the
first person to send her flowers. Lana
Turner, her babysitter, taught her to
tweeze her brows. Harry Ruskin, one
of M-G-M’s most prolific writers, made
her his protégée, supplying her with
books and instructing her in his view
of the world. She never went to school.
One day, when she was around six,
as she remembers it, she and her mother
were waiting to see Mayer. The door to
his office opened, revealing a woman,
with her back to them, shouting at
Mayer, “Don’t tell me! I fucked every
one of you bastards on the way up.” The
woman turned around: it was Norma
Shearer, who was married to Irving Thal-
berg, Mayer’s partner at M-G-M. That
was the first time the young actress heard
the word “fuck.” Later, in Mayer’s office,
she asked him what it meant. She didn’t
get her answer right away.
When she turned sixteen, she re-
calls, Ruskin invited her to his office for
lunch—a normal occurrence, as he hosted
a lunch-hour salon with people who
amused him, and she often went. On
this day, no one else was invited. He
handed her a synopsis with a part writ-
ten specifically for her. “Right there came
the proposition,” she says. “Just frank.
Just out. I was the typical battered wife—I
thought I had done something, that I
had been provocative or dressed provoc-
atively or done something to instigate
this. Because why would he do this? It
was like incest to me.”
She left Ruskin’s office and found
a broom closet to weep in. “I felt my-
self coming unglued,” she says. “My
mother never permitted me to cry,
unless I was being paid for it.” When
she had composed herself, she went
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 21
upstairs to Mayer’s office. “He said,
‘Have you seen Harry?’ I said, ‘Yes,
but’—he wouldn’t let me say anything.
‘Have you read the synopsis?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Don’t
you love it?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘We have your favor­
ite producer, your favorite cinematog­
rapher,’ and so forth. Finally, I got a
word in. I said, ‘But, Mr. Mayer, do you
know what Harry wants me to do?’ By
this time I was in a chair. He was a lit­
tle man, and he definitely
had a Napoleonic complex,
because he had huge over­
stuffed furniture. I was in a
great big black leather chair
over in a corner. He was be­
hind this enormous square
desk, and he came around,
sat on the arm of the chair,
put his arm on my shoulder,
pulled me toward him, and
said, ‘You’ll get used to it.’ ”
She wouldn’t. She went home and
burned all her films, photographs,
scripts, and memorabilia. Her mother
didn’t believe her, and implored her to
apologize to Ruskin for hurting his
feelings. When Mayer realized that she
was serious about refusing to play along,
he threatened to destroy her career:
wagging his finger under her nose, he
said she’d never work on a soundstage
again. “Mr. Mayer,” she said, “that is
my heartfelt desire.” She confided in
her friends Lucille Ball and Ava Gard­
ner, who were not surprised. “They said
he was a rat bastard, but the more you
stir you­know­what, the more it smells,”
she says. “Their advice was, Live with
it, get over it, let it go, just let it go.”
The actress is ninety now, vibrant
and witty, a favorite of the waiters in
Beverly Hills. She wears heels and trim
leather blazers and pencils her eye­
brows. (Thanks to Miss Turner, they
never grew back.) After telling me her
story—a story she has not told her
children, because it still fills her with
shame—she paused, then said, “Does
that answer all your questions about
that epoch, how different it is not? It’s
not a bit different than today.”
he sexual revolution, anti­harass­
T ment laws, the testimony of Anita
Hill—despite them, the silence found
places to hide. Women who spoke out
were deemed “crazy,” unreliable wit­
nesses and reckless self­saboteurs, or
22 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
they were “difficult,” not likely to get
the next job. (Cassandra, the classical
figure of the discredited woman, is
also a victim of sexual assault and ret­
ribution: when she rejects Apollo, he
spits in her mouth and curses her to
proclaim truths that no one believes.)
In Hollywood, respecting the silence
has practically been a condition of
employment. One woman I talked to,
a television writer who has
worked on seven shows—
and who remarked ruefully
that three of her former
bosses have recently been
implicated in sexual mis­
conduct—told me that a
colleague cautioned her on
the first day of her first job,
at Warner Bros.: “This used
to be the ‘Friends’ room,
and you know what hap­
pened to that writers’ assistant when
she made a stink?”
Amaani Lyle, the writers’ assistant
who had made the stink, got a job on
“Friends” in 1999, when she was twenty­
seven. The daughter of a touring jazz
musician, she had grown up in a middle­
class suburb of Los Angeles and at­
tended progressive private schools, be­
fore studying film at Emerson College,
in Boston. She was used to being the
only woman of color in the room.
“Friends,” then in its sixth season on
NBC, was one of the most watched
shows on television; being in the writ­
ers’ room meant a potential credit that
would propel her career.
Lyle’s job was to write down what
the writers talked about. According to
testimony she gave later, several of them
talked about anal sex, oral sex, “fuck­
ing,” “pussies,” “schlongs,” what color
hair they preferred women to have, what
size breasts, and how one of the writ­
ers had missed his chance with one of
the show’s stars. They referred to a lead
actress as “having dried branches in her
vagina”; one writer “frequently brought
up his fantasy about an episode of the
show in which one of the male char­
acters enters the bathroom while a fe­
male character is showering and rapes
her.” They doodled offensive anatom­
ical drawings, vocalized pleasure while
pretending to masturbate, altered a cal­
endar in the writers’ room so that it
read “pert tits” instead of “persistence”
and “penis” instead of “happiness.”
“I can’t even say I was offended,”
Lyle told me recently. “That’s how
steeped in the culture I was. It was such
a ubiquitous thing that it would’ve
seemed off to have them not do that
stuff.” She didn’t want to change the
dynamic of the writers’ room; she wanted
to diversify the show’s all­white cast.
At the time, NBC was openly re ­
ferred to as “No Black Characters.”
Lyle, whose previous job had been
at “Kenan & Kel,” on Nickelodeon,
pitched a story line involving an African­
American love interest for Joey, the
character played by Matt LeBlanc.
After four months, Lyle was fired,
ostensibly for typing too slowly. “I wasn’t
the chip­on­the­shoulder, man­has­
got­me­down kind of person,” she told
me, but she suspected that her typing
was not the real reason. Her apparent
otherness, she felt, made the writers
self­conscious—and awareness of in­
tersectionality wasn’t then thought of
as a virtue. After suing, unsuccessfully,
for wrongful termination and racial dis­
crimination, she joined the Air Force
and moved to Germany, where she
worked as a reporter for military pub­
lications. Meanwhile, her lawyer, who
had taken note of her detailed descrip­
tions of her work environment, contin­
ued to pursue a sexual­harassment claim.
The writers didn’t generally dispute
the behavior Lyle had described; in­
stead, they made a novel argument, on
First Amendment grounds, that their
behavior was a “creative necessity,” in­
dispensable to the making of a show
about a group of unmarried adult friends.
The raunchy patter, so long as it wasn’t
directed at Lyle, was part of their job.
An amicus brief, signed by Steven Boch­
co, David Milch, Norman Lear, Diane
English, and a hundred and twenty­
seven other writers, argued that “the
process creators go through to capture
the necessary magic is inexact, counter­
intuitive, nonlinear, often painful—and
above all, delicate.” Self­censorship could
damage their productivity.
A dissenting amicus brief, filed by
a group of legal scholars, argued that
the habits of the writers’ room “effec­
tively maintained an exclusionary cul­
ture that systematically, if unintention­
ally, marginalizes female writers and
writers’ assistants.” A First Amendment
exception to sexual-harassment rules
would “essentially sanction this form
of exclusion in the entire television
writing sector.” In 2006, the California
Supreme Court sided with the writers.
After that, the female television writer
told me, Warner Bros. began trium-
phantly including Lyle’s affidavit in
mandatory sexual-harassment training
sessions: “It was used as proof that any-
thing goes in a writers’ room, and there’s
not really such a thing as sexual ha-
rassment in that context, because to be
creative you have to be able to say what-
ever comes to mind.”
“Creative necessity” is a bedrock
principle in Hollywood, but the ex-
treme behavior it protects may be un-
supportable now. Ivy Kagan Bierman
is a lawyer who specializes in sexual-
harassment-prevention training for the
entertainment industry. She told me
she wouldn’t be surprised if, in the com-
ing years, legislation and case law refined
our understanding of sexual harass-
ment. “Is the Lyle case going to hold
up now?” she asked. “We will see.”
Lyle, who works freelance at the
Pentagon and is in the Air Force Re-
serve, has more or less given up on a
Hollywood career—though recently
she’s been invited to come back and
pitch material. She told me she fears
that it would be an “exercise in futility.”
Retaliation can be shifty; things don’t
work out and you never really know why.
Amani Walker, a successful Hollywood
writer and the creator of “Rebel,” told
Lyle that she was once passed over for
a job by a boss who had evidently con-
fused her with Amaani Lyle.
With some frustration, Lyle referred
me to a Times story about the Cali-
fornia Supreme Court decision. In it,
a fellow “Friends” writers’ assistant,
who went on to a lucrative career, com-
pared her situation with his, telling
the reporter, “See what happens when
you keep your mouth shut?” But Lyle
never intended to mount a crusade.
“Looking back, if I had kept on with
that trajectory in my career and they
didn’t criticize my work, I wouldn’t
have scrutinized the process,” she told
me. “I wouldn’t have cared how the
sausage was made.”
The women the business has typi-
cally rewarded are unflappable—skilled
at keeping the equilibrium, even if it’s
unequal. One female television writer
in her thirties, who has worked in a
number of mostly male writers’ rooms,
said, “I’ve been told I’m very staffable
because I’m fun. I can take a lot of
abuse and still crack a joke.” When she
started out, her representatives told her
that, as a woman, she would need to
climb the ladder rung by rung; she
understood that, if she ever wanted
her own series, she could not get fired
along the way. On a show where the
female creator had been fired for being
“crazy” and “difficult,” she developed
methods of self-preservation, inuring
herself to the indignities—such as an
executive saying, as he listened to her
pitch a sex scene, that he was “getting
hard already,” and her male colleagues
telling her to take it as a compliment.
She regrets passing her methods down,
teaching other women how not to ruffle
the men in charge. “I had a friend who
was interviewing for a staff writing
job,” she told me. “I gave her the ad-
vice to have thick skin and a light heart.
I felt like such a betrayer of my fem-
inist values. What I was saying was,
You have to seem fun while being
abused. Everyone wants to have a good
time while at work.”
round the time that Amaani Lyle
A was fired, another woman I talked
to was a vice-president of development
at a small production company with a
studio deal. She was in her early thir-
ties, but, because she is female, she was
known as a D-girl. (There was no such
thing as a D-boy.) The executive on
her account, a few years younger and a
rising star at the studio, decided he
wanted to sleep with her. He was
anointed, a brother in the studio fra-
ternity. He was, the woman heard from
her boss, “our guy.”
The woman wore librarian glasses
and thrift-store clothes, and kept her
hair short. It was her style, but also a
signal of her seriousness, her not-
gameness. It provoked him, even
though his own girlfriend was “hot,”
as he told her all the time. “Can you
believe I want to fuck you and that’s
my girlfriend?” he said.
Several times a week, she had to call
him to talk about a script, a writer, the
status of a project. Instead, he asked her
what she looked like naked, and sulked
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 23
when she declined to flirt. It was
impossible, under these conditions, to
do her work effectively, but she had to
make nice—he was their guy.
The woman and her friends didn’t
use the word “harassment”; it was just
the business. If it had occurred to her
to complain, whom could she have com-
plained to? The studio’s H.R.? And
never get another job in Hollywood?
Eventually, she left town, full of antip-
athy after what she considers a medi-
ocre career. She found work that suited
her. He stayed in Hollywood and be-
came an extremely successful indepen-
dent producer of thrillers and adven-
ture tales. In the past two months, she
has started thinking about him again,
the feeling of being on the phone with
him resurfacing, an infuriating reminder
of what she sees as her own failure. She
finds herself Googling his name.
im Masters, an investigative jour-
K nalist at the Hollywood Reporter, is
firm, skeptical, witheringly sane. Not
long after she began covering Holly-
wood, Jeffrey Katzenberg told her,
“Every time I see your name on my
call sheet, I get a stomach ache.” She
thought, “I’m winning.” The first time
she met Harvey Weinstein, twenty years
ago, at the Peninsula, she remembers
that he verbally accosted her, asking,
“What have you heard about me?” She
took a breath. “I heard you rape women,”
she replied. Because the meeting was
off the record, she won’t repeat his an-
swer, but, she says, it wasn’t a denial.
She started trying to break a story on
him then, but without accusers coming
forward it was impossible to publish.
Masters has sometimes been dis-
missed as a muckraker, but it turns out
that muck often hides morally outra-
geous truths. In August, before report-
ing in the Times and in this magazine
unmasked Weinstein and the industry
around him, Masters had a juicy piece
about Roy Price, the head of film and
television at Amazon, who in 2015 had
been investigated by the company for
sexual harassment. Without a strong
statement from the accuser, she strug-
gled to find a place to publish the story.
(It finally appeared on the Information.)
Six weeks later, the accuser, inspired by
the women who spoke out against Wein-
stein, shared a detailed account with
24 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
Masters, who published it in the Re­
porter. That very day, Amazon suspended
Price—for behavior that had been in-
vestigated to no visible effect two years
earlier. Chatter started up about Price’s
misogynistic taste—he was, after all, the
person who passed on “The Handmaid’s
Tale”—and about the culture he fos-
tered. Another writer told me, “Female
friends who went in for meetings at
Amazon would say, ‘God, I feel like I
just got back from Sigma Phi Epsilon.’ ”
Five days after the details of Price’s be-
havior became public, he resigned. Noth-
ing had changed but the weather.
Hollywood, Masters says, has long
operated like a men-only club. “This
town is shot through with a culture of
intimidation, boys having fun, going
to Las Vegas, hiring hookers. They
don’t want female colleagues anywhere
near them. Women are not invited and
not promoted. I remember Dawn Steel
saying, ‘If only I could go whoring
with these guys my life would be so
much easier.’ ”
Still, Masters has been shocked to
see how pervasive sexual harassment
is, particularly at certain studios and
agencies. “It’s not just one or two peo-
ple,” she said. “It’s woven into the fuck-
ing fabric.” She went on, “What’s be-
come clear to me is how deeply the
culture of tolerating this behavior is
rooted. You have a standoff—mutually
assured destruction. There’s so much
bad behavior, if you try to get rid of
one guy then he says, ‘I will go after
you. I know what you did.’ The behav-
ior is entrenched at such high levels.
You almost have to burn the compa-
nies down.”
In the past several weeks, the Holly­
wood Reporter has created a sexual-
misconduct beat and assigned seven re-
porters, who are fielding ten to fifteen
tips a day. Masters decides which to
pursue based on the criteria of egre-
giousness and reportorial difficulty—
very egregious and very difficult she
pursues assiduously. “These companies,
they know,” she said. “They know that
very high-level people are vulnerable.
And I have no doubt they are in a state
of absolute panic. With some of these
people, it could hurt the company’s
stock if these things get revealed. There’s
a huge burden of responsibility, with
implications all the way to Wall Street.”
While pursuing the John Lasseter story,
which she broke, she reached out
to a Disney source and said, “I guess
you know what I’m calling about.” He
simply said, “Yes, I do.” More bomb-
shells were coming, she assured me.
“There are people on the job right now
exhibiting very dubious behavior,” she
said. “They know who they are.”
n some quarters, “How are you?”
Ianymore.
doesn’t feel like a neutral overture
“I’m fucking awful,” one of
the accused replied bitterly, when I got
him on the phone. Another man I talked
with joked grimly, “I’m hiding under
my desk.” He told me, “I believe I have
a clean record, but anything’s possible.
They’re going back fifty years on peo-
ple.” If complaints come, he said, “you
can’t defend yourself. And of course
that’s right for a better set of behaviors,
for people being more conscious. There
is a good side to this. For those who
have done something really terrible,
that’s all good.” But what about the
murky, in-between behavior—remarks
or innuendos that at the time seemed
fine, to the one initiating them? “I’ve
never done anything like those guys,” he
went on. “But I’m not perfect.”
Among his peers, there is a growing
concern about the optics of having a
young woman as an assistant. (This is
backlash at the threshold: for many,
the assistant desk represents the entry-
way to an entertainment-industry ca-
reer.) His own assistant, who recently
graduated from a competitive college,
is professional, good-natured, and,
problematically, female. “I’m thinking,
Jesus, they’re looking at me,” he said.
“Before, it might have been ‘He’s sleep-
ing with her—and whatever.’ ” Now he
worries that having a young female as-
sistant will invite speculation, and spec-
ulation begets reporters’ calls. The very
idea provokes hysteria. “Men are living
as Jews in Germany,” he said.
For one sector of the industry, it is a
golden age. “I get a call every single day,”
a Hollywood sexual-harassment inves-
tigator, who is currently looking into
two rape allegations, told me. “If you’re
a workplace investigator and you’re not
busy now, give it up.” Prompted by jour-
nalists, companies are combing through
their files, seeing who must go. “Major-
ity is, someone’s come forward and we’re
investigating this now,” she said. “That’s
now-now. Not in a few days or a week.
It’s gotten very frantic.”
In the past, men who got caught
used a magic spell: “I am an alcoholic/
sex addict and am seeking treatment.”
Arnold Gilberg, a prominent psychia-
trist who has treated many high-profile
people in Hollywood for sex addiction,
sees the display of compunction as eva-
sive. He told me, “They get nailed and
go into facilities to avoid the penalty
for their behavior.” The men currently
under scrutiny, he said, are experienc-
ing “a masturbatory equivalent—they
exposed themselves and now they’re
getting exposed.”
One measure of the completeness
of the atmospheric change is that the
magic spell no longer works. In its
place is the righteous meme of “zero
tolerance.” Companies have cited it;
Kathleen Kennedy, the president of
Lucasfilm, invoked it as she announced
a commission that she is forming to
address the problems of harassment
and inequality. Cathy Schulman, of
Women in Film, says that what the
phrase means in practice is “We’re
going to no longer cover up all that
stuff we knew that person did while
he was making money.”
All at once, the investigator said,
“the Zeitgeist has changed. What might
not have cost you your job a year ago,
this cannot stand now. Now you’re gone.
In the past, it was possible to counsel
somebody and they would stay. Some-
times it was surprising. I’d think, Wow,
you’re letting him come back?”
I asked her to describe her remedi-
ation work. “My experience of coach-
ing these people is that they really don’t
see why what they did was wrong,” she
said. “It’s a failure of empathy or of in-
trospection. Or they’re just sociopaths,
or they’re really stupid. There’s a range.
I sit down with these guys one on one.
I start by saying, ‘Why are we here?’
Some say things like ‘I was set up.’ ‘It
was a witch hunt.’ ‘You should have
seen what the other guys did.’ ‘She par-
ticipated.’ ‘I’m a Christian.’ All these
deflective things people say. They just
don’t get it. The workplace is a sand-
box where they play out their social
stuff and their family stuff.”
Zero tolerance cuts a ghostly swath;
since October, the remediation busi-
ness has been in a slump. “Totally over,”
the investigator said. Photographs of
the accused have come down from the
walls; their names are being scrubbed
from donated buildings; performances
have been reshot with replacement ac-
tors, online libraries pulled, movies
shelved. The investigator said, “An as-
sociation with the accused is totally
toxic now, with this wave upon wave
upon wave, and Soviet Union-style era-
sure.” Siberia, in this case, might be
defined by what one fired agent told a
former client: he was “pivoting away
from representation” and planning to
reinvent himself in tech.
The blackball system, perfected by
Hollywood’s most powerful men as a
means of financial and social control,
has been turned on its practitioners.
It’s a moment fraught with peril, for
women and for men. “There’s an ex-
plosion of stories that are about trial
by press,” Schulman said. “Obviously,
I’m a leader of the women’s movement,
and I’m in no way suggesting there
aren’t heinous crimes, but we’re in a voy-
euristic trend. Now, based on a single
allegation, there’s firing, there’s black-
listing. There’s a very fine line between
criminal harassment and sex crimes and
other things like freedom of speech and
bad behavior.” An environment where
men won’t mentor women for fear of
opening themselves to harassment
claims will only aggravate the disparity
between the sexes. She said, “We’re al-
ready seeing blowback from men, say-
“Of course there’s nothing on the horizon—that’s what it’s for.”
ing, ‘The last thing I want is to be in a
room privately with a woman and say
one little thing and get accused.’ ”
Jeremy Zimmer, the C.E.O. and a
co-founder of United Talent Agency,
fired Bill O’Reilly as a client, and when
the Weinstein news broke he quickly
wrote a letter expressing unambiguous
support for the accusers (some of whom
are his clients). For him, the revelations
have been bracing. “You wake up one
day and look back and say, Holy shit,”
he told me. “What world do I want my
daughters to live in? The first place I
can do something about it is at U.T.A.”
(His agency recently signed the actor
Terry Crews, who accused an agent at
William Morris Endeavor of sexual as-
sault, and left W.M.E. when it failed
to fire the agent.) But he has qualms.
“It’s really tricky stuff, and it’s very po-
litically incorrect to wonder if we’re
going too far,” he said. “People in my
position are talking about the pendu-
lum. How far in one direction does the
pendulum go? And how much collat-
eral damage does it do?”
hese days, a sign of virtue—or is it
T contrition?—is to cancel a party
and donate the savings to supporting
victims of sexual harassment and abuse.
Creative Artists Agency, which was
named in a recent Times piece as a crit-
ical cog in Weinstein’s “complicity ma-
chine,” pledged to create a legal fund with
its pre-Golden Globes party budget.
W.M.E. paid for a sexual-harassment
help line in the offices of Women in Film.
Wary of appearing unenlightened,
companies are scrambling to put women
in leadership roles. Amazon is report-
edly looking at a number of female
candidates to replace Roy Price. But,
while it’s one thing to celebrate women
moving into a few positions vacated by
disgraced men, actual progress will
require a change in policy at the stu-
dios and at the networks. Katherine
Pope, a television executive in her for-
ties, who insists on interviewing women
and people of color when she hires
directors, said that the situation is dire.
Even at companies where women hold
impressive titles, there are layers of white
men with veto power above them. “The
studios and networks have got to get
more meaningful about the makeup,”
she said. “It’s like a patient’s flatlining
and you’ve got to shock it back. It’s
going to take extreme measures.”
Changing century-old norms will
require overcoming deep unconscious
biases. “The women have to be the
most qualified, brilliant, perfect peo-
ple in the world, and men get to grow
into the job,” Pope said. “You hear
code—‘You have to mature. You’re still
learning.’ Or ‘I know she’s a great de-
velopment executive, but does she know
the business?’ ” Aside from applying re-
active zero-tolerance policies and add-
ing a few hotlines, studios and the net-
works have yet to make decisive moves.
The former studio head told me that
he has urged old colleagues to imple-
ment some quick fixes—say, no more
meetings in hotel rooms, on pain of
firing—but they have ignored him. For
the time being, he says, it’s a “bunker
mentality.” Perhaps the companies are
wary of claiming a moral high ground
they can’t defend.
Stacy L. Smith is a professor at the
University of Southern California’s An-
nenberg School for Communication
and Journalism, who specializes in gen-
der parity in the entertainment indus-
try. For years, she has been pressing
Hollywood to adopt a gender-based
version of the Rooney Rule—the
N.F.L.’s pledge to interview diverse
candidates for head-coach jobs. In her
research, she has looked at inequities
in onscreen speaking roles (66.5 per
cent male), characters over the age of
forty (74.3 per cent male), and sexual-
26 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
ization (more nudity, suggestive cloth-
ing, and references to attractiveness
for female characters). More than sev-
enty per cent of writers in the industry
are male, as are nearly eighty-five per
cent of directors. She has also found
that, when women direct, all these num-
bers become more representative.
“The number of women onscreen is
unchanged from the nineteen-forties,”
Smith told me. “Onscreen and behind
the camera, many of these cultures are
very similar. Hollywood perpetuates the
view of women as marginalized and
unimportant, and that ’s mirrored
throughout top film markets globally.
Hollywood is also the place that can
address and change this.” Women in
Film, which commissioned Smith to
examine pipeline problems for female
directors, has started pitching studios
and agencies on the idea of adding an
inclusion clause to their contracts, with
an accompanying stamp to signify “gen-
der parity in decision-making.”
Throughout the fall, some of the
industry’s most powerful women have
been meeting in secret, determined to
capitalize on a rare and possibly short-
lived opportunity. In October, core
members of the movement, including
Oprah Winfrey, Shonda Rhimes,
Constance Wu, Ava DuVernay, and
Reese Witherspoon, gathered at Cre-
ative Artists Agency to discuss ways of
transforming Hollywood. “We’re using
Naomi Klein’s notion of disaster cap-
italism—where the hurricane hits and
capitalists shove their company into
the chaos,” one of the attendees told
me. “We’re doing disaster feminism. In
the chaos that is ensuing, how can we
create institutional, structural change,
so if the moment passes those things
will be in place?”
Like a post-sexual “Lysistrata,” the
women’s best leverage may be to with-
hold business from those who refuse to
play along. In early December, there
were signs of a coördinated effort, be-
ginning with the agencies. Rhimes, the
creator of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “How
to Get Away with Murder,” is a client
at I.C.M. Partners. At her urging, the
agency announced that it would com-
mit to achieving fifty-fifty gender par-
ity among its department heads, part-
ners, and board members by 2020.
C.A.A. recently promoted two women
to its management committee. It, too,
pledged to achieve fifty-fifty gender par-
ity by 2020, and issued a blanket apol-
ogy to “any person the agency let down
for not meeting the high expectations
we place on ourselves.” Michelle Kydd
Lee, the first female partner at the com-
pany and now its chief innovation officer,
acknowledged that, for C.A.A. and the
culture at large, the challenge is signifi-
cant. Still, she said, “I am optimistic that
we’re having these conversations across
genders. These conversations were hap-
pening within our gender forever. There’s
a real drive for self-awareness.”
In the meantime, before deeply held
attitudes have a chance to change, there
is a disjunctive new normal. Not long
ago, Zimmer and several other mem-
bers of the U.T.A. board cleared their
Friday afternoon to welcome Anita Hill
and Fatima Goss Graves, the president
and C.E.O. of the National Women’s
Law Center, to the agency’s theatre. (A
few days later, Kathleen Kennedy an-
nounced that Hill, who has reëmerged
as a feminist prophet, would lead her
commission, which aims to create “more
equitable and accountable workplaces”
in the entertainment industry.) Tarana
Burke, the activist behind #MeToo, was
in the front row, sitting near Alyssa
Milano, who helped popularize Burke’s
hashtag by using it in support of Rose
McGowan’s rape claim against Wein-
stein. Speaking before a backdrop that
said #MeTooWhatNext, Hill described
her experience testifying about sexual
harassment by Clarence Thomas at his
Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
“At the end of the hearing, in 1991, there
was a public poll taken, and roughly
two-thirds of the population believed
I had lied under oath,” she said. “I think
in today’s atmosphere more people
would believe my story, would under-
stand my story.”
Afterward, Hill attended a reception
on the patio, which is next door to the
headquarters of Playboy. “I definitely don’t
think we can go back from this moment,”
she said. “It doesn’t mean that there won’t
be a period where we’re going to see
some pushback, and there probably will
be even some severe backlash. But I also
think that we’re not going to be the same.
You’re not going to be able to put all
that back into a box—that people know
the truth of what happens to women.” 

SHOUTS & MURMURS
MY YEAR IN CELEBRITY DEATHS
BY BRUCE HANDY
January 1, 2017. No one famous died
today, unless you count Stuart Hamil-
ton, a figure of some apparent import in
Canadian opera. I myself do not plan to
die this year. I am fifty-eight. Hamilton
was eighty-seven. Differential: twenty-
nine years. Thirty would have been bet-
ter, in the sense that thirteen dollars is
decidedly more expensive than $12.95.
Nevertheless, arrow up.
January 25th. Mary Tyler Moore is
dead at eighty. Yes, our Mary. This is a
tragic loss to American culture. Even
more tragic: if I were Mary, but born in
1958, like me, I would have twenty-two
years left. That seems . . . slender. It’s as
far from now as [pause for math] 1995 is
the other way. “Clueless” came out in
1995. Doesn’t “Clueless” count as a recent-
ish movie? It does if you were born in
1958. Arrow down.
February 25th. Today, it is the likable
actor Bill Paxton who has died. He was
only sixty-one. If I had just three years
left, I might, in theory, not outlive the
Trump Presidency. I might not even out-
live the new “Star Wars” trilogy. Arrow
down. In happier news, the likable ac-
tors Bill Pullman and Jeff Daniels are
still alive, I think. [Pause for Google search.]
Yes: sixty-three and sixty-two, respec-
tively. Arrow up.
March 18th. Chuck Berry helped in-
vent rock and roll; but now he, too, is
dead, at ninety. Good for him, and also
for me, because that works out to me
dying in 2049, which is the same year
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
“Blade Runner 2049” takes place and is
thus very far in the future. If this were
1917, and I died in 1949, I would still get
to enjoy the Jazz Age and the Second
World War. I would get to think of radio
and talking motion pictures and latex
condoms as newfangled. Arrow up.
April 6th. Death has come at last for
the insult comedian Don Rickles. He was
ninety also. So much bile and bad karma,
and yet—a nonagenarian. Arrow up.
April 22nd. Dead now as well: Erin
Moran, the star of “Happy Days” and
“Joanie Loves Chachi.” She was fifty-six.
I would have been a ghost for two years
already. Arrow down.
May 23rd. Dead dead dead: the former
James Bond Roger Moore. He was eighty-
nine. Not quite Don Rickles, not quite
Chuck Berry, but not bad! Meanwhile,
the original James Bond, Sean Connery,
is still alive and [pause for Google search]
only eighty-six—three years younger than
his successor Bond. Odd. [Conundrum
distracts from fixation on own mortality.]
July 31st. Another eighty-nine-year-
old has died: Jeanne Moreau, the great
French actress. Just think of all the wine
she must have drunk. Plus cigarettes and
viennoiserie. Arrow up.
August 8th. The guitarist, singer, and
variety-show host Glen Campbell,
eighty-one, is dead from Alzheimer’s.
This seems scary and sad, unless you’re
Erin Moran. Hey, if I live another twenty-
three years, maybe they’ll discover a cure!
Arrow slightly up.
September 19th. The boxer Jake La-
Motta, played by Robert De Niro (still
alive) in “Raging Bull,” dies at the im-
pressive age of ninety-five. Just think of
all the times he got hit in the head. I’ve
never boxed and have had only one con-
cussion. Also, no one has had to gain
sixty pounds to play me. Arrow way up.
September 27th. The Playboy founder
Hugh Hefner dies at ninety-one. Impres-
sive, sure, but I’m uxorious. Arrow down.
October 2nd. Alas, Tom Petty is dead
at sixty-six, or only eight years from now.
Not good. I thought Petty was much
older—you know, the “grizzled rock star”
thing. In Tom Petty years, he must have
been at least eighty-two. Arrow sideways.
November 3rd. “Oh, no, Sally Field is
dead!” gasps my wife. Who doesn’t love
the Flying Nun? Plus, I am turning fifty-
nine in two days. Life is so unfair! Arrow
down. “Oh, wait. Never mind. She’s still
alive,” continues my wife, who has mis-
taken several social-media references to
Field as the first wave of online grief.
Arrow suspended.
November 5th. No celebrity deaths
today, but someone you know turned
fifty-nine. Arrow back down.
November 19th and November 21st. How
could Charles Manson, eighty-three, and
David Cassidy, sixty-seven, die within
two days of each other? It’s as if fate were
trying to erase my childhood. Sixty-seven
is young, even for a pop star who, for
much of his career, wore his pants too
tight. But you have to respect Manson’s
making it to eighty-three on a half cen-
tury’s worth of prison food. Arrows can-
cel each other out.
December 5th. Johnny Hallyday, the
“French Elvis,” is mort. He was seventy-
four, which is thirty-two years more than
the real Elvis got, but is that a yardstick?
Arrow comme ci, comme ça.
December 9th. Kirk Douglas isn’t dead.
He turned a hundred and one today!
That would work out to me living till
2059, which means that if this were 1917
I would live to see my actual self born
in 1958. Whoa. [Trippiness distracts from
fixation on own mortality.]
December 16th. The lounge singer Keely
Smith has died. She was eighty-nine, old
enough to have started out in the nine-
teen-forties with her future ex-husband
Louis Prima, and to have performed six
decades later with Kid Rock at the Gram-
mys. Arrow up for longevity and spunk.
Arrow down for devolution.
December 25th. Thoughts today only
of peace, love, and family. [Puts Vince
Guaraldi on stereo, pours coffee, enjoys “crea-
ture not stirring”-ness of home before col-
lege-age kids awake, begins wondering how
many Christmases left, anxiously awaits
push notifications from Times obit desk.] 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 27
 My father, eighty-three, had been de-
PERSONAL HISTORY clining for several weeks. The late-night
phone calls had tightened in frequency

BODIES AT REST
and enlarged in amplitude, like waves
ahead of a gathering storm: accidents

AND IN MOTION
were becoming more common, and their
consequences more severe. This was not
his first fall that year. A few months ear-
The puzzle was not that my father was dying. It was that he was still alive. lier, my mother had found him lying on
the balcony floor with his arm broken
BY SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE and folded underneath him. She had
taken a pair of scissors and cut his shirt
off while he had howled in double
agony—the pain of having to pull the
remnants over his head compounded by
the horror of seeing a perfectly intact
piece of clothing sliced up before his
eyes. It was, I knew, an ancient quarrel:
his mother, who had ferried her five boys
across a border to Calcutta during Par-
tition and never had enough clothes to
split among them, would have found a
way to spare that shirt.
Then, too, my mother had tried to
play it down. “Kicchui na,” she had said:
Look, it’s nothing. It was a phrase that
she, the family’s stabilizing counter-
weight, often clung to. “We’ll man-
age,” she’d said, and I took her word
for it. This time, I wasn’t so sure.

wenty hours after my mother’s

he call came at three in the morn-
T ing. My mother, in New Delhi,
was in tears. My father, she said, had
fallen again, and he was speaking non-
sense. She turned the handset toward
him. He was muttering a slow, mean-
ingless string of words in an unrecog-
nizable high-pitched nasal tone. He
kept repeating his nickname, Shibu,
and the name of his childhood village,
Dehergoti. He sounded as if he were
reading his own last rites.
“Take him to the hospital,” I urged
her, from New York. “I’ll catch the next
flight home.”
“No, no, just wait,” my mother said.
Homeostasis holds complex systems together invisibly; we notice only its failures.
28 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
“He might get better on his own.” In
her day, buying an international ticket
on short notice was an unforgivable
act of extravagance, reserved for trans-
continental gangsters and film stars.
No one that she knew had arrived
“early” for a parent’s death. The fru-
gality of her generation had congealed
into frank superstition: if I caught a
flight now, I might dare the disaster
into being.
“Just sleep on it,” she said, her anx-
iety mounting. I put the phone down
and e-mailed my travel agent, asking
her to put me on the next available Air
India flight.
T phone call, I landed in sweltering,
smog-choked Delhi. I went to the fam-
ily home from the airport, flung my
bags across the bed, and took a taxi to
the neuro-I.C.U. The unit was arranged
in four pods around an atrium. Part of
the floor was being repaired—the pol-
ished terrazzo had a gash like a busted
lip that exposed the building’s pipes
and electrical conduits, and pieces of
jagged concrete were strewn across the
corridor. If you tripped and bashed
your head on the floor, I noted, a neu-
rologist would be waiting conveniently
for you around the corner.
My father was densely sedated. I
called his name and, for a moment, I
thought he swung his head toward me
in recognition. I felt a burst of joy—
until I saw him swing his head back
and forth again, and realized I was see-
ing an automatic movement, repeti-
tive, rhythmic, patterned. His brain
seemed to be slipping down some evo-
lutionary chain, through a series of
phylogenetic trapdoors—thud-thud-
thud—toward a primitive, reptilian
ILLUSTRATION BY GÉRARD DUBOIS
consciousness. Over time, I began to
regard that vacant, circular motion as
a semaphore that you might send up
from the lower reaches of Hell.
A neurosurgery resident came to
see me. He knew that I was a physi-
cian; he extended his hand and called
me Dr. Mukherjee. He looked about
thirty-five, with a pale face, large ears,
and an air of confidence. I took an in-
stant, irrational dislike to him.
“Your father had extensive bleed-
ing into his brain,” he told me. “And
with his underlying dementia I’m not
sure how much of a recovery we can
expect.” He added that my father’s so-
dium had fallen to 128—critically low,
yet another sign of severe damage to
the brain tissue.
My anger had the quality of under-
graduate indignation: I wanted to tell
him that I knew how to read a CT scan
and understood what a low-sodium
reading was, but I bit my tongue.
“We’ve got everything under con-
trol,” he assured me. “You be the son,
and let us be the doctors.” Then he
hurried off to see other patients.
A few minutes into my visit, I no-
ticed that my father’s heart rate on the
monitor was alarmingly high. I fum-
bled under the sheets until I found a
pulse in his swollen wrist. The rate was
normal; the machine had almost dou-
bled it. I called the nurse. She was a
small woman with an expressive face,
her white coat buttoned over a blue sari.
“Oh, that monitor? It never works,”
she said, waving it away casually, as if
it were a toy with a snagging wheel.
And then, as I watched, aghast, she
switched it off. The machine stopped
beeping. My father was now officially
pulseless. Well, thankfully that prob-
lem’s been solved, she seemed to sug-
gest, triumphantly, and moved on to
the next bed.
An hour later, she came to clean
my father up. A little pool of spittle,
the color and consistency of pond
scum, had formed in his half-open
mouth. She removed it with a suction
catheter. The vacuum pump to which
the catheter was connected made a
brief humming sound, then collapsed
with a loud whoosh, like an elephant
sagging to its death. I stood up to look:
one of the rubber gaskets that held
the tube to the pump had cracked.
The nurse shrugged in apology. She
looked around perfunctorily for a re-
placement gasket, but we both knew
there would be none.
I left the hospital at eleven that
night. A few miles from my house, a
motorcycle had overturned on the
highway, catapulting a helmetless
young man into space. Someone had
lit a string of flares around the acci-
dent to divert traffic. The windows of
my cab had been sandblasted into a
sea-glass dullness by the city’s famously
abrasive winds, and the scene outside
looked weirdly like some kind of cel-
ebration—a festival or a wedding
party—shot through a foggy video
camera. The inversion almost made
me want to laugh. Delhi had landed
upside down. The city was broken.
This hospital was broken. My father
was broken.
here’s a glassy transparency to
T things around us that work, made
visible only when the glass is cracked
and fissured. Look, it’s nothing. To dwell
inside a well-functioning machine is to
be largely unaware of its functioning.
That’s its gift, and we accept it thought-
lessly, ungratefully, unknowingly. Years
ago, as a young doctor trying to make
some extra cash, I moonlighted in a
walk-in clinic in a down-and-out neigh-
borhood a few miles from Boston. I
worked on Saturdays from ten until
eight, and rounded off the day, ex-
hausted, with the gordita-and-beer spe-
cial at a local joint.
The clinic was run, with cutthroat
efficiency on a shoestring budget, by
a sixtysomething nurse who had
worked there most of her life. One
m or nin g, c onf u s ed a b o u t d ay -
light-saving time, I arrived for my
shift an hour early. I watched the
nurse as she prepped for the day. She
stacked the sterile plastic tubing for
the oxygen masks by the side of each
bed. She reviewed the contents of the
“crash cart,” where the emergency
equipment and medications were
stored. Her final act that morning
might have scaled a new peak of ob-
sessive absurdity: she moved from one
unoccupied cubicle to the next,
smoothed the sheets down, and then,
crouching awkwardly in the thin
space between the head of the bed
and the wall, oiled the knobs for the
wall-mounted valves that brought ox-
ygen into the room.
I didn’t make much of this quiet
whirr of morning activity until later
that week, when a middle-aged woman
was brought to the clinic, wild-eyed
and blue-lipped for lack of breath, ev-
idently in the throes of a life-threatening
asthma flare. Moving her from the am-
bulance stretcher to the bed took less
than a minute—but only because the
sheets had been slicked and tucked in,
and her thrashing body slid easily onto
the bed. The knob of the oxygen turned
effortlessly—who would have noticed
that it had just been oiled?—and, when
I reached for an I.V. line, a butterfly
needle, just the right size and calibre,
appeared exactly when I needed it so
that I could keep my eyes trained on
the thin purplish vein in the crook of
the elbow.
By then, the nurse had opened the
crash cart. I asked for epinephrine. It
had already been drawn into a syringe.
“Would you like to intubate her?”
she asked. It sounded more like a com-
mand than like a suggestion.
I had no such desire. In a confes-
sional moment, I might have admit-
ted that I wasn’t a particularly good
“intubator”; the few times I had tried,
the textbook vision of the vocal cords,
glistening tantalizingly beyond the
epiglottis, like some V-shaped prom-
ised land, had somehow evaded me.
But I had no choice. I pulled the wom-
an’s mouth wide open. “Dentures,” the
nurse said sharply, in the nick of time—
and I took them out. I pushed the la-
ryngoscope past the substantial fold
of her tongue until I could see the
orifice, and asked for the tube. I did
not notice that it had been slicked at
its end with a barely there dab of lu-
bricant. The scope glided in. Had the
lubricant not been applied, it could
have been a disaster.
We called an ambulance to move
the woman to a hospital I.C.U. My
shift had ended, and, when I looked
around, I saw that, in my rush to sta-
bilize the patient, I had spilled a hur-
ricane of debris on the floor: plastic
tubes, the casing of the laryngoscope,
needle sheaths. Dentures. But by the
next morning, I knew, order would
have been restored. The sheets would
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 29
be smoothed, the crash cart restocked,
the valves oiled.
In the late nineteen-twenties, the
physiologist Walter Cannon coined
the term “homeostasis”—joining to-
gether the Greek homoios (similar) and
stasis (stillness). The capacity to sus-
tain internal constancy was an essen-
tial feature of an organism, he argued.
His work was rooted in his experiences
working with Allied troops during the
First World War, as he studied the
physiological complications of trau-
matic shock. But it was also inspired
by the work of predecessors such as
the nineteenth-century French phys-
iologist Claude Bernard, who wrote,
famously, “La fixité du milieu intérieur
est la condition de la vie libre, indépen-
dante”: the constancy of the interior
environment is the condition of free
and independent life.
What is true of a well-functioning
institution may also be true of the bod-
ies that staff it. Consider temperature:
the normal human body maintains an
extraordinarily narrow range—some-
where between ninety-seven and
ninety-nine degrees—despite enor-
mous, often unpredictable variations
in the environment. I boarded my Air
India flight on a chilly autumn day in
New York and was hurtled in an alu-
minum tube into unseasonably warm
Delhi, but my core temperature, had I
measured it, would have changed not
one degree. And emperor penguins put
human thermoregulation to shame. As
the ambient temperature is lowered by
a staggering hundred and ten degrees,
from seventy above zero to forty below,
a penguin chick’s core temperature
changes by only a couple of degrees.
The level of sodium in your blood
is tightly regulated between 135 and
145 milliequivalents per litre—a num-
ber controlled by exquisite sensors in
the brain coupled with an equally ac-
curate mechanism that retains or dis-
penses salt and water in the kidneys.
“Constancy in an open system, such
as our bodies represent, requires mech-
anisms that act to maintain this con-
stancy,” Cannon wrote. “Homeostasis
does not occur by chance, but is the
result of organized self-government.”
Cannon’s insight inverted long-
established logic. Physiologists, for
generations, had described animals as
30 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
assemblages of machines—as sums of
dynamic parts. Muscles were motors;
the heart a pump; the nerves electri-
cal conduits. Pulsing, swivelling,
pumping, sparking; the emphasis was
on movement, on actions, on work—
Don’t just stand there, do something. In
shifting physiology’s focus from ac-
tion to the maintenance of fixity, Can-
non (and Bernard) had fundamentally
changed our conception of how the
human body works. A major point of
physiological “activity,” paradoxically,
was to enable stasis. Don’t just do some-
thing, stand there.
All around Cannon, theorists were
thrilling to the idea of self-righting
systems, resistant to the buffeting
forces of change. The English bota-
nist Arthur Tansley coined the word
“ecosystem” in 1935; the maintenance
of stability would soon be described
as one of the cardinal properties of
ecologies. Soon economists were re-
lating homeostasis to self-correcting
markets; Norbert Wiener, the math-
ematician, saw that machines and crea-
tures might be governed by autono-
mous control systems stabilized by
“feedback” loops. Cells, cities, socie-
ties, even political institutions—all
had the capacity to steady their states
through the actions of self-regulated
and counterpoised forces. And Lewis
Carroll’s Red Queen was their sym-
bolic monarch. The world is spinning
so fast under her feet, she tells Alice,
that “it takes all the running you can
do to keep in the same place.”
Yet I doubt that even Cannon, who
died in 1945, his career bracketed by
two world wars, realized the sheer
amount of physiological effort needed
to maintain “organized self-government.”
The effort is continual and system-
wide—and unnoticeable. The valves
must be oiled; the sheets tucked; carts
stocked; the trash dispensed. Heating
and ventilation have to pulse and
thrum, unnoticed. Breathe in. Breathe
out. Repeat.
I had versed myself in the reasons
that my father had ended up in the
hospital. It took me longer to ask the
opposite question: What had kept my
father, for so long, from acute decline?
I had to reimagine the fall—the blow,
the bleed, the delirium, the coma—
and try to understand why such disas-
ters hadn’t occurred earlier, as his brain
had inched, woozily, inexorably, un-
recognizably, toward dementia.
hat was he like, at rest and in
W motion? He loved to travel—
nearly as much as my mother loathed
to. In the early days of every summer,
while I was growing up, he would come
home one evening with four tickets
and a visa form, and announce that we
would be decamping, in a fortnight or
so, to some unfamiliar foreign loca-
tion—Cairo, Addis Ababa, Bangkok,
pre-glasnost Moscow, post-Shah Teh-
ran—while my mother stewed pri-
vately about what to pack, whom to
ask for advice, and what to feed the
children during the trip. It’s tempting
to psychologize this—he was the boy
who had been forced to flee his home—
but sometimes, as he liked to point
out, a ticket across a border was just a
ticket across a border.
Oh, and he loved markets. Malls,
particularly American ones, depressed
him: to shop without confrontation
was to die without a battle. When signs
reading “FIXED PRICE” began to ap-
pear in Delhi’s shopping arcades—
mainly to fend off inveterate bargain
hounds like him—he saw it as a sym-
bol of the impending end of civiliza-
tion. But he never met a man with a
pushcart whom he didn’t give his heart
to. Perhaps it was fated, then, that the
first of his falls, more than a year ear-
lier, occurred as he made his way back
from the neighborhood market with
a bag of onions in each hand; that the
first responders were fruit and vegeta-
ble venders who knew him by name
and knew exactly where he lived; that
they brought him home, like slightly
banged-up royalty, on a repurposed
fruit cart.
He told us that he had tripped on
a loose stone, and, for a while, things
seemed to settle at home. But the world
had already begun to shift around him.
His sense of balance worsened daily.
My mother hired a physical therapist
and a daytime nurse. A carpenter came
to attach firm wooden rails to the bed
that he’d always slept in. When I went
to see him, late that summer, it seemed
as if a Biblical punishment had rained
down on him: the man who wanted
to be constantly on the move was
confined to his bed, his shoes confis-
cated, his cane hidden in a closet so
that he would not find it and be
tempted to roam. One night, when he
was particularly delirious, we tied him
to the bed railings with pajama strings
to keep him from falling off. I woke
up in the half-light of dawn and saw
him crying softly into his bound hands.
And then, quietly, a new kind of
physiology started to coalesce around
him. The fruit and vegetable sellers
began to turn up at home. The day-
time nurse—a scraggly young man
nicknamed Bishnu: the god, among
other things, of maintenance and pres-
ervation—made a habit of propping
him up in his rocking chair on the
balcony every morning, and having
the various venders congregate below
like a worshipful throng. My father
was delighted to be back among the
believers. He would banter with them
from above—a king under house ar-
rest, but a king nonetheless—berat-
ing them about their prices; protest-
ing the abysmal quality of the eggplants;
asking why he, at his age, must suffer
the sins of their bruised cauliflowers;
and why the fish was never quite fresh.
It was a small miracle: Mr. Mukher-
jee could no longer go to the market,
and so the market came to Mr.
Mukherjee.
In retrospect, I understood that this,
too, was homeostasis of a sort. The lit-
tle rituals saved him. They staved off
another fall; they restored his dignity,
his need for constancy. “At death you
break up,” Philip Larkin wrote:
the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for
ever
With no one to see.
But for a while my experience of my
father’s dying was not his breaking up
into cometary bits. It was the oppo-
site: his being held together by an in-
finitude of minute forces. He knew
that he was losing the cosmic bargain,
but the onion seller, at least, would still
cut him a good deal.
nd then things fell apart in a Hem-
A ingway sort of way—gradually, at
first, and then all at once. Bishnu had
to go home to his village because his
hepatitis had apparently flared. A new
32 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
attendant was recruited to replace him,
but the daily routine devolved into
chaos. One afternoon, when my father
should have been safely positioned on
the balcony, the attendant left him
alone. Within a few minutes, my fa-
ther had squirmed out of the chair,
eased his feet into his slippers, and tot-
tered his way to the kitchen. He
touched my mother’s right shoulder—a
gesture so familiar to her from his nor-
mal days that she neglected to turn
around and question why he was stand-
ing in the kitchen beside her. By the
time she had spun around, he was be-
ginning to tumble sideways. He hit his
head on the richly veined marble coun-
tertop that he was so proud of—“Cala-
catta, not Calcutta,” he would say, to
remind people how far he’d come in
life—and then landed with a dull thud
on the floor.
A blow to the brain is a good way
to eject someone from the equilib-
rium of free and independent life. Of
all organs, the brain, ironically, has
the least room to expand; the skull is
a fixed space. Elsewhere in the body,
blood will eventually flow out. But
blood in the skull can stay in like a
festering secret, forming a clot and
then pressing down on the squishy
neural tissue. The clot can grow, fur-
ther increasing the pressure and pro-
gressively crippling brain function, in
a cascading process beyond the reach
of homeostasis. Indeed, once self-
regulation fails, complex systems of
all kinds can be claimed by a version
of this process, sometimes called a
failure cascade. A storm-battered tree
takes down a transmission line; the
increased load causes another net-
work component to fail, further in-
creasing the load, turning a local out-
age into a regional blackout. The
failure of one division in one bank
can trigger a global cataclysm. That’s
a failure cascade.
Such is the power of homeostasis
that it’s hard to see a failure cascade
coming; everything returns to nor-
mal, until normality gives way. About
two hours after his fall in the kitchen,
my father seemed fine, except for a
bruise that had ripened on his fore-
head. He asked for some water, and
then sat in his chair, glowering about
his disrupted morning. The venders
had left. About four hours in, he said
that he felt uncomfortable. His neu-
rons, under pressure, were sending
him mixed messages: he was warm
one minute and cold the next. He
stripped his shirt off, sweating pro-
fusely. Then he wanted a blanket. He
ate lunch like a sullen Goldilocks—
the chapatis were too hot, the dal not
spicy enough—and then was over-
whelmed with the need to sleep. He
woke up an hour later, arms flailing,
delirious. My mother had phoned me
soon afterward.
The speed of the unravelling was,
well, breathtaking. In that I.C.U. ward,
his sodium kept dropping precipi-
tously—131 . . . 128 . . . 122. His coma
deepened from the imbalance of salts.
Then his breathing dulled from the
coma. Carbon dioxide, an acid when
mixed in water, accumulated in his
blood. His heart began to behave bi-
zarrely—the muscle sluggish, the
rhythms erratic—from the strange
cocktail of acids, bases, and salts cir-
culating in his blood. Then his kid-
neys started to fail. And, because his
kidneys were failing, his brain function
worsened, refuelling the cycle of decay.
But he would not just accept death;
he had to be bargained into it. His
body fitfully rallied, hanging on to the
final constancies of life with a kind of
primordial cunning, as if my father
knew, down in his blood and in his
bones, that sometimes the market turns
against you, that sometimes you must
settle for the best among bad deals,
and that a miserable equilibrium is still
an equilibrium. A sodium of 125? He
would take it, but with some cross-
subsidy: he would shut down sectors
of his brain as long as he could keep
his heart.
In those weeks, too, my feelings
toward the I.C.U. neurosurgeon and
nurse shifted from anger to something
akin to admiration. They themselves
 an ambulance waiting downstairs,” he
said. “The driver can stay for ten min-
LOVE POEM WITHOUT A DROP utes.” He began to crank the pulley of
OF HYPERBOLE IN IT the bed in order to lower it. One of
the wheels was broken, and he folded
I love you like ladybugs love windowsills, love you a damp towel under the leg so that it
like sperm whales love squid. There’s no depth could slide on the floor.
I wouldn’t follow you through. I love you like The nurse appeared. “The gown,”
the pawns in chess love aristocratic horses. she said. “You can’t take it with you.
I’ll throw myself in front of a bishop or a queen Hospital property.” I was horrified.
for you. Even a sentient castle. My love is crazy Stripping this drool-spattered gown
like that. I like that sweet little hothouse mouth off my father, keeping his lines and
you have. I like to kiss you with tongue, with gusto, tubes intact and inserted, seemed
with socks still on. I love you like a vulture loves impossible.
the careless deer at the roadside. I want to get “I’ll pay you for it,” I said.
all up in you. I love you like Isis loved Osiris, “No payment—hospital policy,” she
but her devotion came up a few inches short. said firmly, and disappeared again.
I’d train my breath and learn to read sonar until In a fit of desperate rage, I took a
I retrieved every lost blood vessel of you. I swear pair of hospital scissors, cut the gown
this love is ungodly, not an ounce of suffering in it. off, and left it hanging on the mon-
Like salmon and its upstream itch, I’ll dodge grizzlies itors. Shredding clothes, it seemed,
for you. Like hawks and skyscraper rooftops, was turning into a family custom. I
I’ll keep coming back. Maddened. A little hopeless. swaddled my father in a thin Rajas-
Embarrassingly in love. And that’s why I’m on thani blanket that my mother had
the couch kissing pictures on my phone instead of sent from home, and the orderly and
calling you in from the kitchen where you are I took off down the corridor in a
undoubtedly making dinner too spicy, but when half-run. The bed teetered to one
you hold the spoon to my lips and ask if it’s ready side, with the towel under the leg
I’ll say it is, always, but never, there is never enough. tracing the arc of our path along the
corridor.
—Traci Brimhall The “ambulance” waiting down-
stairs was a makeshift delivery van
with a wooden plank for a bed. We
had had to settle for a miserable equi- in, trailing an armada of nurses. “We positioned the hospital bed at the foot
librium. Amid scraps and gaps and need to move him to the geriatric of the back door, and turned the crank
shortages, they had managed to stabi- ward,” he said. “There’s nothing more again to raise my father to the level of
lize him. Yes, my clinic in that down- that we’re going to be able to do for the van’s floor. It turned a few times,
trodden neighborhood outside Bos- him here.” then got stuck, making an ominous
ton was a small marvel of homeostatic I looked at the surgeon as if he were creaking sound. We lowered him and
industry, but its minuscule budget was, mad. The geriatric ward was in an- tried again, and once more the bed
by comparison, a luxury economy. other hospital, about two miles away. lifted up to a point but then was sus-
When a vial of epinephrine was used How could we move this barely con- pended in some hideous limbo. There
up, there was more to replace it; the scious man, draped with lines and tubes, was a gap of about two feet between
oil for the valves didn’t run out. In the to the other ward? the bed and the floor of the van.
Delhi ward, the most ordinary proce- The surgeon stood his ground. Every “What happens now?” I asked the
dure was an occasion for triage and bed in the I.C.U., I knew, had a wait- man.
improvisation. To keep this hospital ing list that extended into the dozens “We will just have to lift him up,”
running required workarounds— of patients. “Your father’s sodium has he said. “Over the gap.”
countless, inglorious, and constant. normalized,” he said, almost accus- “Two feet?” I asked.
ingly; normalcy meant that he no lon- He looked at me as if we were
n the twelfth day after my father’s ger belonged in this unit. The over- locked in a mortal duel. I rolled the
O fall, he recovered a thready pulse
of consciousness. The doctors pulled
head intercom crackled: there was an
urgent call to an adjacent room.
blanket around my father and got up
onto my haunches in the van. “I’ll
out the breathing tube, leaving a plas- An hour later, the intravenous lines pull him in if you lift his legs,” I said.
tic face mask to deliver oxygen. The and feeding tubes had been discon- About fifty people and a few stray
hospital called me to say that I should nected from their hanging bags and dogs were watching us idly in the park-
come see him. dangled loosely around my father. A ing lot. A woman in a nurse’s uni-
He was out of his coma, but barely, thin man in a white uniform came into form walked by; she must have just
his eyes still closed. The surgeon came the room with a metal crank. “There’s ended her shift. I fished two hundred
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 33

“1/5/2018. Journal entry six. Morale is low. It’s been three days
and I’m beginning to doubt the rumors of uptown service.”
• •
rupees out of my pocket. Could she
hold the lines and the end of the feed-
ing tube while we hoisted my father
up?
She took the money and climbed
above my father on her hands and
knees. I pulled, and my father let out
a moan: he was suspended between
the van and the stretcher, his spine
arched backward. His torso was slip-
ping down gracelessly, trailing I.V.
lines and nasogastric tubes, like some
botched Indian knockoff of an ecstatic
Bernini—“The Descent from the
Makeshift Ambulance.” My heart
sank. The woman held his lines in a
clenched fist while I pulled with all
my strength. Another five minutes of
jostling and pulling, and we had
brought him in. His head was lolling
to the side. For a long moment, I
thought we had killed him, but his
breathing resumed.
The van took off through the
traffic. Cars were roaring at the lights
like restrained animals, and we moved
forward sluggishly. I shook my head
in disbelief. I had spent the last hour
34 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
moving my father, like a sandbag,
across a two-foot crack in a system
of care.
“ I fityou leave a thing alone you leave
to a torrent of change,” G. K.
Chesterton wrote in 1908. “If you leave
a white post alone it will soon be a
black post. If you particularly want it
to be white you must be always paint-
ing it again; that is, you must be al-
ways having a revolution. . . . An al-
most unnatural vigilance is really
required of the citizen because of the
horrible rapidity with which human
institutions grow old.”
My father knew something about
the rapidity of decline: he had watched
it befall not one but two cities. He had
been forced to leave Calcutta, the cap-
ital of the state of West Bengal, in the
late nineteen-sixties, having seen it
plunge into chaos, its love spent, its re-
serves exhausted. Glutted with mi-
grants after Partition, the city had
grown precipitously in the matter of a
few months. (“Partition broke Bengal’s
heart,” as he liked to put it, “but then
it broke Calcutta’s spine.”) Every sys-
tem had frayed and snapped: housing,
transportation, governance.
But it was the second fissuring—of
Delhi, the city that he had then moved
to—that broke his spine and heart. For
a brief interlude in the mid-seventies,
Delhi had seemed like a functioning
capital. It was the newest old metrop-
olis of the world. The air was breath-
able; the sewers worked; yellow-and-
green buses ferried people through its
broad, gulmohar-lined boulevards. It
was the pull of perceived prosperity, as
much as the push of desperation, that
brought millions of men and women
flooding in. For a while, it seemed as
if the city would soak up this influx,
absorb blow after blow, and swell into
a barrel-chested mega-metropolis.
Nothing mattered, until, suddenly, ev-
erything did—until people looked
around, choking on the smog, reeling
at a failing sewage system, watching
sexual and communal violence spilling
out on those buses and tree-lined
streets, and tried to figure out what on
earth had happened. The horrible ra-
pidity with which human institutions
grow old.
Not long after I’d moved my father
to the geriatric ward, I read Walter Can-
non’s great opus “The Wisdom of the
Body.” Cannon had published his book
in 1932, after he’d begun studying auto-
regulatory mechanisms in his Boston
lab. It took some time for the world to
grasp the broad significance of what he
was arguing. Homeostasis, the capac-
ity to maintain a functional equilib-
rium, would turn out to be one of the
cardinal principles of all organisms; it’s
often described as one of the defining
principles of life. If a sulfur-metabolizing
ectoplasmic alien were to be found in
the vicinity of Alpha Centauri, say,
there’s a good chance that it, too, would
possess autoregulatory loops for resist-
ing changes in its bodily functions. And
the basic principle applies to most com-
plex systems. Their apparent stasis is
an illusion—the Red Queen’s seeming
immobility in space.
bjects at rest, Newton told us,
O remain at rest until acted on by
outside forces. Newton’s universe was
governed by inertia and motion, a
clockwork cosmos run by inviolable
laws. Bodies put into motion streaked
toward oblivion, until acted on by other
forces that would make them stop their
motion.
But living beings, Cannon realized,
were not Newtonian abstractions. To
make warm biology out of cold phys-
ics, organisms had to evolve their own
laws to counter the inevitabilities of
inertia and decay. In the long run,
Cannon knew, we’ll all turn into ob-
jects at rest. The Red Queen will stop
running and be hurtled away; the
chilled penguin will eventually cool
its heels to zero. The standing body
will fall down, fall ill. Yet we keep say-
ing, Look, it’s nothing, until we become
nothing. It’s as if nature were built to
defy the most natural of all laws: that
all of us, in the end, will cool, die,
diffuse, dissipate.
Yet maintenance defies measure-
ment; it’s the glass pane that’s visible
only when it cracks. In the several
months of my father’s decline, hospi-
talization, and death, we recorded the
values of hundreds of things in his
body: potassium, temperature, breath-
ing rate, creatinine, bicarbonate, chlo-
ride, the oxygen saturation of his blood,
the output of his urine. What we didn’t
measure—couldn’t measure—was how
hard his body was working to bestill
these values, how much “unnatural vig-
ilance” was required to keep things
steady, and how deeply his physiology
must have collapsed when the num-
bers finally dipped into abnormalcy.
We had, in short, no real measure of
homeostatic resilience, of physiologi-
cal reserve.
Look, I wanted to shout each day
that I tended to my father in the hos-
pital, it’s really something. These con-
serving, self-correcting, decay-resisting
forces that contend invisibly within
us—in our bodies, our cities, our plan-
etary ecosystem, even—are the oppo-
site of nothing. The hospitals that
work, the ambulances that lift patients
smoothly off the ground: we neglect
the small revolutions that maintain
these functions, but when things fall
apart we are suddenly alert to the
chasms left behind. If we could mea-
sure homeostatic stamina—if we could
somehow capture and quantify resil-
ience—we might find a way to con-
serve things worth keeping before
they failed, or, for that matter, learn
to break things that we wanted bro-
ken. It is easy to notice the kind of
activity that drives change; stasis, on
the other hand, requires a more vigi-
lant reckoning.
nce his body stopped resisting
O death, my father died rather
quickly. “Old age is a massacre,” Philip
Roth wrote. For my father, though, it
was more a maceration—a steady soft-
ening of fibrous resistance. He was
not so much felled by death as down-
sized by it. The blood electrolytes that
had seemed momentarily steady in
the I.C.U. never really stabilized. In
the geriatric ward of the new hospi-
tal, they tetherballed around their nor-
mal values, approaching and over-
shooting their limits cyclically. He
was back to swirling his head vacantly
most of the time. And soon all his
physiological systems entered into
cascading failure, coming undone in
such rapid succession that you could
imagine them pinging as they broke,
like so many rubber bands. Ping: renal
failure. Ping: severe arrhythmia. Ping:
pneumonia and respiratory failure.
Urinary-tract infection, sepsis, heart
failure. Ping, ping, ping.
Those feats of resilience surrendered
to the fact of fragility. And, as the weeks
bore on, an essential truth that I sought
not to acknowledge became evident:
the more I saw my father at the hos-
pital, the worse I felt. Was he feeling
any of this? Two months had elapsed
since his admission to the geriatric
ward. One evening, around the dinner
table, I broached the topic of bringing
him home. I had expected resistance
but found none.
So we shut off the chirping mon-
itors, pulled the I.V. lines out of his
veins, and unsnaked the gastric tube
from his nose. We bathed and shaved
him, put his shoes on, and wrapped
him in his favorite pashmina shawl.
We brought him to his own bed. The
fishmonger delivered a spectacular
specimen of the river shad that he
loved, and my mother curried it with
mustard and ginger, pulverized it
into a mash, and fed it to him with a
baby’s spoon. He died in his sleep
three days later, his restless body finally
at rest. 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 35

MAKING CHINA GREAT AGAIN
How Beijing learned to use Trump to its advantage.
hen the Chinese action
W movie “Wolf Warrior II”
arrived in theatres, in July,
it looked like a standard shoot-’em-up,
with a lonesome hero and frequent ex-
plosions. Within two weeks, however,
“Wolf Warrior II” had become the
highest-grossing Chinese movie of all
time. Some crowds gave it standing
ovations; others sang the national an-
them. In October, China selected it as
its official entry in the foreign-language
category of the Academy Awards.
The hero, Leng Feng, played by the
action star Wu Jing (who also directed
the film), is a veteran of the “wolf war-
riors,” special forces of the People’s Lib-
eration Army. In retirement, he works
as a guard in a fictional African coun-
try, on the frontier of China’s ventures
abroad. A rebel army, backed by West-
ern mercenaries, attempts to seize
power, and the country is engulfed in
civil war. Leng shepherds civilians to
the gates of the Chinese Embassy,
where the Ambassador wades into the
battle and declares, “Stand down! We
are Chinese! China and Africa are
friends.” The rebels hold their fire, and
survivors are spirited to safety aboard
a Chinese battleship.
Leng rescues an American doctor,
who tells him that the Marines will
come to their aid. “But where are they
now?” he asks her. She calls the Amer-
ican consulate and gets a recorded mes-
sage: “Unfortunately, we are closed.” In
the final battle, a villain, played by the
American actor Frank Grillo, tells Leng,
“People like you will always be inferior
to people like me. Get used to it.” Leng
beats the villain to death and replies,
“That was fucking history.” The film
closes with the image of a Chinese
passport and the words “Don’t give up
if you run into danger abroad. Please
remember, a strong motherland will
always have your back!”
When I moved to Beijing, in 2005,
36 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
A REPORTER AT LARGE
BY EVAN OSNOS
little of that story would have made
sense to a Chinese audience. With doses
of invention and schmalz, the movie
draws on recent events. In 2015, Chi-
na’s Navy conducted its first interna-
tional evacuation, rescuing civilians
from fighting in Yemen; last year, China
opened its first overseas military base,
in Djibouti. There has been a deeper
development as well. For decades, Chi-
nese nationalism revolved around vic-
timhood: the bitter legacy of invasion
and imperialism, and the memory of a
China so weak that, at the end of the
nineteenth century, the philosopher
Liang Qichao called his country “the
sick man of Asia.” “Wolf Warrior II”
captures a new, muscular iteration of
China’s self-narrative, much as Ram-
bo’s heroics expressed the swagger of
the Reagan era.
Recently, I met Wu Jing in Los An-
geles, where he was promoting the movie
in advance of the Academy Awards. Wu
is forty-three, with short, spiky hair, a
strong jaw, and an air of prickly bravado.
He was on crutches, the result of “jump-
ing off too many buildings,” he told me,
in Chinese. (He speaks little English.)
“In the past, all of our movies were about,
say, the Opium Wars—how other coun-
tries waged war against China,” he said.
“But Chinese people have always wanted
to see that our country could, one day,
have the power to protect its own peo-
ple and contribute to peace in the world.”
As a favored son of China, cele-
brated by the state, Wu doesn’t com-
plain about censorship and propaganda.
He went on, “Although we’re not liv-
ing in a peaceful time, we live in a peace-
ful country. I don’t think we should be
spending much energy thinking about
negative aspects that would make us
unhappy. Cherish this moment!”
China has never seen such a moment,
when its pursuit of a larger role in the
world coincides with America’s pursuit
of a smaller one. Ever since the Second
World War, the United States has ad-
vocated an international order based on
a free press and judiciary, human rights,
free trade, and protection of the envi-
ronment. It planted those ideas in the
rebuilding of Germany and Japan, and
spread them with alliances around the
world. In March, 1959, President Eisen-
hower argued that America’s authority
could not rest on military power alone.
“We could be the wealthiest and the
most mighty nation and still lose the
battle of the world if we do not help our
world neighbors protect their freedom
and advance their social and economic
progress,” he said. “It is not the goal of
the American people that the United
States should be the richest nation in
the graveyard of history.”
Under the banner of “America First,”
President Trump is reducing U.S. com-
mitments abroad. On his third day in
office, he withdrew from the Trans-
Pacific Partnership, a twelve-nation
trade deal designed by the United States
as a counterweight to a rising China.
To allies in Asia, the withdrawal dam-
aged America’s credibility. “You won’t
be able to see that overnight,” Lee Hsien
Loong, the Prime Minister of Singa-
pore, told me, at an event in Washing-
ton. “It’s like when you draw a red line
and then you don’t take it seriously.
Was there pain? You didn’t see it, but
I’m quite sure there’s an impact.”
In a speech to Communist Party
officials last January 20th, Major Gen-
eral Jin Yinan, a strategist at China’s
National Defense University, celebrated
America’s pullout from the trade deal.
“We are quiet about it,” he said. “We
repeatedly state that Trump ‘harms
China.’ We want to keep it that way.
In fact, he has given China a huge gift.
That is the American withdrawal from
T.P.P.” Jin, whose remarks later circu-
lated, told his audience, “As the U.S.
retreats globally, China shows up.”
For years, China’s leaders predicted
In an unfamiliar moment, China’s pursuit of a larger role in the world coincides with America’s pursuit of a smaller one.
ILLUSTRATION
BY PAUL ROGERS THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 37
that a time would come—perhaps mid-
way through this century—when it
could project its own values abroad.
In the age of “America First,” that time
has come far sooner than expected.
arack Obama’s foreign policy was
B characterized as leading from be-
hind. Trump’s doctrine may come to be
understood as retreating from the front.
Trump has severed American commit-
ments that he considers risky, costly, or
politically unappealing. In his first week
in office, he tried to ban travellers from
seven Muslim-majority countries, ar-
guing that they pose a terrorist threat.
(After court battles, a version of the
ban took effect in December.) He an-
nounced his intention to withdraw the
U.S. from the Paris Agreement on cli-
mate change and from UNESCO, and
he abandoned United Nations talks on
migration. He has said that he might
renege on the Iran nuclear deal, a free-
trade agreement with South Korea, and
NAFTA. His proposal for the 2018 bud-
get would cut foreign assistance by
forty-two per cent, or $11.5 billion, and
it reduces American funding for devel-
opment projects, such as those financed
by the World Bank. In December,
Trump threatened to cut off aid to any
country that supports a resolution con-
demning his decision to recognize Je-
rusalem as the capital of Israel. (The
next day, in defiance of Trump’s threat,
the resolution passed overwhelmingly.)
To frame his vision of a smaller
presence abroad, Trump often portrays
America’s urgent task as one of survival.
As he put it during the campaign, “At
what point do you say, ‘Hey, we have to
take care of ourselves’? So, you know, I
know the outer world exists and I’ll be
very cognizant of that, but, at the same
time, our country is disintegrating.”
So far, Trump has proposed reduc-
ing U.S. contributions to the U.N. by
forty per cent, and pressured the Gen-
eral Assembly to cut six hundred mil-
lion dollars from its peacekeeping bud-
get. In his first speech to the U.N., in
September, Trump ignored its collec-
tive spirit and celebrated sovereignty
above all, saying, “As President of the
United States, I will always put Amer-
ica first, just like you, as the leaders of
your countries, will always and should
always put your countries first.”
38 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
China’s approach is more ambitious.
In recent years, it has taken steps to
accrue national power on a scale that
no country has attempted since the
Cold War, by increasing its investments
in the types of assets that established
American authority in the previous
century: foreign aid, overseas security,
foreign influence, and the most ad-
vanced new technologies, such as artifi-
cial intelligence. It has become one of
the leading contributors to the U.N.’s
budget and to its peacekeeping force,
and it has joined talks to address global
problems such as terrorism, piracy, and
nuclear proliferation.
And China has embarked on his-
tory’s most expensive foreign infra-
structure plan. Under the Belt and Road
Initiative, it is building bridges, rail-
ways, and ports in Asia, Africa, and be-
yond. If the initiative’s cost reaches a
trillion dollars, as predicted, it will be
more than seven times that of the Mar-
shall Plan, which the U.S. launched in
1947, spending a hundred and thirty
billion, in today’s dollars, on rebuild-
ing postwar Europe.
China is also seizing immediate op-
portunities presented by Trump. Days
before the T.P.P. withdrawal, President
Xi Jinping spoke at the World Eco-
nomic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland,
a first for a paramount Chinese leader.
Xi reiterated his support for the Paris
climate deal and compared protection-
ism to “locking oneself in a dark room.”
He said, “No one will emerge as a win-
ner in a trade war.” This was an ironic
performance—for decades, China has
relied on protectionism—but Trump
provided an irresistible opening. China
is negotiating with at least sixteen coun-
tries to form the Regional Compre-
hensive Economic Partnership, a free-
trade zone that excludes the United
States, which it proposed in 2012 as
a response to the T.P.P. If the deal is
signed next year, as projected, it will
create the world’s largest trade bloc, by
population.
Some of China’s growing sway is
unseen by the public. In October, the
World Trade Organization convened
ministers from nearly forty countries
in Marrakech, Morocco, for the kind
of routine diplomatic session that up-
dates rules on trade in agriculture and
seafood. The Trump Administration,
which has been critical of the W.T.O.,
sent an official who delivered a speech
and departed early. “For two days of
meetings, there were no Americans,” a
former U.S. official told me. “And the
Chinese were going into every session
and chortling about how they were
now guarantors of the trading system.”
By setting more of the world’s rules,
China hopes to “break the Western moral
advantage,” which identifies “good and
bad” political systems, as Li Ziguo, at the
China Institute of International Studies,
has said. In November, 2016, Meng Hong-
wei, a Chinese vice-minister of public
security, became the first Chinese presi-
dent of Interpol, the international police
organization; the move alarmed human-
rights groups, because Interpol has been
criticized for helping authoritarian
governments target and harass dissi-
dents and pro-democracy activists abroad.
By some measures, the U.S. will re-
main dominant for years to come. It
has at least twelve aircraft carriers.
China has two. The U.S. has collective
defense treaties with more than fifty
countries. China has one, with North
Korea. Moreover, China’s economic
path is complicated by heavy debts,
bloated state-owned enterprises, rising
inequality, and slowing growth. The
workers who once powered China’s
boom are graying. China’s air, water,
and soil are disastrously polluted.
And yet the gap has narrowed. In
2000, the U.S. accounted for thirty-one
per cent of the global economy, and
China accounted for four per cent.
Today, the U.S.’s share is twenty-four
per cent and China’s fifteen per cent.
If its economy surpasses America’s in
size, as experts predict, it will be the first
time in more than a century that the
world’s largest economy belongs to a
non-democratic country. At that point,
China will play a larger role in shaping,
or thwarting, values such as competi-
tive elections, freedom of expression,
and an open Internet. Already, the world
has less confidence in America than
we might guess. Last year, the Pew Re­
search Center asked people in thirty­
seven countries which leader would do
the right thing when it came to world
affairs. They chose Xi Jinping over
Donald Trump, twenty­eight per cent
to twenty­two per cent.
Facing criticism for his lack of in­
terest in global leadership, Trump, in
December, issued a national­security
strategy that singled out China and
Russia and declared, “We will raise our
competitive game to meet that chal­
lenge, to protect American interests,
and to advance our values.” But, in his
speech unveiling the strategy, he hailed
his pullout from “job­killing deals such
as the Trans­Pacific Partnership and
the very expensive and unfair Paris cli­
mate accord.” The next day, Roger
Cohen, of the Times, described the
contradictions of Trump’s foreign pol­
icy as a “farce.” Some allies have taken
to avoiding the Administration. “I’ll
tell you, honestly, for a foreigner, in the
past we were used to going to the
White House to get our work done,”
Shivshankar Menon, India’s former
foreign secretary and national­security
• •
adviser to the Prime Minister, told me.
“Now we go to the corporations, to teenth Party Congress, held in Octo­ option for other countries,” calling this
Congress, to the Pentagon, wherever.” ber, had the spirit of a coronation, in alternative to Western democracy the
On his recent visit to Washington, which the Party declared Xi the “core zhongguo fang’an, the “Chinese solution.”
Prime Minister Lee, of Singapore, said leader,” an honor conferred only three When I arrived in Beijing a few
that the rest of the world can no lon­ other times since the founding of the weeks later, the pipe organ of Chinese
ger pretend to ignore the contrasts be­ nation (on Mao Zedong, Deng, and propaganda was at full force. The state
tween American and Chinese leader­ Jiang Zemin), and added “Xi Jinping press ran a profile of Xi that was effu­
ship. “Since the war, you’ve held the Thought” to its constitution—effec­ sive even by the standards of the form,
peace. You’ve provided security. You’ve tively allowing him to hold power for depicting him as an “unrivalled helms­
opened your markets. You’ve developed life, if he chooses. He enjoys total do­ man,” whose “extensive knowledge of
links across the Pacific,” he said. “And minion over the media: at the formal literature and the arts makes him a
now, with a rising set of players on the unveiling of his new Politburo, the Party consummate communicator in the in­
west coast of the Pacific, where does barred Western news organizations that ternational arena.”The article observed,
America want to go? Do you want to it finds troublesome; when Xi appeared “Xi treats everyone with sincerity,
be engaged?” He went on, “If you are on front pages across the country, his warmth, attentiveness, and forthright­
not there, then everybody else in the visage was a thing of perfection, air­ ness.” It quoted a Russian linguist who
world will look around and say, I want brushed by Party “news workers” to the had translated his Party Congress
to be friends with both the U.S. and sheen of a summer peach. speech: “I read from morning till mid­
the Chinese—and the Chinese are For decades, China avoided directly night, even forgetting to have meals.”
ready, and I’ll start with them.” challenging America’s primacy in the Xi has inscribed on his country a rigid
global order, instead pursuing a strategy vision of modernity. A campaign to clean
i Jinping has the kind of Presi­ that Deng, in 1990, called “hide your up “low­end population” has evicted
X dency that Donald Trump might
prefer. Last fall, he started his second
strength and bide your time.” But Xi, in
his speech to the Party Congress, de­
migrant workers from Beijing, and a
campaign against dissent has evicted
term with more unobstructed power clared the dawn of “a new era,” one in the most outspoken intellectuals from
than any Chinese leader since Deng which China moves “closer to center online debate. The Party is reaching
Xiaoping, who died in 1997. The Nine­ stage.” He presented China as “a new deeper into private institutions. Foreign
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 39
universities with programs in China, such
as Duke, have been advised that they
must elevate a Communist Party secre-
tary to a decision-making role on their
local boards of trustees. The Party is en-
couraging dark imaginings about the
outside world: posters warn the public
to “protect national secrets” and to watch
out for “spies.” Beijing is more conve-
nient than it was not long ago, but also
less thrilling; it has gained wealth but
lost some of its improvisational energy.
Until recently, Chinese nationalists
were crowded out by a widespread
desire to be embraced by the outside
world. They see the parallel ascents of
Xi and Trump as cause for celebration,
and accuse “white lotuses,” their term
for Chinese liberals, of sanctimony and
intolerance. They reject political correct-
ness in issues of race and worry about
Islamic extremism. (Muslims, though
they make up less than two per cent of
China’s population, are the objects of fe-
vered animosity on its Internet.) Last
June, Yao Chen, one of China’s most
popular actresses, received a barrage of
criticism online after she tried to raise
awareness of the global refugee crisis.
(She was forced to clarify that she was
not calling for China to accept refugees.)
Back in 2008, I met a jittery young
conservative named Rao Jin, a con-
trarian on the fringes of Chinese poli-
tics. Long before Trump launched
his campaign or railed against the
media, Rao created a Web site called
Anti-CNN.com, which was dedicated
to criticizing Western news coverage.
Over lunch in Beijing recently, he ex-
uded calm vindication. “Things that we
used to push are now mainstream,” not
only in China but globally, he said. In
Rao’s view, Trump’s “America First”
slogan is an honest declaration, a real-
ist vision stripped of false altruism and
piety. “From his perspective, America’s
interests come first,” Rao said. “To Chi-
nese people, this is a big truth, and you
can’t deny it.” Rao has watched versions
of his ideas gain strength in Russia,
France, Great Britain, and the United
States. “In this world, power speaks,” he
said, making a fist, a gesture that Trump
adopted in his Inauguration speech and
Xi displayed in a photo taken at the
start of his new term.
China’s leaders rarely air their views
about an American President, but
well-connected scholars—the ranking
instituteniks of Beijing and Shanghai
and Guangzhou—can map the con-
tours of their assessments. Yan Xue-
tong is the dean of Tsinghua Univer-
sity’s Institute of Modern International
Relations. At sixty-five, Yan is bouncy
and trim, with short silver hair and a
roaring laugh. When I arrived at his
office one evening, he donned a black
wool cap and coat, and we set off into
the cold. Before I could ask a question,
he said, “I think Trump is America’s
Gorbachev.” In China, Mikhail Gor-
bachev is known as the leader who led
an empire to collapse. “The United
States will suffer,” he warned.
Over a dinner of dumplings, tofu,
and stir-fried pork, Yan said that Amer-
ica’s strength must be measured partly
by its ability to persuade: “American
leadership has already dramatically de-
clined in the past ten months. In 1991,
when Bush, Sr., launched the war against
Iraq, it got thirty-four countries to join
the war effort. This time, if Trump
launched a war against anyone, I doubt
he would get support from even five
countries. Even the U.S. Congress is
trying to block his ability to start a nu-
clear war against North Korea.” For
Chinese leaders, Yan said, “Trump is the
biggest strategic opportunity.” I asked
Yan how long he thought the opportu-
nity would last. “As long as Trump stays
in power,” he replied.
he leadership in Beijing did not
T always have this view of Trump.
In the years leading up to the 2016
election, it had adopted a confronta-
tional posture toward the United
States. Beijing worked with Washing-
ton on climate change and on the Iran
nuclear deal, but tensions were build-
ing: China was hacking U.S. indus-
trial secrets, building airports on top
of reefs and rocks in the South China
Sea, creating obstacles for American
firms investing in China, blocking
American Internet businesses, and de-
nying visas to American scholars and
journalists. During the campaign,
China specialists in both parties called
on the next President to strengthen
alliances across Asia and to step up
pressure on Beijing.
When Trump won, the Party “was
in a kind of shock,” Michael Pillsbury,
a former Pentagon aide and the author
of “The Hundred-Year Marathon,” a
2015 account of China’s global ambitions,
told me. “They feared that he was their
mortal enemy.” The leadership drafted
potential strategies for retaliation, in-
cluding threatening American compa-
nies in China and withholding invest-
ment from the districts of influential
members of Congress.
Most of all, they studied Trump.
Kevin Rudd, the former Prime Min-
ister of Australia, who is in contact
with leaders in Beijing, told me, “Since
the Chinese were stunned that Trump
was elected, they were intrinsically
respectful of how he could’ve achieved
it. An entire battery of think tanks was
set to work, to analyze how this had
occurred and how Trump had negoti-
ated his way through to prevail.”
Before he entered the White House,
China started assembling a playbook
for dealing with him. Shen Dingli,
a foreign-affairs specialist at Fudan
University, in Shanghai, explained that
Trump is “very similar to Deng Xiao-
ping,” the pragmatic Party boss who
opened China to economic reform.
“Deng Xiaoping said, ‘Whatever can
make China good is a good “ism.” ’ He
doesn’t care if it’s capitalism. For Trump,
it’s all about jobs,” Shen said.
The first test came less than a month
after the election, when Trump took a
call from Taiwan’s President, Tsai Ing-
wen. “Xi Jinping was angry,” Shen said.
“But Xi Jinping made a great effort not
to create a war of words.” Instead, a
few weeks later, Xi revealed a power-
ful new intercontinental ballistic mis-
sile. “It sends a message: I have this—
what do you want to do?” Shen said.
“Meantime, he sends Jack Ma”—the
founder of the e-commerce giant Ali-
baba—“to meet with Trump in New
York, offering one million jobs through
Alibaba.” Shen went on, “China knows
Trump can be unpredictable, so we
have weapons to make him predict-
able, to contain him. He would trade
Taiwan for jobs.”
Inside the new White House, there
were two competing strategies on China.
One, promoted by Stephen Bannon,
then the chief strategist, wanted the
President to take a hard line, even at the
risk of a trade war. Bannon often de-
scribed China as a “civilizational chal-
lenge.” The other view was associated
with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law
and adviser, who had received guidance
from Henry Kissinger and met repeat-
edly with the Chinese Ambassador, Cui
Tiankai. Kushner argued for a close,
collegial bond between Xi and Trump,
and he prevailed.
He and Rex Tillerson, the Secre-
tary of State, arranged for Trump and
Xi to meet at Mar-a-Lago on April
7th, for a cordial get-to-know-you
summit. To set the tone, Trump
presented two of Kushner
and Ivanka Trump’s chil-
dren, Arabella and Joseph,
who sang “Jasmine Flower,”
a classic Chinese ballad,
and recited poetry. While
Xi was at the resort, the
Chinese government ap-
proved three trademark
applications from Ivanka’s
company, c learing the
way for her to sell jewelry,
handbags, and spa services in China.
Kushner has faced scrutiny for po-
tential conflicts of interest arising from
his China diplomacy and his family’s
businesses. During the transition, Kush-
ner dined with Chinese business exec-
utives while the Kushner Companies
was seeking their investment in a Man-
hattan property. (After that was re-
vealed in news reports, the firm ended
the talks.) In May, Kushner’s sister, Ni-
cole Kushner Meyer, was found to have
mentioned his White House position
while she courted investors during a
trip to China. The Kushner Compa-
nies apologized.
During the Mar-a-Lago meetings,
Chinese officials noticed that, on some
of China’s most sensitive issues, Trump
did not know enough to push back.
“Trump is taking what Xi Jinping says
at face value—on Tibet, Taiwan, North
Korea,” Daniel Russel, who was, until
March, the Assistant Secretary of State
for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told
me. “That was a big lesson for them.”
Afterward, Trump conceded to the Wall
Street Journal how little he understood
about China’s relationship to North
Korea: “After listening for ten minutes,
I realized it’s not so easy.”
Russel spoke to Chinese officials
after the Mar-a-Lago visit. “The Chi-
nese felt like they had Trump’s num-
ber,” he said. “Yes, there is this random,
unpredictable Ouija-board quality to
him that worries them, and they have
to brace for some problems, but, fun-
damentally, what they said was ‘He’s a
paper tiger.’ Because he hasn’t delivered
on any of his threats. There’s no wall
on Mexico. There’s no repeal of health
care. He can’t get the Congress to back
him up. He’s under investigation.”
After the summit, the Pangoal
Institution, a Beijing think tank, pub-
lished an analysis of the Trump Ad-
ministration, describing it
as a den of warring “cliques,”
the most influential of
which was the “Trump fam-
ily clan.” The Trump clan
appears to “directly influ-
ence final decisions” on busi-
ness and diplomacy in a way
that “has rarely been seen
in the political history of
the United States,” the an-
alyst wrote. He summed it
up using an obscure phrase from feu-
dal China: jiatianxia—“to treat the state
as your possession.”
fter Mar-a-Lago, Trump heaped
A praise on Xi. “We had a great
chemistry, I think. I mean, at least I
had a great chemistry—maybe he didn’t
like me, but I think he liked me,” he
said on the Fox Business Network.
Meanwhile, Chinese analysts were
struggling to keep up with the news
about the rise and fall of White House
advisers. Following a report that Til-
lerson had disparaged the President’s
intelligence, Shen, of Fudan Univer-
sity, asked me, “What is a moron?”
By early November, Trump was pre-
paring for his first trip to Beijing. Some
China specialists in the U.S. government
saw it as a chance to press on substan-
tive issues. “We have to start standing up
for our interests, because they have come
farther, and faster, than people thought,
pretty much without anyone waking up
to it,” a U.S. official involved in planning
the visit told me. Among other things,
the U.S. wanted China to open up areas
of its economy, such as cloud computing,
to foreign competitors; crack down on
the theft of intellectual property; and stop
forcing American firms to transfer tech-
nology as a condition for entry to the
Chinese market. “It is time for a sense of
urgency,” the official said.
Cui Tiankai, the Chinese Ambas-
sador to Washington, billed Trump’s
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 41
visit as a “state visit plus.” An Ameri-
can with high-level contacts in Beijing
told me that they planned to “wow him
with five thousand years of Chinese
history. They believe he is uniquely sus-
ceptible to that.”
The strategy had worked before.
In the mid-nineteen-eighties, the
C.I.A. commissioned a China scholar
named Richard Solomon to write a
handbook for American leaders, “Chi-
nese Political Negotiating Behavior.”
Solomon, whose study was later de-
classified, noted that some of China’s
most effective techniques were best
described in the nineteenth century,
when a Manchu prince named Qi-
ying recorded his preferred approach.
“Barbarians,” Qiying noted, respond
well to “receptions and entertainment,
after which they have had a feeling of
appreciation.” Solomon warned that
modern Chinese leaders “use the trap-
pings of imperial China” to “impress
foreign officials with their grandeur
and seriousness of purpose.” Solomon
advised, “Resist the flattery of being an
‘old friend’ or the sentimentality that
Chinese hospitality readily evokes.”
(Henry Kissinger, he wrote, once
gushed to his hosts, “After a dinner of
Peking duck I’ll agree to anything.”)
Following the Nineteenth Party
Congress, Trump marvelled at Xi’s new
power. “Now some people might call
him the king of China,” he told an in-
terviewer, shortly before his trip. Trump
arrived in more modest standing. A
few hours before his plane touched
down, on November 8th, Republicans
were thumped in state elections, los-
ing governors’ races in Virginia and
New Jersey. His approval rating was
thirty-seven per cent, the lowest of any
President at that point in his tenure
since Gallup started measuring it. Three
former aides had been charged with
felonies in the investigation into Rus-
sian interference in the 2016 election.
It was the first summit since 1972 in
which the American President had less
leverage and political security than his
Chinese counterpart.
Xi deftly flattered his guest. Upon
Trump’s arrival, they took a sunset tour
of the Forbidden City. They drank tea,
watched an opera performance at the
Pavilion of Pleasant Sounds, and ad-
mired an antique gold urn. The next
42 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
morning, at the Great Hall of the Peo-
ple, Trump was greeted by an even more
lavish ceremony, with Chinese military
bands, the firing of cannons, and
throngs of schoolchildren, who waved
colored pompoms and yelled, in Chi-
nese, “Uncle Trump!” Government cen-
sors struck down critical comments
about Trump on social media.
Trump and Xi met for several hours
and then appeared before the press.
“The hosting of the military parade
this morning was magnificent,” Trump
said, and he praised Xi as a “highly re-
spected and powerful representative
of his people.” He mentioned the need
to coöperate with regard to North
Korea, and to fix an “unfair” trade re-
lationship, but he said nothing about
intellectual property or market access.
“I don’t blame China,” Trump said.
“Who can blame a country for being
able to take advantage of another coun-
try for the benefit of its citizens?” There
were gasps from business leaders and
journalists. “I give China great credit.”
Some Chinese members of the audi-
ence cheered. Xi and Trump took no
questions from the press.
In preparations for Trump’s meet-
ing with Xi, the State Department had
urged the President to bring up a hu-
man-rights case: that of the poet Liu
Xia, the widow of the late Nobel lau-
reate Liu Xiaobo, who is under house
arrest, without charges. According to two
U.S. officials, Trump never mentioned it.
Trump’s deference to Xi—the trib-
utes and tender musings about chem-
istry—sent a message to other coun-
tries that are debating whether to tilt
toward the U.S. or China. Daniel Rus-
sel said, “The American President is
here. He’s looking in awe at the For-
bidden City. He’s looking in awe at Xi
Jinping, and he’s choosing China be-
cause of its market, because of its power.
If you thought that America was going
to choose you and these ‘old-fashioned’
treaties and twentieth-century values,
instead of Xi Jinping and the Chinese
market, well, think again.”
n concrete terms, why does it matter
Ivances?
if America retreats and China ad-
One realm in which the effects
are visible is technology, where Chi-
nese and American companies are com-
peting not simply for profits but also
to shape the rules concerning privacy,
fairness, and censorship. China bars
eleven of the world’s twenty-five most
popular Web sites—including Google,
YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia—
because it fears they will dominate local
competitors or amplify dissent. The
Chinese government has promoted
that approach under a doctrine that it
calls “cyber-sovereignty.” In Decem-
ber, China hosted an Internet confer-
ence that attracted American C.E.O.s
such as Tim Cook, of Apple, even
though China has forced Apple to re-
move apps that allow users to circum-
vent the “Great Firewall.”
In Beijing, I hailed a cab and headed
to the northwest corner of the city, where
a Chinese company called SenseTime
is working on facial recognition, a field
at the intersection of science and in-
dividual rights. The company was
founded in 2014 by Tang Xiao’ou, a
computer scientist who trained at
M.I.T. and returned to Hong Kong to
teach. (For years, China’s startups lagged
behind those in Silicon Valley. But there
is more parity now. Of the forty-one
private companies worldwide that
reached “unicorn” status in 2017—mean-
ing they had valuations of a billion dol-
lars or more—fifteen are Chinese and
seventeen are American.)
SenseTime’s offices have a sleek, in-
dustrial look. Nobody wears an iden-
tification badge, because cameras rec-
ognize employees, causing doors to
open. I was met there by June Jin, the
chief marketing officer, who earned an
M.B.A. at the University of Chicago
and worked at Microsoft, Apple, and
Tesla. Jin walked me over to a display
of lighthearted commercial uses of
facial-recognition technology. I stepped
before a machine, which resembled a
slender A.T.M., that assessed my “hap-
piness” and other attributes, guessed
that I am a thirty-three-year-old male,
and, based on that information, played
me an advertisement for skateboard-
ing attire. When I stepped in front of
it again, it revised its calculation to
forty-one years old, and played me an
ad for liquor. (I was, at the time, forty.)
The machines are used in restaurants
to entertain waiting guests. But they
contain a hidden element of artifi-
cial intelligence as well: images are
collected and compared with a facial
database of V.I.P. customers. “A waiter
or waitress comes up and maybe we
get you a seat,” Jin said. “That’s the
beauty of A.I.”
Next, Jin showed me how the tech-
nology is used by police. She said, “We
work very closely with the Public Se-
curity Bureau,” which applies Sense-
Time’s algorithms to millions of photo
I.D.s. As a demonstration, using the
company’s employee database, a video
screen displayed a live feed of a busy
intersection nearby. “In real time, it
captures all the attributes of the cars
and pedestrians,” she said. On an ad-
joining screen, a Pac-Man-like trail
indicated a young man’s movements
around the city, based only on his face.
Jin said, “It can match a suspect with “F.Y.I., sweetie, bears are attracted to drama.”
a criminal database. If the similarity
level is over a certain threshold, then • •
they can make an arrest on the spot.”
She continued, “We work with more
than forty police bureaus nationwide. people from stealing toilet paper; it reductions in the funding of basic-
Guangdong Province is always very limits users to sixty centimetres within science research will help China over-
open-minded and embracing tech- a nine-minute period. take the U.S. in artificial intelligence
nology, so, last year alone, we helped Before Trump took office, the Chi- within a decade. “By 2020, they will
the Guangdong police bureau solve nese government was far outspending have caught up. By 2025, they will be
many crimes.” the U.S. in the development of the types better than us. By 2030, they will dom-
In the U.S., where police depart- of artificial intelligence with benefits inate the industries of A.I.,” he said.
ments and the F.B.I. are adopting com- for espionage and security. According Schmidt, who chairs the Defense In-
parable technology, facial recognition to In-Q-Tel, an investment arm of the novation Advisory Board, added that
has prompted congressional debates United States intelligence community, the ban on visitors from Iran was an
about privacy and policing. The courts the U.S. government spent an estimated obstacle to technology development.
have yet to clarify when a city or a $1.2 billion on unclassified A.I. pro- “Iran produces some of the top com-
company can track a person’s face. grams in 2016. The Chinese govern- puter scientists in the world. I want
Under what conditions can biomet- ment, in its current five-year plan, has them here. I want them working for
ric data be used to find suspects of a committed a hundred and fifty billion Alphabet and Google. It’s crazy not
crime, or be sold to advertisers? In Xi dollars to A.I. to let these people in.”
Jinping’s China, which values order The Trump Administration’s pro-
over the rights of the individual, there posed 2018 budget would cut scien- hina’s effort to extend its reach has
are few such debates. In the city of
Shenzhen, the local government uses
tific research by fifteen per cent, or
$11.1 billion. That includes a ten-per-
C been so rapid that it is fuelling a
backlash. Australian media have un-
facial recognition to deter jaywalkers. cent decrease in the National Science covered efforts by China’s Communist
(At busy intersections, it posts their Foundation’s spending on “intelligent Party to influence Australia’s govern-
names and I.D. pictures on a screen systems.” In November, Eric Schmidt, ment. In December, Sam Dastyari, a
at the roadside.) In Beijing, the gov- then the chairman of Alphabet, told member of the Australian Senate, re-
ernment uses facial-recognition ma- the Artificial Intelligence & Global signed after revelations that he warned
chines in public rest rooms to stop Security Summit, in Washington, that one of his donors, a businessman tied
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 43
to China’s foreign-influence efforts, that
his phone was likely tapped by intelli-
gence agencies. Australia’s Prime Min-
ister, Malcolm Turnbull, announced a
ban on foreign political donations, cit-
ing “disturbing reports about Chinese
influence.”
In August, Cambridge University
Press, in Britain, caused an uproar
among scholars after it removed from
one of its Chinese Web sites more than
three hundred academic articles that
mentioned sensitive topics, such as the
crackdown at Tiananmen Square, in
an effort to satisfy China’s censors.
Cambridge abandoned the move. (An-
other academic publisher, Springer Na-
ture, defended its decision to censor it-
self, saying that it was necessary “to
prevent a much greater impact on our
customers and authors.”)
Foreign governments and human-
rights groups have expressed alarm that
Beijing is pursuing critics beyond its
borders and bringing them to main-
land China for detention. One night
last January, unidentified men escorted
a Chinese-Canadian billionaire, Xiao
Jianhua, from a Hong Kong hotel, in
a wheelchair, with a sheet over his head.
“I just need a few minutes with the auto-sensor to
regain my illusion of control.”
(His whereabouts are unknown.) In
several cases, beginning in 2015, the
publishers of books critical of China’s
leaders were abducted from Hong Kong
and Thailand, without public extradi-
tion procedures.
Across Asia, there is wariness of Chi-
na’s intentions. Under the Belt and Road
Initiative, it has loaned so much money
to its neighbors that critics liken the
debt to a form of imperialism. When
Sri Lanka couldn’t repay loans on a deep-
water port, China took majority own-
ership of the project, stirring protests
about interference in Sri Lanka’s sover-
eignty. China also has a reputation for
taking punitive economic action when
a smaller country offends its politics.
After the Nobel Prize was awarded to
the dissident Liu Xiaobo, China stopped
trade talks with Norway for nearly seven
years; during a territorial dispute with
the Philippines, China cut off banana
imports; in a dispute with South Korea,
it restricted tourism and closed Korean
discount stores.
In Beijing’s political circles, some
strategists worry that their leaders risk
moving too fast to fill the void created
by America’s withdrawal from its global
role. I dropped by to see one of the city’s
wisest observers of America, Jia Qing-
guo, the dean of the Department of Di-
plomacy at Peking University. “The U.S.
is not losing leadership. You’re giving it
up. You’re not even selling it,” he said.
“It seems Donald Trump’s view is: if
China can take a free ride, why can’t
we? But the problem is that the U.S. is
too big. If you ride for free, then the bus
will collapse. Maybe the best solution
is for China to help the U.S. drive the
bus. The worse scenario is that China
drives the bus when it’s not ready. It’s
too costly and it doesn’t have enough
experience.” Jia, who has a wry smile
and a thick head of graying hair, said
that universities have not had enough
time to train scholars in areas that China
is now expected to navigate: “In the past,
the outside world was very far away.
Now it’s very close. But the change hap-
pened too fast to digest.”
Joseph Nye, the Harvard political
scientist who coined the term “soft
power,” to describe the use of ideas and
attraction rather than force, told me
that China has improved its ability to
persuade—up to a point. “American
soft power comes heavily from our civil
society, everything from Hollywood to
Harvard and the Gates Foundation,”
he said. “China still doesn’t understand
that. They still haven’t opened that up.
I think that is going to hurt them in
the longer term.” Nye predicts that
Trump’s unpopularity will not erase
America’s soft-power advantage, ex-
cept under certain conditions. “Prob-
ably he won’t be seen as a turning point
in American history but will be seen
as a blip, another one of the strange
characters that our political process
throws up, like Joe McCarthy or George
Wallace,” he said. “Two things could
make me wrong. One is if he gets us
into a major war. The second is if he
gets reëlected and winds up doing dam-
age to our checks and balances or our
reputation as a democratic society. I
don’t think those are likely, but I don’t
have enough confidence in my judg-
ment to assure you.”
At the White House, aides said that
late last year a two-tiered strategy took
hold, in which the President will seek
to maintain congenial relations with Xi
while lower-ranking officials introduce
hard-line measures. By the end of 2017,
the State Department, the National Se-
curity Council, and other agencies were
considering policies to push back on
China’s influence operations, trade prac-
tices, and efforts to shape the technol-
ogy of the future. Michael Green, who
was George W. Bush’s chief adviser on
Asia, told me, “They’re looking at it like
it’s a war plan: working with the allies,
working with members of Congress.”
In its national-security strategy, the
Administration suggested that, to stop
the theft of trade secrets, it could re-
strict visas to foreigners who travel to
the U.S. to study science, engineer-
ing, math, and technology; it dedi-
cated itself to a “free and open Indo-
Pacific,” which, in practice, will likely
expand military coöperation with
India, Japan, and Australia. Robert
Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Represen-
tative, is considering several potential
tariffs in order to punish China for
its alleged theft of intellectual prop-
erty and dumping of exports on U.S.
markets. “We’re not looking for a trade
war,” a senior White House official
involved in China issues told me. “But
the President fully believes that we
have to stand up to China’s predatory
industrial policies that have hollowed
out U.S. manufacturing and, increas-
ingly, high-tech sectors.”
If the White House takes such ac-
tions, they could collide with Trump’s
admiring relationship with Xi. In the
meantime, many China specialists
describe the Administration’s approach
as inchoate. In the first eleven months
of Trump’s Presidency, none of his
Cabinet secretaries had given a major
speech on China. The post of Assis-
tant Secretary of State for East Asian
and Pacific Affairs, the State Depart-
ment’s top job for the region—once
held by W. Averell Harriman, Richard
Holbrooke, and Christopher Hill—
remained unfilled. David Lampton, the
director of China studies at the School
of Advanced International Studies, at
Johns Hopkins, told me, “I think this
is like a bunch of drunks in a car fight-
ing for the steering wheel.”
Inonandonedozens of interviews in China
the U.S., I encountered almost
who expects China to sup-
plant the U.S. anytime soon in its role
as the world’s preëminent power. Be-
yond China’s economic obstacles, its
political system—including con-
straints on speech, religion, civil so-
ciety, and the Internet—drives away
some of the country’s boldest and
most entrepreneurial thinkers. Xi’s
system inspires envy from autocrats,
but little admiration from ordinary
citizens around the world. And for all
of Xi’s talk of a “Chinese solution,”
and the glorious self-
portrait in “Wolf Warrior
II,” China has yet to mount
serious responses to global
problems, such as the ref-
ugee crisis or Syria’s civil
war. Global leadership is
costly; it means asking your
people to contribute to
others’ well-being, to send
young soldiers to die far
from home. In 2015, when
Xi pledged billions of dollars in loan
forgiveness and additional aid for Af-
rican nations, some in China grum-
bled that their country was not yet
rich enough to do that. China is not
“seeking to replace us in the same po-
sition as a kind of chairman of planet
Earth,” Daniel Russel said. “They have
no intention of emulating the U.S. as
a provider of global goods or as an
arbiter who teases out universal prin-
ciples and common rules.”
More likely, the world is entering
an era without obvious leaders, an “age
of nonpolarity,” as Richard Haass, the
president of the Council on Foreign
Relations, has described it, in which
nationalist powers—China, the U.S.,
Russia—contend with non-state groups
of every moral stripe, from Doctors
Without Borders to Facebook, and
ExxonMobil to Boko Haram. It is nat-
ural for Americans to mourn that pros-
pect, but Shivshankar Menon, India’s
former foreign secretary, suspects that
the U.S. will retain credibility and lead-
ership. “The U.S. is the only power
that I know of which is capable of
turning on a dime, with a process of
self-examination,” he said. “Within
two years of entering Iraq, there were
people within the system saying, ‘Are
we doing the right thing?’ ” He has
seen the country recover before: “Three
times just in my lifetime. I was in the
U.S. in ’68, on the West Coast. I’ve seen
what the U.S. did in the eighties to re-
invent itself. What it did after 2008 is
remarkable. For me, this comes and
goes. The U.S. can afford it.”
Menon continued, “I think we’re
going back to actually the historic
norm, separate multiverses, rather than
one, which was an exception. If you
go back to the concept of Europe in
the nineteenth century, people basi-
cally lived in different worlds and had
very controlled interactions
with each other. China is
not going to take respon-
sibility for everything that
happens in the Middle
East or South America.”
In small ways, Menon said,
we live this way already.
“Technology has made it
easy, because iTunes keeps
selling you more of the
same music—it doesn’t
keep exposing you to something new.
When you go to Beijing, you still lis-
ten to your own music, and you’re ac-
tually in your own bubble. So it’s a
historical aberration and a rarity, where
you say you’re ‘globalized.’ But what
does that mean?”
Late one afternoon in November, I
went to see a professor in Beijing who
has studied the U.S. for a long time.
America’s recent political turmoil has
disoriented him. “I’m struggling with
this a lot,” he said, and poured me a
cup of tea. “I love the United States. I
used to think that the multicultural-
ism of the U.S. might work here. But,
if it doesn’t work there, then it won’t
work here.” In his view, the original
American bond is dissolving. “In the
past, you kept together because of com-
mon values that you call freedom,” he
said. Emerging in its place is a cynical,
zero-sum politics, a return to blood
and soil, which privileges interests above
inspiration.
In that sense, he observed, the big-
gest surprise in the relationship between
China and the United States is their
similarity. In both countries, people who
are infuriated by profound gaps in wealth
and opportunity have pinned their hopes
on nationalist, nostalgic leaders, who
encourage them to visualize threats from
the outside world. “China, Russia, and
the U.S. are moving in the same direc-
tion,” he said. “They’re all trying to be
great again.” 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 45
China bulldozed mountains and razed villages to build the glittering skyscrapers of Lanzhou New Area, a city that has recently
46 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
 PORTFOLIO

A NEW SILK ROAD

China is investing billions in building pathways
to Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVIDE MONTELEONE

sprung up in western China. It features replicas of the Great Sphinx and the Parthenon, as well as a dinosaur-themed water park.
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 47
 he Silk Road was established during the
T Han dynasty, beginning around 130 B.C.
Markets and trading posts were strung
along a loose skein of thoroughfares that ran from
the Greco-Roman metropolis of Antioch, across
the Syrian desert, through modern-day Iraq and
Iran, to the former Chinese capital of Xian, stream-
lining the transport of livestock and grain, med-
icine and science. In 2013, President Xi Jinping
announced that the Silk Road would be reborn
as the Belt and Road Initiative, the most ambi-
tious infrastructure project the world has ever
known—and the most expensive. Its expected cost
is more than a trillion dollars. When complete,
the Belt and Road will connect, by China’s ac-
counting, sixty-five per cent of the world’s popu-
lation and thirty per cent of global G.D.P. So far,
sixty-eight countries have signed on.
If bridges, pipelines, and railroads are the ar-
teries of the modern world, then China is posi-
tioning itself as the beating heart. Since 2013, it
has loaned about forty billion dollars a year to de-
veloping countries, according to David Dollar, a
senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Some
analysts worry that China is delivering the money
without the World Bank’s required protections
for the environment and for people uprooted by
major infrastructure projects. Nevertheless, Lee
Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore,
said that he and other leaders in the region em-
brace the benefits. “The Chinese are going to grow
their influence,” he said, at a recent session of the
Council on Foreign Relations. “And this is one
coherent framework within which the Asian coun-
tries—Central Asian, Southeast Asian, South
Asian—can participate in this.”
Like most Chinese official-speak, the phrase
“Belt and Road” obscures more than it clarifies: the
“belt” will be composed of land routes running from
China to Scandinavia, the Iberian Peninsula, and
the Middle East; the “road” refers to shipping lanes
connecting China to Southeast Asia, the Middle
East, and Africa. In the fall, the photographer Da-
vide Monteleone traced stretches of one of the land
routes, travelling from Yiwu, in the southeastern
province of Zhejiang, to Khorgos, home to one of
the world’s largest dry ports, and to Aktau, in Ka-
zakhstan, on the Caspian Sea. Few of the Chinese
whom Monteleone encountered, from shopkeep-
ers to restaurant owners to railwaymen, had much
interest in the Belt and Road Initiative. “What con-
cerns us is what puts money in our pocket tomor-
row, not an abstraction three, five years from now,”
a worker in Lanzhou New Area, in northwestern
China, told Monteleone.
In Chongqing, an inland city of eight million,
and “kilometre zero” of a new international rail-
way, Monteleone rode a ferry on the Yangtze River,
in order to capture a panorama of the city. “It’s
dazzling, foggy, monstrous, compressed, and ex-
pansive,” he told me. Fifty-one towers have been
built in the past three years. Looking at Monte-
leone’s photographs, I tried to find a familiar shape
in the neon skyline of the city where I was born,
but I recognized nothing, except the dark waters
of the Yangtze, rippling in the foreground.
—Jiayang Fan
Ten years ago, Su Xiaolan moved to Turpan, China, an important trading post along the ancient Silk Road.
Chongqing, one of China’s fastest-growing cities, is the starting point of a seven-thousand-mile railway to Europe.
The Lanzhou-Xinjiang railway required three hundred miles of windproof walls to shield it from gales in the Gobi Desert.
The trade market in Yiwu, in eastern China, covers two square miles and contains more than seventy-five thousand mini-showrooms.
Freight trains now carry goods from Yiwu across Central Asia to Tehran, Prague, Madrid, and London.
The Western Europe–western China expressway will run from the Baltic Sea in Russia to the Yellow Sea in China.
Thousands of people have moved to the once empty expanse of sand around Khorgos, Kazakhstan, to build a new trade hub.
Workers harvest cotton in Turkestan, in southern Kazakhstan. The city was an important stop for the ancient caravan trade, and
its location puts it at the heart of the planned network of roads and rails connecting China to the West.
 FICTION

58 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 PHOTOGRAPH BY FARAH AL QASIMI

 n Connecticut, Hassan shared a
I desk with a woman—a girl, really.
Later, this would be what he remem-
bered most about the job, long after the
inconvenience of his morning commute,
the banality of his days spent making
spreadsheets, and the mediocrity of the
cafeteria had faded from memory. He
would remember Hina the way he saw
her on her first day. The crunched, fo-
cussed expression on her small, sharp face
as she claimed her half of the desk, a
purse over one arm and a duffelbag over
the other, a light sheen of perspiration
on her upper lip, a dark-gray head scarf
wound tightly around her head and fixed
above her right ear with a long, silver pin.
Hina nodded at Hassan in greeting
and then took a brass-colored name-
plate out of her purse, placing it care-
fully on her side of the desk. It was the
kind of thing you might order from a
mall kiosk that specialized in mono-
grammed gifts.
“My name is Hina Bhati,” she said,
pointing at the nameplate, in case he
hadn’t noticed it.
“Yes, I see that,” Hassan said.
Hassan had been at the bank eight
weeks. Long enough to know that there
was a slow way he could take from the
men’s room back to his cubicle, a route
that killed off three minutes of the work
day. Long enough to learn that casual
Fridays meant khakis, not jeans. Long
enough to feel that the two-person,
T-shaped desk he’d been assigned to
was his alone. Hina Bhati looked to be
in her early twenties, at least seven or
eight years younger than he was. Why
on earth were they sharing a desk?
Hina had an accounting degree from
SUNY Albany, a fact that he learned from
the diploma she hung on the wall next
to her computer, tapping a tiny nail into
the plaster with a miniature, purse-size
hammer. On her desk she arranged a
tissue box with a crocheted cover, a small,
iridescent vase with three silk flowers,
and a sturdy, expensive-looking ball-
point pen. She put several large com-
puter manuals on the floor and stood
on top of them in order to reach the
high shelf above her desk. There she
placed her Quran, swaddled in a ma-
roon velvet cover and decorated with
multicolored ribbons. Once her belong-
ings were in order, she tucked an imag-
inary hair inside her scarf and raised the
height of her chair until her feet didn’t
touch the floor. Hassan noticed that she
swung her heels back and forth as she
talked, as a child might.
“So,” she began, fixing him with a
flat stare, “we might as well get to know
each other. Where are you from and
how long have you been at the bank?”
He could guess from Hina’s accent
that she had grown up in the States,
and from her features, her coloring, and
her name that she was likely Pakistani.
Was this, he wondered, why they had
been assigned the same desk? The two
Pakistanis? The thought irked him. He
could already tell how little they had
in common.
Working in Stamford hadn’t been
part of Hassan’s original plan. When he
first came to the U.S., he had worked
as a senior analyst at Citigroup in New
York, a job he had held for seven months
before being laid off, after which he’d
had to scramble to get a new position
before the grace period on his H-1B ran
out. In a few months, the Americans
would elect a new President, and the
news was filled with talk of Muslims—
which ones you could trust, which ones
should be registered or accounted for.
He felt lucky to have found the posi-
tion in Stamford, even though it had
meant a pay cut and a relocation. He
didn’t mention any of this to Hina. In-
stead, he told her that he and his wife,
Sara, were originally from Karachi and
loved the peace and quiet they had found
in Connecticut.
Hina told him that she was from Al-
bany but her parents were from Guj-
ranwala, Pakistan. She had travelled to
her ancestral home only once, as a teen-
ager. Gujranwala struck Hassan as the
kind of second-tier industrial city you
visited only if you had a specific reason.
He had gone there once for a cricket
match with his college team. “What did
you think of it?” Hassan asked, amused
at the thought of Hina attempting to
navigate Gujranwala’s crowded streets.
She seemed to shiver slightly at the
memory, as if trying to shake off the
dust even now.
“It made me grateful to have grown
up in America,” she said.
“You should visit Karachi sometime,”
Hassan said. “I think you’d enjoy it.”
“That doesn’t seem likely,” Hina said,
crinkling up her nose. “The State De-
partment has a Travel Warning for Pa-
kistan now. My father says that we’re
much better off here.”
She reached under the desk and
pulled a prayer rug from her duffelbag.
She explained that she had arranged
with Tom, their team leader, to offer her
daily prayers in the conference room on
the eleventh floor. “Where do you keep
your rug?” she asked.
Hassan shrugged. “I don’t,” he said.
“I mean, not here.” Back home, his re-
ligious practice had been limited to an
annual trip to the masjid for Eid, but
it hardly seemed necessary to explain
this to Hina. Prayer was a personal mat-
ter, in his opinion. Best avoided in the
workplace.
assan and Sara lived just outside
H Stamford in a two-bedroom
apartment with wall-to-wall carpeting
and a faintly musty smell. Of all the
places they’d looked at, this had been
the closest to Hassan’s office. It cost
about half what they’d been paying in
Murray Hill, but there was little else
to recommend it. The modern furni-
ture they’d bought in New York was all
wrong here. Tall, decorative vases that
had once flanked their entryway now
huddled like conspirators in the hall.
When Sara talked about returning to
Manhattan, Hassan nodded. He had a
one-year contract at RBS, and he knew
he’d be lucky to extend it. It was un-
likely that they’d move back to the city
anytime soon. But he didn’t want to
upset her. In New York, there had been
places for Sara to walk to, to explore.
In Stamford, the only place she could
reach on foot was a small, deserted park.
He figured that once she got pregnant
she would spend her time turning the
second bedroom into a nursery. But
that hadn’t happened yet. Sometimes
it just took a while, the doctor had said.
Keep trying; come back in a few months.
Hassan didn’t tell Sara that every time
she got her period he felt a small, tug-
ging sense of relief.
Most evenings, Hassan returned from
work to find Sara in their bedroom, rid-
ing her exercise bike and watching CNN.
Even in the sweatpants and baggy
T-shirts she wore in the apartment, even
in her glasses, even fifteen pounds heavier
than she had been on their wedding day,
three years ago, Sara was still a beautiful
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 59
woman. She had been the most sought-
after girl of his youth. True, this was
perhaps not the America she had signed
up for. But it was still America.
“What have you been up to today?”
Hassan asked, retrieving an empty coffee
mug from the floor. Around Sara’s bike
was a sea of miscellany: piles of papers,
coasters, binders, souvenir mugs, tan-
gled Christmas lights.
“Unpacking,” Sara said, her eyes
glassy, focussed on the television. Has-
san found the election coverage repet-
itive and tiresome—these windbag can-
didates were just like the ones back home,
he argued—but Sara had become fix-
ated. Instead of looking into grad school,
she spent her days tracking every scan-
dal, every erroneous theory, even though
she couldn’t vote.
t the beginning of her second week
A in the office, Hina suggested that
she and Hassan review each other’s work
for errors, sharing files back and forth,
before forwarding them to Tom. They
were working on a prospective buyout, a
deal to purchase a toll road in Indiana.
Some days Tom had them running finan-
cial models; other days he had them pre-
pare his presentations for weekly meet-
ings. Hassan was annoyed that, apart from
a group e-mail chain, he and Hina had
almost no contact with the other ana-
lysts working on the deal. But Hina didn’t
mind. She told Hassan that she liked to
think of herself as Tom’s secret weapon.
FPOÑA21527
“This looks good—a ninety-six-part documentary about everything.”
“Well, he has two secret weapons,
then,” Hassan suggested. “Me and you.”
“Perhaps,” Hina said, as if she didn’t
quite agree.
Hassan made occasional mistakes and
Hina caught them. But Hina’s work was
meticulous. And she was fast.
“Watch out, Hassan! She’s unstoppa-
ble!” Tom said as he passed their desk,
chuckling to himself.
Tom’s compliments made Hina blush
and squirm with pleasure. “Don’t worry,”
she told Hassan one afternoon. “I know
you’re concerned that I’m smarter and
faster than you, but that’s not it.”
“That’s not what?” Hassan asked, bris-
tling. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s just that I have greater at-
tention to detail, that’s all,” Hina said.
“It may be because of the way that I was
taught in school. Instead of using rote
memorization, we were taught cogni-
tive problem solving. My father says
that’s the real advantage of an Ameri-
can education.”
It was difficult not to snap at Hina
when she said things like this. Hassan
tried to compose a witty response, but
he couldn’t come up with anything fast
enough. He excused himself and walked
to the kitchen to get some coffee. From
that point onward, Hassan forwarded
Hina’s work to Tom without checking
it, spending the time he’d saved follow-
ing cricket matches on his smartphone.
That evening over dinner, Hassan
did his best impression of Hina for Sara.
“You see, that’s why American Paki-
stanis like me are superior to Pakistani
Pakistanis like you,” he said, making his
eyes wide and his voice high. He put a
dinner napkin on his head to simulate
Hina’s headscarf, making Sara laugh.
“But there must be something inter-
esting or valuable about her, Hassan,”
Sara said. “Otherwise, how did she get
the job?”
Hassan said that no, Hina was deathly
boring. She was a typical American hi-
jabi. All high and mighty.
very Sunday that summer, Sara and
E Hassan put on their best weekend
clothes—bright blouses and capri pants
for her, polo shirts and pressed khakis
for him—and went to the Ahmeds’
house, in Darien. Mona and Ali Ahmed
were originally from Lahore, friends of
friends back home. They had the assur-
ance of people who had spent two com-
fortable decades on the East Coast: a
wide circle of acquaintances, member-
ship at a local golf club, a time-share in
Naples, Florida. Ali Ahmed was a pe-
diatric gastroenterologist. Mona orga-
nized charity events for the Islamic Cen-
ter in Stamford. Every weekend, they
hosted an open house, a back-yard party
where Pakistani families dropped by with
their kids and ate lunch by the pool.
The Ahmeds’ house was a big white
Colonial with green shutters, framed by
carefully landscaped shrubs and trees.
There was a semicircular driveway and
a four-car garage with a guest apartment
above it. “This is what I imagined Con-
necticut would look like,” Sara said the
first time they drove up to the house,
her eyes opening wider with admiration.
Hassan instinctively tried to find fault
with the house. He knew that it might
be years, a decade even, before they could
afford a place like this. But it was grand,
Hassan had to admit. Like a house in a
movie about a family with a lovable dog.
The Ahmeds’ three sons—seven, nine,
and twelve—were always dressed in
matching outfits, their hair combed and
gelled to one side. The boys were con-
sistently charming and well behaved,
salaaming each guest on arrival and shak-
ing hands, then promptly disappearing
to play on their own. “Those kids are
so impressive,” Sara murmured. “I don’t
know how Mona does it.”
The female guests each contributed
a dish covered in plastic wrap—fresh
shami kebabs, fruit salad, homemade
samosas—which they took to the
kitchen when they arrived so that they
could gossip with Mona. Sara told Has-
san that, as the ladies unwrapped the
dishes, Mona made each one feel as if
she alone were the most important
woman at the party. She touched their
sleeves. She complimented them on
their haircuts. Sara admired Mona—
her impeccable taste, how quickly she
connected with other women—but she
also sensed that the parties were a kind
of audition. For what, she told Has-
san, she wasn’t sure.
Outside in the yard, the husbands
hovered around a large Weber grill, keep-
ing Ali company while he grilled chicken
tikkas. Funny, wasn’t it, Hassan had re-
marked to Sara after their first visit, how
in America these men were so proud of
their barbecuing skills, a task none of
them would have taken on back home.
But Hassan looked up to Ali. The easy
way he interacted with his guests, his salt-
and-pepper hair always in place. Hassan
noticed that Ali rarely offered his own
opinions, instead encouraging other peo-
ple to talk about themselves. People said
that he was an excellent doctor.
On the fourth Sunday in June, Ali
clapped Hassan on the back and passed
him the grill tongs. “H-man,” he said,
“you think you can take care of this while
I go for a swim?”
“Definitely,” Hassan said, smiling.
He turned to the grill, squeezing the
points of the tongs together in one
hand and staring at a platter of raw
chicken legs. He wished that he hadn’t
been the one tapped for this task. He
had never cooked anything more elab-
orate than a fried egg.
Abid, a heavyset banker in his late
forties, sat drinking a beer next to the
grill, watching Hassan with interest.
“You should see the look on your face,
bro. You’d think he just asked you to
deliver a baby. You want me to do it
for you?”
“No, I got it, thanks,” Hassan said,
waving the smoke away from his eyes.
“What did you say you do at RBS,
by the way?” Abid asked, pulling his seat
closer and offering Hassan a drink from
the cooler.
Hassan described the buyout that
he and Hina were working on, trying
to sound knowledgeable about infra-
structure in Indiana. He hoped that
Abid would assume he was higher up
in the pecking order of his group than
he really was. The trouble was that he
found it difficult, while explaining his
job and drinking a beer, to stay focussed
on the chicken. How was he supposed
to know when the meat was done?
When lunch was served
it was clear that much of
the chicken was burned on
the outside and raw in the
middle. Ali told Hassan not
to worry. He placed the most
undercooked pieces back
on the grill, covering them
with the lid, and urged the
guests to go ahead and
start eating the rest of the
meal. Mona looked annoyed.
“Dude, Hassan’s trying to kill us,”
Abid joked.
Hassan glared at him. Sara kicked
Hassan’s shin under the table. Hassan
bit into a drumstick that was clearly too
pink near the bone.
“You’ll get sick, sweetheart,” Sara said
to him under her breath, passing him a
napkin. “Don’t eat that.”
“It’s fine, don’t be silly,” Hassan said,
tearing off a piece of raw chicken with
his teeth. “Not bad at all.”
Sundays gave Hassan and Sara a sense
that Connecticut held possibility, that
they were on a trajectory. True, Ali and
Mona inhabited entire worlds that Has-
san and Sara never entered. The club
where Ali played golf with other doc-
tors, for one. The Islamic Center, where
Mona did her volunteering, a place that
held little interest for either of them.
But at the pool parties Hassan and Sara
felt a sense of rightness. On Sundays,
they felt closest to the people they
wanted to be.
There was never a possibility that
Hassan and Sara could reciprocate the
Ahmeds’ hospitality. The thought of in-
viting the Ahmeds over to their small,
shabby apartment felt ludicrous. And
so each Sunday they chatted with Ali
and Mona and the other guests for a
few moments of real connection, and
went home feeling unsatisfied.
Until one Sunday in August, when
Sara told a lie.
Hassan could tell that she hadn’t
planned to do it. After lunch, Mona asked
her about their current living situation,
what they would do when they had a
baby, if they’d need to move to a bigger
place. Sara mentioned that they were liv-
ing in a two-bedroom apartment near
the office, and Hassan saw Mona frown
slightly. But, Sara added quickly, they had
their eye on a four-bedroom Victorian
in Newfield. They had recently put in an
offer on the place, she con-
tinued, but then the owner
had backed out of the sale.
His adult daughter thought
she might want the house
after all.
“That must be so frus-
trating,” Mona said, fixing
her large, kohl-rimmed eyes
on Sara with sympathy.
“And what do you think
about all this, Hassan?”
“Right, yes,” Hassan murmured, fal-
tering. “I mean, yes, it’s annoying.”
“Oh, we’ll find something else,” Sara
said, her voice confident, pulling Mo-
na’s attention back to her. “I know just
what I want.”
Hassan watched Sara conjure up a
house with her elegant, long-fingered
hands. She used words that he didn’t
know she knew. Cornice. Eave. Gable.
He saw Mona looking at Sara, smiling
at her more. At the end of the day, Mona
handed her a tote bag full of paint chips
and fabric swatches left over from her
most recent redecoration, pointing to
the sage greens and dove grays that she
liked best.
On the drive back to their apartment,
Sara examined the samples, rubbing the
soft fabrics between her thumb and
forefinger. She said the names of the
paint colors aloud: Misty Morning Dew.
Sandy Ridge. Brookside Moss. Hassan
chose his words carefully. He didn’t want
to upset his wife, but as he spoke he
found irritation creeping into his voice.
Now, he said, they’d have to talk about
their imaginary house hunt every Sun-
day. Yes, of course he wanted those
things, too. But Sara’s lie had made him
feel foolish. He was only a few months
into his contract. They were a far cry
away from a four-bedroom Victorian.
Sara looked out the window, the
stack of binders open in her lap.
“Oh, I know all that,” she said.
“Then why?” Hassan asked. “Why
did you say those things?”
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 61
 “Because,” Sara said, her voice be-
coming small, “I can tell what she thinks
of us.”
“What does she think of us?” Has-
san asked, surprised to find that he cared.
“She thinks we’re . . . ordinary,” Sara
said.
Hassan started to interject: What
was wrong, he wanted to argue, with
being ordinary? With fitting in? But
then he stopped himself. In Karachi,
Hassan and Sara had grown up in their
grandfathers’ houses. Their families
had histories that were understood by
their friends, shared by their neigh-
bors. In Connecticut, they were inter-
changeable. Inconsequential. He was
just another analyst. She was just an-
other wife.
Their friendship with the Ahmeds
lasted the twelve weeks of summer.
Then, on Labor Day, while they were
eating lunch, Mona informed Has-
san and Sara that she wouldn’t be hav-
ing the weekly pool party anymore.
Now that the school year was start-
ing, she planned to host a multicul-
tural book club instead. Each week,
the group would read a book from a
different culture and discuss it over
lunch.
“There will be two Irish: they are
called the Foleys. A Jewish surgeon and
his wife. A Korean and some South
Indians.”
“Sara and I could be the Pakistanis,”
Hassan suggested, smiling.
“Oh, but I’m afraid that’s us,” Mona
said, shaking her head with sympathy.
“Ali and I are the Pakistanis in the group.”
ithout the weekly trips to Darien,
W Hassan and Sara’s routine felt
unevenly weighted, off-kilter.They spent
Sundays at the Stamford Town Center
mall, looking at kitchen appliances and
clothes that they didn’t need. They went
out for Chinese food. They drank fla-
vored lattes. They took a scenic drive to
look at fall leaves.
“What’s all the fuss about?” Hassan
asked, squinting out the window as
Sara drove north on I-95. “I mean,
they’re leaves.”
Every morning, Hassan watched
Sara take her temperature and enter the
data into an app on her phone. She
made fertility charts, looking for fluc-
tuations and patterns. She spent hours
62 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
exchanging anonymous messages with
other women trying to conceive. But
still no baby.
ne Monday morning in October,
O Hina came to work with new pins
on her parka. She explained to Hassan
that she had spent the weekend can-
vassing in Pennsylvania with her wom-
en’s group. She had a serious look on
her face, and Hassan wondered, with a
vague sense of dread, if she planned to
give him a lecture on the virtues of
American democracy. He was surprised
when she asked if she could tell him
about her trip.
“I know we’re not . . . friends,” Hina
said, taking her seat and folding her
hands in her lap. “But I feel very dis-
tracted by what happened. Perhaps if
I talk about it I can put it out of my
mind.”
“Be my guest,” Hassan said, closing
his browser, his interest piqued.
Hina described her trip. She ex-
plained how her group had started the
day registering new voters at a shop-
ping center. Then the group had bro-
ken into pairs. Hina and another girl,
Saima, were given a list of names and
addresses of registered Democrats in
a residential neighborhood about five
miles from the mall. There, they went
door to door. It was the middle of the
afternoon and most people weren’t
home. The neighborhood looked very
much like the one in which Hina had
grown up. There were ranch homes.
Minivans in the driveways. American
flags. It felt familiar.
After they had covered a few blocks,
a large white sedan passed the girls
and then circled back, pulling up
alongside them. There were three boys
in the car. They were wearing basket-
ball jerseys. Were they lost? one of
them asked. Did they need directions?
Hina thanked the young man and ex-
plained that they were spending the
afternoon canvassing, talking to reg-
istered Democrats. Were they regis-
tered to vote? she asked. Did they live
in the area? The boy in the passenger
seat was the talker of the group. His
light hair was shaved on the sides and
spiked on top. They were from this
neighborhood, he said. They were all
registered to vote. They would love to
talk further with Hina and her friend.
Why not get in the car and they could
go for a drive? Then they could talk
more comfortably.
Hina said that they’d be happy to
discuss the issues right where they were.
The blond boy persisted, asking if the
girls couldn’t get in the car because it
was against their religion? No, it wasn’t
like that, Hina explained. It was just
that they had work to do. Did they not
trust him? the young man wanted to
know. Hadn’t he been friendly to them,
even though he supported the other
candidate? Yes, he had been friendly,
Hina said. Then they should shake
hands, he said. They should shake hands
as a gesture of friendship. To show that
they could agree to disagree. The boy
offered Hina his hand.
Hina took the boy’s hand and he
grinned at her. Just then his friend
tapped the accelerator and the car
lurched forward. She could hear the
boys laughing as she stumbled. She
shouted at the boy to let her hand go,
but he held on. Then the car moved
again. Her arm snapped back as she fell,
landing on the pavement with a thud.
She heard Saima shouting at the re-
ceding car. Hina lay on the ground, star-
ing at the sky. Her arm felt sore, but it
was nothing, really—she was more star-
tled than injured. What bothered her
was that she had touched that boy. She
hated the fact that she had fallen for
the prank. Once she had calmed down,
she and Saima went to the local police
station.
“What did the police say?” Hassan
asked, leaning across the desk. He made
an effort to look unaffected, but he felt
furious on Hina’s behalf.
“The officer said that if he had a dol-
lar for every time someone behaved badly
he’d be rich. That was it. It’s just—” Hi-
na’s voice broke. She cleared her throat.
“It’s just that I wish I had told those
guys to go fuck themselves.”
Hassan had never heard Hina swear.
He watched her switch on her monitor
and open her purse, remove her phone,
her notebook, and her pen, and place
them in a neat row next to her keyboard.
Hassan could see that telling him her
story had made Hina feel more in con-
trol. But it left him agitated. For the rest
of the day, he found himself looking
over at Hina, studying her small, round
shoulders. He had spent his entire life
 their bed, looking at the mound of
laundry. But he had wondered the same
CENTRAL MAZE thing. How could he not have known?

We are a sucking people . . . we look to week later, Hassan got home from
each other for nourishment . . . Afraid of what
will happen to us if we feed in public . . . we
A work to find that Sara had set the
table with crystal wineglasses, yellow
hide in broom-closets and restrooms . . . supermarket roses, and cloth napkins.
take cover here in the Central Maze of the She was wearing a long diaphanous
Forking Paths . . . to snack freely . . . lull with tunic over slim pants, her hair blow-
moss and mushroom and the nine-banded dried straight and her eyes painted a
armadillo . . . with caterpillar and butterfly and dark, smoky blue. Hassan hadn’t seen
butterfly bush . . . amid the odor of wild her dressed this way in ages.
thyme which, to deter predators, has evolved “You didn’t need to go to all this trou-
to become more pungent . . . ble,” he said, gesturing around at the
clean apartment. “I mean, it’s only Hina.”
. . . among sow and puppy and piglet . . . among He had resisted the idea of inviting her,
whatever milk-producing mammal survived but Sara had insisted on it.
the Era of Cancers and Guns and held on . . . “Don’t be silly,” Sara said. “We have
each of us is alive only by the teat of the other to be hospitable.”
... In the dim light of their apartment,
Hina seemed softer. Instead of the boxy
—J. Hope Stein jackets and long skirts she wore to work,
she had come dressed in a maroon shal-
war kameez and a matching headscarf.
in Pakistan as part of the majority. What “You have exciting plans for Thanks- Her outfit looked freshly ironed.
would it feel like, he wondered, to con- giving, Hina?” Hassan asked. He as- “Such a pleasure to meet you, fi-
sider America home? sumed she’d be heading back to Al- nally!” Sara said, kissing Hina on both
bany. The dutiful daughter. cheeks and showing her to the couch.

Itionnthemselves
November, Hassan and Sara found
trying to explain the elec-
results to their families in Karachi.
Yes, they said, it was true that a hand-
ful of states had the power to determine
the winner. Yes, a candidate could win
the most votes and still not become
President. In that case, Hassan’s mother
said, the Americans were even more
foolish than she’d thought. At least in
Pakistan, she said, they hadn’t chosen
their own dictators.
One afternoon, Hassan toggled be-
tween numbers in a spreadsheet and
bullets and graphs on a presentation,
unsure of what to work on next. The
hours between lunch and dinner
stretched out in front of him like an
interminable sentence. On the other
side of the desk, Hina looked deeply
engrossed in her work, her face inches
from her monitor. She was reading
traffic studies, prepping for a meeting
in which she’d most likely not even be
called on. This was the difference, he
realized, between Sara and Hina. Sara
would talk about graduate school for
another year and probably not do any-
thing about it. Hina would have been
halfway to a degree by now.
Hina didn’t look up from her moni-
tor. “Well, my friend Mona Ahmed wants
me to join her family in Florida, but I’m
not sure if I will or not,” she said.
Hearing the name spoken aloud gave
Hassan an odd feeling in his stomach.
“How do you know Mona?” he asked.
“From the Islamic Center,” Hina ex-
plained. “She’s been very kind to me.
And I’m fond of her children.” Hassan
suddenly couldn’t stand those Ahmed
brats. Their precious matching shirts and
haircuts.
“You babysit for them?” Hassan asked.
“No,” Hina said, drawing herself up-
right in her chair. “We’re friends. Mona
and I are in the same women’s group.
We went canvassing together. And I’m
in her multicultural book club.”
That evening, Hassan told Sara what
he’d learned.
“How could you not realize that
she’s known them all this time?” she
asked, exasperated. She was sitting on
the floor of their bedroom folding
laundry, stacking socks and underwear
into little piles. “You sit across from
her all day.”
“It’s not as if we compare social cal-
endars,” Hassan said. He sat down on
Hassan asked Hina if she’d read the
latest report on a toll-road project about
to be scrapped by lawmakers in Texas.
“Might be something we should be aware
of,” he said, calling up the article on his
phone so that he could read it aloud.
“Hassan,” Sara said, rolling her eyes
for Hina’s benefit and handing her a glass
of fresh orange juice, “don’t be a bore. I
want to hear about Hina’s family.”
Hina rested the glass in her lap and
smiled cautiously at Sara. Her father,
she told them, had come from the Pun-
jab with the help of his older brother.
He had settled first in Michigan, then
in upstate New York. Hina had three
younger sisters and one brother. She was
the first college graduate in her family.
“Isn’t that lovely,” Sara said, turning
to Hassan.
He nodded, his smile tight. It was
slightly embarrassing, watching Sara try
to ingratiate herself with Hina.
“And Hassan tells me you know
Mona and Ali Ahmed?” Sara said.
“Yes,” Hina said. “Mona has been a
mentor to me.”
“Isn’t that wonderful. Mona is a dear
friend.”
“I didn’t realize that,” Hina said.
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 63

¥ ¥
“Well, we’ve been so busy this fall,”
Sara said. “That’s probably why we
haven’t seen you at the Ahmeds.”
“Of course,” Hina said.
Sara excused herself to finish pre-
paring the meal and Hassan turned on
their large flat-screen TV, taking a seat
next to Hina. It was strange, he real-
ized, that he had sat across from Hina
all these months but had never sat be-
side her. They were only a few inches
apart on the couch. He could smell her
scent, something musky and floral and
not altogether unpleasant.
At the dinner table, Hina took a
portion of vegetables and salad but
didn’t touch the main course, a thick
rib-eye steak.
“Have some steak, Hina,” Sara said,
holding out a piece toward Hina’s plate.
“It’s a very good cut.” Hassan knew
that the meat had been expensive, the
most impressive American dish that
Sara could think of.
“Thank you, but I only eat halal,”
Hina said, piercing a roasted potato with
her fork and chewing it methodically.
Hassan worried for a moment that
64 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
Sara might try to pass the meat off as
halal, when he knew that she’d bought
it at the Fairway Market in Stamford,
where she bought all their food.
Sara paused, frowning slightly, and
then slid half the steak onto her own
plate, more than she could possibly eat,
passing the rest to Hassan.
“Hina,” Sara said, adopting a serious
face, “Tell me more about your women’s
group. I’m really looking to deepen my
faith.”
Iwerenrivedearly December, an invitation ar-
in Hassan’s inbox. The Ahmeds
having a holiday party at their
home, an open house from 4 to 8 P.M.
He clicked on the invitation twice,
watching the shiny snowflakes and fat
metallic orbs rotate. Were they back on
the Ahmeds’ official guest list? Or was
this a test?
Hassan was curious if Hina had re-
ceived the same invitation.
“I’m not sure if I’m going yet,” she
said. “I mean, I like the Ahmeds a lot,
but they serve alcohol at their parties
and that bothers me.”
“What’s the big deal?” Hassan asked.
“I mean, it’s not like anyone is forcing
you to drink it.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Hina
said, tipping her head to one side and
giving him a long look.
“Understand what?” Hassan asked.
“What it means to stick to your prin-
ciples,” Hina said.
he exterior of the Ahmeds’ house
T was decorated with small white
lights, a bright constellation of electric
points that gave the place a kind of glow.
Inside there were real pine boughs that
let off a fresh, wintry smell. There was
food piled on every table—selections of
fresh cookies dusted in powdered sugar
and platters of crackers, cheese, and fruit.
In the dining room, Hassan spotted Hina
and waved to her. She was more dressed
up than he’d seen her before, in a long,
emerald-green shalwar kameez and
matching headscarf. What’s more, he
whispered to Sara, there was something
different about her face. “That’s called
makeup, Hassan,” Sara said, refilling her
wineglass. “Who knows? Maybe she’s
getting set up with someone tonight.”
Sara went to the kitchen to find
Mona, and Hassan went in search of
Ali. He found him in the library, a
small, wood-panelled room thick with
cigar smoke. A group of men were in
the midst of what looked like an ani-
mated discussion. On the coffee table
was a large bottle of Johnnie Walker
Black Label, a monogrammed, leather-
covered ice bucket, and several crystal
tumblers. Ali seemed pleased to see
him, as if no time had elapsed since
the summer. “Help yourself, Hassan,”
he said, waving him in and telling him
to shut the door behind him. Hassan
grabbed a glass from the tray and set-
tled into a leather chair. He nodded to
Abid, who nodded back.
“Look, there’s no question,” Abid said
to the group. “This Administration will
be good for business.” Several of the oth-
ers speculated on how their investment
portfolios might be positively affected
by fewer regulations. Hassan began to
feel nervous that Ali or Abid or one of
the other men might ask him about his
own investments. He had none. Not yet.
Several of the men had gone to
school together in Lahore. Others had
known each other at Boston University.
There were jokes that Hassan didn’t
understand, references to Web sites that
he didn’t read. He didn’t have much to
contribute to the conversation. He drank
four Scotches in a row. When he stood
up, he realized that he was drunk.
Hassan excused himself and weaved
through rooms of people, looking for
Sara. Where was she? Suddenly he found
himself wondering what he was doing
here. Who were all these people?
He couldn’t find Sara, but he spotted
Hina through a doorway. She sat wedged
on a couch between two older Pakistani
women, who were laughing. Hina looked
miserable, as if she had gone along with
a joke that she now regretted.
“Come on, Hina,” Hassan heard one
of the women say. “I want to introduce
you to my nephew in London. Just take
it off so I can snap your picture and send
it to him. I won’t post it anywhere, I
promise.”
“You’d be quite pretty without the
scarf,” the other woman said.
He made his way to the kitchen,
where Sara was huddled with Mona by
the stove.
“Sweetheart!” Sara said, extending one
hand in the air like a punctuation mark.
The Scotch made him feel as if the party
were moving in slow motion. “Mona and
I are getting caught up. I’m telling her
about how we had to fire the contractor
on our new place and move into a tem-
porary apartment. . . .”
Hassan could see that Sara’s eyes were
bright with her lies, that she was trying
to give him a message to play along.
Walking toward her, he felt something
bubbling up inside him, a well of anger
about to erupt. Just once, he thought,
just once he should say out loud that his
wife was full of shit.
“Sara,” he began, “we both know . . .”
His finger was pointed at her as if they
were in a schoolyard, but now he hesi-
tated, stumbling to find his words. He
saw the whiteness of Sara’s eyes around
her pupils, her stare suddenly narrowed
and mean. His wife could be frighten-
ing when she wanted to be.
Just then, he heard someone lurch
into the room, and he turned to see Hina
standing in the doorway, her bulky parka
bunched under one arm.
“Mona, I’m sorry, but I have to go
home,” she announced. “I feel sick and
I have to go home. Right now.”
Mona went to Hina and put an arm
around her shoulder.
“Wouldn’t you rather sleep over?” she
asked kindly. “It’s raining now. You can
take the yellow guest room. I can lend
you a nightgown.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea, Hina,” Sara
added in a soothing tone of voice, join-
ing Mona. “Let us take care of you.”
But Hina said that she would prefer
to sleep in her own bed. She had already
called a cab. She pulled her parka on
over her outfit and walked toward the
front door.
“Hassan, you’ll go with Hina, yes,”
Mona asked, a directive instead of a ques-
tion. She handed him a large golf um-
brella from a stand near the back door.
“Make sure she gets home all right.”
Sara stood next to Mona like a sen-
tinel. “Go, sweetheart,” she said. “Be a
gentleman and don’t trouble yourself with
anything here.” She smiled at him, an
old smile that told him that she would
fix things with the Ahmeds, she would
fix things in Connecticut, she would for-
get what he had almost said. All that he
was required to do was deliver Hina home
safely.
utside, Hina stood facing the drive-
O way, trying to take shelter under-
neath a pine tree, shielding herself from
what had become sleeting rain. Hassan
joined her there, offering her part of the
dry space under the umbrella.
“They said the cab would be ten min-
utes, but that was twenty minutes ago,”
she said, sounding very small. “I feel
like I might throw up. I should never
have let those women take my picture.”
“I can drop you,” Hassan said. “Mona
asked me to drop you.”
“No,” Hina said, refusing to look at
him. “You’ve been drinking and I don’t
want to get in your car.”
It was not an unreasonable point, ac-
tually. He probably shouldn’t drive.
When the cab arrived, Hassan got in
after Hina. “I’ll make sure you get home
O.K.,” he said.
Hina pulled up a map on her phone
and gave directions to the driver, then
she leaned her head against the window,
her shoulders slumped. When they ar-
rived at her building, Hina handed the
driver two twenty-dollar bills and got
out of the cab quickly, waving goodnight
and not waiting for her change.
As she walked up her front steps, Has-
san noticed her chunky black purse, for-
gotten on the seat next to him. He
grabbed it and scrambled out of the cab.
“Hina,” he called out, waving the purse
in his right hand.
The cab took off, and Hassan ran after
the car, slipping in the slush, but the
driver didn’t stop. Hassan walked back to
Hina’s doorstep, panting with the effort.
“Your purse,” he said, holding it out
to her. She took it, looking grateful.
“You can come up and call another cab
if you want,” she said. “It’s pretty cold out.”
As they walked up the long, narrow
staircase to her apartment Hassan was
conscious of the silence. It felt strangely
intimate to watch Hina put her key in the
lock and push the door open, to step into
the personal space where she slept and ate.
It had been a long time since he’d been
invited into a woman’s apartment alone.
The apartment was dark. The street
lamps outside lit the edges of the room,
and Hassan looked around, trying to find
an object to focus on.
On one wall of the living room hung
what looked like a velveteen poster of the
Kaaba at Mecca; on the other was a Ma-
tisse landscape mounted on foam board.
Hina began to breathe deeply, her shoul-
ders rising and falling with the effort. Has-
san wondered if she was crying. Then she
stepped over to him, looking up. She was
standing less than a foot from Hassan,
the toes of her boots nearly touching his.
“My parents wanted me to be edu-
cated. To be like educated Pakistanis,” she
said, her voice a low hiss. “But I see you,
and you’re all so confused and selfish. None
of you are any better than my father.”
Hina put a hand over her mouth and
stifled an awkward sound, something be-
tween a cry and a moan. In the darkness
of the room, he could just make out the
whites of her eyes in the light from the
street. Hina was right, he thought. All
the people at the party were hypocrites.
Including his wife.
Hina reached up with her left hand
and pulled out the long pin that kept her
headscarf fastened. With her right, she
tugged on the cloth, letting it fall to her
shoulders. Her hair was cut in layers
around her face and her eyes looked large.
As she straightened her shoulders and
held his gaze, Hassan felt two thoughts
compete for his attention: one, that he
should excuse himself and go home
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 65
immediately, and the other, that he
couldn’t leave, that he was somehow
rooted to the floor. Hassan and Hina
stood there facing each other for what
felt like minutes. A car pulled up outside
and he could hear a man and a woman
laughing, snatches of music playing
through the car window. Hina stood still,
the pin in her hand. For a brief, terrible
moment, Hassan wondered if she was
going to do something with it. He felt
the thud of his heart in his ears, as if he’d
been running. Then she turned abruptly
and disappeared behind a door. He heard
the sound of water in the bathroom.
Before he could imagine any other
possibility, Hassan hurried down the
stairs. The streets were empty, the only
sound a garbage truck doing its nightly
rounds. Thank God, he repeated to him-
self as he walked. Thank God he hadn’t
done anything stupid.
t work on Monday, Hina’s face was
A tight, her lips a thin line. Hassan
slid a cup of coffee and a doughnut across
the desk.
“I didn’t know which kind you like,”
he said, “so I got glazed. I hope that’s all
right.”
Hina reached for the coffee and took
a small sip. “Thank you,” she said.
“Did you recover O.K. from the party?”
Hassan asked. It seemed awkward not
to acknowledge the strangeness of the
evening, the abruptness of the way they
had parted, but Hina winced.
“I behaved wrongly,” she said. “I
shouldn’t have been around people who
were drinking. I shouldn’t have been
alone with you in my apartment. And I
shouldn’t have removed my headscarf.”
“But nothing happened,” Hassan said,
leaning forward in his chair. “Hina, we
didn’t do anything.”
“But we could have,” she said, turn-
ing toward the wall, as if she couldn’t bear
to look at his face. “That’s the problem.”
Then a curious thing happened.
Something that he could not have pre-
dicted. Hina pulled her chair closer and
laid her palms flat on the top of the desk.
She began to speak in a low, even tone
that couldn’t be overheard if one of their
co-workers walked by. She told him about
her childhood in Albany. About how,
when her three younger sisters and
brother were small, it was Hina who took
care of them while her father finished
66 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
the night shift in his store and her mother
worked at the hospital. Every evening,
she braided her sisters’ hair and every
morning she made an assembly line of
omelettes, dicing green chilies and on-
ions and tomatoes. Hina was shy at school
and didn’t make friends easily. At home,
she liked to pretend that the children
were hers, to raise as she liked.
Then, shortly after her twentieth
birthday, her father told her that some
family friends from Delaware were com-
ing to meet her. It was obvious to Hina
what this meant. Her prospective hus-
band was well dressed, deferential to her
parents, inquisitive about her interests.
He was ten years older than she was, an
estate lawyer with teeth so bright she
wondered if he’d had them whitened.
When they were given time alone to talk,
she watched him drink his tea and tried
to imagine a life with him. She tried to
picture sleeping next to him, having his
child. There was nothing wrong with
him, and yet she couldn’t shake the fact
that he was not what she wanted.
“When I refused him,” Hina said, “my
parents and I stopped speaking to one
another. They said that I had embar-
rassed them. That I was throwing away
the best chance I’d get. I moved into a
campus apartment with two girls I knew
from the Muslim Students Association.
I finished my degree in two years.” Hina
crossed her arms, looking almost defiant.
“I send my parents money occasionally.
Through my sister. I want them to be
comfortable. But the truth is that I have
not seen them in five years. Inshallah, my
contract here will be extended next sum-
mer,” she added. “I want to make senior
analyst by the time I’m twenty-five. Then
go for my M.B.A. After that, I’ll be on
track to make V.P. and buy a house. Then
my siblings can come and live with me.
I’m not interested in marriage. I want to
make a life that I choose.”
Hina sat back, smoothing her scarf
and looking calmer. Hassan had always
been aware that he might lack the qual-
ities essential for success in America, but
it had never seemed as evident to him
as it did now.
In the days after this conversation, he
and Hina skirted around each other, re-
luctant to be left alone together. Two
weeks later, Hina was promoted to a
managerial position in the firm’s fund
business and moved to a different floor.
When Hassan returned from winter va-
cation he found that the other half of
the desk was empty. All that remained
was a small hole in the wall where Hi-
na’s diploma had once hung.
ow that they are back in Karachi,
N Hassan and Sara joke that they are
“foreign-returned,” a designation that
their U.K.-educated uncles still put on
their business cards, as if it denoted mem-
bership to an exclusive club. They sit in
Sara’s parents’ kitchen drinking tea and
talking about their time in the U.S., trad-
ing theories about why Hassan’s contract
wasn’t renewed. True, it might have been
his performance review. But it could also
have been his name. Or his nationality.
Or his visa status. Either way, no one in
Karachi blames them for wanting out of
the new America.
Hassan will look for work soon, but
first, he tells Sara, he wants to reacclimate.
It takes two hours to read the papers cover
to cover. The local news feels almost com-
forting in its sameness: a litany of power
outages, corruption scandals, society par-
ties. The international news is filled with
talk of war. By the time he finishes, it is
almost time to think about lunch.
Always, when they speak of Con-
necticut, it seems as if the best part of
the story hasn’t happened yet. It’s then
that Hassan thinks of the Ahmeds. Ali,
helping the kids with their homework
while Mona fixes dinner. Ali and Mona
debating whom to invite to their next
party. Hassan tries to imagine the guest
list. Strange how quickly the names and
faces are receding—blurring together
into one large, homogenous pool.
Mostly when he imagines life in
America he thinks of the house that Sara
wanted: a white clapboard Colonial with
green shutters. He sees dusk falling on
the freshly shovelled driveway, the lights
blinking on one by one. But he doesn’t
see Sara in the house, or the children
that they plan to have. Rather, he sees
another man’s children, Hina’s siblings:
three girls and a boy. They are poring
over textbooks at the dining-room table
or playing Ping-Pong in the basement.
They look content in their kingdom, pad-
ding around the carpets in their socks. ♦
NEWYORKER.COM
Sadia Shepard on the nuances of immigration
and cultural identity.
 THE CRITICS

THE CURRENT CINEMA

BESPOKE
“Phantom Thread.”

BY ANTHONY LANE

he new Paul Thomas Anderson
T film, “Phantom Thread,” is about
many things: clothing, sewing, driv-
ing, the risk of love, the exercise of
power, and, above all, breakfast. “I
can’t begin my day with a confron-
tation.” So says Reynolds Woodcock
(Daniel Day-Lewis), a celebrated
fashion designer, who lives and works
in a tranquil London square, and
who despises any threat to that tran-
quillity. It is morning, and his sister
Cyril (Lesley Manville), who helps
to run the business, is at the break-
fast table, as is a plate of iced buns,
which he disdains, and an elegant
young woman named Johanna (Ca-
milla Rutherford). For her, likewise,
he appears to have lost his appetite.
Breakfast No. 2. Reynolds drives
to the coast and arrives, famished, at
a hotel restaurant. A waitress named
Alma (Vicky Krieps) takes his order,
which goes on forever, like the end
credits of a Marvel movie. Welsh
rabbit with a poached egg; bacon,
scones, butter, cream, jam; a pot of

In Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie, Daniel Day-Lewis plays a society fashion designer and Vicky Krieps is his muse.
ILLUSTRATION
BY SARA ANDREASSON THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 67
Lapsang souchong. Pause. “And some
sausages,” he adds. Only Day-Lewis
could make a list of foodstuffs sound
like the Ten Commandments. Alma
blushes easily, yet there is no twitch
of shyness; she bears herself with
confidence, and, when Reynolds asks
if she will dine with him that night,
she accepts. Thus does she enter the
sanctum, or the gentlemanly minefield,
of his life.
And so to the third breakfast, later
in the film. By now, Alma has become
his favorite model and muse. We are
back in London. A ruminative Reyn-
olds sits with his sister. Beside them,
Alma is buttering toast, with firm
swipes of the knife, and, to judge by
the expression on Reynolds’s face, every
swipe is like a nail being driven into
his flesh. (Anderson, to be honest,
cheats a little here; the scraping is so
loud that a microphone must have
been hidden in the marmalade.) On
the basis of this upsetting scene, two
things can be assumed. First, Alma is
fast turning into another Johanna, and
will soon be dismissed from Reyn-
olds’s service. And, second, he is, in
his own way, a perfect specimen of the
nobly suffering artist, who will not
sacrifice his craft, let alone submit his
will, to the dictates of somebody else.
Both assumptions are wrong.
“Phantom Thread” is Anderson’s
eighth feature, and the first to be set
almost exclusively in Britain. The era
is the mid-nineteen-fifties, which
means that the gowns created by
Reynolds for his wealthy (and some-
times royal) clients are of a rarefied
and formal allure that feels as distant
as the court of Versailles. Not the
least of the movie’s joys is the roster
of unflappable seamstresses, with years
of experience, on whom he relies; in
the course of one especially taxing
night, they have to repair a wedding
dress that has been tainted and torn,
to be ready by 9 a.m. As for Day-
Lewis, he strikes the eye as ineffably
dapper, with a hint of the sacerdotal;
in the opening minutes, he pulls on
a magenta sock, buffs the toe cap of
a shoe, and, wielding a pair of hair-
brushes, sweeps back his lightly
silvered locks with solemn care, as
if robing himself in a vestry. Yet this
is not a film that dwells on style. It
68 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
is a film possessed by a fear that style
alone, or the quest for it, can cramp
the soul.
s in “The Master” (2012) and the
A more jovial “Inherent Vice” (2014),
Anderson conducts much of the ac-
tion in closeup. “I like to see who I’m
talking to,” Reynolds says, wiping off
Alma’s lipstick, as the camera looms
so near that it might as well be an-
gling for a kiss. Is that doting, or in-
vasive? One welcome trait of the film
is that its erotic politics are evenly
poised, and that, in the matter of scru-
tiny, the woman gives as good as she
gets. “If you want to have a staring
contest with me,” Alma cautions Reyn-
olds, “you will lose.” Time and again,
throughout the story, they wrestle for
the upper hand. “I think you’re only
acting strong,” she says, to which he
replies, “I am strong.” Although there
is no visible sex or violence, the movie
feels extreme in the way that produc-
tions of Ibsen can feel extreme, as well-
dressed, well-behaved people try to
colonize one another with a tenacity
that borders on the savage. “There is
an air of quiet death in this house,”
Reynolds says. Hedda Gabler would
not disagree.
Another point of reference is Hitch-
cock. As Cyril, Lesley Manville is a
paragon of frosty decorum, and one
glance at her sombre high-necked
dresses and her tightly coiled hair sends
you back to Mrs. Danvers, in “Re-
becca” (1940). Then, there is Jonny
Greenwood’s music, largely for piano
and strings, which is far less jagged
than the work he composed for
Anderson in “There Will Be Blood”
(2007), and summons, instead, some
of the troubled lushness that Franz
Waxman brought to his scores for “Re-
becca” and “Suspicion” (1941). More
than anything, however, what “Phan-
tom Thread” borrows from Hitchcock
is his clammy-comic touch—a sense
that love, at its fiercest, can be both
protective and toxic. Remember Claude
Rains’s terrifying mother, in “Notori-
ous” (1946), slipping something nasty
into his wife’s coffee, or the glowing
glass of milk that Cary Grant takes
upstairs to Joan Fontaine, in “Suspi-
cion,” like a poisoned chalice. Alma,
in Krieps’s winning performance, all
rosy cheeks and sensible smiles, is defi-
nitely not a Hitchcock heroine, yet
even she will go to venomous lengths,
we realize, to keep her man. Weirder
still, Reynolds will play along.
The upshot is that “Phantom
Thread,” though expert and engross-
ing, is also cloistral and sickly, and I
found myself fighting for fresh air.
There are notable excursions, includ-
ing an Alpine holiday where Reynolds
gets to swathe himself in immaculate
knitwear, plus a New Year’s costume
ball, in Chelsea, but the first is like a
snowy stage set and the second is as
writhingly oppressive as one of Felli-
ni’s Roman jamborees. If anything does
snap the claustrophobic spell, it is
Reynolds’s road trips, when he guns
his beauteous British sports car, a red
Bristol, along country byways, with
the camera peering forward and rav-
ening up the miles. Then we have the
pleasure of observing the smile that
comes and goes on his handsome face,
as if he were tacitly conceding that,
yes, these genteel shenanigans, done
in the name of a few pricey frocks for
a handful of spoiled clients, are ab-
surd. You hear a similar hint of mock-
ery in the querulous fluting of his
voice—“Are you sent here to ruin my
evening? And possibly my entire life?”
Yet, despite everything, we continue
to cling to the problems and pursuits
of this obsessive dandy. And why? Sim-
ply because there has never been an
actor as obsessive as Day-Lewis. He
dons the role as if it were a handmade
suit. I happen to revere him most in
motion, as in the hotfooted thrill of
“The Last of the Mohicans” (1992),
but he is equally a champion of still-
ness, and he seems, like certain rare
sportsmen, to be preternaturally blessed
with time—enough time, that is, to
take stock of a situation, while people
bustle around him, and to ponder his
next move. His thoughts look more
dramatic than other actors’ deeds, and
his deeds are done with a deliberated
grace. If it is true, as Day-Lewis has
declared, that “Phantom Thread” will
be his final movie, we will miss him
when he retires from the game that he
has crowned. He is the Federer of film. 
NEWYORKER.COM
Richard Brody blogs about movies.

A CRITIC AT LARGE
BEEN THERE
The Presidential election of 1968.
BY LOUIS MENAND
lmost fifty years ago, on March 31, but that only made the war seem more
A 1968, Lyndon Johnson stunned ev-
eryone by announcing that he would not
horrific and out of control.
I was at home, sitting in the base-
run for a second term as President. John- ment, where we kept our television set,
son had gone on television at nine o’clock listening to Johnson’s speech with my
that evening to address the nation on father. He was standing with his back to
the war in Vietnam. It was not going the screen, so that he would not have to
well. In the past three years, the United look at Johnson. He was protesting John-
States had dropped more tons of bombs son’s policy on Vietnam. The only per-
on Vietnam than were dropped by all son present in the basement to appreci-
the belligerents combined in the Second ate the symbolism was me.
STEVE SCHAPIRO/CORBIS/GETTY
World War. Twenty thousand Ameri- My father had already registered his
cans had died there, four thousand in opposition in a more substantive way.
the previous two months, following a He had been working in Washington,
surprise attack, known as the Tet Offen- D.C., for one of Johnson’s anti-poverty
sive, by North Vietnamese and Vietcong programs, but he had resigned because
forces. Enemy losses were much higher, he felt he couldn’t work for an Admin-
R.F.K. had a rawness that seemed to match the national mood.
istration that was propping up autocratic
regimes in Saigon and napalming the
Vietnamese. So we had moved back to
Massachusetts, where he took a lesser
job with, I assume, a lower salary.
In his address, Johnson announced a
reduction of American air strikes and
said that he would seek a negotiated set-
tlement, but he also said that he was
sending more troops. Then he said, “I
have concluded that I should not per-
mit the Presidency to become involved
in the partisan divisions that are devel-
oping in this political year.” My father
perked up. He did not, however, turn
around. “Accordingly,” Johnson went on,
“I shall not seek and I will not accept
the nomination of my party for another
term as your President.”
“He’s not running!” my father shouted
to my mother, who was upstairs. She
had refused even to listen to Johnson.
That’s the kind of house I grew up in.
“He’s not running!”
For antiwar liberals like my parents,
who had marched in Washington the
previous October in a giant demonstra-
tion organized by a group known as the
Mobe (National Mobilization Commit-
tee to End the War in Vietnam), John-
son was a monster who had betrayed lib-
eralism, and the knight who slayed him
was Eugene McCarthy.
McCarthy was the senior senator from
Minnesota, a liberal anti-Communist
whose roots, like my parents’, were in
New Deal politics. Unlike my parents,
McCarthy had a spiritual side. As a young
man, he had entered a monastery under
the name Brother Conan but was kicked
out for the sin of intellectual pride. Mc-
Carthy had always had a bit of contemp-
tus mundi about him. Turning your back
to the television set was the kind of ges-
ture he would have understood.
In the beginning, McCarthy was a
single-issue candidate. He was a dove.
He ran against continued American mil-
itary intervention in Vietnam. But he
was also offended by the Administra-
tion’s insistence that its war powers were
absolute, and by its increasingly trans-
parent lies about the progress of the war.
He had come to see the Administration
as a danger to democracy. He was an
enemy of what used to be called “the im-
perial Presidency.”
As unpopular as Johnson was in 1968
with Democrats like my parents, he was
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 69
a man politicians thought twice about
crossing. He had won the 1964 Presi-
dential election, against Barry Goldwa-
ter, with the highest percentage of the
popular vote in American history, and
he knew how to squeeze his opponents.
Even Democrats in Congress who knew
that Johnson was driving the country
off a cliff—and by the end of 1967, when
four hundred and eighty-five thousand
Americans were stationed in Vietnam,
the folly of intervention had become
plain—were loath to break with him
publicly. But McCarthy did. In No-
vember, 1967, he announced that he
was entering the Democratic Presiden-
tial primaries. He was running against
a sit ting President of his own party.
Many people thought that he had com-
mitted hara-kiri—a noble act, possibly,
but politically insane.
he New Hampshire primary, held
T on March 12, 1968, made those peo-
ple think again. It wasn’t because Mc-
Carthy did especially well. Johnson’s name
was not on the Democratic ballot, but
he won easily as a write-in candidate,
with forty-nine per cent of the Demo-
cratic vote. McCarthy got forty-two per
cent, despite the fact that his name was
the only name on the ballot, and even
though he had five thousand New Hamp-
shire students and two thousand out-of-
state volunteers canvassing
the state for him. McCarthy
received about twenty-two
thousand Democratic votes,
roughly three votes for every
campaign worker.
In national politics, twen-
ty-two thousand was not
an intimidating number of
votes—twenty-two thou-
sand people would not even
fill half of Yankee Stadium—
and New Hampshire was not a state
that Democrats needed to carry. In the
previous five Presidential elections, it
had voted Republican four times. (The
exception was the Johnson landslide in
1964.) The winner of the Republican
primary, Richard Nixon, got eighty-four
thousand votes, thirty thousand more
than Johnson and McCarthy combined.
But blood was in the water, and four
days later, on March 16th, Robert F. Ken-
nedy, the junior senator from New York,
declared his candidacy.
70 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
If Kennedy hadn’t entered the race,
Johnson could have fended off Mc-
Carthy. In 1968, the primaries played
a minor role in the delegate-selection
process. Thirty-six states did not even
hold them.The parties controlled the pro-
cess. The man who eventually won the
Democratic nomination, Hubert Hum-
phrey, Johnson’s Vice-President, did not
enter a single primary.
Robert Kennedy is one of the great
what-ifs of American political history.
In 1968, he was just forty-three years old.
He had the most glamorous name in
politics; he wore the mantle of martyr-
dom; and he had transformed himself
from a calculating infighter—he had
managed his brother’s Presidential cam-
paign, in 1960, and served as his Attor-
ney General after the election—into a
kind of existentialist messiah. At the
1964 Democratic National Convention,
in Atlantic City, he had received a
twenty-two-minute standing ovation
just by appearing at the lectern.
There was a rawness in Kennedy’s face
and voice that seemed to match the na-
tional mood. He was the personification
of the country’s pain over its fallen leader.
And he had the ability to reflect back
whatever voters projected onto him. He
seemed to combine youth with experi-
ence, intellect with heart, street sense with
vision. He was a hero to Chicano grape
pickers, to inner-city African-
Americans, to union work-
ers. He was a man of the
times when the times they
were a-changin’. Kennedy
had haters. Having haters is
part of the job of being a mes-
siah. But he was salvific. He
could rouse audiences to a
frenzy and he could make
hardened politicos weep. Peo-
ple thought that he could go
to the Convention and steal the nomi-
nation from Johnson. People thought that
he could beat Nixon.
Johnson was not salvific. “Waist deep
in the Big Muddy, and the big fool says
to push on,” I heard Pete Seeger sing in
Washington in 1967. It’s a song about a
platoon in the Second World War, but
everyone knew who the big fool was.
The line was electric. Pete was a sing-
along performer, and the liberal audi-
ence (who else would be at a Pete See-
ger concert?) roared it out.
It was as though they had forgotten
that Johnson had pushed through two
major pieces of civil-rights legislation:
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made
discrimination by race or religion or sex
illegal, and the Voting Rights Act of
1965, which guaranteed the franchise to
African-Americans in the formerly seg-
regated South. Those were the greatest
legal advances in race relations since the
Civil War amendments. But by 1968 Viet-
nam had eclipsed them.
Johnson had no experience in for-
eign policy. Much as Harry Truman had
done, in 1947 and 1948, he allowed the
generals and the policy hawks to con-
vince him of a central fallacy of Cold
War thinking: that America’s standing
was at stake in every regime change
around the world. He did not want to
be the President who lost Southeast
Asia to Communism.
By 1968, Johnson’s Great Society pro-
grams—legislation on education, health
care, urban renewal, and transportation
whose scope rivalled that of the New
Deal—were dying because of the cost
of the war, and he had imposed a ten-
per-cent income surtax, a dependable
way to become unpopular with just about
everybody. Inflation, which had been low
for most of the postwar era, had reached
four per cent. (It went much higher: the
country was on the brink of an economic
retrenchment that took fifteen years to
work through.)
The message of New Hampshire,
therefore, was not that McCarthy was
the answer to the nation’s troubles. It was
that Johnson was the face of what many
voters wanted to get away from. New
Hampshire did not make McCarthy seem
electable so much as it made Johnson
seem beatable. That was the message that
Kennedy had been waiting to hear, and he
wasted little time jumping into the race.
He was accused, rightly, of opportunism.
Although Johnson had served as
John F. Kennedy’s Vice-President, there
was no love lost between him and the
Kennedys. He was not cut out for a part
in Camelot. Colonel Cornpone, Jackie
Kennedy used to call him. At the first
Cabinet meeting after J.F.K. was assas-
sinated, Robert arrived late, and every-
one in the room rose as a sign of respect,
except for Johnson. Five years later, John-
son was losing one war overseas; he could
not engage on a second front at home.
So, on March 31st, two weeks after Ken-
nedy entered the race, Johnson made my
father, briefly, a happy man.
fter March 31st, the primaries be-
A came a mano a mano between Ken-
nedy and McCarthy. As a campaigner,
Kennedy was hot and McCarthy was
cool, but McCarthy did not suffer from
the contrast, at least among white liberals.
He had established his own aura, the aura
of the samurai: unswerving and ascetic.
On May 28th, he defeated Kennedy
in the Oregon primary. It was the first
time in twenty-seven consecutive races
that any Kennedy had lost an election.
On June 5th, Kennedy rebounded and
won the big one, California. Minutes
after declaring victory, he was shot in the
Ambassador Hotel, in Los Angeles. He
died the next day, along with the seeds
of whatever future America he carried
within him.
All the antiwar fury in the Demo-
cratic Party could now focus its hopes
on McCarthy. I went with my family to
see him on July 25th at an enormous rally
at Fenway Park, in Boston. McCarthy’s
wife, Abigail, who was closely involved
in the campaign, defined McCarthy’s
constituency as “academia united with
the mobile society of scientists, educa-
tors, technologists and the new post-
World-War II college class.” If that was
your base in 1968, Fenway Park was the
ideal place to address it.
Almost forty thousand people were
jammed into a stadium whose official
capacity is under thirty-eight thousand;
five thousand more listened outside. Mc-
Carthy was introduced by Leonard Bern-
stein, a man practiced in podium histri-
onics. I can still hear him cuing McCarthy’s
entrance—“Even now, entering from the
center-field bleachers . . .” A door opened
under the stands, and McCarthy walked
across the field to a speaker’s platform
at second base.
McCarthy had adopted the rhetoric
of revolution. It was to be a revolution
of reason and common sense, of course;
McCarthy was a Midwesterner and a
Catholic. He loathed the yippies and the
student radicals; his student volunteers
were encouraged to go “clean for Gene.”
But the language of revolution was
what you used to mobilize antiwar lib-
erals in 1968. So McCarthy spoke at Fen-
way about the “power of the people” and
“He scoffs whenever I suggest a scenic route.”
• •
called his campaign “a kind of uprising.”
McCarthy had a wry and slightly pro-
fessorial tone. “Almost everything that
the Church tried to give up at the Vati-
can Council has been picked up by the
Defense Department,”he said at one point.
I don’t think that line would have meant
much in Cleveland, but it received know-
ing chortles and applause in Boston.
He got his loudest and most sustained
reaction when he mentioned the Conven-
tion, then one month away, in Chicago.
“Any visit to Chicago is always beset with
some uncertainties, some dangers,” he said
(applause indicating that understatement
was always appreciated), “but I think that
we shall succeed there.” He said it in the
most nonchalant tone of voice imagin-
able, but the cheers went on and on.
Those were the cheers of desperation,
tribute to a valiant effort doomed to come
up short. Everyone at Fenway knew that
McCarthy did not have the delegates.
He would have to inspire a stampede at
the Convention to rip the nomination
from Humphrey, who stood to inherit
Johnson’s delegates. In the minds of ev-
eryone who was old enough, there prob-
ably flickered the memory of a speech
that McCarthy had delivered at the 1960
Democratic Convention, putting Adlai
Stevenson’s name in nomination. “Do
not leave this prophet without honor in
his own party,” McCarthy had said, set-
ting off a floor demonstration that threat-
ened to steal the Convention from J.F.K.
But lightning was not likely to strike
twice, and in 1960 Kennedy won on the
first ballot, anyway.
We watched every minute of the 1968
Convention in our basement, and there
were some very late nights. What every-
one remembers are the attacks by police
and National Guardsmen on demon-
strators in the streets outside. In fact, the
networks did not devote much time to
covering those. Out of thirty-eight hours
of Convention coverage, CBS devoted
thirty-two minutes to the demonstra-
tors. NBC devoted fourteen minutes out
of nineteen hours of coverage.
But the scene inside the hall—the
Chicago Amphitheatre, on the South
Side, near the stockyards—was tumultu-
ous enough. The CBS reporters Dan
Rather and Mike Wallace were roughed
up by security personnel. After a vote on
an antiwar platform plank failed, mem-
bers of the New York delegation joined
arms and sang “We Shall Overcome.”
When Senator Abraham Ribicoff, of
Connecticut, was giving a speech, the
mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, shouted
at him, “Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch,
you lousy motherfucker, go home.”
The antiwar delegates lost every bat-
tle. A last-minute attempt to draft Ed-
ward Kennedy was aborted, and Hum-
phrey won the nomination on the first
ballot, with some seventeen hundred del-
egates, eight hundred and forty-seven
more than the rest of the field.
The Convention left the Party frac-
tured. McCarthy refused to endorse
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 71

BRIEFLY NOTED
Shortfall, by Alice Echols (The New Press). In 1932, Walter Davis,
Echols’s grandfather and the owner of the largest building-
and-loan association in central Colorado, disappeared, leaving
behind $1.25 million in debt (some twenty-two million in to-
day’s dollars). Abetted by the burgeoning credit market, build-
ing-and-loan financiers had been enticing depositors with the
promise of homeownership while siphoning off money for
themselves, a scheme that eventually failed, along with the stock
and real-estate markets. The nascent F.B.I. and Scotland Yard
led the search for Davis’s stolen assets. Using family documents
and her mother’s memories, Echols depicts a man whose finan-
cial malfeasance foreshadowed the savings-and-loan debacle
of the eighties and the stock-market crash of 2008.
Troublemakers, by Leslie Berlin (Simon & Schuster). From the
late nineteen-sixties to the early eighties, Silicon Valley intro-
duced technologies that have come to dominate the world econ-
omy, including the personal computer, video games, and bio-
technology. This kaleidoscopic history alternates among seven
“troublemakers”—entrepreneurs, investors, and managers who
helped drive the tech revolution. Among them is Sandra Kurtzig,
a brash and brilliant software entrepreneur who became the
first woman to take a tech company public, and Bob Taylor,
a pipe-smoking Texan who, despite not being an engineer him-
self, became the director of Xerox PARC, the group that devel-
oped such crucial elements of modern computers as the graph-
ical user interface. Berlin sketches their lives in vivid detail,
showing the vital contributions of these “audacious” leaders.
London and the South-East, by David Szalay (Graywolf ). This
dark, antic satire follows Paul Rainey, a “painful knot of self-
hatred” whose dead-end job, as a salesman in London, leads him
to self-medicate with drugs and drink. A chance at redemp-
tion comes from an ex-colleague, who promises Paul a plum
position at a competing firm—if he can arrange the defection
of his best co-workers. The ploy fails, and Paul, now consigned
to stocking shelves at a supermarket, ponders revenge. Szalay
is a barbed observer of office life, and his study is most scathing
when inspecting the perils of extracting self-worth from work.
Birdcage Walk, by Helen Dunmore (Atlantic Monthly). Dun-
more’s fifteenth novel, published posthumously in the U.S., is
set in Bristol, England, at the end of the eighteenth century.
The narrator, Lizzie Fawkes, is caught between her parents,
who are radical writers and thinkers affiliated with Tom Paine,
and her husband, an ambitious property developer construct-
ing extravagant houses overlooking the Avon Gorge. When
news from the French Reign of Terror spooks investors and
potential buyers, and sends the real-estate market into col-
lapse, it creates financial uncertainty and marital discord for
Lizzie and her husband. “These French will ruin us all,” he
tells her. The novel is a sharp depiction of the intersection
between political turmoil and domestic life, and its concern
with women’s rights, authoritarian rule, liberal idealism, and
speculative capitalism feels urgent and contemporary.
72 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
Humphrey, who began the fall campaign
far behind in the polls. “Right now, you’re
dead,” his campaign manager, Lawrence
O’Brien, told him. He did come back,
and nearly made up the difference. At the
end of September, he at last broke with
Johnson and announced that he would
halt the bombing. At the end of October,
McCarthy finally endorsed Humphrey.
It was not quite enough. On November
5th, something happened that would have
been unthinkable a few years earlier:
Richard Nixon was elected President.
The story of this election has been
told in many books, from Theodore H.
White’s “The Making of the President
1968” and Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodg-
son, and Bruce Page’s mammoth “An
American Melodrama,” both published
in 1969, to Michael A. Cohen’s “Ameri-
can Maelstrom,” which came out in 2016.
It is featured in classic histories of the
postwar period, including Hodgson’s
“America in Our Time,” Allen J. Matu-
sow’s “The Unraveling of America,”
G. Calvin MacKenzie and Robert Weis-
brot’s “The Liberal Hour,” and Todd
Gitlin’s “The Sixties.” The story of the
1968 Presidential election is like oral po-
etry, a saga passed down from bard to
bard that no one (or no one of a certain
age, maybe) seems to tire of hearing.
Lawrence O’Donnell’s “Playing with
Fire: The 1968 Election and the Trans-
formation of American Politics” (Pen-
guin) is the latest in this string of rec-
itations. O’Donnell is the host of “The
Last Word,” on MSNBC; he has worked
on Capitol Hill, and he was a writer and
producer for “The West Wing.” His book
relies almost entirely on published sources,
and so it adds little to what we know.
But he is a talented storyteller, and his
analysis of campaign tactics is sharp.
And the story of that election still
matters. In 1968, Americans elected a
man with some savvy and no principles.
In 2016, they elected a man with neither.
O’Donnell’s book makes it a little easier
to understand how we got from there to
here. It turns out that the distance is not
all that great.
mericans tend to overread Presi-
A dential elections. It’s not that
the results aren’t consequential. It mat-
ters which party, and which person in
which party, is in the White House. The
mistake is to interpret the election as an
index of public opinion (itself something
of a Platonic abstraction).
In close elections, such as those of
1960, 1968, and 1976, the vote is essen-
tially the equivalent of flipping a coin. If
the voting had happened a week earlier
or a week later or on a rainy day, the out-
come might have been reversed. But we
interpret the result as though it reflected
the national intention, a collective deci-
sion by the people to rally behind R.,
and repudiate D. Even when the win-
ner receives fewer votes than the loser,
as in 2000 and 2016, we talk about the
national mood and direction almost en-
tirely in terms of the winning candidate,
and as though the person more voters
preferred had vanished, his or her posi-
tions barely worth reporting on.
Millions more Americans voted for
Barack Obama in 2008 and in 2012 and
for Hillary Clinton in 2016 than voted
for Donald Trump, but the Trump voter
is now the protagonist of the national
narrative. People talk about how Amer-
icans want to roll back globalization—
even though most Americans who voted
appear to want no such thing.The United
States is one of the few democracies that
does not have a coalition government,
and a winner-take-all electoral system
breeds a winner-take-all punditry.
The winner-take-all interpretation of
the 1968 election was that, with the de-
feat of Hubert Humphrey, the nation re-
pudiated liberalism. The election sup-
posedly marked the demise of an
ideological consensus that had domi-
nated national politics since Franklin
Roosevelt’s election in 1932 and that made
politically possible the use of govern-
ment programs to remedy the inequities
of free-market capitalism.
But did Humphrey lose because he
was a liberal, or because he ran a tone-
deaf campaign? “Here we are, the way
politics ought to be in America, the pol-
itics of happiness, the politics of purpose,
and the politics of joy,” he chirped in the
speech in which he announced his can-
didacy. The date was April 27, 1968. Mar-
tin Luther King, Jr., had been assassi-
nated three weeks before. It was a bizarre
moment to introduce a phrase like “the
politics of joy.” And although Johnson
had just been forced to withdraw from
the race by two candidates who opposed
his Vietnam policy, Humphrey did not
mention Vietnam in the speech.
Even after he had the nomination in
hand, he seemed reluctant to dissociate
himself from a policy with which the
electorate had clearly lost patience. Yet
the popular vote was surprisingly close.
The margin was eight hundred thousand
votes, seven-tenths of one per cent of the
total. Some of the Democratic base did
not turn out, and some Democrats—my
mother was one—voted but did not check
a box for President (another symbolic
protest performed for a local audience).
Humphrey got twelve million fewer votes
than Johnson did in 1964, and he still
nearly won a plurality. It’s hard to believe
that twelve million people consciously
embraced liberalism in 1964 and con-
sciously rejected it four years later.
’Donnell argues that the lesson of
O 1968 is that “the peace movement
won.” And although his McCarthy is
not an entirely sympathetic figure—he
relies considerably on Dominic Sand-
brook’s 2004 biography, in which Mc-
Carthy comes off as sour and aloof—he
is the hero of O’Donnell’s story. “The
last word about Gene McCarthy,” he
says, “should always be that no one did
more to stop the killing in Vietnam than
Senator Eugene McCarthy.”
This seems a stretch for any number
of reasons, the most obvious being that
McCarthy lost, and that the war contin-
ued for seven more years. Nixon didn’t
want to be the President who lost South-
east Asia to Communism any more than
Johnson did, and he had no idea how to
end the war, either. More than a third of
all the Americans killed in Vietnam were
killed during his Presidency.
It wasn’t as though Nixon was wind-
ing things down. In 1970, he extended
the war into Cambodia. In the last of the
major campus disruptions, protesting stu-
dents were killed at Kent State, in Ohio,
and at Jackson State College, in Missis-
sippi. In 1972, after running again on a
promise to end the war, Nixon ordered
the so-called Christmas bombing of
North Vietnam: in the course of twelve
days, some seven hundred and forty sor-
ties by B-52s dropped twenty thousand
tons of bombs. Sixteen hundred Viet-
namese were estimated to have been killed.
The purpose of the Christmas bomb-
ing was to pressure North Vietnam to
negotiate an end to the fighting, which
finally happened in 1973. But, in 1975, the
North Vietnamese marched into Saigon
and united the country under Commu-
nist rule, exactly the outcome that France
and the United States had been fight-
ing to prevent for thirty years. By then,
Nixon had resigned and Gerald Ford
was President. When O’Donnell writes
that “the peace movement drove U.S.
forces out of Vietnam, not the North
Vietnamese Army,” he is making the
same mistake that every Administration
made: imagining that it was decisions
taken by Americans that determined the
fate of Vietnam.
O’Donnell thinks that the nomina-
tion of Nixon marked the end of liber-
alism, at least in the Republican Party.
That’s quite right: a certain type of Re-
publican politician, the type represented
by Nelson Rockefeller (the governor of
New York, who ran a poorly mounted
and hopelessly belated campaign against
Nixon), George Romney (the governor
of Michigan, who knocked himself out
of the Republican primaries early by tell-
ing a reporter that he had been “brain-
washed” about Vietnam), and John Lind-
say (the mayor of New York, who some
foolishly hoped might be Nixon’s
Vice-Presidential pick), largely disap-
peared from the Party after 1968. But that
leaves a question: Why didn’t their sup-
porters become Democrats? This is where
the diagnosis becomes complicated.
People who write and argue about
politics are ideologues. They hold a co-
herent set of positions that they identify
as liberal or conservative (or some vari-
ant, like libertarian or leftist). But, to mil-
lions of voters, those terms mean almost
nothing. These voters do not think in
ideological terms, and their positions on
the issues are often inconsistent and lack-
ing in coherence. Given the option, they
will sometimes identify as moderates or
centrists, but this tells us very little about
how they will vote.
The fact that voters are often respond-
ing to nonideological cues helps to ex-
plain the apparent volatility of the elec-
torate from race to race. In 1964, for
example, running against Goldwater, a
conservative from Arizona, Johnson
carried the neighboring state of Cali-
fornia with fifty-nine per cent of the
vote. Two years later, running as a con-
servative who had prominently backed
Goldwater in 1964, Ronald Reagan
was elected governor of California with
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 73
almost fifty-eight per cent of the vote.
In the 1968 Presidential election, forty
per cent of the people who had voted
for Johnson in 1964 voted for Nixon,
even though Nixon’s opponent was John-
son’s own Vice-President. What cues
were these voters responding to?
fter Nixon’s victory, two books, both
A of which became enormously in-
fluential, proposed explanations. Accord-
ing to “The Real Majority,” by Richard
Scammon and Ben Wattenberg, the 1968
election proved that, particularly in a
time of extremes like the late nineteen-
sixties, centrism was the winning posi-
tion. Nixon got to the center, while Hum-
phrey and the Democrats remained
associated with the extremes.
Centrism requires a delicate balanc-
ing act, which Nixon, a man with many
innate liabilities as a politician, turned
out to be extremely good at it. He op-
posed the Johnson-Humphrey Admin-
istration’s policy on the war, but had no
policy of his own. (Nixon never made
the claim, often attributed to him, that
he had a “secret plan to end the war.”
That phrase was invented by a reporter.)
As long as the war was going badly,
people who favored withdrawal and
people who favored escalation both
found in Nixon a congenial alternative.
At the same time, Nixon figured out
a position to run on. He became the
candidate of “law and order.” Goldwa-
ter had used that expression in 1964, and
so had Reagan in 1966. It was a brilliant
political slogan, a whistle heard by many
dogs. It transposed political issues like
civil rights and Vietnam into what ap-
peared to be a straightforward legal po-
sition: crime is wrong and criminals
should be punished.
To liberals who believed in the righ-
teousness of the civil-rights demonstra-
tions and the antiwar protests, the dis-
ruption and violence that accompanied
them was caused by the overreaction of
the authorities. For most voters, though,
the disruption and violence were the fault
of the demonstrators. Most people don’t
like righteousness in others. They can be
quite righteous about it.
For these voters, it was not a contra-
diction to profess support for racial equal-
ity and to condemn the marchers in Bir-
mingham and Selma, or to be against the
war in Vietnam and to believe that peo-
ple like Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman
should be locked up. In polls taken in 1968,
only three per cent of voters who objected
to Johnson’s policy in Vietnam were also
sympathetic to antiwar protesters. My
parents were part of the three per cent.
Politically, the most important event
in the United States in 1968 was, there-
fore, the assassination, on April 4th, of
Martin Luther King. Riots broke out
in more than a hundred cities. Thirty-
nine people died and twenty thousand
were arrested. More than fifty thousand
troops were deployed. Washington, D.C.,
became a war zone. In Newark, New
Jersey, there were nearly two hundred
fires. Large numbers of white Ameri-
cans did not interpret this disorder in
terms of social justice. They interpreted
it as a breakdown of civil society. The
rioters were not black or white; they
were arsonists and looters (who hap-
pened to be black). Nixon showed that
political advantage came from steering
clear of the underlying issues. He gave
people respectable reasons to vote for a
candidate they favored for what they
might have worried were not such re-
spectable reasons.
The second influential post-1968 book
was Kevin Phillips’s “The Emerging Re-
publican Majority,” published in 1969.
This is the book that popularized what
became known as the Southern Strat-
egy. Like Scammon and Wattenberg,
Phillips saw that millions of voters were
repelled by what they regarded as ex-
tremism, but he gave a name to what he
thought was the key issue. He called it
“the Negro problem.”
The big news electorally in 1964 was
that a Republican carried five Southern
states: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,
Georgia, and South Carolina. It was the
first time those states had not gone Dem-
ocratic since Reconstruction, and the
reason was not obscure. The voting was
white backlash against the 1964 Civil
Rights Act, which Senator Goldwater
had voted against. Goldwater was not a
segregationist; he was a states’-rights
conservative. But he flipped the South
to the Republican Party.
The key to exploiting this shift in
party alignment, as Nixon understood,
was not to oppose the civil-rights move-
ment but to force the Democratic Party
to take ownership of it. The Kennedys
had seen the perils in that, and they had
been extremely careful about not ap-
pearing to be too close to King. But
Johnson effectively put his personal
brand on the Civil Rights Act and the
Voting Rights Act, and the Party thus
had to take on the baggage of the urban
rioting and the militancy of groups
like the Black Panthers. Republicans
didn’t have to say a word against inte-
gration. All they had to do was talk about
law and order.
Slacetill,indid.theNixon didn’t carry the Deep South
general election. George Wal-
And Wallace didn’t use a dog
whistle. Wallace was the dog. He was
elected governor of Alabama in 1962, a
time when the official logo of the Ala-
bama Democratic Party was a rooster
with a banner above it reading “White
Supremacy.” The next summer, he
achieved national recognition when he
resisted the attempt to enroll the first
black students at the University of Ala-
bama at Tuscaloosa—the “Stand in the
Schoolhouse Door.” (The confrontation
was staged, to allow Wallace to make his
point in exchange for letting the students
enroll. Those students, Vivian Malone
and James Hood, were quietly admitted
through another door.)
A year later, Wallace ran in the Dem-
ocratic primaries, and surprised many
people by winning a third of the vote in
Wisconsin and more than forty per cent
in Maryland. In 1968, he ran as an inde-
pendent, hoping to win enough electoral
votes to deny any candidate a majority,
giving himself leverage in choosing the
next President.
Wallace came to Massachusetts sev-
eral times in the summer of 1968 on drives
for signatures to get on the ballot. I heard
him on one of those trips. The crowd
was small and mostly hostile. What
amazed me was that Wallace gave the
stump speech he delivered everywhere,
which consisted almost entirely of taunts,
insults, and threats. He did not reason
with his opponents.
He called professors and Washington
bureaucrats “sissy britches” and mocked
“the bearded professor who thinks he
knows how to settle the Vietnam War
when he hasn’t got enough sense to park
a bicycle straight.” As President, he said,
he would seek indictments for “any col-
lege professor who talks about hoping
the Vietcong win the war.” He liked to
invite hecklers to come up to the stage
after his speech. “I’ll autograph your san-
dals,” he’d say. He told reporters, “I’d
let the police run this country for a cou-
ple of years. I’m not talking about a po-
lice state, but sometimes it takes a police
state to run some people.” Voters did not
need to be told who “some people” were.
Wallace won just three per cent of
the vote in Massachusetts, but his act
played well across much of the country,
where he spoke to boisterously enthu-
siastic audiences. After a rally at Mad-
ison Square Garden, supporters marched
out chanting “White supremacy!” Peo-
ple told reporters that they admired
him because “he says what he thinks.”
Late in the race, one of
the reporters who covered
Wallace, Douglas Kiker, tried
to explain the phenomenon.
“It is as if somewhere, some-
time a while back, George
Wallace had been awakened
by a white, blinding vision:
they all hate black people, all
of them,” Kiker wrote in New
York. “They’re all afraid, all
of them. Great God! That’s
it! They’re all Southern! The whole
United States is Southern! Anyone who
travels with Wallace these days on his
Presidential campaign finds it hard to
resist arriving at the same conclusion.”
Wallace’s big mistake, late in the cam-
paign, was to name as his running mate
a former general, Curtis LeMay, who
advocated the use of nuclear weapons in
Vietnam. LeMay terrified everyone, and
Wallace ended up with thirteen per cent
of the vote. He was also hurt, as Hum-
phrey was hurt, by being seen constantly
on television surrounded by angry pro-
testers. Those were the scenes people
were voting to get away from. But Wal-
lace carried the Southern states that
Goldwater had won in 1964, and, as ev-
eryone now recognizes, he offered a taste
of demagoguery to come.
bjects in the rearview mirror often
O really are closer than they appear.
It’s not that far from Wallace to Trump.
The focus on Presidential elections makes
it hard to see that from one election to
the next pretty much the same people
are voting, and most people do not change
much over time.The Presidency is a beach
ball bouncing along the surface, the win-
ner an artifact of the circumstance that
there are usually only two candidates to
choose between. “Public opinion,” or the
forces that move it, runs below the sur-
face, and has a much slower tempo.
In “Deeply Divided,” a 2014 study, the
political scientists Doug McAdam and
Karina Kloos argue that since 1960 our
politics has been driven by two move-
ments: the civil-rights movement and
what they call a “countermovement,”
which could be broadly described as anti-
integrationist. It includes racists, but it
also includes many white Americans who
acknowledge the principle of racial equal-
ity but resist involuntary race-mixing,
people who accept and even defend de
facto segregation. “The col-
lapse of the postwar consen-
sus,” McAdam and Kloos
maintain, was not because of
Vietnam; it “had everything
to do with race.”
White voters abandoned
the Democratic Party. In 1968,
Humphrey got thirty-eight
per cent of the white vote. In
1972, George McGovern got
thirty-two per cent. In 1980,
Jimmy Carter, a white Southerner, got
thirty-six per cent. In 2016, Hillary Clin-
ton, running against the toxic nitwit who
is now the face of our politics, received
thirty-seven per cent.
One thing that surprised analysts
about Wallace voters was how young they
were. To most observers during the cam-
paign, it looked as though Wallace was
appealing to older voters who were un-
comfortable with social change or were
unwilling to abandon old prejudices.
These observers assumed that the United
States would age out of those attitudes
as the new day of tolerance and equality
brightened. I’m sure we white Massa-
chusetts liberals believed something like
that. We thought that racial injustice and
American exceptionalism were on histo-
ry’s dust heap, only given a last breath by
the election of Nixon in a crazy and fluky
election year. We thought the gains of
mid-century liberalism were lasting.
We were suffering under two delu-
sions. The first was that ending de jure
discrimination meant ending discrimi-
nation. We know better now about that.
The other delusion, though, persists. This
is the stereotype of sixties youth as pro-
gressive and permissive. There were such
young people, of course, and they got a
lot of press. But most young people in
the nineteen sixties did not march for
civil rights or protest the war in Vietnam.
They had no sandals to autograph. Like
young people in any era, most of them
were like their parents. 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 75

POP MUSIC
SAD RAP
A morose sound goes from underground to the charts.
BY CARRIE BATTAN
ate in November, Lil Xan made
L his New York début, at the down-
town club S.O.B.’s. The level of ex-
citement was unusually high, even for
the much anticipated rap shows that
the club tends to book. “Xanarchy!
Xanarchy! Xanarchy!” the crowd chanted
as the diminutive twenty-one-year-old
rapper, with shaggy brown hair and
the face of a blissed-out toddler, took
the stage. Some audience members
sported fake face tattoos. (Lil Xan,
whose real name is Diego Leanos, has
“Zzz” tattooed under one eye, “Candy”
under the other, and “Xanarchy” above
one eyebrow.) Multiple cameramen
and videographers joined him onstage.
The rapper Lil Peep had the word “Crybaby” tattooed over his right eyebrow.
76 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018
Halfway through his brief set, he brought
out Cole Bennett—a twenty-one-year-
old music-video director with whole-
some, Zack Morris-esque looks—and
the crowd shrieked with the delight
of recognition typically reserved for
those who live in front of the camera
rather than behind it. “I wake up / I
throw up / I feel like I’m dead,” Xan
rapped coolly over one of his glum,
low-range beats, flanked by his friends.
Lil Xan is just one member of a co-
hort of young musicians who, by em-
bracing a morose sound, have trans-
formed from underground curiosities
into stars in the past year. (Last month,
“emorap” was an answer to a crossword
clue in the Times.) The dissonance be-
tween their lyrics and their reception
is reminiscent of the grunge era, and,
indeed, these artists are far more like-
ly to worship Kurt Cobain or Marilyn
Manson than Jay-Z or Kanye West.
This loosely connected network, which
has its roots in the streaming platform
SoundCloud, is now large enough to
have its own offshoots and subsets,
ranging from the violently depressive
nineteen-year-old Floridian XXXTen-
tacion (born Jahseh Onfroy) to the
more radio-ready Lil Xan, who hails
from Redlands, California—or “Dead-
lands,” as he calls it. More concerned
with aesthetics than with craft, Xan
and his peers meld the visual signifiers
and the spoken-word cadences of hip-
hop with the gritty production values
of D.I.Y. punk music.
Despite its abrasiveness, the music
has experienced extraordinary commer-
cial velocity. Over time, Billboard has
broadened the qualifications for its
charts, counting online streams as
well as traditional album sales. Emo
rap, which lives online, has benefitted:
on its release, XXXTentacion’s début
studio album, “17”—a confessional,
genre-bending scrapbook of teen-age
morbidity and mania—landed at No. 2
on the Billboard 200 chart. That week,
it was topped by “Luv Is Rage 2,” by the
more pop-oriented but still anguished
Philadelphia rapper Lil Uzi Vert.
Uzi, who is twenty-three, can be
considered a stepfather of the move-
ment. His single “XO TOUR Llif3,” one
of the most popular tracks of 2017, has
become an anthem for an era of artists
and fans who like to revel in misery,
whether sincerely or for play. “I don’t
really care if you cry,” Uzi sings in bratty
melancholy, over a mournful low whis-
tle of a beat, which was created, by the
producer TM88, using a handheld
portable speaker. “All my friends are
dead / Push me to the edge.” When the
song was released, at the beginning of
the year, it felt like a revelation: an ode
to depression that also got people mov-
ing at night clubs. Now it sounds stan-
dard. In Lil Xan’s breakout hit, “Be-
trayed,” released in August, he warns
of the dangers of prescription pills
one moment and brags about the
women he scores the next. The song
has amassed about a hundred and fifty
ILLUSTRATION BY KEITH NEGLEY
million streams on various platforms,
resulting in a major­label deal.
If hip­hop has historically focussed
on invincibility, this generation is fix­
ated on mortality. Nihilism, taken to
an extreme that feels almost competi­
tive, has become its own form of brag­
gadocio. The sound is a sincere expres­
sion of anguished youth, but it’s also
a backlash against a previous micro­
generation of hip­hop artists obsessed
with self­actualization and revelry. Post
Malone, a singer and rapper tangen­
tially connected to the SoundCloud
community, rose to the top of the Hot
100 toward the end of 2017 with “rock­
star,” a song that makes success sound
as joyless as possible.
In some ways, this movement is in
keeping with the dreary sensibility pop­
ularized on the radio by such artists
D a dark cloud lingered. Two weeks
before, Lil Peep, a twenty­one­year­
as the Weeknd and Lana Del Rey. A
symptom—or perhaps a cause—of this
dim world view is the widespread use
of prescription drugs like Xanax. (Lil
Xan is not short for Lil Xander.) It is
difficult to grasp how these musicians
can be so prolific and make such high­
voltage songs while under the influence
of substances notorious for putting
people to sleep.
As in all popular music, there is a
strong element of fantasy here, and some
of these artists seem to be creating fic­
tional characters as much as they are
expressing their natures. But the line
between fantasy and reality has grown
blurry: live shows have been marked by
widespread violence; XXXTentacion is
currently awaiting trial for a horror
show of domestic­abuse and witness­
tampering charges. Meanwhile, the rap­
per 6ix9ine, whose hit song “Gummo”
blends the brazen lo­fi aesthetic of
SoundCloud with New York street rap,
is making headlines for appearing in
sexual videos with an underage girl.
(He pleaded guilty to the charge of “use
of a child in a sexual performance” in
2015.) Is the tormented ethos of the
songs spilling over into real life, or is
the brokenness of these young stars
being put to music? Listening to XXX­
Tentacion’s “17” or Lil Peep’s “Come
Over When You’re Sober, Pt. 1,” two of
the more impressive examples of the
genre, can be a means of understand­
ing the artists’ pathologies rather than
glorifying them.
espite the excitement at S.O.B.’s,
old rapper from Long Island, had died
after taking Xanax and fentanyl. Lil
Peep, born Gustav Åhr, had been one
of the more talented and brutally de­
pressive members of the SoundCloud
rap community. A master of aesthetic
signifiers, with an ear for melody, he
sampled both Lil Wayne and the early­
aughts emo­punk band Brand New;
he could also rap with the cool forti­
tude of an Atlanta trap rapper over a
minor­chord guitar riff. And his hag­
gard good looks made him an ideal
entrant into the fashion world. (That
he was white was perhaps not unre­
lated.) But his musical sensibility and
his self­presentation were underlain
with a genuine sense of despair that
not even artistic success could placate.
“I used to wanna kill myself / Came up,
still wanna kill myself,” Peep rapped
on “OMFG,” a standout on his mix­
tape “hellboy,” from 2016. “My life
is goin’ nowhere / I want everyone to
know that I don’t care.” (Peep had the
word “Crybaby” tattooed above his
right eyebrow.) The day before he died,
he posted a photograph on Instagram
of his torso, with the caption “When
I die you’ll love me.” Maybe it was a
warning shot; maybe it was another
exercise in image building; most likely
it was both.
Onstage, Lil Xan wore a pink
hoodie bearing Lil Peep’s image. Just
as he was about to finish his set, he
launched into a tirade about the pit­
falls of Xanax abuse. Artists of the
sad­rap movement possess a world­
weariness that makes them seem older
than they are, and Lil Xan has spo­
ken many times, in a harrowed tone,
about battling a Xanax addiction. “Fuck
Xanax 2018!” he told the crowd. But
he added a footnote, lest he start to
sound like too much of a killjoy: “I’m
still Lil Xan, though, at the end of the
day.” In tribute, the d.j. played Lil
Peep’s “Beamerboy,” perhaps the most
morbid song about luxury cars ever
recorded. “I’m never comin’ home
now / All alone now / Can’t let my bros
down / Can’t let my bros down,” Peep
sings. Most of the people onstage and
off bobbed along, unsure of whether
to celebrate or to mourn. When the
song finished, Lil Xan returned to
the microphone to perform his hit
“Betrayed,” three consecutive times.
The crowd hollered the chorus—“Xans
don’t make you / Xans gon’ take you ”—
exulting in an opportunity to return
to the present. 

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THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 8, 2018 77

 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 Michael Maslin,
must be received by Sunday, January 7th. The finalists in the December 18th & 25th contest appear below.
We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the January 22nd 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

“You should see how excited he gets when I pick

him up at baggage claim.”
Kathy Boyanovich, New York City

“It’s cheaper than coach, and he gets more legroom.” “Don’t worry. He won’t last long.”
Eric Weingarten, Bloomington, Ind. Jane Richmond, Cleveland Heights, Ohio

“I think I packed more than I need.”

Alice Gochman, Chatham Center, N.Y.